New Staff Onboarding

I have been recently learning about staff onboarding from Robert Jackson. He asked me to trial his platform Onboard360, so I could learn from the process. The learning was priceless! Here are some of the main parts. There are three basic parts to the onboarding process:

• Pre-boarding
• Orientation
• Post-boarding
  

Pre-boarding

This takes place prior to the new cohort of teachers arriving at the school. We have our first virtual meeting in March. During this meeting, we get to know one another and start to dig into the school's mission. A padlet is available where staff can ask questions. We then answer the questions in a video and send it the following week. In this video, I incorporated a tour of the school. 

About a month later we schedule a second per-boarding meeting. This keeps the momentum going. In this meeting, we give an opportunity for anybody new to the group to introduce themselves. We also dig a little further into the school philosophy. In this case, we looked at our Schoolwide Learner Outcomes.

During these two to three pre-boarding sessions the school has the opportunity to start to make the new staff feel part of the team and to connect with each other. They are assigned a mentor from the current school staff, somebody they can ask questions. The school can send an important policy every week or two so the new staff member can slowly start to assimilate information that will help them hit the ground running. 

Orientation

In our context orientation takes place over one week prior to school starting. New staff come on Monday and Tuesday, and they are joined by returning staff members from Wednesday to Friday. It is important to get a balance here between communicating school philosophy, getting to know one another time, curriculum planning and time to set up learning spaces. I generally try to give teachers afternoons free to plan and set up the class.

The advantage to a strong pre-boarding program is that you do not need to cram so much into the orientation week. You can send new staff items to read in advance. I have learned that a good leader keeps the mission at the forefront of all you do. It is a good idea to develop your ice-breaker around the mission and have staff moving, interacting with one another, and making new connections around the school mission. Everything to do with housing, visa, food, internet and furniture should all have been taken care of before the orientation so that the staff members' primary needs are sorted and out of their minds before orientation starts. 

Post-boarding

Just like the pre-boarding meetings it is a good idea to have some post-boarding meetings after new staff have been on the ground. About two meetings where you buy some treats and get some coffee, and just check in to see how new staff are doing. During this time you can find how things are going and ask if there are any personal or professional needs the staff members have. It is a good opportunity to receive feedback on the onboarding process and improve it in the future. 

Your staff are your greatest asset. Having a solid plan in place to welcome them, provide for their needs and help them hit the ground running will be an immense benefit to your entire community and help the school further its mission. 

Strategic Planning

I have been learning recently about how accreditation aligns with authorization. By accreditation, I am referring to international accreditation organizations such as The Accrediting Commission for Schools, Western Association of Schools and Colleges (ACS WASC), The Council of International Schools (CIS) or New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC).  By authorization, I am referring specifically to The International Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO), which provides a curriculum framework for schools which includes the Primary Years Programme (PYP), Middle Year Programme (MYP), Diploma Programme (DP) and Career Related Programme (CP). 

So what is the difference between these two organisations? 

ACS WASC for example will guide the school through a Focus on Learning Process where the school will analyze its effectiveness compared to their research-based standards. The school undertakes an in-depth self-study and looks in particular at the following areas:

• Organization for student learning
• Curriculum, instruction and assessment
• Support for student social-emotional and academic growth
• School culture, child protection and parent/community
• Residential life

The constant question throughout this process is, "How do we know it is effective for all students' learning and well-being?"

The IBO on the other hand provides a curriculum framework. The PYP and MYP should be developed around a vertically aligned set of curriculum standards, however, the DP comes with a prescribed syllabus. The DP is a rigorous program and the PYP and MYP can be, depending on their implementation. The IBO also leads each program through a self-study process where the school develops in the following standards:

• Purpose
• Environment
• Culture
• Learning

So the question is how do these align? For example, ACS WASC will usually leave the school with around five schoolwide goals to work towards in a six-year period. The IB will leave the school with about ten recommendations per program (about 30 total) to be addressed in a five-year period. The answer is through the development of an annual strategic plan. On this plan, a school can break down the goals and recommendations over the five or six-year period into manageable, attainable, and accountable chunks. 

The school leader may then share this document with the school community to inform them of how the school vision will be put into action. I ask the community to keep me accountable to the plan. In our strategic plan each division of the school was supported to develop its own plan, based on the different self-studies. This will be used to support each division leader to implement their plan, thus achieving the school mission. So for example, there is a tab for PYP, MYP, DP, Logistics etc. 

An idea to consider is to put a Gantt chart on the plan to keep track of schoolwide goals over a historical period. This will be particularly useful during staff turnover to see what the school has worked on over the years. Keep learning!

