Department Chair Job Descriptions

 Department Chair Job Description (new) (2019?)

Oversee the development and implementation of C&I in department.  DC must supervise and evaluate the delivery of instruction in compliance with Board Goals, Board timeline pursuant to the Curriculum Equity initiative, and district/building policies and procedures for advancing student performance.

Supervises and Evaluates the Performance of Certified and NC staff Members

Essential Duties:

1. Supervises classroom instruction at both campuses
2. Helps teachers understand the special needs or problems of individual students
3. Supports the professional development of staff members
4. Orients new teachers in the content area, working collaboratively with district and building staff
5. Plans, evaluates and oversees testing programs for assigned curricular area, including Common Final Exams
6. Assists department teachers in the handing of day-to-day issues related to instruction
7. Supports the introduction of instructional ideas and strategies to staff member
8. Enforces personnel policies
9. Follows district evaluation policies and procedures for assigned staff at both campuses
10. Investigates concerns regarding employees
11. Recommends for dismissal, tenure and job assignments
12. Recruits, screens, hires, trains, recommends for hiring and assigns candidates
13. Supervises and evaluates curriculum relates activities
14. Coordinates the assignment of student teachers and observers within designated area
15. Collaborates on a regular basis with district/building level curricular teams

Coordinates the Review, Revision and Implementation of Department Curriculum.  Coordinates articulation between sender districts and department.

Essential Duties:

1. Send school articulation
2. Analyzes student progress in the content areas
3. Analyzes student placement
4. Works with teachers to develop curriculum and assessments, e.g. learning targets, curriculum guides and end-of-course assessments
5. Supervises the implementation of curriculum and instructional programs
6. Facilitates the revision of the curriculum and course offerings
7. Supervises and coordinates the ordering and use and maintenance of departmental instructional materials
8. Assists in the planning of departmental professional development

Leads the Department

Essential Duties:

1. Implements board policies and procedures
2. Organizes and coordinates departmental meetings
3. Keeps informed about current trends and practices in the 

Provides Fiscal Management for the Department

Essential Duties:

Manages Departmental Organization

Essential Duties:

1. Assists the principal when needed in the overall administration of the school
2. Performs other duties as assigned by the principal or ASA
3. Manages requests for attendance and travel to professional meetings and conferences by assigned staff

Districtwide Curriculum Responsibilities

Essential Duties:

1. All courses at both schools have common fees, common textbooks, common resources, common anchor assessments, adn common final exams
2. grading and parameters are the same throughout course teams
3. curriculum guides include curriculum maps as well as standards, objectives, content, and skills that are to be covered in each course
4. lessons and teaching approaches are straegiecally varied so students' needs are met regarlds of their academic starting point
5. The Curriculum Equity goals and timeline esabtlished by the BOE are met
6. A curriculum equity work plan is created
7. Benchmark data as outlined in the curriculum equity timeline is reported
8. progress is reported to the BOE through the Academic office

Coronovirus and Aerosols

 "How does coronavirus spread?

9/20/2020 LA Times - Aerosol airborne spread (link)

8/25/2020 - Time -aerosols article from August in Time: link

7/20/2020 - NYT Covid aerosols article from Julylink 

A person infected with coronavirus — even one with no symptoms — may emit aerosols when they talk or breathe. Aerosols are infectious viral particles that can float or drift around in the air for up to three hours. Another person can breathe in these aerosols and become infected with the coronavirus. This is why everyone should cover their nose and mouth when they go out in public."

https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-basics

https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/coronavirus-resource-center#:~:text=Aerosols%20are%20emitted%20by%20a,up%20to%20three%20hours.

Design Your Meeting Agenda Around Questions

 

Design Your Meeting Agenda Around Questions

A good agenda is the first step to any successful meeting. If you want to make the best use of everyone’s time, turn your bullet points into questions that drive to the outcomes you’re looking for. For example, instead of a general topic like “Budget Problems,” try a specific question like, “How will we reduce our spending by $100,000 by the end of the fiscal year”? Or replace an item like “Strategic Planning” with a challenge like, “What is the key market threat we need to be aware of, how could it affect us, and what can we do to anticipate?” Preparing these questions before the meeting will make it easier to determine who should be there and how much time you’ll really need. Ultimately, a questions-based approach to your agenda can bring focus, engagement, and better performance to your meetings. And if you can’t think of questions to ask, maybe you don’t need that meeting after all!

