Half-Days Not A Thing Anymore?

The past few weeks of school have been full of testing, end-of-year projects, graduation exercises, and the ever-dreaded behavior issues that go along with a building full of 1,000+ antsy students.  Back when I was in school, students would have half-days (8- 12 or 8-1) during testing OR for the last week of school.  This allows students to come take their exams, grab lunch from the cafeteria and then go home.  After two weeks straight of teachers and students being "locked" in first period for 3+ hours, I began to wonder how half-days could maybe actually improve the level of focus and concentration for our students these last few weeks.  After being locked in with the same students and teacher for an extended period of time, students are bored, restless, and uninterested in the rest of the school day.  After lunch, the last period of the day is often a "free period" where teachers struggle to teach because (1) students go home after their test anyways or (2) students AND teachers are burned out from the long morning. Even the best teacher struggles to keep these millennials engaged for that lengthy amount of time.  Half-days could allow the students to focus more intensely on their exams and end-of-year projects without sitting on their phones staring at Instagram for hours.

I've heard several reasons for not having half-days.  Some say that the bus schedule is too hard to change.  Others say that parents wouldn't want their students home early for two weeks (haha!!). Regardless, I still see the benefit to cutting days for students towards the end of the year.


Do any school districts still do half-days?  Is this a decision made by the superintendent or do principals have any input with this schedule?

Strengths Finder Exercise

I recently completed Tom Rath’s StrengthsFinder 2.0 assessment for my leadership team. Before completing the assessment, I thought that leaders should foster strengths in all areas of leadership. Any weakness should be sought after and made into a strength. However, after the assessment, I understand that people have inherent strengths that they should use to offset their weakness. Further, school leaders should create teams of people who have strengths different from their own. I see myself differently after the assessment. Before, I often got trapped in framing myself with my weaknesses or faults. By viewing myself through my strengths I feel empowered and better-equipped to take on specific tasks that cater to those strengths. My strengths were futuristic, strategic, individualizer, learner, and responsibility. I am both creative, but efficient in completing tasks. I am constantly seeking new, better practices and feel a responsibility to do the work that I’ve made a career. Learning these strengths helped me see what I bring to the table and easily identify what aspects I should look for when hiring teammates. The exercise taught me that to become a better leader I must complete two tasks. First, I must study and recognize the skills I possess. I must understand how those strengths affect my views on problems and others. I must try to accept these as my strengths and recognize them in my work. Second, I must try to foster a team with unique, varied strengths. Other strengths will not offset mine or fully account for my “deficits”, but they will help me build a diverse team that enjoys different tasks and seeks different things from the outcome of our school. For example, if I want to overhaul school curriculum I would love to visualize the end game. Hopefully, there would be a detail-oriented person on my team who prefers creating the new models and a teammate that prefers rallying the team behind these changes. All of those are separate, but positive contributions to an end goal that my school could benefit from. Rath, T. (2007). StrengthsFinder 2.0. New York: Gallup Press.

Teacher Salaries

My principal scheduled a site visit for leaders in our building to Boston, Massachusetts. We visited Brooke Charter School East Boston, a school that is significantly out performing local public schools. For example, 100% of Brooke East Boston’s 8th graders scored proficient or advanced on the PARRC algebra assessment and 89% of all 3rd-8th graders scored proficient or advanced on the math PARRC, making Brooke East Boston the highest achieving charter school in the state. The most unique element of Brooke's model is the teacher pay scale. The school pays its master teachers up to $120,000 per year, which is all possible because of private donations and a hefty Massachusetts per pupil budget. While the research is not completely clear, some studies have shown that increasing teacher base salaries can lead to high new teacher retention rates (Hendricks, 2014). However, Brooke East Boston believes higher salaries are key to increasing retention and quality. The assistant principal noted the retention rate is 95% and it feels great to retain teachers after investing so many hours of training into them. This was in stark comparison to Atlanta Public School's teacher salaries. It was so fascinating that a teacher at Brooke may make more than his or her direct manager. After talking with Brooke teachers it was clear that they are not teaching for the money, but it is a great incentive to become a master at their craft.

Pull-In or Push-Out?