References

ACS WASC Focus on Learning 2020 Edition

IBO Standards and Practices 2020 

Curriculum Mapping of Skills (ATLs)

Curriculum mapping can be daunting and complicated but it does not have to be. In this post, I intend to present a simple process to map skills through a curriculum. What I am documenting here is a half-day off the timetable to get the bulk of the work done. The curriculum coordinator then works with grade-level teams to refine the process as part of an annual program review. Two points to note, in some formal research I undertook in 2013, I documented that in order for professional development to be beneficial it needed to be "built into the schedule rather than tacked on at the end of the day" or weekend. I believe this to be true to this day. The work done here was done during a student-free PD day and the follow-up work by the teaching teams will be done during their 80 minute weekly timetabled collaborative planning time. 

When it comes to curriculum mapping my motto is, "be willing to sacrifice content for the teaching on concepts". This means to me that we aim to cover all the content, however, when this is not possible we should look for power standards or key conceptual understanding over content coverage. Here we mapped all the Approaches to Learning (ATL) skills, however, as the program of inquiry is refined this will change. 

In 2018 the International Baccalaureate released the new Primary Years Programme Principles to Practice. As part of this revision, a new set of ATLs for early years was released in the document The Learner on p. 15. On another document titled Learning and Teaching more ATLs were released for primary grades on p. 26. It is my understanding that these lists are suggested skills and that schools may adopt skills that suit their context. One of our goals is to move from being a 3 program IB school to being a continuum school. In order to make this happen, we decided to implement the new ATLs so that our curriculum would align better with the Middle Years Program. 

To get the ball rolling my secretary created a spreadsheet to work from. I coded all the individual ATLs. The total was 171. I then counted the units in our program which came to be 43. When the number of ATLs was divided by the number of units it came to around 4. We also have 96 single-subject (SS) units. So I asked homeroom teachers to aim for 3 ATLs in one of their units and SS teachers to aim for 3. This way we would cover all of the ATLs at least twice throughout our primary years program. This is the bit I am unsure about and would appreciate feedback from my PLN. As I mentioned above the POI will be refined over time.

Next, we split into three groups. The three early years teams went with our brilliant PYPC, Ms. Maria Zialcita and worked together to map their ATLs into their units. I stayed to work with P6 and P2 together. I made the decision to ask P6 and P2 to stay as they were both extremes of the primary years, the oldest and the youngest. We looked at foundational skills for P2 (Grade 1) and what we felt were the most advanced for P6 (Grade 5). 

After this, we did the same with P3 and P5 before finishing with P4. Our goal was to map the skills developmentally from our three-year-olds up to our eleven-year-olds. What this has given us is a start. What was a daunting task for me has now begun and as I keep mentioning the refining will take place over the coming months and will be further refined each year as the curriculum coordinator leads grade-level teams to make changes to our program of inquiry. As with all of my work, if you would like our ATL map leave your email in the comments, I would be happy to share, "to create a better world through education". 

How to Lose Weight

So over Christmas this year I hit the Tim-Tams heavy! Perhaps the worst thing about living overseas is meeting Australians and learning how to bite off both ends of a Tim-Tam to suck your tea through the biscuit. If you have never tried this, don't! Basically, this left me with a layer of extra fat that I wanted to get rid of. Due to a back injury hitting the gym was not an option so I took to the kitchen. 

There is a saying in bodybuilding circles, "A Six-pack is not built in the gym but in the kitchen". This is very true. The vast majority of the following information I have learned from Kevin McGarry, a friend and one of the best personal trainers I have ever met. He basically taught me that by putting your body into caloric deficit for a period of time fat will burn off. Our bodies need a certain number of calories each day to provide the energy we need. Caloric deficit means that we aim to provide slightly less than the body requires, thus requiring the body to burn excess fat, for a period of time. 

In order to learn how many calories your body needs each day you need to use a calory calculator like this one or this one. The following information needs to be inserted:

• age
• height
• weight
• sex
• exercise level

This will then give you the number
of calories you need each day in order to maintain your current weight. If you want to get bigger add more calories, if you want to lose weight (get shredded) take slightly less calories each day. The Bodybuilding.com calory counter will actually go that bit further and tell you exactly how many calories to take according to your goal. 

So as can be seen in the image above I need to reduce my calories to about 1900 in order to burn off some fat. I advise you to give yourself about three months. This is the start of my third month and I have lost about 9 lbs. You can lose weight faster using diets but this is a lifestyle that does not restrict what you eat. I was on 10 days holiday recently and very much enjoyed the buffets at breakfast and dinner. I maintained my weight at the amount I lost by not exceeding 2300 calories a day. 

A Day of Food at 1900 Calories

Here is a day of eating for me. On this day I knew that I would be going out for a staff appreciation dinner that evening to a great burger joint. I watched my calories carefully at breakfast and lunch so I could go wild in the evening! 

