Friday News Roundup…

Here’s the Friday News Roundup for June 17, 2022

Advice for Principals: Empower Your Teachers (Education Week)

“The best thing principals can do to support their teachers is to empower them to teach. Yes, of course, it is also important to provide systems, professional development, and to be a strong leader. But what good is it if we don’t empower our teachers to do the very thing they have dedicated their professional live to?”

Larry Ferlazzo is a contributor to Education Week’s “Classroom Q & A.” I usually like what Larry Ferlazzo has to say, but not this time.

The job of an adult learning leader is to make sure learning is happening. As a superintendent mentor of mine once told me, “Scott, if there is no learning, there is no teaching – period.”

Let’s change the first sentence above a bit: The best thing principal learning coaches can do to support their learning coaches is to empower them to build learning plans that will lead to deep learning for all of their learners.

The First 5 Years in the Classroom Are Tough. This Teacher Has Ideas to Lessen the Burden (Education Week)

“As teacher job-satisfaction rates plummet and administrators fret about the potential for higher turnover rates, it’s more important than ever for teachers to tell their stories.”

“There are a lot of things that administrators or leaders can do to support new teachers. The first is that you have to see new teachers from a strengths-based perspective. You have to know that they are walking into a building with experiences and expertise that will be for the betterment of children.”

“I think with that is creating a culture of reflection…If we can create a culture in which teachers can come together to have vulnerable discussions about what they’ve been experiencing, to reflect, then we can create more shared decision-making, so teachers can have a voice and a seat at the table.”

“The last thing I would say is we have to see teaching as human work. That’s the heart of the book (The First Five): seeing teaching and teachers as human. Yes, we’re teaching the student in front of us, but we come in with particular experience in schools in this country that we either replicate or we try to disrupt. We gotta have conversations with one another about our human experiences so that we know who’s teaching next door. How can we really build real relationships with one another so that we have a better understanding of why we make the types of decisions that we make as professionals?”

The author of the comments above is Patrick Harris, a middle school English teacher near Detroit who is wrapping up his seventh-year teaching.

I have news for Mr. Harris. What he wants to happen inside traditional public school is never going to happen at scale. It hasn’t happened over the past 50 years. It won’t happen over the next 50 years.

In order for learning leaders to realize such goals, it will be necessary to invent a new system of learning. The present system is incapable of achieving Mr. Harris’s dreams on a large scale.

Great Hearts Hope In-Person Pods + Online Teaching = New Type of Hybrid School (The 74)

“In the weeks after COVID first shut down schools, the headlines were replete with stories about pandemic pods, small groups that came together to share the responsibility of caring for kids, overseeing distance learning – or replacing traditional school altogether. They were as endlessly varies as they were fascinating.”

“Among those watching the pod experiments was Kurtis Indorf, in charge of developing new programs for the Great Hearts network of nearly three dozen successful charter schools in Texas and Arizona. Great Hearts uses an academic model known as classical education; its graduates score well above national averages on college entrance tests and outperform students in traditional district schools on math and reading tests. Its nine Texas schools earned a collective B on state accountability ratings in 2019, the last time reading and math proficiency data was collected.”

It’s early but learning pod education seems to be hanging around. The next step is to make these pods available to poor families. That will take state money appropriated for such purpose, and it will be interesting to see what state steps to the plate first.

Legal Worries Prompt a Randolph (VT) School to Take Down a Black Lives Matter Flag (Seven Days)

“The Black Lives Matter flag flew in front of Randolph Union High School for three years, but an administrator abruptly had it taken down last month over legal concerns. On May 2, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that Boston had discriminated when it refused to raise the banner of a Christian group on a city flagpole. That case has clear-cut ramifications for schools if they allow one flag – and not another – to fly on campus, said Layne Millington, superintendent of Vermont’s Orange Southwest School District.”

Whether you are a fan of a certain flag or not, Randolph’s decision to take down their Black Lives Matter banner signifies the traditional school’s inability to meet the needs of all children and all families. The larger schools and districts get, the more disagreement appears around what is truly in the best interest of children. It’s time to go small. It’s time to make learning comfortable for all young learners.

Have a great weekend,, and we will talk Monday. SVB