This tip is adapted from “How to Create the Perfect Meeting Agenda,” by Steven G. Rogelberg

Make Your Virtual Meetings More Interactive

 

Make Your Virtual Meetings More Interactive

(from HBR from an article by Andy Molinsky) While you may not all be in the same room, your virtual meeting can still be engaging and interactive. One big advantage is that a virtual setting can lower the bar for participation, so you have an opportunity to glean thoughts and insights from people who ordinarily might not speak up in person. You might use a polling function as a warm-up for discussion and an early opportunity to engage people. You can also encourage attendees to use the chat function, so they can comment in real time. Invite them to participate in the discussion, rather than just talking at them. For example, you might say: “Anita just wrote a great point — and it seems Juan had a similar thought. Do either of you want to go into a bit more detail?” If your chosen platform offers virtual break-out rooms, use them liberally. You might divide people into smaller groups to discuss ideas amongst themselves. You can join these rooms yourself if you wish, the same way you’d roam around the room during a live meeting. Finally, when you’re ready, you can bring everyone back to the larger group with a click of the mouse. You have the tools to recreate the vibrancy of an in-person meeting, so take advantage of them virtually.

10 Things - not necessarily school related - that came across my desk this week

 10 Things...

1.  Toots and Maytalls link
2. Once inch of silence Outside
3. Jim D sends this NYT article @ SEL and English
4. Outside car camping packing list
5. Keri Smith blog - make a thing a day
6. Billson shared "how to deal with the N word" http://edchange.org/Moore.pdf
7. Vlog brothers  (and this good John Green Circles)
8. TLAC - reading outloud virtually in HS (and other TLAC resources)
9. NYT writing curriculum all in one place (and NYT "choose your own adventure" Short story writing with images)
10. Followership article... listing all the character traits it takes

Engagement in Remote Meetings.

 This tip is adapted from “Break Up Your Big Virtual Meetings,” by Liana Kreamer and Steven G. Rogelberg

 Research shows that embracing silence during a brainstorm helps teams produce significantly more — and higher-quality — ideas. Silent brainstorming can be particularly useful in remote meetings. So what does it look like in practice? First, starting with the meeting invite, make sure everyone understands the goals of the brainstorming session. Then, at the beginning of your meeting, share a working document (such as a Google Doc) with key questions that need to be answered. Encourage all participants to contribute to the document for 10 to 20 minutes without talking. During this time, attendees can actively ideate and respond to each other in the document. The leader can also participate, providing direction and asking attendees to elaborate on specific ideas as they’re being formed. Once the silent phase of the brainstorm is complete, you can begin a discussion if your group is relatively small. If the group is large, you can end the meeting, review the document, and follow up with an email that shares conclusions and next steps. Or, you might consider sending out a quick survey where participants can react or vote on options to move forward. 

Learn Something Every Day

 This tip is adapted from “The Simple Joy of Learning on the Job,” by Marc Zao-Sanders and Catalina Schveninger

We all know that thrilling feeling of learning something new — a new recipe, a new word in a foreign language, a new chord on the guitar. And yet, so many of us go through our workdays on autopilot without setting aside time to learn something new. How can you introduce the joy of learning into your professional life? Start by taking control of what you read to better yourself and your career. Pay attention to what genuinely interests you, rather than relying on a website’s algorithm for recommendations. Have an open mind about what “counts” as learning — you can find unexpected opportunities in movies, conversations with friends, speeches, or social media feeds. Finally, keep a list of what you’ve learned lately, how you’ve used that new knowledge, and what you hope to learn in the future. You’ll stay focused and motivated by tracking your progress and setting new goals. Taking these steps will help you take your professional learning and development into your own hands — and have some fun with it.

 

Set Clear "Communication Hours" for your Team

 This is from the "Today's Tip" from HBR.  It's by Maura Thomas in her article "The Downside of Flex Time"

When your team is working remotely — and possibly on different schedules — people can feel like they’re expected to be online all the time. But this lack of distinct downtime isn’t good for you or your team. As a manager, it’s your responsibility to establish communication norms while encouraging people to continue to work flexibly as needed. Define clear “communication hours,” for example, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., when team members are expected to check and respond to messages. Outside of those hours, encourage them to change their settings to “Do Not Disturb” and to send messages using the schedule feature of their email. Develop a plan, such as calling or texting, for urgent or time-sensitive communication outside of these hours. This way, people can comfortably shut off other channels, like email or Slack. Plus, the act of calling or texting a teammate is likely to make the sender pause and think, “Do I really need this person now, or can it wait until tomorrow?” An “always-on” culture isn’t sustainable, and these boundaries allow team members to set their own hours and not feel like they have to accommodate everyone else’s schedule. 

