Lowell vs. Grand Ledge

Grand Ledge prepares to take on Lowell. A great night for a game.

Learning About Mozart

Today at Wacousta students learned about The Magic Flute in Mrs. Hoard's music class. Fun stuff for 4th graders.

Willow Ridge Fire Drill

I was lucky enough to be at Willow Ridge today when they had a fire drill. Students wonder why these are important but pre-planning is essential if there ever was a real emergency.

Disruption in American Education

Several weeks ago I was at a conference and Hall Davidson of Discovery Education was speaking.  His audience of Superintendents listened as he talked about the need to look for and use technology in interesting and powerful ways if we are going to reach students.  He was amazing in his ability to connect throughout his talk with websites and technology tools that helped his audience learn.

During the course of his presentation he made an interesting comment about how educators sometimes assume that things can't or won't change because we believe we are just too important.  He suggested that other industries have made the same fatal comment in the past.  His example was the newspaper industry, who, when faced with incredible challenges from technology, probably believed that their delivery system did not need to change because everyone needed a newspaper.  After all, where would one get daily news and insight.  How could anyone live without the daily newspaper being delivered?    

He said that educators sometimes act like the newspapers.  "Schools don't need to change.  We are as important as newspapers!"  Uh-oh!

I thought of that presentation as I read two articles this week.  One appeared in the New York Times and the other in the online version of Newsweek.  These two articles, unrelated except for their commentary on how life in the 21st century keeps changing, made me think about how education needs to be sensitive to the changes that are occurring all around us.

The Newsweek article talked about the difficulty an online company was having remaining competitive and finding a way to turn a profit.  The article said that this company was being replaced by a competitor that really was not supposed to be a competitor.  The author stated that the company was struggling and it was surprised "But this is how disruption happens in tech . . . something comes out of left field and provides a new way to do something."

The New York Times article provided a great example of how something is coming out of left field and will potentially change education. Students in Britain were being taught math online through tutors in India.

Is how we do things in American education the best and only way to do things?  I would like to say yes, but the evidence is accumulating that there are other ways to teach and learn.  Just because classrooms today look a lot like the classrooms of forty years ago or the classrooms of one hundred years ago, does not mean that the classrooms of next year will look the same.

This is how disruption happens.  Something comes out of left field and provides a new way to do something.  Those of us responsible for educating todays's youth need to be aware of and sensitive to the changes that might happen.  Instead of being shaken by the disruptive forces at work in our world, we need to be involved in shaping those disruptive forces to help our students learn.

Lunch at Beagle

Lunch time at Beagle. Salad, fruit, carrots. Lots of healthy options.

October 24 Independent

Here is the article that will appear in this weekend's Grand Ledge Independent.  

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The Greater Lansing Cross Country Invitational was the brainchild of Jim Brandt and Grand Ledge has hosted the event every year since 1989.  Almost forty schools sent boys and girls teams to participate in this event last weekend.

It was remarkable!  At the beginning of the race, all forty teams line up, the starter calls “On your mark,” the gun sounds, and almost two hundred runners storm towards the first turn.  This year – an even numbered year - the boys ran first and then forty-five minutes later the girls started.  Last year, the girls started first and then forty-five minutes later the boys started.    

By the time they came around the first big turn, the runners were spread out over more than fifty yards.  The winners crossed the finish line about sixteen minutes after the race began.  The last person to finish arrived about thirty-five minutes after the race started.

The most remarkable thing about the race to me was that the fifth place finisher on a team had as much, or more, impact on the team score than the person from the team who finished first.  This sport truly epitomizes the team concept.

As I watched the event last Saturday, I learned a little about how teams earn points and how you determine who wins.  Every runner earns points.  The points you earn are determined by where you finish.  If you finish first you earn one point.  If you finish second you earn two points.  

