Transformative Principal

Livonia Michigan Suburban district with 300 students, 16,000 in district Pre-K–4th. 5 years, 21 years in 14 years as a principal @jon_wennstrom sparkoflearning.blogspot.com teacher blog http://wennstromweekly.blogspot.com parent blog PBIS school, 7 Habits of highly effective students, Positive phone calls, student led announcements, PSAs. Class Dojo, 23% ELLs Wall feature. School-wide meetings. PBIS school. Monthly, student of the month meetings. Stephen Covey’s 7 habits 3 to be pledge, respectful, responsible, safe Poster contests for that 90–95% parent attendance rate for kids who are students of the month. Weekly meeting. Sunrise and sunset meetings. Goal: build community Sean Gallard #celebrateMonday meetings Doesn’t a weekly meeting take away a lot of instructional time? Increase time-on-task Support staff who help K students get ready. Videos for students, less than 3 minutes. Perseverance, Stephen Covey’s 7 habits for highly effective kids Art teacher creates a canvas to help students showcase their work. Importance of including parents. Positive phone calls on a daily basis. Class dojo process - classroom wall (like a Facebook wall). Parent program for Love and Logic. Process for parent phone calls. 66 day challenge Youth making a difference Loading… Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher.  Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show. Buy Communication Cards Show notes on TransformativePrincipal.com Download Paperless Principal.   Sponsor: Sanebox Web Site Transformative Principal on Stitcher Refer A Principal Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey     Join the Transformative Mastermind Today and work on your school, not just in it. Apply today. We’re thrilled 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 technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove 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.

Participate.com use it for chats–it works really well. Check out this cool minute-long video about how it works. View a longer webinar about participate learning. Everything in there is based on conversations that Brad has with users. Chats are great, but how do you pay attention to everything that you learned from it? Calendar of chats Create collections from chats in the time period. Create collections and share with others. Schools and district hashtags can be involved in this as well to share their resources. Participate as a social network. How to be a transformative Principal: Have a growth mindset and empower everyone in your building. @participatelearn brad@participate.com @spirrison   Loading… Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher.  Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show. Buy Communication Cards Show notes on TransformativePrincipal.com Download Paperless Principal.   Sponsor: Sanebox Web Site Transformative Principal on Stitcher Refer A Principal Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey Join the Transformative Mastermind Today and work on your school, not just in it. Apply today. We’re thrilled 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 technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove 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.

This is part 2 of my interview with Susie Wise. Susie has had multiple incarnations at the d.school – teaching EX-Tools back in the trailer days, launching the K12 Lab in 2007 with the Nueva School Innovation Lab project, and jumpstarting Media Ops and Hootenanny design for the inauguration of Building 550 in 2008–2010. Back again in 2012 she is leading our efforts to support the movement bringing design thinking into K12 teaching and learning. Susie stumbled upon design thinking when she took a course with David Kelley in 2003 and the experience helped her make sense of the universe. Susie is motivated by the simple belief that humans are by nature designers. Recently a design strategist and innovation coach at Intuit, her practice centers on inspiring teams to use empathy to get to innovative outcomes. Susie has a PhD in Learning Sciences and Technology Design from Stanford’s School of Education and is a co-founder of Urban Montessori Charter School in Oakland. She lives there with her husband and daughter (yes, the one in the movie Babies). Design thinking process New way to seek opportunities and problem solve. Traditional Analytic ways of thinking: see a problem, come up with ideas, do a lot of planning Empathize first, to see what they could see. Ask questions, immersion. Understand the space in a human centered way. Define the problem once you have empathy. Once you have framed what you’re going after, ideate. Ideation is about separating idea formation from selection. Yes and vs Yes but. Prototype - make bite-sized change. Test it out in small spaces to see if you are on the right track in a human-centered way. Do it rapidly. How quickly could you prototype and test your ideas? Mine the failures for learning. Questions to ask after empathy experience: Ask Why 5 times. It can be scary to ask Why. It is about people. Somebody pulls out or somebody pulls rank. Let’s run those prototypes. Bias towards action. Practice on hacking things that are not in school. Hack something in life. Breaking it down into the smallest possible size to get quick wins. Take on more complex tasks. How to be a transformative principal? 1. Shadow a student and 2. put yourself in a different position than you have been in. Loading… Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher.  Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show. Buy Communication Cards Show notes on TransformativePrincipal.com Download Paperless Principal.   Sponsor: Sanebox Web Site Transformative Principal on Stitcher Refer A Principal Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey Join the Transformative Mastermind Today and work on your school, not just in it. Apply today. We’re thrilled 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 technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove 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.

