In a past Division Head e-Letter, we shared examples of faculty professional development that didn’t make the most of in-service days. (In fact, it was borderline offensive!) Today, we’d like to take a moment to highlight some qualities of excellent professional development that comprise an enlightening experience for your faculty—and ultimately, your students.
Dear National Teacher Day: A Letter to First Year Teachers
National Teacher Day was May 6, and we couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate all of our teachers than to share a video made by Edutopia and SoulPancake featuring veteran teachers writing letters to themselves on their first day of school as a new teacher. (The transcript’s below, if you care to read instead of listen.)
The Wise Use of Your School’s Disciplinary Data
As School Head and academic leader, consider taking a more systematic approach to your student discipline records. When a child misbehaves, school administrators tend to attribute his or her behavior to situational factors at home or within their peer relationships. Repeated misbehavior points to a dispositional issue. Data, however, can show patterns in students’ behavior that reveal that the school environment has a tremendous influence on student behavior. It is clear from ISM visits to hundreds of schools that both Division Heads and their faculty are not mining their discipline records for information to determine policy, process, and direction. Often, it is hard for schools to even locate discipline records that are stored in any methodical and intentional way. Yet discipline (both academic and behavioral) can be telling indicators in your divisions.
Strategies for Reducing Late-Summer Faculty Resignations
Private schools can suffer late-summer teacher resignations, often in August, mere weeks before the start of the new school year. Despite having signed a contract, a teacher may leave your school to work at another school, or even pursue another career—forcing you to find an immediate replacement. What can your school do to develop a plan of action to prevent this from happening?
12 Steps to an Effective Extended Day Program
Working parents need extended day programs that are well-designed, convenient, and flexible—and these parents are willing to pay for quality service. Yet, extended day programs are still managed in many schools as though they were side operations. To make these programs real contributors to the overall solvency and marketability of your school, consider the following steps.
The Division Head: A New Reality
Every member of the Academic Management Team must understand how to operate as the CEO—the School Head—does (mission-based and strategically oriented). Our understanding of the changing role of the Division Head now emphasizes this “headship” aspect of the role. In the past, the Division Head was bureaucratic—involved in curriculum development, policy setting, and handbook creation. The position rarely involved meaningful discussions with colleagues in other divisions, let alone in the Advancement or the Business Office. This will no longer suffice in today’s private-independent school. The Division Head now has one primary function and two supporting functions.
Support Your Teachers in Their Race to the Finish Line!
There are dozens of articles on how teachers inspire and motivate students, but how can we reinvigorate the teachers? As close to the end of the school year as we are, teachers may feel overwhelmed with the high-stakes final grades and exams happening over the next two months. So, here are a few ways to keep your teachers up and at ‘em through the final bell.
The Right Tool for the Right Job: Three Times to Call Instead of Emailing
The days when people used their cellphones to call their friends and co-workers are quickly fading. These days, a quick text or email is regarded as a replacement for good ol’ fashioned conversations. For busy Division Heads, email may seem like it was invented specifically for your hectic lives, enabling the quick dissemination of information and instructions to the whole school. But email isn’t always the right communication tool to use, and it certainly shouldn’t be your only contact method. We have three instances when you should avoid using email and go for the phone instead.
Conflict Resolution in the Context of Your Parent Retention and Education Plan
Today’s parents tend to view their child’s private-independent school with a profound sense of ownership. Since they “make payments” to the institution, parents reason that their privileges should include making explicit demands on teachers, on administrators, on Trustees, and on the curriculum itself. If granted, some of the demands would alter educational and programmatic policy and practice; others would provide a de facto waiver for that parent’s own child in regard to school policies and practices.
The obvious counterweight should be added: Parents are sometimes right. The extent and difficulty of a third-grade teacher’s homework assignments may, in fact, be out of line. An upper-school history teacher’s response to one student’s tardiness may have been extreme. Your middle-school physical education courses may be ill-conceived or poorly executed. The Lower School Director may unreasonably procrastinate in returning parents’ phone calls. The Board may, in fact, be uncommunicative or secretive as a matter of habit, rather than selectively (that is, for special cause).
When Professional Development Is Useless for Your Teachers
It’s a waste of your teachers' time as well as your school's resources to provide inadequate professional development, as what happened to some unfortunate Chicago public school teachers. In a video that’s gone viral, a participant secretly recorded a full 63 seconds demonstrating this district’s take on professional development.