No Office Day

Today was a day I'd been looking forward to for a few weeks.  I am involved in a Twitter group  that meets online Monday evenings at 9pm.  We're all school administrators or aspiring school administrators from Kentucky but sometimes friends from other states float in and out of our chat as well.  It's our Professional Learning Network that I look forward to connecting with weekly to make me a better principal for my students.  A few weeks back, we decided to hold a #KyNoOfficeDay, meaning principals across the state would not answer email, not schedule meetings, not get inundated in the red tape of being an principal but instead spend the day immersed in classrooms with kids.  Here's a glimpse of my day.  Can't wait for the next one!!

I'll put all of my text first then my pictures.  (I can't blog well enough to embed the pictures one at a time!!).  


7:30am  Today's No Office Day began with a few impromptu meetings as teachers arrived back from Thanksgiving Break and then the task of returning phone calls and one last swipe at the email before the day kicks off.


8:20am:  Time for our daily staff huddle to go over important announcements or celebrations of the day.  It was a great sized group today for the first day back from a 5-day weekend.  :)

8:30am:  The dismissal bell rings and it's time for kids to head in from buses and to classrooms from breakfast.  I hung out in the front hallway to collect donations for Master Monday (a fundraiser benefiting Master Provisions).  It was a great opportunity to supervise our Leaders of Hallway Assistance as they completed their jobs of the day.  They alerted me their neon vests were missing.  Yikes!  Must look for those...

8:45am:  Our Leader of Morning Announcements was absent today so I took the reigns for the first time in weeks (I love the announcements!)  then we quickly followed the regular announcements with our Leaders of School Patriotism leading the school in the Pledge to the Flag.

9:00am  The day is off and running and I'm heading up the hallway to classrooms, I found a sick little guy and delivered him to the clinic and headed back to first grade.  The kiddos were working diligently on finishing up morning work before heading to their Reading 212 classes.

9:10am:  In 212 Reading class, I stayed in 1st grade classrooms to check out the learning in our littlest Longhorn rooms.  The student work ranged from word ladders to visualization techniques.  Every room was intently focused on a specific reading standard matched to the students' needs.

9:25am  Next stop is our reading lab to check out student work on three programs:  Fast ForWord, Reading Assistant, and Imagine Learning.  The kids were intense in their concentration on Fast ForWord until Reading Assistant took over and then the room exploded with oral reading fluency practice.  So awesome.  So, so awesome.

9:40am:  A stop in my office to pick up my laptop to use for an evaluation in a few minutes and I discover newly-delivered books for teachers to begin a book study after the Winter Break.  Leaders of Their Own Learning is a book published by Jossey Bass and created by and for Expeditionary Learning schools.  We'll  be exploring the student engaged assessment in this book with teachers from Yealey and Thornwilde in 2015.

9:50am:  Time to visit Mrs. Pendleton's 5th grade classroom for her second observation of the year.  This time will be a tad different.  I'll be scribing everything she says, filling out a district evaluation for her, then categorizing her statements and actions by new domains of the our new evaluation system and inputting them into a state database.  All the while, attempting to take photos and document the kids' learning so I can tell you all about it here.  Whew...multitasking at its finest.  It's an exceptional lesson, by the way.  Exceptional.  Did I say exceptional?

11:00am:  Next up was 1st grade lunch.  150 super happy first graders enjoying their choice of pizza or BBQ sandwich.  Pizza was the clear choice but packers won out today, interestingly.  I learned ALL kinds of stuff at lunch.  New knock knock jokes, the names of the Mutant Ninja Turtles, where everyone went for Thanksgiving dinner, and why cats are better than dogs.  Who knew?

11:30am:  After lunch was over, I scooted back to my office to pick up that book order for the teacher book study and took off with my cart around the building to make deliveries and answer any questions teachers had about the book study.

11:40am:  My next stop was into the library for a kindergarten lesson exploring Mo Willem's website (WOW...it is neat).  The kids did an amazing job checking out information about one of their favorite authors.