Susie Wise has had multiple incarnations at the d.school – teaching EX-Tools back in the trailer days, launching the K12 Lab in 2007 with the Nueva School Innovation Lab project, and jumpstarting Media Ops and Hootenanny design for the inauguration of Building 550 in 2008–2010. Back again in 2012 she is leading our efforts to support the movement bringing design thinking into K12 teaching and learning. Susie stumbled upon design thinking when she took a course with David Kelley in 2003 and the experience helped her make sense of the universe. Susie is motivated by the simple belief that humans are by nature designers. Recently a design strategist and innovation coach at Intuit, her practice centers on inspiring teams to use empathy to get to innovative outcomes. Susie has a PhD in Learning Sciences and Technology Design from Stanford’s School of Education and is a co-founder of Urban Montessori Charter School in Oakland. She lives there with her husband and daughter (yes, the one in the movie Babies). Shadow a Student is a practice that is out there, but we wanted to make it a movement. Original idea Hack your school toward something deeper. Small scrappy experiment. How can you hack to something that is important. It’s not about a 3–5 year plan. It’s about something small. Something you can do right away. The big load that it takes to move from class to class. Not enough processing space in the day. Is the organization of the day really working for the kids? Is there time for Social Emotional Learning? Hacktivity mini course - bigger ideas from deeper learn. Choose a big idea Select a hack Take Hack-tion Jethro’s shadow experience Attack advisory time. every day for 5 or 10 days, you have a 3 minute conversation with that student. All students on a board, everyone puts a dot by kids’ names that have good relationships. Unwall your office. Loading… Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher.  Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show. Buy Communication Cards Show notes on TransformativePrincipal.com Download Paperless Principal.   Sponsor: Sanebox Web Site Transformative Principal on Stitcher Refer A Principal Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey Join the Transformative Mastermind Today and work on your school, not just in it. Apply today. We’re thrilled 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 technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove 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.

Jon Laffoon is the principal of Pea Ridge High School in Arkansas, where they are using a dynamic schedule called the flex mod schedule to allow time to serve students, rather than students serving time. It is pretty remarkable and impressive. Save $10,000 on paper because of 1:1 Don’t hire substitutes Expectation is that teachers post everything to Google Classroom when they are absent. Subs are just babysitters Time serving students rather than students serving time. Redesign cafeteria to make it a modern space like a starbucks. Supervision of students. 3 Core Values: Leave no trace, be responsible, use time wisely Teach them personal responsibility. You have to take on a growth mindset to make changes. Students skipping a class still happens, but it has not increased, though the way to work with kids has helped. Phase Balance - can’t have every class meet 3 days (Phase 3) a week or every class meet 4 (Phase 4) days a week. Schools can come learn from PRHS. Conference in the summer. Office of Innovation for Education Summit 1:1 school, is that a requirement? No. No more textbooks. Google Classroom Schoology How to be a transformative Principal: Be student centered. Constantly assessing how we are doing. Build a team around you. Take ownership and pride in everything you do. Become connected. Find balance. jlaffoon@prhs.k12.ak.us @laffoon_jon Loading… Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher.  Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show. Buy Communication Cards Show notes on TransformativePrincipal.com Download Paperless Principal.   Sponsor: Sanebox Web Site Transformative Principal on Stitcher Refer A Principal Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey Join the Transformative Mastermind Today and work on your school, not just in it. Apply today. We’re thrilled 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 technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove 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.

