Gardening in the Minefield

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Gardening in the Minefield

• Stephanie Knott
• Director of Planning and Data Services
• 2005 Teaching and Learning Conference

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• Work by Laurel Schmidt
• Published by Heinemann
• A copy for everyone!!!

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Divisions of Text

• The minefield

• The toolshed

• The arsenal

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The minefield

• Politics
• Vision
• Your Staff
• Yourself

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The Toolshed

• Hiring the Best
• Motivating Staff
• Distributing Leadership
• Supervising Instruction
• Evaluating and Dismissing
• Communicating
• Publicizing

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The Arsenal

• Professional Development
• Mentoring
• Stress Management
• Grace under Fire

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Know the players in Washington.
Sen. Elizabeth Dole-R
Sen. Richard Burr-R
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Know the players in Washington.
Rep. Patrick McHenry-R
Rep. Sue Myrick-R
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Know the Players in Raleigh
Sen. David Hoyle-D
Sen. James Forrester-R
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Know the Players in Raleigh
Rep. Debbie Clary-R
Rep. William A. Current, Sr.-R
Rep. John Rayfield-R
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Know the Players in Gaston County
Pearl Burris Floyd
Joe Carpenter
Jack Brown
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Know the Players in Gaston County
John Torbett
Mickey Price
Tom Keigher
Allen Fraley
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Know the Players in GCS
Ruth Angel
David Phillips
Kevin Collier
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Know the Players in GCS
Jennifer Davis
John Eaker
Annette Carter
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Know the Players in GCS
Kemp Michael
Kenny Lutz
May Robinson
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The Vision ThingVision is a clear statement of
every childs educational birthright,
communicated through focused action. Another way
to think about it is, If nothing else, what will
I guarantee all students who come to my school?
(14).
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What is your vision/philosophy and can you
articulate it in a sentence or two?
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Never to be squandered, the miracle of another
human being.Prelude to a Kiss
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Spreading your mission

• Notice approximations of what you want
• Demonstrate
• Show and tell
• Educate parents about it
• Document, photograph evidence of your mission in
  action

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Principal Dearest

• Psychiatrist Dr. Daniel Siegel In any
  organization, the leader assumes a parental role
  in the subconscious of followers.

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The Chronic Cases

• Overachievers
• Sacrificers
• Self-annointed failures
• Foot draggers
• Handle-with-care staffers
• Dodgers
• Filabusters
• Faultfinders

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Whos renting space in your skull?
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The seven deadly sappers

• The pleaser
• The critic
• The procrastinator
• The perfectionist
• The cynic
• The worrier
• The controller

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Hire the Best
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Paper Screening

• The best indicator of what a person will do for
  you is what he has done elsewhere (41).
• Focus on verifiable factspay attention to gaps
  in service
• Read letters of reference

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Cold calling

• Energy
• Thinking vs. jargon

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Team Hiring

• Allows staff to own a hire and be committed to
  the growth and support of the teacher once he/she
  joins staff
• Great teams attract great candidates
• Indicator on NC School Climate Survey

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Interviewing Techniques

• Write good, legal questions
• Use a scoring rubric for the members of the
  interview team
• Sample writing prompts
• Demonstration lessons
• Portfolios
• Reference checks

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The Fezziwig Principle
He has the power to render us happy or unhappy
to make our service light or burdensome a
pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in
his words and looks, in things so slight and
insignificant that it is impossible to add and
count em up what then? The happiness he gives
is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.A
Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
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The Five Rs of Motivation

• Recognition
• Relationships
• Resources
• Rewards
• Rituals

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Recognition

• Personal notes to staff membersnotecards or
  Post-It Notes
• Praise is good. Praise with an audience is
  better (61).
• Form letters
• Honorable Mentionwhen parent, co-worker, etc.,
  praises a staff member

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Relationships

• Write bios of new staff members. Add a digital
  photo and post in a weekly staff bulletin or next
  to the sign-in sheet.
• Offers and requests
• ConnectionsBenefit of management by walking
  around.

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Resources

• Lend professional books
• Xerox notes from meetings you attend
• Send teams of teachers to high quality
  professional development opportunities
• Partner with community facilities (museums,
  gardens, etc.) to hold faculty events there

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Rewards

• Order a subscription to an interesting periodical
  for the staff lunch room
• Discount coupons to restaurants
• Stop at intervals during long staff meetings to
  raffle off plants, coffee coupons, etc.
• Give gift certificates to the first three
  teachers to submit an important report

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Rituals

• Annual faculty barbecue or picnic
• Opening staff members with a special reading
• Send birthday cards
• Give each teacher a journal at the beginning of
  each school year.

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Distributing leadership

• One of the great paradoxes of education is that
  we entrust teachers with our most precious
  resource, then turn around and treat them like
  parolees or overgrown children (70).
• Staff meetings are painful rituals that
  underscore the Mother-may-I culture of
  schools(70).

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Project Thinking

• Think of projects as group gardening. Staff
  members select the plot of their choice, organize
  their work, enlist aid from colleagues or experts
  when necessary, and share the bounty of their
  labor to benefit the whole school community (72).

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Supervising Instruction

• Classroom visits are, after all, the essence of
  gardening in the minefieldthe only way to
  witness the tilling, planting, growth, bounty,
  and sometimes a crop failure (84).

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Observations

• Make them priority one on your calendar
• Broadcast your intentions to your office staff so
  that they know where you are and why

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Organizing Focused Visits

• Grade level
• Subject
• Program
• Specific students
• Short-term conditions
• Time of day

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Impact of Observations

• A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats
• The Dead Cat Bounce
• Subversive Action

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Pruning in the Minefield

• A recent study by the New York State School
  Boards Association found that the average teacher
  termination in the Empire State took 319 days and
  cost 112,000. If the teacher appealed the
  decision, the cost was likely to top 300,000
  (99).

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Improvement Plans

• Establish a dialogue
• Examine data
• Offer appropriate assistance
• Provide feedback and documentation

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Five critical elements of disciplinary letters

• A clear description of what the employee did that
  is unsatisfactory
• A statement of what the employee should have done
• The effect of the unsatisfactory behavior or
  performance
• What you expect the employee to do in the future,
  how you will help, and the consequences if there
  is no improvement
• The right of the employee to respond, including
  time lines and whether your letter will be placed
  in the permanent file

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The In-Box Never Sleeps

• There are problems with having your very own
  voice mail. It gives the community twenty-four
  hour access to you, which means that during the
  scant six or seven hours when you manage to find
  your way home, your phone is manning a
  drive-through window (112-113).

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Taming the Beast

• Restrict
• Redirect
• Regulate

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Restrict

• Limit number of times of the day when you check
  messages
• Have staff listen to messages and write them on
  the NCR pad for you
• Reserve a portion of each week for parent
  conferences
• Have a door policy to facilitate communication
  with staff

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Redirect

• You handle all the tasks that are appropriately
  yours, but redirect all other tasks to the people
  who can do them best.Its the basis of good
  management and good customer service, but its
  also a powerful tool for empowering staff (117).

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Regulate

• Reserve a time for returning phone messages,
  maybe at the end of the day
• Create system for organizing communications
  folder for signature, folder for time sensitive
  reports/replies, seat of chair for burning
  issues, etc.

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School Public Relations

• School Image Walk Throughproject plan with
  timelines and staff assignments
• Navigation
• Landscaping
• School history
• Parent resources
• Procedures for visiting
• Student work on display/current projects

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PR Suggestions

• School website
• Business cards for staff
• Monthly school tours for perspective parents
• Personal notes to enrolling kindergarteners
• Collect parent e-mail addresses
• Run an ad in the paper to thank the community for
  supporting fundraisers

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Professional Growth

• Know the Drillscrisis, lockdown, evacuation
• Know the LawEducation code, board policy,
  special education law, student discipline,
  custody disputes

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Professional Organizations

• National Association of Elementary School
  Principals
• National Association of Secondary School
  Principals
• National Middle School Association
• National High School Association
• Association for Supervision and Curriculum Design

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Mentoring

• Trust, respect, knowledge
• Retiree? Outside district? Business leader?
• Place to let your guard down
• Someone whos smarter than you in a critical area
• Cheerleader, Rescue 911, Mental Health Monitor

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Stress Management

• OR
• With all this manure, there has to be a pony
  around here somewhere!

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Simple Pleasures

• Music
• Aromatherapy
• Eye Candy/photo safari
• Reading
• Food
• Exercise
• Is this hard?
• Positive phone calls to parents

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Getting Smart Under Fire

• The Top 10 Troubles for Principals
• School safety
• Discipline
• Firing employees
• Special education
• Full inclusion
• Test scores
• Changing curriculum
• Changing the school day
• Un-sins (unorganized, uninformed, unresponsive)
• Crossing swords with your boss

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Managing Under Fire

• Manage your image
• Manage the crisis
• Manage the message

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There is no more noble occupation in the world
than to assist another human beingto help
someone succeed.Alan Loy McGinnis