New York Times Writing Curriculum

 

Last year the New York Times Writing Curriculum got great.  Each unit contains prompts, daily writing prompts, guided practice with mentor texts (show don't tell, express critical opinions, quote or paraphrase experts, craft scripts for podcasts), Annotated by the Author commentaries, a contest that can be the final project, webinars.

What are the units?

 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER

Unit 1: Documenting Teenage Lives in Extraordinary Times

OCTOBER-NOVEMBER

Unit 2: The Personal Narrative

DECEMBER-JANUARY

Unit 3: The Review

JANUARY-FEBRUARY

Unit 4: Informational Writing

MARCH-APRIL

Unit 5: Argumentative Writing

APRIL-MAY

Unit 6: Writing for Podcasts

JUNE-AUGUST

Unit 7: Independent Reading and Writing

Survey Questions Collection

Notes:

don't overdo them... ask as few questions as possible.

think about what you're looking for... how you'll present the data... are you looking for "45% of you think..." or are you looking for qualitative ideas? 

How would you rate your experience with remote learning (much worse than expected -> much better than expected)

Please explain your answer for the previous question.

Zoom Classes - Cameras: I know many people like to have video off, but it makes it very difficult to know if you are understanding me, participating, etc. It also makes it a bit harder to put a face with a name if I never see you. How would you feel about me asking people to keep video on whenever possible?

With Remote 2.0, we have some synchronous (all together) and asynchronous (you working on your own, like when you're reading) class time. How do you feel about the balance so far?

How are you doing right now OUTSIDE of academics?

Is there anything I can do to make remote learning better for E2H? 

Keeping students engaged in remote learning

 Here’s what English teachers in the department are saying about how they’re adapting to increase student engagement in low stakes ways:

1. The majority of teachers talked about using Zoom breakout rooms (especially with cameras on) for pairs and small groups.  One teacher added that accountability is key: “Randomly assign kids to break out rooms. Have them talk and then call them back. Then, randomly call on kids to hold them accountable.”
2. Having an informal but written product in the breakout room to share screen with the rest of the class in whole group. Collaborations in Canvas make this quick and easy for them, too. (KW)
3. I used Poll Everything yesterday with an assignment that usually a four corners of the room assignment. So after seeing where everyone stood using the poll, I then had people take turns unmuting themselves to further explain their poll opinion. (MB)
4. My kids are in semi-permanent learning groups. I pull each learning group, each day for small group work while the rest work asynchronously. It's not innovative, but it has been successful. (GC)
5. I did Write-Pair-Share through Zoom which worked really well for a Fahrenheit introduction discussion. Kids had 3 minutes to write on a topic, and then I put them in breakout rooms to discuss for 5 minutes, and when we came back to the main zoom room, kids took turns sharing out what their groups discussed. Yesterday, kids had 5 minutes in breakout rooms to find a "most important passage" from the first pages of Fahrenheit. When the kids came back together, I could still see the names of students in each breakout room, so we just went through each group sharing their passages and explaining why they chose them. To review the first few pages of Fahrenheit, I told each student they had to state 1 thing they knew for sure happened, so we just went in reverse ABC order through the "zoom" room. On a day that students had to do a webquest on 3 different articles to prepare for reading, I jigsawed the activity by breaking up the class into 3 breakout rooms for those kids in the same group to read 1 article and make notes on it to share out with the rest of the class. Breakout rooms have been my saving grace to help me teach the way I usually run my classroom. I just have to keep reminding them that if something happens that I need to know about, I am available through email, but I talked myself out of fearing this function when I remembered that kids can always find ways in class in front of us to be nasty or mean to others, so it's a risk I guess I am willing to take to keep class engaging and kids producing. (JS)
6. Canvas Groups — collaboration and conference in groups (Birthday Girl)
7. Asking questions that require use of polls, the chat box, thumbs up, etc to show that they are actually listening and there instead of pretending like they are. (KT, LO)
8. Have students collaborate on a Google Doc. We did an activity last week where students were all working on the same document in groups. (CB)

 

 

Some nice phrasing in email/online

 Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you Monday. — David

Thanks, everyone, for your continued flexibility and perseverance! I'm constantly impressed by you all!

