Caring For Grandma–A Mother’s Day Tribute
This week I am taking a break from posting about school to reflect on some events affecting my family. As we just celebrated Mother’s Day, I am so thankful for my mom. But today I wanted to take some time…
Principal Matters
with William D. Parker and Friends
William D. Parker
Encouraging Positive Attitudes About Testing
Our teachers have been preparing our students all year for the testing window we are now in. Many of those strategies included best practices like bench-mark testing, curriculum mapping, or introducing literacy standards across all subject areas–to name a few.…
Guest Post: Pivotal Leadership
This is a guest post by Justin Baeder, Director of The Principal Center. He writes about productivity for school leaders at Eduleadership.org. We all want to improve student learning in our schools. We want to achieve better results, create better…
A Conversation About K-12 Schools
A couple of years ago, I had the privilege to participate in a ten day tour of four cities in China. On one leg of the trip, I sat by a woman who was fluent in English and on her…
3 End-of-the-School-Year Reminders
Last Saturday I drove my daughter to the local lake dam spillway to meet her teammates for a weekend track workout. After twenty minutes of warm-up running on the grassy path to the spillway and back, they lined up for…
Interview with Mitchell Curry
Earlier this year, I had the privilege of hearing Mitchell Curry and his school leadership team present a workshop on how their school became recognized by the National Association of Secondary Principals as a “Breakthrough School”. Mitchell Curry is Principal…
7 Tips For Dealing With Challenging Students
A few years ago, I was talking to a teacher about a student she had volunteered to mentor. The young lady had had a difficult past, and the teacher had confided in me that some of their meetings had been…
Interview with Annette Breaux
This past February, I had the pleasure of hearing Annette Breaux present at the NASSP Ignite Conference. She is by far one of the most engaging, entertaining, and practical education speakers I have heard. She is also an avid writer…
5 Spring Break Reminders
When my eight-year-old son Jack and I went camping this past weekend, we enjoyed crisp mornings, yummy food, good hikes, warm fires, and great company. But as we finished supper Saturday night, we felt the first raindrops. Jack sidled up…
Interview With Justin Baeder
The following is a Q & A between Justin Baeder and me. A few months ago, I was introduced to Justin first via a Twitter exchange. Soon afterwards, I discovered his free 21-Day Instructional Leadership Challenge. Although I was not…