Chapter 9

Out of all the chapters in this text this one seemed the hardest for me to wrap my head around. It could be that the topic of interest is such a challenging one, even for the best administrators to tackle and maintain in their buildings. I definitely agree with the authors' statement that every building has their own culture and climate. As an administrator in a larger district and familiar with several of the elementary and secondary buildings, I have experienced the spectrum of climates from ones that are very open and focused on student learning to buildings that have dysfunctional relationships between teacher and principal and between teacher and teacher. I also concur with the authors' belief that the principal has much to do with the positive or negative vibe a school exudes. This knowledge will be influential as I consider which elementary building I may want to be a head principal in or even which school I would want to send my two children to in the future. As a prospective candidate for any of the elementary positions that will open up due to a principal's retirement, do I want to go into a building with poor climate and take on the challenge of changing the direction of the staff's focus? Or do I look for a position where the hard work has been done and the culture and climate of the building is open and collaborative but there are big shoes to fill? Neither scenario sounds like the perfect situation. Maybe the best solution for now is to stay as an associate principal in my middle school and continue focusing on the important work currently at hand.

Going back to the text, I did lots of highlighting and note taking whenever I saw information comparing and contrasting organizational climate and culture. I have always wondered what the different was between the two. I felt the authors did a nice job with this task, like describing how scholars use qualitative techniques to examine culture and quantitative techniques when examining climate. Also of importance from the text is the fact that both perspectives are an effort to understand the influence of social context on organizational life (319). At the present time when schools are expected to provide so many social resources beyond the core curriculum for kids, making an effort to see the whole picture of the student-instruction-learning process is vital if any building plans on making a positive difference in increasing achievement. One more piece of information that hit home for me related to this specific topic is the acknowledgement that all students can make significant progress in spite of their socioeconomic status, race, family situation, or disability. With that, I am always leary of any program that asks schools to allocate inordinate amounts of time and resources toward activities that try to control for the uncontrollables such as SES or diversity. An example I am thinking of right now are the canned anti-bullying programs. An educator worth their salt knows that the best way to deter harassment in schools is to have consistent building expectations, logical consequences for misbehaviors, and constant adult supervision of students. I guess it is easier for some administrators to focus on the fluff than to do the hard work and try to make important change that will have a lasting, positive effect on students and their learning.

Chapter 8

This was a longer chapter, and deservedly so considering the title of the chapter is "Assessing Student Learning". There has been a lot of focus in the public and in the media about trying to increase student learning by holding them to higher standards through a standardized test. The focus has also led some to believe teachers and administrators should be judged by how well a student performs on this one-time assessment. I believe this constant attention to what's wrong with the American education system has led people to believe that our system is dysfunctional at best. Speaking with a fellow colleague who attended an exchange program for principals in Japan, this is not the case. The Japanese educational system has some of the same issues we deal with here in America. It should also be noted that we educate and test all of our students including those with mild to severe cognitive disabilities. From what I am told this practice is the exception and not the rule when comparing our educational system to other countries.

Looking back in the chapter I made some notes next to the descriptions of central tendency and standard deviation on page 276. When reading the definitions of mean, median and mode I noted that the median might be the best measure when a teacher uses scores to determine a grade for a student. If you want to take it one step further, you would take the last score for a specific skill or concept assessment as this would reflect the student's most current understanding of what they have learned. These are interesting ideas suggested by assessment experts such as Thomas Guskey and Rick Wormeli. I appreciate Guskey's remarks at one conference when he compared a teacher's traditional grading system of using the mean to giving a karate student who has completed all of the appropriate levels a "gray" belt. That would not happen in this martial art, and Guskey's argument is it shouldn't happen in student assessment either.

I appreciated the analogy on page 299, comparing authentic assessment in the classroom with how coaches and directors assess their performers in sports and in the arts. There are complaints by educators that because the stakes are high with the WKCE, they are forced to teach to the test and ignore some important classroom instruction. As the authors state, coaches and fine arts instructors gladly teach to the test because the test is the students' performances on the field and in the auditorium. It helps that most performances in the encore and extracurricular areas are visible for all of the community to see. If a couple thousand people showed up to watch students take a reading test like they do to watch a concert or a football game, I am pretty sure the language arts department would adjust their current practices and beliefs to better correlate what they teach to what they assess.

