Here in New England, October is a beautiful month where we start to see the change from summer to fall with the beautiful foliage. October also provides educators across the globe opportunties for tremendous change professionally due to the fact that it is Connected Educator Month. As school leaders, we need to promote and model the actions of a connected educator if we expect our teachers to utilize technological resources in their work with students. Students who are shown how to take advantage of the latest tools to learn, network, and solve problems will have a distinct advantage over those who are left to figure it out on their own.
With this in mind, I am happy to announce that the National Association of Secondary School Principals and the National Association of Elementary School Principals have teamed up to offer a series of Twitter chats on Monday nights at #CPChat throughout the month of October to help promote Connected Educator Month and National Principals Month.
So please mark your calendar now for the following Mondays at 9 p.m. EST:
- Monday, October 5
- Monday, October 12
- Monday, October 19
- Monday, October 26
School leaders need to advantage of this opportunity to connect with their colleagues around the globe!
Keeping with the theme of Connected Educators and Principals, I am going to share three blogs from high school principals that you should be following for this week’s “Three for Thursday.” I will share blogs from middle and elementary principals in future posts.
My first share this week comes from Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada. It is The Learning Nation, the great blog of Kamloops-Thompson’s District Principal of Innovation Cale Birk. Cale certainly lives up to his title by sharing some of the innovative practices he is pursuing with his colleagues in Kamloops and asking some important questions that we all need to spend som time reflecting upon.
My second share is Practical Theory by Science Leadership Academy’s (SLA) Chris Lehmann. If you are not familiar with Chris and his amazing work at his school in Philadelphia then you definitely need to start connecting. Science Leadership hosts an annual conference at the end of January which is unlike any conference you have ever attended. I highly encourage school leaders to check out Educon and interact with the staff and students from SLA as well as the other educators who come in from around the globe. Finally, Chris and former SLA teacher Zac Chase (now of the U.S. Dept. of Ed’s Office of Ed. Tech) have just written a book titled Building School 2.0 which is getting great reviews and is at the top of my reading list.
The final principal’s blog I will highlight is from Jimmy Casas at Bettendorf High School in Iowa. Jimmy is a recent winner of the Iowa Secondary Principal of the Year award and he was selected as one of three finalists for NASSP’s National Secondary Principal of the Year. In 2013, he received the Bammy Educators Voice Award as the Secondary School Principal of the Year. In 2014, Jimmy was invited to the White House to speak on the Future Ready Schools pledge. Most importantly, Jimmy’s passion and voice are a great model for school leaders and those aspiring to be school leaders.