It’s Sunday afternoon and I’ve just finished putting away all the things from our second Ultimate Youth Night. This night is a opening evening for youth in our community to come together in a safe and supervised setting to enjoy movies, games, gaming and music. Our first event had about 50 youth attend from 7:00…
I’ve been meaning to write here a few times now but each day just seems to fly by. I’m seriously thinking that I may need to talk to someone in law enforcement because I think someone stole the month of April! Is time speeding up? Is the world revolving faster? Who’s driving this thing anyway?…
I’ve been thinking about my last post concerning raising expectations. That post came out of a little non-scientific survey that I did with some students regarding what they thought were necessary aspects of a progressive and relevant highschool. I’ve known that the two are linked but it’s taken me a little while to work things…
As our students are leaving school and entering a more global society, we have become more interested in how they are doing compared to others around the world. We compare them using various test outcomes, pinpointing where they’re successful and where they need to improve. These results then drive the data driven decisions that districts and…
This week has been busy and it’s only Tuesday. It is the annual music festival in our community and I have 5 children participating in several categories plus my wife is doing a duet with one of the girls. It is also drama festival week which means our highschool drama troupe is hard at work…
We just finished parent/student/teacher conferences and the school is now quiet. Everyone else has gone home to rest and get ready for more conferences tomorrow morning. We then have the afternoon “off” – I’ll be here getting ready for early dismissal on Monday and doing other things while the students are away. In the quiet…
School morale – the ambiance and atmosphere that permeates a building when you enter. It’s reflected in the way the students greet one another and how teachers interact with the students, teachers and parents. It’s part of how visitors feel when they enter the building and staff feel when they exit on Friday afternoon. It…
Years back, my wife use to hate when she had a technology problem or couldn’t remember how to do something. In fact, when we (read I) first bought our imac, she wasn’t very happy with the whole thing because everything was “backwards” and she couldn’t find anything. She would avoid asking me to show how…
This week I was asked the question “What are some characteristics of an effective and progressive high school?” Now, being in a K – 12 school, I took some time and talked to a few of the students in the senior grades. They were a great help, as were the 4 people who answered my…
It has been a very busy week and it will only intensify from now until the end of June. I’ve been working on several projects and just haven’t had the time to get involved in conversations via twitter or read too many blogs. However, as I was working tonight, I’ve been reading a few as they cross…