 Tip of the Week:
Evaluating Your Team Readiness
This is a good time to take stock in how well trained your team is and consider what kinds of update training or professional development you need. In terms of timing, what I so often see is that districts wait until spring to provide training, and then much is lost as summer allows inertia and job transfers take that training away from your team to new sites. When teams update their training and improve readiness during winter, you have time to put much in place and perhaps have the opportunity to practice and refine what you've learned.
Take a moment to evaluate your strengths and weaknesses, and consider moving on needs sooner rather than later. We have a brief outline to make it easy to see strengths and weaknesses at a glance. Use this evaluation link to see what pops out at you! Often use of video conferencing is an affordable alternative to on-site training, depending on the content needed. Most of our video conferencing content is designed to meet specific needs rather than expecting that districts will choose from a pre-set menu of selections. Let us know your needs!
I also want to take a moment to mention an email I received after the last Tip of the Week. A security officer was concerned that I was suggesting that we don't need to drill for school shootings because, statistically, they are one of the rarest causes of death for students. If one person was unclear about my intent, I assume many of you may have been. My purpose in looking at these statistics is not to discourage drills for those worst case scenarios, but to balance that with a variety of additional drills for the many kinds of more common threats we face. I want to thank the fellow who took the time to voice those concerns, and always I would hope that, when you find philosophical differences of concern, you, too, will let me know. What I notice is that we lose adolescents to suicide every single day in America, and many teachers are better versed on what to do in active shooter drills than on what to do if a student mentions the possibility of suicide... that and lightening strikes and drunk driving and hundreds of other issues also beg our attention. But not at the expense of safe schools drills. They're all important!
Welcome back after the holidays.... we're just five weeks out from the first crocus blooms in Oregon! Hang on!
Cheri
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