Applying for a Position

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Dear Applicants:

If you are interested in applying for a teaching position in our school district, thank you! Randolph Central is a wonderful place to work, with terrific students, a great team of professionals and a supportive community. Having reviewed all of the application files that were submitted, I would like to share a few tips with you, if applying to our school district (or any other).

If the deadline for the position is Monday, September 26, 2011, then you need to have all of your materials in by that date. Not two days later, backdated to September 26. Do whatever you have to do to mail your resume, application and letter of interest,  or use express mail, or drop your application file off to us. Can you email your materials to me? You may do so, but you’d better also be using ‘snail’ mail because it otherwise looks lazy on your part. Can you submit your materials late? You can, but you won’t be considered. Responding late to a job posting screams, “I don’t meet deadlines. This is a clear indication that I work on MY time, not yours and you can expect me to be late with every other deadline you ever set for me.”

Is it a good idea to apply for the position if you’re not certified yet or if you’re certified in another content area? NO. Back in the day it may have been possible to hire someone in a non-traditional manner or to have someone teach out of his content area or to hire a teacher on a long term substitute basis while awaiting certification. NOT NOW. We cannot legally hire you if you’re not certified, and certified means the certificate is in your possession for which you can provide us a copy, in the content area for which you will be teaching.

Bottom line? With only a one to two day posting, we received 60+ applications. It’s a competitive job market. Don’t get yourself knocked out of the running by applying without the proper certification, submitting your application file late, misspelling words on your resume, emailing your materials to the superintendent without paper copy follow-up, or completing the application in an illegible, haphazard way. This is the time to put your best foot forward. You cannot afford to do it any other way.

Respectfully Hoping the Best for You,

A Superintendent in a Position to Hire You

What Are Our RCS Teachers Learning This Year?

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As district parents know, our staff development days are scheduled throughout the school year (10/31, 1/27, 2/21, and 5/25), with teachers and professional staff here at school learning while our students have the day off. Have you ever wondered how we spend our time on those days?

Traditionally in districts, these days were “sit and get” experiences. Administrative Teams worked diligently to schedule something for every minute of the day with a one size fits all approach. Think about it. It’s difficult at best to plan a day or two of training in which the content is relevant for everyone from the guidance counselors to the teachers of special subjects to the HS Mathematics teacher to the Kindergarten teacher. Prior to this past year, the best configuration of this staff development I ever experienced was a sharing day in which teachers with different expertise did mini-sessions for our colleagues. Back in the day as a teacher at Pine Valley Central, I remember offering a session on Easy GradePro, one of the first electronic gradebooks.

We started working in small groups last year called Professional Learning Communities. Our intent was two-fold in implementing this type of structure for use of our staff development time. One, we wanted to create opportunities for our teachers to collaborate and problem solve, to use  curiosity and imagination, and to communicate with one another. Teaching has historically, and I’m generalizing here, been an isolated, independent profession in many ways. We know that we’re better together than we are separately and so we hoped that using our staff development time to work together in self-selected small groups to study relevant curriculum and instructional topics would get everyone talking and sharing best practices. Ultimately, we hope that teachers will see that they can safely ask each other questions, brainstorm and learn from one another without fear of judgment.

And two, we knew we had to change our culture in these ways to prepare our teachers for the important work that they will do together on data inquiry teams. Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) are the ideal structure for teachers to use in creating parallel tasks, creating and administering common formative assessments, and analyzing data from NYS assessments, interim assessments and other student data.

I’m excited to see what our teachers learn this year as they research, plan, analyze and discuss relevant topics that should improve learning for our students. We have teachers in grades PK-6 studying project based learning, common core standards, differentiated reading centers, using music to enhance learning, and writer’s workshop.

Our PK-6 teachers and professional staff are also using their PLCs to assess student reading and math progress, create common formative assessments and parallel tasks, create science kits, develop multi-sensory math manipulatives, collaborate on speech and language development of reading skills, and using interactive whiteboards and iPads to enhance learning at the preschool level. Using NYS Math and ELA assessment data to drive instruction and to individualize student learning is a particularly relevant topic that’s also being studied. Our art teachers are working together across the grade levels on the art curriculum and our elementary PE teachers will implement a SPARK fitness curriculum. Our occupational therapists are working on a handwriting intervention curriculum, something that is invaluable for many of our students.

Our 7-12 teachers and professional staff will learn more about and plan to implement digital portfolios, develop a curriculum on health, wellness and success, implement a 7th and 8th grade 1:1 Technology Initiative, develop informational text units collaboratively between ELA and social studies, and continue the implementation of new technology initiatives. I look forward to hearing more about what our teachers learn about peaking student interest in young adult novels and connecting students to the workforce.

Is it harder work than sitting and getting whatever we as an Admin Team think will be best for everyone? Absolutely. And much more valuable.

