The Principal’s Page.com Blog

This blogger cracks me up.  As the cop on the Simpson’s says, what he writes “is funny, because it’s true”.  His posts can also be poignant (see this post for example: read to the end where the Principal’s Page’s wife leaves a note).  Up until recently all of The Principal’s Page post titles were in caps.  Many of his paragraphs are one sentence long.  He refers to his posts as blogs, which I find endearing.  I don’t know who he is, but his “blogs” have cheered up some bleak days.

Not Too Late To Change The Name

This is the other ‘must read’ blog in my reader right now and is  by Jen.  Jen teaches at a ghetto middle school (her words, not mine) in LA.  This is her second year of teaching, but I think this is her second career.  Her job sounds really challenging and I frankly don’t know how she does it.  Her language is colourful at times, but she writes with humour and compassion.  She sometimes writes short bittersweet posts like this one, and then ones like this one that make me realize that my troubles are pretty small in the big scheme of things.  She also writes hopeful posts like this one.  One quirk about Jen’s posts are that they never have titles.

Freedom in Anonymity?

Both Principal’s Page and Jen write anonomously, which may be why their posts are so enjoyable; they can say what they want to without professional repercussions.  That is not to say that they slag people, because they don’t.  They can just be a little more candid than some of us are willing to be when our names are attached to our blogs.

Who Makes You Smile?

I’ve shared a couple of my favourite, put a smile on your face, bloggers.  Do you have a few gems to share?  What do you think about blogs published anonymously; are you pro, con, “it depends”, or other?  I’d love to hear what you think

So far 2009 has been a bit of a bust for me as I have been sick for the entire time with a variety of non-life-threatening ailments.  The plus side is that I have been able to read some books!  Back in the spring I bought Daniel Pink’s ‘A Whole New Mind’ and only made it about 40 pages in.  Well I got a chance to read it and I have to say that I really enjoyed it.  Then, on one of my forays out of the house to procure tinctures etc, I picked up Malcom Gladwell’s ‘Outliers’ and devoured it quickly.  Another great read that has me analyzing my own personal success and wondering what factors will impact the success my children will experience as they grow up. Both Pink and Gladwell do a wonderful job of weaving stories of individuals to make their respective points.

Different Types of Reading

Now I find myself wishing I had some more unread books on hand to read.  There is something really satisfying about books that I’m not getting from reading blog posts.  I enjoy reading posts and engaging in conversations in the comments, but books really feed my soul.  I guess I need to have a balanced diet when it comes to reading.  I’ve also got to make sure that I’m not so busy that I don’t have time for books.  A problem that I have with books is that I feel compelled to finish them; I have difficulty just reading a chapter and putting the book down for a day or two.  Reading a book in just a few sittings is not a good strategy if you have a job and a husband and two little kids to look after

Now on My List

Since tweeting about reading these two books it’s been recommended that I read ‘The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives’ by Leonard Mlodinow and  ‘The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything’ by Ken Robinson.  So I’m on a quest to get these books; so far my local book sellers and library are not helping me out.

Any Recommendations?  What’s on Your List of Books to Read?

What books have you enjoyed lately?  What book(s) are you pining to read?

Say What?

CCK08 is the Massively Open Online Course on Connectivism and Connective Knowledge being taught by George Siemens and Stephen Downes. When the course was announced in the spring I eagerly signed up. However, as the start date for the course approached my doubts about being able to keep up with the course (plus everything else in my life) intensified. Can doubts intensify? If they can mine did. The first week I dipped my toes in the CCK08 waters; I signed up for the RSS feed, I set up my profile on Moodle, I introduced myself, I read the assigned readings. I told myself I would get more involved in week 2, when I had more time…

The Thing About September

As a teacher and parent of one school aged child and one preschooler living in the Northern Hemisphere I have to say that September is a crazy month! As a parent I’m trying to get the kids into their new routines and make sure that I register in time for all of the activities that they would like to participate in. As a teacher in a distributed learning school this is a very busy month; our enrollment pretty much doubles as we go from September 1st to September 30th. That means lots of meetings with families, helping to order and distribute resources etc. along with teaching classes and marking, ahem assessing. My husband is a teacher too, so needless to say things are a little crazy here in September. Something had to give so we dropped Beavers (the 1st step in Boy Scouts in Canada). Great, now I’ll really get into the course…

I’m Fine With It, Really

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I’ve just not been able to keep up even my week 1 level of participation. I think I have to face facts; I’m a CCK08 drop-out. But I’m ok with being a drop-out. I don’t feel stressed. I didn’t feel like I had to read every single blog posting or Moodle forum. I was not flustered that I couldn’t participate in the Elluminate sessions or watch the UStream broadcast live. I guess that as I approach my one year anniversary of building my on-line personal learning network I’ve gotten used to the fact that you can’t read everything. You can’t watch everything. I feel like I’m standing at the river’s edge; there is a constant flow of interesting information (with the occasional bits of flotsam) and if you try to catch everything you’ll drown.

What’s Your Story?

Did you sign up for CCK08? If so, what has been your experience?

How can we change the system so that more teachers are rewarded for not taking the short cuts?

Chris’ post was inspired by video number 8 in Dan Meyer’s summer video posts–which have been excellent.

How To Keep The Ones We Love?

