Can I tell you a secret? I have a love-hate relationship with the summer on a school campus.

As a school administrator, my days extend quite far into the summer. That’s okay – I knew what I was signing up for. Yet, it’s such a weird experience on a campus. On the one hand, it’s lighter and quiet. There is time to think, plan, and recuperate. On the other hand, it’s eerily quiet and lonely. It’s so strange to go from 100 mph to residential speeds in a few days. Mostly, I greatly miss our staff and students. That being said, I have greatly come to appreciate the time to slow down, think, and plan for the future.

As a part of the planning process for next year, our team is making some big pushes toward increasing the amount and quality of professional development on our campus. We will be making a huge push with amplifying our PLC’s and pushing writing across the curriculum. In addition to this, we will have a variety of staff meetings, optional PD’s, and district PD’s in which our staff can participate. To help organize all of this information, I developed a simple “Professional Development Calendar” with all of the trainings, dates, locations, and links to upcoming PD to keep our staff informed.

Here’s a quick example of what it looks like:

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As you can see, the calendar is broken into four sections:

• Staff Meetings – Monthly staff meeting with a specific sitewide focus. This year, it will be on “Amplifying our PLC’s”
• Academics – PD specifically aimed towards improving our academics. This year, we will be offering writing PD’s, continuing our learning walks, and a Rookie Rap for new teachers.
• Student Well-Being – Any PD for our SEL & PBIS goals to support teachers as they navigate the ever-changing behaviors of our students.
• District PD – Any PD being offered by the district office.

If for some reason one of my amazing teachers is reading this PD, I know that none of this is new information but please note these dates are all simply examples and may not be accurate. Your “legit” version is coming soon!

As with anything, I always want to make sure the “why” is understood when developing, creating, or implementing something new. While this PD calendar has a low impact on staff, the “why” is quite simple but still important. Clear, accurate, and timely communication is always appreciated by school staff. We have a lot of amazing opportunities happening on our campus. It’s important that our staff can easily access these trainings and plan for their year.

Finally, as a leader, the goals for the year must be communicated to your staff. As simple as this calendar might be, it is another way to remind our staff of our sitewide goals for the year. After all, how effective are your professional development and goals if it is unknown by your staff? Simply sharing this calendar is another way to increase the awareness of our goals for the year through visually seeing the professional development that is offered to support it.

How does your school share their important events and/or dates with staff? I would love to hear about it, so share in the comments below!

Last month, I shared the start of our PBIS journey in hopes of improving student behavior through a tiered system of support. Over the last quarter, we have been piloting our PBIS program to determine if this is something that we want to implement in the following school year. As I mentioned in my last post, I was apprehensive about implementing PBIS in our school. However, our pilot has been so successful that I have become a believer that these systems (when implemented strategically and effectively) can make a huge impact on student behaviors and, ultimately, student learning.

Below, I will be sharing our first steps – the foundation – of our PBIS program. Specifically, the focus will be on Tier 1 of our PBIS program because this is the area where we were lacking the most support. So…here we go!

Step #1: Forming Our PBIS Teams

Implementing a PBIS program is a huge undertaking. To get started, it was critical that we pick the right people to be a part of these teams. Our teams are broken up into two groups: PBIS Core Team and the PBIS Team.

Our PBIS Core Team is a smaller group of educators. The Core Team is responsible for the guidance of the implementation of the PBIS strategies. This team regularly meets to evaluate the BOQ (more on that below) and determine the direction of the larger team. The Core Team consists of the following people:

• Vice Principal
• School Counselor
• SEL Intervention Teacher
• iMTSS District Coordinator
• District iMTSS Psychologist

Our PBIS Team (AKA, our RISE Team) is a larger group of educators that helps with developing the ideas, creating structures, and the implementing of PBIS strategies. The PBIS Team consists of the following people:

• Everyone from the Core Team
• All Admin from the Site
• 5 Teachers (Different subjects/grades)
• Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA)

We have been incredibly fortunate to have an amazing group of educators on this team. I am constantly amazed by the ideas that come from this group as we develop our PBIS program. Without the right people in place, I do not believe we would be making the progress we are currently on our campus.

