A View from the Now-Retired Principal's Seat

I had a fascinating conversation with two of my kindergarten teachers this afternoon.  They spent yesterday in an all-district kindergarten teacher meeting and were updating me on plans for kindergarten students in our district to be formally assessed in writing six times over the course of a year.  Students will be demonstrating their abilitiy to write a narrative piece, an opinion piece, and an informational piece.  There will be pre and post writing assessments in all three topics. Think about your kindergarten experience.  With all due respect to author Robert Fulghum, all I ever needed to know, I really did learn in kindergarten, but I'm fairly confident I did not learn how to write an informational or an opinion piece in kindergarten. I understand all of this is developmental.  Of course, I don't see any of our kindergarten students submitting a piece for any medical journals any time soon, but our kindergarten (actually all of our) students do re...

How do you start your day?  At Novi Woods, where I am principal, we are very intentional in how we start each day of learning.  While I am outside with another teacher directing traffic and greeting students in the pick-up/drop-off line and other  teachers are guiding kids off the buses to the school, all other staff welcome over 480 kindergarten through 4th grade students to their classrooms.  Student "safety-leaders" monitor doors and hallways while kids say good morning, give high-fives, chat about their evenings and plans for the day.  Excitement for learning and leading is in the air. At 8:40 I make a quick call over the PA that morning announcements will begin in 5 minutes.  Assigned students from the school help me with morning announcments and a 4th grader reads a morning "Words of Wisdom."  It goes something like this: "Good morning, Novi Woods.  Today is Wednesday, March 27, and we are growing great leaders!...

Have you ever noticed it's easy to get caught-up in the petty things that don't really matter? This is my very first real post on my very first blog.  It's interesting to me that I have spent the better part of the last hour worrying about how my blog looks .  I've been trying to get the perfect picture as a background and the best "gadget" to make sure everything looks professional.  After what seems like an inordinate amount of time, I realized I hadn't even thought about what or why I wanted to write.  As you can tell, I finally gave up on the cute pictures and links.  Rather, I decided to focus on writing. After attending MACUL (Michigan Associations for Computer Users in Learning) last week, I was inspired to start this blog simply as a way to share.  I wanted to share my thoughts as a school principal and educator.  I wanted to share my thoughts as someone who cares deeply about children and their learning.  I wanted to share my thoughts...