Caring Counts

Madeline Hunter states, "Kids don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." Think about that statement. We work in a profession where focus is on standards, testing, and data. I think about "The Brady Bunch" and 'Marcia, Marcia, Marcia'. Data, data, data!

I work with a fantastic group of people that truly believe in Ms. Hunter's philosophy. Yet, we struggle to find that balance between state and political expectations. So, how do find the balance.

It's easy. Relationships make the difference. Our kids need to know you care about them. Spend time developing these relationships with your students. So, how do you this? Here's three strategies:

1. 10-4 Good buddy! Over the course of the first 4 weeks in the school year, learn 10 facts about your students that are not related to academics. Take a loose leaf notebook and create a page per student. On each student page, record 10 facts about each student. Learn your students outside the class.

2. Stick it to 'Em! Each evening write 1-2 sticky notes with a positive prompt about 1-2 students. Do this each evening. Imagine what would happen if you do this daily, and how this would improve your relationships.

3. Develop Deep Family Connections! Build connections with your students' families. Make a phone call, drop an email, or make a visit. Imagine if you made this contact once a month for each family. Phone calls and emails take five minutes. Praise points go a long way, especially if you do this repeatedly. Other benefit? When there is a challenge, you know that the parents are going to be very supportive!

Why do we do this? Show your kids your care, and then they will care to learn what you know!

Feel the heart, and you feed the brain. Inside, out!

Lead Like Their Lives Depend on It

As is this time of year, we often reflect on the successes of many as commencements across your community happen. I'm reminded that the sense of completion and the time of new beginning. What I love most about this time of year is the restart button for educators.

We close up the classroooms, level up the classes, and type up the copious amounts of data we have for evaulatiions and state reports. But more importantly, it's a time for us to reflect on our leadership skills. For a new set of kiddos are around the corner. 

I often argue that being a leader in Education is the most demanding of all fields. Having worked in public education, non-for-profit, and corporate, I am more convinced of this. The stakes are way higher than any other profession. What we build are the traits and behaviors that future leaders and community members carry with them for the rest of their lives.

As a school leader, consider the following:

1. Be in each and every moment - there is nothing more important than the conversation you are having with that child or adult. Listen more than you speak. We know you are the leader. You don't need to show us through words. Show us through actions. Find the root cause of an issue, and tackle it together. 



2. Every class, every day - Make a point to visit every classroom even if it's just a walk by. It's the best proactive support you can offer. Set aside 30 minutes to visit and be seen. I wish I had down this more. Looking back, im afraid I missed many "right there" opportunities to build confidence, reinforce positive actions, and learn.

3. Be a Teacher - model why you want. Spend time once a month teaching in a classroom. Maybe it's an interactive read aloud or teaching a guided math group in fourth grade. It could be a new recess game or a science experiment in chemistry. 

They are looking to you for guidance, for approval, and for affirmation. Your actions make a difference. Whatever you do, lead like their lives depend on it. Why? Their lives may really do depend on it. 

How Am I Going to Make This the Best Year Ever?

These 17 students taught me with the power of relationships,
and how a bunch of kids and a 22 year old can become a family.

I'll never forget my first day as a legitimate, certified teacher. I was hired in a K-8 middle school, and was the 'bubble' section of a rather large third grade. I remember walking into my blank slate of a classroom and feeling elated. All of the learning I was about to bestow would happen in this room. Mind you the classroom had a roomful of windows right outside the hallway that led to the café. So, every single student and teacher would watch me teach every moment. Life in a fishbowl - no worries there - I would later find that life in a fishbowl was pretty normal in a one district community.

I spent days preparing for the arrival of my 17students (yes-17!). I had taken all the classes - management, literacy, math, assessment - and was ready for what was to happen. The first day arrived. In my blue shirt, khaki pants, and striped tie, I was ready to welcome my first and dearest family. What I wasn't ready for were the tears, crying, and all out desperation. The previous teacher (for whom I took over in the bubble) had left and the students found a young man teacher and not the female teacher they were expecting. Their classroom had moved and was in the midst of the eighth grade hallway. You could say that the first moments of third grade was a scary time for us all. I didn't have a class on what to do if your kids cried because you weren't the teacher they thought they would have.

