Superintendent Pays Us A Visit
Even in the shortest of exchanges, you can’t help but learn when you come across someone who’s just plain good at their craft. It was no exception last week when Superintendent Chan came to 102 for my first ever end-of-year Principal’s Observation. I’ve observed more than 10 classrooms with her this year in different buildings, and I’ve learned so much just by paying attention to the things she looks for in a classroom and how she gives feedback to teachers. No one sees a greater variety of teachers than superintendents, and she knows exactly how instruction at every level of effectiveness look and sound and what the teacher needs to do to improve.
Every feedback is a gift. But feedback from her also comes with urgency and license.
While she celebrated our collegial and collaborative culture, high student expectations, and effective use of resources, she made clear that our focus next year should be on increasing the rigor of our instruction by pushing student thinking. Good thing she didn’t ask us to focus on something else because we’re already knee-deep into that work. From curriculum to programming to professional learning to even air conditioners–more on that below–we’re poised to make significant improvements to our school. And we will. A sneak peek of the work ahead:
About 30 of our teachers are working overtime to create/adapt curricula that explicitly identify student thinking as an objective for every lesson. If our expectation for students is to think, then it only makes sense if our expectation for teachers in lesson planning also explicitly address thinking. Starting next year, every lesson plan will include:
1.) Focused and meaningful THINKING OBJECTIVE aligned to CCLS, assessments, and students
2.) How the teacher plan on GENERATING this thinking
3.) How the teacher plan on ASSESSING this thinking
Get ready to innovate because that’s exactly what we are aiming to do with a “thinking-driven” approach to lesson-planning. Sure, people talk about Bloom’s and they talk about critical thinking, but look at their lesson plans and most likely you’ll see one that’s still task-based. It’s always what students will do and not what they will think. If you disagree, try finding a lesson plan template with the above components for thinking. Go on; I’ll wait.
We will discuss this in greater detail on Chancellor’s Conference Day on June 9th. Be ready.
Things You Need to Know:
- Our air conditioners are installed in the nick of time! Let me know if your room is too hot or too cold. We’re trying to determine a best temperature for the units to be programmed. All APs, in addition to the custodians, have remotes to the units and let them know if you want to adjust the temperature.
- UFT will be conducting a vote next Tuesday for next year’s SBO regarding Tuesdays. The default option, should our SBO option not pass with a 55% majority, will have the school day start at 8:20AM and end at 3:55PM. Our SBO proposes that 20 minutes of the extended time on Tuesdays be in the morning, making Tuesday’s schedule for teachers 8AM to 3:35PM.
- Students will not be in attendance on June 14th and teachers are to adhere to our normal Tuesday start and end time.
- Promotion Portfolios for students who are promotion in doubt are due this Friday.
- Please take advantage of our morning announcements. We do a flurry of activities for our students each week but you could never tell from our morning announcements. I encourage you to have students publicize and/or report to the school before and after any worthwhile student activities. Field trips count too!
- “Klay-Thompson” sounds like a great middle name for anyone not living in Oklahoma. Paging Ms. Falesto?
mrkobot.com 