Chapter 7

As I read this chapter on classroom management, I find it hard to believe where I was as a student teacher to now as an assistant principal 10 years later. I remember dreading going to my student teaching assignment because I had a hard time being the adult in the classroom. As I matured my classroom management philosophy swung to the other side of the pendulum as I became much more strict. Realizing with the help of my supervisor that I wasn't developing positive relationships with my students in the name of keeping order, I finally found a balance between being assertive and compassionate with my students. In retrospect I am fortunate to have gone through that experience as I am a better administrator for it. I can relate to probationary staff on both sides of the discipline coin. When they require guidance in their classrooms I can draw on the valuable experience I have to help them avoid the same mistakes I made.

In this chapter I noted several good ideas to support effective classroom management such as Positive Behavior Supports, peer mediation and precorrection. It is interesting that these concepts came up in my reading at this time. Currently I belong to a group with the RtI Action Network. We meet once a month online in webinar format to discuss what positive behavior supports we are currently trying in our schools. Precorrection is one of the techniques mentioned by a school that has implement PBS recently. I plan on sharing this information with all staff as we move toward the implementation of these proactive practices. Since August I have been holding voluntary staff meetings for anyone interested in helping the school adopt these ideas for the classroom and make them routine, a part of our school culture.

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Chapter 6

In the past couple of years we had a superintendent that expected all teachers to submit weekly lesson plans to their respective principal. This directive had some dissent at first but teachers eventually accepted the practice and complied with this expectation. As I read page 199 about planning as the first step of teaching, I made a connection with this lesson plan practice. Specifically, I highlighted the statement that there was some evidence that teacher who overplan and stick to that plan no matter what often have students who do not learn as much as students who have teachers who are flexible. Thinking back to my teaching days as an experienced educator, I recall making a skeleton outline of my objectives for each lesson rather than explicit details. I could never plan every step of my Friday's lesson plan in reading on Monday. I didn't know how students would respond to my instruction during the week and whether I would have to reteach or accelerate certain lessons based on the students' understanding.

On the same page I noted my question regarding the collaborative approach to planning used in Japan called kenshu or "mastery through study". I followed the text's directions and did an internet search of "lesson study". I found several websites that all defined this concept of groups of teachers developing, teaching, observing, analyzing and revising lesson plans. In my school time is set aside for teacher teams to get together and work with one another to plan instruction and intervene with students. One thing that may be missing right now is a formal structure for teacher teams to use when meeting. Although my principal and I are a little hesitant right now to exert our wishes onto others so early in our school's inception, some direction from us might be well received. This format for collaborative time may be what teams are looking for.

Chapter 5

I found the five views of motivation very applicable to my current position as an assistant principal. Right now I am dealing with a flurry of bus referrals that started around the end of September until the present time. As I read the section on sociocultural approaches to motivation, I asked myself if this is a big reason for all of the misbehaviors on the buses. Some of these students have never ridden a bus, and half the time the middle schoolers are on the bus there are no older role models as examples of how to behave. According to the text, we learn how to behave in society by watching and learning from more capable members of the culture (pg. 151). Most of these students have not had bus etiquette modeled for them yet. Maybe we as a staff need to go back and teach students how to find a seat quietly, talk with respectful tones and language while riding, and be prompt at the bus stop if we are to expect permanent, positive change in behaviors.

Reading about self-efficacy on pages 166-169 was a good review of the research project I did a few years back for my masters at UW-Superior. I focused on best practices to increase self-efficacy in teachers. A main point I highlighted from the text was the research summary on page 167 that student self-efficacy is increased when students 1) adopt short-term goals to more easily judge progress; 2) are taught specific learning strategies; and 3) receive rewards based on quality of performance and not just engagement or effort. I have tried to utilize this thinking as I work with students with patterns of misbehaviors during unstructured times. We have made reasonable goals together. To reach these goals we have had discussions about appropriate behaviors and we have even practiced them. When one of my students reached their goal he was rewarded with a private lunch with his best friend.