All of the ideas I had planned suddenly were out the window for the first day. I picked up a stack of books and I read. I read. I read. I read. We had community circle, read some more, learned about each of the students, and complimented them all -- from the dress one girl was wearing to the glasses of another boy. I spent the entire day reading books and playing games. I couldn't tell you what happened on day two or three. I can just tell you what I felt. I wanted my students to feel safe and secure.

I wanted them to trust me as their teacher. I wanted them to be grow into the best learners imaginable that year. As I reflect back, I don't remember when and how I taught the standards (they were taught per my lesson book showed). I couldn't tell you what reading skills we taught. Nor could I tell you how cursive went (we did teach it). I know my students learned skills in math and reading. But, what I believe they learned most of all was how to care for one another. How to support one another. How to love one another. That all started with a stack of books and a commitment I made to them that we would have the best year ever. Every day in my plan book was, "How am I going to make this the best year ever? Then, I worked to make it happen.

Digital Learning: The Pole Position of the Classroom

The Namco 1982 game Pole Position came
out, and helped revolutionize technology.
Educators are in the driver seat now
to embrace and catapult digital learning
for tomorrow's problem solvers.

We are a far cry from the 1980s with Atari and Pole Position. Technology is everywhere. We have allowed it to become part of our culture. However, I'd be a hypocrite if I said that we should be cautious about the use of digital tools while I use my own cell phone all day for conference calls, Go To Meetings, emails, texts, resources, pictures, etc. Yet, here I am urging us all to take pause in how digital tools are embedded within our life. I am 100% okay with -- and in fact promote -- digital learning environments. What I am not okay with is the lack of understanding that goes with a digital environment.

Like it or hate it -- digital learning is here and it's not going to crash around turn four. Therefore, we have a responsibility to fully understand the pedagogy behind digital learning. It's not enough to simple give students a device and say use. We cannot take a textbook, turn it into a PDF and say we are a one to one environment in schools. Our ultimate goal in integrating purposefully digital learning is to maximize the learning experiences of students to provide opportunities where we challenge their thinking, stretch their creativity, and build solutions to problems that exist. Anything less than these goals is short-sighted and a waster of money, time, and resources.

Yet, here we are. As the school year comes to an end, the role of the teacher is just ramping up for reflection, fine tuning, and growing in our own professional learning. The fallacy of "summers off" for teachers is more false now than ever before in education. Educators, this is our opportunity to truly take a deep dive in why we are investing our time in digital learning. How are you going to invest in your curriculum this year to create meaningful, purposeful, and 'out of the ball park' lesson design really challenge your future learners? Now is the time. There's only one Pole Position. Are you ready to jump in the driver's seat?

Tape Measures Don't Work

Each child is so important to us as educators.
We want them to have the world at his/her fingertips.
He/She is one of "our kids" and will always be.

As an educator, I have spent hundreds upon hundreds of hours working with students and teachers problem solving why a particular student is demonstrating struggles in particular disciplines. We sit in our classrooms reviewing copious notes, accessing resources, and problem solve next possible solutions on how to help the student determine the right strategy for success. Without real time during the day to conduct this work, this is a before school, after school, or late evening task for our students. We do this not because of a paycheck or even an accountability metric--we do this because students succeeding is the right thing to do. It's called integrity.

Yet, we struggle is a society on why we can't just get kids to be "at the bar". It should be easy as making a quick adjustment. Hold the phone! We need to remember, our children are not products that are built and shipped for purchase. My parents own a local sheet metal manufacturing company, and I spent a summer working in quality assurance. I would review parts fabricated, review specifications, and ensure accuracy. If the product was off by even an eighth of an inch we could make an adjustment in the process and verify the new product. Then, we could mass produce.

Kids are not mass production. We can't take out a tape measure, check the blueprints, and adjust. It is not just that simple--anyone who thinks different should spend a day with a teacher. We make broad-stroke comments about how to 'fix' education, get kids 'up to speed', and earn that school-wide letter grade of an "A" for recognition. Yet, we do not truly understand the world of a teacher in the classroom.

While you are watching your favorite TV show (maybe Scandal, Designated Survivor, or the Bachelor), just remember the teacher who lives next door or has your child or grandchild in his/her classroom, is combing over his/her notes on the child who lives across the street and just can't seem to master reading fiction texts or adding fractions with unlike denominators. As we enter Teacher Appreciation Week, take time to say thank you to that neighbor, family member, child's teacher, or other educator you know. They need our support, our appreciation, and our cheerleading.

