Starting Strong

You know that saying - "You only get one chance to make a first impression?" The same is true for the start of the school year. You only get one chance to start the school year right - and it doesn't happen by chance.

We have spent the last two weeks in professional development that focused on Restorative Practices, Building Supportive Relationships, Bias and Diversity, Mathematics Instruction, and Writing Instruction. I have been challenged in my thinking and in my practice by an amazing team of teachers and leaders. Seeing them take leadership in group discussion and in exemplar practice, really made me think back to where we started. The growth we have made is truly amazing.

Throughout our discussions, we have continued to return to the need for strong routines and procedures and the importance of building a strong sense of community in your classroom. We have looked at data that supports the "why" of the work we are doing and planned carefully for the "how" so that our routines and procedures are able to be tight and purposeful. Routines are essential to providing students the structure and safety that will allow them to take personal and academic risk and to invest themselves fully into relationship with the classroom learning environment (read more about the importance of routines here and here).

Starting the year strong is essential to implementing the strong routines and procedures that will lay the strong foundation for student achievement. As a school leader, it is critical that you "inspect what you expect" and provide opportunities for teacher and students to mode, teach, practice, and assess the routines and procedures that will set students up for success during the year ahead.

We focus on being #tightbyweek3, which means that all of the school-wide routines and procedures have to be well established in order for us to have a safe and productive culture of learning. My leadership team clears their schedule for the first three weeks - there is nothing more important than being in classrooms, in common areas, and in transitions in order to provide immediate feedback and offer opportunities for immediate course correction. For classroom routines and procedures that become the foundation of academic achievement, we will provide feedback, opportunities for practice, and action planning to ensure that we are poised to achieve the level of academic success that our students deserve.

It is critical that school leaders have a clear vision of how school-wide routines and procedures will be modeled, taught, practiced, and reinforced and that there is a clearly articulated vision about the routines and procedures that are expected in order to ensure academic achievement in classrooms.