Vlog Post 2: Happy Teacher Appreciation Week

 Happy Teacher Appreciation Week: https://youtu.be/jAgpz2nuPrM

VLOG Post 1: I'm In Reflection Mode On This First Day Of May 2021

It's time to start vlogging in between the times of putting pen to pad! Two words that I keep hearing in education are Innovation and Revolutionary. These 2 words are profound as we strive to reach families and kids in ways that stretch us outside of our comfort zones. Below is the link to the VLOG post:

https://youtu.be/T6v8p7pZ7Hs

Thanksgiving and Sacrifice Go Hand in Glove in Leadership

My feelings about this holiday season over the years have evolved into more and more reflection time around what really matters in my life. As a black man in America, I don’t get into the logistics over the history of the holiday that I've educated myself on because this is a PERSONAL time of reflection, gratitude towards my family and friends, and of appreciating my blessings. This year, especially, there are 2 words that ring loud and clear in my inner being as I reflect, and those are Thanksgiving and Sacrifice.

As one who holds leadership roles in education and at my church, I take those roles very seriously. I’m thankful to be blessed to operate in both roles, and it requires sacrifice. The very act of being thankful for your blessings should propel one to look beyond the blessings and say to oneself, “How can I sacrifice in order to pass the blessings that I have been bestowed upon me to someone else?” This is where it gets personal for me. The blessing that I have worked diligently to pass on is safety. As a school leader during this pandemic, parents are entrusting me to ensure a maximum level of safety for their kids. In turn, my wife and my own kids at home have an extremely high expectation that as a husband and father, I will live my life everyday during this pandemic in a manner that does not expose them. 

The confidence that my family and the families I serve put in me LEADS ME to sacrifice everyday that I wake up, and I do offer that sacrifice with a smile on my face and joy in my heart. Will I miss seeing family and friends for Thanksgiving? I certainly will. Do I miss watching my kids participate in soccer, basketball, and field hockey during the fall and winter months? I miss it to a level that you wouldn’t believe. However, I know that my level of thankfulness to be in the position that I am has LEAD me to sacrifice the things I love to ensure that the kids I serve can continue to attend school in person if their parents have chosen that option. My level of thankfulness to serve in a leadership capacity at my church has LEAD me to sacrifice my personal desires for the members (30% or less of capacity; socially distant; and following all state and CDC guidelines for houses of worship) that look forward to attending in person to hear a message of Good News every Sunday. My level of thankfulness for having a beautiful wife and kids has LEAD me to sacrifice by isolating myself from all the things I love to do to ensure that I am keeping them safe. My thankfulness has LEAD me to think about the families of my colleagues, my neighbor that I may pass on my morning or evening walks as we both walk our dogs, and my fellows brothers and sisters that I don’t know, and apply personal sacrifices to my life for them.

However you celebrate, or if you don’t celebrate during this season at all, I implore you to love on the family in your house, reflect on the bright spots of 2020 that bring a smile to your face, and be hopeful that the future brings greatness to all around you.

Evolving Mindsets...Leaders, Tap Into Your Teachers

 If you are reading this, please make sure to go back and read the blog post by my friend and colleague, Doug Timm @DougTimm34, and this post will make more sense to you. His post, "What I Thought, Is Not What It Is," got my mind in reflection mode so I decided to write. I'm challenging my friend and colleague Deanna @Hessteacherest to follow this post up with her wonderful insight to help Doug and I channel this in a great way that she always does.

There were 2 statements that Doug had in the blog post that captivated my thoughts. Here they are:

1. "I thought my presence, title, and perceived power would bring my 'thoughts' to truth and facts."
2. "It turns out my thoughts were wrong. It is a lot of hard work, constantly growing, and mindsets evolving."

To unpack it further, I am focusing on "thoughts" and "mindsets." As a school leader, these 2 areas are imperative to continually improve instruction and student achievement. One tip that I'd like to drop for school leaders is to ensure that you are in at least one Voxer group, thought group, etc. where you as a school leader are outnumbered by teachers. The key thing is that it is a group of teachers not from your school or district. This will push your thinking in ways that a graduate course or a conference may not. Let me break it down for you.

With every passing year in leadership, that is one more year further away from the classroom. For example, I haven't taught in the classroom since September 2014. The experience of the teachers I serve now is completely different from what I experienced. My students in 2014 are not the students of 2020. As I gain new learning about instructional technology, resources, and strategies, I can't rush to try to push it all on my teachers. In addition, the teachers I serve may feel uneasy about calling me out on my approaches to things or challenging my thinking on things that drastically affect them in their classrooms. By being in Voxer groups or PLNs where you are outnumbered by teachers, I can gauge how my teachers really feel about certain things without them having to tell me. The teachers in my PLNs can call me out or challenge me on parts of my leadership or practices that teachers are going to have problems with. Not only can they call me out, but they will also describe their own experiences or history in certain situations that I'm describing, and explain to me how it may have negatively impacted the morale of the school.

