MiddleWeb | Chris Toy Diary

CHRIS TOY
Diary #1

Focus on Goals and Balance
with One Week to Go

School begins in one week. It's 6:30 AM and I'm getting ready for the first staff meeting of the 2001-2002 school year. This system level meeting is convened by the superintendent and includes all the administrators and teacher leaders for each of the four schools in Freeport. The superintendent will share the school committee's goals, his goals, and talk about what he'd like us to focus on for the coming year.

Our school committee does a good job of keeping the goals focused and reasonable in number. There are four major goals this year:

*Continue to strengthen teaching and learning to enable all student to reach Expectations (local standards) and Learning Results (state standards).
*Create more respectful environments within our schools.
*Continue to address major facility needs.
*Review curriculum continuity within disciplines from school to school and grade to grade.

Although these are all important, and are being worked on within our school, the most important one is the first goal to strengthen teaching and learning. While it might not be politically correct, I would consider dropping the last part referring to expectations and learning results. What really matters is the quality of instruction, what happens in the classroom between students and teachers each day.

I think the other three goals serve the first goal by improving the overall learning environment. A more respectful environment is supported by the middle school's involvement with things like teaming, a school wide peer mediation program, the statewide Civil Rights project, an anti-bullying project and grant developed in partnership with our parent team.

Students arriving in one week will experience, first hand, what it's like as we address our major facility needs. I'm not sure they will be able to use the front door or whether the cafeteria will be usable. Even so, I believe we'll be ready to open in a safe and clean environment. Teachers and parents who are just seeing the construction site for the first time are appalled. Since I have seen the day-to-day process and the progress these past weeks, I am optimistic. Besides, what other choice is there? We'll do our best.

Two goals for the year

As for my goals this year, I will focus on two areas. The first is communication. It seems that parents need more information about school from teachers. The school also needs to hear from our families about their perceptions of our school.

*I will work with the staff to improve home-school communication about academics.

-- each teacher will have a yearly syllabus and course outline for open house

-- each teacher/team will contribute to periodic newsletters updating parents

-- I will highlight instructional practices and programs in newsletters

*I will work with the staff on a system for obtaining feedback from parents, teachers, and students about their experiences at the middle school.

-- form a committee to develop a plan to present to the faculty, parents, and students.

*I will develop a system for getting regular feedback from parents, teachers, and students on my role as principal.

My second goal is to help teachers to reflect on instructional practices to improve programs and instruction.

*I will take more time to visit classrooms and provide feedback to staff on their instructional practices.

-- I will visit at least one classroom each day for at least 30 minutes and follow up by communicating with the teacher in person within two days.

* I will meet weekly with teams of teachers to discuss improvement of instruction.

-- I will set a day each week to attend grade level and unified arts team meetings.

-- I will set one afternoon each week as an open meeting with staff to talk about instructional practices.

Some thoughts on balance

Each fall I remember my first day as a high school assistant principal 16 years ago. I arrived in August to move into my office. The previous assistant principal had left me some notes about his job, but what I remember most is a small newspaper clipping. The article described something called quadrivalence.

The writer explained that the term valence refers to an electrical charge, either positive or negative. Most things in nature have positive or negative charges. Some things in nature have both a negative and a positive charge, like magnets, or water molecules. The writer claimed that school leaders are often faced with situations that are quadrivalent, or having not two, but four charges. Many decisions require school leaders to take into account at least four diverse interest groups -- teachers, students, parents, and of course, the leader's own perspective. The author explained that leaders experience the greatest stress when they are unable to reconcile at least two of the four perspectives.

All this reminds me to keep looking to our school's mission statement and belief statements as we begin the new school year! But even that will be an exercise in balancing vision and action as the teachers will need to get to their rooms to take care of getting ready.

As Joel Barker said, "Vision without action is only a dream. Action without vision only passes time. Vision with action can change the world." Perhaps that's why we are in education, maybe?

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