Breakfast
Oats 300 + Peanut Butter 100 + Rasins 150 = 550
Lunch
Taco Salad 300 + Slice of Bread 100 = 400
Dinner
Burger 600 + Fries 350 = 950

Total = 550 + 400 + 950 = 1900

As for how to know how many calories are in the food you eat. Currently, I just Google and have been keeping a list of everything. Another great way to do this is to download the My Fitness Pal app developed by Under Armour. After a while, you will be able to tell about how many calories are in your meal by looking at it, as you most likely eat the same things over and over again. 

I hope this helps somebody to meet their weight goal while enjoying life!

Principal's Principles #4

Welcome to the fourth installment of the blog series Principal's Principles. At this stage, I am completing my fifth year as an elementary school principal. The following are some of the learning that is taking place in my life during this stage. 

Distribute Leadership

Plan like you are leaving! Anything can happen and you may have to leave your school tomorrow. One of the best things you can do is have a succession plan in place should that happen. This is done by developing a strong leadership team and distributing leadership as much as possible. Initially, as a new leader, you may feel insecure and that you want to be in the spotlight for every occasion. You need to get through this stage as soon as possible if you are in it. 

Some practical ways to put this into practice are the following. Have lead teachers, coordinators or other key staff members lead assemblies. Distribute the load of planning and leading parent workshops throughout the year among the leadership team you have developed. Include a couple of people in your recruiting process. Teach them how to interview and call references. In particular, if you teach them to call references you are ensuring the safety of your students and the mental health of your current staff. 

The Bus

Closely connected to the section above is the leadership saying: get the right people on the bus and get them in the right seats on the bus. This means that hiring is crucial. I have a saying, "I do not care about PYP or PhD, just give me a good teacher with a good attitude." I put much more weight in the reference calls than the interview. Through careful recruiting, you get the right people on the bus. 

Developing a solid Professional Growth Program is then important to develop the people you have hired. I believe in promoting internally and developing the proven talent that you have. This is the second part of this saying, get them in the right seats on the bus. I suggest you promote internally and get competent people that you trust in lead teacher, coordinator, and other key positions. 

Accreditation

This one is huge and has the potential to transform your organization. If you get your head around this it will be worth its weight in gold for you. I will most likely write a separate blog post about this. Accreditation agencies such as ACS WASC, CIS or NEASC have developed research-based standards over decades to guide schools. These standards form the basis of what makes a good school. Learn what they are inside out. I encourage you to apply to serve as a visiting team member with one of the above organizations. This will rapidly increase your learning in this area. 

As you go through the accreditation process with your school, utilize it to its full. If the leadership team can really understand the value of an Appreciative Inquiry, Action Research, self-study process, it can transform the school. The action plan that is developed as part of this process should drive all you do at the school. This is particularly beneficial in times of crisis like the current COVID-19 pandemic that we are experiencing. 

Professional Development

Align your professional development plan to your schoolwide action plan. Connect it to your teacher professional growth program. Ensure that you are not selecting PD on a whim with no follow-through. Plan it according to your action plan. For example, if one of your schoolwide goals is child protection then you should have child protection training as part of your PD program. Basically, it is a rule that the more you connect everything at the school, the faster you will bring about lasting change. 

Baby Photos

My final bit of advice is to use baby photos. If it is a graduation, presentation, or whatever, if you put up pictures of your students when they were babies, it will immediately change the atmosphere in the room:-) 

The Big Bang and Christianity

I have recently been learning about Big Bang Cosmology and would like to document it. This means that at a point in the past space and time had a beginning. Some would say that the big bang is the greatest proof, of the 20th century that God is real and that the bible is accurate. Allow me to explain why.

Prior to the 1900s when the big bang was first theorized it was the belief of the majority of the scientific community that the universe was eternal. Here are examples of thinking throughout the ages.

Bertrand Russell: The universe is just there. That’s all.
Aristotle: The idea of a first instant of time is inconceivable.
Epicurus: Truly this universe has always been such as it now is, and so it shall always be; for there is nothing into which it can change, and there is nothing outside the universe that can enter into it and bring about a change.

As a model of a cosmic beginning began to emerge the majority of scientists were opposed to it. Did you know that the term “big bang” was actually coined by Fred Hoyle in 1949 as a derogatory term as it did not align with his steady-state model?

Here are some other examples of the scientific community’s resistance to the big bang changing, which were shared by John Lennox, Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University (emeritus). 

Hoyle proposed a ‘steady-state theory’ to explain the expansion.
John Gribbin (1976): Hoyle’s steady-state theory was given impetus by philosophers and theologians recognizing the problems and questions raised by the idea that the universe had a beginning.
Sir Bernard Lovell: Neither steady-state nor big bang cosmology offers a satisfactory explanation from science so they ‘must move over into metaphysics’ and postulate divine creation.

