This guest post is by Michael O’Hara, a principal at Edmonton Public Schools in Alberta, Canada Opportunity & dissent a pandemic worldThe COVID-19 pandemic is tragic but can be very instructive if we choose to accept what has changed. The pandemic has shown the fury and force of nature moving like a series of unstoppable hurricanes leaving devastation in its …
How to conduct teacher evaluations during online learning
As administrators prepare for the 2020-21 school year, many are concerned about how they will evaluate teachers who are teaching online. Obviously, the process will be somewhat different than the way evaluations are conducted in “normal” school settings. Over the past several years, both before and during the current Covid situation, I was engaged to evaluate the work of several …
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6 post COVID lessons for educational leaders
Most schools are now moving into the final stages of the craziest school year ever. With little notice, we were plunged into the existential storm of replacing physical schooling with Zoom or D2L or similar online schooling. There has been a very rapid learning-curve for everyone involved – school leaders, teachers, parents and students. Not surprisingly, there have been both …
A crisis not to be wasted
During this very difficult time where no individuals or institutions, certainly not schools, are unaffected by the implications of the Coronavirus, I have turned for inspiration to the speeches of great leaders – Churchill, Obama, Reagan – during the crises they had to manage. (YouTube, of course, is a wonderful resource, allowing us to actually see such leaders speak.) Winston …
Education in 2020: Fashionable vs fruitful
A No-nonsense perspective Last summer, while visiting a friend, I picked up a novel from the bookshelf. The protagonist was a kindergarten teacher whose school shared a building with a prestigious “progressive” elementary school. Ten years previously, its progressiveness was defined by its unstructured approach where students were free to discover their own interests and choose their activities. Ten years …
Culture fit vs culture add
There is little doubt that a start-of-the-year best practice list for educational leaders would include helping new faculty fit into the culture of the school. Indeed it’s important that new teachers, whether experienced or novices, are given the lay of the land. But, as opposed to simply fitting in, new teachers can, in fact, meaningfully add to a school’s culture. …
7 Ways to demotivate teachers
Some times the best way to achieve positive results is to consider the most negative possibilities and do the opposite. Much has been said and written about how to motivate teachers. Perhaps more can be learned by thinking about how to avoid the negative. In that spirit, here are seven ways that are sure to demotivate teachers. Be unsupportive when dealing …
Displine, Diversity & Teacher Satisfaction
In my last post, I wrote of the importance for any school to have faculty who are respected, fulfilled, satisfied and proud to be teaching where they are. I shared some of what I had learned through a teacher satisfaction study I recently completed and promised to share more insights. Two issues emerged as being most important to the teachers …
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8 ways to make teachers feel valued
Successful schools have faculty who are respected, fulfilled, satisfied and proud to be teaching where they are. That is one of my conclusions having recently completed a comprehensive study of teachers’ attitudes and impressions about the schools at which they work. Teachers want to feel pleased to be employed by their school, like their jobs, and feel well supported in …
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Heads: In crisis, position yourself for success
Two recent events in renowned, highly reputable institutions have reverberated through the independent school community. Both resulted in the Heads of their respective schools leaving their positions. The first was at the Bishop Strachan School in Toronto. Some members of the school community felt that students had not been properly prepared for a theatre performance based on Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. …