Brian M. Stack's School Leadership Blog

This article was written originally for MultiBriefs Education . My New Hampshire suburban high school, home to some 800 students and staff, is not unlike many high schools from coast to coast that has, in recent years, received a variety of security upgrades including the expansion of our video surveillance network. What once was a limited system with just ten cameras pointed in the most high-traffic parts of the campus is now a system that is approaching 100 individual cameras that record and save footage for nearly two months. Our eyes in the sky allow us to watch, in real time, our hallways, stairwells, common areas, athletic fields, cafeteria and patio, parking lots, and entrances/exits. As visitors enter our building, they are greeted by a sign reminding them that our campus is under video surveillance. Our cameras have become an invaluable resource in our efforts to maintain order and discipline, acting as both a deterrent for misbehavior but also a primary witness in inv...

This article was written originally for MultiBriefs Education . I’ll never forget the first cyber security attack I endured as a high school principal. It happened years ago, after I had to assign consequences to a tech-savvy student who regularly would hack into our school wifi network to access websites and social media platforms that, at the time, were blocked from student access during the school day. I remember the student being upset because he was trying to meet a critical deadline for his international business, and his two other partners (one in Finland, one in Russia) needed his help to finish a project for their company. The three ran a company that rented and solder server space to gamers around the world. Mind you, my student had just recently celebrated his 15th birthday. Coincidentally, the day following the in-school suspension I assigned the student, my school district was placed under a distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack from unknown sources on th...

This article was written originally for MultiBriefs Education . It seems these days that every news broadcast starts with a look at a hate crime happening somewhere in our world. These cries could be as big as the recent attacks in New Zealand , where dozens were killed in Christchurch mosque attack; or as small as a hate crime story happening in the town next door. America’s youth are growing up in an age where they are seeing these instances of hate in a constant basis, and it is our job as educators to help them process, reflect, and take action to turn the tide on this awful trend for their generation. Late last year, the FBI reported a 25% increase in hate crimes in schools and colleges from 2016 to 2017. The FBI tracks instances of criminal incidents motivated by bias toward race, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender, and gender identity. Of the 7,175 instances of hate reported to the FBI in 2017, 10.5% occurred in schools and colleges...

This article was written originally for MultiBriefs Education . In a recent Edsurge blog article, Giancarlo Brotto makes a strong case for why the future of education depends on social emotional learning (SEL), which he sees as a critical indicator to predict college and career readiness. He writes, “social and emotional abilities are said to be indicators of how well a person adjusts to his or her environment, adapts to change and, ultimately, how successful she or he will be in life.” He does on to suggest that early success mastering SEL skills and competencies helps young children develop into happy, fulfilled, contributing members of society. Brotto went on to reference this “Ready to Lead,” Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report which was based on a national principal survey that looked at how SEL prepares children. The report suggests data that supports the need for SEL in schools, such as a 2011 meta-analysis that found that “students who re...

This article was written originally for MultiBriefs Education . For at least the last decade, there has been a push in our profession nationally to find ways to engage more girls in STEM-related courses and careers. This push has not gone unnoticed to me in my own New Hampshire high school, where currently more than 50% of students enrolled in AP Calculus and 80% of students enrolled in AP Biology are girls. The statistics are similar for other high-level STEM courses. What is more, girls are performing as well, if not better academically in these courses than boys. I attribute some of our successes in this area to decade-long K-12 emphasis on performance tasks and the engagement by all learners in authentic learning tasks that measure deeper learning. Our approach is backed by research that offers schools strategies on how to engage girls in STEM. In a recent EdWeek blog , Sarah Sparks reported out on a recent study in the journal Psychological Science which concluded tha...

This article was written originally for MultiBriefs Education . I recently spent time eavesdropping on some of my students while on a bus ride for a field trip. I couldn’t help but listen to their discussion on later start times at school. The day prior, our school had a two hour delay due to weather, the fifth this school year. The students were remarking at how much more productive and effective they felt overall when we had weather delays, and they wished school would start later on a regular basis. The conversation got me thinking about an issue that has come up for me time and time again as a high school principal. On two different occasions over the last five years, I have written about this topic. In a MultiBriefs Exclusive article in 2014 , I wrote about pros and cons of later start times for high schools. Then, I referenced a research report entitled "School Start Times For Adolescents," by the American Academy of Pediatrics that concluded that teens are ...

Inequities with technology access in our schools can cause students from different socioeconomic backgrounds to fail to develop information capital which leads to a shift in power. This concept has come to be known as a digital divide, and it is a problem that schools take a close look at. Today, school districts are seeking effective ways to increase access to digital tools and resources to disadvantaged populations in an effort to close the achievement gap that the digital divide has the potential to create. California Superintendent of Schools Darryl Adams of the Coachella Unified School District has a unique strategy to combat digital divide. Coachella is located in the desert just 50 miles north of the Mexican border where nearly 90% of students qualify for free and reduced lunch and few families have access to the Internet in their homes. More than half of the children are not fluent in English. About 2,000 students are the children of migrant farm workers where they labo...