Principal Interview: Sheri Marcotte of Chapel Hill 7th and 8th Grade Center

Chapel Hill 7th and 8th Grade Center is a middle school on the west side of Indianapolis. MSD of Wayne Township Superintendent Dr. Terry Thompson has overseen an impressive series of building initiatives which, most recently, included rebuilding the school into a state-of-the-art facility. As part of that makeover the school also got a new principal. I had chance to speak with Sheri Marcotte this past week. She is an experienced and impressive educator. I asked her to comment on lessons learned in her first year at her new school. Below are excerpts that I have paraphrased from her responses to a number of questions posed to her in our conversation.

What is your background?

I graduated from Indiana University and worked at a wholesale produce company while I did my student teaching. It was an invaluable experience and gave me some great insight into customer service and how to really focus on what your customers want and need. That experience has served me well as an educator.

My career has been spent in the Indianapolis area including teaching in IPS (Indianapolis Public Schools) and as a middle school administrator and principal in both Franklin Township and Warren Township. I have worked in 5 different middle schools of the past 35 years.


What motivated you to take a new position at Chapel Hill?

I live on the westside closer to Chapel Hill and I am very familiar with the school corporation. It sounds materialistic but the new building was a very attractive to me and a big reason I wanted to come. In the end though the Superintendent Terry Thompson and Assistant Superintendent Dr Jeff Butts both convinced me that this was a place that needed me and that would give me lots of opportunity to positively impact students.


Describe the situation at the school when you arrived.

First of all, the people were great. I could tell that the hiring process the school had been through was excellent. The staff was really top notch.

I was aware that some of the staff might be resentful of me. I was prepared for some groups of staff to harbor some animosity towards me. That seems typical for a lot of new principals. But, I did not really experience that. I felt very comfortable with the people almost immediately.

The school had plenty of instructional programs. That was not a problem. In fact, my first impression was that there were too many instructional programs. The school seemed to lack a bit of focus.

The biggest thing I noticed was that the school generally did not deal well with large groups of students. Classroom management was fine but once students were in the halls, moving between classes, going to lunch, attending an assembly or going to the buses the environment became chaotic. This was not acceptable to me. I believe that students should behave well at all times in a well-run school. The passing periods and going to buses should be no exception. The lax atmosphere was sending a message to our students that acting in this way was acceptable behavior.

Fortunately, I came from a very similar school with a very similar demographic of students. Instilling order is second nature to me so I knew we could address this need.


What was the culture of the school when you came in? What did you do to change things?

Many of the staff members seemed to feel powerless in their inability to impact and address negative student behavior. I think they felt some underlying needs but didn’t really know what could be done about it. I tried to be focused and deliberate in my first year. I focused on just a few things.

First, as I mentioned, we added a lot of structure around how we dealt with large groups of students. The staff was skeptical that we could easily deal with this. Dismissal, in particular, was horrible. When you have 1,200 middle school students headed for the buses at the same time, it is important that you have order or things can get out of hand. We began by having teachers walk their classes to the buses. Students were required to be quiet and orderly. We saw an immediate and drastic change regarding how smoothly dismissal went. It was great. Teachers would come up to me in the halls and thanked me for creating such an orderly dismissal process.

Shortly after we began this practice, some teachers began to ask how much longer we would be walking kids to the buses. I realized that our management of students was not yet part of our culture. I became encouraged though when other teachers began to speak up and request that we always walk students to buses. This told me that they got it. It wasn’t a one time thing. We needed to maintain our focus on managing the environment of the school. I my mind it, starts on ensuring that the classrooms, halls and all common areas were as orderly as possible.

Another thing I changed pretty quickly was when the schools leadership team met. As a group they met each morning at the start of school. This meant that many of my best teachers were not in homeroom classes with students. To me, students are our number one priority so I changed the schedule around so that every teacher had a group of homeroom students – including those on the leadership team.


What are your plans for the coming school year? What will be your focus in the coming year?

Generally a lot of what I did in the first year was to instill order. The school was a chaotic environment and one where not everyone felt safe. We worked hard to address that immediately.

This year we are working on “Engagement by Design”. We want to ensure that our students are truly engaged in their studies. I don’t think this happens by accident and it doesn’t always happen naturally. We are being intentional about engagement with our students.

The other things we are doing this year is nothing. By that I mean we are doing nothing new. This school corporation is well known for its excellence and for staying on the leading edge of educational practice. But sometimes it translates into doing too much or changing practice too much. For this year, we are going to stick with the great curriculum we have and make it work for us. I am excited about that.

---

Scott Wallace is the Executive Director of the National Center for School Leadership. To learn more about their services and how they work to improve school culture and develop school leaders, visit their website at http://www.ncfsl.org/

Is ELearning For Teachers One Answer to School Reform?

