Our teacher led school... at the Principals' Institute

You can only imagine how strange it is for me, as the former union president, to be participating in the Principal's Institute (now called the Leadership Institute). Principals were asked to bring at least one teacher from their school. We don't have a principal at MSLA, so we brought teacher leaders. We are a teacher led school. One would assume that means that teachers will lead... Collaboration is not always an acceptable practice in DPS, and encouraging teachers to serve in a leadership role is almost unheard of! Yet, it's the Leadership Institute...

In talking to some administrators (central and building) today, they still don't understand what we're trying to do. One principal said, "Yeah, but who is the administrator?" Another said, "Good luck with your charter school." My favorite is the principals who asked what I'll be doing now, and I tell them about the school. They just stared... and walk away. I didn't know that math and science, to start, was THAT out of the box.

It was amazing to listen to the message from the top repeated in front of everyone. The Superintendent talked about working together- changing the culture- working with DCTA. He talked about changing practice to better meet the needs of kids. I thought that was great. Then we went into our breakout groups... where the telephone game began.

In my first session, a participant asked how to "get specialists on board with RtI". I had an idea that I blurted out... How about talking with them??

In another session, we talked about assessing students... a lot. We didn't talk about actually doing something with the results. I don't think that "weighing the pig" was what they meant.

If I had a penny for every time I heard the word "fidelity", I could've signed my retirement papers with or without the DPSRS/PERA merger.

What is fidelity in school anyway? In some schools, it means having the right posters on the wall, being on the right page on th time right day and at the right time. Some principals think it means never asking a question. Others think it means writing 8 different objectives on your white board every day for every period. In fact, we actually discussed the difference between objectives and activities... I think that should've been mastered in teacher school 101.

Tomorrow... the digital divide! I'm going to cross my fingers and hope that talking with teachers, using assessment results, and differentiating instruction based on student needs is an acceptable practice, and that the message trickles down to those who actually do the work!

p.s. Go Penguins! Maybe we can tie up the series?