Category Archives: Blog

A Principal Teacher

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There was a time when schools did not have principals.  Teachers were the only adults in the school house.  Successful principal leadership today should be founded inthe reasons schools required a principal in the first place.  Good principaling has not changed with time; there always is a need for the principal teacher.

A brief history lesson is necessary for our background knowledge.  The establishment of public schools followed the creation of territorial and state governments.  A provision for public education was at the top of each new constitution and authorized local communities to form a school district as a legal entity.  By statute, a district required election of a school board and the board was authorized to employ a superintendent and teachers.  Voila!  A school with teachers.  No principal.

The concept of principal began when a county or district superintendent worked the circuit of county or district schools, often in widespread and distanced communities.  The circuit schedule meant that teachers in a school supervised themselves, for weeks if not months, between superintendent visits.  Teaching practices and curricula evolved and governmental mandates piled up in those early years.   The question arose in the community and at the school – who at the school was the superintendent’s contact or the person who helped all teachers do the work the superintendent charged them to do between circuit visits?  If everyone in the school was a teacher, who?  Hence, the creation of a principal teacher.  The first principal was a lead or head or principal teacher.  Voila, again!  A teacher became a principal. 

This is where we need to stop the story and focus on what the principal is.  The principal is a teacher first and foremost.  Read it again – the principal is a teacher.  The expanded concept is that the teacher as principal no longer has a classroom of children to teach but a school as a teaching responsibility.  The school is the principal’s classroom and the principal teacher’s responsibility is to teach and assist all teachers in the school to be effective teachers for all children.   There are key words here – school as a classroom and to teach and assist.  Not to tell or expect without teaching and assistance.  The qualities of an effective teacher are demanded in the qualities of an effective principal.  Effective principaling has not changed since its inception.  The principal is the principal teacher.

Back to the story.  Principaling is the same work in a school of 4,000 children as it is in a school of 200 children.  Enter the concept of classroom size or scope of effectiveness.  While we understand there is a reasonable number of children a teacher can effectively and efficiently teach each day, there is a reasonable number of teachers for whom a principal can act as a principal teacher.  Once again, Voila!  Assistant or vice principal-teachers.  The additional number of school assistant principal teachers does not change the function – principals are principal teachers assigned to teach and assist teachers.

How does a principal teach teachers, one may ask?  The need for a teacher’s continuing education begins the first day of their hire.  Completion of a baccalaureate and teaching license says the teacher is trained in how to teach as a beginning teacher – again, a beginning teacher.  The degree does not prepare a teacher for the specifics of a job assignment – district curriculum, school policies and procedures, and student policies.  These specifics differ school to school.  The principal is responsible for each teacher’s new and continuing education to assure that all children benefit from quality classroom instruction.  Once hired, curriculum review cycles present new curriculum on an annual cycle.  Professional understanding of child psychology and learning theories present new teaching strategies.  The advancement of school technologies alone is a constant challenge.  Teachers are constantly engaged in professional learning.  A principal teacher needs to be side-by-side, either teaching teachers or learning along with teachers.  Principals as teachers are constantly engaged in professional learning. 

We too often think of the principal as the supervisor and evaluator of teachers.  In fact, the statutes assign principals to this role or to Effective Educator evaluation in Wisconsin.  This gets too much attention, partly because it can be contentious.  Supervision and evaluation is important but it is like a stripe on a highway that only gives the traffic a direction now and again.  The highway of heavy traffic in a school is daily teaching and this should be the interface between every teacher and a principal constantly.

It sounds like this. 

Principal: “How’d it go today?” 

Teacher: “Pretty good, I think.” 

Principal: “I watched a little bit from the doorway.  Tell me about what went pretty good, please.”  Teacher: Describes the lesson, what she did, and what children did.

Principal: “What clues tell you that the lesson worked for your children?”

Teacher: Describes her observations, handed in student work, and formative conclusions.

Principal: “What did you learn from this lesson?  Anything that helps in what comes next?”