School leaders face many challenges in today's education environment. As school districts are just coming to grips with the accountability components of No Child Left Behind, our new administration promises to create even more requirements for public schools. Meanwhile the realities of improving student achievement remain as prevalent and underfunded as before. School superintendents and school principals do admirable jobs pursuing school reform and keeping up with the needs of their teachers and students, however with their lack of resources and changing federal expectations, this challenge can appear overwhelming.

One component of effective school improvement and reform is teacher professional development. Oftentimes schools need to completely overhaul a curriculum based on declines in student achievement necessitating costly and time-consuming training. Other times, curriculum directors are forced to train and retrain on existing curriculum due to the inconsistency of its application in the classroom. And each year, many teachers are new to the profession and need significant training above and beyond what they receive in their teacher college programs. These realities require school districts to invest heavily in the continuing education of teachers. Indeed this is one of the most important components of any school reform program.

New research introducing innovative teacher techniques and facts about how and why students learn are another factor driving the incessant need for teacher training. Most educators are so driven to see their student succeed that they are prone to lack of focus. With so many teaching and learning approaches, how are educational leaders to choose? The research-based requirements of No Child Left Behind have helped provide a high bar for new initiatives to achieve prior to serious consideration. But even so, superintendents and curriculum directors need to maintain a razor-like focus on their own district improvement plan as they select from these educational best practices. Each new practice can only be successful if properly deployed to the teaching staff with an appropriate focus on teacher training.

Once selected, deploying these best practices into America's classrooms is difficult for any number of reasons. The cost associated with deployment can be prohibitive. Education consultants brought in to teach typically require high daily rates and associated travel expenses. And even internally taught classes require pulling teachers from classrooms resulting in the expense of substitute teachers and loss of teaching time. Even the best intended professional development plans often end up with inconsistent implementation. It is not uncommon to see two teachers, who attend the same class, implementing (or not implementing) very different versions of what is supposedly the same methodology.

School districts use job-embedded staff development and rely on full time internal coaches to help deal with some of these issues. While this is routinely effective, school districts are still constrained with how much change the system can absorb. And, like it or not, oftentimes successful school reform centers around how much change a school district can enable in a relatively short amount of time.

One solution to help work within the constraints of teacher schedules and school district budgets is more online delivery of teacher professional development. The case for online delivery is as compelling for teacher training as it is for supplemental or primary student teaching. The schedule issues are greatly reduced as technology relieves us of the requirement of getting all participants in a room. Technology also allows us to extend the class size as appropriate. Whereas a classroom-led training session is difficult when done in large groups, it is not necessarily so for online teaching. The facilitation of conversation can, in some instances, be of a much higher quality with online platforms as participants are - depending on class format - allowed to chime in with the benefit of more time and more contemplation versus a live classroom.

The reason for why online learning hasn't been more prevalent are diminishing rapidly. Until now, schools and school districts suffered from a lack of online content that was tailored toward their specific needs. Now content is becoming increasingly easy to generate bringing development costs down significantly. Previously online content was static or not engaging (or very expensive if it was) but, again, with technology advances, the cost of engaging content is accessible to all districts even for internally generated course content. And given the availability and capability of ready-made learning management systems, the ability of participants to easily and productively interact is automatically enabled - all at a fraction of the cost required just a few years ago.

One technology that has made this happen is Moodle (www.moodle.org). Moodle is an open source learning management systems that can be easily and quickly deployed to address the specific needs of staff developers. Because Moodle is open-source there is no cost associated with purchasing the software. And as with many open-source platforms, there is an extensive developer network with whom to borrow and share ideas and modification.

Moodle has most, if not all, of the capabilities required of a learning management system. It is easy to implement and can be managed easily from a robust administrative back-end interface. The emphasis was to develop a secure and easy-to-manage system that did not require technical management. The course components allow for unlimited numbers of classes. Classes can utilize a range of activities including forums, quizzes, glossaries, resources, choices, surveys, assignments, chats, and workshops. The system supports and facilitates collaboration across the learning community as defined by the system user and administrators.

While the core software is certainly compelling, what makes Moodle so interesting is the user and developer communities that support the platform. Add-on modules include everything from the ability to integrate social networking platforms into your Moodle platform to the ability to seamlessly include and publish podcasts into your lessons. These add-ons are also available under the GNU General Public License which means they are also free to use and modify.

To be sure, there are many learning management systems available beyond Moodle. Most have a significantly higher cost to license and to develop. That said, in some cases these other platforms may be better suited to the needs of the individual school or school district. Regardless of the platform, online delivery of teacher training is a cost-effective solution that should be part of any professional development program.

Scott Wallace is the Executive Director of the National Center for School Leadership. To learn more about their services and how they can help you implement a Moodle-enabled Learning Management System, visit their website at http://www.ncfsl.org
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com

The Good News and Bad News about Arizona Schools

The school year has officially begun across Arizona and the rest of the country. Discussion topics have shifted from vacations and summer camp to homework and new teachers. Parents have suddenly found new enthusiasm for carefully comparing notes on everything from math curriculum to testing policies. Parents agonize at length about whether their child's teacher is the best match to the needs of their children. No detail regarding the school, teacher or curriculum is left unanalyzed. We explain to anyone who will hear how great our school is and what a wonderful experience our children are receiving.

