Sponsor: Sanebox Web Site Transformative Principal on Stitcher Refer A Principal Why are we going to let other people tell our story? What they believe in. Every choice they make is thoughtful. How Tony shares his story daily. Storify - An example of how Tony uses Storify. Cantiague Hashtag Video updates Touchcast app How he shifted brand management from him to the staff and the kids How to make sure the brand experience matches the brand promise. For example, here is an exchange between Tony and someone who knows what his school’s brand promise is: @TonySinanis @mrkempnz I know you do!! :) All groups are equally respected and treated at #Cantiague. — Lisa (@lisaodavis) April 17, 2014 Transparency has changed the relationship between the school and community. PTA meetings have taken a new direction since they are so open. Build it from the inside. Faculty Enhancement opportunities instead of faculty meetings How to be a transformative principal like Tony. It’s not about you! Stay current on research. Don’t take yourself too seriously, but take the work you do seriously. What he has in his office to keep him focused on how to be the best principal he can be. Jericho Schools You have to make sure the brand experience matches brand promise As the principal, you need to be learning the most.New Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal

  Sponsor: Sanebox Web Site Transformative Principal on Stitcher Refer A Principal I was super excited to interview Chris Wejr. He is one of those principals that I have been following for a long time and his take on discipline and behavior is inspiring. Moving from a lower SES school to a higher SES school. If kids are driven by rewards, then they are across all areas. It is very easy to go too far with rewards, and focus only on providing rewards for kids to "get us through the day." The problem with determining how to properly implement PBIS. The complexities of correcting a student’s behavior by giving them a reward when they behave correctly. How important it is to have sense of belonging to help students avoid negative behaviors. Strategies to help students who struggle with negative behavior overcome those struggles. It sometimes takes 2 years to get kids to overcome their struggles. How to buy yourself some time to make decisions and help get through the day to make sure you help kids who are struggling. The bouncy ball trick that worked for me every time after I interviewed him. The difference between a program and a system. This is a great interview. Chris is amazing!New Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal

The ProblemLast Friday we had kindergarten orientation. Last year, we thought it would be fun to take pictures with the school mascot and share them with the families. The only problem is that we didn’t have a way to get the pictures printed and distributed to the families, so we took a bunch of pictures and they sat on the person’s camera and nothing was done. A great gesture, but not helpful in the end. This year, I was tasked with making sure the families got a picture of their student with our mascot. The picture would be on the bottom half of an 8.5x11" piece of paper. On the top of the paper it said, "Future Cougar, Class of 2027" and that was already printed out. So, I needed to get the picture on those papers. The original idea was to print 2 pictures on 8.5x11" paper and then cut them out and tape or paste them on that piece of paper. I knew that we wouldn’t have enough time to cut all those pictures out. The SolutionHere is what I wanted to do:Since the papers were already printed, and just needed the picture, I could print right onto the paper that said "Future Cougar".I created a Word document that had a top margin set to about 6" (which is about how much space the words took up).I would insert all (expected) 70 Kindergartner pictures in the Word document.I would then print them.Here’s the thing, Edit -> Insert Picture -> From File and then navigating to that folder would be really annoying to do 70 times! Another wrench that quickly messed things up is that printing pictures from a camera that takes high resolution pictures takes a long time on our computer, especially if it makes the Word document really big. So, I would also need to reduce the size of the pictures to something much smaller, so they wouldn’t create a bottleneck at the printing process. The Automated SolutionAutomator is an app that comes with every Apple computer, and it automates things you would do on your computer. It is pretty awesome. I already created the Word document. I already had a folder that I would put all the pictures in. I just needed to get them reduced in size and inserted into the Word document. Automator takes care of that for me. Here are the Automator steps:Get Selected Finder Items - This gets the Finder items that are selected in the frontmost finder window. I just selected the photos that I had taken. Scale Images -  I needed the images smaller, but not too small I had to play around with this one, but I got it to work well at about 50% scaling. Move Finder Items - To not confuse myself, I had Automator move the pictures from the folder they were in to a folder in Dropbox called "Print these" which is shared with the office staff, where the pictures were printed. They did quality control and made sure all pictures printed correctly. Insert Content into Word Documents - This is where the magic happens! Automator takes care of the annoying mouse clicks and just inserts the pictures into the document. I chose the bottom of the document, so that they would be in the same order as they were taken.BonusWe took the pictures using the iPad. I had Camera Uploads turned on, so that when we took a picture, it almost instantly went to the camera uploads folder on Dropbox. That got it to my computer quickly. Using Hazel, I created a rule that watched the Camera Uploads folder for new files and moved them to a folder and then ran the Automator workflow on those files. BAM!Dropbox, Automator, and Hazel allowed me to take pictures on my iPad and by the time I got back to my office, they were in a Word document ready to review and print on pre-made stationary!Have a Good Life.

