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.