Friday Focus

I want to share a post from a colleague that I met on Twitter.

"If we have professional trust amongst us, then a 2nd grade teacher can trust that the student coming to her has been taught appropriately and can trust that when she moves that student on, that in the following grade levels, that student will be receiving the same great instruction and focus on learning as she had dedicated to that student.  As a teacher, you trust that the growth that you have seen in your students will continue year after year, no matter which teacher they are placed with.  Unfortunately, it only takes one teacher's practice to compromise the work of the entire school."

This quote had me pondering this morning. What 

have we done to encourage and support "professional trust?" We have a great culture and welcoming environment but what are we doing to enhance our educational collaboration? As we have grown as a staff I feel it is time to implement a PLC on our campus. Hord, (1997) defines a PLC as an ongoing process through which teachers and administrators work collaboratively to seek and share learning and to act on their learning, their goal being to enhance their effectiveness as professionals for students’ benefit. 

How can we empower and enhance our PLC? How can we build professional trust amongst each other so that we know when we send them on that they will get the same if not more rigorous instruction they received the previous year? 

Grade Level Time

I really enjoyed visiting all grade levels yesterday. I always enjoy getting to spend time with the best group of teachers. Clarifying communication is always a good thing. We are wrapping up TPRI testing and getting prepared for our Scholastic Analysis. The staff is always prepared for anything. Last week I had the opportunity to have Principal chat session with everyone. It was very insightful and let me realize that although change is a good thing it is very important to manage the change and take it a few steps at a time and not one giant leap.

Second Week of School

We wrapped up our second week of school. Our preliminary results from our placement tests look  promising. I am piloting this blog with a few teachers to work out the kinks and get feedback. 

First Day With The Students

Wow! I must say today was one of the smoothest school openings I have ever experienced! I believe most of it was due to our Meet The Teacher/Open House event we had to inform the parents ahead of time. 

Meet The Teacher/Open House Trails

Well yesterday was a very exciting day. We took the greatest group of teachers and a bus and went to see where our students lived. We passed out flyers for our Open house event. We saw several students and you can probably imagine their shock when they saw their principal and teachers walking the neighborhood inviting them to come to the school Friday.

Greatest Teachers!

Culture and relationships are critical to improving the academic success of students. I have to admit it feels great to work with the greatest group of educators in my district. I opened the building up for teachers to get thier rooms ready for school and around 90% of the teachers took advantage of this. I visited the building to day and it is obvious our STARS theme has teacher buy in.