Scot Graden's Blog

Last week I had the chance to speak to a couple of classes at our high school.  It was a great opportunity to learn about the opinions and perspectives of some of our current junior and senior students.  One of the issues that we discussed is cell phone use – as you can imagine they want to bend my ear about this issue…..  Bottomline, it is a difficult policy issue for school districts across the country.

In the November 10th issue of Education Week, Ian Quillen reports on new guidelines for student electronic communication devices crafted by the Center for Education Policy at the University of San Diego. The report suggests the following answers to commonly asked questions:

• What qualifies as an electronic communication device? Cell phones, computers, pagers, and any device that allows direct electronic communication or communication via social networking.
• When do school electronic communication device rules apply? During school activities on school time and during school-endorsed activities outside of school hours.
• What constitutes misuse of an electronic communication device? Refusal to turn off a device when told; damaging school-owned devices; causing an in-school disruption; using the device for cheating, cyberbullying, or sexting.
• When can schools punish a student for misuse outside of school? When misuse causes school disruptions or harms students, teachers, or other school personnel in a manner that the offending student should have expected.
• What are acceptable consequences for misuse? Device searches; verbal and written warnings; confiscations; notices to parents or law-enforcement authorities; extracurricular restrictions; and suspensions or expulsions.

While our current Saline Area Schools policies align closely to the recommended versions offered in the article, this continues to be an area of rapid change.

There was an article in the recent addition of eSchool News about “blended learning” models being used across the country.  While there is no official definition of blended learning, in general, it can be described as an instructional approach that combines both face-to-face and online instruction.

This blended learning approach appears to be gaining momentum.  It leverages the advances in technology and provides students with flexibility, without giving up the the connectedness and accountability of the traditional classroom model.

In Saline, we developed and offered a blended option for our College Writing I course.  It is called “College Writing with Service” and offers an opportunity for students to explore community service as part of their writing course. To accomplish this they are released from attending the class for portions of the trimester, however, they stay connected with the teacher through Moodle.

Next year we are looking to expand the blended learning options by adding a Senior Capstone Experience.  Senior Capstone Experience (SCE) is a year-long interdisciplinary course. Two main components of the course are the college style lecture and recitation, and 60 required hours of community service. Students have choice in their area of study, but the focus is on educating world citizenship.

The course will be centered on one guiding question: What are a student’s home, local, state, national, and world responsibilities? The purpose of the course is for seniors to synthesize areas of future study in light of the local and global community.

The course culminates in a Senior Project, an individualized plan that students envision, enact, and reflect upon over the course of their senior year.  In this course students will not be “in class” each day and will stay connected to the curriculum with mobile devices and Moodle.

I encourage parents with children that will be seniors in 2011-12 to consider this course.

A few weeks ago I read an article in Education Week about getting feedback by Alexis Wiggins. She is a former teacher who is now a consultant.  (I assume that is how she now has time to write articles for Ed Week.)   “As a middle and high school English teacher, I can say unequivocally that nothing has made me more uncomfortable than having a supervisor sitting in my classroom, scribbling away on his or her legal pad as I teach,” says Alexis Wiggins in this thoughtful Education Week article. Although she sometimes got helpful insights from administrators’ comments, Wiggins says the most helpful feedback she’s received over the years has come from students.

Wiggins noted that she didn’t get truly helpful feedback from students until she had learned two lessons.  First, there was limited utility in standard end-of-course feedback forms and questionnaires. She learned that mid-course feedback allowed her to make improvements in real time. “I’ve found this feedback infinitely more honest, detailed, and helpful than end-of-course reviews, which come at a time when students have less incentive to be constructive in their criticism,” says Wiggins.

Second, not all students were really open in the hand-written mid-course evaluation surveys she used at first. The “aha” moment came when Wiggins’s principal asked the staff to fill out a questionnaire evaluating a new-faculty orientation program. “Will they recognize my handwriting?” Wiggins fretted. “In the end, I was too afraid to be as honest as I wanted to be, because I worried that the administration would single me out later.”

This experience persuaded her to have students fill out their mid-course evaluations in the computer lab while she stepped out of the room, with one student designated to collect the anonymous printed-out copies and deliver them to her. She found the feedback was more direct and helpful.

“A part of all of us wants only to hear good things about what we do,” Wiggins concludes. “But that part is not the teacher, but the child in us. The teacher truly wants to keep learning how to be better, and feedback is a mechanism for doing that. Regular, authentic feedback is one of the best forms of professional development. It’s free, easy, not time-consuming, and it pays big dividends. Teachers should shake off their fear and welcome it into their classrooms. If we want to be serious about students’ learning, we need to be serious about our own.”

As a leader, I need to continually seek ideas, help, and criticism. It’s not always easy, but I am convinced that consistent feedback will help Saline Area Schools improve.

