Communications Survey

By Steve Atwater | Published: February 14, 2011

One of our on-going challenges is to maintain good communications with the public.  In the past year we’ve made several improvements to this area. We are now seeking our stakeholders’ feedback on how we are doing.

We are  participating in a new study to help school districts improve communication with parents (and others) in our school community.   The research is part of a communication accountability program of the National School Public Relations Association (NSPRA). NSPRA is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving all facets of communication in school communities. The survey firm, K12 Insight, Inc., is donating its services for this project to NSPRA.  We are able to participate in the survey for free.

All responses are confidential. Our school officials will receive the results from our community survey in late spring.  We plan to use the results to refine our current communication effort and improve its effectiveness. The compiled results from the 100 school districts will be announced in July by NSPRA and no identification will be given to individual school districts.

The survey will be offered by NSPRA’s partner, K12 Insight, Inc. through an email system beginning on March 20th.  We  will be providing the confidential list to K12 Insight, Inc., who will implement and tabulate the survey.  All parties have signed confidentiality agreements to assure the privacy of all concerned. 

I encourage you to sign up for the survey.  To do so, go to the homepage of our website and click on the NSPRA Communications Survey sign-up.

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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 walk into the various school libraries and see it  packed with parents, community members and teachers.  The good attendance is evidence of the importance of the events; thanks to everyone who took the time to attend and thanks for the excellent audience input on our candidates’ interview responses.  This input has been both thoughtful and insightful; it is good to gain the various perspectives

My decision on who to select is based on the consideration of three things: the feedback and recommendations of the district administrators who closely listen to the responses, the audience’s input and the reference checks on the candidates.  This last item often takes time since I usually look beyond those people who are listed on the application.  As mentioned in a previous post, the job of principal is difficult.  Thus far, we are fortunate to have good candidates who are up for the job.

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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 the lesson and watching  the students.  Inevitibly, I notice some students keenly engaged in the teaching and others who are distracted.  But what I do not see in our high schools is a lot of what you might label as attitude.  The sullen, defiant behavior that you sometimes see in high school students does not appear to be present in very many of our teens.

While I can’t say that we don’t have some students with attitude, it is clear that if we do, they are in the minority.  I view this as a reflection of a series of things including the positive relationships that our teachers and administrators have with our students as well as a lack of some of the  pressures that you find in a larger school setting.  I feel that it is important that we take a moment to appreciate the fact that our students are pretty good kids.

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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 as immediate as we would like, and heavily depends on our recruiting efforts and  our reputation.  For principals however, we can play a more active role.

Last spring we  established a partnership with UAA to offer the necessary principal training courses.  We then created a cohort of 15 of our teachers who are interested in becoming principals.  This cohort approach has several advantages including the district playing an organizing role, using local instructors that allow the application of content to have a local flavor and offering more face-to-face classes.  Although the teachers pay for their coursework, we are using stimulus funds to help with travel and lodging and various other small items of support.  The cohort will work through their courses and be eligible to apply for their administrative certificate in May of 2012.

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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 hard enough by their parents to excel and in contrast to childeren of Chinese parenting, are soft.

Opinions on how to create optimum conditions that will lead to a child being motivated to excel vary, and  typically fall into the old school, heavy handed approach (practice your violin for four hours a day or no television) or new school where children are relatively free of  such structure and can spend a lot of time in social situations that welcomes self-discovery.   Each approach has obvious benefits and shortcomings.  My take is that if our students are to be the best, we will have to do  both.

We are asking our teachers to take student learning to a higher level where the assessment of acquired knowledge includes analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.  When I share this request with teachers I am occasionaly met with a  “not so fast” stare.   I get this because the teachers know that acquistion of basic skills must come first and are often as “far as we can get.”  Unfortunately, as far as we can get is often not far enough. We need to refine our practices for acquistion of skills so that we can more easily move to the higher order level of learning.   The benefit of repeated practice must be accepted and embraced by parents, they should not however, be satisfied with an A on a spelling test.

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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 with being  creative leaders who will help their schools advance up the improvement continuum.  They must also be practical managers who can deftly handle a complex discipline matter while simultaneously worrying about a bus that just hit a moose.  It is not an easy job.  It is important then, that the stakeholders of these schools provide input on who their new principal will be.  This can be done by attending the interviews and then sending me feedback on each candidate. 

Ideally we will hire principals who will embrace what William Butler Yeats  wrote, “education is not filling a bucket but lighting a fire.”  Let’s make sure that all of those whom this hire affects are paying attention.

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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 usually position themselves to receive a lot of attention, I feel that it is important that we take the time to recognize these unique students, their teachers and support staff.  While it is easy to focus on all the accolades that so many of our students and teams earn, I feel that it is equally important to note that our 126 intensive needs students are a significant part of our district  Let’s not lose sight of this.

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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 may have caused us to miss the exit on the technology highway. 

There is more and more research that shows that compulsive multitasking (texting,while cruising facebook, while doing your homework) impairs your ability to think.  If thinking means concentrating on one thing for a long enough time to develop an idea about it, then I am  afraid that the mentioned missed exit might be named Ideaville. Once upon a time, the efficient multitasker was lauded as skilled.  Today, we are probably better off by occasionally disabling our wireless networks, so that we can focus on one thing.

Our task as educators is to harness the power of technology to enhance the learning environment.  We can’t be trapped by the false belief that the more connected you are, the better you will perform.

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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. I attribute this comfort to the intimacy of the small community and once again recognize that there is a lot of benefit to being raised in a small town where everyone knows your name.

When I meet with other Alaskan superintendents they tell me that KPBSD has to be one of the most difficult districts in the state to administer.  They point to the large number of schools, the distances between them and their wide range of sizes.  While I agree that these do present a challenge, I like to think that our diversity offers a collective strength that may be absent elsewhere.  Sitting in the audience on Wednesday at Moose Pass is a lot different than doing the same in Kenai.  Yet, the strong support for our students that I see in each of our communities assures me that the nucleus of  what is needed for a good school district is in place.   Our challenge is to create ways for all our schools to benefit from the strengths of our varied school communities. 

Although it is hard to believe, the first semester of the school year is ending. Thanks to all of our staff, parents and community members for all that you do for our students.

Happy New Year.

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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 that these students are not a representative sample of Chinese kids, it is noteworthy because previously, Chinese students’ results had not been listed among the world leaders.  The tested American students’ scores were predictably in the middle of the pack.  While it is beyond the scope of this blog to examine why American students do not perform better on these tests, most cite the culture of education for the Chinese that includes greater emphasis on teacher training and a more rigorous focus on academics as the reason for their better performance. 

When I look at our students on the Kenai, I have to ask whether our culture of education is as good as it can be.  My quick answer is probably not.  Although I feel that it is wrong to promote (as apparently the Chinese do) a competitive culture geared toward test taking, I don’t feel that it is wrong to expect that all of our graduates have an exceptional skill set to do what it next after high school.  From what I read, the Chinese don’t use their schools to teach music and art, nor do they offer activities such as sports.  I don’t for a minute want to suggest that we emulate this approach to schooling.  I do feel however, that we need to ask whether our academic instruction and support is improving.   I don’t feel that to improve requires us to work harder; it is a matter of being more analytical about what we are doing and then charting improvement strategies.   We don’t need to eliminate sports and music to get better. Improving the system to better realize the strengths of our staff will give our students a better chance to hold their own on a world level exam.

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