I took Thanksgiving week off for a well deserved rest. Survived the School Support Team (SST) review well. The team presented preliminary results that centered around two themes: prioritizing and structuring for success. I can agree with both since I have been hammering the prioritizing goals and working on a few whenever I have the opportunity. They cited many positives, especially around the dedication and professionalism of the staff. That worked for me as well.

The formal roll out of their recommendations will be December 10. Students will not have school and we will all face the music in the morning and work on the tune in the afternoon. Should be an interesting experience. However, I remember a reputed Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times."

Prior to that, we will receive the feedback from the highly paid consultant who has already sent her recommendations to the administration. I have been asked to help design a survey tomorrow to collect responses to some of the recommendations she has made. And I thought I'd have a week to rest up.

That Chinese curse had two other parts: "May you come to the attention to those in authority" and "May you find what you are looking for." Apparently R5 is in this process because we came to the attention of the authorities. All that remains is that we find what we are looking for.

A retired principal has returned to volunteer. I admire Lee Searcy a great deal and view him as a mentor. He made some observations about the school that reflect the initial themes from the SST. I look forward to talking with him at some point once I get a break. I suspect that this will be during the week of the 17th of December when my sole duty will be to act as Santa Claus during the Holiday event.

The Colorado Department of Education Staff Support Team (SST) completed its review today and gave a brief overview of its findings. We received commendations for our level of commitment to teaching and our students. We have a high level of professionalism and we are a welcoming bunch, open to suggestions.

Their recommendations will have two themes: narrowing our focus and planning for student success. I think I would have arrived at these conclusions as it is. I have been using simplify as a mantra for a few days, so it's great to see an outside source see the same thing.

Our anxiety level has taken a step down, so that's good news. The big rollout will be on December 10th when we will receive a detailed view of their changes. More to come I'm sure.

The fundraiser is tomorrow, so on top of this work load, we have all the arrangements for the sale to handle too. I'm whipped. Time for bed.

Consultants are back this week, and the clarity they have coaxed out of administration has had a positive impact. Setting up clear lines of responsibility after studying transformational leadership has been a boost to productivity and focus.

My angst after the negative feedback from the in-service has passed. After meeting with the CTE consultant, we have established a plan that will enable us to use the group work productively and improve the curriculum as a team. Input from everyone will develop buy-in from the staff.

Heading into a 500 hour yoga teacher training this weekend. The physical, spiritual, and emotional challenge of this course will take my mind off the issues around the school. A clear head on Monday will be a great relief.

Survived the in-service process on Thursday by largely listening and staying vulnerable. As I typed up the notes from the meetings, I felt overwhelmed from the negativity expressed by some of my colleagues. I responded honestly about the feelings and went out camping near Dinosaur National Monument over the weekend. The fresh air and hiking helped drive out the depression and cleared my head.

Received good feedback from several colleagues and deafening silence from some others. I deeply appreciate some of the newest teachers who have a far more positive attitude. One woman joined the team because she couldn't grasp the curriculum. She wound up presenting a PowerPoint at the in-service. Her constructive atttitude helped move me along the process. A new male teacher asked where do the critics think curriculum comes from. After all, in a traditonal school, they would be responsible for creating all of their own lessons. No one would be responsible for creating it for them.

The best feedback was from my principal (whom I often criticize) who said she though I was courageous to step into vulnerability in my comments. I thanked her, but also said that approach generated a whole new set of feelings and that being angry is a lot easier and more familiar. We shared a good laugh on that one.

So two consultants are in this coming week. I will be meeeting with one on Thursday afternoon to continue to construct the curriculum.

We received a postitive rating from our Unified Improvement Plan report which has all of our academic measures in the green zone over a three year average. Since last year's scores were at an all time low, we'll need to keep progress up. However, hope in not impossible to generate with what we are doing so far.

On the other hand, the Colorado Department of Education send in a team last week that will be showing us what to do next. This is the same team that confused the heck out of a team of teachers two years ago over the course of two sessions in Glenwood Springs. When pressured, they admitted that they were unable to answer some of the questions.

The first question was did it make sense to target schools that were alternative classification in the first place. Of the 35 schools on their turnaround list, 17 were alternative schools. They already know that we are composed of largely failing students. The degree of success we achieve can often be viewed as a net benefit since all of our students arrived to us after failing in a tradtional school setting.

