Ideas for School Administrators

Here are ten ideas

1) Your School Must Be For All Kids 100 Percent of the Time
If you start making decisions based on avoiding conflict, the students lose. This is what sustained me through one of my most difficult decisions. I asked
the school district to let our school health center offer birth control after four girls became pregnant in one semester. For this group of kids, the health center at
King was their primary health care provider. Although
we offer birth control to our students, we are not the birth control school; we are the school that cares about all of its kids. This decision was the right one, and it cemented for all time the central values of
King.

2) Create a Vision, Write It Down, and Start Implementing It : Don't put your vision in your drawer and hope for the
best. Every decision must be aligned with that vision. The whole organization is watching when you make a decision, so consistency is crucial.

3) It's the People, Stupid : The secret of managing is to keep the guys who hate
you away from those who are still undecided. (That's adapted from Casey Stengel.) Hire people who
support your vision, who are bright, and who like kids.

4) Paddles in the Water
In Outward Bound, you learn that when you are navigating dangerous rapids in a raft, the only way to succeed is for everyone in the boat to sit out on the edge and paddle really hard, even though everyone would rather be sitting in the center, where it's safer.

At King, in times of crisis, everyone responds with paddles in the water.

5) Find Time to Think During the Day
They pay me to worry. It's OK to stare at the wall and think about how to manage change. If i have 70 people who work . Even the most centered has three bad days each school year. Multiply that by 70 people and that's 210 bad days, which is more than the 180 school days in a year. So, me, I am never going to have a good day -- just get over it.

6) Take Responsibility for the Good and the Bad
If the problems in your school or organization lie below you and the solutions lie above you, then you have rendered yourself irrelevant. The genius of school lies within the school. The solutions to problems are almost always right in front of you.

7) You Have the Ultimate Responsibility
Have very clear expectations. Make sure people have the knowledge, resources, and time to accomplish what you expect. This shows respect. As much as possible, give people the autonomy to manage their
own work, budget, time, and curriculum. Autonomy is the goal, though you still have to inspect.

8) Have a Bias for Yes
When my son was little, I was going through a lot of turmoil at King, and I did not feel like doing much of
anything when I got home. One day, I just decided that whatever he wanted to do, I would do -- play ball, eat ice cream, and so on. I realized the power of yes. It changed our relationship. The only progress you will ever make involves risk: Ideas that teachers have may seem a little unsafe and crazy. Try to think, "How can I make this request into a yes?"

9) Consensus is Overrated
Twenty percent of people will be against anything. When you realize this, you avoid compromising what really should be done because you stop watering
things down. If you always try to reach consensus, you are being led by the 20 percent.

10) Large Change Needs to be Done Quickly
If you wait too long to make changes to a school culture, you have already sanctioned mediocre behavior because you're allowing it. That's when
change is hard, and you begin making bad deals.

Coutesy: http://www.edutopia.org

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Help your Students Succeed

Teachers who transform lives understand not only how to teach curriculum, but also how children develop into capable, caring, and engaged adults.

They see beyond quantitative measurements of success to the core abilities that help students live healthy, productive lives.

Famous educator Maria Montessori wisely remarked, "The greatest sign of success for a teacher. . . is to be able to say, 'The children are now working as if I
did not exist.'" The world has changed dramatically since the early 1900s when Montessori made her mark in education.

Yet the same goal remains: scaffolding children toward self-sufficiency. How does this occur today, particularly when test results often seem more
important than the development of a child ready to tackle career-life challenges?

In a nutshell, it happens when we understand how children and teens successfully mature to adulthood and how we impact their growth in key developmental areas. Based on decades of research in child and adolescent development, neuroscience, education, and psychology, we know that relationships with teachers, parents, and other supportive adults determine how
school-age children acquire their personal guidance systems, full of interconnected abilities and pathways to success.

When we envision those abilities as an
internal compass, it's easy to see how education and development go hand in hand -- how children navigate successfully through school and life.

A framework for understanding why kids need these interconnected abilities and how they're nurtured in different contexts, it's also a call to act on behalf of children who deserve to live full, meaningful lives beyond external measures of success.

