As you can see, there is a new version of Mobile Principal out today. We've made some improvements to the look and function of the user interface. (Including a link to this blog, which we'll use to make announcements.) Please call us at 877-759-7335 if you have any questions or suggestions.
Remember when kids understood irony? Note to students: Being cool, does not require you to actually freeze. Evidently, they aren't getting the message in Albany. High schoolers there resist all reasonable expectations for common sense and instead seem to be under direct mind control from the all-knowing, all-wise Hollister marketing department.
We educate our students to make them more productive adults. Cell phones will probably be the most important productivity tool they will use throughout their entire lives.
We ban them outright in schools. Are we missing a chance to teach here?
There is a Canadian principal who has a refreshing look at how to use the functions that cell phones offer for productive teaching opportunities. While you've got them by the ears, wouldn't it be nice to teach some cell phone etiquette too?
I came across this opinion piece this morning and want to know what you think about teacher evaluations and whether they should be public record. My personal philosophy about this is that on an individual basis, individual teacher appraisals are probably best left private. Nobody deserves each of their professional evaluations published for public scrutiny. But the Dallas evaluation tool discussed in the article is a quantitative measure of the standardized test outcomes based on the teacher. I think this is a far more relevant to public scrutiny. After all, students' scores on these tests determine the levels of government funding a school receives. We are the funders, and the students are our family. To withhold the reports with the teacher's names redacted, is an injustice to our community's interests because it puts the district's administration beyond the inspection of the public it serves. Do you also consider Dallas' stance incongruent with the public good?
In response to last week's post about the Principal whose pink mohawk was actually proven to enhance the learning environment, here is a story about a student who added just a little pink to her polychromal coif and got herself in a tangle for it.
Piedra Vista High School allows only naturally occurring dye jobs. Even for students who work in hair salons. Wrong move blondie.... um brunettey... um pinky. Save the pink for the principals!
Maybe Principal Ron Machado of Miraloma Elementary School should have thought through the permanence of the the offer before he promised his students that he'd get a mohawk if their test scores improved. As we've reported similar strategies in the past, generally principals promise they'll kiss something gross, wear something weird, or do something strange to motivate their kids. Nothing too permanent. Ron promised he'd get a pink mohawk!
Let's just think this through. As a refresher to all you Principals who might be consider using a similar promise to your students. In these scenarios, I'm not sure there is a direct correlation between the degree of permanence of your offer and students' level of motivation. So Principals, please try to limit your offers to a sensible degree of humiliation. No smashing up your cars, or cliff diving, or tattoos. A pink mohawk might just cross this limit; but we don't want to see principals offering up a limb for better test scores. Even though the offer might be tempting.
Image: SF Chronicle/ Deanne Fitzmaurice
The Mineral Wells school district in Texas is clamping down on what it's willing to put up with regarding cell phones in the their schools. Like many districts, they are particularly tired of this topic taking up so much of their administrators' valuable resources. How many minutes a week do you spend dealing with phone issues in your school? Ever spend a minute helping a student look for a lost cell phone? Mineral Wells says that's one minute they'd rather their Principals not bother with.
