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.