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| | LATEST NEWS FOR PRINCIPALS |
School Leaders Now
One of your teachers calls out and you're left scrambling to find someone to cover her classes and keep the students on track. Later you see online that she's not sick — at least not in the traditional sense — but she's taking a mental health day to recharge before coming back into the classroom. What do you do? One supervisor went viral when he responded to his employee's request for a mental health day with praise.
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District Administration Magazine
Can exercise boost our effectiveness as leaders? Science supports the importance of exercise, especially for leaders. Proof abounds on the internet and in magazines. Have you made the connection yet? If not, here are a few reasons you should. It's energy-inducing. Exercise can improve energy by strengthening circulation and the heart muscle, both of which increase energy levels. The University of Georgia's review of more than 65 studies on exercise notes that more exercise equals more energy and less fatigue, regardless of whether you get out in the fresh air to walk around campus or hit the trails for a run after work.
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Inc. (commetnary)
Kat Boogaard, a contributor for Inc., writes: "From professors to managers to mentors, I've had the opportunity to be inspired by some great leaders so far in my somewhat short professional life. When thinking about what they have in common, it's easy for me to come up with some shared characteristics. They were all supportive, encouraging, charismatic, and motivated. They all had unique skills and valuable experiences under their belts. But, personality traits aside, I identified one more common thread that ties all of my most memorable leaders together: the questions that they would ask me. Here are three questions to ask your own employees if you want to be seen as a better, stronger leader."
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eSchool News
Challenge-based learning projects in the makerspace have many benefits for students, and can engage and get them excited about new projects. In "Challenge-Based Learning in the School Library Makerspace," Diana Rendina, media specialist and writer for Tampa Preparatory School, Tampa, Florida, presented tips for design challenges and shared experiences from working in the makerspace during her time at Stewart Middle Magnet School in Tampa, Florida. When Rendina first started her position at Stewart Middle Magnet School, a public STEM magnet school, there was almost nothing in the library for hands-on STEM learning. Diana worked with the students to form a makerspace planning committee, and eventually raised money to transform a corner of the library into a dedicated makerspace.
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By: Savanna Flakes (commentary)
 Mindfulness is not new. It originated with Eastern meditation practices around the art of "bringing one's complete attention to the present experience." Mindfulness is what makes us human — the capacity to be fully conscious and aware, or put another way, being present and aware of things happening in the moment. If, as adults, we thrive with mindfulness training, how much more do our students need mindfulness to grow socially and emotionally into healthy human beings?
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Your students don’t all learn in the same way, so why deliver instruction in the same way? Exact Path is focused on understanding where your students are academically and then taking that data a step further. Adaptive tools offer targeted instruction that is aligned to your goals and paced to your students’ needs.
Click here to learn more.
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eSchool News
When you read, you become another person, if only for a short while. You see how that person lives and how they think. You experience their hopes and fears, and you see how they've come to be who they are. If you read five different books, you have a window into the lives of five different people. That's what empathy is: to feel for that other person, and it opens you up to different experiences you may never have otherwise been able to share. There have been numerous studies showing that people who read fiction have increased empathy. This is why fiction is one of the most powerful tools we have to combat bullying and intolerance. When you see the world through another person's eyes, you realize how similar you are to them, even if that person might seem very different from you.
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Education World
The U.S. Hispanic population accounts for 56 percent of the country's population growth since 2000, according to the Pew Research Center. What this means for schools is that roughly five million or one out of every 10 school children are classified as English language learners. Many of these students are immigrants or first-generation from Spanish-speaking countries and while they might know some English, it may not be the primary language spoken at home. This elevates the potential for them to easily fall behind in school. Because of this, the need for bilingual or dual-language teachers continues to rise in many parts of the country.
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School Leaders Now
The school cafeteria can feel like a battleground. Students get ushered in, let off lots of steam, make a mess and leave. If we want our students to abide by healthy habits and make good nutritional choices, it's time to make our school dining areas a pleasant and inspiring place to be. Here's a hint! Your cafeteria walls can be prime real estate for local artists and, of course, student artists to takeover and shine. Here are 13 schools that transformed their cafeterias into havens filled with art, color and style. They're now places in which students not only want to eat but also go back to class and do their best afterwards!
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EdTech Magazine
Technology and social media have taken a great leap in the counseling world. Now you can receive therapy through text and video chat, track your mental health through apps and participate in group sessions online. Just as data and machine learning have been proven effective for school counseling, apps and online tools can help facilitate better student care. Because technology plays such a big role in our students' lives — academically, socially and emotionally — these types of resources can be really helpful for school counselors, allowing them to connect on a deeper level and better communicate.