11:45am:  When I walked out of the library and looked up the hallway, 5th grade was in the midst of class change so I walked up to visit with them and watch them switch classes.  Their procedures in the hallway are exemplary.  So proud of them and their teachers for reinforcing the practice of being respectful in the hallways for the 3rd and 4th grade students who are in class learning.  Oh my gosh...and they're just such a polite bunch of kids.  Our 5th graders are terrific role models for our building. 

11:50am:  I trailed one 5th grade classroom as they headed to the computer lab for benchmark math testing.  This will be our third benchmark of the year as we're keeping a close eye on our growth from August through April.  Kids are keeping their own data notebooks and taking their own data very seriously.  We've seen a big change in their approach to their benchmarks since instituting data notebooks at our school.  They own their learning.  This makes a huge difference.

11:55am:  As I passed by the Wonderwall (a new addition to our center hallway), I realized we had a TON of wonders without responses so seeing as I had time to devote for tasks such as this, I plopped down on the floor and started researching some wonders.  The kids post something they wonder about on a post it and stick it up on the wall.  Other kids or adults can research their wonders and then turn into the office so the wonder and the answer can be announced.  Then we post for everyone to see.  Today's wonders were:  I wonder how many bird species are living.  I wonder why does someone say "a minute" but it's really like 5 minutes?  I wonder  what is the most popular candy.  I wonder how do you get seeds to grow crops?  I wonder who made this school?

12:15pm:  Ah...the life of the principal calls.  I knew it would happen eventually so I was pretty impressed that I got to 12:15pm before I got the, "I need to meet with you right now." request.

12:45pm:  Crisis averted and I was on to my next task that had to be completed which was completing letters to go home to our 5th grade parents in light of a schedule change that is upon us on December 15th. 

1:05pm:  Time for 5th grade lunch and today I'm meeting with the Principal's Leadership Team to plan an upcoming academic celebration for our building.  These are 11 5th graders who were selected by their 4th grade teachers last year to work with me to create student-centered assemblies, events, and culture in the building.  They do a fabulous job and in their words, "The assemblies are a lot more fun now."  I would have to agree. 

1:40pm:  Our meeting was short and sweet and we got it all planned out with me as the scribe and the kids as the leaders of the meeting.  Now it was time to head to the cafeteria to talk with the entire 5th grade class about an upcoming schedule change based on student input.  The kids put a lot of thought into their balance of classes and requested to have more science experiments and social studies expeditions.  The teachers responded with a very workable solution.  We felt it best to talk to them at one time so we'd give the same message and then allow them to debrief with homeroom teachers.

2:10pm:  I wandered up the hallway with my phone in hand ready to tweet my adventures and walked right into a 3rd grade classroom as they were organizing their BOB books.  BOB stands for Big Ol Binder and it's part of the HOPS homework organization program researched and tested through Cincinnati Children's Hospital and NKU.  We've instituted this program in our school this year for our 2nd through 5th graders as a means of teaching them organization and responsibility.  It hasn't been without tears and frustration but we are seeing a difference in the kids' ability to organize themselves.

2:20pm:  Next up was a 2nd grade classroom where I became entranced in the teacher's read aloud.  She was reading a book from the I Survived series on Hurricane Katrina.  What most impressed me was the questioning of the students.  Actually, what impressed me more than their questions was their deep thought and then purposeful questions that connected to prior leaning.  I could tell this was a skill that had been taught and I was just so impressed that they had truly experienced the comparison of twin texts and the type of questions they should ask when comparing two genres of the same subject.  And...they're eight years old.  Oh my.

3:00pm:  As I flew back to the office so as not to miss my meeting with the Teacher Tech Leaders (students who learn technology and then train teachers on planning periods and before and after school), I couldn't believe it was already 3pm.  Holy moly.  3:05...3:10...finally one of my foursome came by and asked me if we were meeting.  I told her we could follow up the next day and she exploded with excitement to tell me that our chorus had been selected by a local radio station as a finalist in the Q102 Christmas Choir contest.  Voting starts today!!  I guess we'll plan Skype sessions tomorrow. 

3:30pm:  Whew.  Time for dismissal, announcements, and ESS (extended school services).  I'm exhausted and have 198 emails to get through, but it was a great No Office Day!  Check out our photos below documenting the day.