Teacher:  Picks out one or two aspects she might adjust to improve or polish or will be sure to repeat.

Principal: “I enjoy watching you work.  Your children are learning.”

Five minutes, maybe less, is all it takes for a frequent conversation that can take place every week.  The result of a principal looking in, a teacher acknowledging that the principal is looking but not evaluating, and the personal, professional conversation builds relationship.  And, relationship between principal teacher and teacher is what advances teaching and learning in every school. 

Perhaps this gets added to the conversation.

Principal: “I saw that you were using (something from the last PD session).  How is that working?”

Or, more personally “Is there anything I can help you with?”

There are many other events and tasks that build relationship.  Too often we consider the assistant principal or principal to be the school disciplinarian.  Actually, the principal only supports every teacher as the disciplinarian of last resort.  The most important aspect of every classroom rule takes place between a teacher and students; the work of the principal teacher assists when help is needed.

As we think of teachers in a classroom, we think of the principal in the school office.  A principal should be aware of everything that happens in a school, hence there is a ton of information and data and schedules and communications that a principals handles regularly.  And, that chain of communication  between the school and the superintendent or district office requires time and effort.  That work load needs to be balanced against the first responsibility – the school is the principal’s classroom – and most of a principal teacher’s time is spent in classrooms, hallways, libraries, studios, shops, gyms, and around the campus. 

Teaching and assisting teachers to teach is not same as teaching children.  There are other skill sets and dispositions that help a principal to do a quality job as principal teacher.  But, teaching is always foremost.  It also is the common lynchpin that builds teacher and principal professional respect.  It does not always follow that a high quality teacher should be a principal teacher.  Classroom teaching is professionally and personally very highly rewarding.  Just as we want teachers who are “called” to be teachers by inner wants and needs, we want principals also who answer a “call” to be principal teachers.

You can take the principal out of classroom teaching, but teaching remains the organizational focus of the principal teacher now and ever more.

Why Is My Teacher Memorable?

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Grandmother was a school teacher in the proverbial rural school of two classrooms and one outhouse.  Two teachers were the faculty and the county superintendent made a circuit visit now and again.  A high school boy swept out the classrooms every afternoon and tended to the oil furnace in the winter.  My memories are almost 70 years old, but I clearly see this 4’ 11” teacher in front of a classroom of students in grades 7 – 12, all 37 of them. 

A fraying scrapbook holds class pictures of my elementary school days and I can name every teacher from memory, as if the 1950s were not long ago.  Women, only the PE teacher was male, were the mainstay of our elementary school of more than 800 K – 6 children.  I see their faces, hear their voices, and feel their presence.  Miss Blaine.  Mrs. Wendlendt.  Miss Lamb.  Miss Phillips serves as a benchmark for my concept of an elementary principal these 60 years later.  I know nothing of her teacher leadership but am rock solid in remembering her care for children.  Each has left this world, but their presence has not.

I can add similar commentary about my secondary teachers and university instructors and professors.  They shaped me and continue to do so in ways I cannot always fathom but know nonetheless.

These comments are to say that teachers and principals are memorable.  They play large roles in our developmental years and often shape our thinking long afterwards.  I am not alone in saying this, as any reunion of my classmates or gathering of graduates from the schools I served always begins and ends with stories about teachers and children.  Teachers matter in our lives.

Who are they that they matter in this way?  What is there about a teacher that causes them to linger in our memory so long after the last class? 

When in high school and talking with my wrestling coach, also a PE teacher, I embarrassed myself by referring to him as Dad when we were talking.  It was a casual after practice moment with other wrestlers cooling off and sitting around the training room.  In this very relaxed but real time, our coach’s relationship was recognized.  No one commented.  No one asked, “Did you mean to say that?”.  Coach did not say anything.  We just kept on talking.  I don’t think anyone but me thought twice about the reference, because in the context, in the moment, this teacher/coach was providing us with parental care.  We knew it for what it was.  While he taught and coached us as a team, he knew each of us a unique person and more than a wrestler.  Later, I wondered how much of a slip of the tongue I had made.  I told my father of my referring to Coach as Dad and my father smiled.  He told me it was an appreciation of his fatherhood that I would measure another person against his role modeling. 

