About this time each year, I like to reflect on the past year and begin framing “goals” or “areas of emphasis” that will guide me through the forthcoming year. I don’t necessarily believe in New Year’s Resolutions, as they are so easy to break and forget about just days after the new year passes. It’s for this reason, I reflect and plan ahead both professionally and personally.

While each educator and school administrator will certainly have their own respective list of goals to guide their practices in 2012, here are five (5) that may be of particular interest to you:

1. Family First, Work Second: I have no shame admitting to any past, current, or future employer that my family is my priority. Jobs and employment may come-and-go, but my family is a permanent fixture in my life. However, without proper maintenance on relationship-fostering and memory-building with your own family, your family becomes unstable and could lead to many negative consequences. Of course, employment and your work performance is vital, but my belief is a happy “family man/woman” is also a “happy worker.” Dave Ramsey, financial guru, once warned people to never have affairs on their spouses, for it will tear the marriage to its core. Over-dedication toward one’s career creates a dominant relationship with an entity other than your spouse. Not healthy at all. So be proud and bold–tell everybody you place family first. Lead by example.
2. Brand Yourself, You Are an Expert: Because public education is so vastly different than the “business world,” branding is definitely not a component of educators’ professional practices. I’m not sure why this is–fear of exposure and attention at a large-scale? Fear of judgement or scrutiny by colleagues and supervisors? Fear of a public identity that is accessible to colleagues, students, parents, and neighbors? Fear of appearing to be self-absorbed and/or a braggart? Regardless, school leaders need to tap into the social media tools available and brand themselves appropriately. By doing so, educators can repurpose their identity toward being an expert, or trusted resource, in their respective discipline. By strategically branding one’s self, it also has the strong potential of building credibility to others. Lastly, branding is an awesome tool to network and connect with others. Such digital networking and connecting leads to digital collaboration, self-regulated learning, and autonomy. Build a website, use social media, publish whitepapers and ebooks, or record podcasts and YouTube videos. Don’t be afraid–you’re an expert. Brand yourself as such!
3. Pause, Listen to Others: I’ll lead-off by saying that I should have probably listed this tip at #1, as I’m definitely an “emerging-learner” in this category. School leaders and educators need to pause and start listening more. Don’t be confused with my preceding tip about believing that branding one’s self means incessant self-promotion and alienating others’ perspectives. You can still successfully brand yourself, while partnering and collaborating with others. There is so much knowledge that can be gained from others, it would be foolish to not draw upon the wisdom and advice of others. From a leadership standpoint, listening to others’ perspectives helps conveys just how important others truly are. When others know they are being listened to, it increases trust, relationships, rapport, collaboration, and motivation…just to name a few.
4. Being Untraditional is NOT Bad: This tip “hits home” for me, since I am a school administrator at an alternative school. It didn’t take me long to notice that some individuals do not “succeed” or “prosper” in “traditional” environments. And why would we ever think this to be the case? People are so unique, with extremely-specialized talents, skills, and knowledge. But all of these characteristics could be severely stifled if people are not able to perform in their ideal environments. Therefore, we need to quickly abandon the idea that educators and students can ONLY succeed using “traditional” methods and cookie-cutter, prescribed approaches. School leaders MUST allow colleagues and teachers time to reach, stretch, experiment, create, imagine, and innovate…without punitive responses. Our students deserve better. And they definitely deserve better than the “same old song-and-dance!”
5. Empower Others: One of the biggest mistakes people make, particularly school administrators, is believing that others cannot be trusted and they must do EVERYTHING. What a big, big mistake! Effective leaders should be constantly thinking about the future; pondering how to improve and how to adapt. But, effective leaders need to also strategically align an organization’s efforts toward its goals. No single person could, or should, be able to achieve the organization’s goals alone. Principals and central office administrators must develop capacity-building within each of its teachers and support staff, empowering EVERYBODY to maximize their contributions. For school leaders, it is essential to believe, and trust, that teachers are totally skilled and eager to perform. By doing so, school leaders can delegate responsibilities to others and lessen the burden that was previously-imposed on a single individual.

I have no doubt many will disagree with my list and probably have wished for other important features to have been included in lieu of others. But, it is my list. I would love to hear your comments and bullet list of your own tips for administrators for the year 2012.