Jon Laffoon is the principal of Pea Ridge High School in Arkansas, where they are using a dynamic schedule called the flex mod schedule to allow time to serve students, rather than students serving time. It is pretty remarkable and impressive. Flex Mod schedule Form of a block schedule. Certain classes that might meet 4 days a week or 3 days a week. Videos explaining the schedule Empower the teachers - get them out of their silos The gray ILT times keep the classes from conflicting. The schedule to look at Independent learning time: with great power comes great responsibility. Designing a PE unit based on their fitness goals. 210 clock minutes whether you meet 3 days or 4 days a week. ILT time is class time. Many teachers have flipped their classes. 60% of students each year were going to a 2 year or 4 year institution. Only 25–30% of students were staying in school. SLT Structured Learning Time is some RTI time. 2000-student high school designed for the Flex Mod schedule. Teachers don’t teach in the same rooms every day. Teachers offices are moved to the big classrooms which have been converted to commons areas. Rotating schedule made it so we didn’t have to build more classrooms. River Bluff Loading… Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher.  Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show. Buy Communication Cards Show notes on TransformativePrincipal.com Download Paperless Principal.   Sponsor: Sanebox Web Site Transformative Principal on Stitcher Refer A Principal Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey Join the Transformative Mastermind Today and work on your school, not just in it. Apply today. We’re thrilled 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 technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove 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.

Ken Spero of @edleadershipsim seeks to help leaders develop their decision-making ability by running simulations of realistic situations. Experience is the best teacher What simulations in a box look like. Engage one’s own imagination Experiences of those who go through it. This is an experience to be able to talk about what you could do. Valuable and engaging. Stories engage people. Running simulations as part of assistant principal training. Analyze the thinking of your team. Janice Case Become a Patron Focus is on critical thinking and judgment. Experience can be about getting things wrong. How he creates sims. Alternate Reality (sims) vs. Alternative Reality (games). How to be a transformative principal: what experience do you need to have to learn and grow? Loading… Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher.  Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show. Buy Communication Cards Show notes on TransformativePrincipal.com Download Paperless Principal.   Sponsor: Sanebox Web Site Transformative Principal on Stitcher Refer A Principal Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey &at=1l3vatw Join the Transformative Mastermind Today and work on your school, not just in it. Apply today. We’re thrilled 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 technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove 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.

Loading… Glenn Robbins (Twitter and Blog) is the 2016 NASSP Digital Principal of the Year. Duties of digital principal of the year. Things that were done to gain attention for this award. Idea Street Turtles in an aquarium in the school. Digital Shop. Design thinking. NCMS Innovates blog EdCamp Period. 5 days in a 45 minute period. We want to create designers. Using technology when appropriate. Design thinking and deprogramming them. The Extraordinaires Program It’s saying yes more than no. Responding to kids’ feedback. How to be a transformative principal? Be connected digitally and in person. Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher.  Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show. Buy Communication Cards Show notes on TransformativePrincipal.com Download Paperless Principal.   Sponsor: Sanebox Web Site Transformative Principal on Stitcher Refer A Principal Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey Join the Transformative Mastermind Today and work on your school, not just in it. Apply today. We’re thrilled 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 technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove 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.

Leyden East High School Principal Jason Markey, assistant principal Anita Huffman and principal-to-be-current-special-education-teacher Meaghan O’Neil join me to talk about the Assistant principal for Student Services - The importance of a title Breakfast with students to support the new students coming in. ACCESS Program - extra 25 minutes for freshman to help them get acclimated. Hand-schedule students with ACCESS teacher so they have a single adult to Learning2breathe study time for students to focus on mindfulness. Teaching the whole child. “Yes, And” thinking. Giving kids the time and space to be creative. Innovation incubator. Disengaging from PLCs to be in a new group focused on design thinking. Design thinking Trust and vulnerability is vital. It is an unknown. What can you do to be a transformative principal: Work to empathize more with our students and teachers [#shadowastudent](http://shadowastudent.org) Have a PLN and connect with others to help reflect and continue to grow. Step out of your comfort zone and learn and grow. Loading… Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher.  Ready for a Modern Web Site for your school? Simple School Sites is the place to go for high quality Wordpress sites specially designed for schools. Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show. Buy Communication Cards Show notes on TransformativePrincipal.com Download Paperless Principal.   Sponsor: Sanebox Web Site Transformative Principal on Stitcher Refer A Principal Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey Join the Transformative Mastermind Today and work on your school, not just in it. Apply today. We’re thrilled 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 technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove 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.

