It has been a tremendously exciting couple of weeks!
I had hoped last week to blog about our successful FCIS (Florida Council of Independent Schools) Five-Year Re-Accreditation visit, which took place on March 12th & 13th, but the week got away from me. ‘Tis the busy season, what with standardized testing, re-enrollments, report cards, parent-teacher conferences and model seders to squeeze in before Passover Break. And I am still going to save that blog post for a later date because I would like to be able to quote and share parts of it with you.
Spoiler Alert.
We came through with flying colors! We have only a very few number of record-keeping issues to clean up and we should have our first-ever “clean report”! In fact, two areas that the school was flagged for during our last evaluation have been transformed from “violations” to “commendations”. The first was in the area of professional development. The second, which should serve as an inspiration to all those schools still fretting about taking first 21st century steps, is to know that six years ago the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School was flagged for being a technological wasteland. Yes, the school that will bring to the field next month edJEWcon – the first significant conference on 21st century learning and Jewish day school – was, just six years ago so far behind in technology that it constituted a violation. Speaking of edJEWcon, anyone within shouting distance of Jacksonville is invited to hear our major keynote:
But more on FCIS accreditation and edJEWcon in upcoming posts.
I want to focus this blog post on linking together two great initiatives from this year into one brand-new idea.
On Wednesday, March 4th, I will be taking “No Office Day” to the next level by officially swapping places with Shoshana H. in Grade Five. Shoshana will be “Principal for a Day” and I will be “Student for a Day”.
What did Shoshana H. do to earn this reward? She created our first student-made, 2-minute “Community of Kindness” video, called “Being Nice”.
You can tell her what a great job she did yourself, by visiting and commenting on her blog, here. (Please do.)
Now it was her idea to be “Principal for a Day”, not mine. But since it has been so long since my last (and only) “No Office Day” this seemed like a great opportunity to tie some threads together. The purpose of having regular “No Office Days” is to get principals unchained from their computers, untethered from their meetings, unleashed from their desks and out into classrooms. [You can click here for my original blog on the idea and here for my blog on the experience itself.]
Here is what Shoshana and I have worked out so far for our swap:
- She will come dressed as principal; I will come dressed in uniform.
- She will greet families at the door; I will be on Safety Patrol.
- She will visit classrooms during the day; I will be in Grade Five.
- She will join me at our weekly Staff Meeting.
- She will lead Grade One Tefillah (one of my regular duties).
We will both wield Flip cameras to document our days in each other shoes and will both blog about our experiences, including our video diaries.
So in one fail swoop, I get to reward a student for taking the initiative in helping our school develop its Community of Kindness AND experience a twist on No Office Day.
Talk about a win-win!
Can’t wait to see the flip videos on this!