Annual Professional Performance Review Plan CHANGES

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I must admit that all of the changes from NYSED have left my head spinning. Our APPR Committee, including five teachers and three administrators, has worked hard since the beginning of July to make sense of it all and to make collaborative decisions about what’s best for us here at RCS. The APPR Plan is on the website as a series of links and files, under District. If interested, please take some time to read the documents and follow the links.

As administrators, we have much to learn about the Danielson 2011 Teacher’s Rubric  and our role as lead evaluators. In fairness, we believe teachers deserve  professional development in the use of the tool with which they’re about to be evaluated. On October 31, our next Superintendent’s Conference Day, teachers will have half a day for their Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) and half a day of professional development on the Rubric– Understanding the Framework, the four levels of performance and one aspect of one Domain–Student Engagement. As an Admin Team we will be working with a lead expert directly from the Danielson group 3-5 additional days during this year. One of the things I’m most interested in is the coaching day, when the Danielson trainer works with us to visit classrooms and then talks with us about how we talk about teaching with our teachers.

The Danielson Rubric has four domains, the last of which is entitled Professional Responsibilities. Under the new State Regs, and agreed to in our APPR Committee meetings, we will have 40 points of the teacher’s Composite Score based on multiple evaluations on the first three domains. The fourth domain will be based on a Professional Portfolio worth 20 points of the Composite Score. (Remember that the other parts are 20% for State Assessments and 20% for Locally Selected Assessments.)

And speaking of Locally Selected Assessments, we’ve selected iReady. We are meeting with the sales representative next Thursday to negotiate a price and to get these assessments into place as soon as possible. Why the rush? I want our teachers to have their preliminary diagnostic assessments done as early in the school year as possible.

I remain, as always, optimistic that the changes the new regulations have mandated will help us to improve learning for all of our students.

Calendar Change for THIS Year

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The NYS Education Department did not release the 2011-12 testing dates until the end of August. The Grades 3-8 ELA Testing Dates are immediately following our scheduled two week Spring Break. Therefore, at last night’s BOE meeting our BOE adopted a revised calendar that moves our two week Spring Break back by one week. Instead of the first two weeks of April, we will now be on break the last week of March and the first week of April.

I realize there are all kinds of arguments, gripes, and opinions surrounding if and when children have breaks from school, some educationally centered and some for personal convenience. I also realize that some families may have already booked their vacations for this school year and that this will cause difficulty for those families. I truly regret the inconvenience this causes to our families. With the late release of the testing dates from the State Education Department, the only other decision we could have made would have been to let it ride and hope our students do well on the ELA state assessments.

I just don’t see how that’s fair to our students or teachers. Yes, we should be adequately preparing them all year. Yes, I understand it’s not about a week of test preparation. Yes, I know they’re young and it shouldn’t be all about testing. And yes, I know there are counter arguments to everything coming from NYSED.

BUT. We are a public school district working within the expectations and governance of NYSED. Coming off of a two week break our students aren’t even back into their routines of going to bed early and thinking about school. And yes they are young, so upon returning from the break, they likely won’t remember as much. And yes, these tests are high stakes. No one likes being at the bottom of the 96 school districts in Western New York—even the parents who may be frustrated that we’ve changed the break aren’t going to like it if Randolph doesn’t improve.

We are just as good as the other districts in Western New York, with extremely hard working teachers and excellent students. We’re working hard to better align what we’re teaching to the NYS curriculum and to identify what each child needs to succeed. Leaving the break the way it is and rolling the dice that everything would work out anyway just seemed like betting against ourselves to me. I’m not willing to do that because I believe we’re on our way UP academically. As our BOE President said, “we’re in the education business, not the vacation business.”

First Days

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Is there any day better than the first day of school? I LOVE this day. Not only is it a long arduous summer working here with just our Admin team and custodial/clerical staffs,  but this summer was particularly difficult with all of the changes we were studying from the New York State Education Department. So on this day, I am the happiest educator anywhere—delighted to remember why we’re here as I see our students laughing and walking through the hallways.

Our students return happy and excited and wearing their new school clothes—looking their very best. They haven’t had any bad days yet, no failures, no peer problems. Just refreshed and ready to go. Our teachers return happy and excited too, wearing clothes they haven’t probably looked at in two months. They haven’t had any bad days yet either and they return with renewed energy, plans about their curriculum and hope that they’ll have students they can love as much as those they said goodbye to in June.

I especially love the elementary building on the first day of school. The Pre-K and Kindergarten students who enter so timidly, ready for this new experience, are probably my favorite. More than one or two moms leave a bit teary eyed and at least one Pre-K student let her feelings be known at a volume hard to believe from a tiny little four year old. The most tender part of the day is watching all of the older siblings walking their younger brothers and sisters to their classrooms—many who aren’t “too cool” and kiss and hug them goodbye. What a wonderful way to be introduced to this new world of school!

