In my 14 years of classroom teaching, I feel like I took Teacher Appreciation Week for granted. I didn’t really feel the need to be appreciated. I loved what I did and I felt the love from 150 high school
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How do you Learn to be a School Administrator?
“The talent squared workplace is possible because gifted bosses and great employees want the same things from a workplace: Freedom from management, mediocrity, and morons; a change; a chance.” – Dale Dauten, Gifted Boss “Connect your brain to your mouth and
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Why Good Feedback for Students Must Start with Administrators
Schools are working harder than ever to find ways to improve the learning for their students. Schools are experimenting with technology implementation, lowering class size, even implementing mindfulness, and while each of these practices may be wonderful, there is no
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National Board is No Secret Handshake Club
A few years back, a very good friend of mine won a highly regarded award for teaching. Another educational leader joked with me, “well of course she won, she’s an NBCT and you are all part of that secret handshake
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Dealing with Student Death
It is something that is becoming all too common in schools across Arizona, the need for schools to support students and staff as they grieve for classmates, friends, and students that pass. In my first ten years of teaching, this
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Do Evaluations Improve Teaching?
I spend a lot of time thinking about my district’s evaluation system these days. As a first-year director of personnel, developing something new, meaningful, and usable is on my short list. After years of being evaluated by our current evaluation
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My Advice for Newly Elected Arizona Leaders
I am a proud product of Arizona’s public schools. I am a native born Arizonan who spent her formative years in the Paradise Valley School District. I earned a degree from Northern Arizona University and have worked in schools both
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Where are the Teachers?
This was going to be the year: the year where classrooms were going to be filled with certified teachers. Arizona, like many states across the country, relies on alternative certification allowing for teachers to earn their credentials while teaching. These
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PD for Principals?
There have been two Stories from School AZ blogs focused on principal leadership this year. Beth Maloney writes a beautiful letter about what support teachers are craving in Dear Principal and Jess Ledbetter uses poetic transcription in Administrators: Be the
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Leading in the Wild West
I have successfully completed my first school year. As teachers and staff across the state are returning to the classroom, I am winding down the marathon that is summer life of a personnel director in Arizona. I have conquered the
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