  Sponsor: Sanebox Web Site Transformative Principal on Stitcher Refer A Principal In this second part of my interview with the amazing Chris Wejr, we go deeper into the ideas of student discipline and learning. We also discuss some other cool things that are happening at his school. Punishment. How to approach it correctly. How do we help students with disabilities. How to deal with parents of victims that are upset that there are not visible consequences for misbehavior. If we don’t teach this child, he will continue doing this. Following up with parents a couple weeks after an incident to ensure it is not still happening. Restorative practices - should be tied to negative behaviors. Finding opportunities for kids to serve others. Be proactive to find opportunities to prevent problems that may arise. FedEx Prep - giving teachers time to be innovative and productive on their own with their own passions. Advice for being a transformative principal. "It comes from the teachers, of course. I can’t transform something in a classroom." Something in his office that motivates him. I asked him to send me the picture of him with the paddle. New Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal

Sponsor: Sanebox Web Site Transformative Principal on Stitcher Refer A Principal Doug Robertson (Twitter) teaches 3rd grade in Southern Oregon. Here’s his blog or media empire homepage. Youtube Channel Facebook Fan page He is the author of "He’s the Weird Teacher" (paperback) (Kindle edition). I interviewed Doug because I read his book and was really fascinated by it. I have learned that not everyone teaches the same way (DUH!). But, also, our own life experiences have taught us and shaped us into the people we are today. To be a great teacher, you don’t need to be like [Enter Great Teacher’s Name]. Doug and every excellent "popular" or famous or movie teacher have two things in common: A strong desire to be your own person, regardless of the status quo or anybody else’s judgments. A passion to help kids learn. As part of this podcast, I want to start interviewing master teachers who are really great at what they do. I am especially interested in teachers that are great at making their kids enjoy class and learn life lessons, not just making sure they are acing the tests. ;) Notes from my conversation with Doug: He used to teach in Hawaii, so we talked a little about that before the official interview started, but it was fascinating, so I included it. Teaching is a performance art Acting vs. Teaching. Importance of trust in teaching. What happens in my classroom happens because I want it to. To Principals: You hired me to do my job, now let me do it. Chris Hardwick How he takes away the opportunity to make excuses. How swimming helped him learn to stop making excuses. Why you can’t keep complaining without doing something to fix it. It is OK to vent about kids. "But, my kids don’t give me much to complain about." (That is because if they did, he would take responsibility for it!) "My classroom is noisy because it has to be noisy." "My students are weird, what am I doing to make them weird." I give two cents on why I like a noisy cafeteria. Some discussion on the term "digital native". We should call what we do "Practicing Education" just like lawyers practice law and doctors practice medicine. How being a good teacher and establishing the basics allows us to know how we can change things up as we go along. What kind of an environment does Doug need to thrive? Trust! How trusting students is an extension of the trust from administration. Teach Like Your Hair is on Fire by Rafe Esquith How to have your own style. Don’t teach like someone else. Teach like yourself. Some kids don’t respond well to the style of Doug’s teaching. New Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal

William D. Parker is the principal of Skiatook High School. His web site and Twitter. He has also done some amazing interviews himself. I have learned a ton from reading those, and I am sure you will, as well. Due to technical difficulties, we recorded our phone conversation, so the quality is a little old school. But, I almost felt like a radio DJ with a call-in show. What he learned as the Assistant Principal to the Principal at his school, who recently retired. Bonuses for students who take all the assessments they are required to. What skills he had to learn as an educational leader, that he wasn’t taught in school. Key Responsibilities Areas from Entreleadership tells people who is in charge of what area. Here is his blog post about KRAs. Michael Hyatt leadership podcasts. How he has dealt with student loss. They have tragically had 2 student deaths this year. Excellent and a lot of communication. Be visible. Maintain as much stability as possible. Open to creative and spontaneous. Show appreciation to the kids who are present. Tried to communicate well to media. Allow yourself to grieve. How he knew what the right thing to do was. Be part of a good team. Trust your people. How he has established collaborative culture of trust. Hiring great instructors and compassionate people. Treat teachers how you would want to be treated. Shotgun blast of directives is not effective. Relationships matter. His blog rocks! Give him some more followers on Twitter, because he has great things to say. I have learned so much from Will. New Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal

Sponsor: Sanebox Web Site Transformative Principal on Stitcher Refer A Principal Curt Rees Twitter is a tech-minded principal at Northern Hills Elementary School in Onalaska, WI. He is also one of the hosts of the Techlandia Podcast, a great education podcast. Experience as a principal and a teacher around the country. Why he has moved around so much. Doctoral Program and how he balances that with being a principal and what he hopes to get out of it. Clay Shirky Cognitive Surplus Every single day I learn something about being a school leader. The 4 C’s: Communication, Collaboration, Critical Thinking, Creativity Ninja video by his kids. (And the Harlem Shake) Technology as a tool that supports the kind of learning we want for our kids. Voxer App. Sharing things a little more privately and allowing for a little more emotion. New Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal

Apple is a technology company that excels at making software that is inspiring and innovative. If any company were able to create something with technology that would be amazing and inspiring, it would be Apple. They just purchased a company called Beats, which makes headphones, speakers, and in just January of this year, released a music steaming service in a field crowded by Pandora, Spotify, iTunes Radio and more. The coverage is mostly about the streaming music service as the reason for the purchase. Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, said, "We get a subscription music service that we believe is the first subscription service that really got it right. They had the insight early on to know how important human curation is. That technology by itself wasn’t enough — that it was the marriage of the two that would really be great and produce a feeling in people that we want to produce." Emphasis added. Apple gets what our current scripted programs, Value-Added Measures, computer programs, focus on big data, and an emphasis on standardized tests doesn't get - it is the human connection that matters. Education is about connecting people. It is not about standards,  racing to the top, international test scores, or high stakes tests. It is about teaching people to be human beings. Furthermore, the Beats Music programming team consists of experts who are dedicated to their craft: "The Beats Music programming team is comprised of qualified music experts with a combined 300+ years of experience representing virtually type and format of music available. Their unique backgrounds are as diverse as their musical tastes—from mainstream music magazines, to specialty music blogs, to radio promotion, label A&R, and much more." Emphasis added. This idea of establishing the human connection with people who have devoted their lives to one thing sure flies in the face of current churn and burn practices and Teach For America cohorts we have now. In education now, experienced teachers are often viewed as old stodgy people who just get in the way and cost too much. Well, Apple just showed that the things we are forcing out of education are still highly valuable by spending 3 Billion dollars on a company to get its human connection and experience. That is 7 times as much as it paid for its largest acquisition previously (NEXT for about $400 million )And that is more than the state of Utah spent on all public education in 2011 (page 4 of this).In education and business we often look to Apple as a case study for creativity, iteration, shipping a product, innovation, and more. It is time we look at it as an example of the importance of human connection and start getting more of that into education. Have a Good Life. 

Sponsor: SaneboxWeb Site Transformative Principal on Stitcher Refer A Principal Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey How to manage time on social media with being a principal, doctoral student, etc. How to connect with others. It is about connections that is most beneficial. Connecting with Bill Ferriter and John Pederson It isn’t about the tech itself, it is about the real. Technology just helps you connect with others. What Curt is most proud of that is happening at his school right now. Remodeling his school thanks to a funding referendum his community. Student-produced newscast. (Led by Crystal Brunelle) His school’s Facebook page Going out in the school and snapping pictures. International Happy Day "Wouldn’t this be cool to do?" - said a teacher at his school. People make stuff up on the Internet Humility - Curt is constantly deferring praise to others and deflecting praise and comments to his staff and other people around him. Strengths-Based Leadership Great book! Great leaders need to be excellent listeners. How Curt grew to learn about himself. Evaluating others. Giving feedback that is based on what is seen in other classrooms, rather than, "When I was a teacher…" We have to notice others around us. Spend time to get to know people. Make sure you’re winning hearts and minds before you try to do anything. We aren’t a bunch of independent contractor. Techlandia podcast. And on Twitter - If you listen to this on Sunday, you’ll find something that you can put to use on Monday. How to be a Transformative Principal: Be well read. What motivates him: Nice notes from teachers, parents, students. "You are responsible for the energy you bring into this space." Shoutouts: Bill Ferriter Solution tree Crystal brunelleNew Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal

Today, I have the pleasure of introducing you to Alice Peck, one of the best principals I have ever worked with. You’ll love to get to know her in this episode. How she came to be where she is at. What she noticed coming from Texas to Utah. What she really enjoys about how things have changed since she came to her current position. How she got her staff on board right from the beginning with PBIS. The art program at Oakdale. The process of starting PBIS at her school. Practical advice of how to get things going. How important it is to have the whole staff involved in school-wide initiatives (speaking of PBIS specifically). Why an actual form for Office Discipline Referral form is important. Where to go when processes are established and ready to maintain. Sponsor: Sanebox Web Site Transformative Principal on Stitcher Refer A PrincipalNew Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal