June 2011 – A Floor, But Not a Ceiling

You Can Go Home Again

Forgive the brevity (for me)…

We got back late last night from a week-long vacation in Las Vegas and we are moving rental homes first thing Monday morning. Between catching up at school and prepping for the move…

It was our first trip back to Las Vegas, our most recent home, after almost an entire full year here in Jacksonville, our new home. As the plane was descending into Las Vegas, I was reminded of one those “only in Vegas” phenomena that I was finally on the right side of. Living in Las Vegas and traveling for work was a singularly annoying activity because only in Las Vegas does everyone applaud when the plane lands. You are simply returning home to your workaday life, but you are surrounded by people filled with desperate longing for the vacation of a lifetime. Cities like Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Miami are fascinating to work in because people move there to be on permanent vacation – there is a different mindset and a different energy. Anyhoo, last week, at least, we were happily clapping along with the rest of the vacationers.

I have written a lot (for 11 months of weekly blog posts) about my personal Jewish journey, but very little about my professional Jewish journey. That hasn’t been for any reason other than I don’t expect there is much interest in my prior stops for my present, primary audience – stakeholders for the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School. As I have eased my way into the blogosphere, I have felt more comfortable occasionally blurring the lines between the personal and the professional, although always cognizant that this is a professional blog. I try to write in my own voice and with my own particular sense of humor. I try to share the things that I am thinking about and, thus, make my private process public. And sometimes I share something personal when I am so moved because that’s how I understand the meaning of authenticity. Consider me so moved (and so jet-lagged).

This was, as I have said, my first trip back to Las Vegas since we moved to Jacksonville last summer. In addition to having an opportunity to visit my parents, it was our first opportunity to return to the school I had the honor of helping create as its founding head. Almost six years ago, with a two-week old daughter in tow, we landed in Las Vegas to begin what turned out to be an extraordinary five-year adventure in almost every sense of the world. There is little doubt that when, years later, I revisit the twists and turns of my professional career, my five years as founding head of the Solomon Schechter Day School of Las Vegas will stand out as uniquely fork-turning.

This is not a picture from my Bar Mitzvah – it is from my second year in Las Vegas during Simchat Torah. Ah…how young we all were once!

It was wonderful to have an opportunity to visit my former school and even though school was already out, we got to see teachers, parents, and many friends on our trip. Maytal, our three year-old, didn’t really recognize her teachers from last year, but Eliana, our almost-six year-old, got to visit with almost all the teachers she had had from eighteen months on. It was very intense walking through the doors of a place you had spent so much time and energy, but no longer belong to. Part of me felt like I had never left; part of me felt like I had never been. A colleague put it in perspective by reminding me that although the past year changed everything for me, for those still there…

By my third year, I used to tell the story of how during my first year, when we gathered as a school we took up less than one row of the Main Sanctuary. 14 First & Second Graders. By my fourth year…

…our first graduating class – almost as many students as we had to begin with.

The full story of that school’s creation is one that I am more than just personally interested in; it is the subject of my doctoral dissertation. I am heading round the final turn entering my ninth (!) and final year as a doctoral student in the Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Trying to write a doctoral dissertation while founding a new school, raising two young daughters, and then relocating cross-country for an amazing job opportunity is probably not the textbook move, but life rarely goes according to plan. I mention all of this because the story of my time in Las Vegas and the (professional) lessons to be learned from it is nearly written and will be available in one form or another for those interested sooner than later. I’ll have more to say as publication looms closer.

In the meanwhile, it was good to know that Las Vegas will continue to be a home of sorts for our family. It was good to see my parents. It was wonderful to see our old friends. It was fun to be back in Las Vegas. It was dangerous to eat so much kosher meat. It was satisfying to see the school I helped found doing so well under the tried and true stewardship of others. We will surely be back for future visits. But as our plane descended last night into Jacksonville, I must say that, in my mind, I quietly applauded.

It is good to be home.

Self-Evaluation – The Ultimate Transparency

We had our final meeting of teachers and staff this morning to officially wrap up the 2010-2011 school year! Woo-hoo! School’s out…for summer!

But before we turn the page entirely on the year that was AND before we share some of the “Coming Attractions” for 2011-2012 (an upcoming, post-vacation blog post!), I thought I would take a final stab at transparency and share a reflection of how I thought I did this year in my first year as Head of the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School. [I reflected last week (here) about my adventures in 21st century learning this past year, but that is only one aspect of my role as head of school.] What follows are actual excerpts from the self-evaluation I wrote and submitted to my “Head Support & Evaluation Subcommittee” as part of my overall evaluative process. We have asked all of our teachers to post reflections of their years on our (closed) ning as part of promoting the value of shared reflection. I want to do my part by sharing excerpts of my reflection for y’all (did that sound authentically southern enough? It has almost been a year!):

Jon’s Self-Evaluation “Students”:

I think in this area we took a number of important first steps this year. We created academic standards for each grade and subject by Winter Break and were able to disseminate benchmarks as part of the Admissions Process. We created and disseminated a variety of survey instruments, failing only to send out and score an “Alumni Survey” for this year’s freshman class.

We have also taken great strides in our outreach to special needs families and in our current practice in putting together processes for dealing with the mechanics of delivering services. We take it as a positive sign that KoleinuJax has gifted us (in collaboration with Jewish Family & Community Services and the Jewish Community Foundation of Northeast Florida) the monies necessary to expand our program next year by allowing us to hire and train additional support staff in classes where we have children with special needs.

One additional area I would like to improve upon for next year is my own personal investment in teaching and establishing relationships with students. I taught First Grade Tefillah once a week this year; I may expand upon that next year. I taught MS Tefillah once a week this year; I may seek to find additional opportunities to teach in the MS as well. I take it as a positive sign that students have been sending me letters, emails and making appointments to meet with me when they have questions and concerns, but I would like to do a better job next year of working on developing meaningful relationships with my students. It is a time management challenge (what isn’t!), but one worth solving.

Jon’s Self-Evaluation “Faculty”:

I think I have successfully implemented an evaluative process that has not been active in some number of years. I believe we have created an environment where teachers have reached the higher bar we have mutually set.

My takeaway from the survey data from the faculty is that I have room for growth in providing more regular positive feedback. I do not compliment as often as I would like to and because I am not shy about providing critique, it can create an imbalance. My experience is that in time as we all get to know each other better it becomes less and less of an issue, but that does not mean I shouldn’t try harder to provide positive reinforcement. Next year, I want to put up a bulletin board in the faculty room where we share positive thoughts with each other and then make it a personal goal to put one up a day. That will create good habits.

I also want to make more of an effort to spend more time developing personal relationships. It is so hard to find the time, but if I am serious about creating a family atmosphere it will be necessary.

We did a good job of providing professional development to our Jewish Studies Faculty. We have provided more opportunities for teachers to teach each other during our Faculty Meetings which are now hosted by a different teacher each month in her classroom and has a theme. I would like next year to try to send a few more teachers out to receive subject matter expertise that they can bring back – for example, Judy Reppert could attend a seminar and then lead a faculty meeting and share what she learned. I would like our MS Faculty to serve more as “department chairs” for the Lower School in their areas of expertise.

Jon’s Self-Evaluation “Parents”:

Teaching “Parent University” and establishing a blog were two big goals for this year. It takes a lot of time to keep up the weekly blogs and to prepare and teach the class, but it is worth it and then some. The twice-yearly face-to-face meetings with parents yielded vital information and hopefully positively contributed to retention.

I also think I’ll be able next year to expand my reach into Shabbat and holiday programming which will better foster the school-shul relationship and the kinds of meaningful carryover we are all looking for.

I think, similarly to faculty, I could do a better job with volunteer recognition and appreciation. I need to take the extra step to ensure that people feel appreciated for the volunteering they do. I try hard now, but I think I can grow in making sure people feel they have my full attention whenever we are speaking. My mind races a million miles an hour, but I don’t ever want a parent to feel that I am not keenly interested in their issue at the moment we are speaking.

So…that’s that! I hope having an opportunity to peek inside my process from time to time is useful; it is for me!

I told the teachers this morning that I am typically as excited about summer vacation as they are…but honestly? I am so enthusiastic about what is planned for next year that I almost wish we could skip to Pre-Planning…

Almost!

A (School) Year in the Life…

Forty-one posts later…

…I have spent some time rereading the titles of the forty-one blog posts I have written this year and cherry-picked a few to reread so that I would have some sense of how to tie up in a neat bow my adventure in blogging this year. Rather than regurgitate that which you are welcome to reread yourself, I though I would share an illustrative anecdote that took place last week:

I received an email a few weeks ago from the head of a community day school in the Midwest asking if I would be willing to Skype with her and her technology teacher about how our school began its path towards 21st Century Learning. I went through some of my prior blog posts, did a little searching on Twitter, reviewed a chapter or two in Curriculum 21 and scheduled the call. We had a lovely hour-long chat on Skype – during which I had occasion to reference, among other things, blogfolios, digital farms, back-channels, digital immigrants, nings, wikis and GoogleDocs. It was a very nice call and I look forward to continued collaboration with our new friends.

When it comes to reflecting on my own work and having that reflection made transparent – one raison d’être for having a blog in the first place – my big takeaway from this school year that was, is that prior to July of last summer, I would have been utterly unable to define any of the words highlighted in red let alone speak of them intelligently. The idea that during the course of one school year, I have come from almost utter ignorance to presenting at conferences and fielding requests for consultation is almost preposterous. And yet here we are…

There is nothing unique about me that allowed for this to happen. I promise. It took a village (and a book) to teach me basic skills and the (peer) pressure of trying to live up to the expectations already put in place by the school I had been hired to head. I kinda had no choice, but to begin blogging and Tweeting or else I’d be left behind my own teachers!

My story is really the story of the last two years of our school writ small. There was nothing particularly unique about our school that would have led you to conclude that it would one day stake out a leadership position in 21st century education. We were, and are, a relatively small K-8 Solomon Schechter Day School in the relatively small Jewish community of Jacksonville, Florida. And yet here we are…

It doesn’t take millions of dollars and it doesn’t take a surfeit of faculty. It doesn’t require expertise in advance and it doesn’t require knowing the end of the journey before you take the first step. You don’t need SMART Boards, iPads, and laptops to adopt a 21st century mindset. It is not about the “stuff” (not that the “stuff” doesn’t help…it does)!

We have tried in our school to stop using “21st Century Technology” as a synonym for “21st Century Learning”. Technology requires “stuff”; Learning requires “people”. It isn’t that the technology is unimportant – there are certain minimum thresholds of technology necessary to walk the path. But most schools can reach that threshold with creative budgeting and fundraising. Harder than accumulating the stuff is changing the paradigm. It doesn’t take an endowment to revolutionize your educational philosophy – it takes teachers, administrators, parents and students. And every school has those.

We have exciting plans here at the school for this summer and the year to come. I look forward to planting those seeds next week. As I prepare to turn the page on this school year and begin writing the chapter on the next, let me pause to thank those who read this blog and even more those who comment. I am frequently challenged trying to produce a blog post of sufficient quality each week to be worthy of publication. I don’t know that I always reach the goal, but I am always grateful for the opportunity.

Let summer begin…

And the winner is…all of us! (Part III)

Is it a cop out if I borrow an article I have already used this week to address the exact same topic if it is the final Friday of the school year? I vote, “No!”

In Part I (found here), I made transparent and explained the results of our first Annual Parent Survey. In Part II (found here), I made transparent and contextualized one important slice of our annual standardized testing results. Finally, what I had intended for exciting conclusion in Part III (and shared already with our parent body) was to make transparent our faculty and staff assignments for the 2011-2012 school year. This will be the team charged with taking all the data from Parts I & II to make next year the best year yet!

It is hard to believe that we are in the final days of the school year, but here we are. It is time to take a peek at the future. We don’t want to wish away our summer, but we are so excited at how next year is shaping up! (The lineup is 99% complete and we will continue to work hard to fill the final two part-time positions in the upcoming weeks.) We are confident that the foundation built this year through all the hard work and love of this year’s faculty and staff will be carried on to the next level by the next year’s. And so, without further adieu, be excited!

Here is the 2011-2012 Faculty of the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School:

This is the team prepared to take on the next step of our school’s journey. We are committed to partnering with parents, providing differentiated instruction, Hebrew language immersion, fostering Jewish identification, 21st century technology, and “a floor, but no ceiling” for each student in our school. We will enjoy the last days of this school year, relax and prepare over the summer, and look forward to working with you when it is time to come back to school. Next year is going to be something special!

P.S. If you are in town, please don’t miss our Middle School Graduation this Monday evening at 7:15 PM!

P.P.S. Please don’t miss out on a variety of creative programs here at the Center for Shavuot, but particularly don’t miss our first “Who’s Left Standing at Sinai?” contest on the June 8th during morning services! I’ve been watching the kids practice their verses and its anybody’s guess who will win!

P.P.P.S. Congratulations to our Third Grade for their wonderful end-of-year video and presentation of “Jacksonville Reads”! Twenty-first century learning in action!

P.P.P.P.S. Congratulations to our Fifth Grade for their wonderful end-of-year project “Facebook Profiles of the American Revolution”! Even more twenty-first century learning in action!