NASSP, Virco Name Finalists for Assistant Principal of the Year

Clay McDonald, Deborah Miller, and Courtney Voshell

Reston, VA-Three exceptional school leaders have been selected as finalists for 2014 NASSP/Virco National Assistant Principal of the Year:

•  Clay McDonald, Piedmont High School, Piedmont, OK
•  Deborah Miller, Park Hill High School, Kansas City, MO
•  Courtney Voshell, Dover High School, Dover, DE

A national winner will be selected from these finalists in February and all state and national honorees will be recognized at an April black-tie gala in Washington, DC.

"Assistant principals play a critical role in our nation's schools and we are honored to recognize these three outstanding school leaders for their commitment to that role," said JoAnn Bartoletti, NASSP executive director. "These educators model all that can be accomplished when school leaders are dedicated to raising student achievement and improving their schools."

NASSP and school furniture manufacturer Virco Inc. annually honor a winner from each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the Department of Defense Education Activity schools. Selection criteria are built around collaborative leadership; curriculum, instruction, and assessment; and school personalization-the core areas of the NASSP Breaking Ranks Framework for school improvement. The three finalists were selected from the pool of state winners, and one national winner will be identified and announced during the NASSP conference, Ignite 2014, which will be held February 6-8 in Dallas, TX. Each finalist will receive $1,500 and the national winner will be awarded an additional $3,500, which can be used for personal professional development or for a school improvement project.

All state winners will be honored at a three-day event in Washington, DC in April. Event highlights include a national speaker, visits to Capitol Hill to meet with legislators, and networking with some of the best assistant principals across the nation. The event culminates with a black-tie gala to recognize the achievements of each of the state honorees, the national finalists, and the national winner.

Thanks to Bob Farrace, NASSP's Director of Communications and Public Relations.

The Most Useful Educational Tools Every Teacher Should Try

Dick Flanary, NASSP Deputy Executive Director for Programs and Services, is a lifelong teacher and learner.  In his work with schools and principals across our nation, he is constantly looking for proven resources for improvement.  Over the next three weeks, we will share a list tools every teacher should try from an article written by Melissa Burns and found in entirety here:  http://learningonlineinfo.org/most-useful-educational-tools-every-teacher-should-try/  Our thanks to Dick Flanary  ([email protected])for sharing this with us, and now with you!  Enjoy.

~ MW for PM!

1. TutorClass  TutorClass is the most advanced online tutoring platform, which connects students and tutors. Everyone benefits from this project - students are studying in an inspiring environment for an affordable price, and tutors can reach out to a wider audience and manage their classes through the easy-to-use tutor management software system.

2. InfuseLearning  InfuseLearning may be the easiest tool for teachers to use. It enables them to create and share prompts, quizzes or simple questions with their students. This is a great way to get everyone involved  in a discussion, because students are always eager to use their tablets and smartphones, even when it's for educative purposes. 

3. Aurasma  Aurasma, one of the leading augmented reality platforms on the web, is a free app available for iPads , Android devices, and iPhones. With this tool, users can create so-called Auras, which represent a blend of the reality and inspiring interactive content. Students also have access to images, videos, or websites designated by the teacher.

5. WeVideo  Almost all students love creating videos, but those projects can become even more fun with WeVideo. Students can create great video content on the go by using this online video creating platform on their smartphones. Educators can use this tool to keep students motivated for project-based tasks.

More next week! 

Professional Development:  A System of Ongoing Learning

Sheila Harrity is the 2014 MetLife/NASSP National High School Principal of the Year.  The principal at Worcester Technical High School in Massachusetts, Sheila recently  spent time with NASSP's Jan Umphrey, Editor of NASSP's Principal Leadership.  Here's what Sheila had to share about the culture of professional development at her school.

PL: How do you ensure ongoing learning for the adults in the school to keep them current in their particular fields?

Harrity: The professional development plan is designed around the goals of Worcester Tech's accountability plan. The plan outlines school initiatives that are based on formative and summative student data.

The accountability plan outlines the need to prepare all educators with content knowledge and pedagogy to increase the rigor at our high school. This includes significant professional development to create curricula for a program to channel students from pre-AP classes to AP classes. Teachers also receive the training necessary to create effective assessments to support student learning and achievement. The focused instructional coach supports our school initiative, providing weekly in-house professional development in such topics as classroom technology integration, literacy strategies across all content areas, and best practices for academic and technical teachers.