In my years working with schools, I have observed this “new school year” phenomenon with much interest. It seems that all parents believe that their school is above average virtually without exceptions. When I have conducted focus groups with parents in inner cities, they too exhibit a high degree of satisfaction in their local school as do parents from affluent suburbs. It seems that even the average school is, surprisingly, above average.

In most states the issue of which school is best is somewhat, well, academic. Unless you are willing to move or go to a private school, your school is your school. However in Arizona this is not the case. Arizona provides open enrollment (on a space available basis) to all of its schools. If you are willing to provide transportation, you have the opportunity to send your child anywhere you like to receive a public education.

This level of competition among schools was designed to improve schools. The thought being that if our enrollment (and thus our survival as a school) depended upon meeting the needs of students, then educators would work harder at meeting the needs of students. Opinions regarding the impact of this are, of course, mixed. But the general consensus is that more choice is better than less and so the system remains largely popular.

Since school choice in Arizona seems unlikely to go away it becomes much more that a measuring tool to determine which schools are best. Presumably many parents would drive 5 minutes (or even 10) past their current school in order to have their children attend a much better school. and in practice, many parents do. But on what basis? Parents often tell me that it “felt” right or that it just "seemed to click". Other conduct bonafide research on the internet reviewing school rating website. My own decision making required a somewhat more rigorous approach including (though not limited to) discussions with key staff and teachers, school walk-thru’s and classroom observations.

To provide a bit of objective information to assist prospective “school shoppers” in the Arizona “market”, we compiled a quick analysis of Arizona’s best schools. The list below represents the best 25 schools in Arizona among those with over 200 students. The results are based on the average Spring 2009 Terra Nova scores across all grade levels within a given school.

BASIS Scottsdale
Mesa Academy for Advanced Studies
University High School
BASIS Tucson
Gilbert Classical Academy Jr.
Arizona School For The Arts
Great Hearts Academies - Chandler Prep
Great Hearts Academies - Veritas Prep
Self Development Charter School
Cambridge Academy East
Tempe Preparatory Academy
GPS Traditional Academy
Cheyenne Traditional Elementary School
Great Heart Academies - Scottsdale Prep
Hamilton Prep
Keystone Montessori Charter School
Bright Beginnings School #1
Kyrene Altadena Middle School
Esperero Canyon Middle School
McDowell Mountain Elementary School
Orange Grove Middle School
Foothills Academy
Quartz Hill Elementary
Valley Academy
Cochise Elementary School

This list of the top 25 schools in Arizona contains a number of charter schools and traditional schools. We congratulate each of them as they represent the top 2% of Arizona schools. What follows in this article is not meant to detract from their accomplishments.

The Bad News About Arizona Schools

Arizona ranks 48th out of 51 (include the District of Columbia) in terms of per pupil expenditures. I am shocked that when I discuss this fact with parents they have no idea that this is the case. The State of Arizona simply does not provide its schools with as much monetary resources as other states provide to their schools. Is this reflective of a fiscally conservative voting electorate? I suppose it. More importantly, does the introduction of school choice and reliance on charter schools overcome this funding gap?

In an effort to explore this topic, one simply needs to take the next step in the analysis. The above list represents the top 2% of schools in Arizona. These results are based on the Terra Nova test which is a nationally normed test. How did this group of schools fare when compared with schools nationally? The answer is that they did fairly well. As a group they scored at the 85% percentile. Pretty good right? But wait. Shouldn’t they, all else being equal, score at the 98% or 99% percentile? Yes, but that would suppose that they were in the top 2% nationally. Unfortunately the top 2% in Arizona only equates to being at the 85th percentile nationally.

To explore the numbers further we broadened the scope of the "top school analysis" to encompass the entire top decile (in terms of Terra Nova test score performance) of Arizona schools. The top 140 schools, representing the top decile of school in Arizona scored, on average, at the 77th percentile nationally. Thus while this group of top schools scored on average at the 95th percentile within the state, they were only able to attain the 77th percential nationally. This represents an 18% gap on state-vs-national percentile ranking. This is even worse than the 13% gap represented by the top 2% of Arizona schools.

It is difficult to look at these very straightforward numbers and easily dismiss the issue of public education in Arizona. To be sure, this analysis does not represent an exhaustive review of educational issues in Arizona. But I suspect that the issues that Arizona has are very similar to the issues in other states. Despite this apparent relationship between funding and poor national test scores, I am not saying to throw money at the problem nor am I suggesting that the reasons are easily understood or addressed. But when your top schools cannot break into the top decile nationally, I think there’s a problem worth exploring.