FRIDAY DROP IN

As I’ve said before, one of the greatest challenges of a high school our size is effective communication among staff members. To be sure, we have the traditional: email, phones, school newsletter, and public address system. We have faculty meetings, department meetings and committee meetings. And the most traditional of all: word of mouth.

Yet something seemed missing. So I tried an experiment a few years ago. I decided that at 7:45 each Friday morning we would have a “Drop In.” I wanted it to be a time from 7:45 to 8:30 (when class begins) for staff to drop in to the meeting room next to my office just to chat about stuff with each other. Although it is technically a kind of staff meeting, the agenda allows what the staff wants to talk about.

Sometimes the discussion is centered on school finance. Sometimes it is about how tough or good the week was. Maybe it’s an idea that works in class. Maybe it’s about the health of a staff member—or a baby that was just born. You get the idea.

However, in reflecting over the past five years of Drop Ins, I think that at the core it’s maybe just looking at each other and celebrating how good life really is. It is a time to be real people. A meeting, if you will, where the agenda is us and how good we all are each day. Making a professional point, winning a scheduling argument or impressing others is left at the door of the meeting room. Stress is not on the agenda and camaraderie is.

At times, we may have only twenty staff there. At other times, there may be nearly forty. Some stay for almost the entire forty-five minutes while others just stop for a word or two as they grab a donut. (Oh, I almost forgot to tell you about the donuts, coffee and juice. I provide those. I mean, how else are you going to get conversation going on an early Friday morning?) Some staff are regulars and others show up only a couple of times a year. Most are teachers, although I encourage everyone to come to the Drop In.

I think that the key to the success of the idea is not how many staff attends: it is that there is always a place on a Friday morning that is there for you. No one forces you to go—no one takes attendance. It’s a place you are always welcome: a place to celebrate each other and the end of a week—or maybe the beginning of the weekend.

Perhaps veteran Math teacher Denny Smith said it best when I first began the Drop Ins: “Roger, even if nobody comes, you need to have these every Friday.”

Technology, Technology, Technology

Good Morning World (the 25 people who read my blogs ;>)--

On the wall of my office is an old slate (chalkboard) in an oak frame, about 11" X 14"). It was in my grandfather's farmhouse attic when my mother found it about 45 years ago.

Of course, in the old country school days, the slate was world class educational technology. You had the slate, you had chalk and you had a way to erase it all. The slate was used over and over and over. It it still is usable today, some 70+ years since it was first written on by some farm kid in Jackson County, Minnesota.

Below is an article which was sent to me by the National Association of Secondary School Principals. It too is about technology, but not in the standard sense. (It's really more about changing lemons into lemonade.) The line I like best is the one by the principal in Virginia: "You don't ban paper." (You'll understand when you read the article.)

Thanks.

--RZ

Teachers begin using cell phones for class lessons

By CHRISTINE ARMARIO (AP) – 3 days ago

WESLEY CHAPEL, Fla. — Ariana Leonard's high school students shuffled in their seats, eagerly awaiting a cue from their Spanish teacher that the assignment would begin.

"Take out your cell phones," she said in Spanish.

The teens pulled out an array of colorful flip phones, iPhones and SideKicks. They divided into groups and Leonard began sending them text messages in Spanish: Find something green. Go to the cafeteria. Take a picture with the school secretary.

Leonard's class at Wiregrass Ranch High School in Wesley Chapel, a middle-class Florida suburb about 30 miles north of Tampa, is one of a growing number around the country that are abandoning traditional policies of cell phone prohibition and incorporating them into class lessons. Spanish vocabulary becomes a digital scavenger hunt. Notes are copied with a cell phone camera. Text messages serve as homework reminders.

"I can use my cell phone for all these things, why can't I use it for learning purposes?'" Leonard said. "Giving them something, a mobile device, that they use every day for fun, giving them another avenue to learn outside of the classroom with that."

Much more attention has gone to the ways students might use phones to cheat or take inappropriate pictures. But as the technology becomes cheaper, more advanced and more ingrained in students' lives that mentality is changing.

"It really is taking advantage of the love affair that kids have with technology today," said Dan Domevech, executive director of the nonprofit American Association of School Administrators. "The kids are much more motivated to use their cell phone in an educational manner."

Today's phones are the equivalent of small computers — able to check e-mail, do Internet searches and record podcasts. Meanwhile, most school districts can't afford a computer for every student.

"Because there's so much in the media about banning cell phones and how negative phones can be, a lot of people just haven't considered there could be positive, educative ways to use cell phones," said Liz Kolb, author of "From Toy to Tool: Cell Phones in Learning."

Even districts with tough anti-use policies acknowledge they will eventually need to change.

"We can't get away from it," said Bill Husfelt, superintendent of Bay County District Schools, a Florida Panhandle district of 27,000 students where cell phones aren't allowed in school, period. "But we've got to do a lot more work in trying to figure out how to stop the bad things from happening."