Over decades of school work, I have watched this same relationship develop, work its magic, and live on in the lives of hundreds of teachers and thousands of children.  Teachers and children form mystical bonds.  In truth and sadness, these bonds are not present for all children and all teachers.  To say it nicely, teachers with a capital T have the capacity for this.  There are so many more teachers with a lower case t who are causing children to learn everyday without this special relationship and I appreciate their work.  However, when it is present, children know.  They may not be able to express it in the moment, but they will know it over time.

Want to test this?  Perch somewhere in a school hallway and watch the bees around the flowers.  Children are the bees and teachers are the flowers.  The bees do not flock to every flower before school or after school or when walking in the hallways.  They do not look twice at lesser flowers when they pass.  The bees know who not only who teaches them but who really cares about them.  The bees will tell you this is true.

At-Home Learning Rethunk

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Educators must practice their trade regarding the use of hybrid teaching and at-home learning in the Time of COVID.  Plan.  Prepare.  Instruct.  Assess.  Adjust instruction to assure learning.  We are in the assess and adjust phase of using the hybrid educational model of in-school and at-home learning.  We must “rethink” our first thoughts and designs, adjust and use what we know to cause all children to learn.

Last March when schools shifted from in-school learning to at-home learning, a first thought was how to make at-home learning as much like in-school learning as possible.  If we could do this, we could mitigate (there is that COVID word again) the loss of student learning due to the pandemic.  Much energy and many resources went into bringing children virtually back into school classrooms.  This must be our first rethink.

Does at-home learning need to be a mirror of in-school learning?

Not necessarily.  Regardless of the learner’s location, we are to teach all children to be proficient in the standards of their annual grade level or subject area curriculum.  Does that require the same instruction design, the same exact lesson, for each location?  A rethunk answer is no.  Children in the classroom and children at home are not always able to do the exact same things within a lesson.  Time, materials, and teacher proximity are not the same for each group.  Children at school remain on a school clock while children at home have more flexibility.  Children at home may use different materials in completing an assignment – what they have available at home.  Teacher proximity is a significant difference for in-school children.  At-home children, outside the eye and presence of a teacher, do not get the immediate “I see you” and they don’t get the “get busy” attitude over a computer screen.  When in-class teaching is slowed by waiting for at-home adjustments, the lesson bogs for everyone.  We now are aware of these differences and should adjust our hybrid accordingly.

If our teaching and learning design is outcome-based and student-centered, we do what we always should do – design backwards from the outcome to an appropriate and effective instruction.  Appropriate and effective instruction may mean differing the lesson for each location.

At-home learners suffer screen fatigue.  Adjust and allow children at-home to work with their screens off.  We do not need to watch all children on-screen as they read or write or do the detail of a school assignment.  Keep the audio on.  Let them turn off or work away from their screen.  If they have a question or need assistance, they can return to video.  Why this rethunk?  Some children are at-home because of parent choice regarding the virus.  Other children are at-home because they prefer to be at-home and not in-school.  This is a fact that pandemic choice has created.  Work toward the benefit of their preference not its downside.  Regardless of reason, screen fatigue is real.  Be focused on the outcomes not the process.  If the outcomes erode, bring them back on-screen for the right reasons.

Flex the time so that children at-home have until the end of the day not the limits of in-class time to complete a lesson.  A child at-home has disrupters that we do not know and cannot see on-screen.  Their attention goes to parents, siblings, pets, and others in the household at times and for reasons we do not know; it just does.  Home noises and sounds distract them as well as the comings and goings of others.  Their environment is different than that of an in-school learner.  So, understand and be flexible.  Learning outcome is the priority, not the window of time allowed for work to be done.

