Transformative Principal

Adam Geller is the Founder of Edthena, a video coaching program. 

Enjoy this chat from #FETC2020

Today’s Transformative Principal sponsor, John Catt Educational, has been publishing high quality guidebooks, magazines and educator-focused professional development books since 1959. John Catt’s mission is to support high-quality teaching and learning by ensuring every educator has access to professional development materials that are research-based, practical, and focused on the key topics proven essential in today’s and tomorrow’s schools.

John Catt amplifies fresh voices on timeless topics, with a list of authors recognized around the world for their fresh perspectives and proven strategies to drive success in modern schools and classrooms. Learn more about these professional development publications that are easy to implement for your entire faculty, and are both quickly digestible and rigorous, by visiting https://us.johncattbookshop.com/. 

Visit this page to learn more about bulk orders and how to bring John Catt’s research-based materials to your school: https://us.johncattbookshop.com/pages/agents-and-distributors

Learn about some of John Catt Educational’s newest publications:

• What the Academy Taught Us: Improving Schools from the Bottom-Up in a Top-Down Transformation Era by Eric Kalenze
• Be More Toddler: Leadership Lessons From Our Little Learners by Emma Turner
• A Quiet Education: Challenging the Extrovert Ideal in Our Schools by Jamie Thom
• Rosenshine’s Principles in Action by Tom Sherrington
• The Thinking School: Developing a Dynamic Learning Community by Kulvarn Atwal
• The researchED Guide to Explicit and Direct Instruction: An evidence-informed guide for teachers by Various Authors

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Join host Tamara Fyke and Jethro Jones of Transformative Principal for a conversation about how to keep yourself calm when you’re feeling stressed and nervous.

We will talk about:

• Phrases to show empathy
• Phrases to give yourself some time to think!
• Phrases to calm fears
• How to control your voice.
• Phone vs. in person vs. video conversations.

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

A great interview with Tom Murray at #FETC20 earlier this year. 

Today’s Transformative Principal sponsor, John Catt Educational, has been publishing high quality guidebooks, magazines and educator-focused professional development books since 1959. John Catt’s mission is to support high-quality teaching and learning by ensuring every educator has access to professional development materials that are research-based, practical, and focused on the key topics proven essential in today’s and tomorrow’s schools.

John Catt amplifies fresh voices on timeless topics, with a list of authors recognized around the world for their fresh perspectives and proven strategies to drive success in modern schools and classrooms. Learn more about these professional development publications that are easy to implement for your entire faculty, and are both quickly digestible and rigorous, by visiting https://us.johncattbookshop.com/. 

Visit this page to learn more about bulk orders and how to bring John Catt’s research-based materials to your school: https://us.johncattbookshop.com/pages/agents-and-distributors

Learn about some of John Catt Educational’s newest publications:

• What the Academy Taught Us: Improving Schools from the Bottom-Up in a Top-Down Transformation Era by Eric Kalenze
• Be More Toddler: Leadership Lessons From Our Little Learners by Emma Turner
• A Quiet Education: Challenging the Extrovert Ideal in Our Schools by Jamie Thom
• Rosenshine’s Principles in Action by Tom Sherrington
• The Thinking School: Developing a Dynamic Learning Community by Kulvarn Atwal
• The researchED Guide to Explicit and Direct Instruction: An evidence-informed guide for teachers by Various Authors

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

At FETC2020, I had the privilege of interviewing Rebekah McPherson and Nikoski Darnell. 

Such a great conversation. I hope you enjoy it. 

Today’s Transformative Principal sponsor, John Catt Educational, has been publishing high quality guidebooks, magazines and educator-focused professional development books since 1959. John Catt’s mission is to support high-quality teaching and learning by ensuring every educator has access to professional development materials that are research-based, practical, and focused on the key topics proven essential in today’s and tomorrow’s schools.

John Catt amplifies fresh voices on timeless topics, with a list of authors recognized around the world for their fresh perspectives and proven strategies to drive success in modern schools and classrooms. Learn more about these professional development publications that are easy to implement for your entire faculty, and are both quickly digestible and rigorous, by visiting https://us.johncattbookshop.com/. 