K12 Cornerstones

One of the most key contributing factors to a child staying in school is family involvement.  According to various researchers, the most precise predictor of a child’s academic achievement is based upon how involved his/her family in encouraging learning.  Parents need to dedicate time, each day, by talking with their children about their child’s daily performance at school and how to further encourage their success.  The benefits of family involvement with their child’s education can lead to the following:

• higher grade-point averages (GPA);
• better test scores;
• great success in challenging and honors-level courses;
• ability to successfully earn more credits;
• better school attendance;
• more positive attitude about school;
• stronger liklihood that he/she will graduate with a high school diploma;
• attend college; and
• avoid alcohol and drug use.

According to various research dedicated to preventing dropout, the following tips are geared for parents hoping to keep their child(ren) enrolled in school:

• Keep in contact with all of your child’s teachers, regularly.
• Closely track of your child’s attendance.  If you begin to notice a trend of avoiding school, talk with him/her to find out what may be the real cause of absences.
• Motivate your child to join afterschool activities or work a part-time job.  Extracurricular activities and employment opportunities give students a great chance to work with others, socialize, and develop skills they may not have even known they ever had.
• Research career paths with your child.  Even though your son/daughter may change their career interest (which of hasn’t, right?!!?), at least you are helping guide and support them through the process.
• Remind your child that a high school graduate is most likely going to earn double the salary of those that had dropped-out of school.
• Build a family culture that promotes and accepts education and learning all the time.

The family role is so important to high school students.  Even though the “typical” high school student may not want to admit parents know best, and may completely try to avoid parental advice, remain firm in your committment to his/her education.

K12 Cornerstones

For the past several months, I have aggressively dedicated myself to completing my dissertation on the topic of social networking, personal learning networks, and connectivism for educators. Through my research and studies, I have found overwhelming evidence to support the benefit of online learning for adults by connecting with others. Rather than learn in isolation, adults prefer to facilitate that own learning quest by socializing and networking with peers.

This vague framework of social learning theory and connectivism (a learning theory for the digital age) is what spurred me to redesign and repurpose K12 Cornerstones. I want to continue providing individuals with high-quality information and resources regarding various educational topics, but also want to collaborate with other educational experts along the way.

Let’s be frank…there is a lot of junk to be found on the Internet. Shameless internet marketers have inundated the web and dominated the search engine rankings with absolute-crap, generally to make a quick dollar off innocent people. This is unethical and a complete waste of time for those in need of quality information. Some have identified this as an “information gap,” between websites rich with information and others festering with garbage.

To help maneuver through the immense digital landscape of educational information and resources, I decided to repurpose K12 Cornerstones to help others gain educational information/resources by actual educational experts. Over time, it is my intent to collaborate and partner with various educators by including their blog and educational products for our readers.

By creating the K12 Cornerstones Learning Network, the ability to promote and share ideas between member blog sites becomes a reality.

Additionally, one of the primary benefits of networking with others educational bloggers is to improve search engine optimization SERPS rankings. While some may target me for being to ambitious, it’s my hope that our network will grow to nearly 100,000 unique visitors each month and furnish hundreds-of-thousands of monthly page views.  But none of this is realistic without genuine, fresh, high-quality education niche content.

My primary goal is to provide readers with great content, in an interactive format, based upon various educational news, teaching and learning tips, and learning resources to help others.

I welcome you to the redesign and repurposing of my educational blog network. If you think you’d be interested in becoming a contributor, please feel free to drop me an email (k12cornerstones@gmail.com).

K12 Cornerstones

Welcome to K12 Cornerstones dot com!

K12 Cornerstones, LLC is a Kansas City-based education company that provides various educational services to families.

Our specializations include:

• One-on-One tutoring for students in grades K-12;
• In-Home tutoring (or a preferred public location);
• Study skills tutoring;
• ACT/SAT/Test Prep;
• Early childhood education screening and progress monitoring.

K12 Cornerstones

I’m so happy to share another bookmarking-content curation tool that was recently launched, called Pinterest.

Using Pinterest, individuals can create a board on a specific topic while “pinning” various images and links on their board for others to read.   It’s described as “online pinboard” that yields people with the power to organize and share their favorite links and images.

Time Magazine recently dubbed it one of the Top 50 Websites of 2011:

The basic idea behind Pinterest— which lets you create and share collections of stuff you like in any category you choose — has been tried before by start-ups that didn’t make much of a mark. This time it might take off. Pinterest makes the process painless by offering a Pin It button that lets you grab pictures of your favorite things as you browse the Web. The site then collects the images on “boards” that other users can follow and comment on. Perusing other folks’ boards, featuring everything from picturesque travel scenes to oddly beautiful bacteria, is as enjoyable as building your own. Pinterest is still in private testing, but if you request an invite, you should be able to get right in.