This is one significant way that school leaders can challenge their thinking and shift their mindset. A sample testimony of mine is that there have been many ideas that I've had that I wanted to present to my Principal for us to think about based off of what I saw other school leaders doing on Twitter or Facebook. It'd happen by chance that I'd find myself lurking in one of my Voxer groups, trying to catch up on a conversation, and teachers would be discussing a similar initiative or strategy being implemented in their school that I was thinking about, but the implementation was not going well for several reasons. It gave me a chance to gauge how that same thing could either blow up in my face at my building or how we would need to revamp it in order to suit our school.

Let's Rock!

All Roles and Roads Lead Back To The Classroom Series - Part 1

A couple of weeks ago, this idea hit me so I decided to tweet it out.

My two years as a Dean of Students, in addition to my first two years in admin as an AP at the middle school level, taught me that my Principal should not be bogged down with the discipline issues and decisions to the point where they are constantly away from instructional matters. This concept has been tugging at my core lately. As I interact with teachers and administrators on Twitter and my Voxer groups, it is evident that this is an area of concern or struggle in many schools across America. 

Now I have a renewed focus for my blog posts and writing as I unpack this area in 2020 through reading, research, and what I consider most important, organic conversations with teachers and administrators from everywhere. 

My focus with this post is on the nature of the role of Dean of Students and Behavior Interventionist (BI). If you were to look at the job descriptions for job openings for Dean of Students and/or BI's, you will almost likely find one glaring statement of similar wording to the one below:

• this person will collaborate with administration, teachers, counselors, social workers, and other pertinent personnel to develop appropriate and positive behavior modifications or supports to assist students in being successful across a variety of settings

When looking at this one sample component of Dean's or BI's role, this component can and will help schools to meet the needs of students that need the extra support and Principals to spend time in classrooms instead of disciplining students. However, we must provide the job-embedded modeling, professional development (PD), and training for Deans and BI's in order to make this a reality. Many times in schools across the globe, the process of dealing with behavior or discipline issues entails:

1. The teacher informs the Dean, BI, or admin
2. The Dean, BI, or admin are first to pull the student from class to have a talk with him or her about the behavior 
3. The student returns to the classroom with our without a consequence (this depends on the school and/or district's code of conduct, policies, procedures, or protocols, but consequences is not a part of this discussion or the intent of my journey)
4. The cycle continues with multiple students throughout the school that are experiencing behavior or socioemotional concerns

I must admit, I have been guilty of this process on many occasions as a Dean and AP until peer accountability from my PLN and other mentors convicted me to grow in this area. School leaders, myself included, must shift our time away from "jumping in to discipline" issues with our Deans and BI's. The new focus of our time needs to be on developing and modeling for our Deans and BI's on how to go in the classrooms to "collect evidence" in the same way that as evaluators we "collect evidence" during our teacher observations. 

These roles may not be classroom based roles, but we need to create the culture around these roles that supports them being in the classrooms. I will be the first to sing the praises of educators that serve in these roles because many times, their days consist of tending to difficult situations, minimized or missed personal lunch times to deal with issues, working with bus drivers, meeting with parents, and the list goes on and on. Having served in one of these roles, I'd never minimize their worth. I am on a mission to celebrate these educators and ensure they are supported in ways that help them have the latest evidence-based practices at their disposal to help them help the students they serve. The same way that we throw a lot of money at PD for our teachers, we need to look at ways to provide PD for our Deans and BI's.This ultimately leads back to the classroom in the sense that Principals can be in classrooms for most of their days. This starts with the mindset towards how we improve the culture and climate of our schools.

I will extend on these ideas and thoughts in later posts, which will add other school based, or specialist roles outside of the classroom. This is just the tip of the iceberg of my journey towards unlocking the keys to supporting these roles while increasing instructional.

Reflections on Fatherhood

First and foremost, due to challenges this weekend, my Sat. blog post was handwritten, but was unable to log on to get it in electronic format. So, here it goes.

As I stare at my 3 kids everyday, I always reflect on how I think I'm doing as a dad. I've come to realize that there is not a manual for parenting.... AT ALL. I'd never buy one of those "better parenting" type books as long as my conscious and love for humanity exists in my inner being. All kids are different so this whole process of "parenting" is trial and error. I hang my hat on 2 specific self reflection questions, which are:

1. Am I actively listening to my kids' concerns, passions, interests, etc.?
2. Am I fully supporting my kids in all their endeavors, great and small?