Visit this page to learn more about bulk orders and how to bring John Catt’s research-based materials to your school: https://us.johncattbookshop.com/pages/agents-and-distributors

Learn about some of John Catt Educational’s newest publications:

• What the Academy Taught Us: Improving Schools from the Bottom-Up in a Top-Down Transformation Era by Eric Kalenze
• Be More Toddler: Leadership Lessons From Our Little Learners by Emma Turner
• A Quiet Education: Challenging the Extrovert Ideal in Our Schools by Jamie Thom
• Rosenshine’s Principles in Action by Tom Sherrington
• The Thinking School: Developing a Dynamic Learning Community by Kulvarn Atwal
• The researchED Guide to Explicit and Direct Instruction: An evidence-informed guide for teachers by Various Authors

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

I had a 1:1 coaching call with Natalie Irons. She’s awesome.

If you want to reach out for help, you can send me a text: 801–252–6368

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Matt Pavao is a principal in Burlingame, California. The following is a transcript of our conversation. 

I'd love to talk about my school will be a lot lots of things going great at the school in the district. I have a small district in in the Bay Area, like you said, We're right near the San Francisco Airport. We are a school of 338 students k five. We are title one school. We are also school. It's very dedicated to innovation and very dedicated to our community and being a real community school all the school district all the schools in Burlingame are committed to being really community schools. So we're really tight and tight knit community at our and in our district. 338 today? Yeah. You know, we always say about 350, actually, but we just did the count the other day, so 338 Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, I've been at the school for eight years. My eighth year at the school. Yeah. As the principal the whole time. Yeah. It's my 20 I think third year in education. I'm done. Teaching and then other administration jobs at middle school and then and then this my first principalship first sponsorship, I'm eight years Hey, yes. Yeah. Yeah, we did. All right. We're doing okay.

Well, yeah, no,

I Well, the interesting thing about the school is I'm only the third principle they've had and Something like they reopen the school. It's the school is hundred years old this year. So it was built in 1919. But it was closed for some years in the end up until about and I think believe 1988. And since then we've only had three principals. So there was the principal there for 10 years. And the one before me was 11. And then mean, so I have, I'm the young still, I'm still the newbie in that group. You know, it's such a wonderful job and a wonderful community that I have such exciting people that I work with, and really inspired teachers and really inspired district that's allows me to have this community that allows me to have this, why they there is an expectation that we continue to push towards a very innovative practices. And we're in the kind of the north end of the Silicon Valley. So a lot of our parents work in the Silicon Valley in jobs that require the creativity and the collaboration and then the, you know, the critical thing that we talked about the communication. So they understand that's an important factor, and what we have to teach, so to give you this wide berth to kind of really push out into some things that aren't You know, you must be on page 25 of the textbook today. And we are. And at the same time, you know, I think we're a good example to other districts in that we have a wide range of students, you know, we have students of all socio economic backgrounds will talk about, you know, we have 27 different languages at the school. And that's not that's typical, actually, for our area, you know, our we have a very diverse population. And in that we still have achieved we were still able to achieve at high high levels of the typical if you want to call them that academic backgrounds, while at the same time really pushing our innovative practices into things like today where we're looking at podcasting or when we're doing a lot of creative work with presentations and so, a lot of creative creativity and design thinking and things like that. Okay,

Yeah, my advice would be one is to reach out to them. A lot of times we have this shutdown method of like you stay on your side of the fence and I'll stay on my side of the fence. But at Roosevelt and in Burlingame, we definitely encourage parent participation. So a lot of the ideas we have come from parent groups, you know, you meet with them after school and or in the evenings and if they're willing to give their time to you, and then you can listen to their great ideas and you can take that and put the educators lens at the same time possibly because not impossible because of the principles that came before me. There was this foundation of real partnership with the parents that I just inherited it worked hard to keep that going. But it's always been part of our culture at the school and in the district that there's a real partnership. And certainly, there are helicopter parents in all walks, but even we don't. We don't I wouldn't say we even have I can't name any that we would have even at my site, but we've always really valued our partnership with the parents and they valued our professionalism. It's really, really a special kind of place in that respect.

So hundred years. Yeah, this year Well, 1990 is actually passed over but 1919 we're gonna have the celebration this year.

