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District Administration Magazine
Sharing special events, celebrating student accomplishments and telling stories of the small moments from a school day are all part of the role of educators. Social media platforms are powerful tools for educators who are committed to connecting with stakeholders in a meaningful, consistent manner. It gives them information in the spaces they are already exploring on their own time.
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School Leaders Now
There is a challenging reality for administrators when it comes to helping at-risk students. These students may require temporary interventions to succeed academically and/or behaviorally. Many of these students do not have the skills to respond appropriately to the expectations of classroom teachers and administrators.
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MindShift
Everyone — from businesses to sports franchises — is on a quest to crack the code of the perfect team. Google spent years studying their working teams and determined that success wasn't based on "who" was on a team but on the culture created by the team — for example, a group that takes turns talking vs. one in which members speak over one another. Educators are also looking for students who work well together, both socially and academically.
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Harvard Business Review
Lately, we have been hearing a lot from our clients about "toxic" coworkers and teammates. This issue isn't new; there have been bad coworkers since the beginning of organized work. But these days, their impact feels bigger and more destructive. Businesses need teamwork to function. And teams need to be more collaborative, adaptable, and proactive than ever. The days of top-down decision making are long gone in many companies and industries, as it's replaced by grassroots innovation that's unleashed through coworkers openly networking and sharing information across boundaries.
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Leadership Freak (commentary)
"It's easier to complain than take responsibility to make something better. One morning, not long ago, I set out to NOT complain for a day. That morning at 7:00 a.m I met a leader for coffee. He said I complained in the first 30 seconds of our conversation. I complained about the large cold room where we were having coffee. The complainer in me wants to blame him for pulling me down! But sometime – before I die — I need to take responsibility for my life."
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Forbes
How much fun are you having at work? Our brains need passion, play, and release at work. They're essential to keeping us emotionally connected and engaged, to feel part of the tribe, to blow off steam, to create shared experiences. Here are 5 ways to have more fun at work.
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CLO
Over the past few years, the corporate learning and development community seems to have embraced a new tenet: Make it easy. Intensive offsite training courses are being replaced by online microlearning and smart curation and assessment tools. Employees no longer need to devote weeks at a time to professional development — they can learn from their desks, on a schedule that flexes around the demands of their job.
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The NIGHTLOCK® Lockdown uses the strength of the floor to withstand tremendous force, and works on any outward- and inward-swinging doors. The NIGHTLOCK unit is installed at floor level, and remains out of reach to anyone attempting to enter by breaking window glass on conventional classroom and office doors.
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Comparably
One of the most important factors that determines how long people stay at their jobs is the relationship they have with their boss. When that relationship is healthy, the sky's the limit; but when it's not, productivity and morale are at risk. Comparably recently asked users to reveal which quality they find to be the worst in a boss. The data comes from more than 2,000 employees from small, midsize and large public and private U.S. companies, predominantly in the tech sector.
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Harvard Business Review (commentary)
by Paul Axtell, a contributor for Harvard Business Review, writes: "Katherine, have a go at it?" I love this scene from the 2017 movie, Hidden Figures. Katherine, played by Taraji P. Henson, is put on the spot by her boss, played by Kevin Costner, in a room filled with top brass NASA officials — all male. She is asked to go to the chalkboard and lay out the math to bring John Glenn's space capsule out of orbit and back to Earth. This moment has all the elements of classic storytelling — something unexpected happens, something disruptive and uncomfortable — and then a memorable moment becomes a life lesson for everyone who is paying attention.
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District Administration Magazine
Last fall, a national problem arrived in Superintendent Richard Scaletta's corner of rural northwestern Pennsylvania. Principals in the General McLane School District began reporting unprecedented levels of misbehavior: students in frequent and severe distress, sometimes kicking, biting or throwing things. By October, the district had referred 27 of its 2,100 pupils to intensive out-of-school therapy. And one morning in February, after months of information-gathering, Scaletta started school two hours late so district staff could undergo training on student mental health issues.
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HR DIVE
A lot can happen in a year, or even in six months, and managers that don't keep detailed records of employee progress, setbacks or incidents must rely on memory when it's performance review time. According to Reflektive's study, 67 percent of managers admit they removed negative feedback from evaluations because so much time had gone by and the feedback was no longer relevant. Real-time reviews allow managers to focus on and address current incidents, eliminating questions about whether old feedback still applies.
