• revisiting the budget
• balancing classes
• creating their site plan
• thinking of creative strategies to increase student achievement with dwindling resources
• evaluating staffing allocations
• and dealing with the myriad of changes that summer always brings

• Food and prizes (do a random drawing for gift cards, a small amount, or a week free from duty)
• Teambulider - my favorite one this year was Trainwreck. Make a large circle and use a pen or sticky at every one's feet to mark the location they are standing in. One person starts in the middle and gives a fact about his or herself, a like/dislike, a distinguishing characteristic. If the statement is shared by people in the circle, they must move to another spot quickly (but not right next door to where they started). The person who can't find a spot goes to the middle and makes a claim. This is best done out doors.
• Review of your mission, vision, values and goals
• An engaging activity that gets staff to talk about how they will answer the following: how do they know when students are engaged, how will they ensure that students understand the daily learning objective, and what will they do to make a connection with each and every child that enters their class?

        

I saw two very funny infographics about happiness recently.  Here is the theory:



And here is one closer to reality ...



I found both of these on FlowingData .  Enjoy!

        

        

Are you interested in free services on improving trust and building social capital. If so, apply to be a 2010-2011 GetCivic Focus School.  Use the link below to complete a brief questionnaire:

Focus School Application

Interaction by interaction, our vision is to change the world by developing individual and community capacity, promoting transformation from dependence to independence to interdependence at all levels of learning organizations. 

All applicants will be notified by email on or before September 30, 2010.

Please let us know if you have questions or challenges with the process.  You can contact us through the website, www.getcivic.org.

        

GetCivic.Org is pleased to be working with a Focus School this year from Irvine, California.  The Focus School is a high school with an excellent reputation.  Earlier this school year their principal and staff completed the GetCivic.Org Trust Surveys.  Their next step is the Social Capital Survey that includes generation of a sociogram that represents the professional network among the staff.  Actual names of the respondents have been replaced by randomly generated labels to preserve anonymity.  As a large high school, it is evident that the vast majority of the responding staff members were connected to a central core with high network density.  However, the six staff members that are on the side were disconnected from this core clique.  These results, along with specific recommendations for next steps, will be shared with the school leadership to help inform ongoing improvement efforts.  Importantly, this feedback is designed to build trust, improve relationships, and increase happiness and effectiveness. 

        

 
“The key to achievement for students from poverty is in creating relationships with them…. How does an organization or school create-and build-relationships? Through support systems, through caring about the students, by promoting student achievement, by being role models, by insisting upon successful behaviors for school”(Ruby Payne, 1996, p.111). The importance of relationships between studen tand teacher starts to become important and can change many teachers’ beliefs in their students and their success.

This is a guest blog post from Shannon Ramsinghani.  Shannon is mother of twins, former administrator in Northern California, and current Ed.D (ABD) student at Pepperdine University.

        

Please watch this excellent video on how to help kids to be happy during the holidays.  While centered on the holidays, I expect that the same lessons apply in schools as well--if we focus more on helping others and on developing positive rituals we will see increases in happiness.  Again, while the video centers on kids, school leaders (at any level) can also cultivate happiness in adults--including the staff--by remembering to be altruistic and to commit to community-building rituals. 

        

Michael Fullan (2006) explains the importance of initiative in a school setting by stating that, “People need to feel that what they do matters, that they can make a difference in outcomes, so they offer ideas and suggestions. People take initiative, and initiative results in improvement and innovations” (p.32). I have had several experiences witnessing initiative bring about a tidal wave of energy, and “light the spark” as Zander and Zander (2000) discuss. At first initiative in reform work can be lonely. Everyone seems to be working on their own project. However, once the initiative blooms into a working vision,the initiative then becomes a beacon of hope and possibilities. At that point our relationships with people become stronger as we work together to change our systems to be more successful.

This is a guest blog post from Shannon Ramsinghani.  Shannon is mother of 9 month-old twins, former administrator in Northern California, and current Ed.D (ABD) student at Pepperdine University.

        

Educators are often known as a ‘people persons.’ I believe that quality is common due to the nature of the profession as well as our willingness to build relationships. This act of building relationships requires trust in people and a common vision, in doing what is best for our kids. As a leader some of the first steps we take are building relationships with our staff.  Lencioni, (2005) in his book Overcoming the five dysfunctions of a team: A field guide, states, “I’ve come to one inescapable conclusion: no quality or characteristic is more important than trust” (p.13). 

 

With our continuously changing world, it is often hard to trust in the system and in others, however our work can never progress if trust and relationships are not strong. 

 

This is a guest blog post from Shannon Ramsinghani.  Shannon is mother of 9 month old twins, former administrator in Northern California, and current Ed.D (ABD) student at Pepperdine University.

        

The results of the spring 2009 Focus School Social Capital Survey have been analyzed and a new sociogram has been created.  As with the fall results, we scrambled the names to preserve the anonymity of respondents.  Surprisingly, there is a reduction in the network density from the fall to the spring.  Right now we are awaiting feedback from the school staff regarding potential explanations.  Is this typical in a school year or were there other factors (such as budget cuts) that contributed to a reduction in network connections?  What do you think?