It's real. And it's a real balancing between honoring what was before you, and then building, you know, continue to build. And so we tried to do that in the years I've been there and it's been successful. Yeah, yes. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Sure. Let me preface a little bit. We, we so we have this giant wall in our school that we painted this mural on a while back for a lot of different reasons. We had an event, an unfortunate event of some graffiti that we and so it's This speaks to what our parents are like as well, that we, in typically, we just cross out the graffiti move on our day, the parents want to do more we did that. Got it down immediately, and then went about our day and then went to say, No, we want to express who we are. And part of that is our 27 languages that we spoke at the time and I think was 24. We've grown. So we put this wall that said, we are Roosevelt. Roosevelt elementary is my school. And so we and then we wrote in every different language on the wall. We are Roosevelt in that language. So if you had someone who was speaking to golic it's up there if you have Russian it's up there Chinese Portuguese. And after you when you see it, and I look at it almost every day when you come in it's really keeps you focused. So one of the parts we were having struggles with we you know, we have a wee hours about night where we celebrate all the cultures, but we weren't getting party active participation from all our parents. And one of the ideas was, well, we need a translation service to translate our newsletters and we went through that and there's a price to that. And then we thought what we have experts Right here in the school, so we should have an audio audio Translation by our students using podcasts. We'll just attach it right to a link on our newsletters and we so what we do is we have, so we get we put it out to the parents and the teachers in the fifth grade, our students in the fifth grade, come and help us translate our newsletter. And so they would show up on our newsletters go out on Thursdays, they would show up on Tuesdays, I would give them kind of these are the highlights. They would take it home, they write it out with their parents, and then they would come so we had the first year we had Japanese and Portuguese and Japanese Portuguese, Spanish, and not Russian, but I'm forgetting we had one more. And we've now since expanded to Turkish and China we have Mandarin Chinese now. So we're confused. We don't have all 27 right now but it's it's powerful for lots of reasons. If you just take out even the parties, the students feel valued, which is actually the number one piece. There's a technical aspect to it that the kids are learning how to do podcasting, there's a some of these kids knew how to speak the language. They didn't necessarily know how to write it out. So they're even learning their own language which is how to their parents language how to write it out, but so there's children

Well, you just bring up something, it's just my my wife's family comes from China. two generations ago her grandmother came from China and who just passed at 98 years old. And one of the things that her uncle brought up at the thing was even he had a commute there was always a communication issue with them and, and it was powerful it and so the other thing that we s...

Jeff Becker and I are hosting a webinar about how to implement SEL in your school. Register here! Jeff is a former school counselor and current video production teacher in Florida. He also hosts the CanDoU SEL podcast and produces courses for high schools to use to support their students. Check those out here.

• It won’t work unless you address SEL with staff, too
• People feel ill-equipped to do SEL.
• The students will lead you through the process.
• CASEL Core Competencies - Self-awareness, Self-management, Social awareness, Relationship skills, Responsible decision-making
• What is SEL?
• SEL just feels fluffy.
• Professional development on social emotional learning.
• Teachers hate to be put in a situation where they don’t feel set up for success.
• If you work with kids, and you do care, you’ve already won 80–90% of the battle.
• You know more than you know.
• Kids just want to be listened to.
• Create a space to talk about what the kids want to talk about.
• Think about when you had a connection
• At worst, SEL shows kids how much you care.
• Data on success from doing SEL.
• Write down all your problems in your school, and fit them into each of the buckets from CASEL.
• When given the opportunity, they want to know how to stop using substances to stop numbing feelings.
• How to be a transformative principal? Give your teachers the green light to carve in time to talk about something non-academic in your class.
•  

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Systematizing Our Professional Development For The Charter School with Amanda Huza Transformative Principal 320

Social Media: We’re not wasting the time of teachers who have already mastered that aspect of teaching.

Amanda Huza is the principal of Equality charter school.

