Things I’m really excited about as we move into the new year… in no real order:
- Seeing who we are without the first class in the building. That’s how you start to really see what you become… did the culture stick? Just listening to three juniors in my office today talk to some visitors… watching the upperclassmen teach the incoming 9th graders… I think we’re in very, very good shape. I’m going to miss the graduates, and it has been a blast to see so many of them this week, but I am also excited to see how the Class of 2011 leaves their mark. A bunch of seniors confessed that they are staking out their claims to the various seats in my office.
- We built a much larger committee structure at the end of last year, and we’re already seeing dividends. We’ve got enough teachers that we don’t need to be "all hands on deck" all the time. For our week of PD next week, I’m running next to nothing… and the people who are running all the sessions are doing it because it is in their established sphere of interest and influence. That feels awesome. The whole concept is to institutionalize the distributed leadership at SLA by letting people pick the pieces of the puzzle they want to work on. I think, given how many committees we created, that we will figure out which ones have use and legs and which ones were a better idea in theory than in practice, but overall, we are already seeing committee chairs take ownership and work with other teachers to get things done. So very good.
- We get to really try to get good at everything this year. That’s our focus. Document all the UbDs… publish more to the community… institutionalize things we’ve done by the seat of our pants. We’ve done everything at least once now, and while we’ll do new things this year, the major pieces of the school are in place. Now we can cast a critical eye on all of them and work on doing them better. I’m excited to see how Roz and the Capstone committee revise our process. I am excited to see how Josh and Zac move us forward with our PLCs. And I’m excited to see us really work on our curriculum and on publishing it so that we can make our practice more and more transparent.
- We want to establish an active and empowered alumni network. I read Radical Equations this summer and one of my take-aways was how the alumni of the Algebra Project formed the Young People’s Project, and I would love to see something similar for SLA. I think our alumni are proud of their high school, so it is incumbent on us to find meaningful, powerful ways for the graduates to stay involved.
- We want to find more ways to involve and engage parents. We have a wonderful Home and School board who are excited to build on the work of the founding parents, and I think we are going to do some great work this year. The board and I are doing a book study with "Beyond the Bake Sale: The Essential Guide to Family/School Partnerships" (Anne T. Henderson, Vivian Johnson, Karen L. Mapp, Don Davies), and I am hoping that it gives us a powerful vision of new ways to strengthen the Home – School relationship.
- We are rolling out a new web-site in the next week. I’d say more, but I’m sworn to secrecy. Suffice to say, it is going to be awesome.
What are you looking forward to this school year? What are your goals?
