Kelly's Curriculum Corner

  Our annual Excellence in Education dinner recognized educators, schools, and community entities for outstanding work in the field of public education through the implementation of a program or service. These recognized programs received the Crystal Award for Excellence in Education. Each award winner had an opportunity to describe their program and talk about the impact it had on students. Winners ranged from a Health Related Technology program at a Career Center that serves the community through an adult daycare program to a character education program for elementary students and everything in between. The common thread of relationships seemed to connect all the programs. Retired individuals connecting to middle school students, teachers connecting to digital age of their students, students connecting to their parents, students connecting to the community etc... I left the event wondering whether we really understand school improvement. Is it about more math and reading ...

This past Monday I visited East Stroudsburg North High School. Steve Zall, principal, hosted a group of administrators from a neighboring school district and myself to showcase his building's instructional walk-through process. As I listened to Steve share his experience and hospitality with us, I was struck by two things. First, instructional walk-throughs are not about teachers or teaching. They are about leading and leadership. Secondly, the term instructional leader is really not an accurate term, rather what we need in schools are learning leaders. To pay attention to instruction is not sufficient. We need leaders who are not content to simply schedule professional development and assume its implementation. We need leaders like Steve, who walk with a high degree of frequency from classroom to classroom looking for evidence of implementation. We need leaders that will learn along side their teachers, participate in staff development and be able to recognize implementation ...

Law of Leadership: A successful team with 100 members has 100 leaders. -Lance Secretan Students are the largest stakeholder group a school has , but they are often overlooked source of information, energy and momentum for improvement efforts. I was intrigued when I heard East Stroudsburg Area School District (ESASD) had a Student Advisory Council in each high school that the superintendent and high school principal met with personally 3 - 4 times a year. Dr. Rachael Heath, Superintendent of ESASD, started the Advisory group when she came to the district four years ago. She is expanding the council to both intermediate schools this year and I can see why! Here's a summary of the meeting to give you a flavor of student interests and insights : A diverse mix of 20-25 students assembled in the school library. They opened the meeting with Old Business..... School Safety, Bathrooms, buses and the Cafeteria. The first two items were quick. Students indicated they felt safe and the bathr...