Brian M. Stack's School Leadership Blog

This article was written originally for MultiBriefs Education . We’ve all had those moments where as educators, we wish we could have handled a student behavior issue differently after it was all over. My moments, although extremely rare, often come when I let my emotions get the best of me when working with a student. It could be a raised voice, or it could be making the wrong comment at the wrong time which can lead to a loss of control of a situation in the moment. Over the years, I have come to understand that I can achieve far better results when I can exhibit compassion, empathy, and care when working with students through a difficult behavioral situation. I have made it my mission to utilize this approach with every student interaction, and implore my teachers to do the same. Amanda Morin, of Understood, wrote recently about the importance of teachers practicing empathy when addressing student behavior. “ It’s not always easy to respond to student behavior with empa...

This article was written originally for MultiBriefs Education . My wife Erica recently returned to the elementary classroom after a decade-long hiatus to raise our young family. In late January, she succumbed to her first multi-day battle with the flu. She knew she was going to be in trouble when the aches and pains started to set in, then the cough followed almost immediately after. Twenty-four hours later, and she was laid up on the couch and miserable. Ironically, for as bad as she felt physically, the guilt she felt from missing her students and her team was significantly more impactful than anything else. “I don’t need this right now,” she told me. “I’ve got several IEP meetings this week that I need to be at, and I have testing that needs to get done for two of my students.” There simply aren’t enough hours in the day to get it all done, and being down for the count with the flu certainly didn’t help her cause. My wife’s guilt is a common feeling that millions of teac...

This article was written originally for MultiBriefs Education . Imagine a world without social media. No likes. No status updates. No notifications. Those of us born before 2000 can remember life before social media, but I’m not sure how many of us would actually want to go back to those days for any length of time, especially when we start to weigh the advantages and disadvantages that social media platforms have given us in both our personal and professional lives. Those born after 2000, of course, have grown up in a world where social media is as commonplace as eating, sleeping, and breathing. They are now beginning to enter a workplace that has laid the groundwork for social media to be the foundation for how future generations will interact and engage with each other in our global marketplace. We are at a unique time in our human existence --- one where teachers and students are learning, together, how to navigate this brave new digital world. How can teachers make sense o...

As our world becomes more and more digital, our classrooms continue to become transformed through technology. The series of curriculum binders in the back of the teachers classroom have been replaced with a shared “Drive.” The whiteboard at the front of the room seldom has dry erase marking on it because students know their agenda and their notes will always live in the “Cloud” and that the whiteboard is really a way for the teacher to project the Google Classroom on the wall. There is an app for everything --- literally. As we continue to see the rise of screen time among children, coupled with the rise in mental health issues such as anxiety and depression, one can’t help but wonder what, if any, correlation may exist between the two. My wife and I, both educators, try to apply this same logic to our own five children, all under the age of fourteen. As with most parents, we believe in finding a healthy balance with screen time so that our kids can learn to self-regulate with ...

This article was written originally for MultiBriefs Education . Happy New Year! As we close out 2019 and look forward to what the new year will bring, let’s take a look back at what our profession learned in the last year. From the over twenty-five articles that I wrote for MultiBriefs in 2019, the topics that seemed to have the highest reach with educators focused on topics such as competency-based / personalized learning, mental health and social emotional learning (SEL), and school safety. In this July MultiBriefs Exclusive on the rise of competency-based education (CBE) models, I reported that forty-nine out of fifty states have policies in place to support the model, and in this October MultiBriefs Exclusive I shared an updated definition for CBE developed by the Aurora Institute . Mental health and SEL continued to trend in 2019 as teachers continued to look for ways to meet the needs of their students. Of all the articles I wrote on this topic, this March MultiBriefs E...

This article was written originally for MultiBriefs Education . Secondary schools have historically relied on tracking as a way to sort students into ability-groups for the expressed purposes of providing appropriate instruction at a “just right” level. Last week I visited a high school with no fewer than five different tracking levels for their 1,500 student population. When talking with teachers in the school, I had to ask the seemingly obvious question -- what is the difference between a level 3 and a level 4 student? Not surprisingly, the responses I received from the teachers in this school had little to do with academic ability and more to do with work study skills. I couldn’t get a clear answer from the group, with each teacher putting their own spin on what the distinction between the levels meant for them and their approach to their classes. Here in lies one of the fundamental flaws with this broken system. It is a system filled with inequity, bias, and at the very lea...

This article was written originally for MultiBriefs Education . Imagine arriving home from work each day and being confronted with tasks to complete as soon as you walk through the door. As adults we typically have a little bit of time to “decompress” after a long day. On our commute home from work we may turn on some calming music or turn off all music and enjoy a few minutes of silence.   Upon arriving home we take a few minutes to get the mail, change our clothes,   and take a few deep breaths before starting dinner or taking our own kids where they need to go.   Now more than ever, in a society where we are expected to be executing one task while simultaneously thinking of the next one we as adults need time to be mindful. Children are rarely afforded these mindful opportunities, and that needs to change. They sit on an often loud bus, enter their classroom, and are expected to get right to their morning work. Time is a precious commodity, especially in a ...