Belated Self Assessment

As I stated in my course assessment that goes to the school, this course was the by far the best course I've had so far in the Educational Leadership program. It taught me most about what needs to happen in the classroom and of the endless possibilities to way curriculum can be presented.
On the self assessment part I did well with covering the material in class or assignments that were written and turned in. In that area I did "A" work.
However I am good with computers but I am definitely not a web-surfer and most definitely I am not Web 2.0 material. I would say that I am probably about a web 1.5. haha My blogging was definitely not up to the levels of many of my classmates. I did "B" maybe B+ work in this area. I would say overall I did A- work for the semester.
It was a great experience I hope to make great strides offering my students a new Web 2.0 program from now on.

Defeating "The Buffer"

When reading about "The Buffer" I could not help thinking about one of my favorite Bugs Bunny cartoons that I used to watch as kid. The episode where he took on The Crusher (pronounced "THE CRUSHA") who was a behemoth wrestler that had muscles on top of muscles and was an indestructable force, that is until he wrestled Bugs. This tiny little rabbit single handily took on and defeated The Crusher not by brute force but with guile and finesse. A new principal taking on the huge force of the Status-Quo reminds me of how Bugs Bunny defeated The Crusher and what it will take to make real change in schools.


The first quote I chose is from Prof. Bachenheimer's list- 1. D. We have created a system in which generations of talented, hard-working teachers have engaged in inferior practices without receiving feedback that would alert them to this fact.


The second two quotes are from Schmoker's book


2. "...non-interference is the best friend the status-quo could ever ask for. (Ch. 1)


3. "I'm impressed with how aware they are that isolation hides and protects ineffective practices and practitioners." (Ch. 2)

As a new principal, I will rely on some of my experiences as a leader and former company commander while in the Army. In many cases the answer to the problems we face is for the leaders to lead. The two problems I am covering are related with all three quotes I chose.

The problem with inferior practices being tolerated without any feedback is strictly a leadership problem. The practice of annual announced observations means that for the other 179 days teachers are allowed to slip into ruts or engage in practices that do not fully engage the students. A former Science supervisor I had told me that "The only work that gets done is the work that the checker checks." If supervisors only observe their teachers once per year it is only human nature for most people to stop challenging themselves and give in to the Status-Quo.

Leaders (supervisors & principals) must be willing to visit classrooms more often and give teachers feedback, even if it means telling the teacher something they do not want to hear. This leads into the second quote. Administrators need to get involved or "interfere" with their teachers daily operations. A leader that I have admired and have had the pleasure of meeting, Colin Powell, has a great quote when it comes to leadership. "Being a leader means that sometimes you have to piss people off." Leaders need to be willing to do and say things even if they are difficult and unwanted by the recipient. Good leaders do what is necessary even if it means having to take on the The Crusher. (otherwise known as the status-quo in this blog)

Schmoker mentions that teachers will admit that isolation hides and protects ineffective practices. I work with a few teachers who seem to contradict themselves in this area. They complain about the fact that our department office was turned into a classroom and we no longer have a place to collaborate. Yet when they are told that their tests and exams need to match with the teachers teaching the same subject they complain that they need to be left alone to teach how they see fit.

Many teachers seem afraid to step outside their comfort level and try new ideas. The only way to break this status-quo and defeat The Crusher is for leaders to confront ineffective teaching methods, push teachers to try new methods and then have them collaborate with their colleagues on what what works and what needs improvement.

As a new principal I plan to lead by example and make unannounced visits to classroom where I will give informal feedback to those teachers. If I were to see repeated poor practices than I would have the supervisor conduct additional formal announced observations. Getting involved is the only way to bring about true change in schools.

I encountered more difficulties loading my lesson plan onto the blog than I had creating the lesson plan itself. After many tries I had to load it the same wat I did the pictures for the mash-up.

As far as difficutlies with the lesson I realized I had to rethink my whole lesson to tailor it towards asking essential questions. This was not a bad thing because it made me raise my whole lesson to a higher level of thinking.

All of th eoverarching questions are new questions that I added to my lesson.

I hope you can all make sense of this. I do not know how well you will all be able to see the lesson once it is posted.

