Often administrators struggle with shifting our focus from the world of the kids, to the world of adults.  Instead of teaching lessons and walking lines, building readers and planning field trips, we find ourselves presiding over IEP meetings, planning professional development, meeting with parents, and interacting with district level staff.  In a shift, our new role is to impact student achievement through the adults on our campuses.

But we are in this profession because of our love for young people and our passion to see them succeed and grow.  How do we reconcile this internal tension?  

1. Embrace your new charge. Effective school leaders can and must work with and through adults on campus. This is our charge. Teams of effective teachers and staff members benefit from school leadership that articulates a vision, coaches their practice and resources their efforts.  As a response to reading Micro-Resilience (Bonnie St. John) this summer, I’ve crafted the following personal purpose statement: “To lead teams that deliver equitable outcomes for kids.” 

2. Schedule daily ‘kid time.’  It is honest and noble to acknowledge a need to know and impact students on a daily basis. It helps us ground our decisions and taps our deepest motivations. Given the demands of our roles, we are logistically unable to spend all of our time with children.  Instead, we should find at least one slice of the scheduled day, where quality interaction with students is both possible and rewarding. 

I started out the year challenging kids in games of four square and being present during lunches.  This filled a supervision need and got me outside of the classrooms/ office and with kids.  As the year went on, I found that eating lunch, at the lunch tables, with students, became my “jam.”

Eating lunch with students worked for a number of reasons.  Because I needed to eat anyways, it was and initial act of multi-tasking.  Second, because lunchtime is limited and dedicated time, I it was predictable for me.  Third, I noticed that it ‘hit the spot’ for me internally.  Suddenly, I was learning kid’s names, cutting up over knock knock jokes, and connecting with students in positive ways.  I’ll take cafeteria lunches with the kids at my school over comped business lunches out every single day!

School leaders who connect with students outside the classroom also turn traditional principal dynamics on their head. Students don’t have to associate interactions with the principal as punitive, directly following instances of poor behavior. They are not just seeing the school leader when they are “sent to the principal’s office. And when they are sent there, principals can lean leverage a bank of relational interactions helps necessary action be restorative and character building.

For each of us, the particular avenue for consistently connecting with kids will likely be different.  For me, eating lunch with students daily will keep me in leadership longer and in a state of laughter!

How do you stay connected with students and focused on work with adults?

Image by US Department of Agriculture via Flickr.

She asked a question that ended our date that night. While the question provided an opportunity for leadership growth and development, it functionally ended the night.

Date night is a big deal in my house.  The frequency of dates with my wife serves as a barometer for the health of our relationship.  It’s also a practice that we remain committed to so that distance does not grow. Arranging successful dates are also minor feats. Lining up free time, securing babysitters, and coming up with a novel, and romantic, can be magnanimous challenges.

My incisors were sinking their way into a piece of artisan pesto pizza; I never did make it through that bite.  

She asked, “Do families know that there isn’t school tomorrow?”

Instead of finishing the meal with a delectable dessert or a long walk on Ocean Beach, we headed up to the school.

You see, it was Sunday night.  And there wasn’t school the next day.  In fact, we were having the first school holiday of the year and we had not blasted a message to families, via email, paper flyer, website or call.  

I could just see scores of families lined up at the gate, only to be turned back home. Frustrated parents would be forced to call in sick from work.

Facing this grim possibility, I did what any other rookie principal would do.  I apologized to my wife.  I drove up to the school.  I searched the custodial space for a ladder and key to the marquee.  I turned the headlights of my car on, and I spelled out the following message, letter by painful  letter:

No School Monday

School Resumes 9/27

Then…first thing Monday, I articulated a procedure with staff, so that this would never happen again.  

I learned a few things through this first year foible:

1. Learn to laugh at yourself. While I was not laughing while on top of that ladder, I continue to laugh about the incident today!
2. We all need time away from the work. Dates with spouses, backpacking trips with college buddies, and beach days with the family recharge us and make us better.  When our attention is divided, as it was in this instance, we are not getting true rest and restoration.
3. Systems need fine tuning. The operational systems at our schools need frequent analysis and tweeking, if they are to serve our communities well. Our strategy/ approach to communication has needed lots of tweeking to reach stakeholders.
4. Effective Leaders take ownership. I wrote about taking leadership here.  At the end of the day, the buck stops with us.
5. Leaders makes mistakes too. And that is okay!  How we respond to our mistakes is what makes us.

Image by Glenn Lascuna via Flickr.

The 411: English Language Learners at School, A Guide for Administrators. Else Hamayan and Rebecca Freeman Field, Caslon Publishing, Philadelphia, 2012.

