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.