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Podcast: How Idaho is Exceeding Expectations and Driving Student Achievement Gains in Schools

Posted January 13th, 2010 in Podcasts, Success Stories

Lisa Kinnaman won’t come out and say it, but – in terms of school improvement – the schools and districts who are participating in her projects are thriving.

(Scroll down to the podcast link at the bottom to skip straight to the good stuff.)

As the State School Improvement Coordinator for Idaho, Kinnaman has been hard at work over the past few years figuring out how to get the most out of improvement and professional development dollars. What she and the entire network of educators, administrators, coaches and leaders have done in that time is nothing short of impressive.

In this 24-minute podcast, I talk to her about the nuts and bolts of their program and Lisa lets us in on what’s made Idaho so successful.

She discusses:

• How they’ve strategically partnered with the state’s university network
• How they’ve engaged and trained a powerful contingent of distinguished educators to build capacity
• How they’ve grown the program to serve an astonishing 54 sites statewide

Continue reading…

National Recognition for Your School’s Most Promising Practices!

Posted January 8th, 2010 in News, Noteworthy

As part of the National Schools of Character awards program, the Character Education Partnership (CEP) gives annual Promising Practices awards to schools and districts in the United States and elsewhere for implementing unique and specific strategies in character education. Selected schools and districts receive an award certificate at the Promising Practices Awards Ceremony at the CEP National Forum on Character Education. In addition, a description of their winning practices appears in the National Schools of Character annual publication and on CEP’s website.

If your school or district has developed and successfully implemented a unique practice, CEP encourages you to apply for a Promising Practices award. They are not looking for a description of your whole character education program, but rather for a specific practice or aspect of your program that other schools may learn from and even replicate.
Continue reading…

Sprint Character Education Grant

Posted January 4th, 2010 in Uncategorized

Important information about the Sprint Character Education Grant:

Through the Sprint Character Education Grant Program, the Sprint Foundation will award grants to school districts and individual schools to fund the purchase of resource materials, supplies, equipment and software that facilitates and encourages character education among K-12 students. With a national reach, the program is open to all US public schools (K-12) and US public school districts.

The Sprint Character Education Grant program will accept applications for Character Education programs that promote youth leadership, youth volunteerism, school pride and a positive school culture.
2010 Funding and Grant Application Period:

The Sprint Character Education Grant Program will award individual school grants up to $5,000 and school district grants up to $25,000. The grant application period will run from Jan. 4th – Feb. 5th 2010. In 2009 the Sprint Foundation awarded more than $450,000 in combined grants to schools and school districts.

For further information and to apply visit the grant website and download a Word Document of the grant application here.

Remember the Starfish

Posted September 3rd, 2009 in Motivation

I was just flipping through an older version of our Coaching Guidebook and I found the Starfish Poem that we’d published on the front cover. I was struck by just how perfect and meaningful it is for us all as educators, coaches, parents, mentors, and friends.

Remember the Starfish as you enter into this new school year – your work is heroically important, never lose sight of that. Ever.

Once upon a time there was a wise man
who used to go to the ocean
to do his writing.

He had a habit of walking
on the beach
before he began his work.

One day he was walking along
the shore.
As he looked down the beach,
he saw a human
figure moving like a dancer.

He smiled to himself to think
of someone who would
dance to the day.
So he began to walk faster
to catch up.

As he got closer, he saw
that it was a young man
and the young man wasn’t dancing,
but instead he was reaching
down to the shore,
picking up something
and very gently throwing it
into the ocean.

As he got closer he called out,
“Good morning! What are you doing?”
The young man paused,
looked up and replied,
“Throwing starfish in the ocean.”

“I guess I should have asked,
why are you throwing starfish in the ocean?”
“The sun is up and the tide is going out.
And if I don’t throw them in they’ll die.”

“But, young man, don’t you realize that
there are miles and miles of beach
and starfish all along it.
You can’t possibly make a difference!”

The young man listened politely.
Then bent down, picked up another starfish
and threw it into the sea,
past the breaking waves and said-
“It made a difference for that one.”

~Author Unkown

How to read a book you don’t want to read.

Posted August 29th, 2009 in Reading and Resources, Strategies

It happens to everyone – even adults.  Assigned reading that makes you want to pull your hair out.

Never fear! This video discusses a strategy for how to get through it (maybe even with a smile?)  Great for adults, students, spouses, and even young teachers making their way through continuing education programs.

If you’re on a dial-up, there’s a nice summary of the video content here.

Thanks to Trelease on Reading for the great resource!

How to read a book you don’t want to read from
Jim Trelease on Vimeo.

Student Learning Protocol in Action: A Case Study

Posted July 14th, 2009 in Strategies, Success Stories

Earlier this month I had the opportunity to catch up with Mitch Richards, a 4th Grade teacher at John Campbell Elementary in Selah School District about a program that they have been developing called the John Campbell Instructional Learning Cohort (JCILC).

The cohort is a grassroots movement by a group of teachers, led by Richards, who decided to take professional development into their own hands by coming up with a structure to benefit from observing one another. The tool of choice? Our recently developed Student Learning Protocol.

Richards was inspired after doing an observation a few years back: “It was an overwhelming learning experience for myself to be able to watch another classroom and then reflect back on my own teaching practices – and that really started the interest in observing and learning from each other.”

Continue reading…

The Latest from Jeanne Harmon: Baby Boomers in Washington

Posted March 25th, 2009 in News

I always look forward to Jeanne Harmon’s (Executive Director for the Center for Strengthening the Teaching Profession) emails – they’re insightful, useful, and really relevant. Her latest on baby boomers in Washington State was no different:

The National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future recently published a report about the impending retirement of baby boomers and its projected effect on public schools. Their review produced a picture of the workforce across the nation but doesn’t give specifics for Washington.