Even though I’m still getting acquainted with its uses, particularly on how I can engage fellow like-minded educators, I can see great potential on its uses.  I’ve already launched a sample site, #k12chat Education PLN Pinboard.

It is worth noting, Pinterest is currently not available to the general public.  At this time, membership is by invitation only.

K12 Cornerstones

As a school administrator and former special education teacher, I have tremendous respect and high regard for teachers.  Occasionally, the teaching field can be extremely-difficult, stressful, and full of delayed gratification.  Teachers are the “front-line force” for implementing a school district and school building’s goals and objectives.  It is teachers that face the numerous academic, behavioral, and social challenges of their students, all students.  All teachers must know that I support you and your efforts, but I will not think for you.

This past summer I researched and read many sources dedicated to social cognitive theory, motivation theory, professional development theory, adult learning theory, learning theories, and connectivism.  In short, I am more motivated than ever before to establish a work-environment that provides teachers and support staff with autonomy, professionalism, and opportunities to be innovative.  I am willing to not be a micro-manager that stifles their staff, rather than empowers their growth.  But again, I will not think for you.

http://www.urbanmoms.ca/multiple_musings/2010/11/unschooling-2.html

Though early in this school year, I have committed myself to ensuring professional development sessions, building workshops, team collaboration meetings, and informal discussions yield teachers with “room to stretch” and “grow.”  I have encouraged staff to take risks, delve into built-in time to create independent projects/solutions, and build various school programs without strict administrative oversight.  Basically, I’m the complete anti-thesis of Type A, top-down, micro-managerialish school principals.

And don’t get me wrong…I provide parameters, foundation, and structure.  Motivation theory and social cognitive theory specifically indicates that people will do what they know; avoiding all else that they are not comfortable or competent doing.  Based on this research finding, this means that school administrators can’t just give teachers autonomy, individuality, and space just for the sake of doing so.  Instead, specific parameters and guidelines must be stated that leads team members to understand the ultimate outcome expectation.  For some, this is difficult for some administrators,  as they try to not overly-state what is expected and compromise the innovation of team members.

Teachers deserve a work environment that allows autonomy, individuality, innovation, and opportunities to take risk.  But, I will not think for you.  In this environment, teachers must be able to work independently, collaborate with others, access resources, think outside-the-box, and still be held accountable.

As always, my role as a school administrator is also “lead learner,” “lead teacher,” or “chief learning officer.”  That’s not just a statement.  I’m here to facilitate, coach, guide, lead, help, assist, and empower.  I’m here to collaboratively work with you through an entire project, from start to finish.

I definitely don’t want to hold you back, stifle your thinking, destroy your motivation, contain your creativity, negatively judge your approaches, and/or tell you that you’re always wrong.  I believe in you, personally and professionally.  And I can’t wait to see the amazing things you can create, implement, and produce when given this level of autonomy and free-will.

But, please understand…I won’t think for you.

K12 Cornerstones

Even on stressful days, the one thing I can almost always count on, is that my students will say something that just cracks me up and lifts my spirits.

It’s almost as though students can gauge when adults feel overcome with emotion and know exactly when to insert a wise-crack that leaves an adult with little else to do, than laugh aloud.  Of course, it’s even better when the student knows that he made you laugh…it gives them an extra shot of “coolness” or “early-adulthood.”

So students, of all ages and grade-levels, thank you.  Thank you for maintaining positive spirits, finding ways to make me laugh, and reminding me to not always take things SO serious.

It’s ok to laugh, even in the pressing situations.

Of course, it takes a child to actually teach me this.

K12 Cornerstones

Yesterday, our district dedicated the day to school-based staff development, with an emphasis on curricular issues.  But, during the second-half of the day, I dedicated my high school grade-level team attention toward our ongoing planning/implementation of a school-wide positive behavior supports (PBS) program. I would be flat-out lying if I said this planning process went smoothly.  I’d be accurately describing the process as frustrating, tiring, and uncomfortable.  But, I’m ok with this.  As a school leader, I believe that the planning process SHOULD be uncomfortable at times.  And the more this uncomfort is experienced by team members, the more I believe it will finally become comfortable.

There are few on my staff that are not comfortable with this overall outcome.  But, I believe strongly that as an organization works toward a goal, there will be moments of unease.  Why?  Well, as team members come together and kick-around ideas, brainstorm new ways and practices, challenge their own ideas and their peers, and/or move toward internalizing the purpose of the initiative, there will be debate and discourse.  This is healthy.  It’s healthy because, if facilitated properly, will ultimately lead to the desired change sought by the team.