Some days I feel as though I fall short in both of the above areas, but the goal is to improve upon yesterday's interactions/relationships with them. As they get older, their interests change, and I must do what I can do to support them. We know that the interests and passions of kids can lead them to their calling or destiny in life.

Another component to this is working with my wife in order to be the best father I can be. As fathers, we can't even put into words or fully grasp the bond that exists between a child and mother. I have grown to love our conversations with in reference to our daughters and son because I learn even more about my kids. The conversations held with mom can and will differ from those held with dad. That "mommy" insight helps tremendously. 

I have had outstanding men in my life, especially those I worship with weekly, that I have observed and "stole" things from to improve myself in being the family man that I was called to be.

When Being Blunt Goes Wrong....Crafting the Message

As a continuation of yesterday's blog post on crafting the message, one concrete example below will consume today's post.

Scenario:

John is an 8th grade student in Mr. Phillips' 4th period math class. The class is 55 minutes in length. John uses the restroom everyday at approximately the same time during Mr. Phillips' class. John has even tried to ask to go to the restroom twice during the class period on several occasions. This has been ongoing for the past week and a half. Mr. Phillips decides to put his foot down, and he lets John know that he is not permitted to use the restroom during class anymore. Mr Phillips calls John's parents and tells them that John has been abusing his restroom privileges in his class, and he's not allowed to use the restroom in his class anymore. Some back and forth ensues between Mr. Phillips and John's mother. John's mother ends the call by informing Mr. Phillips that she will be calling the Principal because he is refusing her son's right to use the restroom.

I have seen some teachers and student/parent relationships strained or damaged due to interactions like these. A different approach, or crafting the message in a different way, would of yielded better results. The end result here is for John to minimize the amount of instruction time he misses.

A crafted message to the scenario:

Mr. Phillips starts to respond to John's requests for restroom use with the question, "Are you able to wait several minutes until after this part of the lesson is done because I don't want you to get behind on this material?" This doesn't deter John. Mr. Phillips talked to John's other teachers, and he discovers that John is going to the restroom in all of his other classes at approximately the same time to. Mr. Phillips decides to take the initiative to call his parents. His phone conversation with the mother goes along the following lines:

Mr. Phillips: Good morning! This is Mr. Phillips, John's math teacher.
John's Mom: Yes, good morning.
Mr. Phillips: The purpose for my call is that I am concerned for John.
John's Mom: What do you mean?
Mr. Phillips: Well, for about the past week and a half, John has been missing substantial time from my class every day because he's requested to use the restroom. I'm trying to help him stay caught up as much as possible, and since it's been going on for over a week, I just thought I'd call to see if there is any medical reasons, which I don't need details about, that I should be aware of so that I can let the nurse and his other teachers know so that we are accommodating and offering alternatives so that he doesn't get behind with missing work.
John's Mom: No, Mr. Phillips. John is fine. He should not be leaving your classroom that much. It looks like he is starting that again this year with trying to get out of class to goof off or God knows what. He knows that my husband and I have told him repeatedly that he the only way he is to be leaving any classrooms is for emergencies, and I'd prefer him to ask to go to the nurse is he is feeling ill or something along those lines.
Mr. Phillips: Oh, I see. Thank you so much for that insight. That helps me out a lot. So, moving forward, how would you like me to address this because I don't want to deny him restroom privileges, but I don't want him getting behind with the work either.
John's Mom: Please do not let him leave your classroom. My husband and I will be having a long talk with him about this. He is only to go to the restroom in between classes because he doesn't need to miss any work. Mr. Phillips, I appreciate this phone call. Please let me know if he starts trying this again.
Mr. Phillips: Thank you for all of your help in this matter. I appreciate it. I will keep you and your husband updated with any other issues or concerns that may arise. Have a great rest of your day.
John's Mom: You too. Goodbye!

This was just one approach that could have been used to attack that issue. The main point that Mr. Phillips needed to get across was the loss of instructional time, and he needed him in the classroom as much as possible. The child's motive to get out of class, as relayed to him by the parent, is irrelevant to the bottom line at this point in time. Sometimes with communication and trying to relay the correct message, our feelings can sometimes get in the way for various reasons. When we can carefully decipher what the bottom line is and craft that message appropriately, the end results can work in our favor a significant amount of the time. Now, don't get me wrong, we know that this will not work all the time. However, trying to craft the message as best as we can may eliminate some degree of negativity.