Chapter 4

At school I am currently in the midst of observing teachers. As I read the Theory into Action guidelines on page 116, I found many strategies listed in this section on applying information processing that I have observed my staff doing in their classrooms. Many examples are listed below:

• Moving around the room, using gestures, and avoiding speaking in a monotone. A 6th grade reading teacher spoke in accents when discussing a novel about Hispanic Americans (she has a degree in Spanish).
• Beginning a lesson by asking a question that stimulates interest in the topic. A 7th grade reading intervention teacher presented a riddle at the beginning of class, the topic of which was related to the read aloud that followed. He also gave students a tip on how to use thinking strategies to solve the riddle.
• Note the information on the board in colored chalk. I included this example only because chalk boards no longer exist in our school. However many teachers utilized their SmartBoards to enhance their instruction. I was impressed that most teachers didn't use them only as glorified white boards.
• Have students work with partners to quiz each other. One of the 7th grade math teachers paired up students with their clock partners (student pairs preselected by an hour of the day prior to class). They were instructed to find equivalent decimals and exponents.
• On the following page in the textbook, I even found a questioning technique to help aid my discussion when I go into homerooms to discuss bullying prevention. At the end of my presentation, I have the two questions developed by Nancy Perry on page 117 to help students reflect on what they learned: "What did you learn about yourself as a student today?" and "What did you learn that you can do again and again and again?".

With these classroom observations, I would surmise that my staff's teaching philosophies primarily revolve around the cognitive view of learning. My view is that this approach is very appropriate for the middle school setting. Adolescents are starting to become aware of their own thinking and are able to think abstractly.

A question came up as I read the Point/Counterpoint sidebar on whether homework is a valuable use of time. How do leaders in a building get teachers to adopt practices that are proven effective yet not accepted by veteran educators because it is hard to change? Staff members in my building have attended conferences by Guskey, O'Connell and Wormeli, yet a few of them still do not employ what they know to be best practices. For example, points are still given to students for getting their parent letter signed and turned in at the beginning of the year. This is a distortion of their grade according to the experts listed above, and I couldn't agree more. As my kids start to enter school I hope their teachers use best practices in assessment and grading so I truly know how they are doing in the content areas.

Chapter 3

This chapter delves into the past and current understanding of intelligence. I appreciated that the text touches on the most recent findings that intelligence is dynamic and can be increased through hard work and the use of specific learning strategies. I was fortunate enough to witness this happen in my school. A male student who had been in the cognitive disabilities program since kindergarten was actually exited out of the program because he raised his IQ enough points. This student was very motivated to learn how to read. Every day he volunteered to meet with the counselor and read with him during his study hall time. I believe through simple determination and hard work he was able to increase his intelligence, a promising example for other students with disabilities to follow.

Looking at the information on tracking, I found it interesting that not all tracking is bad, i.e. AP courses for high achieving and gifted students. I understand that remedial courses can have a negative effect on low achieving students. Our local high school I believe does a nice job of offering regular and advanced courses, in line with the text's recommendations. One question that came up was whether or not high schools should strongly encourage all students to take AP courses. Will students with different levels of abilities all make significant progress during the year? What would happen when some students made significant progress but did not score high enough to qualify for college credit? How does a school encourage bright students who do not have post secondary plans to take AP courses? These are a few questions I had as I read this part of the chapter.

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Chapter 2

This chapter can best be summed up by the following statement: Make connections. Whether it is fostering resiliency in disadvantaged youth or instilling pride in bilingual students, the common factor in these actions is how professional staff connect with young people. For students to feel like they can be successful and overcome obstacles and diversity-related challenges, they need adults in their lives who try to get to know them on a personal level and let them know they are important. Making purposeful instructional decisions to eliminate bias and discrimination in the classroom allows these relationships to flourish.

I was surprised to read about the lack of evidence to support teachers focusing on students' learning styles (Point/Counterpont, pg. 43). Many professional development offerings in my district have conveyed the importance of gearing instruction toward the preferred way of learning for each student. Were these sessions a waste of everyone's time? I'd like to think they weren't. I do believe the initial push of gearing instruction toward learning styles led to more reasonable teaching methods of differentiation and understanding by design.

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Chapter 1

This seems like a pretty unbiased text. The NCLB Point/Counterpoint is a good example. I couldn't tell if the authors were in favor or against this legislation but they did have good reasoning for both sides of the issue. Another plus is the amount of research that the authors refer to when trying to back up their assertions. If there is any complaint thus far it would be that this text isn't opinionated enough. I also question the validity and reliability of every research paper and case study referred to in the text.

As I scanned the back cover of this book I agreed with the first sentence which states that traditional teacher supervision is an outdated model for rating the effectiveness of teachers. As an administrator I find this process less than conducive for improving instruction and student learning. The climate for evaluating teachers is not collegial or collaborative due to the summative nature of this process. Formats such as teaming and professional development focused on building specific goals are much more effective in improving the teaching-learning process.

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