This year, professional development at Worcester Tech is focused on our STEM initiative as outlined in our STEM early career and college innovation plan. This plan ensures that 100% of Worcester Tech graduates will graduate college and career ready to meet this goal. Professional development includes teacher externship opportunities in business, industry, and higher education. Additionally, site visits have been incorporated to align curricula with industry expectations and recognized certifications. A full day of professional development was designed to encourage all staff members to connect with more than 25 area companies and institutions of higher education. These venues gave faculty the opportunity to create relationships and make valuable connections to ensure that our students are making successful career and college transitions.

For example, our electrical department worked on aligning state electrical frameworks with National Grid's training and educational programs to develop a seamless, trained workforce pipeline. The plumbing and chemistry faculty visited the local water filtration plant and returned with integrated lesson plans on the chemistry of water. The English department met with Worcester State University's admissions and English faculty to discuss college expectations and to align the high school curriculum with college requirements.

Worcester Tech's professional development plan has created a structure that recognizes teachers as professionals in their fields and provides opportunities for professional development that are teacher, curriculum, and data driven.

You can read the entire article, written by Jan Umphrey, the editor of NASSP's Principal Leadership magazine , at this link:  http://www.nassp.org/Content/158/pl_jan14_poy_alaiasa.pdf   

Rules for Classroom Heroes:  Never Teach to the Test

Never teach to the test. Despite the fact that both student and teacher assessments are directly tied to performance on the plethora of state-issued exams, there is not an educator among the fifty profiled in my book who approaches his or her curriculum with the primary end goal of achieving high scores-though make no mistake, their students do dominate.

Why? Because these teachers are finding inventive ways to knit the standards into the fabric of their curricula. As Josh Anderson, who teaches English and coaches the debate team at Olathe Northwest High School in Kansas puts it, "Exceptional test scores, brilliant job applicants, and competitive colleges should simply be by- products of a great education, not the sole purpose of it."

This is an excerpt from a blog written by Katrina Fried.  It outlines the "Twelve Rules of Classroom Heroes."  We will share the rules with you weekly in Principal Matters!  If you can't wait to see them over time, you can read the article in its entirety here:  http://www.weareteachers.com/community/blogs/weareteachersblog/blog-wat/2013/10/30/12-rules-for-classroom-heroes    It's inspired from her best-selling book, American Teachers:  Heroes in the Classroom, available at Amazon and at your favorite book-seller. 

Projects to Engage Middle School Readers

In middle school, we ask students to dissect texts and perform literary analysis. However, that does not mean that we have to limit how we assess their understanding of the books. If the desired learning objective is for students to . . .

• Demonstrate understanding of the plot elements
• Explore the role of tone and theme
• Identify significant scenes or events and their impact on the story
• Analyze a character and show an understanding of that character's motivations
• Explain the relationship between the author's life and the story

. . . does it have to be an essay or book report?

Why not one of the following instead?  .....

Book Trailers

In the spirit of movie trailers,  book trailers allow students to create video advertisements to entice new readers. Not only do these projects ensure that students have a firm grasp on the story's plot, setting, theme and main characters, but they also provide an opportunity to address persuasive writing as well as digital literacy concepts like copyright and publishing.

Student Book Trailers Examples

Students could use iMovie or Animoto to create and publish their videos. In fact, iMovie includes a set of pre-built trailer templates, and Ben Schersten (@benschersten) created a great set of PDF storyboards for students to use in planning those projects. Both iMovie and Animoto allow students to focus on the content, as they greatly simplify the editing process. Barbara DeSantis' eighth graders produced a great set of examples in just two weeks after reading The Giver.

Illustrated Character Analysis

Credit: Cyberenglish 

Atticus Finch tells Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view -- until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." In order to see whether or not your students truly comprehend the characters, encourage them to create a new scene and put those characters in the middle of it -- to take a walk in their shoes.

 Storybird allows students to choose from hundreds of illustrations in order to create their own stories. As illustrated by Cybenglish, students could show their understanding of characters by placing them in new scenes in order to reveal their motivations.

