Raise the Praise

Good Morning and Happy Friday!

Good luck to the Lady Blues and Graham Steers competing in basketball tournaments in Albany and Santo.

Kudos to Crestview Principal Amanda Townley for being a good sport.  The second grade students earned the right to tape her to the wall for bringing the most items for the food drive.

Marzano High Reliability Schools (HRS)- I shared this several weeks back.  The principals will begin discussing this with the staff following the holidays.  We will be creating three teams- Pioneer/Crestview (need 4 teachers from each campus; Woodland/GJHS (need 4 teachers from each campus; GHS (need 9 teachers).

This past year I submitted a request to ESC 9 for our district to be included in the HRS professional development program.  I recently learned that we will be afforded this opportunity.  The HRS framework is not about adding a new initiative… It is about discovering best practices and providing indicators that will allow us to measure progress and increase levels of reliability related to:

1. Safe and Collaborative Culture
2. Effective Teaching in Every Classroom
3. Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum
4. Standards-Referenced Reporting
5. Competency-Based Education

Based on Marzano's research districts and schools, using the framework and indicators, can drive permanent, positive, and significant impacts on student achievement by synthesizing multiple complex initiatives into one harmonious system.

Funding (approximately $75K per team) for the training is being provided by the Priddy Foundation. I am thinking that we will be establishing three ten member teams (Pioneer/Crestview, Woodland/GJHS & GHS) to participate in the 17-18 school year. If you are interested in participating in this opportunity please email me and your campus principal.

A-F Accountability System for 2017 - 18 and Beyond- Sometime over the Christmas break, the district will receive our “mock” A-F Rating. This rating will be made public sometime in January.  This coming week, I will be sharing information related to this with the campus principals and they will share it with you following the break. I have created a shared folder on Google Drive that is available to all that contains information related to the A-F Rating System.

Commission of Education to Set a Permanent Scale Score Passing Standard for the minimum passing score on each 3-8 STAAR and EOC STAAR assessments.-

• The Commissioner is also proposing new names for each performance level.  The proposed changes include having 4 performance levels.  These levels will no longer be referred to as "Satisfactory, Final Level II and Advanced Level III".  The new proposed terms are:
• Did Not Meet Grade Level: This performance category applies to students scoring below Approaches Grade Level. This performance level indicates that students are unlikely to succeed in the next grade or course without significant, ongoing academic intervention. Students in this category do not demonstrate a sufficient understanding of the assessed knowledge and skills.
• Approaches Grade Level: Performance at this level indicates that students are likely to succeed in the next grade or course with targeted academic intervention. Students in this category generally demonstrate the ability to apply the assessed knowledge and skills in familiar contexts.
• Meets Grade Level: Performance in this category indicates that students have a high likelihood of success in the next grade or course but may still need some short-term, targeted academic intervention. Students in this category generally demonstrate the ability to think critically and apply the assessed knowledge and skills in familiar contexts. For Algebra II and English III, this performance level indicates students are sufficiently prepared for postsecondary success.
• Masters Grade Level: Performance at this level indicates that students are expected to succeed in the next grade or course with little or no academic intervention. Students in this category demonstrate the ability to think critically and apply the assessed knowledge and skills in varied contexts, both familiar and unfamiliar. For Algebra II and English III, this level of performance indicates students are well prepared for postsecondary success.
• The amendment would establish the 2015-2016 STAAR® passing standard as the minimum passing requirement (Approaches Grade Level) and set the current panel-recommended standard as the benchmark indicating a higher level of satisfactory achievement (Meets Grade Level). The Level III performance standard would be renamed "Masters Grade Level" to clearly indicate advanced grade-level performance on a STAAR® assessment and articulate the relationship between each of the performance levels.
• The proposed rule change is open for public comment from December 9 - January 9, 2017. To view these proposed changes, please click here.

Raise the Praise

Raise the Praise and Minimize the Criticize is a growth mindset.  Taking the positive approach is key to enhancing the morale of others.  Active acknowledgement of the many positive things occurring within an organization and with individuals may be the critical factor in growing a positive culture within one's team.

One of the challenges that all educators face is learning how to praise.  Often teachers have spent their entire careers looking for what is wrong, pointing out errors and focusing on mistakes. Although this is part of being a teacher, the exceptional educator looks for opportunities to find people doing things right.  

Ben Bissell (1992) described five areas that help praise work.

1. Authentic- Praise others for something genuine; recognize them for something that is true.
2. Specific- Praise should be clearly defined or identified.  The behavior we acknowledge often becomes the behavior that will continue.
3. Immediate- It is vital to recognize positive efforts and contributions in a timely manner.
4. Clean- For praise to be “clean” it is offered without an expectation of change and it can’t include the word “but.”
5. Private- The majority of time, praise needs to be private. Many students prefer private recognition to avoid peer resentment, not being “cool”, etc.

I encourage you to find a way to praise that works for you… postcards, phone calls, emails, etc.!

Take care of yourself, have fun and raise the praise!

Corny Joke of the Day

What do reindeer hang on their Christmas trees?
 (Scroll down for the answer)

Horn-aments!

HOPE

GOOD MORNING AND HAPPY FRIDAY!  

