First Day of School Edition

Happy Friday, team!  And a joyful TGIF!

I am bringing back the "JV weekly recaps" as we start out the SY25 school year. They will be published every-other-week this year (in this jazzy new format) and I'm eager for your suggestions or insights on content.  For this edition, I'll summarize some timely network updates, team updates, share a few things I'm reading, and throw in a little personal / WLB update. 

1. Network Updates:

  • The school year has begun!  I was able to get into 9 schools this week and it has been absolutely delightful.  There is a lightness and ease to this school opening that I don't recall in years past.  A few highlights include:  officially launching dual language in Camden (I stopped by McGraw and got to see Heggerty in Spanish estar en plena actividad), Chromebooks in secondary schools which look like a sea of red, and the most beautiful ELA and Biology lessons at Gratz which left me verklempt.  Ah, what is possible when we are clear with our instructional vision!

  • End of Year Reflections:  Last week, I prompted Directors to do a regimented review of end of year student outcomes.  The goal here is two-fold: the lift up to 10,000 feet to see the birds eye view of achievement across the network and then to identify salient themes that should influence our school support this year. 

  • NST Satisfaction / Net Promoter Survey:  today in our Executive Team meeting, Serena shared last year's NST satisfaction results.  Once we get our department report, we will share and debrief as a team, but in the meantime wanted to share the headlines:  schools are moderately satisfied, but want to be able to give more feedback:

2. Team Updates

  • This month we are supporting the transition of the Specialized Services team over to the Equity Department.  We are also getting ready to ensure a lively send-off party for Elizabeth. Anthony and Krissy are taking the helm with day-to-day management and working hard to make sure we're organized to maximize our NST support.

  • To that end, by the end of the month the MLL team will be transitioning over to Humanities and Lisa Walsh will work directly with Molly.  

  • As you know, Kevin is officially on the Equity Team now, working on high school redesign.  Over the course of this month, I'm supporting Zac and Tiffani with transitioning over to NST Ops and working with Dean Dickos.  Heads up, we will be putting some new protocols in place for purchase requests, booking external event space, registering for conferences, etc. and will be requiring more lead time.  More to come after that is worked through.

3. What I'm Reading 

  • Out of desperation, late last spring, I ordered Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell to try to have a come to Jesus moment with myself around how I am spending my time.  The truth is, I am an active mother, an executive educator, a doctoral student and I try to be a decent wife / friend / daughter / sister, etc.  For me, there does seem to be a point in midlife where the paradigm has to shift with how I chose to spend my time.  While I find his voice a bit obnoxious, the central message of the book is "manage your energy, not your time" and it's quite effective... even can be liberating. 

  • In the work world, I am reading a study that came out earlier this month about the disproportionate identification of LGBTQ+ students in special education (headline: 2x as likely to be identified). This is particularly relevant as we're on the precipice of conducting our special education audit in the year ahead for Plan 2029.    

  • Finally, in conjunction with the NST alignment review that Dr. Randle is helping us with, I've been reflecting on the role of instructional leadership at Mastery, particularly on school leadership teams.  As an executive team this summer, we read UW's Central Office Transformation Toolkit - very thought provoking!


4. JV's World 

Professionally, I am starting the year with a clear mind and an open heart.  I spent some time going through a "polish week";  that is, time set-aside to update my workflow systems, reset my calendar, forecast upcoming milestones, etc.  One deliverable in this process is mapping out my "ideal week" - it allows me to manage my energy, not just my time (see reading list).  The desired outcome of this is that I can spend considerably more time in schools - seeing our model in action, gathering feedback, and shadowing our team.  Yay!

Personally,  I am in a bit of a bureaucratic carousel getting my IRB application at Seton Hall approved.  Which me luck - they are being persnickety.  

In terms of the family, Max will start 4th grade and Evelyn will start 6th grade (middle school!) on Tuesday, 9/3 - we're all ready. ;)  

I am taking vacation next Thursday and Friday and we're going to sneak down to the shore for some final summer beach time, which always restores me...  here's a picture from the last time I was at the beach at the Oregon Coast (shutdown week).  Too long ago!



 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Network Outage Edition

Image
Team,  Can you believe it?!  We are online, on email, all up in Google Classroom, and TEAMS / Google chattin' our way back into technology integration!  What a wild few weeks.  Thanks for your patience, flexibility, #OneTeam spirit, and concierge-mentality that helped us navigate our way through tenuous challenging days. In all seriousness, cyber incidents have hit public school systems hard over the last five years and our experience represents a concerning trend.  Providence, RI, Scranton, PA and Highline, WA - districts similarly sized to us - all experienced an attack in the last month, yet if you were to read the headlines from those locales you'd notice how much faster we've progressed through a truly trying time.  Kudos to our technology team is well-deserved and we navigate getting back to full restoration (more on that below). Updates this week : New Jersey Charter Renewal :  On Tuesday, 9/24 we hosted a ten-person delegation from NJDOE , Cam...
Read more

Holiday Edition

Image
Seasons greetings, team!  I hope you are having a great December . My month has been B-U-S-Y (more of those personal updates below).  One bright spot is the amount of time I've been in schools, which filleth my cup (and my cup needeth). A few updates for this week: 1. NST Alignment Process Updates:   We wrapped the last AP session on NST alignment yesterday and Lauren will be working to aggregate the survey feedback and elevate key themes.  We'll share those with you after Winter Break as we lay out the design process for responding to the feedback and ensuring our supports and services are clear and impactful. 2. JV's Principal Empathy Interviews :  As you may know, I've been spending November and December sitting down with principals to better understand their hopes and desires with the NST alignment.  Because we will be re-centering on Instructional Leadership , we will need to redefine the role of principal as instructional leader and then cascade that ...
Read more

September 13th Edition

Image
Happy Friday (the 13th)!  I have a lot to update you all on this wonderful September morning, as the school year is well under way!  So far, I've had a chance to get into  about 16 of our schools, with my goal of seeing the remainder before the end of the month.  I am seeing bright, beautiful buildings, the use of technology (especially in our secondary schools), planned teachers, and positive school cultures.  Great examples of this are kids in Biology at Gratz (right) engaging in HMH and google classroom and kindergarten dual-language students at Molina (below)  What I am also seeing is teachers almost executing the Common Foundation, but not always fully meeting the mark.  I am seeing scaffolds - lots of them, both written (think:  graphic organizers) and verbal (teachers narrating kids through the thinking steps).  When I see these things, I worry - I think about the level of cognitive engagement that is expected at a given grade level t...
Read more