Clearly communicate the lesson outcomes to parents so they can monitor when a child has completed an assignment.  Put parents on the same page of concern for learning outcomes not time on task or process.  These are the adults supervising the at-home learner and they need to know what “done with an assignment” looks and reads like.  Communicating beforehand with parents saves the time of having to correct student work later.  Get our at-home parent partners in on the the game plan.

Accept alternative versions of a successful learning outcome.   In an old Harry Chapin song, he sang of a teacher who told children that flowers only come in green and red and always are in straight rows.  Harry knew that isn’t and so and so do we.  Let creativity and interpretation flourish as expressions of the learning outcomes you set.  At-home and in-school can appear differently if they achieve the same learning.

Accountability to learn still holds, so don’t go soft on grading.  Accountability requirements at state and national levels are dropping like flies, but a classroom teacher’s requirements for curricular and subject learning should not.  Give explicit feedback frequently.  Require student work to meet your usual requirements and do not create softer pandemic standards.  One of the guardrails for at-home learners will be their grades.  If an at-home shuts down, don’t let them slide.  If children respond to grades, use that lever now.  And, of course, use the grades lever with parents.  Let parents do the heavy lifting of supervising at-home learners.

The Big Duh of a hybrid design is that in-school and at-home teaching does not have to be identical for all as long as the learning outcomes are the same for all.  We can use the advantages of in-school and the advantages of at-home to cause children to learn regardless of location.

When remote education is necessary, we can use our learning to assist all children to learn. 

The School That Will Be Cannot Be The School That Was

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The compelling push to return children to school assumes that the school they left is the school they return to.  It is not.  The push also assumes that school is the preferred place for children to be learners.   This assumption also is not fully valid.  Now, what?  The answer is our understanding that the school that is now is not the school that was last March and the school that will be this spring and next fall must reflect what pandemic education is teaching us.

A school day last March was a lot like every school day for the years before.  From every corner of the schoolhouse, one could hear voices of children and see active children.  Singing and playing instruments in the music rooms.  Running, jumping, throwing, and catching, and loud voices in the gym.  Groups sitting and talking at tables in the media center and sitting and eating in the cafeteria.  Children walking, mingling, talking, and laughing in the hallways.  Children in classes receiving teacher-provided instruction.  Children grouped everywhere.  Only the first sentence in this paragraph about school last March lives in our school this January.  The school our children are returning to is so much unlike the school they left. 

So, what.  In truth, there is a lot of “what”.  Our pandemic schools provide parents the choice to have their children attend school or be at-home learners.  The “what” is that almost 50% of children in our schools do NOT want to return to a school deep into pandemic protocols.  The school that is today is not the school children left and children may not choose to be back until their school is like the school they want to attend. 

It is more than a requirement that everyone must wear masks at school.  Class desks are socially distanced.  There is no small group work.  A teacher will not come to your desk to give personal attention and help.  Kids can’t use their lockers or see their friends in the hallway.  Lunch is served in bags in classrooms.  No choral singing, no plays on stage, and no band or orchestra concerts.  No large groups at recess.  To diminish contact between children and teachers, some classes that were 50 minutes are now three hours long and a child only attends two very long classes each day.  No thanks, some children say.

A second understanding about then and now informs us that some children never were happy attending the school that was.  Our historic model of school wants children to be extroverts, sharers, talkers, socializers, and willing to be around and with classmates five days a week for 180 school days.  Our academic, activity, arts, and athletics life in school constantly requires children to be with other children.  Collaboration and group participation are indirectly part of our educational evaluation processes.  Children who do not mix well often did not prosper in the school that was.  Consider a child you knew to be highly introverted and how well that child prospered in the school that was.  Do you see that child today in the school that is?  Not with pandemic choice.  The option to be an at-home learner has become the schooling of choice for a significant number of children.  They no longer are stressed by the demands to socialize and cooperate and collaborate.  These children are prospering as at-home learning because they are happier at home than at school. 