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Inc. (commentary)
Marcel Schwantes, a contributor for Inc., writes: "Whether your company is a startup or an established firm, I want to share about a compelling leadership model that will get the best out of employees. It's based on the seminal research of Dr. Jim Laub, president of Servant Leader Performance and creator of the Organizational Leadership Assessment. Out of a mountain of data, Laub discovered six characteristics of servant leadership that, when actively demonstrated up, down, and across levels, can lead to a thriving and result-oriented work culture."
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Education World
Budget cuts. We've been feeling the effects of them for a while, now, haven't we? At first, we waited patiently, even optimistically. We watched supplies dwindle, books deteriorate, computers fall apart ... We took pay freezes, pay cuts, took a second or a third job, did our best to dodge layoffs ... As an educator, often, your first reaction to such an unsupportive academic environment is to double-down your efforts, if only out of pure spite against the system: You start running free after-school programs to keep the arts alive; you take pride in your ability to creatively manage a classroom with half the resources; you show the world the indomitable spirit of your students ... Unfortunately, these practices don't tend to be sustainable. Everyone has a breaking point. And teachers in classrooms across the nation have reached it.
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Forbes
It has been about six months since the sexual harassment allegations against Harvey Weinstein surfaced and launched the #MeToo movement. Although there were hopes that #MeToo would bring about real change in the workplace, after six months we have little to show for it. In fact, new research out this week from the Pew Research Center indicates that a majority of employees feel that #MeToo has made it more difficult to interact with the opposite sex at work. A whopping 51 percent of employees stated that #MeToo has made interactions with the opposite sex at work harder, while only 12 percent thought these interactions were made easier by #MeToo.
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Education Week
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, who announced that he will not seek re-election to his seat in Congress this fall, will leave behind at least two notable education achievements: He ensured passage of a new federal education law in 2015, and gave a boost to parents seeking resources for school choice through a tax-reform bill approved in 2017. Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, was first elected in 1998 and took over as speaker in October 2015, replacing Ohio Republican Rep. John Boehner.
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By: Bambi Majumdar (commentary)
 When Education Secretary Betsy DeVos ripped Oklahoma teachers for not serving their students, she inadvertently shed light on a problem that is tearing the K-12 system apart. The issue is not the teachers and the missed classes. It is the intrinsic detachment of lawmakers and decision-makers from the reality of our educational needs. Some teachers complained that DeVos has not visited enough schools in underfunded regions and therefore has no idea of what they need.
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The Hechinger Report
Sometimes Superintendent Steve Bradshaw has to close the schools in Columbia Falls, Montana because of snow. But he never thought he'd have to call off school because of an attack by the Dark Overlords. Then, in September 2017, students and staff across the district started receiving threatening text messages and emails. "It was frightening," he says. "They were saying that they wanted $150,000 worth of bitcoins." The Dark Overlords are a faceless group of hackers, most well known for hacking and trying to extort Netflix. They hadn't attacked a school before.
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District Administration Magazine
School district administrators hate it when they stumble across closets full of unused computing devices or visit classrooms where whiteboards are being used as very expensive chalkboards. Technology leaders at Dysart USD in the Phoenix suburbs had real-world experience with this phenomenon and were determined to make changes, says Diana Hawari, chief information officer. "Buying 1,000 laptops and dividing them between so many schools might not be the best idea if we don't have a great idea how to use them," Hawari says.
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EdTech Magazine
When the IT department rolls out a new technology in a K-12 school, having a cloud-based management tool is basically a requirement. With the cloud, slim IT staffs are able to help teachers and administrators leverage technology to create personalized learning experiences and manage student data. As more storage and server functions are moved to the cloud, IT staff can help schools save money and valuable time.
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eSchool News
School violence regularly occupies news headlines, turning students into activists as they demand gun control and call on lawmakers and education stakeholders to drastically improve school safety. This disturbing trend, including the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and the March 20 shooting at Great Mills High School in Great Mills, Md., has prompted many districts to turn to technology solutions to put an extra layer of safety measures in schools.
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School Leaders Now
We live in a digital age where STEM touches nearly every career in some way. To prepare our students, schools put a strong focus on STEM curricula that builds students' skills in math and science and teaches them how to use various forms of technology. But what about soft skills?
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Edutopia (commentary)
Michael Giardi, a contributor for Edutopia, writes: "Last year I began working at a school with block scheduling, which offered me 100-minute math classes, four days a week. As a math teacher, I've always stressed about having enough time in class and was thrilled to begin my new schedule. However, I wasn't as thrilled about the new curriculum, which left me searching for ways to engage my students in math on a daily basis."