The team score is determined by adding up the points each runner earned.  Each team could run seven but could only count the top five scores.  If your team had runners in first, fourth, twelfth, twentieth, and thirtieth place, your team earned one, four, twelve, twenty, and thirty points.  Add those up and you have your team score.  The team that wins has the lowest combined score of its top five runners.  

It was important for each of the seven runners to finish as high as they could.  A team’s seventh place finisher could knock a runner from another team down a notch or two by finishing ahead of them.

This was the first cross-county meet I had ever seen in person.  I marveled at the effort each of the student-athletes gave.  The runners gave all they had, hoping to finish as they expended their last bit of effort.  Steve Gabriel, our high school principal, said to me, “Why would you want to have anything left when you finished?”  As I looked into the faces of these high school students as they finished the race, most of them had given everything they had.

This athletic event reflects the importance of the team, almost more than any other sport.  The fifth place finisher on your team helped determine if your team wins as much as the first place finisher.  In fact, the seventh place finisher on your team has an impact as well.

This made me think about our school district.  Our school district cannot be excellent unless everyone contributes to our success.  We can have a wonderful band program but if our academics are weak – using the cross-country analogy – our team will not score as well.  Or our academics can be strong but if our extra-curricular offerings are poor, the overall strength of the district is diminished.  If our building principals talk to parents and get to know the public but the Superintendent hides behind his desk, then our district suffers.

We have a lot to offer in our district.  Our academic programs, our bands and choirs, and our athletic teams are all strong.  Secretaries and custodians and food service employees and departments contribute to our success. 

When parents and students look at us, they judge our school district based on their experience with a wide range of departments, offices, schools, and employees.  My goal is for our school district to function as a team, recognizing that every part of our organization contributes to our success.  If one part of our organization fails, then every other part of the organizations suffers.

I learned a lot last Saturday as I watched the Greater Lansing Cross-Country Invitational.  One of the lessons that I was reminded of is that it is important for every part of the team to function well if we expect to win.  A weakness anywhere affects the team score.  

As we continue to work to improve our district, my goal is for us to be strong as a team so that we can meet the needs of every student who attends our schools.

5th Grade at Delta Center

Measurement was the central idea in Mrs. Knauff's class today. Do you remember how many cups are in a gallon?

Greater Lansing Cross Country Meet

A perfect day for the Greater Lansing Cross Country meet. Go Comets!

Grand Ledge wins

Grand Ledge beats Holt 17-10. Holt failed to score from the eight yard line with 40 seconds left.

Holt vs. Grand Ledge

October 17 Independent

I had a wonderful teacher in 4^th grade. She persuaded me to try things that I never would have dared try without her encouragement. 

She encouraged me to write.  So I wrote.  To this day I can clearly remember a story that I wrote in her class about a baseball game told from the baseball’s perspective.  I learned about voice, tone, mood, and setting, all because she created an environment that helped me learn not only the mechanics but also the art of writing.

She encouraged me to learn history.  So I did.  I participated in one-act plays with my friends, acting out some of the most memorable events in New Mexico and US history.  Through this simple strategy, she helped me learn and remember my history lessons.

She also promised a dollar bill and a Hershey candy bar to any student who had perfect attendance for the year.  I never missed a day of school.

I look back fondly on 4^th grade.  My teacher used a variety of strategies and approaches to keep me interested in school.

Yet activities and strategies that worked for me probably did not work for everyone in the class.  An approach that I really enjoyed probably was not enjoyed by everyone.  I am sure that there were times and there were activities that I did not enjoy. 

That is the mystery of teaching.  Why does something work so well for one student but not so well for another student?

As I move around the district I try and get into as many classrooms as I can.  I want to see how our teachers are trying to reach our students.  What strategies are our teachers using to encourage and motivate students?  How do our teachers help our students learn?

Teaching is both art and science.  Teachers have to know their subject but they also have to understand students.  Teachers need to have a toolbox full of strategies and approaches and they need to know when and where to use those strategies.