Today, Daniel Bauer and I talk about our Mastermind. I encourage you to join. Check it out here: Transformative Mastermind.   If you still have questions or are ready to join, please set up a brief phone call. Schedule a call Daniel and I are both setting up masterminds. I interview him on his podcast: Better Leaders Better Schools    Mastermind For Principals We all know that being a principal can be a lonely job. It is isolating to be the only one who has to deal with everything that goes on in your day-to-day life. Some of us have assistant principals, some of us have co principals, but each of us know that there are some things that are just hard to help other people understand what you’re going through. Enter a mastermind. A mastermind is a group of people who are dedicated to investing in themselves to improve their lives. We all have social networks which help us in various ways. If you have been on Twitter, in Facebook groups, or Voxer groups, you know there can be an ebb and flow with the conversation and ability to help other people in the group. You know there are a lot of lurkers. You also know that sometimes your questions and needs don’t get answered. Sometimes you don’t even ask questions because you can’t articulate what the problem is without giving a big back story. A mastermind is different. You commit to being there for yourself and for your teammates. You commit to answering their questions, to supporting them, and, most importantly, to investing in yourself to help you be the best you can be. Schedule a call with me right now The truth is, a mastermind isn’t for everybody. Answer the following questions and see if you might be one of the ten principals in the country that will be able to join this mastermind. Do you want your work and home life to be in balance? Do you want to lead with a new level of confidence and ability? Do you want to learn how to communicate with your teachers and students so they understand the vision you have? Do you want to learn how to work with other principals and leaders in your district to be on the same page, working towards the same mission? Do you want to be healthier? Do you want to have better relationships with those you love? If you answered yes to the questions above, then let’s set up a call and talk further about the possibilities. Click here to set up the call What do you get as a member of the mastermind? Weekly meetings online to facilitate the mastermind. A group of principals that are willing to help you as you help them. A monthly leadership book club A DISC personality profile test to help you understand how you communicate, and help people communicate with you. Free access to events and trainings. Private Facebook group and Voxer group. A rotating weekly problem-solving session that allows you to go deep into the primary problem you are facing in your school. Specific curated podcast list of the best podcasts available. Celebrations of overcoming obstacles at your school with people who will understand the complexity of the obstacle. A time to reflect that will energize you for the next week to be your best. Lifelong relationships with other principals. I hope you will join me, and take your leadership to a level you never could have imagined. Click here to set up a call with me If you are still not sure, please read through the frequently asked questions below and set up a call with me! What is the time commitment? We will meet each week online for about 60–90 minutes. These sessions will be jam packed with useful information, problem solving, and reflection. Why does it cost money? I can join a Voxer group for free! This is more than a Voxer group. This is a group of people, meeting regularly, to make sure that we are being the best we can be. Simply put, if you don’t pay for it, you will likely get “too busy” and blow it off. When you invest an amount of money you are going to be more dedicated to it. Your level of commitment and dedication will be commensurate to the monetary value associated with it. Your monetary investment in yourself shows that you are serious about learning and growing. What if I don’t have the time for something like this? Then it is not for you. What if I don’t find it valuable? If you’re not satisfied with it, you can call me and ask for a refund. I’ll ask for feedback about how to make it more meaningful, and happily refund your money. What if I just want to listen and not participate? The mastermind is for those who want to do. It won’t be as beneficial if you are on the sidelines. That being said, we won’t be forcing anyone to do anything. You will get out of this what you put into it. Join the Transformative Mastermind Today and work on your school, not just in it. Apply today. We’re thrilled 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 technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove 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.