Amber — Page 66

#SAVMP- How do you encourage leadership?

September 6, 2013 by Amber Leave a Comment

Leaders are everywhere. They aren’t just the ones in charge. Take for example the office clerk in Georgia, who was able to prevent who knows how many injuries or even possibly deaths.

Antoinette Tuff said she convinced an armed Michael Brandon Hill, 20, to surrender after a brief gun battle inside the Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy in Decatur, Ga. The heroic bookkeeper said she stopped the gunman from going to a schoolyard filled with frightened children ‘because I knew that if he got outside, he was going to start shooting the kids.’

What if she had decided that it wasn’t her job to step up and step in? That she wasn’t a LEADER, that she was just a book keeper?

I firmly believe that we can ALL be leaders in education. It doesn’t take a title to step up, it takes a heart for kids, and a willingness to do what is best for them. @TechNinjaTodd wrote a great post for me on being a teacher leader and the ways that he has taken on some different leadership roles on his campus. Teachers, you can look for leaders in your classroom too. Have you talked to your students about what it means to be a leader? How impactful that would be for your campus…if we all realized what a difference we could make…

George Couros asked on our recent #SAVMP hangout about what campus admin can do tomorrow to help encourage leaders. I think you start by empowering your staff to recognize their strengths. Regardless of one’s love language, (cough cough) who doesn’t appreciate being recognized for their effort? I am big believer in supporting and promoting what you want to see more of…I did it in my classroom, I try to do it on our campus. That doesn’t mean isolating and leaving out anyone else…just highlighting what you think supports the campus vision.

I started with teachers who had a penchant for technology…asking them to help their peers, to help lead staff development, all the way up to where we had multiple teachers presenting at the local regional tech conference. (So proud!) I saw our teacher branch into tweeting with professionals, utilizing different creative collaboration tools, and actively seeking opportunities to grow. That fire was there, it just needed to be stoked.

Look for the sparks on your campus. Whether it be students in your class, teachers on your campus, or members of your PLN. It just takes a spark to start an inferno…a leadership inferno.

Fired up,

Amber

Tick Tock, and the wasting of the clock!

September 6, 2013 by Amber 2 Comments

(aside: I think all of my titles should rhyme!)

I remember the time crunch of being in the classroom. I never felt the pressure more than when it came time for our state tests. No matter how hard we’d worked I always had the thought in the back of my mind that if I could just have ONE more week, I’d feel so much better about what I’d covered. Just ONE more week…

Last week we met with teams discussing our new amazing RTI roll out process. My principal made the statement that if your team was supposed to get started at 10am, she wanted to see it at 10am sharp! Not 10:01, not 10:03…in fact, 9:59 sounded pretty good!

That stuck with me and brought me back to my classroom and being desperate for more time.I started to calculate the hours we spend with instruction.

Did you know that there are roughly 177 school days in our year? That equals 37 weeks of instruction. I averaged our school day to be 7 hours long, minus an hour for a lunch and recess…so 6 hours. Still with me?

If you miss 3 minutes of instruction a day…(think how easy that is…three measly minutes throughout the day…) Your students at the end of the year, will have missed 531 minutes. That’s roughly 9 hours…or a day and a half you’ve lost.

If you miss 5 minutes of instruction a day your students will have missed 885 minutes. That’s 15 hours of academic time…or 2 1/2 full days of instruction.

10 minutes? You’ve lost 1770 minutes. 30 (30!!) hours of class time, or 5 full school days.

15 minutes? You’ve lost 2,665 minutes or about 44 hours. That’s 7 and 1/2 days.

30 minutes? 5,310 minutes…89 hours…about 14 days.

Classroom management becomes even more important when looking at these numbers. No time to spare when switching subjects or coming in each morning. Our minutes are precious…just like our kiddos!Transition times, coming back from the bathroom, assemblies, etc…there is always something that seems to drag throughout the day. My goal here is just to remind you how intentional you have to be in your classrooms. Protect your instructional time…those opportunities to be the kin of teacher you’d want your own children to have. There are 1,0632 hours in the course of your school year…and you know how valuable they each can be!

Some links to help you think about classroom management:

Time Management Strategies

Tips for Managing Classroom Time

AmCuckoo

What if every day started with this?

September 5, 2013 by Amber 2 Comments

Yet another reason kinder classes could teach the rest of us a few things… I sat in on a morning routine this week and was so tickled to hear & see this. Wouldn’t we all have better days if we started each day singing this to ourselves? I think they have their priorities straight!

Singingly,
Amber

A digital footprint for the beast

August 23, 2013 by Amber 6 Comments

During a conversation with a new colleague recently, she expressed surprise at the fact that I have two daughters, not just one curly headed one. I heart social media, especially when it lets me share my sweet baby girl with my friends and family.

I am very cautious, however, about sharing my big girl. She almost a teen and I try to be very cognizant of her digital footprint. I don’t want her to be attached to the social stream of who I have defined her to be. I want her to be her own person, with her own likes, dislikes, pins, etc. I never use her real name on the internet. She is known by what I’ve called since she was 2 and toddled around carrying a sack of potatoes. She’s my “beast”. (Obviously, she’s gorgeous, else that would just be uncomfortable!)

I’m also aware of the fact that there are going to be times in the future when she is not holding my hand when she walks across the parking lot. I don’t need “strangers” being able to initiate conversations with her based on details I’ve provided. (The baby is always with an adult, less opportunity for that with her!)

She is very limited in what she is allowed to be involved with on the Internet. It is a constant discussion in our household in what I think she should have an account with or have zero access too. From what I have seen & learned though, is that my opinion does not match what other parents may be thinking or doing.

Scrolling through her “friends” accounts shows me how uninvolved some parents may be in their children’s social media world.

It’s not enough that I can teach MY child how to be appropriate…I also have to monitor what other people are posting & sharing. While I initially took advantage of the teachable moment when something came across, I ended up having her delete her account. There is a cognitive level of maturity that needs to occur both with her and her circle of friends before we’re going let her dive into that social media stream. Controversial? Probably, given my stance on all things SM, but unless my PLN wants to help me have some of the super awkward conversations that were caused by things that we came across…we’re going stick with harsher parameters for now.

Mom to 2,
Amber

Early bird gets the…reading skills!

August 20, 2013 by Amber Leave a Comment

At the beginning of the year there is always a need for scaffolding basics, especially for younger students or students who may need a reminder of what reading is all about.

Teach your Monster to Read is a free game to practice the first steps of reading. It is built on the principles of synthetic phonics.

Teach Your Monster to Read is intended to be used by teachers and parents/guardians as a reading-related teaching tool for children between 3 and 8.

Teachers and parents may register on the site, and as a result become “Users”. Users may set up individual accounts for their Students, which allow the Students to access, and the User to track students’ performance. Accounts may only be established by Users, and not by Students themselves; Students must have Users’ permission to use the Game Service.

On the How It Works Page, you can find links to how the game has been conceived and used in schools.

Bright, fun, free, & fabulous! All good things!

Monsterishly,

Amberstein