To Do:

• Have a fantastic (and well-deserved!) time away from work – instead focusing your energy on those who love you most: your family and friends. (Not that those you work with don’t love you, but… well… you get it.) I am looking forward to a few days out of town with Christie prior to all of our kids being home and Thanksgiving with my side of the family. It may seem a little cliche to say at this time, but I am honestly “thankful” to have the opportunity to work with, alongside, and for you. I am truly blessed because of you.

This and That:

• On Monday I sent you (MS admin) a one question survey regarding our Horizontal meeting currently scheduled for the afternoon of Monday, Nov. 27 – our first day back after the Thanksgiving break. It was sent out to 13 of you, and 12 of you had shared your thinking by this morning.  The results are clear, the overwhelming majority of you (8) would love to be in your building for the full day – so I am going to cancel our Horizontal this month.  The other four votes were split between rescheduling for December (2) and meeting to share a “best practice” (2) occurring in your building. [A graphic of the results are below.] Please continue to be diligent in reading through TRIBE so you don’t miss any important information that I need to share with you or ask you to communicate with me.
• Starting in December and continuing through January at least, I am going to be including articles in TRIBE around a theme.  Next month I’ll be focusing on the broad theme of “high quality work.”  After the first of the year the theme will be “persistence” – mainly as it relates to students (but there could also be some applications with your staff). I’d love to hear if this theme approach is something that you enjoy, or if you prefer the various “choose your own adventure” topics that I’ve woven into previous posts.
• As I had mentioned earlier, SVMS hosted a Make-a-thon event this week that was a great success.  The link is a story from today’s paper (front page no less!) if you happened to have missed seeing it. Kudos to Scott and Brian and their work on providing this opportunity to students and staff alike!
• You have all heard the phrases “shared leadership” or “collective leadership” or even “distributed leadership” – and I know you understand the concepts and benefits of not having a school run via a hierarchy of one.  In an article (that Dr. VanLoo recently passed along) by Madeline Will and published in Education Week Teacher, it claims one of the benefits of teachers having voice in leadership (decision-making) within a school is increased test scores.  This was a benefit I did not anticipate.  Hope you have a few minutes to be reminded and/or learn something new regarding shared leadership with teachers and how that will benefit not only school culture, but also student learning.

Reminders:

• Wednesday, Nov. 29 is a district SIW.  All of your math and science teachers (and possibly others) should know where they are meeting.
• Thursday, Nov. 30 at 6:00pm, PCMS will be hosting the second in a series of parent informational meetings.  The focus of this workshop is Internet Safety. Feel free to advertise this to parents and staff as all are invited to attend.