Adventures in Administration

This is a great question and one that was chatted about in one of my Voxer groups recently.  This question stuck in my head and led me to this blog post.  So I am grateful to my #LeadWild Voxer #PLN for bringing this up.  It was actually quite timely as we have been, in slightly different words, grappling with this question at home as our son adjusts to 4th grade.  Sometimes work and home align, and this is one of those times. Image Credit To begin to answer this question, I turned back to my "roots" so to speak, of a history teacher, and began with Socrates.  Really, I could begin my quest in many places, but for me Socrates seemed an excellent starting point.  During Socrates' time, Ancient Greece was a democracy of sorts.  Citizens (read: free adult men) were expected to contribute in different ways to the running of society.  For Socrates, he encouraged his students to seek the truth (this eventually will lead to his death).  To se...

The topic for Day 3 of the  +TeachThought  blogging challenge is observations.  As the Associate Principal, observations are ideally what I spend the majority of my time on.  Of course we know that reality is very different from the ideal so sadly I do not get into as many classrooms every week as I would like.  Regardless, I want to make the time that I do spend in the classroom as effective as possible. I have an app that I use for my walk-throughs (though I am thinking about changing apps so if you have a format that you really like, please share!) which allows me to capture a fairly accurate snapshot of what is going on in the classroom according to the standards .  What I have discovered, though, is that it isn't the check-list, but rather the free-form comments and the conversations that I have after I have been in a classroom that have the biggest impact. So in order for me to provide effective feedback and engage in meaningful conversation about...