In the next year, tne CDE changed our classification to Alternative Education Campus. This compared our performance with other similar schools. Our classification went from "red" in the overall comparison to "yellow" last year. This year's evaluation has us as a "green" school.

To our principal's great credit, she has not crowed about the successes and has pointed out that last year's scores will certainly cause a dip in performance unless we do better this year. The good news is that the areas I can most impact, academics and behavior in school, are doing fine. The area that is still in the "red" zone is attendance. This is far more of a systemic problem and I believe requires more of an administrative intervention.

Time spent on communicating with others has changed the way I do business. I used to be able to use my time in planning to work on lesson development and grading. As a techer in an Alternative Cooperative Education Program, I have job coordinating duties that ensure that the student has a vocational placement in the community and that we tie the duties to the classroom. Ultimately we prepare students for entry level employment. I used to have plenty of time to visit employers and chat up the possibility of using our students in challenging jobs.

Those days are gone. I now have several committee assignments and larger curriculum development projects that pull me away from my former duties. What I find most challenging is the communication part. The school district has adopted a common curriculum. Between the English and Careers classes, I am challenged to develop lessons and protocols that are acceptable to a cohort of teachers with varying degrees of skills and abilities. Limits to technology access creates issues when we are trying to develop 21st Century Learning Skills.

Most of all, I am impatient. I can see where I'd like to go and I am not satisfied with the rate of progress.

Has it really been two weeks since my last post? Well, I have combined focusing on the positive with maintaining a sense of personal centeredness during this time. From the results of the past two weeks, I suspect that this has been a good decision on my part.

When I last entered in this blog, I was angry and very disappointed. I chose to focus on my feelings of disappointment in a critical leadership team meeting after the "personnel matter." This gave my principal the space to express her feelings of anger with the consulting firm. After the weekend, I had several constructive conversations with her that created space around the incident for her to collect her thoughts and emotions while I worked hard with my colleagues to keep the focus on our goals. We also had a breather on leadership meetings so that everyone had a chance to cool off. I had a great happy hour with the AP and two other colleagues to blow off steam over beers and margaritas.

What is different from my past leadership endeavors is that I am collecting consensus and spending time networking with my colleagues. Often this takes more time that I'd like, but in the end, the return is much greater. With a few well placed suggestions, I had a teacher and a counselor step up to prepare the presentation for tomorrow. We have two days with a consultant on the vocational side of the program and she will have a strong foundation to work with the staff on what we can do in the second sememster.

My intention is to offer this opportunity to those who are ready for the challenge and make it clear to the others that we are not hand holding with a canned curriculum that kids can sit and do on worksheets and online. In order to be successful, I believe we must combine a model that includes whole group instruction, guided practice, group work, and individual work. This is called the Gradual Release of Responsibility model. Another acronym is born- GRR.

This does come with a cost. I was so stinking tired on Thursday that when I can home my eyes hurt and I could barely audiblize a hello to my wife. A weekend camping among the changing aspen in the mountains, sleeping on a chunk of memory foam (bliss! for eleven hours a night, and hiking ten or so miles has done wonders to my state of mind and physical well being. Balance is a key.

So the great hopes of last week were dashed by tech issues and abuse of the software. By the end of the week, we have administrative leave and a discussion of trust issues. A great disappointment.

Until the personnel issue is resolved, I will not discuss this matter. A video conference next week might clear tech matters up. Not a stellar week by any stretch of the imagination.

The short week left me with little time for more than the hard work to prepare for the consultant who arrives tomorrow to work all day with the leadership team. This will be an opportunity for feedback on a couple of initiatives that we've tossed out there. The data driven dialogues that we have completed so far are guiding the staff down a different decision making avenue. We have negotiated a number of issues that potentially were troublesome and now appear through shared decision making to be strengths.

When asked to write a narrative from the August 14 DDD (data driven dialogue), I reset my priorities for the day to accommodate the time to construct this writing. It will go on the Unified Improvement Plan (UIP) for the state that the Instructional Focus Team will revised the goals for. Have I mentioned that I live in acronym heaven? Stay with me here, it gets complicated.