On the other hand, the need for personal and private time does not resonate with all children.  Just as many children prefer and require the social life of school.  Our new understanding is this: if our real interest is meeting the educational needs of all children, then at-home learning is how we should meet the needs of some children in the school that will be.  Not all, but some require a  choice of where to learn.

This should be no surprise to adults.  Consider how many of us are now working from home.  Note the use of words.  Learning at home and working from home.  Interesting.  The office no longer is required for every kind of work and working from home is now and will continue to be a way of life in many businesses.  The business model changed and adults learned to prosper in this way of doing their work.  If it is good for some adults, why wouldn’t it be good for some students?

The school that will be should not be like the school that was.  The pandemic has wrung out a number of our prior assumptions about schooling and beliefs of what is best schooling for all children.  The school that we provide and ask children to attend today, the school that is, will and must further evolve into the school that will be.  If that future school reflects all that we have learned in the Time of COVID, it will not be the school that was.

What Did We Learn? Lesson #7: At-Home Learning Workshops

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As the classroom has become an instructional studio, the place where each child does her schoolwork remotely has become an at-home learning workshop.  This is not Grampa’s workshop with a thick-topped wooden workbench and wall of hanging hand tools.  A school child’s workshop is a table top where a pad of paper and pencil, or laptop, chromebook or tablet lay.  Some days, it is a child’s lap as she sits on the sofa or is propped on her bed.  Every at-home learner has a learning workshop place.  This is a COVID-effect.  It is a reality that we need to understand, support, enhance, and appreciate.

New concept:  Every remote learner has an at-home place or places for doing schoolwork and these places are her learning workshop.  Think about a writer’s workshop that is a place for thinking, writing, editing, and rewriting.  A writer’s workshop is about the writing process not the place.  A learning workshop is the place where an at-home learner engages in the processes of learning.

Remote education put an end to classroom fussiness about how a student sits at a desk during class time.  A teacher who once harped “Now, sit up straight”, no longer has a concern for posture.  An at-home learner will not hear “Both feet on the floor, please”.  And, about those neatnik comments.  A teacher who frowned at a student’s desk that was a mess and dissed a child saying, “No wonder you can’t find your assignment!”, need not be concerned.  A child’s at-home desk or schoolwork area is that child’s domain.  And, no one need say, “No hats in this classroom, please”.  At-home children set their own standards for how and where they work and how they sit and what they wear while doing schoolwork.  “Clothing, please, when on camera” is all we ask.

“Oh, and be kind to and respectful of each other”.  Cannot forget this in our on-line environment.

This is great!  It says for a first time that all we are interested in during class time today is what a child thinks, says, learns, can show in writing or media, and how she feels about her learning.  The absence of school-centered demands allows us to shift most appropriately to learning demands. 

“Show me or talk to me about your work and let me see your smile.”  And, I will show you my smile as we talk about your learning.

This is the essence of a remote education connection called “class”.  This statement tells us that we are approaching a real performance-based education.  All the other insignificant yet enforced regimens of classroom behavior are suspended for at-home learners. 

In-school teaching can enhance a child’s at-home workshop.  As we provide children with digital devices and Internet hook-ups, we cannot forget all the other provisions a learner needs no matter her location.  She still needs books and workbooks in print form, pencils and pens and paper, and art and mechanical supplies that would not be available in kitchen drawers in most homes.  A paint brush for home walls and halls will not do for a child’s watercolor painting.  Advanced math learners need their upper-end calculators.  Chemistry and other science students need “safe” materials for home-based lab work.  We will not be sending band saws, drill presses, and lathes home for tech learners, however.  As we push at-home learners further and further into a full school curriculum, we must supply at-home learners with required materials for their at-home workshops.

High quality teaching and learning continue throughout the pandemic.  This is what we are called to do.  Our new understanding of a child’s at-home learning workshop helps us to foresee and prepare all children to be successful learners in the Time of COVID.