Category Archives: Schools and Assessment

Principal Interviews

By Steve Atwater | Published: February 13, 2011
Last week I interviewed 16 candidates who were vying for four of our principal vacancies. Although the interviews made for a long week, it was good to move to this stage of the hiring process.  The public turnout, with the exception of the one at Spring Creek Prison which was private, was great.  It was impressive to […]
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Lacking Attitude

By Steve Atwater | Published: February 1, 2011
One of the best parts of my job  is when I spend a morning shadowing one of our students.  This ground level perspective of our schools is always refreshing and in some cases revealing.  I spent this morning at Skyview trailing a sophomore.    When I attend class with a student, I split my time between following […]
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Growing our own

By Steve Atwater | Published: January 31, 2011
One of the challenges that school districts periodically face is how  to maintain organizational continuity when there is a large turnover of teachers and, or, administrators.  The ideal way to meet this challenge is to have folks in the pipeline who are ready to step up to fill these openings.  Doing this for our teacher vacancies is not […]
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Motivating Our Students

By Steve Atwater | Published: January 23, 2011
In the past week there has been a lot of discussion in the media over Amy Chua’s  book, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.”   The book, by being critical of American parenting, has sparked a debate on how best to raise our children.  From what I can tell,  Chua claims  that our country’s kids are not pushed […]
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Principals and Lighting a Fire

By Steve Atwater | Published: January 16, 2011
The beginning of our new semester causes me to shift  much of my attention to replacing  our departing principals.  Last week we started holding  meetings at those schools with a pending change in leadership to explain how the hiring process works.  The interviews for these vacancies will begin in February. Replacing a principal is a big deal.  Our principals are charged […]
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Intensive Needs Students

By Steve Atwater | Published: January 7, 2011
About once a week something about one of our intensive needs students will come to my attention.  This week I had the good fortune to interact with one of our autistic students and the misfortune to learn that a medically fragile student died. Although our intensive needs students and the staff who work with them don’t […]
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multitasking, not quite what it’s cranked up to be

By Steve Atwater | Published: December 27, 2010
Between my wife’s side and mine, we have more than 30 nephews and nieces.  During the Christmas weekend we spoke or texted several of these relatives and inevitibly heard that many of this year’s gifts are tied to electronics.  While I am as enthralled with technology as most, I am beginning to wonder whether our effort to stay current […]
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Strength in our diverse set of schools

By Steve Atwater | Published: December 17, 2010
On Wednesday night I was in Moose Pass to watch the students sing Christmas songs and play piano as part of their holiday program.  It was a nice show and fun to watch the young students in action.  What impressed me most about the event, was how at ease the students seemed in front of the audience. […]
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Can we learn from the Chinese?

By Steve Atwater | Published: December 10, 2010
The results of the most recent Program for International Student Assessment, known as PISA, which is given to 15-year-old students living in the world’s major industrial powers, were released earlier this week.  The buzz in the education community is that the students in Shanghai outscored the rest of the world.  While it is fair to say […]
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Taking Ownership

By Steve Atwater | Published: December 3, 2010
As students move from elementary school to high school, their success is more and more dependent on them taking  greater ownership of their learning.  Teachers gradually relax the student hand holding of  the early years so that at graduation, our students are independent enough to tackle what is next.  That is the plan, but as […]
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