Congratulations to Lady Blue Jasmine Sims!  She has been selected as a Texas Girls Coaches Association (TGCA) All-Star.  This a huge honor as only 12 girls from 1A, 2A, 3A and 4A  were selected to represent Blue Team in the All-Star Game that will be held this coming July.

Congrats to the Lady Blues who received Volleyball All-District Honors! Offensive Player of the Year- Jasmine Sims; Newcomer of the Year- Emma Ranger; 1st Team All Dist Nicole King and Marleigh Sanders; 2nd Team All Dist- Emily Davis and Delaney Sullivent; Honorable Mention- Baylee Loomis and Skylar Morris

Congrats to the Graham Steers that received Football All-District Honors!  Those receiving honors include: Jack Hays- Defensive MVP; Will Hays- Defensive Sophomore; Jaxon Brockway- First Team Running Back; Adam Groves- First Team Receiver; Hunter Dooley- First Team Offensive Tackle; Hector Alejo- First Team Offensive Guard; Alfonso Duran- First Team Defensive Tackle; Cy Holt- First Team Outside Linebacker; Wes Martin- First Team Cornerback; Tucker Horn- Second Team Quarterback; Kody Perry- Second Team Receiver; Riley Wyatt- Second Team Center; Preston Langley- Second Team Defensive End; Joel Jones- Second Team Outside Linebacker; Peyton Johnston- Second Team Safety.

Congratulations to the Graham Steers Basketball team on Tuesday’s victory over Bridgeport.

Best of luck to the Lady Blues competing in basketball tournaments at Jacksboro and Mineral Wells this weekend.

Good luck and safe travels for our Ag Leadership Team students competing at Sam Houston State today and tomorrow.

The Chamber of Commerce Hot Chocolicious Competition and Movie has been moved to the GHS gym. The event will be held from 5:30 pm to 9:00 pm with the movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, set to begin at 6:45 pm.

HOPE

Barry Haenisch with the Texas Association of Community Schools organization shared this with me this week. Enjoy!

I hope that each of you enjoyed a blessed Thanksgiving. The passing of Thanksgiving marks the official beginning of the Christmas season. Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year. It is a season filled with symbolism, both religious and secular. While it is the time that the Christian tradition celebrates and remembers the birth of Christ, it is also a time of excess; too much food, too much celebrating, and too many presents. Christmas is the one time of the year where the gaudier and brighter the lights in the neighborhood, the better!

Two hundred years ago in the early 19th Century, as astonishing as it may seem, Christmas almost ended in England. The primary newspaper of the country at that time did not mention the word “Christmas” one time between 1790 and 1835. Beginning in the 1840s, famine and unemployment were widespread throughout the country. About 10% of the population lived in extreme poverty; worse poverty than you can even imagine. For too many people life seemed hopeless. At that time an author, Charles Dickens, was planning to challenge the government and the wealthy to act with generosity and compassion. His little book, A Christmas Carol, through the character Ebenezer Scrooge brings the challenge into focus. In many ways, the book struck a chord with the populace. Many historians credit the return of Christmas in England to the popularity of the book. As a result of the work, a scrooge became a miserly, miserable person. From this little work, hope began to creep back into the lives of the British populace.

It’s kind of sad the effect despair can have. Despair can swing elections. It can infect the culture of companies and nations. Despair can poison the spring of “peace on earth, good will to men”. With the gap between the haves and the have-nots in our country, the verbal and physical battles at play after our recent election, and the prospect of an economy in down-turn, too many people are in despair in our country.

In England in the mid-19th Century a little book about a mean, money-grubbing miser who got to really see his past, his present, and his future somehow brought hope to the people. Even today, when we hear the story again, we aspire to be the joyful, genial, generous Scrooge from the end of the book. Funny, isn’t it, how sometimes the smallest of things can make the biggest difference in a person’s life or in the direction of a country?

As a country we face a real unknown. Is our future in good hands? Will the terrorism that others are facing impact us? Will world tensions spring out of control into another global conflict? As a state, we worry about the price of oil and its impact on our lives. Higher taxes seem to suck up every salary increase most people receive. Health care costs just keep spiraling upward. Educators worry that public education seems to be a lower priority with our leaders each year.

And yet, hope springs eternal. As we enter the Christmas season most of us will get the Christmas spirit. We will wish one and all a very Merry Christmas! We will sing the songs of the season with vigor and gusto! We will, like Scarlet O’Hara in Gone With the Wind, decide to “…think about that tomorrow”.

In reality, hope is a frame of mind. Hope lies within each of us, and it is a choice that we make…or choose not to make. I like the words from the book, Grateful the Heart of Prayer. “Hope looks at all things the way a mother looks at her child, with a passion for the possible. That way of thinking is creative. It creates the space in which perfection can unfold. More than that, the eyes of hope look through the imperfections to the heart of all things and find it perfect. The eyes of hope are grateful eyes. Before our eyes learned to look gratefully at the world, we expected to find beauty in good looking things. But grateful eyes expect the surprise of finding beauty in all things.”

As we look forward to the future with a new President, to the cheer of the holiday season, the uncertainty of a legislative session, and to the new beginnings of a new year, may you feel real hope; may you look with grateful eyes at the beauty that you take for granted every day. Or, as Desmond Tutu once said, “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all the darkness.”

Corny Joke of the Day

What do Santa's little helpers learn at school?
 (scroll down go to for the answer)

The elf-abet!