While our PBIS teams our developing this program, everything that we do is taken to our Site Leadership Team (AKA, Think Tank) for input. These are the leaders on our campus, therefore, their input, insight, and approval is of the utmost importance. After this, Think Tank takes this information to their departments (AKA, PLC’s) for more input. Finally, the PBIS team gathers all of the input to add to the PBIS program.

Step #2: Reading the Book

Over the years, I have started to become a bit skeptical about educational books. I have found that they are often written from a place of theory, rather than real-life application. A lot of time I read these books and think, “When was the last time this person was in a classroom or on a school campus?”

This is not how I feel about the PBIS Handbooks – which is AMAZING!

Our focus this year is through implementing Tier One supports at our school, so our team has only dived into the Tier 1 Handbook. However, there is SO much in here that it will probably take us a year to properly implement all the ideas and strategies. The book is practical, clear, and gives teams an easy guide on how to get started. If you are planning on implementing a tiered PBIS system in your school, I highly recommend these books.

       

The Benchmark of Quality (BOQ) helps PBIS teams examine their Tier 1 implementation by identifying current strengths and weaknesses. In addition to this, it also provides guidance and support for creating better PBIS systems within a school. The BOQ is embedded within the PBIS Tier One Handbook, however, you can find it for free on their website: PBIS Champion Model System.

Since I am a spreadsheet person, I took the BOQ from their website and turned it into a spreadsheet that automatically tabulates a school’s total score. In addition to this, I created a section where teams can add ideas and next steps during the planning process. If you would like a copy of this, click on the Google Sheet icon to the right or this link: Tier 1 – PBIS Assessment & Next Steps.

When we went through the BOQ, I was amazed at how much we have not done. While this may seem discouraging, I found it exciting. There were so many ideas, strategies, and structures that could be put into place to support students. Even if we scored low, we could easily see our next steps. At the end of scoring our BOQ, we picked the top 3 areas of growth. From there, we analyzed what we were doing, what could be improved, and piloted some of these strategies during the 4th quarter. Now, we have a very clear plan and vision for sitewide implementation during the next school year.

Right now, I am so excited for the next school year and to see how we continue to develop our PBIS program. If you have done this at your school site, please share in the comments below any tips, tricks, or strategies!

Last month, I wrote a blog post on my favorite game-based learning platforms which inspired me to create a PD presentation for a conference within my district. When I was asked to present at this conference, I figured that many educators may be overwhelmed with SO many things right now that I wanted to create something easy, fun, and enjoyable for my attendees. While it may not be the deepest or pedagogically based presentation, it was fun and introduced educators to new tools that they could use in the classroom to introduce and review academic content.

The presentation is broken into three sections:

• The Pedagogy
  • While these tools are fun to use, it is always important to start out with the “why”. Why are these tools beneficial and how do they support students?
• The Tools
  • A quick list of my favorite game-based learning tools.
• The Tutorials
  • These slides are built for educators to view during AND after the presentation. While I was presenting these slides, I introduced the tools and started games for attendees to experience.

If you are looking to introduce educators at your site and/or district to game-based learning, here is a free presentation for you to use! Feel free to use, edit, and modify in whatever way will most support your educators.

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Happy November! It is hard to believe that we are almost through the first semester of school! I hope you are doing well and surviving these crazy times – because it really is SO crazy right now.

In fun news, I am starting a new series of blog posts that will come out at the beginning of each month – the Rundown! This is a simple post with a TON of links to Google Workspace Updates, helpful videos, blog posts, and a variety of instructional and educational resources that I have discovered over the last month. It is a short post this month but I plan on growing it over the next few months to contain more categories, blog posts, videos, and resources.

I hope that you enjoy these easy, quick blog posts and find something useful to use in your classroom and/or school!