WHY

Viewing the Future Through a Fischbowl

My initial reaction to 'Did You Know' was that it was just listing of data. When it made the comparison to the dominance of Great Brittan at the turn of the last century it showed what could be in store for the US if we continue on our current path.

To prepare our students for the future we will need to increase computer and technology skills. Based on the video, we will also have to re-emphasize our efforts in math and science to compete for future engineering jobs.

I think that more than ever students need to have problem solving skills to survive in the future. With the rate at which everything is changing it will be difficult to teach the specific skills that will be needed. Therefore students will need to be able to solve problems that have not been addressed before.
Teaching problem solving is very different than getting students to memorize information, this means we will need to take a different approach to teaching the skills our students need.

I believe that to make this happen we will need greater cooperation with our industrial base to communicate what needs they are looking for in their future workforce.

Letter to E.D. Hirsch

Dear Mr. Hirsch,

I am writing to you in regards to your book Cultural Literacy. I first read your book in 1996 in my Education Seminar while obtaining my teaching certification. I found the book to be intriguing and somewhat of an ego boost. Being a trivia buff, I enjoyed going through the lists and seeing how many of the terms I knew. I also enjoyed comparing the number of terms I knew with that of my classmates. Since I was older than most of the others in the program I usually knew more terms than they did, this provided the ego boost I mentioned before. However I did not relish the time when they knew more than I did. I can see where someone who was not familiar with many of these terms may feel somewhat intimidated speaking with someone that referenced these cultural phrases.

In one aspect I agree that it is important for people to be educated in the culture of their nation. For someone to not know who Roger Maris, Newt Gingrich or Jonas Salk are seems they are lacking common knowledge that they should have. The more people know about our culture the more connections they can make to other topics. It follows the axiom 'the more you know the more you can learn'.

Although I agree with your philosophy on cultural literacy I differ in how people should go about learning these cultural terms. Students should not be expected to learn terms through rote memorization just so they can spit them out during a conversation. It doesn't mean anything if people can recite terms but do not know the meaning or history behind them. Students need to learn the complete history behind your cultural terms. This may present a problem with becoming as culturally literate as you wish them to become. But then again are they truly literate if they no the term but not what it means? Is a student literate if they know the alphabet but cannot read words?

Paul Tavarone

This I Believe

I believe that standards are necessary. Having standards on all levels local, state and national provides a base level from where every school can achieve different levels. Although I think most people do not look at standards as a goal that is what they are. Standards give school districts goals to strive for and vision on where they need to concentrate. If there weren't any standards than education would vary so greatly that there wouldn't be any common base of knowledge among population. The standards are the minimun level of knowledge that societies or governments sya that their citizens need in order to lead a successful life. Without this knowledge citizens would be destined for poverty and other hardships.
Of course I do not believe that the standards are what we as teachers should expect from our students. We need to push our students (and as administrators, our teachers) to constantly strive for excellence and exceed the standards as much as possible. Then again, as many say... 'if the minimum wasn't good enough it wouldn't be the standard'... lol

I believe that the standards are only as effective as the effort that a school district or teacher puts into working to meet those standards. In physics, there are equations for determining the amount of work done by machines. Which ever one is used it basically comes down to this Work input = Work output. Except for some energy loss due to the transfer to heat the work that goes into making a machine work is equal to work that the machine does.
So like anything, students will only get out of their education experience the knowledge that is equal to the amount of work they put into their education.
Of course as teachers sometime we have to push some students before they start working anywhere near their potential.

1st Official Blog

My name is Paul Tavarone, I am a Science teacher at West Orange High School. I have been working at WOHS for 11 years after spending 6 years working for the NJ Dept of Agriculture's Soil Conservation program. I am a 19 year veteran on the NJ National Guard and was deployed once in 04-05 for the War on Terror. I am currently serving on active duty again since Nov 07. I will not return to teaching until Sep 09. One benefit with this deployment is that I am working out of one the local armories so I get see my family each night while serving.
I plan to finish my Master's in Educational Leadership and become an administrator starting as an AP and eventually a principal.
My wife and I celebrated our 18th anniversary last week and we have four boys ranging in age from 4 to 12 yrs old. I enjoy playing sports and going to the beach. I also enjoy coaching my son's little league team.
I am taking this class as part of the curriculum for the Ed Leadership degree.