The school goals are the same for the large TIG (Tiered Intervention Grant) of $1.1 million and the UIP grant ($35,000 a year for five years). If I were a taxpayer, I'd be after the smaller UIP supervisors since they have delivered one page of feedback on our proposal and we are in year three. They certainly lack the manpower or the gumption to analyze what we've done. To me, it feels as thought they are just waiting our the string and schools that blow it in five years will be reorganized depending upon who gets elected governor and the state of the economy. Can't help but think that this is what drives education.

The TIG seems more organizaed, with a consultant assigned to our school The feedback she provides tomorrow and the training for the team members including plain old teachers like your truly is the crux of the grant and its impact. I am curious and eager to hear what our consultant has to say tomorrow. It's a big day and she has already assigned specific times to meet with me in the next two days as part of the training.

It is my intention to use the training as the core of my national board certification renewal in 2014-2015 when the grant expires. When all goes according to plan, we will have achieved real gains in all four areas. My plan for world domination moves forward. Okay, just checking to see if anyone actually is reading this.

The Labor Day weekend helped to refresh and energize, and the problems of high risk students drains one in a matter of hours. Two schizophrenics and a wired girl bent on violence were the biggest drains today. Loud, racing, rough voices spilled out in the double class period where crowd control techniques are in use constantly with the two techers. Reminds me too much of middle school where one oould tell when the weather was going to change by the number of kids bouncing off the wall.

Support from administration today. It's a relief when admin comes by to clariy and help point out those kids who have attendance issues. We can straighten them out and having the AP come by and seek me out is a welcome indication of awareness of how doggone hard we've been working.

Found organizational methods that will help the team taught classes straight. My colleagues want more structure than I'm used to, but we are in place now and it's looking good.

We are having our fantasy football draft tonight. This will help blow off some steam.

The grant comes with lots of demands on energy. I've been at school 7 to 4 daily, non-stop. Tomorrow 7:00 to 8:00 thanks to Back to School night. I have no idea when I will eat. The brutal pace has developed some frayed nerves and the new folks who haven't quite found their grooves are itchy too.

However, the new Discovery program for kids who are just starting seems to be helping. Had 35 of these kids at a ropes course today. I belayed for the most part, but the students now know who I am and that I am trustworthy. The experience will smooth and reinforce their entry into the regular classroom.

More good news is that enrollment is up for the school at this point. We are over 190 and that bodes well for the count days coming up in September and October. If we made all these changes and decreased enrollment, that would not be well received.

On a grimmer note, the Board of Education is messing with the social studies curriculum, requiring more "facts" and more U.S. Constitution in opposition to the best thinking of Common Core State Standards. The new board president is a right winger who ran unopposed in the lunatic fringe end of the Grand Valley. He also does not send his school age kids to public schools. So he makes decisions for the rest of the students? His campaign started over a complaint about an art teacher (since fired) who showed an R-rated documentary about Frieda Kahlo. Now he's imposing his views on schools, targeting those socialist bums who teach social studies.

But enough of that. Time to think ahead. When I heard a teacher's frustration about the Careers curriculum, I wrote a PowerPoint that answered many of the questions. Now I will present it to the instructional assistants tomorrow to catch them up. More trainings in the next three weeks. A construtive response to a challenge, I think.

That's it for now. My wife and I will take a long camping weekend to ground ourselves for the next busy month.

Sore from hitting the first speed bump hard this afternoon. I was feeling accomplished after establishing a postive start to the changes in all my classes. Then we received a memo that we would need to use fifth hour to complete two 45 minute tests for all the students by September 5. Yes, the very classes where we spent yesterday establishing challenging 20 day goals. This testing plan would cut their usable time by 20%. Feels like the lesson is that when we try to plan for success, arbitrary events will sidetrack us and make success problematic. We don't control our learning.

There's a series of screw ups that brought about the delay in setting up the testing window. That part I accept. The testing is essential for the students to provide a solid data baseline for future decisions. I heartily endorse that. Spreading the scheduling out over six days using all the technology in each room in the class period where we are using all available space for teaching is a bad idea.

I strongly advocated for a one day focused test. We could use the same schedule that we used yesterday (and should have used yesterday if the delays in central administration hadn't fouled things up) so we can get it over with and move on.

Stay tuned to see what the result of my advocacy will be. I made it clear what I felt from the memo, spoke personally to two of the administrators involved, and I am curious what happens next. With two of my colleagues already developing migraine symptoms, the team is feeling a lot of stress and this sounds like another whopper.