Thank you to Chase's and Carson's teachers. You mean the world to us.

Why Inside Out?

I'm convinced education is more important today than ever more. It is also more scrutinized that ever in the history of education [#mythought]. Whether it's politics, social media, lack of where else to blame--and we have to blame someone--it's there. Each of us have to take a hard look at oneself, and ask am I creating that scrutiny? It's time to look inside out.

I knew since I was seven I was going to be a teacher. Could it be from an awesome teacher like Mrs. Schwartz who just showed me that you can solve the impossible when we look at problems different? Or maybe it was in fourth grade when I finally was 'old' enough to be in Little Hoosiers to help with the straw maze at our local festival? Or, maybe it was high school journalism when Mr. Smekens selected me as editor of the yearbook because he saw something in me that I wanted to find in others?

Interestingly, those brief memories have little to do with standardized testing, school choice, poverty, behaviors, parental involvement, title one, special education, ESSA, NCLB, and any other great 'yeah but" you may pull out in an effort to measure my experience. A great education is only measured by the individual who receives it. The job of a great education is up to everyone and no one all at the same time. It's quite a conundrum.   [#newfavewordtouse].

I am not naïve or simple minded. I'm a thirty-something, white man with a doctorate. I'm the privileged by many who would argue. I don't discount that, but nor does that discount my own beliefs and experiences. We have an obligation to guarantee a viable, accessible learning experience for each and every child. I firmly believe we have very few educators who wake up and say, "I'm going to make life a living hell for my students today." Or, do we have very few students who wake up and say, "I want to cause my teacher eternal grief today so their future children will not have my name." But, yet, we believe both to be true. Why?

Do you want to know about your community's education system? Then, go find out. Volunteer. Spend time in a classroom. Watch a teacher for a day -- guarantee that job isn't easy. But, yet, we find ways to simplify education. We give schools a rating system. We take all of the work of each educator in a school setting, and surmise the planning, teaching, reflecting, parenting, guiding, mentoring, facilitating, and connecting down to a single letter grade, number, or some other attribute.

Here's what I know in my 30+ years in this wonderful life I've been given: My passion lies in creating outstanding school cultures to help build amazing learning environments for students, changing the world to be a better place than I found it, and loving to inspire others through learning. You can't get that out of a test score.

Drummond is the Director of Professional Learning for the International Center for Leadership in Education (ICLE) | A division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. His posts are solely his views and represent no other educator. You can follow Drummond at @adamddrummond on Twitter and follow ICLE @RigorRelevance using #leadered.

Put On Your Networking Shoes

If I had to pick one attribute the conferences provides me each year, it’s this: Networking! We all are attending this conference together at this precise moment in time. Yet, we all got here differently. Reflect back to your own professional networking footprints as I share how I arrived Sunday for the conference!

I presented with a colleague in 2009 at the Indiana Coalition of Quality Schools conference. During my presentation, I shared with participants about the organizational transformation of our school. In the audience, was an educator who knew. Dr. Nancy Phenis-Bourke. At that time, Dr. Bourke provided professional development opportunities to a network of administrators in central Indiana. Nancy asked me to speak at that event.

While I was at the event, Nancy encouraged me to explore professional opportunities through NAESP, specifically the Principal Mentorship program. During the mentor institute and certification process, I worked closely with NAESP Zone Director Missie Paschke and NAESP Kathleen Sciarappa, as well as a cohort of administrators from around the state. The end result provided me with fantastic knowledge and resources to support other principals, and connections with NAESP and information to connect with my own state membership (in which I was a member but did not realize the benefit. I quickly did.

I connected with IASP Executive Director Dr. Todd Bess and became involved on the board of directors for IASP through my own district. Through my involvement in IASP, I have found other educators who are passionate about helping children succeed, building teacher knowledge, and advocating for education in my state.

The opportunity to network grew with my recent role as the NAESP State Representative for Indiana and serving as a trainer for the NAESP mentor program. My networking footprint isn’t about the names or the titles or the roles in which I serve. The networking footprint is about how these experiences helped craft my own leadership skills as a principal. I would tell you—and the teachers at Lincoln would agree—I don’t have all the answers. But, when I have a question, I have a wealth of resources with whom I can connect.

Who is part of your professional networking footprint? Want to take that next step? Make it happen at #NAESP14!