Followership

 I shared this article (FOLLOWERSHIP: THE OTHER SIDE OF LEADERSHIP by John McCallum) with a group of teachers in the department.  

Here's the heart of it:

Followership may take the backseat to leadership but it matters:  it matters a lot!  Quite simply, where followership is a failure, not much gets done and/or what does get done is not what was supposed to get done.  Followership problems manifest themselves in a poor work ethic, bad morale, distraction from goals, unsatisfied customers, lost opportunities, high costs, product quality issues and weak competitiveness.  At the extreme, weak leadership and weak followership are two sides of the same coin and the consequence is always the same:  organizational confusion and poor performance.

Good followers have a number of qualities. 

First, judgement.  Followers must take direction but they have an underlying obligation to the enterprise to do so only when the direction is ethical and proper.  The key is having the judgement to know the difference between a directive that your leader gives on how to proceed that you do not agree with and a directive that is truly wrong.

No one disputes that good judgement is critical to being a good leader.  It is just as important in the follower.  Show enough good judgement as a follower and you usually end up getting a shot at being the leader.  Something of an aside but there is a line that I have always liked about judgement:  “Good judgement comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgement.”

Second, work ethic.  Good followers are good workers.  They are diligent, motivated, committed, pay attention to detail and make the effort.  Leaders have a responsibility to create an environment that permits these qualities but regardless, it is the responsibility of the follower to be a good worker.  There is no such thing as a bad worker who is a good follower.

Third, competence.  The follower cannot follow properly unless competent at the task that is directed by the leader.  It is the obligation of the leader to assure that followers are competent.  Sometimes things go wrong because the follower is not competent at the task at hand.  When this happens, leaders should blame themselves, not the follower.  A sign of poor leadership is blaming followers for not having skills they do not have.

Fourth, honesty.  The follower owes the leader an honest and forthright assessment of what the leader is trying to achieve and how.  This is especially the case when the follower feels the leader’s agenda is seriously flawed.  Respect and politeness are important but that said, it is not acceptable for followers to sit on their hands while an inept leader drives the proverbial bus over the cliff.  Good leaders are grateful for constructive feedback from their team.  Bad leaders do not welcome feedback and here followers have to tread carefully.  If the situation is serious enough, consideration should be given to going above the leader in question for guidance.

Fifth, courage.  Followers need to be honest with those who lead them.  They also need the courage to be honest.  It takes real courage to confront a leader about concerns with the leader’s agenda or worse, the leader himself or herself.  It is not for naught that Churchill called courage “The foremost of the virtues, for upon it, all others depend”.  From time to time, it takes real courage to be a good follower.

Sixth, discretion.  A favorite saying in World War II was “Loose lips sink ships.”  Sports teams are fond of the expression “What you hear here, let it stay here.”  Followers owe their enterprises and their leaders discretion.  Talking about work matters inappropriately is at best unhelpful and more likely harmful.  Discretion just means keeping your mouth shut.  It should be easy but many find it next to impossible.  Bluntly, you cannot be a good follower and be indiscreet.  Everybody who works at an enterprise has a duty of care; indiscretion is not care, it is careless.

Seventh, loyalty.  Good followers respect their obligation to be loyal to their enterprise.  Loyalty to the enterprise and its goals is particularly important when there are problems, interpersonal or otherwise, with a particular leader.  Followers who are not loyal are inevitably a source of difficulty.  They create problems between team members; they compromise the achievement of goals; they waste everybody’s time; they are a menace.  Loyalty is not a synonym for lapdog.  Rather, its essence is a strong allegiance and commitment to what the organization is trying to do.  Followers should remember that their obligation is to the enterprise, not a given leader at a given point in time.

Eighth, ego management.  Good followers have their egos under control.  They are team players in the fullest sense of the concept.  They have good interpersonal skills.  Success for good followers relates to performance and goal achievement not personal recognition and self promotion.  Sounds too good to be true and often it is.  It is difficult but the best organizations tie advancement and reward to performance and goal achievement as hard as that may be to do.