Google Workspace Updates:

• Replacing a Background in Google Meet
• Slideshow Button in Google Slides
• Making Google Classroom Video Meetings Easier and More Secure
• Google Classroom Unenrollment Features
• Create Meeting Notes in Google Calendar
• Easily Add to Google Docs with the @ Menu
• Page Break Before Paragraphs in Google Docs
• New Google Meet Host Features for Audio and Video

Instructional & Educational Technology:

• PearDeck: Reflect & Review
• 11 Things Coaches Should Look For in Classroom Observations
• Slides Mania Cardtegories!
• Top 5 Game-Based Learning Platforms

Inspirational:

• Don’t Let the Tough Things Keep You from the GREAT Things! (Video)

Going forward, I hope to add many more links and sections to this blog posts. Particularly, I would like to share some leadership blog posts and videos to help support education leaders and, selfishly, help me to grow, too!

Stay tuned for the next rundown!

As our school site continues on our journey of evaluating our grading practices (see my previous blog post for more details), I am excited to share more interactive resources that can be used for professional development at your site! In the previous blog post, I shared an activity that challenged teachers to evaluate their grading practices through a self-assessment. Now that teachers have gone through this process, it is important to begin the hard work of trying to brainstorm and establish common goals. To start this process, our school site leadership team met and determined three areas of importance when establishing common grading practices:

• Grading Scale
  • Example: 0-100, A-F, 4 Point Scale, Etc.
• Late Work
  • Example: Is late work allowed? What’s your policy?
• Categories & Weights
  • Example: What is more important – the task or learning? Do you weight your grades?

As a school site, our goal is to try to create common goals for grading practices across our PLC’s and, in some areas, on a schoolwide level. We are trying to start small by focusing on these three areas and PLC’s and, hopefully, growing them over time. As an example, starting with PLC’s or departments is already a huge task. Trying to establish all of these goals on a sitewide level could be a much larger task that may take some time. Overall, our goal is to allow our leadership team to help guide the focus of these conversations and where they hope that we should go as we deep dive into our grading practices.

To help us understand our common goals across PLC’s, we developed two activities that I will share below. As mentioned above, we are starting in PLC’s and that is how I will reference our process. However, you could certainly replace PLC’s with department, grade level, or even schoolwide. It is totally up to you and your site to decide what is best!

1.) Brainstorming Common Goals

In this activity, PLC’s will meet together to simply start brainstorming and thinking about these three categories and where they hope to go in the future. Think of it like a brain dump. There is no need to have all your questions answered or decisions made. Simply take the time to have a discussion with your PLC and record your thoughts. After the PLC’s record their thoughts and ideas, challenge them to view the other slides (based on subject area) to view other ideas and/or add comments and questions.

We have already completed this activity with our PLC’s and I absolutely loved the conversations that we observed and the ideas that were recorded. I was so impressed with the time and deep-dive our teachers took into evaluating their grading practices and attempting to start the process of establishing common goals.

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2.) Establishing Common Goals

After PLC’s have had the opportunity to brainstorm, challenge them to begin the hard work of narrowing their focus and establishing common goals. This is the real meat and potatoes of creating cohesive grading process across PLC’s (or departments, grade level, etc).

In this activity, you will once again see our three focus areas. Each slide represents one focus area and asks several questions to help PLC’s narrow down their common goals for their grading practices. By the end of this activity, the goal is for PLC’s to have a strong idea of what their PLC-wide focus will be for grading.

If you choose to make a copy of this activity and want to include all of your PLC’s, simply make a copy of the three slides multiple times and assign certain slides to certain PLC’s.

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I am going to be 100% transparent that this is a huge undertaking for our school site and the end goals are still being determined as we go through this process. Hopefully, if you find yourself in similar conversations at your school site, these activities can help frame and guide your conversations.

As always, drop any comments and/or questions below!

Our site has recently begun the journey of evaluating our grading practices through a deep dive into the book, “Grading for Equity“, by Joe Feldman. It’s a hard conversation to have for any teacher because it is personal and our brains have been so ingrained in the current grading practices that are in place. However, it is an incredibly important conversation to have to understand if our grading practices are truly equitable across all students.