One of our district goals is that teachers and administrators will collaborate to find, use, and monitor effective instructional practices.  In the report How the World’s Best-Performing School Systems Come Out on Top (McKinsey and Company, 2007) improving instruction is heralded as the most effective way to improve outcomes.  This report goes on to say that there is not a single documented case of a school successfully altering its pupil achievement trajectory in the absence of talented teaching.

If our district is to meet our objectives, we have to focus on instruction.  It is a collaborative effort between administrators and teachers.  District administrative leadership must know and understand what good teaching looks like and teachers must be able to identify and use classroom strategies that are effective.

I have been fortunate to have great teachers throughout my life.  My 4^th grade teacher was a wonderful example.  She used strategies and approaches that drew me in and helped me learn.  

We have great teachers in our district, teachers who work hard at their craft.  Our goal is to support our teachers, encourage them to find, use, and reflect on their instructional strategies so that our students can be successful at learning the lessons that they need to learn. 

October 3 Independent

Last week I was driving home from a meeting and the battery light flashed on my dashboard.  I reached over and opened the glove box to find the owner’s manual.  I looked up battery light in the manual to see if I could figure out what might be going on.

The manual said that if the battery light appeared while driving you should take it to the dealer to have the car examined.  It warned that you should not stop the car because it might not start again.

I was one hundred and twenty-nine miles from home.  I thought of my local dealership and thought to myself that I hoped that the car would get me that far.

It didn’t.

Shortly after the battery light appeared, the tachometer and the speedometer stopped working.  Then the radio quit.  I was several miles from an exit, but I had the sense that my ride home was not going to end well.

It didn’t.

A short time later I was coasting to a stop on the side of the road because the car had completely lost power.

As I sat by the side of the road waiting for the tow truck to arrive I had time to think.  I thought about my car and the time we had spent making sure that it was in good shape. 

I change the oil on a regular basis.  I get tires and shocks.  We had a problem with the electronics and had to replace one of the computer modules.  I thought we had done the right things.  Yet, here I sat waiting for a tow truck – one hundred and twenty-nine miles from home.

It turns out that the alternator had broken.  After I discovered that I asked myself if there was something that I could have done to check the alternator.  Maybe I could have prepared for this.

After it was repaired and I was back on the road I started thinking about our schools.  Were there things that are not easily seen to which we need to pay more attention?  Are there things like “alternators” that are critical to a school or a district’s performance that I need to make sure we take the time to inspect.

A district of over five thousand students has lots of parts that no one pays much attention to until they break down.  The new school year is a month old.  During the course of this first month I have seen some things not work as well as they could and should have. 

Most of the time these things work well and I pay no attention to them.  This first month has reinforced to me that I cannot afford to ignore any part of our organization.  Every part of our organization is important and I need to make sure that every one of our employees understands the critical part they play in making us an organization that students, parents, and our community can trust.

One of our district goals is for every employee to work to create and maintain a high performing organization.  Every piece of our organization is important.  The parts that are hidden, or at least less visible, contribute value and stability to the overall mission of ensuring that students learn.

Just as I learned an important lesson about cars this month, I also remembered an important lesson about our school district.  I need to work to help us maintain our focus and help everyone in our district remember that we all contribute to creating an organization that students, parents, and our community can believe in.

Visit to Neff Elementary

I visited our kindergarten and early childhood center at Neff Elementary this morning. I saw Mr. Austin in action, singing a jolly hello song with our early childhood students.

Okemos vs. Grand Ledge Volleyball

Grand Ledge played Okemos tonight in volleyball.

New and Old Learning Tools

I was at a workshop today on school funding. The learning tools available to me were some old favorites - coffee, pen, and paper. But I also received a clicker where electronically I could respond to questions asked by the presenter. The presenter then could give a sense in real time if those listening were learning or if he needed to reteach. It led me to wonder how can Grand Ledge begin to harness technology to ensure that students will learn? This particular technology is not new but it is not prevalent (yet) in schools. It did make me think about how we can and should integrate and use technology to help students learn.