Holiday time is approaching. For most of us, it is a happy time with family and friends, with memories and fondly held traditions. Most schools engage in activities that help raise funds for families in need, offering food and other gifts.  It can make a difference for the young recipients, but there are other issues that run deeper than the need for food or gifts. Those issues are highlighted at holiday time, but remain percolating in the lives of students all through the year.  Those…

It is no secret that schools and the educators and students who work in and attend them are under stress. The time has come to radically change how our schools are organized, how time and work in schools is organized, how our leaders and teachers are trained, and how our students are taught.  The time demands leaders who think and act creatively (Harding, 2010). Read…

It appears, that former University of Missouri System President Tim Wolf ignored reports of an unsafe and unfair racist environment growing within his community. Was it a failure to listen to the members of his community or the failure to give the message the importance it demanded?  Whichever error he made, it cost him his job.  We do not know what was in his heart, but we do know that he failed to appreciate the cost others were paying for his lack of active response.  How many times…

Student safety, student behavior, and student learning are a trio of educator responsibilities. Educators have always operated within and held students to a standard of behavior memorialized in a code of conduct.  Ethical behavior, good manners, and certainly legal behavior are taught in homes, houses of worship, and community groups, and are reinforced by teachers and leaders throughout the students' thirteen years in school. But, the cyber world is introducing new questions and more…

So much attention focuses on student achievement and how teachers can teach better and students can learn more.  But, that is only one aspect of the living organism that is school. There is an abundance of contributing factors to whether students reach academic success; whether they are living in poverty, suffering with mental or physical illness, have learning challenges or differences, have fallen behind, have supportive home lives, were read to as toddlers, have attended youth…

This past week we literally saw (thanks to social media) how a classroom situation can accelerate. A student refuses to follow the directions given by a teacher, ignores the administrator's direction, and ultimately, the SRO (School Resource Officer)  is called to a classroom at Spring Valley High School in South Carolina. When the student doesn't respond to his direction, he removes her from her chair and the room, setting off a flurry of reaction by those who witnessed it on site and…