Kimberly Moritz BlogPosts

As administrators, we’re great at manipulating time and space. We think about and make improvements to schedules, facilities, class size, procedures, sequences, requirements, and course offerings. Well, most of us do all of that, the best administrators are always analyzing, researching, reflecting and planning. The worst do little to effect any change at all.

And you know what? It’s all for nothing if we don’t invest in our teachers and our own analysis of what we teach and how we teach it. Every single year that I work in education, I’m more convinced that we’ve never done enough to foster a different system, one in which teachers collaborate on what they’re teaching and how they’re doing it.

Our teachers are still largely left to figure everything out on their own which is the very reason they take it so personally when we try to analyze what they’re doing, when and how. They don’t feel like we were all invested in the first place, instead they can feel like, “hey, this is what I did and I got there alone, NOW you want to come in and question how I did it?” If we’d ever talked to them about what that should look like in the first place maybe they wouldn’t feel personally attacked when we start to say “let’s look at that, what went right and wrong there?”

Let’s change this. My biggest fear right now is that all of our work together this summer, analyzing results and standards to determine what we want to teach and when will become another isolated experience where teachers just end up mapping what they already do. That won’t matter much. As T. Gray says, “that’s just an exercise in compliance.” Does anyone get that we’re better working together than we are alone? That it isn’t who’s the best or most liked teacher that matters? That we have so much to learn from one another and that analyzing and discussing and planning our K-12 curriculum is the most meaningful improvement we can make?

What we teach and how–that’s it. The rest is gravy.

And I haven’t even gotten to how we’re investing in teacher learning of instructional practices through Thoughtful Education yet. . .

Our boys’ baseball team is now the Section VI champion for 2008. But wait, they are also the Far West Regional Champions now. And wait again, because they are headed to

THE STATE FINALS THIS SATURDAY!

Bring us back a State Championship boys, WIN IT BIG!

Absolutely proud of you already, looking forward to the next steps. Thank you for the wins.

Our teachers and administrators are embarking on curriculum design this summer and I am so excited about the 63 teachers who are coming to concentrate on their own learning in July! That’s 75% of our teachers, with the other 25% completing the work in September. I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it, “the way to improve is to invest in our teachers.” If we continue to work together, to teach them new/additional ways to look at curriculum and instructional strategies, it’s the only way we’ll ever get better.

We’re also implementing our new K-6 reading program and we have an August 3 day forum planned for learning/collaborating. For this session, 39 of our K-6 ELA/Reading teachers have enrolled, that’s 85% of our teachers in this area.

Thank you to our teachers for enrolling during their summers and for working on their own learning. Thank you to the principals and special education director who will lead these critical initiatives and are going to be learning along side our teachers. And thank you to our superintendent and BOE members for approving the expenditures necessary to make it all happen.

Whenever our high school athletes compete in regular season and play-off games, I think they learn about much more than the technical aspects of the sport. The athletic field can be a place to learn about team work, sportsmanship, heart and how to win/lose gracefully.

I would be much more disappointed if our athletes and coaches did not conduct themselves with dignity and class than if they lose. Our Boys Varsity Lacrosse team played a play off game last night at a neighboring school. Our boys lost. I know our coach and players and I know from all reports that they lost with dignity and class.

When the opposing team, the winning team, rallies their players by posting a sign that says “Make ‘em cry boys” and then plays the song “Big Girls Don’t Cry” over  the PA system at the conclusion of the game, three times in succession, it shows a definite lack of dignity and class. It reflects poorly on the coaches and the school. I’ll take a loss over that kind of behavior any day of the week.

Thank you Gowanda Lacrosse athletes, coaches and parents for teaching our boys what it means to become men, the right way.

Read this excellent post by Chris Lehmann that points us to what’s happening in our neighboring school, Cheektowaga Middle, as reported in the New York Times.

I read the article and thought long and hard about it. It’s a complicated issue, particularly at the middle level. I feel strongly about creating a positive climate for students, one that supports them and encourages success. But I also know that most kids need some guidance on what’s expected within that positive climate. Here’s my response to Chris’ article that I left on his blog post,

Funny that I learned about something that’s happening 40 minutes from here in a blog post by an author in Phillie. I’m glad you pointed us to it Chris. I’ve got to think that the new principals former role as an assistant in the district for four years influenced his focus. As assistant principal, he was probably frustrated by the negative behaviors he dealt with time and again. I’d also venture to guess that this is exactly what those on the hiring committee wanted in their new principal, someone who would take care of business and get the kids under “control”.

In my experience, it’s a pretty common administrative answer to poor achievement. We control what we can. After all, it’s much easier to implement a school wide discipline system than it is to make real changes to the curriculum and instructional system. Hopefully, his next steps will be in that direction. If he uses the same strong leadership that led to this behavior management system to lead substantial changes to program, he might just make a real difference in Cheektowaga Middle. He’d better do it soon though, because punitive measures never work as well as positive–kids do well because of good instruction and a positive climate, not because they’re afraid of what will happen if they don’t. That just leads to kids thinking, “fine, you want to shut me out, then I’m out of here.”

The kids we lose to the punitive measures worry me. On the other hand, some would argue, me included, that without a system of behavior management in place, not much else can happen. I’ve been there as a building principal. The first thing I put into place as a principal was a positive schoolwide behavior management plan. Climate is extremely important. However, the kids I’ve worked with and those that David Smith works with in our middle school, behave as we expect because of a lot more than punitive consequences. It’s because of the teachers and administrators who model and connect with a caring, supportive focus daily. It’s because consequences are given out after students are heard clearly and parents are part of the conversations.

A discipline plan shouldn’t be the primary focus of what’s happening in any school–I’m betting there’s a lot more to Cheektowaga Middle than this NY Times article communicates.