During yesterday’s PBS action planning session, there was extremely divisive, yet healthy, dialogue about whether or not our PBS token reinforcements should be capped or unlimited for each class period.  Members of both viewpoints presented their rationale and justification and helped each other better understand their beliefs.  Overall, this process alone took nearly 45 minutes…which for many, is viewed as a tremendous waste of time.  But, I believe otherwise.  Our team needed this type of discussion before we could even progress further into our PBS planning and implementation.  This was a critical conversation that NEEDED to occur, and probably should have occurred months ago.

As a school leader, it would be extremely easy to insert a top-down approach and “rule” or “mandate” the project’s outcomes.  But that’s not democratic and yields no autonomy to the grade-level team.  Our team needed to experience a critical conversation WITH EACH OTHER so they could grow as a team and better understand their own perspectives.

I believe that these critical, uncomfortable conversations need to be had on a regular basis.  And soon enough, these “uncomfortable” conversations will feel comfortable and routine.

K12 Cornerstones

I receive automatic email messages from my elected U.S. House of Representative Sam Graves (MO-R) on a weekly basis.  Admittedly, I usually send many of these directly for the inbox, but today I held back and decided to read it because of the title line–”Our Education Standards Must Make Sense.”  In short, because some of Missouri’s “good schools” are now being deemed as failures, due to No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandates, public sentiment is FINALLY growing to repeal NCLB.

Quite frankly, many education policy analysts and educators saw this coming.

My teaching career started the very year NCLB regulations were fully enforced.  As a teacher in an underperforming urban school district, we saw NCLB as a real threat, knowing that our school district could be further placated as a “failure,” which we knew was unfair.  As teachers, we worked on overdrive to improve student achievement scores in math and reading…and worked even harder to have our students demonstrate math/reading proficiency above cut-score levels.  But all in all, our efforts were always overshadowed by the ultimate goal of NCLB–that by 2014, all students will demonstrate proficiency in reading AND math.  All students.  Proficient.  Reading.  And math.

Wow.

All students, means all students–urban, rural and suburban.  This also means that our nation’s best performing schools will, at some point, not look “good enough” because they will unlikely demonstrate 100% proficiency of all their students.

Sure, we were peeved at this law and did what we could to share our sentiment with our local elected officials.  But we also knew the new landscape of education accountability was going to change, until it directly impacted our nation’s “top performing” and “best” school districts.

Once the stakeholders of our nation’s “best” schools realize their school is labeled a failure (by NCLB standards), perhaps the REAL change will occur.

At the present time, 82% of our nation’s schools have been labeled underperforming.  Quite a statistic, eh?

It just doesn’t make sense.  And it doesn’t make sense to Rep. Graves either:

That doesn’t make any sense to me. Missing one or two questions on a test is different than getting all of the answers wrong.

We recognize the difference between getting a B and an F in the classroom. We should also recognize it when it comes to grading our schools. I will propose this common sense change so that we can identify the school districts that truly need help and stop punishing good schools.

So to you Rep. Graves, and other elected officials, thank you for FINALLY sensing the lunacy in certain aspects of this law.  Unfortunately, you’re all just a tad late entering the discussion.

K12 Cornerstones

Ok, ok…I’ll admit that these type of announcements should be coming directly from an organization’s leaders, but I’M EXCITED!!

Since early this summer, I’ve been regularly participating in a personal learning network (PLN) dedicated just for school administrators and principals, Connected Principals. Through this network of administrators, I’ve been reading others’ blogs, linking to their blog entries, Tweeting, participating in Twitter chats, sharing links to relevant news stories, and blogging about many of their experiences and successes.

Connected Principals Official Badge | ConnectedPrincipals.com

Participating in the #cpchat PLN has been a tremendous motivation to my career, but I still felt as though I was missing the best opportunity to fully engage with other PLN administrators–be a contributing blogger at the main hub website.

Initially, I was hoping to be “discovered” or recommended by a fellow PLNer, but I eventually

grew impatient.  So, last week I finally decided to beg-and-plead for an opportunity to be a contributing blogger at their website.  And just like that I was finally hooked-up and invited to fully participate in the Connected Principals’ PLN.  Check-out my personal profile page!

Thank you George Curous (@gcouros) for getting me establishing and more affiliated with the network.

So, here’s to avoiding writer’s block!

K12 Cornerstones