A New Year Approaches

As we look forward to the new year, what is it that we hope to accomplish?  What goals are you going to set?  Which ones will you keep?  I want this year to be about creating goals for myself that I know I can attain and will be a part of improving me and helping me maintain an attitude of gratitude.  I think in our busy schedules, we get away from realizing all of the good things in our lives.  We focus on continuous improvement which is not a bad thing.  However, I think we have to be mindful that this type of focus can keep us from enjoying our successes and celebrating things that are going well.  This year I intend to do just that.  One of the tenants of the PLC is celebration. We don't do nearly enough of that - big or small, we need to celebrate.  So I challenge everyone to keep your focus, remember that calm is contagious, and focus on being positive and celebrating.  Don't just make it about big events in life.  If you brought up your grades be proud of that.  If you made it to all of your classes on time be proud of that too - your teachers will appreciate both.  Be thankful for everything you have and maintain a positive outlook on life - it will make celebrating much easier.

Grading Final Projects

This week I have been grading the final projects from the GW Supervision class.  I am impressed by my students and the hard work and thoughtfulness they put into these finished projects.  I was worried that an 8 week compressed course on Supervision just wasn't enough - but the end result shows me that maybe it was adequate.  Kudos to my students in PG County!

I feel like you can't ever talk about supervision enough - and as administrators we are always improving our craft of providing feedback.  We must stay up on practices and really, really, know and be able to articulate what makes good instruction.  We cannot get fixed in one mindset and then continually provide the same feedback.  We really must embody ongoing learning and development - otherwise, we are guilty of not getting out of the time machine.  Our students are ever evolving - we have to keep up with them - and as instructional leaders, we have to prepare our teachers to keep up with (or ideally, stay ahead of) the curve for students!