• Serve about 630 middle and high school students in the bronx.
• Share space with two other partner schools.
• 27 teachers - 50% of them are new or 2 years or less.
• Important to accelerate their growth.
• Want them to feel successful enough to improve student learning.
• Data-based professional development.
• Focus on 10 pieces of Danielson framework.
• Create rich cultures of learning, routines and procedures, logical consequences in the classroom,
• Provide examples and non examples.
• Informal observation on a weekly basis. Teachers know that someone could be in classrooms at any time.
• higher order thinking questions and wait time. Scaffolding questions.
• Focus on specific areas of mastery and track those.
• We’re not wasting the time of teachers who have already mastered that aspect of teaching.
• The list is not concrete, we want to think about the people that we have in front of us.
• Scholar data as well.
• 1–2 day opportunities for teachers to be learners themselves.
• Peer observations.
• coaching role and supervision, then principal position.
• goal is expanding to elementary school.
• Systematizing our professional development for the charter school
• Building up to socratic seminar.
• Get feedback from their peers and from their coaches.
• Large group of kids who need intervention.
• Footage of a demonstration lesson, then feedback from peers.
• Swivl
• Edthena
• Can see videos of exemplars in their school.
• Teachers are on an equal playing field.
• Helps the administrator move away from being a judge.
• To put the pressure on you to remember everything is really unkind to both the administrator and the teacher.
• There’s pretty much always someone coming into the classrooms each day.
• Informal observations happen weekly.
• Weekly coaching meeting.
• Coaching meeting is a debrief of the observation and a review of the data.
• Provided weekly lesson plan feedback.
• Video is 1 time per month at least, sometimes more if they are in higher need.
• Explorations in EdThena.
• Teachers create a professional development support plan.
• Weekly professional development time on Tuesdays.
• Quarterly data meetings.
• How to be a transformative principal? Don’t forget that the work that’s happening is the most important work and the work we used to do, so we need to not be afraid to learn with them.
• Really helps teachers feel supported and valued. [email protected]

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Kim Marshall is the founder of the Marshall Memo and Jenn David-Lang is the founder of the Main Idea. We talk about their new book, “The Best of the Marshall Memo,”

• As a principal I rarely had time to read in a thoughtful way.
• Why write a book about the Marshall Memo.
• Articles not organized.
• Professional development ideas.
• Educational journals have theme issues.
• How to take the next step from the learning to the doing.
• Practical article about how to have conversations - Don’t email criticism
• Watching a teacher who made a grammatical mistake.
• It’s going to be in the principal’s hands. One strategy, what do you notice?
• Why have a conversation about the grammatical error? Are there reasons why you should talk with this teacher?
• She was miseducating the kids. We couldn’t let that go by.
• Has the leader created a culture of feedback?
• Getting into classrooms enough that you see the bigger picture.
• Teachers need to be appreciated.
• Real time coaching vs after-the-event feedback.
• Routine for principals to take over the class.
• Have a conversation so that the teacher comes to the conclusion on what behavior comes next.
• Sanebox - take control of your email
• How to be a transformative principal? Kim: Have an out of office response on email. Jenn: Ask for feedback.
• If you want to work with Jethro, please get in touch jethrojones.com or schedule a call

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Phil Echols is an Administrator of Professional Learning supporting K-12 needs in the area of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) and coaching in Wake County Public Schools in North Carolina.

• Psychology major and teacher in his home town.

• Counseling

• The power of Twitter.

• People often find a way to monetize things

• Monetization of the network. You can’t monetize the network - via @adamcurry

* #BMETalk - Black male educators * Black males are like unicorns in so many spaces. * Every time I meet someone face to face at a conference I create a twitter list with them on it. * How do you mentor those unicorns? * 100+ staff members. 1200 students. * Why do you stay here? * You could be in a school where there are more minority students. Why do you stay here? * Good things come from my DNA. * Patience and reflection comes from my parents. * Enter spaces with the mindset of who do I need to be in this space? * How to decide who you need to be in a meeting. * The relationships of the people at the table require a different approach. * Paying attention to what people might need. * Presume positive intent. * Relationships are foundational. * Sometimes I can be too heavy on the relationship and we don’t get everything done that we need to! * Facilitated leadership equilateral relationships, processes, and tasks. * Leader member exchange theory - focuses on three components: leader follower, and exchanges between those two. * Leaders often have in groups and out groups. * Out groups don’t always get everything they need. * Help people feel like they are in the “in group!“ * How to be a transformative principal? Be more mindful of your individual interactions with all of your staff members.

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.