The NCTAF report states:
- 1.7 million are approaching retirement (avg retirement age = 56)
- in 2011, the Baby Boomer generation will begin to retire in large numbers

To read the NCTAF report, see: www.nctaf.org

So what about Washington?
Continue reading…

Act Now to Access Funds from the Federal Stimulus Package – We Can Help You!

Posted March 25th, 2009 in Funding, News

The Federal Stimulus Package includes money for Washington State, but you’ll have to be ready to act fast – the competitive application process will start soon and you can expect a short timeline for 2009-10 dollars. Go to the OSPI website for the details or read below for the most pertinent information. We’ll keep you updated on new developments – check back often.

$44.5 Million for Washington State
The Federal Stimulus Package allocates $44.5 million for Washington State over the next two years – allocation will begin soon, so you need to be ready to submit your grant. Read more about the details on the OSPI site.

OSPI Will Announce the Application Process Soon
Once the state’s proposal for using stimulus package funds is approved by DOE, OSPI will use the iGrants system to notify superintendents and district fiscal managers regarding the application process for these competitive grants.

Time is of the Essence
Given the anticipated start date of July 1, 2009 for stimulus package grants awarded for the 2009-2010 school year, you can expect a relatively short timeline for the application process.

We Can Help You
If you want to take advantage of this huge opportunity but you’re not exactly sure where to start, we can help you pull your proposal together. We want to see your great school improvement work continue and we understand how the state budget is going to affect your school or district. Let’s talk about how we can work together to make sure you can access these funds.

We want to hear from you
Call or email us – we’d love to have a conversation with you about how you can tackle this opportunity. You can reach us by phone at 425-681-4446.

Click here to download a PDF of the informational flyer.

PTL Officially Joins Forces with Leadership Innovations Team

Posted January 8th, 2009 in News

Happy New Year! We’re excited to tell you about a Big Change…

Dear Friends,

We’re writing today to share some exciting changes that are in store for the new year. As of January 1st, Powerful Teaching and Learning into Practice and The Leadership Innovations Team have joined forces and merge into one, unified company.

Moving forward into 2009 we will continue to provide all of our current customized professional development solutions and services but we will operate solely under the Leadership Innovations Team name.

This is a big change, and one that we have thought about for a long time, but we believe that bringing these two companies together will enable us to deliver even more powerful solutions to help K-12 educators everywhere improve, grow, and increase student achievement levels. We remain dedicated to continuing to focus on instruction, leadership, and coaching.

We’ve included more information about the change below and we encourage you to contact us with questions or concerns that you may have. There’s also an entire web page dedicated specifically to information about the transition.

As always, we thank you for your ongoing support and partnership. We look forward to many years of working together to build stronger leaders, better schools, happier educators, increased achievement, and a better future for our children.

Sincerely,

Alison Olzendam and Heather Knight, Co-Presidents
The Leadership Innovations Team

Why we’re making the change:

• It’s a natural progression. PTL and LIT have enjoyed a successful partnership over the past year, delivering award-winning leadership development programs in tandem with results-driven programs for educators at every level. In fact, we’ve worked so closely, bringing the two companies together under the same umbrella seems almost more natural to us than operating separately. Consolidation will also allow us to deliver an even more streamlined set of solutions.
• To reduce confusion and allow us to be more flexible. The term “powerful teaching and learning” is used in many areas of the education field and it has led to some confusion about our work and related associations. Our mission is to provide customized solutions for K12 educators – basically, we want to help you figure out exactly what your school or district needs to do to improve. We are not tied to any single protocol or process – so we have more flexibility to work with your unique situation. We want our name to reflect that.
• We truly believe that leadership is the difference. Here is what we’ve come to realize over the past three years: leadership is the thing that makes powerful teaching and learning as a practice really work. Everyone must be a leader from where they stand. And everyone must have a leadership mindset in order to facilitate growth and improvement. Without a strong leadership emphasis, even the best programs, protocols, and systems will fail.

How this will affect you:
Other than visiting us at a different website address and some cosmetic branding changes, this shouldn’t affect you at all. All normal business operations (including contracts, accounting, scheduling, phone numbers, addresses, etc) will remain exactly the same. Even our powerfulteaching.com email addresses will continue to work for the next few months (they’ll forward directly to our new leadershipinnovationsteam.com addresses).

If you’ve got a few questions
We know you might have some questions about this, so we’d like to encourage you to feel free to use the feedback form on the website to let us know what’s on your mind. We’ll get back to you and we’ll also incorporate everything into the FAQ page.

The Power of 360

Posted June 25th, 2008 in News

Let’s face it, we are all nervous about soliciting feedback from others. If you ask the question, what if you don’t like the answer? You still have to deal with it.

Being reflective about our practice as educators or administrators is about taking some risks, but remaining committed to constant improvement is essential to our end goal: providing the best possible education for tomorrow’s leaders.

Someone just shared this article about the 360 process with me, and I think it is an amazing example of how powerful it can be. This quote, in particular, really drove it home:

Gill, who also did a 360-degree review last year, said it’s helpful both to him and to school board members, who may have little or no contact with most district employees. “It’s good to know how people feel, to get that raw, anonymous feedback,” he said. “It helps shape the decisions you make.”

If you are curious about how a 360 process works, and how you might get the ball rolling, check out our Extraordinary Leaders Institute page.

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