Is the first in a series of nine posts on how teachers develop these internal abilities in the classroom. Each month, we'll take a deeper dive into one of these eight compass attributes:

Curiosity

Curiosity is the ability to seek and acquire new knowledge, skills, and ways of understanding the world. It is at the heart of what motivates kids to learn and what keeps them learning throughout their lives. Curiosity facilitates engagement, critical thinking, and reasoning. We nurture children's curiosity and other life-long learning skills when we encourage them to identify and seek answers to questions that pique their
interests. When we help them recognize failure as an opportunity for exploration, we encourage experimentation and discovery.

We help them understand the tenets of engaged learning when we recognize the different ways they explore -- touching,
tasting, climbing, smelling, etc. -- and praise them for their perseverance in finding answers. When we show
them how parts connect and influence the whole of society, they discover that curiosity improves relationships, fuels innovation, and drives social change.

Sociability

Sociability is the joyful, cooperative ability to engage with others. It derives from a collection of social- emotional skills that help children understand and express feelings and behaviors in ways that facilitate positive relationships, including active listening, self- regulation, and effective communication.

We impact children's sociability when we help them understand that the words they choose make a difference to the relationships they create.

When we teach them that every social interaction is tied to an emotional reaction, we help them avoid impulsive behavior and think through difficult situations before acting. We also build their capacity for collaborative teamwork.

Resilience

Resilience is the ability to meet and overcome challenges in ways that maintain or promote well- being. It incorporates attributes like grit, persistence, initiative, and determination.

We build resilience when we push students gently to the edges of their intellectual, emotional, social, and physical comfort zones. Our support and
encouragement as they take risks, overcome challenges, and grow from failure helps them learn to bounce back from life's ups and downs.

Self-Awareness

Self-awareness is the ability to examine and understand who we are relative to the world around us. It's developed through skills like self-reflection, meaning making, and honing core values and beliefs. It's situated at "true south" on the compass to symbolize that introspection is about looking into ourselves.

Self-awareness impacts children's capacity to see themselves as uniquely different from other people.

We stimulate students' self-awareness when we engage them in reflective conversations about values, beliefs, attitudes, and moral dilemmas.

By encouraging them to understand and attend to their intellectual, emotional, social, and physical selves, we let them know that we value their full human
potential.

Integrity

Integrity is the ability to act consistently with the values, beliefs, and principles that we claim to hold. It's about courage, honesty, and respect in one’s daily
interactions -- and doing the right thing even when no one is watching.

We shape children's integrity by treating them with respect and dignity, and listening to their feelings and concerns without judgment. When we praise students for demonstrating their values, beliefs, and principles through actions, we remind them of their value as ethical human beings, beyond a grade or test score.

Resourcefulness

Resourcefulness is the ability to find and use available resources to achieve goals, problem solve, and shape the future. It draws on skills like planning, goal setting, strategic thinking, and organizing.

We encourage students to be resourceful when we set high expectations and support them to accomplish their goals. When we teach them to be strategic
thinkers and adaptable problem solvers, they learn to live without rigid rules or preconceived ideas.

Creativity

Creativity is the ability to generate and communicate original ideas and appreciate the nature of beauty. It
fosters imagination, innovation, and a sense of aesthetics.

We inspire creativity when we encourage young people to express themselves through writing, poetry, acting, photography, art, digital media, unstructured play, etc. When we notice and praise them for thinking outside the box and taking risks, their imaginations blossom.

Empathy

Empathy is the ability to recognize, feel, and respond to the needs and suffering of others. It facilitates the expression of caring, compassion, and kindness. It's
situated at "true north" on the compass to symbolize the outward impact of educating young citizens committed to creating a just, sustainable world.

We influence children's abilities to care for others beyond themselves by creating meaningful relationships with them, ensuring that they are seen, felt, and understood regardless of how they learn.

When we expose them to different worldviews, engage them with community projects, and bring service learning into the classroom, we develop greater empathy and compassion.

The Compass Advantage views education and child development as integrated processes nurtured through
the collaborative efforts of parents, teachers, and out- of-school programs. When we attend to the development of these eight abilities, the results are
transformative.