Lennox also notes that many scientists immediately saw how a cosmic beginning which the big bang theorized would only feed the argument for a creator God.

Christopher Isham - Perhaps the best argument that the Big Bang supports theism is the obvious unease with which it is greeted by some atheist physicists.
Stephen Hawking - Many people do not like the idea that time has a beginning, probably because it smacks of divine intervention.

What evidence do we have for a cosmic beginning? Also known as a space-time beginning or the big bang.

1920s - Alexander Friedman & George Lemaitre: Einstein’s theory of general relativity allows an expanding solution beginning with a singularity.
1929 – Edwin Hubble showed a red shift in spectra invisible light from other galaxies, the Doppler shift effect that indicated the universe was expanding.
1964 - Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered cosmic background radiation, an omnidirectional signal in the microwave band. Their discovery provided substantial confirmation of the big-bang predictions by Alpher, Herman and Gamow around 1950. This basically proved that the universe was expanding and thus had a beginning that it was expanding from. In 1978 Penzias and Wilson were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work. (Taken from Wikipedia)

Here is a beautiful quote from Penzias, "The best data we have are precisely what I would have predicted had I nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, and the Bible as a whole". Do not be fooled into believing that Christianity and Science are at odds. If you are a believing scientist you are in good company along with the likes of Isaac Newton, Galileo Galilei, Francis Collins (who recently led the team to map the human genome), and these to name but a few. 

And finally for the greatest proof for the big bang:

Genesis 1:1 - In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
John 1:1-3 - In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him, nothing was made that has been made.

References:

(1) John Gribbin, https://www.amazon.com/Our-Changing-Universe-John-Gribbin/dp/0333196910

(2) Reasons to Believe, https://reasons.org/explore/publications/rtb-101/read/rtb-101/2000/06/30/big-bang-the-bible-taught-it-first

(3) John Lennox, https://www.johnlennox.org/resources/?category=15

(4) Veritas, http://www.veritas.org/the-big-bang-and-creation/

(5) David Berlinski, https://www.amazon.com/Devils-Delusion-Atheism-Scientific-Pretensions/dp/1511340657 

(6) The image was taken from, https://science.howstuffworks.com/dictionary/astronomy-terms/before-big-bang.htm

(7) Discovery of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_of_cosmic_microwave_background_radiation

(8) List of Christian Scientists, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christians_in_science_and_technology

Developing a Strong Marriage

Introduction

What is worth learning? This is a question we often ask ourselves as educators. It has been my opinion for some time now that the three most important things are not taught in schools. These three things are budgeting, parenting, and marriage. I have been reflecting on what is worth learning during this current lockdown period. Many families are at home under quarantine and unfortunately, this can lead to conflict. In this post, I would like to share a tool to develop a strong marriage.

Communication

It is no secret that one of the keys to a strong marriage is communication. Carder (2008) writes, "A relationship needs lots of attention, or your perception of it will become outdated and you will have no clue about what is really happening between the two of you." In order to have a current correct perception of how your relationship is doing you may do the following activity.

Marriage Satisfaction Survey

The tool below is used to communicate with your spouse about your marriage. The sample in this image covers five years. You will need to create a sheet like this for every five years you have been living together. The steps are as follows:

• Together fill out the boxes at the bottom of the tool. There is a box for each six months. 
• The boxes should include information such as; births, deaths, job status, moves, illnesses, marital difficulties, education, living arrangements and other major life events.

• Once you are finished make a copy of the tool.
• On your individual sheet plot a line on the rating scale going through the years of your marriage. Be honest, do not let your current feeling influence your decision. It should be how you felt at the time.
• To plot the line put a dot on the scale above each six month period. When you are finished, join the dots. 

Results

After you are finished, come together to discuss both of your charts. Some things to consider when you do this are:

• Look for periods of high-level satisfaction reported by both of you (4-5).
• Talk about any surprises. Ask questions to understand why your spouse was feeling that at the time. 
• Look at the overall pattern. Did you experience events with a similar pattern? Why or why not?
• Is there a decline in the pattern? Why is this?
• Was there a low point? How did you overcome this?

Conclusion

Marriage is one of the most important undertakings you will ever take. It is the best opportunity to grow as an individual as you learn to put another before yourself. Having a strong marriage is the greatest gift you can give to your children. As there is no formal education on this in school or university, we need to identify tools and keep learning ourselves. I hope this will help you grow a strong marriage. 

(If you would like the excel template put your email in the comments and I will send it to you.)

References

Carder D., (2008), Anatomy of an Affair, Moody Publishers.