At a recent administrative team meeting we discussed the role parent/teacher conferences play in our school district.  With K-8 conferences coming in the next few weeks, this information may help everyone have productive conferences.

The role of the parent/teacher conference is to provide the opportunity to foster the “team approach” and provide direct face-to-face time to discuss the whole child.  This provides parents and staff the opportunity to look at the strengths of the individual child and the individual areas for growth.   It is a time to revel in the student’s successes and determine ways to best support the individual child in their areas of weaknesses in the academic, social and behavioral arenas.

A few tips:

• Prior to the parent/teacher conference, talk to your child to know your student’s teachers, classes and their perspective of the course(s).  This allows the education discussion to begin at home and fosters the family and school partnership.
• To best utilize your time, prepare your prioritized questions for discussion.
• Arrive on time or a a few minutes early.
• Take notes to allow you to review the conference with your child.
• Do not stay beyond your alloted time.  Future conference opportunities can be discussed to continue important discussions.

From all sides, communication is the key to continued success and less stress.  The more we can effectively communicate with each other, the greater the odds of helping the individual child maximize their entire Saline Area Schools educational experience.

In the November issue of The American School Board Journal, Douglas Reeves notes,, “There are no silver bullets in education. But writing – particularly nonfiction writing – is about as close as you can get to a single strategy that has significant and positive effects in nearly every other area of the curriculum. Nonfiction writing is the backbone of a successful literacy and student achievement strategy.” This results in improvements in writing that  lead to gains in reading comprehension, math, science, and social studies.

According to Dr. Reeves, the results of an insufficient focus on writing K-12 are well known in colleges (large numbers of students need remedial courses) and the workplace ($3 billion a year is spent bucking up the writing skills of new employees). The writing gap can be traced back to the early grades, where phonics-based reading programs tend to build fluency but not deeper comprehension. “Reading quickly and clearly is nice,” says Reeves, “but hardly an accomplishment when students do not understand the information they are reading.”

As Michigan along with many other states eliminate writing from their state mandated assessments…. the question is will the lack of emphasis on writing have a significant impact on student learning?

This past Friday we had our first “Professional Development” day.  For students, all this really meant was the first real four day week of the year.  For staff, it was the start of the focused professional development and training for the year.

Based on my conversations with educators from across the State of Michigan and the nation…. very few feel like they have a great process for developing effective and relevant professional development opportunities for their staff.  At times, we have felt the same way here in Saline.  It is difficult to consistently provide targeted learning opportunities for a diverse staff.  Grade levels, core subjects, technology, special education, music, career & tech education, physical education, etc.  all have different needs.  Let’s just say it is a challenge.  The default position for most districts is to fill the auditorium and bring in a speaker that tries to connect a broad section of the staff.  Experience shows that the probability of success with this type of format may or may not be beneficial.

This year we have taken a different, more individualized approach.  Administrators have been assigned to each department and/or grade level.  They have met with department chairpersons or grade level leaders and developed goals for the year.  Based on these goals, specific professional development opportunities are being developed.  During this process a few issues have emerged.  First, it’s difficult to manage.  Like in a classroom, breaking everyone into groups and trying to meet their individual needs is a challenge.  Second, keeping track of where each group is at along with being prepared for the next professional development day is time consuming.  Lastly, we need to make sure the entire process is aligned to the goals and vision of the district.

My group is the high school technology department composed of auto tech, electronics, graphics, machine tool, metals, photography & video production.  As you can see, even within a department there is a large degree of diversity.  Our first day involved touring two local businesses – Adaptive Materials and Menlo Innovations – to learn more about what a 21st century workplace looks like and what skills they are looking for when hiring.  I appreciate the two companies for taking the time to share their thoughts with us as we work to make sure what we are teaching and skills we are trying to enhance are relevant in the marketplace.

I am looking forward to reviewing the feedback we get from staff about this individualized approach.

Early this morning we had a meeting to discuss school climate – which is defined as, “multidimensional aspects of a school encompassing both characteristics of the school and perceptions of the school as a place to work and learn.” During the meeting a middle school teacher shared her vision about the type of communication culture she would like to see in Saline Area Schools.  The term she used was, “a culture of dialogue” where ideas and vulnerabilities can be openly shared and accepted by others.

During the day I thought about this comment and about the organizational communication that occurs, along with the type of communication I see expressed in society.  Maybe “election season” is not a good time to think about dialogue vs. debate – but frankly, I struggle to find examples where I see us consistently modeling dialogue.  I do see evidence of debate throughout our culture.

We will be getting the group that met today back together in a couple weeks, however, in the meantime I am going to try to model using dialogue driven communication and look for examples in the media and/or community where a culture of dialogue is chosen over a culture of debate.