CHRIS
TOY
Diary #22
Dead Tired
I'm dead tired. Mentally, emotionally, and physically tired.
It's 10 p.m. Sunday night, I've just hung up from talking to my state representative about Maine's Laptop Initiative. It looks to be a long hard uphill battle in a tough budget year. But I'm ahead of myself here.On Monday I attended the board meeting of the Maine Principals Academy. I was on the agenda to talk about getting the Academy involved in the Gates Foundation Leadership grant for Technology. It was a great conversation! The board understood the importance of its role in modeling the use of technology if we were expecting to Academy staff to support its use in the Academy curriculum for practicing principals.
After an hour or so of animated discussion we decided to plan a day-long board retreat around technology and leadership, with the help of the Gates people. We decided to include the Academy director and the staff in the retreat. The head of the Gates grant was present and has promised to provide two facilitators, wireless networking and hardware for the meeting. I will be working with him to plan the retreat, in my "spare time." Still, it's very exciting. Wouldn't it be great if at this summer's Academy each participant were handed a wireless laptop as they registered?
I arrived back at the superintendent's office in time for less exciting news at our weekly administrative meeting. Due to the slow economy it seems that state revenues will be lower than expected. Budgets have been restricted or frozen. We also had to hand in drafts of next year's budgets.
It looks like Freeport will be getting significantly less from the state next year. Due to additional numbers of students coming into the 6th and 7th grades I will need an additional teacher. This will probably happen since the school committee's guideline is a 20-to-1 ratio of students to teachers. We've been above this in some areas and the committee has been receiving concerns from parents. I will be asking for an assistant principal, for the 5th time in as many years. It looks bad for that request. Hopefully we'll be able to hold on to all our other programs.
On Tuesday we had our monthly staff meeting. Although I had planned an activity on how we identify good teaching when we see it, one agenda item took the whole meeting. The item was listed as the "new construction project update." It started out as an update, but when I brought up the possibility of teaming changes due to student population changes, some folks became very concerned.
I think the major concern was that some felt team structure should be immune to student population changes. Different "what if" scenarios stirred up different levels of concern. for example, if there were a drop of 20 students in a given grade level, it follows that we would stand to lose one teacher. This would affect the teaming structure. I guess there was a feeling that this should not happen.
There was also some sentiment about the reverse situation. If the population increased, which is happening, some teachers wondered whether they could choose to have more students in their classes, rather than change their teaming configuration. Interesting how the prospect of change can affect our views.
I followed the advice of the team leader I mentioned in an earlier diary and clearly stated that I wanted smaller teams. Meaning that if another teacher were hired to account for increased numbers, I did not want one larger team of teachers and that having larger class sizes was not an option. We'll see what happens.
The costs of growing
The building project is progressing on schedule and reasonably on budget. I meet weekly with the school committee's building committee. The furniture budget is very tight and will require the use of some contingency funds, which are built into the overall budget. This week we pretty much finalized the ordering of new library furniture and the new cafeteria tables. We'll still need to work on getting the cost of computer tables, science tables, classroom and office furniture down. I was amazed at how much shipping cost. It's 10% of the total cost! We saved 90% of the shipping cost of the library furniture by switching to a local furniture maker. It should look pretty nice. Ash tables and chairs in the new library.The increase in students has already forced me to displace one program in order to find an additional classroom. Unfortunately, this necessity makes the person being moved from a full-sized room to a half-sized room feel less valued. Even though I explained that their program works with less than a dozen students for less than half the day, I know it still hurts. As some have said before, I guess that's why I get the "big bucks."
Working on parents' concerns
After the building committee meeting I met with a concerned mom and dad and a teacher. The parents were concerned that their child was not being challenged in the heterogeneous setting of the middle school. The elementary program had allowed for students to work at their own pace and this child, along with some peers, had accelerated what seemed to be well into the 6th grade curriculum while they were in the 5th grade.
After some discussion it was determined that the last time the teacher had heard any concerns from the parents had been 10 weeks ago, at the end of the last ranking period. It was also determined that we needed to do a better job of keeping up with what happens in the elementary school programs. It also seems that it will be a good idea to see if we can find out how much of the 6th grade curriculum students may have worked through.
The meeting ended well. The teacher, the parents, and I touched base via email a couple days after the meeting so summarize. I think we're in agreement.
