Leading, Learning, and Doing: A Principal's Story

I am a scattered person by nature.  My brain thinks of ideas faster than I can keep up with, and I take notes all over the place.  I am constantly trying new organization systems in an effort to improve my access to ideas and notes from meetings. Well I have found the answer!  If you are like me, you need to run as fast as you can and try Google Keep!  This is sticky notes on steroids!!!!  Here is a link  https://keep.google.com/ You can take notes, or make a checklist, and then add labels for organizing.  You can also change the color of the notes to help your brain categorize concepts.  ALSO, you can take photos and add them to the note right there!!!!  Lastly, you can pin important items to the top of the list.  Then you can access your notes from any device that has Google.  I no longer have the problem of thinking....where is that agenda I took notes on?  Here is an image of what my first few pinned notes look like. ...

My staff read The Wild Card, by Hope and Wade King, for our 2018 summer book study.  The teachers absolutely LOVED it and I was inspired by their enthusiasm.  The book challenges teachers to get out of their creativity comfort zone and engage students in learning.  It is written by teachers for teachers and is super fun to read.    I assigned my FIRST EVER Google Classroom project!  I shared it with the teachers and they were able to work at their own pace during the summer and answer reflective questions as they read.  The teachers did an amazing job reflection on their practice and setting goals for areas to improve on. I have copied and pasted the information from the Google Classroom below in case you want to give this book a try with your staff.  Why reinvent the wheel?  Have fun! Part 1 of Wild Card Book Club Activity! Welcome to our summer book study! We hope that you are excited to read this book about using your authentic self...

In our effort to transition our campus into a Professional Learning Community, it was important to spend part of our beginning of the year PD developing our Shared Core Beliefs.  After being on campus for a year, it was very evident that there were meaningful shared core values on the campus that impacted student learning daily.  We did an "All on the Wall Activity" that allowed all teachers to add their unique beliefs on a sticky note, and then we collaborated to organize the stickies into categories.  We ended up with three powerful statements that absolutely defined what I saw on campus.  This is what we started with: We Believe- In Building Positive Relationships In Providing a Safe, Structured, and Engaging Learning Environment That Actions Speak Louder than Words After spending about two hours on the developing the three shared beliefs above, it was evident to me that we were missing one.  However it was not apparent to the staff.  This was a...

One of the challenges that was given to me going into my 4th year as a principal, was to start the year differently.  In the past, I have felt the need to stack as many professional learning opportunities as possible into a couple of campus development days before the start of school.  This year however, I decided to concentrate on my school climate.  We always begin the year teacher challenges, named Crusader Quests after our Crusader mascot.  This year, we took it a step further. My staff read The Wild Card, by Hope and Wade King, for our 2018 summer book study.  The teachers absolutely LOVED it and I was inspired by their enthusiasm.  I will have another blog post about the Wild Card book study that we did.  The book challenges teachers to get out of their creativity comfort zone.  In order to cement our book study, and begin the year differently, we began the year with a Carpool Karaoke challenge to share on social media.  Each grade le...

Although I am going on my fourth year as an elementary principal, it is only the second year on my current campus.  I spent 15 years in Texas as a teacher, assistant principal, and principal, and am now beginning my second year in Arkansas.  It has been an wonderful experience to see the similarities and differences in education between two different states.  Although I am still a newbie to Arkansas, I am loving it more each day.  This blog will be a reflection of the process that I used to transform my campus into a Professional Learning Community.  It will take lots of work, but in the end, it is what is best for kids.  There will be some updated done in the blog to reflect that work that was done from August through November in 2018.  I was not quite ready to blog until now....