Podcasts

On a foggy fall day, I took my ninth graders outside to sit on the porch while I read "The Tell-Tale Heart," tapping heartbeats on the deck and playing off the ominous weather. They hung on every word, engrossed in Edgar Allen Poe.

Leveraging the recording capabilities of most computers and mobile devices, students could explore the role of tone and sound by creating podcasts in the fashion of old-school radio shows. Using Garageband, Audacity, AudioBoo or any other sound recorder, students can retell portions of stories, complete with background music and sound effects, to demonstrate their understanding of tone, setting and theme, as well as practice their reading fluency.

Reading in the Wild

In Reading in the Wild, reading expert Donalyn Miller continues the conversation that began in her bestselling book, The Book Whisperer. While The Book Whisperer revealed the secrets of getting students to love reading, Reading in the Wild, written with reading teacher Susan Kelley, describes how to truly instill lifelong "wild" reading habits in our students.

Based, in part, on survey responses from adult readers as well as students, Reading in the Wild offers solid advice and strategies on how to develop, encourage, and assess five key reading habits that cultivate a lifelong love of reading. Also included are strategies, lesson plans, management tools, and comprehensive lists of recommended books. Copublished with Editorial Projects in Education, publisher of Education Week and Teacher magazine, Reading in the Wild is packed with ideas for helping students build capacity for a lifetime of "wild" reading.

"When the thrill of choice reading starts to fade, it's time to grab Reading in the Wild. This treasure trove of resources and management techniques will enhance and improve existing classroom systems and structures."-Cris Tovani, secondary teacher, Cherry Creek School District, Colorado, consultant, and author of Do I Really Have to Teach Reading?

"With Reading in the Wild, Donalyn Miller gives educators another important book. She reminds us that creating lifelong readers goes far beyond the first step of putting good books into kids' hands." - Franki Sibberson, third-grade teacher, Dublin City Schools, Dublin, Ohio, and author of Beyond Leveled Books "Reading in the Wild, along with the now legendary The Book Whisperer, constitutes the complete guide to creating a stimulating literature program that also gets students excited about pleasure reading, the kind of reading that best prepares students for understanding demanding academic texts. In other words, Donalyn Miller has solved one of the central problems in language education."-Stephen Krashen, professor emeritus, University of Southern California

On This Date...

January 28, 1986

The Challenger Explosion

There are moments in United States history that everyone living at the time remembers.  You not only remember the event, but you remember where you were, who you were with, what you were doing.  Those events --Pearl Harbor, the JFK assassination, September 11, 2011-remain etched in our memories forever.

So too, was the Challenger Explosion, on this date in 1986. 

The horror and tragedy of the moment, of the lost explorers , of the faces of the families in the grandstands at Cape Canaveral was a thief of our optimism, a stealer of our innocence.  The incident is tragic enough on its face; but this mission, as you well know, was different than any other in the shuttle program's history.

For the first time, an ordinary civilian was invited.  Christa McAuliffe, a teacher.  She represented herself, her students, her school, but she represented all of us.  Every one of us who was teaching then had an extra feeling of pride, knowing that "one of us" was flying to space. 

Christa, a social studies teacher at Concord High School, was selected to explore space as a result of a national search for the "Teacher in Space" program.  She was selected as one of ten finalists to attend the Johnson Space Center to interview for the seat on the mission.  Program coordinators said she stood out among others, due in part to her "infectious enthusiasm."  After the announcement of her selection, she was on talk shows, in the press, and brought a huge level of interest to the mission and to the space program in general.  Christa McAuliffe was a star.  America loved their teacher-explorer.

You know what happened on January 28, 1986; you can follow the links below to see more. 

What you may not know is that McAuliffe's son Scott became a marine biologist; her daughter Caroline, a teacher. 

The backup for the Teacher in Space Program was Barbara Morgan.  Barbara went through the same intensive training as Christa to prepare for her backup role.  After the Challenger explosion, Barbara dedicated her life to the space program and to exploration, and became a professional astronaut.  She flew on Space Shuttle Endeavour in 2007, making a trip to the International Space Station. 

Please take time to share with your teachers and students the story about America's brave teacher in space, Christa McAuliffe, as well as the other astronauts on the flight.  We honor them with our memory.   

 ~ MW for PM!

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/challenger-explodes 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christa_McAuliffe 

http://womenshistory.about.com/library/bio/blbio_christa_mcauliffe.htm