with William D. Parker and Friends
The following is a Q & A exchange between James Holifield and me. James “Jim” Holifield is the principal at New Prairie Middle School in New Carlisle, Indiana. As the Indiana Middle School Principal of the Year, he represented his…
Whether for you are leading a team of individuals, or you are a team member who wants to more effective, it is important for everyone to know his or her role. Sometimes our greatest loss of time happens when we…
One of my favorite books to recommend to new teachers is Harry Wong’s First Days of School. In it, he outlines the essentials for establishing, organizing, and implementing good routines and procedures for students. I call it “teaching with both…
Last week, I posted Part 1 of Lessons in Leadership from Edmund Morris’s The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. I shared four lessons from this exhaustive biography: 1. Never underestimate the power of early education. 2. Never underestimate the influence of…
This summer a couple of long road trips afforded me the opportunity to listen to and finish the unabridged audio version of Edmund Morris’s, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. This biography of “Teddy” chronicles his life from birth to the…
A few months ago I was planning to attend a principal’s meeting near the state capital. Since I was going alone, I asked a principal friend from a neighboring district if we could ride together. Little did I know how…
Some summers, my family and I enjoy vacation right here at home. But this summer we had the privilege to go west. Regardless of whether someone is an educator or not, or whether your vacation time is long or short,…
I recently finished listening to the unabridged audio-version of Laura Hillenbrand’s Seabiscuit. A biography about a famous racehorse, the story also centers on the lives of three men whom Seabiscuit involves in a network of drama, suspense, defeat, and triumph.…
This past spring, as I transitioned from assistant principal to principal, I began to wonder if I had made the right decision. As the school year closed, and my former principal departed, I found myself wrapping up many of my…
He met a teacher, and it changed everything. Jim Wengo was fresh out of high school when he started working at the local butcher shop. But his high school agriculture teacher, John Krivokapish, had other plans for him. When he…