I was wondering what everyone thinks works best to help support struggling students, a pull-in or push-out model?  I began my teaching career in a special education classroom, and I always pushed for my students to be included in everything as much as possible.  For this reason, I really disliked when my students were taken out of class for any reason.  However, when some special needs students are left in their classrooms they struggle to comprehend the material.  It seems like these students would be better served by being pulled out to work on their specific skills deficits.  This strategy can lead to backlash from parents who simply want their child to be included as much as possible, regardless of any potential benefit to their child.  They just don’t want their student to be seen as different from their classmates.  I have seen pull-in models work very well, but I don’t think that they allow quite the same amount of differentiation of material that push-out models can do.  It’s tough to have kids work on deficit skills while still working on similar material as the rest of the class.  I’d love to know if anyone has experience with either of these models of instruction and can tell me which one they prefer.  Thanks!

Best Way to Support Teachers

One factor of leadership that I have struggled with this year is how best to support teachers in my school.  I see my leadership style as very collaborative, and I try to solicit teacher input as much as possible when planning for school programs and events.  However, some of my teachers prefer to receive direct instructions as frequently as possible and want to be left out of the decision-making process.  I’m wondering what is the best way to support both of these types of teachers.  Should I simply ask input from the teachers who I know want to participate while avoiding those that just want to be told what to do?  I feel like this would create dissension among my staff because some would feel included and others would not.  Either way, it seems to me that I would be alienating half the staff.  Right now, I am leaning towards just continuing to use the leadership style I am comfortable with by asking for input from teachers on decisions that are relevant to them.  This way my decisions are more informed and based on the facts on the ground. 

Good teachers are leaving

I recently had a conversation with a friend who teaches 6th grade.  She is an amazing teacher with every teacher award one can have.   She has been teaching for 10 years and loves her student; however, does not love the politics or administration that comes with teaching.  Therefore, she has decided she does not want to teach any longer.  So, we talked about other jobs like: changing schools, higher education, or working at an education publishing company.  However, through our conversation she decided her need to get out of education was too great.  As I reflected on our conversation, I am almost at the ten year mark myself.  I too, feel like leaving education sometimes or doing something more lucrative; however, I enjoy teaching 90% of the time.  I think we are at a critical point in education when good teachers are leaving education. Therefore, teachers are leaving and going into fields that make more and be happy.  My honest advice for her was to leave and do something that makes you happy.  I also explained to her that if she starts early and uses time wisely the transition to another career over the summer would be easy.  Many of educators who leave teaching go into corporate training or instructional training of some sort.  I think what we have to realize, as teachers, is that although it’s sad when teachers leave this field, many times we have to make decisions for personal growth.  As a millennial, we are not the generation that stays in one job for twenty plus years.  Therefore, the trend is to move around until finding a career that is suitable and makes one happy.  

To Charter or not to Charter?

Our current political climate along with the U.S. Department of Education’s confirmation of Betsy Devos is at a crossroads that can lead to an adverse affect on our educational climate.  Furthermore, achievement gaps among students from different ethnic groups, affluent, and low-income students is the greatest it has been.  Therefore, it is critical the right decisions be made concerning the future of education within our borders.  Are charter schools the answer? Is school choice the answer? Are school vouchers the answer, as proposed by Devos? Is deregulation of charter schools the answer?  The debate of whether or not charter schools are helping students achieve will continue.  However, according to statistics, there is no reliable data that shows charter schools are outperforming public schools.  Therefore, we must examine the demographics in which charter schools service.  Charter schools have been developed in places where the public schools system lack resources, endure overcrowding, exhibit a racial achievement gap, and confront policies that fail to deliver opportunities for minority students of color. However, the current administration wants to deregulate charter schools even more, as well as provide school vouchers for students of working class parents to take them to private schools.  I think the deregulation of charters and the money spent on providing parents vouchers for their kids to attend private institution can be sided with better options.  I think charter schools as well as private schools must adhere to the same accountability standards as public schools.  Therefore, these schools would still use their freedom; however, standards such as teacher certification and IDEA would be mandated.    Also, charter schools and private schools should be granted more resources to service students with disabilities.  In conclusion, we must ask ourselves how to best fight for equitable education to close the achievement gap among our students.