The Leadership Principal

OK, now that was fun!!  Mrs. Hohmann, Mrs. Milan and I had a wonderful afternoon on Monday, February 8, 2010.  We actually got to brag about our school and the wonderful AISI project that is going on here.  We were invited to attend an Alberta Initiative for School Improvement Showcase to tell people about our “Leadership for ALL in the 21st Century” project.  We figured about 10 people would show up to our late afternoon presentation.  In fact, about 75 people showed up allowing us to tell a wide range of folks about our 3 pillared program of 7 Habits, Effective Behavioural Supports and Social Justice running here at St. Charles.  It was a wonderful time, with lots of energy and excitement.  It was obvious that people were very interested to hear about our school and what is happening with our students.  When asked about our school, our favourite answer was “come and see!”  We hope to see folks coming to our school, checking us out and finding out why our school is so successful with this project and why we are so very excited about the things that are happening with our students.  We are especially proud of our Kindergarten students and the short video presentation they created about their social justice project. It was excellent and made our presentation so very real.  Thanks Mrs. Milan and Kinders. 

Clearly, the work we are doing as a school is making a huge difference in the lives of students, staff and families.  Thank you for your continued support.

Here at Edmonton Catholic Schools is a department filled with many expert educators.  We call it Learning Support Services or LSS.  This morning I was invited to speak to LSS which is comprised of Assistant Superintendent, Principals, consultants and support staff.  The energy in the room was exceptional.  I reminded the consultants that should any of them be looking for a teaching position in the future to check out St. Charles School.  You really don’t get to be a consultant without first being a Master Teacher.  Here at St. Charles we are working hard at our Leadership Project, and it is with Master Teachers that our goals will be met.  We believe there are 4 necessary components to our Project:  1.  Top notch staff called to INSPIRE; 2.  Balanced Program of Studies delivered with Effective Practice; 3.  Students who want to be here; 4.  Facility that supports this program.

I am happy to say that even though we are into our project for only 5 months, clearly there are signs that things are happening.  We have Master Teachers who are excited, enthusiastic, challenging, who speak the same language, are open, wise, supported, happy, healthy, unified and want to be a part of this community.  We have a program from Alberta Education that is supported by our Catholic agenda.  We have students who even want to ‘run to school’, who believe they are valuable and worth it, and who live out of this belief.  We are even getting our facility into shape with all our portables now attached,  one more room added to our building, various parts of our building freshly painted and new arrangements and availability for technology.

Simply put, here at St. Charles we believe that our Leadership for ALL in the 21st Century project will help make a huge difference in the lives of every child that is registered by their parent at this school.  Why?  Because we don’t want to be catching up…we want to set the trend; we don’t want the latest fad…we want the longest lasting!!

It was a treat to speak to the LSS folks!  Thanks for being on our team.  Hope to see some of you in our building.

I always wondered what 2010 would look like, and here it is!  Amazing.  Time flies when you are having fun.  January tends to be a rather ‘dull’ month in that we are into regular teaching and not a whole lot of activities outside the classroom.  Keeping our students excited about the leadership skills has made this a much brighter month.  They are getting into Habit 3 and Habit 4, which will take us to the end of February.  Right now we are looking at how we can spread these habits to the parents of our school.  Hopefully by the end of  January we can have a clear picture of how many people might be interested.  The cost would be $200 per person (a far cry from the $1800 that is usually charged).  The problem is not the cost, but the time factor.  As we continue to talk about this at Parent Council, I will keep you posted to see if parents are interested in taking the 7 Habits themselves.  Let me know what you think.

Christmas has arrived and time flies very quickly when you are doing what you love to do!  Our school year is full of learning and energy as we continue to promote the Seven Habits, Effective Behavioural Supports and the 5 Stages of Social Justice.  Starting in January, staff will be presented with PD that will highlight the 5 stages and how we can embed them into the lives of our students.  Are we going to move mountains?  Not likely, but we will definitely be touching the hearts and minds of our students as we consider the global view that is so necessary when we strive to build leadership in every child.  Leadership is about more than promoting self.  It is in fact, the promotion of the well-being of the world; that which is directly around us and that which is an arms length away (Developing Worlds).  Can we teach children the power of Social Consciousness that will affect how they care for the world?  Yes.  It is time now to get at it.  Be prepared to hear about this in the coming months.  Have a blessed Christmas holiday and a hope-filled New Year.  See you January 4, 2010.

I have just spent the last two days at one of the best PD sessions I have ever experienced concerning student behaviour.  It is called:  Violence Threat Risk Assessment.  In a nutshell, the PD was to bring administrators up to speed on how to determine the level of risk in a school and the intervention in a school concerning behaviours of students and how these behaviours can affect the lives of all students.  It was an extremely eye-opening PD, that will help us as a district to set up a protocol to deal with any behaviours that want to escalate and cause harm to any of our students.  As you know, the safety and security of ALL students is a core belief for all schools in our district including at St. Charles.  We must be proactive as leaders in our schools to ensure the safety and security of all students.  That means I need the skills to ’see and assess’ any and all situations along with every single staff member throughout a regular school day, day after day!  It also means that we as a school are NOT alone.  We need to be in connection with all our stake holders in our school.  These include:  Senior Administration, Police, Supervisors of Clinical services, Mental Health, child protection, probation and others.  Together we can ensure that students are protected, while at the same time being available to support of children who are potentially escalating as a threat to themselves and to others.  I will keep you posted about this crucial training and how it can help us as a school in our quest to support and train leaders for today and tomorrow!

