The Board of Trustees and the School Head are entrusted with creation of the school’s mission statement; that is amplified through development of the Portrait of the Graduate and the Characteristics of Professional Excellence. Collectively, these documents are called Purpose and Outcome Statements. What do they mean, however, for the life of each division and department?
Maintaining Costs for Summer Program Directors
Summer programs are often run as completely separate educational programs regarding budgeting, scheduling, planning, curriculum, and staffing. Although part of your schools culture, and commonly sharing its mission, these programs typically don’t share budgets or administrative support. For the Summer Program Director with full-time responsibilities as part of the faculty or Administrative Team, the burden of the summer camp silo can be an overwhelming one.
Strengthen Your Outdoor Education Program
Outdoor education has a long and distinguished history in private-independent schools. Whether it involves an annual trip or is a yearlong component of the curriculum, administrators cite various benefits to these programs: personal growth, development of social skills and self-confidence, health and fitness, teamwork, whole student education, fun and recreation, and enhancement of a positive school culture.
As you develop, expand, or assess your school’s own outdoor education program, determine how effectively you address these fundamental areas.
Can a Talented Teacher Be a Good Administrator?
The answer, of course, is a qualified “yes.” As the School Head, you have a vested interest in identifying administrative talent. When you find a teacher who can take charge of an operational area—however small—you relieve yourself or another Administrative Team member of a burden. This may even free time to devote to other imminent tasks and issues.
Professional Development: Five Worst Practices
As a Division Head, your most critical responsibility is to increase the capacity of your teachers. You may be in the process of reevaluating your school’s professional development with this in mind. Here are the five worst practices that ISM often witnesses in schools, and the recommendations that go with them.
Educational Specifications: The Foundation for the Facility of Your Dreams
Any professional, knowledgeable architect will ask your school for educational specifications—a definition of the “who, what, when, why, and how” for each space in the structure. These “building blocks” make the difference between a generic, restrictive structure and one specifically designed to:
support your school’s mission;
meet the needs of your program;
serve the students, faculty, and staff who use the building daily; and
stay within your budget constraints.
Faculty, Space, Ownership, and the Schedule
ISM has been largely concerned with management and leadership research and improved practice. Throughout, we have advised school leaders within the context of a school’s own mission and the impact of our advice on the lives of students. In our research, we discovered the principle of “freedom-within-structure,” ISM’s predictability and support model that is the foundation of great teaching practice. While structure/predictability was construed as “what the teacher wanted to do” in the conventional (20th century) educational paradigm, the new paradigm (21st century) includes the teacher and the student in an ever-evolving relationship.
Professional Learning Communities
As School Head or Division Head, you may already be immersed in the practice of Professional Learning Communities (PLC), or you may be just starting to integrate them into your practice. They can, of course, exist in various settings—here we will apply it strictly to teachers working together. The term dates from the 1960s when researchers were already trying to find an antidote to the isolation experienced by teachers. It gained popularity in 1993 with the work of Milbrey McLaughlin, when she and her collaborators identified the major characteristics of a PLC that have largely survived intact to this day.1 These characteristics include:
10 Reasons You Were Meant to Teach
The first months of a school year can be rough, as everyone re-adjusts to more regular sleep schedules and greater expectations. Sometimes, you just need a reminder why you bothered to begin this career path in the first place—and we can help you there.
“Advanced Placement” Doesn’t Equal Higher College Grades, Study Finds
Many schools—public, charter, and private alike—offer The College Board’s “rigorous” Advanced Placement (AP) program to their most driven pupils. Students take these courses for the educational challenge and (they hope) the “advanced” standing they’ll receive from secondary institutions in the form of college credits. However, a new study has recently shed doubts on whether these AP programs mean greater success for students at the collegiate level.