Tom Waters

  Your Vision and School Culture "When we think we need to solve problems all the time, we forget to focus on and celebrate what's already working!" From  @Jennifer_Hogan "The problem with passion...I was too invested in the process...prohibiting me from seeing things through the teacher's eyes." From  @matthew_arend "I believe it's the duty of the educator to prepare students to maneuver in the world regardless of the world's obstacles. Ss determine their position in this world, and this begins with a school's culture." From  @calewis1975 Professional Learning and Relationships "When a campus culture lives and breathes professional growth, the principal must clear paths for the teachers that work to improve themselves and their teams." From  @GlennWilly   "Reflection is a state of mind. It’s a mental habit. It’s a necessity for outlier teachers." From  @mafost "If you want s...

Three principals go to their schools one day, and each one faces a series of problems, challenges, and frustrations with staff members. The first principal, the Talker, decides to summon the courage and talk candidly with two teachers that she is concerned about. It's not a pleasant thing for the Talker, but she believes transparency and truthfulness build trust and respect . The Faker believes being kind and positive will create the conditions for her campus to thrive. She also has two teachers that she's concerned about, but is fearful of holding an uncomfortable conversation - instead, she fakes a smile and brings in heavy doses of nice . The Shaker also has two teachers that seem to be causing problems on her campus. She shakes things up by deciding to move these two teachers into positions that they will dislike, and she hopes they get the message . The Talker Without a doubt, the Talker tackles discomfort with courage and honesty. If this approach is couche...

Assessment often falls under the hate mail category, standardized testing. And rightfully so. Here are three ways that you can improve assessment practices on your campus. What will these ideas in this post do for you? improve reliability data sets that are simpler to interpret data that's actionable, quickly reporting that details learning, not just a grade information that can lead to highly-reliable evaluations of curricular programs Data Dashboards A data dashboard is a simple way to combine the most important metrics in ways that improve reflective practice. The data on a dashboard need to vary from sensitive data that show weekly student growth to qualitative results from parent surveys. Read more on Data is Not the Solution for Teachers   A defining characteristic of effective dashboards is the combination of district/campus determined metrics and teacher-developed metrics. This increases involvement in the assessment and evaluation pro...

It's Rose's first year on your campus. She has promise to be a great teacher and only has 2 years of experience. The students love her, you like what you see in walk-throughs, and she gets along with her team. However, there's a problem, and it's going to impact your entire school climate - uncertainty. Innovation Misinterpreted Rose attended the last team meeting and offered some great ideas about improving students' math computation skills. She listened to the feedback on her team and decided to implement her ideas with the adjustments suggested by her teammates. Sound good, right? Well, it is good. The problem is the uncertainty on the team about your expectations for innovation. At a recent staff meeting, you made it clear that you expect everyone to work together . Your exact words were, "Every teacher on your team needs to be on the same page." The Problem with Your Solution You were addressing a problem that was arising on a 2nd-gr...

Many teacher and principal evaluation systems are evolving more and more into growth vehicles. And that's a good trend. However, there's a major problem haunting evaluation systems. Evaluation systems will never equal growth systems. I know that's superlative, and there's no room for mistake in my claim. So let me explain. Evaluation Does Not Equal Growth Evaluation is judgment. It's a stamp in time on your performance. Evaluation is a rating. A score. It's not a discussion that promotes thought, reflection, or creativity. Therefore, it does not equal growth. That's not to say evaluation is unnecessary. Of course, it's needed for many reasons. But it's not to be confused with growth tools. Evaluation is about Employment An evaluation measures your performance as an employee. It doesn't gauge you as a professional or as a person. It compares you to the expectations of an organization. It's used to make employment decisi...

You do it and great leaders do it. Context switching. Not every scenario, team, or individual should be approached exactly the same. There are unique forms, functions, and frames of mind required of school leadership throughout the day. Great leaders understand this. Good leaders do it. And...well, we've all worked for someone who made mistakes with this...or was unable to execute the context switch. And yes, it's easier to see in your boss than in the mirror (oh, the power of reflective practice). In this post, I will show: How three different school leaders do or don't context switch. The positive and negative effects of each leader. Steps to effectively context switch and lead your school to greater learning outcomes! The Promoted Manager The context for this school leader is managing up. They intuitively know relationships above in the chain of command are vital. This leader places an imbalanced effort in managing up. The efforts in this context ofte...

How Long Should Direct Instruction Be? Direct instruction is great, but how long should it be - based on brain research? This is a great reminder from Eric Jensen about the length that most students can cognitively engage (in direct instruction, that is). Thanks  @DavidJHuber , for sharing this as we go back to school. But what can be done in only 8-12 minutes? Here are 5 high-yielding strategies that fit perfectly in this short direct instruction window. 1. Expand Prior Knowledge in Direct Instruction Part of the challenge in teaching classes of students (instead of individual students) is the range of background knowledge. Each student comes to class at a different starting point. Direct instruction can very efficiently build prior knowledge for all students. Present visuals, videos, quick reads, or graphic organizers. Fill in prerequisite background knowledge and push the limits on enriching background knowledge. This will allow all students to make richer conne...