Have the room looking like a classroom and ready to go even if my files are stacked on a table in the corner. The teacher I share a room with is at about the same point. Received the feedback I had hoped for from a returning student who popped in. He like the way the desks faced in. Looked as though we could have students working together. I blinked twice and thought that this just may be the ticket upward.

Meanwhile, the morale on the staff is high. A committee prepared a barbeque lunch for us and I received a nice round of "Happy Birthday" in honor of #56 yesterday. I believe that the word is out that no one has the degree of preparation that one would like, but with the extensive change sweeping the school, we will do the best we all can under the circumstances. I see us having a common direction for a change and an energy around the work we are doing.

In fact, I was so energetic that when I went to the yoga class at Crossroads downtown after teaching my class (4-5:00), hitting the store for groceries, and arguing politics with my brother, I was wired tight. The abs class was seven minutes over, and so I pretended to open the door and tell them to vacate. Well, out of the seventeen students who were waiting outside the door, one woman did just that. It was a hoot. Our instructor took the time to calm us all down in an excellent demonstration of "pitta calming" that did the trick.

The all comes about because I love teaching so. This year has great promise and an absence of hard feeling that characterized the past few years. I am ready to jump in with a full slate of students tomorrow morning.

Three days of in-service and I'm whipped. The two presentations I helped to prepare went very well. We demonstrated to the consultants that we can work together as a team and use data to drive decisions. Unfortunately, we had a ton of stuff to deliver that came down from the district that had to be presented verbatim. I wonder how it's done in big, traditional high schools. Must suck the life right out of the rooms and the beginning of the year.

We still have some major challenges to complete by the beginning of October. So much of what we have to do fall into details that will come up as we perform the shake down during the first two weeks. Several potential problem areas are in place, and I'm sure that we can deal with them in time. However, the idea that we are all heading in the same direction is essential to success. I wonder if the reality of the process scatters the thoughts as we move forward.

Lots of wondering as D-Day approaches. Trusting the process and colleagues challenges me. On the other hand, going it alone and being some kind lone wolf heroic figure is not an alternative. Only a team effort can effect lasting change in the culture of the school. It is great to see many folks step up and accept the challenges and display the courage that is necessary for growth. I was pleased to see a couple step up and make the connection of work and personal life.

When asked for "greatest hope" I went all out, saying in a year we'd have all kinds of national news coming in to see what we'd done to make the improvements that we will make. A bold prediction yet the question was for "greatest" hope, and that's what I laid out in front of the group. We shall see.

Meeting with the consultant tomorrow a.m. and I will be all ears on this part. I'm expecting great things from them, especially in light of how high a percentage of the grant goes their way. I know this kind of intervention has worked elsewhere. I am looking forward to listening to them now after showing them what we can do.

Finished a solid working week planning two presentations for our four days of in-service next week. I will present the work the team completed on the revised Careers curriculum and on Tuesday the AP will lead a Data Driven Dialogue that we worked on together. I am excited about the work we've done so far and I have high hopes for what these trainings bring about.
Working in teams will be a shift for me since I usually work on my own. This results in frustration for me since others misinterpret what I develop and we lose some of the effectiveness that will be generated by the rest of my team members. I believe that the Careers revisions will accomplish just that- I will have a team who share the same visiion for the curriculum and will help create lessons throughout the year.
Communicating with the principal can be challenging as well. Since we have fairly different learning styles, I have to be sure to pin her down and achieve clarity before I act on team decisions. I spent a good bit of time yesterday ensuring that she understood what I have planned and what I will require to be effective. We have this nailed down too.
So time to stop procrastinating about the weekend's work. Bricking in a deck in the back yard will provide a good bit of physical work and help to curb my enthusiasm.

Reworking and Updating

Today completed the second day of the team of six teachers and a consultant deconstructing and then building back up the school's Careers curriculum, updating and aligning the work with the Colorado Community College System's standards. The CCCS (I do live and work in acronym heaven)has an incredibly useful tool where we could select the standards and appropriate outcomes for each and convert them to a spreadsheet. Yesterday afternoon, we left with a draft of two semester courses.