Followership will always be in the shadow of leadership.  But there are no leaders without followers and on-going success with weak followers will usually prove elusive.  It is true that an organization is only as good as its leaders.  It is also only as good as its followers.  Who would not benefit from giving some thought to how they could be a better follower?  Such thought may actually hasten your trip to the leadership position you actually want.

Clarity in a list of "principles"

 I really like the "design principles" from Achievement First about remote learning because of the way they're written.  The "we need a simple..." pattern makes it really easy to understand.

• We need to lead with our “care for the whole person” value and keep our community together. We need to have enough touchpoints and direct contacts to make sure we have a pulse on our kids and each other. 

• We create a shared “container.” Having a consistent instructional approach and schedule will enable efficiencies (family communication, tech issues, and curriculum design) and collaboration.

 • We need a simple, clear plan that we can execute well. None of us has ever done this before. The more complexity we add, the harder it will be to do it well.

 • We need continuity and consistency. We—our scholars, teachers, and families—need consistent routines for remote learning and remote community that will become a source of stability and comfort. 

• We are designing for “most.” There will be no effective plan that works for every single student, parent, and teacher. We will need flexibility and extra support for the students, families, and staff who need it.

"Instructional Shifts to Support Deeper Learning" - McTighe and Silver - notes

 One big idea that highlights "the big skills" in education (and LA classrooms):

Focus less on didactic instruction and more on active meaning making by students. Students should be “earning” understanding of critical content by actively, independently processing new material using these higher-order skills.

-    Conceptualizing abstract ideas;

-    Note-taking and summarizing;

-    Comparing;

-    Reading beyond the literal meaning;

-    Predicting and hypothesizing;

-    Visualizing, graphic representation;

-    Empathizing and perspective-taking.

“Instructional Shifts to Support Deep Learning” by Jay McTighe and Harvey Silver in Educational Leadership, September 2020 (Vol. 78, #1); 

Fordham Institute's report on lessons learned during remote learning

Here's the PDF.

Some notes:

 KIPP DC created this new Maslowe's hierarchy:

Staying in touch with students and families wasn’t just about providing social and emotional support; it was also essential to keeping kids learning. The charter networks are data-driven organizations, and they doubled down on this during the crisis to learn what was and wasn’t working, employing clear goals and metrics to monitor, with dashboards that helped educators decide what to keep or change. The networks leveraged their previous investments in becoming learning organizations that could quickly build pilots, try them, gather data, learn from them, and pivot, akin to the “lean startup” innovation methodology (a method for increasing the success rate of innovative products and services through rapid prototyping and quick feedback loops).38 This use of data happened at the network school and classroom levels, with educators systematically improving lessons via trials, observation, coaching, feedback, and iterations.

A strong finding from the interviews was the central importance of regularly reaching out to students and families, including providing social and emotional support and development. This came up in nearly every interview. Most networks had an advisor or counselor system (operating before and during the pandemic), allowing them to check in on student and family needs, provide emotional support, and gather feedback on how remote learning was going among their pupils. One striking observation was how thoughtfully and systematically the networks reached out individually to students and parents, which seemed a rare practice in other schools (or an aspiration deemed to be operationally impractical).

Encourage teachers and staff to maintain a growth and innovation mindset as educators move up the steep learning curve of figuring out how to teach with these new tools.

Focus on fundamentals (for example, reading as a gateway to learning other subjects).

Ensure lessons include many opportunities for active learning, with students engaging directly with the material, instructor, and their peers

Make creative use of teaching teams, with smart use of specialization and collaboration.

Assess students effectively so educators can monitor progress and diagnose where students are and what they need.

I really like the "design principles" on pp. 21-22.  The best is the one from "Achievement First" because of the way they're written.  The "we need a simple..." makes it really easy to understand.

• We need to lead with our “care for the whole person” value and keep our community together. We need to have enough touchpoints and direct contacts to make sure we have a pulse on our kids and each other. 

• We create a shared “container.” Having a consistent instructional approach and schedule will enable efficiencies (family communication, tech issues, and curriculum design) and collaboration.

 • We need a simple, clear plan that we can execute well. None of us has ever done this before. The more complexity we add, the harder it will be to do it well.

 • We need continuity and consistency. We—our scholars, teachers, and families—need consistent routines for remote learning and remote community that will become a source of stability and comfort. 

• We are designing for “most.” There will be no effective plan that works for every single student, parent, and teacher. We will need flexibility and extra support for the students, families, and staff who need it.