Planning

By: Julie Jungalwala (formerly Wilson), Recognized Thought Leader and Akribos Guest Contributor The summer professional development season is upon us and I have been enjoying working with several schools as they continue the work of translating their pedagogical and curricular vision into reality. A key part of this work is deciding on the work to be done - all while holding it lightly and with a spirit of iteration. During these conversations, we typically add things to be done - very rarely do we discuss what we might stop doing. A helpful exercise I often facilitate is called KEEP/STOP/ START. Try it with yourself and your team and commit to the changes that emerge :)

Tue May 09 08:51 AM

You’re still celebrating being named to a new leadership role in your district and you’re ready to get to work and move your school(s) forward … now is the time to consider your strengths and weaknesses carefully and to introspectively analyze your leadership style.

Tue Apr 18 09:03 AM

Grant dollars have always been available for K-12, but I would submit that we are seeing a record amount of grant dollars being announced by multiple funding sources. What problem or challenge would you solve if you had the money? Those funds are likely available in the form of a grant.

Wed Apr 05 09:29 AM

Team building is an essential component in industry and in education. Teams offer a systematic structure to address prevent and solve many of the problems we face in education today that are too difficult for one person or one group to solve.

Tue Mar 21 12:05 PM

A flashback from Dr. Kevin Elko, Guest Contributor

Tue Feb 28 08:15 AM

School districts around the nation are faced with the challenge of finding sufficient qualified staff to fill all the positions needed to serve students with disabilities well; therefore, staffing must be strategic and data-driven in order to deliver needed services effectively and efficiently. Additionally, staffing represents the largest portion of any school district’s budget therefore determining staffing needs is a critical function in any school district. The level of service students with disabilities need should be the driver for special education staffing and NOT the programs available. Service needs are determined by IEP teams and measured by minutes of service needed for students to make progress toward meeting their IEP goals. It is important that district leaders have a means to extract total minutes of service, as determined in student IEPs, per school in order to determine campus staffing needs and to ensure student IEPs are implemented with fidelity.

Tue Feb 14 08:06 AM

For more than two decades, forward-leaning educators have focused on a set of skills that for some reason all started with the letter “C”: creativity, critical thinking, communication, collaboration, etc. I want to add another “C” to that list, one, I would argue, that will be more important to the world going forward than all the rest. Civility. If we don’t get this one right, we may not have a framework in which the others will bear fruit.

Tue Jan 31 08:30 AM

In our world of uncertainty, especially for superintendents, there is one thing we can rely on: it is not a matter of if a crisis will occur, but when. A recent stint as an interim superintendent served as a reminder that the job has a unique set of challenges and adequate preparation is essential.

Tue Jan 17 07:55 AM

By: Faron L. Hollinger Ed.D.

Tue Nov 08 07:03 AM

Five years ago, I attended my 45th high school reunion and reflected in my Blog about how the interpersonal and student-focused dynamics of high schools in the early 1970s were similar and different from the high schools I worked in—at that time—in 2017. Today, I attended my 50th high school reunion, and it is striking what has happened in our country and across the world over the past five years. And while I will detail some of that history in a poem below, let’s recognize that every generation feels that it is unique, and that it contributed something essential to American history and our social fabric.

Mon Oct 17 09:26 PM

The vast majority of the 250 schools I have visited over the last decade were designed and built with little alignment to what many of use believe is the future of learning. School communities have spent vast treasure building learning spaces that re-enforce an industrial model of education that should have been retired thirty or more years ago.

Tue Oct 04 07:48 AM

If you are like me, this is certainly one of your favorite seasons of the year and the particular season to which I refer has little to do with the weather. On the other hand this season has everything to do with school colors, fight songs, tailgating, game-day attire, and how we structure and schedule our Saturday afternoons and evenings.

Tue Sep 13 09:25 AM

Some of the most interesting conversations about grants happen when I am on the road or in the air. Recently, a gentleman named Emmanuel and I started a conversation while waiting for a plane. Naturally, I am always eager to talk about grants. But unfortunately, I hear the war stories of those who have been too fearful even to try to seek a grant, or I hear lament from those who refuse to run into a brick wall again. Emmanuel runs several non-profits, so he was especially eager to hear about my work. Again, I found myself quoting from my own book, The "How to" Grants Manual, as I tried to put grant seeking in perspective. Quoting from my book is not challenging after authoring nine editions of it and teaching it for 50 years.

Wed Aug 24 11:04 AM

Have I done everything I can to prepare for this school year? Have I forgotten something that's key to keeping everyone informed? As school leaders, we are always thinking about what we need to do next.

Tue Aug 09 10:59 AM

The Winning Grants Institute is an innovative partnership between The Akribos Group and David G. Bauer Associates and is based on The “ How To” Grants Manual, now in its 9thedition. The Winning Grants Institute has developed a program that results in a success rate of approximately 50% and made it available in a cloud-based format.

Tue Jul 26 04:06 PM

This week I am visiting the venerable Tower Hill School in Delaware to share thoughts about the status of education in a rapidly changing world, and some vision about how a leading school might impact the big challenges ahead. I was asked to share a few examples of schools that are really leading the way. This is always a difficult task because there are so many, and so many I don’t even know about. Over the last decade there has been a virtual tsunami of K-12 innovation, much of it leading towards a much more student-centric, inquiryproject-experiential learning environment. As I said back in 2012, we are re-finding what eduleaders like Montessori and Dewey knew 100+ years ago.

Tue Jul 12 09:35 PM

“The Core of Change is Learning. Which is ironic. Our institutions of learning are slow, some might even say, immune to change.” – ‘The Human Side of Changing Education’, Julie (Wilson) Jungalwala

Tue May 31 09:01 AM

Is your school, like so many others, thinking of leveraging community partnerships for real world, student-choice learning? If so, read on!

Tue May 17 08:35 AM

Here we are in spring 2022. COVID-19 is shifting from pandemic to endemic. Putin invaded a sovereign nation and revived the threat of global nuclear war. Inflation is the highest it has been in four decades. And if you have been working in schools, you are the closest to burnout you have ever been – or well past it. School administrators and teachers have been heroic in their efforts to prop up the creaking bureaucracy of our inherited system of schooling. A system that was designed during a time when teachers and textbooks were the predominant sources of knowledge and the path after secondary school was highly predictable.

Thu May 05 02:05 PM

If engagement through two-way communication is part of your strategic plan, it may be time to think critically about the tools teachers are using to reach parents. Most K-12 communication solutions weren’t built with consideration for analytics, or administrator oversight. Other common issues are lack of language translation, one-way mass text blasts, and robo calls with no way for parents to return a phone call. Feature-rich parent apps may seem like the solution, but apps only work for the parents who will download them. What results is inefficient communication that frustrates teachers and parents alike. For a district administrator, these issues may go unnoticed because they can be difficult to observe. Educators are innovative–experts at making the most of the tools available to them with little extra time. Your teachers may be using a free app with little security, a tool with no administrator oversight, or their own cell phones to talk to parents. What are the signs that your teachers need better tools so that parent engagement is supporting your district goals?

Tue Apr 12 10:21 AM