However, this morning started slowly with some technical issues that required the focus of the team's two Excel experts. A lesson for me on why teams work well- as they polished the spreadsheets to a functional format, I connected our assignments, grouped the standards into an outline, and applied logic to the outline. By the end of the afternoon, we were polishing up a document that will provide a great foundation for the course that all teachers will teach and serves as the foundation for the Alternative Cooperative Education program at the school.

Pleased to see that tomorrow, I can enlist the team to help prepare a PowerPoint for Monday a.m. With the fresh energy of a new school year, I'm sure that a well prepared presentation will help recruit support from the staff for the changes. What was most gratifying was that after deconstructing and brainstorming a new structure, we wound up recreating the sequence that is remarkably similar to what we have been using, adding rigor and depth- rich and thick according to one team member- to what was a tired, uninspiring course. We also added the software, Naviance, that the district adopted to meet the requirements of the ICAP law. Remember- acronym heaven. Speaking of acronyms, we have a Plan Of Study, that I'm sure will elicit a few chuckles from the students. The Cluster Finder- well, let's just not go there.

Left the day feeling full of energy and inspired to charge ahead into the Data Driven Decision work I'll do with the AP. We have some interesting data that will show how our school has changed over time and what that means to our processes. I'm ready to complete that too so I can spend the weekend tending to construting the brick deck and cleaning my raft.

I'm also pleased with this blog record, so when the energy flags- IF it flags- I'll be able to recollect the promise of the start.

Finding this software to be a bit of a challenge. I'll keep hacking away at it. I'm sure it will come around.

From July 25, 2012 The leadership team met today and discussed what we have with the Tiered Intervention Grant (TIG) and what plans we need to implement before the start of school August 20. As in most bold endeavors, the chance for making great things happen are balanced with great danger.We can create a dynamic, effective program for at-risk students or we can fall flat on our faces with 40% of the funding we asked for. The expectations are the same while the money to pay for the time to plan and the feedback from the experts has been reduced.

The benefits possible from a deep examination of the processes we use to teach our students requires time for reflection and constructive feedback from outside sources. I have been asking for this since 2001. We should have this feedback in June for the first time. We will be observed and the results will be part of a data driven discussion that I expect will help us to evaluate what is effective and what is not so we can make revisions.

The world of work is changing and how we prepare our kids must reflect those changes. We can do this without losing our hearts and souls. The dedication and love we put into what we do is great, and it is not sufficient. The opportunity is ripe for growth. I am fervently dedicating the year to making this happen.

From August 1: Another meeting about the TIG tomorrow afternoon. R-5 will be hiring a couple of new teachers and I am anxious to hear who will be on board. Spent today at a class on techniquest for English Language Learners. Reinforced the lessons I remembered from twenty years ago and applied to Oyster River High School. Seems like a long time ago. Hey, wait. It was a long time ago.

Worked hard today at two major tasks before the school year starts- rewriting the Careers class curriculum and unwrapping the changes in the district's English curriculum. Even popped in on Sunday for the second interview with the new English teacher. We had great candidates for our three new hires and the decision was a tough one. However, we won either way.

Also have to pare down the space in my room. The tables will need to go and desks will be necessary to accommodate the 30 students we expect one period a day. May have to get creative to see how we can house that many students for that class. We shall see what ideas come up.

I am pleased with the direction we are heading with English, focusing on raising the expectations of the students without losing sight of their abilities and needs. By creating a full range of options, I expect that we will be able to lead the way for the other content areas.

Attendance will be the biggest change for the students. With the new six week class for all incoming students, attendance will be mandatory. They will be able to retake the course, and they must attend. I expect that when students realize that this is the key to the door, they will do what it takes to be successful. I know there will be no "gotchas" on this requirement, but it's been long overdue that we raise the bar on this predictor of success. As Woody Allen said, "Eighty percent of success is just showing up."

Somewhere between the optimistic submission for the TIG in mid-June 2012 to the acceptance by the Colorado Department of Education for half the requested money, I found myself wondering what in the world we would do once the grant became a reality. I know that in the room, the school's leadership team all have visions of what this might look like and reality will provide us some feedback as well. We start the conversation tomorrow at 10:30. Let the process begin. My hope is that we can create a new direction for alternative education in the Grand Valley that prepares students for the challenges of the new century, enabling them to compete in a global market.