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School Construction News
School facilities built in the mid-20th century often have structural limitations that make it difficult to support the delivery of a 21st century curriculum. For example, double-loaded corridors with homogenous classrooms can challenge the delivery of project-based learning, such as small group activities, and are not conducive to outdoor learning. Many teachers are masters at flexibility and working around these limitations, but a better approach is to renovate school facilities so they enhance instruction.
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Language Magazine
A new study of more than 11,000 7-year-old twins found that how well children read determines how much they read, not vice versa. Furthermore, the authors of the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry study found that how well children read is highly heritable, while how much they read is influenced equally by genes and the environment. The findings indicate that children's reading level fuels how much they choose to read and that children therefore tend to avoid reading if they find it difficult. Interventions should focus not only on promoting reading skills but also motivation to read.
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Tulane University via Science Daily
Participating in yoga and mindfulness activities at school helps third-graders exhibiting anxiety improve their wellbeing and emotional health, according to a new Tulane University study published in the journal Psychology Research and Behavior Management. Researchers worked with a public school in New Orleans to add mindfulness and yoga to the school's existing empathy-based programming for students needing supplementary support. Third graders who were screened for symptoms of anxiety at the beginning of the school year were randomly assigned to two groups.
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Edutopia
Even the best lesson plans do not survive unchanged on first contact with students. Those who struggle will need modifications to help them learn, and advanced learners will need adjustments so that they're stretched for their personal growth and don't just regurgitate what they already know. Successful instruction plans for these differentiation needs — and highly effective instruction also involves students' readiness, interests and learning preferences.
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EdSurge
Economists following the teacher protests in Oklahoma, West Virginia, Kentucky and Arizona say they saw this coming. As the costs of living, higher education, healthcare and retirement are rising, researchers studying salary trends note that the average pay for teachers has dipped.
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The Hechinger Report
Preschool is most likely to help low-income children if their classmates come from a range of family incomes, according to a new study. The new research contradicts the current strategy in most states of targeting public preschool only to low-income kids. That approach is based on the results of many earlier studies that have found attending preschool helps kids from disadvantaged backgrounds start kindergarten on a stronger academic footing. The benefits for higher income children are less pronounced. That is why most states and the federal government choose to spend taxpayer dollars on "targeted" preschool programs open only to low-income families.
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New England Public Radio
How important is it to have a role model? A new working paper puts some numbers to that question. Having just one black teacher in third, fourth or fifth grade reduced low-income black boys' probability of dropping out of high school by 39 percent, the study found. And by high school, African-American students, both boys and girls, who had one African-American teacher had much stronger expectations of going to college. Keep in mind, this effect was observed seven to ten years after the experience of having just one black teacher.
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Education DIVE
As schools seek ways to encourage individuality, creativity, innovation and collaboration, redesigning the classroom space seems like a logical place to start. The traditional desk-in-rows format does little to promote these ideas. Many schools are now looking at flexible seating options and new classroom designs that work better with new educational approaches and the growing use of technology.
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Oxford University Press USA via Science Daily
A new study indicates that delaying school start times results in students getting more sleep, and feeling better, even within societies where trading sleep for academic success is common.
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Tucson.com/Capitol Media Services
Advocates hope Arizona's elementary school children will be a little less stressed this coming year thanks to a new law. Gov. Doug Ducey signed legislation mandating two recess periods a day for students in kindergarten through fifth grades. Youngsters in half-day kindergarten programs will get at least one break. The legislation is the culmination of a decade-long effort by some lawmakers and education advocates who have argued that letting kids get up and move around will help their academic performance.
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The News & Observer
There are so few nurses in North Carolina's public schools that a new state report says it could cost an additional $45 million to $79 million a year to help meet student health needs. There's one school nurse for every 1,086 students, according to a state legislative staff report, meaning the majority of student medical needs have to be met by non-nurses. The report said it could cost $45 million a year to get to a ratio of one nurse for every 750 students and could cost $79 million annually to ensure every North Carolina public school has a nurse.
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NAESP
Together with Crayola, NAESP offers a special opportunity to apply for a Champion Creatively Alive Children Grant. Your school could receive a $3,500 grant (a $2,500 check and $1,000 worth of Crayola products) to establish a creative leadership team and build the creative capacity of your professional learning community. The deadline to apply is Friday, June 22. (The Early Bird deadline is Monday, June 5. Early Bird applications will receive a Crayola product Classpack). Click here for more information.
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NAESP
Don't miss a unique opportunity to advance your career and strengthen the leadership skills of new principals. Your knowledge and expertise is critical to ensure the success of the next generation of school leaders. As with any career, mentors offer guidance and support to help others become highly effective leaders. Take the time to invest in yourself, your career and the principal profession as a Certified National Principal Mentor.
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