Rest assured parents: we love them, we’re delighted to see your children return and we will do our very best to care for each child and to teach all of them to love learning. Welcome Back RCS!

As Our Professional Learning Communities Evolve. . .

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With everything that’s headed our way with the changes to the APPR and teacher accountability, we need our teachers to start thinking about the future of our PLCs with us.  If you read the work on PLCs that has been written by Rick and Becky DuFour, you’ll learn that PLC teams are involved in collective inquiry, action research, improving achievement for students, results oriented learning. They say,

“We have a model in schools that was never designed for all kids to learn. No one teacher can possibly serve the needs of all kids in his or her class but WE can serve the needs of all of our kids together. What you do in your PLC should be supporting what you already have to do in your daily job, working together to make sure every kid succeeds.”

I’ve known since our original planning for PLCs that we need the work done during that time to focus on critical questions with student outcomes. With the increased teacher accountability through the APPR Process (20% State Assessments, 20% Locally Selected Assessments, 60% Multiple Evaluations), I’m so excited to see our teachers making significant shifts in their  PLCs. My original plan was to take 3 years to better understand the process before delving deep into the critical questions. All we hoped for in the first year was to change professional development for teachers, give you the opportunity to work together and decide your own learning goals instead of on size fits all, “sitting and getting” conferences. And you did a wonderful job of collaborating and sharing!

I know from one on one conversations that some of you have had with me that many of you are ready to shift your PLCs to these critical questions with student outcomes–tied to the Common Core and assessments.  I’m excited as I review many of the PLC Planning sheets, the areas of study are more directly related to student outcomes..

Specifically, what do I mean by that?    A team of fourth grade teachers or a team of ELA teachers  work together to take the common core curriculum, design and deliver parallel tasks, with formative assessments. The PLC time is used to do all of that and to take a hard look at the data— how ALL of the 4th grade students do BEFORE the state assessment. Why?So that teachers can say to one another, “my kids bombed this content or skill and yours did well–what did you do so that I can do it too?” That’s why the first year was critical in learning this type of professional development. We first had to learn how to build trust and listen to each other. PLCs should be looking at data, our own results, to learn together about what we can do better.

With everything coming at us from SED, you’re missing a huge opportunity if your PLC is about the latest tech tool or gadget. YES, it’s important to continue to work on learning with passion, innovation and leadership BUT it’s on top of our solid foundation of SED Common Core curriculum and student achievement goals. There are ample opportunities at Randolph Central where we offer Technology training one day per week all summer, employ Tiffany Giannicchi three days per week to support you, and Mark Carls two days per week to help you with your technology learning goals. You need only schedule them to come to work with you. These are all resources that have vanished from many other districts.

If anyone can do all of this work well, fully implementing the Common Core, better preparing students for the new assessments, working together to make sure all of our teachers and principals thrive in the new evaluation system which includes 40% objective measures—it’s all of us at RCS, together, here and now.

 

Best of the Web and Sports Programs

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This is the week when we receive the Business First Rankings. In addition to being compared to the other 95 school districts in Western New York for everything to do with our academic results, Business First looks at several specialized rankings too. The academic rankings are announced in groups, one per day, and I will post more about our achievements as compared to previous years later this week.

I am pleased to announce two special distinctions that Randolph Central has achieved this year.

Congratulations to EVERYONE involved in our athletic programs, as we are ranked #11 (out of 96) for our Sports Programs—-WOOT! This is a distinction we’ve received previously and a HUGE accomplishment to be in the Top 15 for another year. Thank you for all of the hard work here.

A new accomplishment is to be ranked in the Top #12 for Best of the Web. Actually, it’s the Top #6, with Randolph Central ranked #1 for Schools of our size. Great job by everyone who contributes content on our website but particular congratulations to WEBMASTER Michael Frame for his work on making ours the Best in Category this year! Thank you!!

RCS Budget Passes

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Our 2011-12 budget passed voter approval yesterday 153-19. Thank you to everyone in the community who came out to vote. I also want to thank our business official, Dave Chambers, our School BOE members and our Admin Team for the budget development work that preceded the final budget as presented to the public. I would guess that our exceptionally low voter turnout is indicative of community satisfaction with the reductions to the budget and to the tax levy. Randolph is about the best place to be that I can think of, especially at this time in New York State.

After last year with eleven candidates running for the BOE, this year brought only our two incumbents to the race. Who can figure what makes the difference from one year to the next? We congratulate Louise Boutwell and Tonia McAllister and thank them for their continued service to the district and to the community. We have a solid team of BOE members with varying perspectives who work hard to help lead the district. They challenge my thinking, push for excellence and question our policies and decisions appropriately. I’m looking forward to another productive year with our BOE Team and our entire school community!

Commissioner’s Advisory Council

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Last week I traveled to Albany as a Cattaraugus County alternate to the NYSCOSS Commissioner’s Advisory Council. What does that mean? On Friday a small group of 20-25 school superintendents from across the State had the opportunity to talk with State Education Officials including Commissioner David Steiner, Deputy Commissioner John King, Ken Slentz, Chuck Szuberla, and David Abrams. For three hours we asked questions and heard answers from the top SED leaders. And I definitely had the sense that they were listening to us as well. It was an extremely rewarding two days for me. In my mind good information is paramount to making the best decisions for the district so every minute was worthwhile.

If you haven’t been paying attention to all of the changes headed our way in regard to teacher and principal evaluation through the APPR process, and you’re a NYS educator, then I suggest you start now. During these two days, we talked about everything from the accountability pieces to state and locally selected assessments to scoring bands to training and capacity.

I’ve written on this blog previously about my own opinions on the general quality of our evaluation system in public education. I’m cautiously optimistic that we will end with a much better system upon the full implementation of the regulations. Principals often write “love letters” to their teachers in the knowledge that the one pre-scheduled visit to the classroom can’t possibly do much to influence what’s happening in the room and because they’ve had little to no training in how to give meaningful feedback. What will come between now and our new SED proposed evaluation system will require a huge cultural shift. Educators are neither accustomed to being evaluated in a meaningful feedback system nor are the principals adequately trained in how to have those conversations. Don’t get me wrong, I believe we have extremely hard working and dedicated administrators in every district in which I’ve worked, but this is not a piece of the work we’ve historically done well enough.

The success of this new evaluation system hinges on the depth of training for principals and the ongoing support as they learn to communicate both expectations and feedback about good instruction to our teachers. Teachers who have been left to figure it out on their own and have seldom been critiqued or offered much feedback in the past may find it difficult to take any kind of constructive feedback. And why wouldn’t they? It’s a huge change in many places and it feels very personal.

When you consider that some principals may never have been good teachers and may have no idea how to really talk about solid instruction with credibility and solid ideas about strategies and content, we’ve got quite a row to hoe. Couple all of that with the fact that the expectations and criteria for being an effective principal may be changing dramatically in some districts–to mid or end career administrators–and the work before us is immense. Most principals are effective building managers, taking care of the 1000+ details that managing a building requires, with little time left for our most fundamental reason for existing—quality instruction. This is through no fault of the principal, I’ve done that job and can tell you first hand that on most days it’s emotionally draining and exhausting, especially if the principal is responsible for all of the discipline. It was certainly my intention on every day to be the instructional leader but on many days it was veritably impossible.

This is the most vital change we can make toward long term school improvement.  As Commissioner Steiner said on Friday and on which I wholeheartedly agree, “The two most important points in all of this are what you teach and how effectively you teach it.”

We can figure out the rest together but it’s truly going to take ongoing training, relationship building, trust and hard work, resources and expertise building. I absolutely believe the only way to make it work is to set clear expectations based on solid research, communicate effectively and learn together. It’s the right thing to do.

Rock Stars of Education

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At an Education Week Leadership Forum this week, I had the opportunity to meet two women who have influenced my thinking for many years. Diane Ravitch and Deborah Meier. Ms. Ravitch and Ms. Meier write a blog that I read regularly, Bridging Differences, in addition to having individually authored several books on education to include Meier’s In Schools We Trust and Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System. Their straightforward advocacy for a free and equal public education and their perspectives on the issues we face in education greatly influence my thinking and leadership. I’m not someone who would pay $5 or take the time to walk down the hallway to meet 99% of the “famous” people out there—but I have to admit, I was thrilled. When they sat down at the table next to ours, I was positively star struck. Deborah MeierKimberly, Diane Ravitch, Jerry Mottern

I especially appreciated the thoughts they shared on high stakes testing and federal “reform”. When they spoke of policy makers and our political leaders expecting that the way to improve our schools is through “PUNISHING, CLOSING AND FIRING”, I wanted to stand up and cheer. Yes, I get that it’s our responsibility as administrators to hold all employees responsible for their performance on the job. I’m not reluctant to have crucial conversations with employees. What I do not agree with is the notion that people perform better from a position of fear.

How do we empower our teachers and encourage them to collaborate more with a sharing of ideas and an openness to the idea that they can learn from one another? How do we break down the walls surrounding each classroom that causes teachers to stay inside and keep what they do quiet? How do we encourage teachers to critically analyze their own practice in an effort to improve? NOT through fear and competition and threats. Fear doesn’t help anyone do a better job, including me. Fear doesn’t help teachers to teach more effectively and it doesn’t help our students to learn either. Or better put by Deborah and Diane, “Fear is not an incentivizing tool.” For anyone. Thanks Ladies, for leading and writing and inspiring educators just like me.