The Dynamics of Staff

As a principal, I deal with people everyday: staff, students and parents. Over the years I have gained wisdom, made mistakes, and learn something new everyday! In my current school the staff dynamics is challenging and mysterious. Is there anyone that can guide me through this maze of craziness?
I work with a group of staff members that spend everyday doing what they think is best for staff. I love to see the great lessons that engage students and motivate them to learn more. For the past 3 years I have been working on getting the staff to make small changes: getting them out of their comfort zone and trying new things. Many of them have embraced this concept. I have seen excitement, heard many success stories and have been amazed by their dedication and hard work. For me, change is welcome, new and exciting. What a surprise to me that there was a smaller group of staff that was resistant to making these changes.
As I realized that not everyone was as gung ho as I was, I read some books, some articles and talked to many people. I learned about the process of change and how different people react to it. I know that staff needs to be a part of the process of change. They need buy-in. I know that some will adapt quickly and some will need support and guidance. I made sure to communicate throughout the process (although this is an area that I can always improve in). I assumed that this small group of resistors would, with support, make the changes that were upon us. These were changes that we learned about together. Some were imposed upon us at the district level, and some changes were discussed, investigated, and decided upon by the staff. Three years later, I feel that I still have a small group of resistors that rock the boat every chance they get.
How can they come to work everyday and complain about everything? Although these teachers may not be bad teachers, they wear me down!
So, who has some pointers for me? How can I get them to get happy or get out? I've tried talking with them, compromising, motivating them. Heck, I've even tried bribery! Who can help?

What Do We Do With Children That Live In Less Than Desirable Environments?

Frustrated. That is the best way to describe what I am feeling today. I am frustrated because I fear for children. As educators, we have knowledge of abuse and neglect. Although we are mandated reporters, not investigators, we see the daily haunts of these children. We see the dirt under the fingernails. We see the tears and hear the stories of how mom and dad "cook" and have friends come over at all times of the night. We see the children that need obvious medical care, but are not provided with it.

Everyday, I do my job of being a mandated reporter, and yet, these abused and neglected children are rarely removed from their homes. We return dozens, hundreds of children to homes with abusive parents, drug users, and neglect. When will the rights of these children outweigh the rights of the parents that do not take care of them? By keeping the children in these environments, will they grow up to be responsible adults?

I am all for helping those that need help. However, when we are told that "as long as the drugs do not interfere with the children," I have to ask myself: what has become of our society? Are these children better off with those who abuse? Or can we not come up with an alternative?

Most schools are safe havens for many children. Most teachers are great role models for children. What would happen if we invested the money that is spent in the foster care system and funded orphanages. There are people that will love these kids and be the role models that are needed. Would it be hard for children to be away from mom and dad? For some, yes, but I know just as many that would thank God everyday that they can go to sleep without being beaten. As a society, we need to wake up and take action.

Staying silent, and complacent will not change the circumstances that these children grow up in. It's time to talk to community leaders. It's time to pay attention to the judges that work in Family Court. We must talk with our legislators. We can no longer sit back and let this abuse continue.................

A New Adventure

It seems as though my husband is right. I am consumed with my job. Last week he asked me why I work so hard. My answer was this, "Right now I work in a good school. I want to work in a great school." Until all of my students, and yes I mean 100% of them, are successful, I will keep working like this.

Every night I come home, spend time with my family and then start working some more. This is when I hit the net, trying to learn from other colleagues, and find new ideas to bring back to school. I must admit, I do not have a creative bone in my body, but I sure do hang around some people that are creative. These great colleagues allow me to learn from them and together we make our schoool better every day.

Right now we are working on making the transition to RTI. If any of you have some great resources to help with scheduling, I would be most grateful. I frequently visit Intervention Central and Curriculum Based Measurement Warehouse. As of now, we have 17 small groups a few times a day. We are working on implementing researched based strategies, without the cost of buying a commercial program. We find most of these researched based strategies on the Florida Reading Research Center webiste. I will post these links below. I hope you find them hopeful!

Seven of the groups focus on phonemic awareness, 4 focus on reading comprehension and the rest focus on fluency. We are looking for a great way to test comprehension on a weekly basis. Any ideas? For fluency, we use Dibels. Students are tested every week and we are charting their progress. We are in week 4 and for some students, we have seen a huge improvement. For others, we hope that the progress will come soon.



Until next time, keep fighting the fight!