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Harvard Business Review
You know the moment: a mood-veering, thought-steering, pressure-packed interaction with a colleague, boss, or client where the right thing to say is stuck in a verbal traffic jam between your brain and your mouth.
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THE Journal
Time, planning and support from schools and districts and ongoing professional development are key to getting the most of new technologies and tools introduced to the classroom, according to a new report from the Foundation for Blended and Online Learning. The report is based on surveys of nearly 700 educators from public schools, charter schools, private schools and alternative education programs, as well as from school and classroom observations by the authors and in-depth interviews with 11 different educators.
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Istation
[FREE E-Book] Boost student achievement and inspire educational gains with eight steps schools can take to bridge the gap! This e-book from Istation covers progress monitoring, motivational strategies, strengthening school-to-home connections, and more.
Get your copy.
Forbes (commetnary)
Amy Douglas, a contributor for Forbes, writes: "As a leader, I've often had to help my team manage challenging situations. Through all those conversations, a common theme would emerge. I'd find myself asking them, 'What is more important to you: being effective or being right?' We all like to be right, including me. It's hardwired into many of us, especially successful, driven leaders who have been 'right' a lot in their careers and handsomely rewarded for it."
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| | FEDERAL ADVOCACY AND POLICY |
Education Week
As the White House digs in on its immigration legislation, school leaders and immigration advocates across the country face a dilemma in their fight to protect hundreds of thousands of young people from deportation. President Trump issued a list of demands — which includes a plan to expedite the removal of unaccompanied minor children arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border — for immigration legislation to Capitol Hill over the weekend that represent a return to the hardline stance that he championed during last year's presidential campaign.
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Education Week
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos' school choice agenda has run into roadblocks on Capitol Hill. But, from her perch at the department, she has other levers to get states and districts to offer kids more schooling options, without help from anyone in Congress.
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Education Week
President Donald Trump alarmed a lot of the education community when he proposed slashing the U.S. Department of Education's nearly $70 billion budget by $9 billion. So will those cuts become a reality? Probably not, say a couple dozen inside-the-beltway education experts surveyed by Whiteboard Advisors. In fact 79 percent of them don't think Congress will follow through on the proposals.
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EdTech Magazine
Small and rural school districts aren't alone in launching virtual classrooms, thanks to new collaboration and networking tools. The master plan developed by the San Francisco Unified School District identifies virtual classrooms and blended learning opportunities as critical resources for personalized instruction.
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EdSource
Special education in California is in "deep trouble," exacerbated by outmoded concepts and an extreme shortage of fully-prepared teachers, according to Michael Kirst, president of the California State Board of Education. Kirst said that the state's special education system — which serves students with physical, cognitive and learning disabilities — is based on an antiquated model and that it needs "another look." "Someone needs to sit up and say, 'We need to update it,'" he said.
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The Morning Call
A class of second-graders at Plainfield Elementary stood up and raised their arms. Extending two fingers — or sky writers — they traced out a letter "K" in the air. "Kay. Slide down, slide in, slide out," they chanted in unison. It's a mantra they repeated as they traced a K with their fingers on a textured paper, so they could physically feel the letter. Then they wrote the letter with a pencil.
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NPR
Back-to-school season didn't last long this year in Puerto Rico. First Hurricane Irma and then Maria forced schools to close and turned the lives of students and their families upside down. Puerto Rico's Secretary of Education Julia Keleher says that of nation's 1,113 public schools, 22 reopened last week and another 145 this week. They're hoping that the majority will be open by Oct. 23. Some are still functioning as emergency shelters. To get an idea of how children and teachers and parents are coping, we visited two different schools in San Juan last week. They're among the lucky ones that have been able to open their doors and welcome students back.
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The Washington Post
In the years after the Supreme Court's landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, many Southern states revolted against school desegregation orders. Not Florida. There, leaders accepted them. Florida witnessed more dramatic integration than other states, in part because desegregation was allowed — and then embraced — by LeRoy Collins, who was Florida's governor in the late 1950s. The state's school systems are also organized by county — encompassing cities and their whiter, more affluent suburbs — making it easier to create demographically balanced schools. But there is growing evidence the schools in the nation's third most-populous state are resegregating, according to a report by UCLA's Civil Rights Project.
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NAESP
"We are all English learners" is a phrase often used in articles and presentations. In practice, however, the challenges of having students who speak different languages may seem overwhelming. Serving the wide range of English learners is an important matter for principals, particularly in the many schools experiencing changing demographics and struggling to serve a more diverse population.
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NAESP
Oct. 31 is quickly approaching! NAESP is currently accepting proposals for 75-minute conference sessions in one of the following conference strands: High Leverage Instructional Leadership, Creating Positive Culture, Transforming Schools and more.
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