Brian M. Stack's School Leadership Blog

This past October, the College Board announced that they will be overhauling more of their AP courses to better emphasize college-level critical thinking . The work will involve looking at all of its 36+ courses in order to cover fewer topics and aim to address charges that the old courses prized rote memorization over imaginative thinking. The announcement comes out just as the College Board introduced a revised AP US History course that is more closely aligned to the Common Core that has been described by some as “un-American .” It would be unfair to bring the Common Core debate into the new AP US History test. The reality is, the test was overhauled for some of the same reasons that other courses will be overhauled – the College Board has come to recognize, almost too late, that it needs to better support instruction that leads to higher-order critical thinking and problem solving, college readiness skills that are essential for all students to develop while they are still i

Mr. S tack writes occasionally for the national blog www.CompetencyWorks.org. Here is the latest article he submitted to that blog on the importance of leadership when making a major system change like competency education: I work for the Sanborn Regional School District in New Hampshire, a District that was an early adopter of a K-12 competency education model, one that is now in its fifth year of implementation. My fellow administrative team members and I regularly receive questions from educators around the country who are looking to implement a similar model in their schools. One of the most popular questions that we receive is, what kind of leadership is necessary from district and school-based administrators in order to effectively implement a competency education model? When I am asked this question, I am reminded of a passage in Dufour and Fullan’s (2013) book on sustaining reform known as Resolute Leadership : “Ultimately, the most important factor in sustaini

The following article was written by Sanborn Regional High School Guidance Counselor Heidi Leavitt: The adolescent years are marked by a roller-coaster ride of emotions – difficult for youths, their parents and educators.   It is easy to misread depression as normal adolescent turmoil; however, depression appears to be occurring at a much earlier age.   Depression- which is treatable – is a leading risk factor for suicide.    To proactively address these issues, Sanborn Regional High School is offering depression awareness and suicide prevention training as part of the SOS Signs of Suicide Prevention Program.   The program has proven to be successful at increasing help seeking by students concerned about themselves or a friend and is the only school based suicide prevention program by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) for its National Registry of Evidence-Based programs and Practices that addresses suicide risk and depression, while redu

Our communities, like so many in Southern New Hampshire, have been rocked recently by the rise in the use of drugs like heroin. Recent Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) data show that no family in our school is immune to this deadly addiction. This past summer, the Sanborn Regional School District, with support from community organizations like the Greater Derry Public Health Network, Southern Rockingham Coalition for Healthy Youth (SoROCK), and SAFE Sanborn, applied for and was granted a $100,000.00 two-year renewable grant for the hiring of a full-time Student Assistance Counselor who will work with families at both SRMS and SRHS. We are currently in the interview process for this position and hope to have someone on staff in just a few short weeks.   A Student Assistance Counselor is knowledgeable in areas such as child and adolescent development (to include mental health and substance abuse issues), substance abuse prevention, working with children of substance a

Late this past summer, the American Academy of Pediatrics published a report that will likely become a hot topic at many School Board meetings in the coming months and years. The report, entitled School Start Times For Adolescents , studied the sleep patterns of teenagers and determined, with no surprise, that teens are not getting enough sleep and it is impacting their ability to perform in school. According to the report, teens need at least eight and a half hours of sleep each night. The report called upon schools to move their start time to a more reasonable 8:30AM to accommodate this increased sleep need. Mind / Shift blogger Nancy Shute wrote more about the impact this report has on schools in her article Pediatricians Say School Should Start Later For Teens’ Health . Shute reported that currently, just fifteen percent of high schools in America have a start time of 8:30AM or later, and forty percent start school before 8:00AM. Shute went on to write that studies have