Advancing the Vision 10-16-18

I appreciate everyone's hard work at our staff development day on Monday.  It is wonderful to work with a group of adults who truly act as professionals and with whom you can trust to work on tasks that not only will lead to the achievement of personal goals, but will also contribute to the success of our school as a whole.  When using the analogy of the train, hard work on your train car will improve the experience of the riders in your car as well as further them on the track to proficiency.

As I planned for our meeting and for the tasks I wanted us to complete,  I was hoping that by once again reflecting on what the components of student-focused instruction mean to you and on your strengths in those areas, I would encourage you to think about yourself as a leader in some area of our school-wide initiative.  I also hoped to encourage you to zone in on something instructional we can work on together to keep the train moving.

I was excited to read through your responses to both identifying strengths and areas where you want coaching.  Your strengths are diverse!  We have folks that identify strengths in creating experiences where they step aside and act as the facilitator while students problem solve, several others who have identified using strategies for responsive instruction, and still others who are skilled in spiraling the curriculum.  It was fun to compare those to the strengths you wrote at the beginning of the year.  I have made note of what you completed at our first staff meeting, by the way, and will give them back as a reminder for you to focus on your strengths.

As far as the instructional look-fors, the staff was split into mainly two groups. Many want feedback on congruency between standard, target, and task and the other largest group wants feedback on the on-the-spot formative assessments/overt responses.  It will be fun to have these conversations with you.

When I went through the feedback you gave me, I looked at the 2 areas that had the lowest overall scores compared to the other areas.  These were Enable Others to Act and Encourage the Heart.  A few things that jumped out to me within Enable Others to Act are that I need to listen to other points of view more and work on building the leadership capacity of the staff. Within Encourage the Heart I learned that I need to do better with verbal praise and feedback.   I appreciate your candor and honesty.  I will be working not these areas and then re-polling in the spring to see if I have made improvements.

Thank you again for all you do to keep our train moving forward.  I will continue to "do my job" and work on my train car with the feedback you have given me and as I continue to strive to advance the vision.  After the link was broken, I found it again...here you go...Let's do our job!
...The four things Bill Belichick asks the Patriots to do EVERY Day... Be sure to watch the super-short clip and scroll through the article.


Here are four qualities that have helped his Patriots over the years:


1. Do your job.

2. Be attentive.

3. Pay attention to details.

4. Put the team first.
How do you think that applies to us?