Not only do children become lifelong
learners, they become what Maria Montessori envisioned -- self-sufficient navigators of their own
lives.

By: Marilyn Price-Mitchell PhD
Developmental Psychologist,
Researcher, Writer

www.edutopia.org/blog

Our Ideal School 2

TEACHING - LEARNING ASPECTS:
The students should have more project works so that they can enlarge
their creativity.

There should be a specific period where the teachers and the students can share new ideas and knowledge about different and innovative things.

The students must be allowed to the extra curriculums, as some students might like singing and dancing and others might have interest in sports.

Study tours should be organized each year to allow students swell their knowledge about certain things.

CURRICULUM:
Every school needs a curiculum upon which every subjects, extracurricular activities are based on.

The adpoted school curriculum should be well implemented and adequately followed.

SOCIETAL BALANCE:
The students should also have idea about their culture and society.

The teachers are the most important part, because an ideal school must have ideal teachers.

There have impactful, colourful school evemts frequently

The students will learn from their teachers just like a new born baby learns from his parents.

TEACHING STAFF:
The teachers must be well trained and adequate enough.

Besides having the ability to teach the teacher should also know how to motivate the students.

Our Teachers should be of integrity, modesty, true role models, approachable.

Our whole life depends on how we grow up just like a building depends on Its foundation.

An ideal school can be said to be:

It is intellectually stimulating.

It is safe.

It has positive energy.

It reflects the interests and cultures of all the students.

It is a place students wouldn’t mind visiting even if they weren’t in class.

It reflects the challenges students have faced and conquered within its walls.

It is a place in which studying the English language is interesting, fun, challenging, and seems worth every minute.

It is a place of change and growth brought about by learning.

It uses other types of tests that affect the psychomotor, affective domain of a child apart from the standardized tests are not accurate measures of intellectual growth and only make students anxious about going to school.

Some of this looks unachievable for schools just starting up and a lot of fund is required, Nigerians why not unite with other small schools around the location legally to do big things as one.

This shows that we love each other more and the impact in the lives of our students are more important than our egos.


References: http://rryshke.wordpress.com
Photos: shutterstock.com
visualphotos.com

Our Ideal School 1

Wards, pupils spend most of the time within a school environment which greatly influence their attitudes, thoughts, beliefs towards later life and moulds them for the future consciously and subconsciously.

A School is a place where we achieve knowledge about the whole world. Not only that, we also learn how to socialize with all sorts of people, know how to speak for ones right, distinguish about manners and learn to be the part of a certain group.


In identifying a good school, your lists should look at;

UNIFORM:
An appropriate school uniform colour should appeal to a child's  age group, texture should be skin-friendly, styles should be simply  and creative.

It must not be biased to any religion, culture. It should encourage unity at every possible way.

ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE:
Any Organization what so ever needs to know how authority and responsibility flows.

This is a chart this shows the School head , how information flows from him to every one in the school both the teaching and non-teaching staff as well as the pupils.

RELATIONSHIPS:
There should be a cordial relationship between the school and the community close to it, the school activities must be relevant to its immediate environment.

Also good relationship should be between teachers and teachersteachers and parents, school and parents through diverse innovative forums, like Parents Teachers Association (PTA), Parents forums, Open days,other creative programmes

FACILITIES:
A good, spacious field, playground that suit the learning age of the learners

Toys, artistic tools, equipments, laboratories with relevant tools, etc relevant to the child's learning age.

Library, Toy corner, Sick bay, First aid box, Running water, etc

PHYSICAL STRUCTURE:
Classroom blocks, staff rooms shouldn't be far apart, keep the wards close and the more the impact.

Well ventilated environment.

The site for an ideal school must be close to nature. It should be delimited by trees, have a big garden and a field where the students can play.

It should have lockers so that students don’t have to carry their heavy school
bags.

It should have different rooms for different kinds of extra curriculums.

Beside nature the students should also be introduced with science and new technology.

Each class should contain small number of students dependent on the age of the learners, so that the teachers can give more attention to each student.