My Tweet: 75 minds answer pressing questions schools face in teaching ELLs. “English Language Learners at School” has helped reshape our approach, working with emerging bilingual students. #thosekidsareOURKIDS

A Leader’s Take:  If you are leading a school serving a significant number of English language learners, this is a text you will want access too. While technical, it is driven by pressing questions we face in thinking through an instructional program that supports the predictable, yet unique needs of our growing ELL populations. Multiple expert voices provide input on pressing questions like: 1) How should we assess academic achievement of English language learners 2) What factors influence English language learners’ success at school? 3) What kinds of knowledge and skills to administrators need in order to implement an effective program for English language learners. I took the text on in chunks. I highlighted with intensity. Then I typed up the most powerful learnings and shared them with stakeholders. The research-based learnings have us thinking differently about supporting ELLs at our school.  While we are still working towards equitable outcomes for our ELLs, this reading, and the process we are going through, is a formative and critical process.

One Take-Away:  Perhaps the most profound takeaway from this book, for our learning community, is that we now see refer to our students as “emerging bilingual students” as opposed to “English language learners.”  The seismic shift recognizes students from a position of strength (gaining a SECOND language) rather than a position of deficit (still acquiring our language).  I believe that what we believe about students impacts everything. It is a powerful thing to recognize that our students are on the verge of gaining skills that will put them ahead of most people in life- and our students are only in elementary!  This is very different than (even subconsciously) thinking about students as underperforming language learners who might bring scores down. I choose the former! These experts and practitioners helped me get there.

Your Next Move: Write down the title. It well could be the primary resource help you design and articulate a plan for your site.

It Gets: 4 out of 5 apples.

It’s one thing to be a school leader and cognitively know that students on your campus would benefit from having break areas in their classrooms.  I shared a rationale for break areas in this post. It’s a whole other thing to help a learning community see the importance of them, dedicate a space in their rooms, teach a protocol to students, and facilitate appropriate break area usage.  That is second order change.  But these pointers should get your staff closer to reality where all students have tools to self regulate and return to learning, without leaving the instructional environment.

1. Know the purpose. 

A break area is a designated area in the classroom for students to go, where they can get space, remain in the classroom environment, practice self regulation, and return to learning. A break area is open to all students who demonstrate need.
A break area is not a punitive timeout consequence for children who misbehave in the classroom.
The Center for Responsive Schools explains the purpose of a “take a break”strategy is, “a positive, respectful, and supportive teaching strategy used to help a child who is just beginning to lose self-control to regain it so they can do their best learning. An equally important goal of Responsive Classroom time-out is to allow the group’s work to continue when a student is misbehaving or upset. Giving that child some space from the scene of action where they can regroup while still seeing and hearing what the class is doing accomplishes both of these goals.” That is well said.

2. Pick a space.

A break area can be created with as little as A) a 3X3 space on the edge of the room B) a soft pillow C) some painter’s tape and D) a small poster detailing “Take a Break” protocol. Of course, there are additional ways to adapt the break area to fit your context. And over time, teachers may want to add tools that help children self-regulate, calm and focus their brains. But creating a designated space is a huge first step!

3. Pre-teach break protocol.

It’s important that all students are clear on expected behaviors for taking a break, before the dysregulation occurs. In each classroom, it may look a little different. But teachers may consider a nonverbal signal, options for helping a student refocus and calm their brain (concrete options coming in the next post). Using a timer will help students and staff know that the break is not indefinite. It can signal time for a “check in”- a powerful trauma-informed technique. Finally, students coming from a break should know what it looks like to re-integrate back into the learning space. Other students should be encouraged to welcome the now-regulated learner back into the learning space, without judgement.

4. Tweek procedure as you go, and for specific students.

Like any other classroom procedure, this one will need explanation, modeling, and practice. We shouldn’t expect perfect utilization right away.  One student may spend too long there.  Another may try to visit the break area multiple times in a day or hour.  If we embrace this process as means to support individual students, at the moment of need, we will work through the kinks.  We will work with students to use the break area to augment and support their learning experience.  And we will realize the benefit of this added support in our classrooms.

5. Celebrate the changes you are making on behalf of students you love.

Remember that students using the classroom break area appropriately is a good thing.  Push away the voice that tells you these students are trying to avoid work or ‘game the system.’  Remember that adults self-regulate in various ways in order to persist through long meetings and conferences that have us sedentary.  We check out with a bathroom break or a quick under-the-table-cell phone scroll, just to get a our brains reset.  The reality is that kids may need a reset too.  Some need them more than others.  Here’s what we should celebrate:  When students are using the break area appropriately, we have a larger contingent of students ready to take on high levels of learning!