When we discuss these grading practices, it is more than simply evaluating the current 0-100 scale that tends to dominate education. It goes much deeper than this. It also includes conversations such as late work policies, hard vs soft skills, assessment practices, and more. All of these pieces of our grading practices can influence students and their grades. Do our current grading practices represent the type of education we are giving our students today? Or do they more closely model a world of the past? Honestly, I am still exploring my own beliefs for the most equitable grading practices. There is a lot of hard work, conversations, and reflections that will be coming over the next several months. During this time, I hope to create some interactive and engaging professional development activities that you could also share with your teachers, departments or sites.

In this first activity, I created a simple, short, and interactive PearDeck presentation that challenges teachers to evaluate their grading practices to determine if it is truly equitable. I can take little to no credit for the content in this, since the majority of it came from Joe Feldman’s Quiz on his Grading for Equity website. However, I took this quiz and put it into a presentation that would allow school sites to have interactive conversations as they go through it. Here are a couple ideas on how to use this activity with your staff or team:

• Individually Paced – Set up the PearDeck for teachers to complete on their own and at their own pace during a staff meeting. Review the answers at the end, then break into groups to discuss these answers.
• Whole Group Paced – Set up the PearDeck for teachers to complete as a group. Display the responses to the whole group to see if the site is aligned or not. Review the answers, one by one, discuss during the presentation. If time allows, break into groups at the end for further discussion.

Personally, my favorite is the whole group option, although that was rarely my teaching style in the classroom. However, it is truly powerful to go through these questions as a whole site and compare where everyone is at and to see whether or not the school was aligned. You may find that, on certain questions, nearly all your teachers completely agree with one another. On the other hand, there may be questions where they are more split – which is where the true work begins!

If you are interested in using this activity with your site, all you need to do is:

1. Make your own copy.
2. Install the PearDeck add-on.
3. Present with PearDeck!

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Important Note: To view the answers choices to the quiz, you must present through PearDeck.  You can also view them in the speaker notes at the bottom.

Has your school taken a deep dive into its grading practices? If so, share in the comments below!

Hello EDU Friends! I hope you are surviving this crazy world that we are living in right now. Whether you are in distance learning, hybrid, or fully back in the classroom, I hope you and yours are safe, healthy, and happy.

Today, I will be sharing a simple, easy, and interactive presentation that can be given during professional development. The district in which I work is huge with the 4 C’s which, eventually, morphed into a personal passion through my Google Innovator project. I truly believe the 4 C’s in an excellent way to evaluate the depth of teacher lessons and improve these lessons for the future.

Recently, I delivered some PD to our new teachers breaking down the 4 C’s into a simple, short presentation. The 4 C’s can be a really deep and complex concept, so I tried to break it down to its simplest form, while also providing more depth for the future. In this presentation, you will find that it is broken into three parts:

1. What are the 4 C’s?
   • In this section, teachers are introduced to the lowest level and highest level of the 4 C’s, as well as provided rubrics for breaking down each C.
2. How Can I Assess the 4 C’s in my Lessons?
   • In this section, teachers are challenged to evaluate the current depth of 4 C’s in their own lessons and find next steps for improving their lessons.
3. Resources for Lesson Design
   • In the last section, teachers are provided links to lesson design ideas, websites, and resources.

Below, you will find a preview of the presentation, the view access, and a link to make your own copy:

(View) (Make Your Own Copy!)

I hope you find this presentation beneficial and feel free to drop any comments, ideas, or suggestions below!

Is distance learning hitting anyone like a ton of bricks? Or a truck? Or a truck with bricks? Okay, maybe it’s just me! Distance learning is a huge part of many educator’s lives at the moment. Everything has become virtual and, well, that can be a bit tricky and overwhelming at times. Yet, while we live in the virtual world, there are many useful tools that can make our lives easier – even when everything feels so hard. Today, I am so excited to share one of my favorite new platforms for live, virtual events: StreamYard!

