#PrincipalPLN

In this episode Jessica and Spike discuss a bunch of different things going on in the life of a Principal. They begin by discussing the summer responsibilities and how to complete the end of the year, manage the day to day and plan for the upcoming year. They discuss the role of the vice/assistant Principals, student use of cell phones, and summer learning. 

Resources mentioned in our discussion:

Cell Phones In School? - Away for the Day

Books Jessica read/plans to read this summer:

• Creating a Culture of Reflective Practice: Capacity-Building for Schoolwide Success

• Swimming in the Deep End: Four Foundational Skills for Leading Successful School Initiatives

• Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity

• The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace

• Relentless:Changing Lives by Disrupting the Educational Norm by Hamish Brewer

   

Spike: 

• Crucial Conversations: Tools For Talking When The Stakes Are High

• The Artist's Way: A Spiritrual Path to Higher Creativity

   Here is a Principal to follow who is doing things differently and getting amazing results:

Hamish Brewer 

• Relentless: Changing Lives By Disrupting 

• Principal of the Year: Hamish Brewer, Fred Lynn Middle School 

• Ted Talk - How Radical Love Transformed a School 

In this episode, Spike and Jessica catch up on the new initiatives in their school and how things are going. Jessica discussed the progress of PBIS and Playworks in her school. Spike discussed how his school is going through the revalidation process to continue being an AVID National Demonstration School. Based on the feedback from a prior visit, the staff have been working on increasing Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS). The AVID site team have provided weekly instructional practices, developed a Google Form to collect best practices, and they meet with Spike on a monthly basis to coach him how to use HOTS in the weekly email, staff meetings, and for teacher feedback. They are also correlating the McREL Walkthrough data from last year as the compare the instances of remembering and understanding with analyzing and evaluating. The revalidation process has definitely caused the school to improve in areas to make student learning better.  

Here is a link to Spike’s blog “5 Ways to Increase Higher Order Thinking Skills at Your School”

PrincipalPLN is a part of the Education Podcast Network

In this episode, Theresa and Jessica discuss what they're up to with welcome staff back to school. Jessica finally tried out Flipgrid thanks to Eric Ewald's encouragement when she attended his session at the National Principals Conference.  Here's a quick video Jessica made to show her staff how to do this: Flipgrid intro.  Theresa shared some other awesome ideas she's seen Flipgrid used for.

As they talked about Social Emotional Learning, here are links to some of the resources/programs mentioned:

• Second Step Curriculum
• Zones of Regulation
• Pyramid Model
• Playworks
• Handle with Care Referral
• The Fire Within book
• Fostering Resilient Learners book
• Lavonna Roth
• Web and Link Crew from The Boomerang Project
• Playspent.org Poverty simulation

In this episode, Theresa and Spike sit down to discuss the first week of school and reflect on their openings. Both Theresa and Spike discussed how they were in the "cycle of sacrifice" due to the high levels of stress in opening up school for the year. Are you in the cycle of sacrifice? 

Spike discussed the First Three Days project he did with his school. This was an idea that was inspired by the Significant 72 by Greg Wolcott. The Lakeside staff and students spent a significant amount of time building relationships with each other as well as reviewing the expectations of the school. Spike plans to blog about this initiative and also will discuss upcoming ideas for follow up. 

Theresa shared ideas to make the weekly communication more collaborative. Her administrative team writes their information on a shared Google Document which is generated from a weekly reminder email from Theresa through Boomerang. She also uses Boomerang to manage her email inbox by using the tools such as pausing, scheduling and having emails re-delivered for emphasis and reminders. Boomerang can be used for Gmail and Microsoft Office. Be sure to check it out! 

In this episode, Spike and Jessica talked about their school plans for the first days of school. Spike talked about the Significant 72 and Jessica talked about Playworks. 

Spike and his staff took the Significant 72 and used it as an outline for the first 3 days. They made a Google Slides presentation for all staff to use period by period. Within the presentation are "get to know you" activities as well as instructions to cover all expectations. The Significant 72 places emphasis on students knowing teachers, teachers knowing students, students knowing students. Spike and his staff added students knowing the school. Spike will report out on this on the next podcast.

In this episode, Spike and Jessica catch up on what they’ve been doing to relax in the final days of summer and had a discussion about how we welcome kids back to school. As we’re seeing awesome back to school ideas, like rolling out the red carpet (Click here for the time RM Bacon literally rolled out the red carpet forthe welcome back and tied it to the You Matter movement by Angela Maiers), our discussion may challenge your thinking about grand events. A post that started some interesting discussion on Twitter was: Your Back to School Message is Hurting Teachers. 

Jessica shared Greg Wolcott’s idea of the Significant 72 and how important the first 72 hours (or 3 days) of school should be all about relationship building. And that also goes for the first 72 after a break. Read about the Significant 72 here: https://www.smore.com/ddc84-significant-72

In this episode, Theresa, Spike and Jessica catch up from the summer break. They each discussed how July goes so quickly and provides a much needed down time from the business of the school year. Now, as they are quickly realizing, is the time to make sure all of the Back to School lists are completed such as scheduling, organization of the school and the most important part... the first few days of the school year.

Over the course of the Podcast, you will learn about the following:

• Transformative Leadership Summit 2018 - Spike visited with Danny from #TLS18 to discuss How to Spread Gratitude Throughout Your School 
• The Principals Playhouse - Allyson Apsey (Author of the Path to Serendipity) and Jonathon Wennstrom
• Challenges with Time Zones :) 
• Social Emotional Learning - Jess is reading
• Back to School Preparation

Thank you for listening! Connect with us on Twitter @principalpln or #principalpln on Twitter or Instagram.

We want to start out by thanking everyone who has ever listened to the PrincipalPLN podcast. We are very grateful to have had the opportunity to share our learning with you over past 5 years.

We finally made it to 100 episodes of the PrincipalPLN podcast. Theresa, Spike, and Jessica began this journey in the fall of 2013. They have been together with their #principalPLN network through all types of changes in our lives.

In this episode, we brought back a few of our friends (who happened to be guests) to talk about the latest changes in education, books we are reading, and inspirational words. We all have something in common that we want to inspire each other and to have a purpose in our lives. More importantly, we were able to do what we do best... hang out and chat!

Guest List - Please follow and connect with them! 

Tony Sinanis - @TonySinanis

Jessica Cabeen - @JessicaCabeen

Sarah Johnson - @SarahSajohnson

Jay Posick - @posickj

Curt Rees - @CurtRees

Show highlights 

Throughout the show, we were able to catch up and reminisce about our favorite PrincipalPLN episodes. We talked about running, job changes, Donkey Basketball, Time Zones as well as educational issues. We also gave away a few of our favorite books: