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Katie Nettles

Educational Leadership:Creating Caring Schools:Creating a School Community - 0 views

www.ascd.org/...eating-a-School-Community.aspx

community school

shared by Katie Nettles on 26 Jul 16 - No Cached
  • These fundamental needs shape human motivation and have major implications for learning and development. We are willing to work very hard to preserve our sense of safety, belonging, autonomy, and competence (Deci & Ryan, l985).
  • We also bond with the people and institutions that help us satisfy our needs (Watson, Battistich, & Solomon, 1997), which makes the creation of caring, inclusive, participatory communities for our students especially important. When a school meets students' basic psychological needs, students become increasingly committed to the school's norms, values, and goals.
  • A growing body of research confirms the benefits of building a sense of community in school. Students in schools with a strong sense of community are more likely to be academically motivated (Solomon, Battistich, Watson, Schaps, & Lewis, 2000); to act ethically and altruistically (Schaps, Battistich, & Solomon, 1997); to develop social and emotional competencies (Solomon et al., 2000); and to avoid a number of problem behaviors, including drug use and violence (Resnick et al., 1997).
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  • These benefits are often lasting. Researchers have found that the positive effects of certain community-building programs for elementary schools persist through middle and high school. During middle school, for example, students from elementary schools that had implemented the Developmental Studies Center's Child Development Project—a program that emphasizes community building—were found to outperform middle school students from comparison elementary schools on academic outcomes (higher grade-point averages and achievement test scores), teacher ratings of behavior (better academic engagement, respectful behavior, and social skills), and self-reported misbehavior (less misconduct in school and fewer delinquent acts) (Battistich, 2001).
  • Actively cultivate respectful, supportive relationships among students, teachers, and parents.
  • Emphasize common purposes and ideals.
  • Provide regular opportunities for service and cooperation.
  • Provide developmentally appropriate opportunities for autonomy and influence.
Katie Nettles

Education Week: The New Ed-Tech Leader Models by Digital Example - 0 views

www.edweek.org/...02leaders.h06.html

EdTech integration EdLeadership Technology

shared by Katie Nettles on 30 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • he is giving high school students a pivotal role in serving as technology troubleshooters, and he runs a monthly "tech night" for parents to teach them the skills their children are learning in school. Beyond that, Larkin designed a special "playtime" after professional-development sessions to let teachers experiment with new technologies, alongside experts who offer guidance.
  • He is modeling the commitment by blogging and tweeting regularly about ed-tech problems and solutions, and relying on his own virtual network of peers and experts he can reach out to for advice at any time, primarily via Twitter.
  • "Teachers have started their own blogs highlighting activities in the classroom," he says. "I never told them to do it, but I said, 'Wouldn't it be nice if a parent could find out what their child is doing?'
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  • It found that high-quality leadership was "essential" to better use of technology, and that schools whose leaders had properly implemented 1-to-1 programs, for example, saw significant improvements in everything from test scores to dropout rates, over both schools without such programs and those without properly implemented programs.
  • And there are characteristics and techniques that successful leaders in the ed-tech field share—everything from risk-taking to regularly using pilot projects to test initiatives before expanding them.
  • It was once enough for school and district leaders to surround themselves with people who understood technology, but the leaders themselves didn't necessarily need deep technology know-how. That is changing, some say.
  • "Modeling is crucial. If you want your kids and teachers to be users of 21st-century tools, … you have to show that you can do it too," he says. "It shows that I'm still a teacher—I can still instruct and still learn."
  • Every two weeks, Cook schedules "Tech Friday" before school, in which teachers can highlight a particular app, software program, or technological device, or simply ask questions of others about various ed-tech tools or approaches. Sometimes, students give presentations about new technologies to the teachers during those sessions.
  • A hallmark of successful ed-tech leadership is introducing rapid-fire pilot projects, working out the kinks, and scaling up quickly if the pilots are effective,
  • Of course, not all pilot projects work, and it's vital to cut losses quickly.
  • flexibility
  • That approach of "high standards, but not standardization" is a characteristic of successful ed-tech projects,
  • The ability to adapt
  • "Seventy-five percent of what you learn is from making mistakes," he says.
  • flexibility
  • Johnson deliberately did not tell them which apps they needed
  • experiment
  • embodies the belief among a growing number of school administrators that getting educators to embrace digital teaching and learning, and to use technology more effectively, requires leading by example
  • echnology should be a tool to reach an educational goal, not the goal itself, she says.
  • But she emphasizes that the project wasn't about the iPad—it was about delivering programs that improved students' educational experiences.
  • "What would force someone to change if their results are saying what they're doing is excellent?" he asks. "But are they preparing the students for jobs that don't exist yet?"
  • Moran says she goes beyond standardized testing to evaluate success, looking at evaluating "authentic assessments" conducted by teachers.
  • The board recently adopted a formal district vision statement that embraces innovation and risk-taking, with the understanding "that it doesn't always lead to instant success," Vodicka says. That gives him the support and courage to venture into new areas, he says.
  • Even so, those ventures are calculated risks. All the ed-tech leaders interviewed for this article say they research, experiment, and test the initiatives they seek to put in place before fully enacting them
  • they all tap into extensive social-networking communities they have formed for themselves
  • Cook says he has learned more from his personal learning network than he ever learned getting his doctorate or during his first and second years as a principal.
  • But educators no longer have the luxury of hanging back on technology, he says. "I don't think it's OK anymore to say, 'I'm just not tech-savvy,' " he says. "If we're not, we're hurting kids."
  • Katie Nettles on 30 Aug 14
     
    Ed Tech Leadership… lead by example!
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