StreamYard is a “live streaming studio in your browser. Interview guests, share your screen, and much more. Stream directly to Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and other platforms.” It’s an incredibly easy platform to create live streams where you can share on multiple social media websites AND save for future viewings. Personally, I have been using it for the I Heart EDU webinars. At my school site, we have also used it for our Back to School night, too!

Below, I am going to share a quick tutorial, a few ideas on how you can use StreamYard at your school, and a referral link:

Live Stream Ideas:

1. Back to School Night: Create a virtual back to school night to share important announcements and information for the new school year.
2. Reading with the “Staff Member”: Host a live reading of a children’s book with staff members at your site – whether it’s the Principal, a teacher, or support staff, student’s will love it!
3. Schoolwide (or Classroom) Updates: Let families see you live! Share important updates with your families in a live feed where they can ask questions.
4. Parent Professional Development: Are some of your families struggling with technology? Host a webinar for parents online!
5. Guest Speakers: Bring a guest speaker to your school to increase interest in college, careers, and more!

Interested in StreamYard? Visit their website to test out the free version of it! If you are interested in a paid subscription, use the following referral link to get $10 in credit!

StreamYard Referral Link

Feel free to share your virtual, live event ideas below!

In April and May, I Heart EDU released a variety of professional development webinars to support teachers with distance learning. I’m so glad many of you were able to tune in to these videos and I hope to plan a couple more soon!

Today, I am sharing a webinar on Jamboard and Google Meet that I had previously not posted due to my summer hiatus. In this webinar, Rosalinda Jaimes shares how to use Jamboard and Google Meet to amplify learning during distance learning.

I’m ashamed to admit it – but I had never used Jamboard until this presentation! I’m so disappointed that I didn’t because this would have been an AMAZING tool in the Math classroom.

Below you will find the YouTube video and helpful links to get you going with Jamboard. Enjoy!

• Presentation
• Jamboard Product Page
• YouTube
• Tech Fairies Website
• What is Google Jamboard? Blog Post

Have you used Google Jamboard in the classroom? If so, share in the comments below!

Happy May everyone! As we continue in these strange times with stay-at-home orders, I EDU is planning to continue with monthly webinars. I know that a lot of my posts recently have been based on webinars, but stay tuned for more posts as I have normally shared in the past. (Unfortunately, I messed up my back a bit this month so a lot my regular posts have been temporarily put aside!)

If you are interested in these webinars, you can pop onto our YouTube Channel or Facebook Page at the time of the event OR use the link to create a Google Calendar invite in your own calendar! As a note, the Google Calendar invite will contain a link to the YouTube channels but not the exact videos, since those have not been generated yet. 🙂

Jamboard & Google Meet

Date: 5/12 @ 4:00 PM (PST)

Presenter: Rosalinda Jaimes

Links: YouTube | Facebook | Google Calendar

Description: Using Jamboard as an interactive whiteboard and collaboration space during distance learning.

Distance Learning & Student Voice with Flipgrid

Date: 5/19 @ 4:00 PM (PST)

Presenter: Melissa King

Links: YouTube | Facebook | Google Calendar

Description: How can we offer assignments that are engaging, rigorous, yet easy to use? Flipgrid! Now teachers and students can even screen record using Flipgrid. See how to create Fliphunts, design reading group challenges, and more!

5 Google Tips & Tricks You Didn’t Know About

Date: 5/21 @ 4:00 PM (PST)

Presenter: Meagan Kelly

Links: YouTube | Facebook | Google Calendar

Description: Join this quick and informative webinar on five GSuite for Education tips and tricks you’ve never seen before – unless you’re a Google Master!

Check-ins with Google Forms

Date: 5/26 @ 4:00 PM (PST)

Presenter: Mari Venturino

Links: YouTube | Facebook | Google Calendar

Description: Use Google Forms to check in with students, both during remote learning and when we transition back to the classroom. It’s a great way to build connections with students and establish a routine.

We hope to see you there!