Principal Speak

    I need to make a confession, maybe not a complete and total confession, but a confession none the less.  I like scripted programs. Now, I am not saying everything should be scripted and I don’t want to insult teachers, but I do think scripted programs have a place in elementary school.

    Maybe it is the way my mind operates, I like taking something, anything and improving on it. If I find a basic black dress, I enjoy taking it up a style notch and making it an awesome LBD. However, I know if you gave me thread, material and some glitz and I had to pull it together, I would be kicked off Project Runway.

    During my time as an elementary principal I have figured out that everyone has strengths and weaknesses, including great teachers. Giving the support of a scripted program for a strong teacher who is weak in teaching writing has been a really successful formula for us here at Princess Anne. With the Being a Writer Program, teachers were teaching writing, not just having kids write. They covered what needed to be covered and found joy in writing. Did we have to add mini lessons, absolutely, did we need flexibility with the prompt unit right before the SOL writing, yep again.  What I witnessed was an unexpected phenomenon, teachers who were not secure in teaching writing were now talking about writing, and their confidence was growing. As their confidence grew so did their skill. We started using our PLC time to calibrate writing scores, We collaboratively developed rubrics for our process pieces, which since we were all using BAW we were all working off the same sheet of music. We spent this year looking at Making Meaning lessons and adding rigor to the questions. I don’t think we would have come as far as we have come if we didn’t start with the basic black dress of the scripted program.  My entire staff was not thrilled when we went to MM and BAW, it took a great deal of pushing the elephant up the hill and support for some key players who knew the program in C&I, like Lorena Kelly. We went slowly, provided training and support, we have grown and developed as a PLC. If BAW/ MM get shelved as a “resource” what will happen? Will this be a step forward and give teachers freedom to go unscripted and pull from various resources? Will that improve the instruction in elementary school?

    Ok here is my second confession, this one is a biggie, I don’t understand math well enough to UBD the curriculum, I struggle envisioning how it is going to work, but I guess that is a story for another day.