I'm proud to watch our team at TeamTom Education lead into another area of curriculum and instruction...Word Study! They are hard at work developing a free spiraling warm-up resource for reading teachers in grades 2-8. In just 10 days we've had almost 300 teachers sign up, and the list is growing by 5-20% per day. If you know a reading teacher, team, or department that could benefit from a streamlined approach to teaching word knowledge to young readers and writers, this free membership may be for them. The power in this resource is in the research-based video instruction and the spiraling curriculum. Daily word study warm-ups guarantee each student has hands-on practice and direct instruction with the following skills and concepts: consonant clusters vowel sounds vowel combinations multiple syllable words sentence fluency academic vocabulary word parts root words Our authors are at work developing the curriculum into all areas of word study to build st...

Teachers Really Do Amazing Things! It is so hard to adequately so thank you to the professionals who delicately and passionately touch so many thousands of lives! TeamTom Education is inviting teachers to access free resources as a part of TeamTom Testers. I think it is a valuable opportunity and a great way to give a little back to teachers. Teachers really do touch more than test scores! Read the article and the full invite on the  TeamTomEducation.com blog: Tap to read  Keep Calm and Thank a Teacher

Collective purpose is such a buzz-type word. But the concept is more than buzz. It's the foundation of good teamwork . In practice, it is not as common as you would think. At least not as common as it should be with the surge in "collaboration" over the last 5 years. Everyone talks collaboration. Working together. Yet, it is not uncommon for many teams to actually collaborate with collective purpose. What is collective purpose? There are four basic features at the core of collective purpose. Here they are from big picture down to technical detail. 1. When a team shares a vision about what needs to happen and where they intend to be. 2. When a team shares what they hope to achieve and the goals they have to reach along the way. 3. When a team understands  how they go about their business. 4. When a team accepts the roles and plays those roles with passion and strength. Collective purpose can empower and awaken a team to move in the same directio...

TeamTom Education has an amazing strategy on the new blog post. It is a total response strategy that is aimed at taking test review into excellent instruction. In this strategy, students focus on test question analysis , but they do so in a fun and engaging way! The blog post covers these key topics related to the strategy: How the Strategy Works - a step-by-step overview of the strategy, Test Question Slap Down What are Analysis-Level Questions? Test Review to Think Deeply - Questions stems to prompt critical thinking when using test items Ongoing Formative Assessment The Benefits of Fun and Engaging Test Review Ideas for Classroom Management with this strategy You can read or recommend teachers to review the blog post at Test Review Game: Test Question Slap Down .

I once heard the book titled something like,  Feed Your Teachers or They'll Eat the Students . The gist of it was this: build a healthy work environment , and teachers will get the most learning out of the students. To do this, teachers need: Support Affirmation Professional learning Positive feedback Coaching feedback Listening I think you'll agree, these are the basics for a healthy school culture. You'll also agree the same is true at the leadership level. Feed Your Principals, or They'll Eat Your Teachers Your principals want the same as teachers - to  be successful ! Wait a second, that's the same desire held by district leaders and community members. So why do principals often act in ways that reveal detrimental dispositions? Dispositions and actions that undermine success. Such as: Fear of being judged harshly. Insecurity about their success. Need for control. Reaction to unforeseen problems. The answer is... ...they...

I don't mention it much here on the leadership blog, but I've got to take a few sentences to say how proud I am of our publishing team. You author the best teaching resources! Keep up the great work. View their latest test prep resources on the teaching blog at http://teamtomeducation.com/reading-test-prep-summarizing-task-cards/ Be sure to recommend the blog to teachers you know! And teachers are saying the greatest things...which is always more than I can say! “My class loved using these!” -Natalie Asbury “My class started using these today. There are so many options and ways to use them!” -Jessica C. “This is great! Thank you ;)” -Elizabeth Liedtke “Great for workstations and exit tickets!” -Ms. W Creative Little Learners (TPT Seller) “This resource is great practice!” -Stacy B.

In my previous post, Very Few Teachers Ever Quit Teaching , I proposed the idea that teachers never quit teaching. They quit their principal. If this is true, for the most part, then here are some easy to use strategies to keep your star teachers from quitting you. 1. Say Thank You to Your Teachers No, don't go there...not in a general email. That's not good enough. It's practically boss spam. Instead, make it personal. I was leaving Kroger's the other day, and the manager was cleaning the entry area. An employee was leaving his shift, and the manager said, "Thanks for your hard work today." That's it. It's not magical. It's leadership, and it says how much you value your teachers. Here are 23 Tips to Boost Staff Morale . 2. Be a Treasure Hunter It is so easy to point out every flaw and detail of imperfection. Or should I say, perceived  flaw? Make it a habit of walking through classrooms and finding treasure! Organiz...

Almost no teacher. Very few. Practically none. They don't just quit teaching. But they do quit something. (And Burnout is Real ) Almost all educators who entered the profession did so because they love growth. Teachers love to see children grow. Teachers love to see students learn. School leaders love to watch teachers grow. District and regional leaders love helping people and organizations grow. With all this love, it's illogical that any teacher every quits teaching. Well, they don't. Teachers don't quit teaching, they quit their principals. Here are 4 ways to keep your star teachers from quitting you: Use words to encourage, affirm, and recognize individually and in group settings. There's no cost to words. There's no bank where they run out. Don't be stingy with good words. Visit them often and find the good. If you can't find the good, then it's likely that your lenses need cleaning. You provide great training and support, so...