Brian M. Stack's School Leadership Blog

Welcome to May, the month when most school administrators begin the process of filling open positions in their schools for the upcoming school year. Maybe my administrative team and I are getting picky as we mature as a team, or maybe we are just getting wiser, but we honestly believe that our hiring practices have changed dramatically since our school made the shift to competency education four years ago. For those of you who are thinking about applying to work in a school like ours we would like to offer you some words of advice before you get your resumes and cover letters together for us. 1.      We need “team players.” In our school, very few “big” curriculum, instruction, and assessment decisions are left to individual teachers to make on their own. Most are made by teams of teachers as part of their Professional Learning Communities (PLC’s). If you join our school, be prepared to share and collaborate with your PLC on just about everything you do. With your PLC team y

SRHS wouldn't be the same without its amazing parent volunteers! In a school near you, an elementary school principal is asked to predict which adults will have the greatest impact on a child’s educational success later in life. Most would place parents very high on that list. It is no surprise, then, that in many elementary schools parental involvement is significant. Most have strong PTA or PTO clubs that organize parent volunteers for work in the classroom, the playground, and on school trips. These groups plan silent auctions, BINGO nights, and pancake breakfasts to help school programs. By middle and high school, parental involvement drops off significantly. With the significance that President Obama and his predecessor President George W. Bush have placed on educational reform initiatives such as Race to the Top and No Child Left Behind programs, it a fair question to ask: When it comes to parental involvement in schools, how much is enough? According to Keith

In the Freshman Learning Community (FLC) at our school, every teacher has posted in their classroom a large sign that said “Keep CALM and HAVE GUTS.” When I ask students and teachers what this poster meant to each of them, they unanimously tell me that it means they need to practice grit and determination. FLC teachers continually encourage students to persevere through difficult academic, civic, and social situations both in and out of the classroom. It is this fostering of grit, they argue, that best prepares their students for the real world. Using Thomas Hoerr’s recently published ASCD book Fostering Grit for inspiration, blogger and online educator Andrew Miller offers educators Five Steps to Foster Grit in the Classroom . First, he suggests teachers need to model grit in their classrooms to help students understand and better relate to the concept. Next, he advises teachers not to grade formative assessments that might punish students for making mistakes. Next, he dir