A Long Weekend of Dance and Debate
Thursday night, just before I was about to leave work, I heard my phone ring. I went back to my office. It was the Maine Commissioner of Education. He asked if I would be willing to share some of my thoughts about Maine's Laptop Initiative as part of the opening of a daylong workshop on Saturday. Of course I was glad to do it. Of course, I forgot that I had a Middle Level Commission meeting all day Friday followed by a dance Friday night. I'd have to get up and out by 6:30 a.m. on Saturday to make it to the meeting near the center of the state. Well, at least I had some time to think about what I would say.
Friday's Middle Level Commission meeting had some great discussions. It was the first time in the Commission's deliberations that there was some disagreement. The controversy, though mild, was significant. It centered around a recommendation that Maine phase out a curriculum consisting of separate subjects and skills taught and tested in isolation from one another. This went right to the heart of the content and delivery of curriculum. Some felt that such a step would undermine high-quality, challenging content and skills in specific areas --especially math. Others felt that this was not the case. They recognized the importance of specific content and skills, but not taught and assessed in isolation. It will be interesting to see how this is resolved. Friday's dance was great fun. It was a bit different because at the beginning of it I had to stand up on a table while students duct-taped me to the wall. Then they took the table away leaving me up in the air. I got stuck up because our students won a challenge to bring in 10 items each for our local food pantry. Of course I knew the kids would come through and I would lose. We broke our previous year's record for bringing in food so it was worth it. The kids had a good time. I stayed on the wall for a couple minutes and we began the dance. Getting down was a bit painful. I have no hair left on the backs of my hand. It will grow back, right? After the dance I sat down to write a few thoughts about the laptop initiative in Maine. By the time I finished it was after midnight. Below is the text of my reflections. I wanted to make the case that the initiative, which is increasingly at risk in the legislature, is worth campaigning for. Talking points for Laptop Opening - Chris Toy - 2/9/02
Why are we here on a Saturday morning in the middle of a Maine winter? To call this an initiative is to forget it's already underway. It's not a project. Projects generally have specific purposes and well defined beginnings, middles, and ends. And, at our school, they come with scoring rubrics. This is the first great odyssey of the new millennium. It's an adventure because Maine, the first state in education, is leading the other 49. As Maine goes.....and you all know the rest of it. Initiative? Project? More like a challenge, or a quest. This change is not coming down from the high schools, nor is it coming up from the elementary schools. It's coming from the heart of our educational system, the center, the middle schools! Look around at your fellow adventurers.... We represent every Maine 7th grade student next year and those who will be 7th graders after them. We represent every school with middle level students, every school system, and every community in our state. Some who do not see or understand the vision driving this adventure think it's about computer chips, hardware, networking, and software. They are wrong. The adventure, the Quest on which we are about to embark is about transforming the way teaching and learning happens today into how it will happen in future. It is about giving the future generations of Mainers, wherever they may be, the tools to prepare for a tomorrow that we may be able to envision, but which is beyond our ability to know. You and I have the opportunity to be visionary leaders. We are the keepers of the collective vision. We keep that vision clear and bright by modeling the things we ask of our colleagues, our teachers, and our students. We absolutely must be lifelong learners, be willing to take risks in the pursuit of the vision, we must change, and always grow in our professional and personal lives, we must support those who depend on us to do their jobs. We have to have a mission, a higher purpose than the things we do from day to day. We cannot ask this of others if we fail to demand it of ourselves. Because we are leaders, people are watching us, waiting for us to show them if this road is one to take or turn away from in fear, whether this path has unacceptable risks, or if this is, indeed, a great adventure, filled with challenges to be overcome, rewards to be reaped, a journey toward that vision for all of Maine. Traveling together we can take up this adventure, make the journey and realize the vision. We can provide this gift to every future citizen of our state. Oh, by the way, thank you being here on a Saturday morning in the middle of a Maine winter.
My comments were well received. I participated in a principal's panel discussion at the workshop. The day ended at 3:30.
Tonight, Sunday evening I made my weekly phone calls to see how our weekly newsletter was received, or whether it was received at all. Interestingly, I only had to make 8 calls to find two families in each grade who had received and read the Pirate Page. Not too bad.
I also use the phone call as an opportunity to ask how things are going for students and families. Tonight 10 out of 10 families reported that things were great at the middle school. They also promised to call if they had concerns. It's 11:40 p.m.
