How to be a good Middle School Principal?

Ensure you are surrounded by good middle school teachers.

I woke up last night at 2am. I wondered what I had to worry about because it was the first day of the school year. I considered the wonderful staff in the building, and fell back asleep till 5:30!

I got to school and folks were already setting things up, preparing for students and looking forward to success. #endthemeetingnow The staff had investigated technology and some even posted their first tweets. #winwar (Winfield Warriors)  Technology was everywhere.  www.polleverywhere.com and www.dropbox.com are just the beginnings to the technological natives in our seats.

Of course, we all understand Dr Seuss was talking about relationships when he wrote Green Eggs and Ham and without a relationships, we would have little impact and less influence on the people around us, the wards under our care, or even the children in our classes or the kids in our family. All day was filled with activities that are designed to intentionally engage students in their own learning process.  Worksheets don't grow dendrites and we worked accordingly.  Well done, middle school staff.

Reflection: Today was the first day of our SY and as we walked the halls and popped into classrooms, we saw many great practices. We saw teachers allowing students to interact with technology in front of the entire class. We saw smiles and heard laughter. We had over 97% of our registered students show up. Staff were engaging with students on both a surface level as well as an intentional deeper level for future interactions of deeper levels of knowledge. We observed and overheard evidence of students wanting to attend school to see what their teacher had thought up for them. Parents came to check things out and even popped into classrooms with us. We saw the foundations for success. We are preparing to put Winfield Middle School on the map.
If today is any indication of where we are going, we are reservedly excited and I think everybody will be back tomorrow! Well done staff.
We were only Winfield, but now we are on the MAP!
PS. Did anyone see our high stakes testing scores released from DESE last year? Out of the park!  Kudos again.
PPS. How to be a good Middle School Principal? Someone said one trait was being a little goofy!  I say surround yourself with good middle school teachers!