Seventy-one percent of teens had a cell phone by early 2008, according to a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. That percentage remains relatively steady regardles of race, income or other demographic factors. Meanwhile, many schools are low-tech compared with homes outfitted with home networks, wireless Internet and a smartphone for every family member.

Most schools still have prohibitive policies curtailing cell phone use — often with good reason. At Husfelt's district, seven students were recently arrested after they got into a fight on campus that he says was instigated through text messages.

In other parts of the country, teens have been arrested for "sexting" — sending indecent photographs taken and sent through their cell phones. Students also use the devices to cheat: In one poll, more than 35 percent of teens admitted cheating with a cell phone.

But phones are so common now that seizing them is huge hassle for teachers.

"It's just a conflict taking them up and having to deal with them," Husfelt said. "It's too disruptive."

Teachers who have incorporated cell phones into their classes say that most students abide by the rules. They note that cheating and bullying exist with or without the phones, and that once they are allowed, the inclination to use them for bad behavior dissipates.

"Kids cheat with pen and paper. They pass notes," said Kipp Rogers, principal of Passage Middle School in Newport News, Va., "You don't ban paper."

Rogers started using cell phones as an instructional tool a couple of years ago, when he was teaching a math class and was short one calculator for a test. He let the student use his phone instead. Twelve classes, including math, science and English, now use them. Students do research through the text message and Internet browser on some phones. Teachers blog. Students use the camera function to snap pictures for photo stories and assignments.

Classes often work in groups in case some students don't have phones.

In Pulaski, Wis., about 130 miles north of Milwaukee, Spanish teacher Katie Titler has used cell phones for students to dial and record themselves speaking for tests.

"Specifically for foreign language, it's a great way to both formally and informally assess speaking, which is really hard to do on a regular basis because of class sizes and time," Titler said.

Jimbo Lamb, a math teacher at Annville-Cleona School District in south-central Pennsylvania, has students use their phones to answer questions set up through a polling Web site. Instantly, he's able to tell how many students understood the lesson.

"This is technology that helps us be more productive," he said.

COOKIES, COOKIES, COOKIES

Good Morning,

Last Saturday, several principal-types got together to bake cookies/candies.

It was an attempt to do something fun together and help provide a team bonding experience that we can build on and access when work related issues come up in the future. (Plus, we just wanted to work with dough ;>)

The class was offered through the Sartell Community Education Department and was held at Sartell High School.

Eleven of us participated including Principal Skaja from Lincoln Elementary, Assistant Principals Blauer and Vos from Tech, Principal Moeller from Kennedy, Assistant Principal Blackmore from South, Assistant Principal Sarah Nelson from Oakhill and others.

Each principal or two worked on making and baking a particular cookiecandy. Principal Hugh Skaja's and my speciality was the Nut Goodie.

Of course, much of the discussion while baking turned to the excitement and challenges of being a principal in our school district.

Carbohydrately Yours,

--RZ

YEARLY TEACHER EVALUATION

At a faculty meeting this Tuesday, we reviewed the SPRE (Staff Performance Review and Evaluation) requirement for each teacher.

Each year, teachers are evaluated by the principal. Generally, here's how it works:

1. If you are a probationary teacher (in the first three years of teaching in the District), there are three formal observations of your classroom by the principal.
2. Each tenured teacher has a one formal observation every five years. Therefore, if you are a tenured teacher on the "five year cycle", you will be observed once this year.
3. Every other tenured teacher who is not on the "five year cycle" will not have a formal observation.

All teachers, whether probationary or tenured, are require to complete a professional goal for the year which is reviewed by the principal.

However, the SPRE requirements and observations listed above are the minimums. If the principal feels that a teacher needs more assistance or a teacher asks for more assistance, additional observations can and do occur.

The purpose of observations is to improve instruction, share ideas and grow professionally as a teacher.

Tech Enrollment: This Year

First, let me make it clear that Tech is healthy and well and will continue to be so into the second and third decade of the 21st Century and beyond. We have the same core of excellent and motivated students that have been here since I arrived in 1999.

Over those past ten years (1999-2009), our student population has fluctuated between 1500 and 1900 students. (Yes, about 5 years ago Tech had over 1900 kids.) This year is the lowest it has been. As of Friday, September 18, we have 1404 students.

It is not because kids are going other places more than ever before. It is not because parents have suddenly decided that Tech is a bad place for their kids. (In another memo, I will share our successful testing information as well as the quality classes we have for all of our students.) The short answer to why there are fewer kids: there are fewer kids.

We have 73 fewer 9th grade students this year than last year. Coupled with a large graduating class last year and normal attrition, Tech ended up with 1404, whereas last year we had 1535. Last April, my assistant principal and I predicted that our total students this year would be around 1400. This small 9th grade class has been moving through the St. Cloud system since they were in first grade. There are now here, and their low numbers will be here until they graduate. (Apollo also has a much reduced freshman class this year.)

But whatever the size of a class or the student population as a whole, the most important number is the number 1. No matter where you come from in our school district, region, state, nation or world, you are welcome here. Tech High School and its staff stand ready to help you as you grow into an adult and are ready to face the future.