In response to one of the comments, Chris outlined what he does in his role as principal to improve the sustainability of the profession. You should really check out Chris’ comment in its entirety*, but basically he says that he;

• - buys extra teaching positions to reduce the student to teacher ratio
• - treats his teachers with an ethic of care
• - fosters collegiality and collaboration amongst his teachers

These things come at a cost–for example; reductions in non-teaching positions–so the choices are still difficult ones to make. My favourite quote from Chris’ comment is this;

In the end, I believe that high school teachers shouldn’t have more than 80 kids on their academic roster. Teachers should not teach 70% of their working day, because that guarantees that the diligent teacher is consigning themselves to 60 hour work weeks — minimum. Both those solutions mean spending a lot more money, but I think that’s what it takes.

30% Preparation Time–Where Do I Sign Up?

I can tell you that I would have loved to have 30% of every teaching day as prep

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time. In my last school, a grade 8 – 12 school, we ran a semester system. It meant that for one semester (half the year) you taught 4 out of 4 classes. For the other semester you taught 3 out of 4 classes and one block was for prep. A week into the new semester you could walk into the staffroom and tell right away who had prep and who didn’t. Those without prep, if they were even in the staffroom at all, had that tense wide eyed look you see on horses when they’re spooked. Those with prep had a whole different body language–sitting relaxed on the couches, joking with their colleagues.

When I had prep in a semester, life was pretty good. I would only have about 75 students to keep track of, and I would have the chance to overhaul some units and do some fresh stuff. I could collaborate with other teachers who had prep at the same time, or I could come in and watch another teacher’s lesson during my prep and learn from them. And when I got home, I could actually spend quality time with my own children. The end result was that my students had a teacher who was more relaxed, able to roll with it, better able accommodate their needs, and able to provide more challenging and engaging activities. Conversely, when I had no prep I was responsible for around 100 students and always seemed to be running fast just to stay in one place. I’d often scarf down lunch in my room while I prepared for the afternoon lessons–missing out on valuable time to connect with my colleagues.

Now maybe for Chris that 30% wouldn’t be all prep time, but I’m sure that it would be time that would allow teachers to do a better job and provide a better learning environment for their students.

Weighing In

If you teach in K-12 how much prep time in the teaching day do you get? What do you think would be the ideal? How else could we make the profession sustainable?

*I haven’t figured out yet how to make a link to a specific part of a webpage yet, so you’ll have to go to the post and browse the comments.

On Saturday Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach of 21st Century Collaborative posted You Might Be Too Busy If… where people from her Twitter network finished off the statement. Their responses are funny, but also attest to how very busy some of us are!

Then on Sunday, Chris Lehmann’s post included a poem by one of the teachers on his staff, Matthew Kay. The poem is a great tribute to the amazing community that they have built at the Science Learning Academy where Chris is principal. It also emphasizes the amount of dedication and time the teachers, students and support staff put in to maintain that community. Here is a small sample from the poem, (I encourage you to go and read the whole thing here):

We’re 6:30 AM Practices. We’re 6:30 PM tutoring.

We’re prep periods lost observing

We’re lunches skipped counseling

We’re late night planning

We’re doling out hugs

We’re doing whatever we can to make sure

That the kids leave our classes inspired.

Both of these posts have me wondering how we can balance our dedication and passion for teaching while still nurturing our relationships with family, friends and ourselves. Are we looking after our own health and well being?

Michele Martin wrote Making Your Work Life More Manageable at the end of January and she has a number of really good suggestions. I was inspired enough by it to overhaul how I deal with my e-mails, although I still find it hard to only check my e-mail two times a day. How can I not check it when my iGoogle page is always up on my monitor??!!

Michele also wrote about including relaxing/non-work activities in your daily schedule; we’ve got to plan to do these things, or else they may not get done.  For me it has meant dedicating 60 minutes every other night to exercising; this includes the stretching afterwards.

Michele’s post didn’t discuss something that may be a very teachery trait–putting too much time into planning. Let’s face it, that new unit you’re working on could suck up all of your ‘free’ time–if you let it. To provide balance in their lives, I know some teachers who choose a specific time to wrap things up every day–they may ‘do’ school from 7:30am to 5pm, but once they leave the school, schoolwork is over. With a young family, I find this a hard one to do. My kids are in bed by 7:30pm so I elect to go home earlier and do more prep, marking, etc once the kids are in bed.

I wonder too about a culture in some schools and districts where there is an expectation that the teachers and/or the admin do not have a life outside of school. C’mon–we should have outgrown that idea once we were out of the primary grades (remember being surprised seeing your grade 1 teacher out and about?!)

“No.”  This is a word that is so simple–just one syllable, only two letters, but it appears to be absent from the vocabularies of many stressed out teachers.  Every school has one or two teachers who have never even heard of this word.  You know, the ones that are soooo good at organizing assemblies, or sports tournaments, or school dances, or or or… and so they always get asked to do them.  If you know one of these teachers, please help them to get acquainted with this word!  And let’s not always go to that same go-to guy or gal–spread the love around and give them a break occasionally.

Is the only time you pause to take a breath when you catch that cold at the beginning of winter/spring/summer break.  You know, the cold you couldn’t afford to have while you were busy preparing for the winter concert/class trip/basketball tournament/end of course exams…  Maybe it is time to stop the insanity?

I know that what I have written about does not pertain just to teachers.  I’m also not advocating that people start slacking off.  It just seems like sometimes it is worthwhile taking a step back to look at the big picture.

What tips do you have for living a balanced life?  I’d love to hear from you!

Image: The Trick is To Keep Breathing