Hey team, we are into the last week of November and the completing of our second Habit, already!!  As you can tell by several parent comments on my blog, things are happening not only at school but at home too!  This is excellent.  I am sure there are many other parents out there experiencing different things from the 7 Habits training that our students are encountering.  Tell us about them!  Send me your thoughts and reflections, your ah-ha’s and your encouragement.  We also don’t mind if you have thoughts on how we can improve what we are doing.  Ask your students about their latest addition to the 7 Habits tool kit…their Data Notebooks.  Hopefully, you will find out more about these when you come for the Demo of Learning in the first week of December.  Thanks for your continued support and interest.  As one parent said: ‘we are helping to build leaders for today!” 

Today we had a visit from the Franklin Covey organization.  Her name is Gail Green and she came to speak to the staff about what is happening at our school with the Leader In Me.  It was an excellent time to share the many ’stories’ about how our students are speaking the language of the 7 Habits and especially how that language is being carried to their homes and shared with parents and other family members.  We love to hear these stories, so if any of you are reading this blog I invite you to share any story you might have about your student(s) coming home and using any of the 7 Habits language.  Have you heard such things as: ‘I’m being proactive Mom!’ or ‘We need to synergize!’.  I especially liked to hear about the student who was in a situation during recess.  He realized very quickly that things were starting to heat up.  About 10 minutes later I came across him in another part of the field.  His response:  ‘I was being proactive, so I walked away!’ 

Share your stories with us, we would really appreciate it.

This is so very exciting.  I am right now sitting at the Sheraton in Edmonton South listening to David Warlick speak about the 21st century learner.  What is so very exciting is that he is describing the very school that I am learning and working at.  That school is St. Charles Elementary School in Edmonton Alberta.  He is helping to redefine literacy in all our schools.  He is challenging all of us, especially teachers, to look at our teaching methods to make sure that the heart of education is learning, not teaching.  We will continue to present this every day at St. Charles School.  We especially will invite parents to get involved in our school.  Together, we can guide and direct our students to the very best of learning right now.

It has been a very interesting and challenging three days.  From October 14-16 I had the privilege of working closely with all the administrators of Edmonton Catholic School district on a topic that has always intrigued me.  Our leadership academy was entitled:  The Voyage of Catholic Leadership…through the Hands of God.  We looked at the following topics:  Disruptive Technologies: thoughtful responses; Then and Now: The impact of technology in our lives; Innovation through Critical and Creative Thinking; Collaborative Learning, Engagement, and Academic Performance: the links; and Innovative Leadership in the 21st Century.  Coupled with these topics were two ‘bookend talks’ by Fr. Steven Penna who challenged us to: leave a legacy, being a teacher is the most important, Find Catholics and help them become leaders, Jesus makes all the difference, use technology to reveal Jesus, does our technology bring us to Eucharist?
I was struck by many things throughout the three days.  I was challenged and supported in many ways.  Every time a thought would strike, I would be thinking about St. Charles School and the wonderful students I get to work with every day.  For example, how are we using technology to get students to be proactive?  It is a question I will be posing to all the staff on Thursday afternoon as we continue to learn and grow on our journey with the 7 Habits.
One thing we will need to do in the very near future is to have a Parent Survey in reference to the 7 Habits.  We truly want to know what parents already know about the 7 Habits BEFORE we begin teaching them in the classroom.  Then we will have another survey at the end of the school year to see if their students were able to ‘bring home’ what they learnt about the 7 Habits and to see if it made a difference in their home.  We will use technology for this by putting the survey ON LINE.  Now I am told that on line surveys usually don’t get a great response.  We are hoping that after prodding and pushing and announcing, we will get a good response from our parent community.  We will let you know about it after our Parent Council meeting at the end of the month.
One very important point I learnt this week was that education can no longer be a ‘top down’ way of teaching and learning.  In fact, it is a circular way of learning, where students, teachers and parents are directly involved in teaching a learning, where ONE PERSON no longer has all the information.  This is not new, but it is certainly something we need to be reminded about.  A classroom is a learning environment where staff and students share, collaborate, challenge and discuss as they learn.  This is the same in the home.  It is a combination of three very key elements:  Technology Innovation/21st Century Skills/Research On How People Learn.  These three elements intersect in a circular fashion with the center spot being 21st Century Learning. 

The center is 21st Century Learning

 Teaching students to become leaders, to support effective behaviour and to be conscious of the needs of the world is what will help them to live in our world today.  It is truly an exciting time to be alive.

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