Springtime is scheduling time for many Division Heads, adding a new bundle of stressors on top of an already hectic work schedule. To support you, our stressed-out readers, we gathered quick and easy ways to help you de-stress at work and achieve the necessary zen to complete those vital tasks.
The Role of the Department Chair: A Middle Manager
Considering the Department Chair as a middle manager can be a difficult proposition. In many schools, the Department Chair still teaches the same number of classes as everyone else and has little real power. Or the Department Chair is, so to speak, the “union leader” of a power group that advocates for its own position within a power structure. The prerequisite for a change in the role to one of middle manager requires the entire faculty culture to be growth-focused. In such a culture and with strong Division Head leadership, the Department Chair can exercise proactive leadership that supports the school’s strategic vision largely by grounding it in a realistic application within the classroom.
The Midyear Scramble for Teachers
The prospect of needing to hire teachers in the middle of the school year provokes monstrous headaches for most Division Heads. No matter how solid your faculty community is in September, circumstances can change at any moment. Medical leave, unexpected departures, and necessary firings all affect your school’s ability to keep your students taught by the best instructors available—and the pool of teachers available to jump into your school in the middle of the year is significantly smaller than that for September starters.
Still, there are some unconventional and creative ways to accommodate your immediate need for qualified applicants without skipping steps to properly vet your incoming teachers. Here are four ways in which you can lessen your midyear hiring headache.
The Questionable Necessity of Snow Day Make Ups
After Winter Storm Jonas paralyzed much of the East Coast on January 23, school cancellations for slippery roads, power loss, and facilities damage were rampant. Remembering the storm-tossed winter of 2013-2014, during which the United States saw a “polar vortex” causing double-digits of school days missed, the question of snow days arises once again—and whether they need to be “made up” at all.
Interdivisional Idiosyncrasies (Or, Your Division Is Not the Center of the Universe)
It’s easy to get caught up in the details and duties of your own division. Faculty meetings, evaluation and coaching, professional development, and perennial "fires" all demand your attention. But when you’re one Division Head of several in a multidivision school, you have to think beyond your own area. You must understand how your particular “cog” turns in the overall “machine” of the school, and how your students’ needs change as they age.
Seven Excuses That Don’t Matter—And One That Does
Successful educational programs require hard work and (occasionally) difficult changes. It can be daunting to keep and sustain the sort of drive needed to make them take hold and become permanent. But, that doesn’t mean you should allow excuses or circumstances to prevent you from trying new initiatives to improve your school. Here, then, are seven common excuses that shouldn’t stop you from starting difficult changes—along with the one reason you should halt any initiative before it gets off the ground.
The Student-Centered Department
Over time, all schools become adult-centered. Adults have all the power and students have none; faculty and administrators may stay around for three or four decades while students keep passing through. Put power and longevity together and it is clear why the evidence for adult-centeredness is so profound. Being student-centered, thus, is not a given, although it is always assumed in schools. Who would suggest otherwise? The Department Chair (or team leader) as a middle manager has a responsibility to lead a student-centered conversation. As School Head or Division Head, inspire your teams to reflect on your own department culture.
Grading Your Report Card Communication
Report cards: One of the few things that parents are guaranteed to read. It’s a unique opportunity for your teachers to communicate—clearly and authentically—with both students and families. This semester, evaluate your students with more than a letter grade or a percentage; it’s time for teachers to tell families what they really need to know.
Unleash Your Inner Monster: An Interview With Katie Johnson, Founder of the Monster Project
Source readers, we’d like to introduce you to Katie Johnson. By day, she’s an art director from Austin, Texas. By night, she’s the founder and CEO of the Monster Project. Her organization fosters imaginative play by sending student-created drawings of monsters to professional designers all over the world. These designers then create their own versions of the students’ prototypes and return them to the schools, so students can see how their monsters—and their own creativity—can “grow up.”
Scheduling the 21st Century Service Learning Program
In 2008, the National Youth Leadership Council articulated “The K–12 Learning Standards for Quality Service Learning Practice.” ISM both endorses and replicates them here, recognizing that such standards have to meet and be influenced by your school’s mission.
Service learning is now a norm in upper, middle, and lower schools. Most Division Directors believe, as a result of each school’s and division’s mission statements, that service learning is a key part of children’s education. Scheduling the program, however, can be challenging. It competes for time with the school’s primary task of providing an academic education, asks teachers to carry out yet another function, and can be disruptive as students miss class or use class for tangential projects. Clearly, the school has to articulate its position on service learning and agree to standards that may mirror those of the National Youth Leadership Council.