Brian M. Stack's School Leadership Blog

Later this week, most of us will gather with friends and family to celebrate the tradition known as Thanksgiving. Whether you plan to celebrate in a traditional manner with turkey and all the trimmings or whether you plan to take the road less traveled, let’s take some time to celebrate some reasons why it is great to be an educator in this day and age. To help you develop your own list, I share with you the seven things that I am thankful for this season as an educator. 7. I am thankful for the educators that I learn from each day. There are thousands of educators from coast to coast who regularly share resources, tips, and strategies that you can use to become a better educator. Not sure who to follow? The website TeachThought has compiled a list of over 50 educational blogs worth following . Do you learn better from Twitter? The website Getting Smart maintains a list of 125+ educators worth following on Twitter . I’m on that list, you can follow me on Twitter here !   ...

As a high school principal, the kind of meeting I hate having the most is one with the parent of a student who has just engaged in behavior in the school that warrants, according to our School Board policies , a suspension from school for a period of time. In these kinds of meetings parents and guardians, rightly so, ask what good will come of keeping their child out of school where they will fall further and further behind from their peers. They are absolutely right. Over the last decade, my school has worked hard to reduce the number of infractions that lead to an out of school suspension and instead incorporate other forms of disciplinary consequences and restorative justice practices. My school has also looked at ways that the number of suspension days can be reduced for infractions that do require an out of school suspension. Still, I don’t believe that ur efforts have been enough, and what worries me further is that other schools are even further behind than my school in their...