Year in Review with Jethro Jones Transformative Principal 1052

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Vision Mission Strategic Goals

Strategic goals line up with the district’s strategic goals. Our vision for Tanana is “give people what they need, when they need it.” This vision applies to staff, students, parents, and other community members as needed.

Our vision for the future of Tanana is clear and has been reviewed throughout the year. Here is the updated 4 year plan. At two times this year, I have met with each teacher individually to discuss the vision for the school and ensure that we are able to make collaborative decisions about the future. Additionally, the Leadership Team Running Agenda reviews and gives information about the trajectory of our school, as well as our Faculty Meeting Running Agenda and our PLC Session Board.

Data for Informed Decision Making

While academic success is surely one of our goals at Tanana, in this building year, there has not been a lot of focus on traditional school data. While we have certainly analyzed and reviewed MAP data, PEAKS data was essentially not useful, and we have focused more on other issues.

One of the major areas of concern related to attendance and tardies. We have systematically documented tardy issues and found that typically less than 5% of our students are tardy, which indicates it is a small problem, and not a widespread issue. We have identified 19 students who are consistently tardy and in the halls and have created a student contract for them. To enable us to identify the students who were the ones causing issues, we created hall passes for teachers to use to monitor student hallway use.

Additionally, we used informal qualitative data to determine next steps for our school this year, asking teachers the areas in which we needed to focus. A review of our progress will be completed at the conclusion of this school year.

Furthermore, at the beginning of the year, Dr. Orr and I met with each teacher to review MAP data and how it would impact their classrooms. We used the documents in this folder for our review with the teachers.

Empowering Work Environment

At Tanana Middle School, our success cannot be dependent on the principal’s ability to manage many different initiatives. That is a recipe for disaster. Teachers and other staff take a prominent role in ensuring that plans are successful.

One such area is our advisory options. Each teacher (and staff member that wants to) may submit a new advisory option every two weeks. This list shows all the different options that have been created this year. Each teacher takes responsibility for creating something of value for students. Many items on that list are also student-generated ideas that came from students wanting to have a bigger say in what we do.

Our school librarian was given the directive at the beginning of the year to make the library a “place where we learn and create” and has been given decision-making authority to accomplish that. Mrs. Martin redesigned the library, removed a wall, facilitated technology distribution, and created makerspaces in the library, that change nearly every single day.

Mr. Balash has adjusted his way of delivering instruction in the classroom to ensure all students are engaged in the process of learning and acting.

The beginning of the year, end of the year, and many other activities throughout the year have been organized by teachers working in committee to make meaningful change to our school.

Continuous Improvement

One of my favorite ideas is that we are never done improving. It doesn’t matter how much we do or don’t do, we can always get better. There is always room for growth, no matter what we are doing. One small example is that our hall passes were not as effective as we wanted, and so we created a second hall pass that met the teachers’ needs. One group of teachers needed additional support, so they created their own processes for dealing with hall passes in their section of the hallway.

A good example of our belief in continuous improvement relates to the Leadership Team Running Agenda. On the April 25 agenda, we had this posted on our agenda: Reevaluate schedule B, please…comment from teacher ”Does Schedule B really help us grow into the schedule we want for the future? Does it help train students to be ready to handle the freedom of an open schedule?”

Even when we make a decision, we know that we have a long way to go to be where we want to be. Nothing in our school is too sacred to talk about.

Celebrating Success and Acknowledging Failures

Each faculty meeting, we start with celebrations. There are many areas when I have failed at something this year. I usually refer to those on my podcast. One of the failures that we had this year was an attempt to roll out a school-wide service learning program. A couple teachers came to the leadership team with an idea, and we tried to roll it out to the staff. It was too soon, and I let the leadership team know that I had jumped the gun too much on that.

Another area where I failed this year related to collaborating with principals relating to personalized learning. I attempted to have weekly meetings with other principals around personalized learning. Nobody showed up, and so I waited “by the phone” each week. I’ve recently started doing a Fairbanks mastermind with four other principals in the district on Friday mornings. This has been a much better solution and much more powerful because there are just a few of us. Even so, we have only had a couple meetings, so we will see where it goes.

Personalized Learning Student Reflections - One of our teachers

Ideal Week Schedule

Each week, I schedule out my week and plan to spend the morning with teachers. I used to think that I needed to be in classrooms observing teachers, but I’ve realized it’s much more powerful when I think of that time as coaching teachers. I might be in their room while they are teaching, or I might be talking with them during their prep, talking about how we can meet their goals. Other items that I time block include writing newsletters to parents, collaborating with my assistant principal, and making time for district-focused work each Tuesday afternoon.

Having time blocks has really helped me to be present in the moment so that I can devote attention to the things that are really important.

Systems Leadership

One of my goals this year after reading “The One Thing” has been about being more proactiv...