AWSP Blog

The 59th anniversary of the United States Senate Youth Program (USSYP) will take place in March of 2021. For the past 59 years, two students per state have been selected to receive a $10,000 scholarship and attend a weeklong program in Washington D.C., funded by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation. To apply for consideration in our state this year, a student must be a junior or senior and must hold an elected position in student council or school government. If students are unable to hold leadership positions this year due to the pandemic, they can submit the position they held during the 2019-2020 academic year.

AWSP is thrilled to offer its second annual Women in Education Leading and Learning (WELL) Summit. Our WELL Summit for the 2020-21 school year will be a series that is offered in the fall and the spring. Our goals for the summit are to create professional networks for female leaders in education, increase our knowledge of successful leadership qualities and experiences, discuss ways to remove barriers to leadership, and focus on self-care.

Educational gaps have persisted for decades. That question is not for debate. Another point that we need not waste valuable time discussing is the ever-widening gaps across the system with each passing day. We are starting to hear the term, “learning loss” bubble to the surface of educator conversations. Call it what you want. “Learning loss” to me is a nice way of saying “even wider gaps in achievement, access, opportunities, expectations, relationships, and hope.” That’s learning loss. Let’s call it what it is—most of our students are suffering massive unintended consequences of remote learning.

Today, October 27, is National Mentoring Day! 🎉 AWSP would like to offer a well-deserved thank you to the amazing 230 AWSP trained mentors! These mentors offer their support, guidance, friendship, expertise to over 125 new and newly assigned school leaders every year. AWSP-trained mentors are truly “friends of AWSP” as they deeply understand and are committed to impacting the effects of the principal churn rate in the state of Washington.

During October's Principals Month festivities, we asked members on Facebook, "What's one thing you wished people knew about your current reality as a principal?"  Stephanie Teel writes, "Right now, my job feels a lot like the title of an old Western: 'The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.'" Read more to find out why. (Thanks, Stephanie, for sharing!)

As the 2020 year continues to progress, we have the unusual vantage point for understanding an even broader meaning of inclusion. Across the world, we all experienced a form of isolation that was required in response to the pandemic and continues even now. Social distancing is something we all became intimately acquainted with. For our own safety and the safety of others we donned masks, restricted outings, and reduced gathering to those within our households. To equate social distancing to exclusion may seem over the top, but if you think about it, it has afforded everyone the experience of what many students with disabilities encounter daily in our brick and mortar schools and in truth, life, which is to be distanced in all ways. So how do we shift, in those ever-shifting sands of re-opening schools to ensure inclusion and inclusionary practices are a part of reimagining?

For many of our students, the realities are that many adults listen to them but do not hear them. Their perspectives, words, hopes, fears, and concerns often get chalked up as "kids being kids." As adults and people with positional power, we can foster and create spaces where students can be heard. It begins with the belief that their perspectives and stories matter. It's about moving beyond performative student engagement, where we ask questions but disregard their responses. It is about us as adults sitting in potential discomfort and recognizing students' agency and value speaking up and out.

In this episode of AWSP News, we discuss our “How To Be “ALL IN” As an Inclusive Leader" webinar series, AWSL's Fall Conference where over 4000 students and school leaders have already registered, creating a Principal’s Advisory Council to build relationships with kids, our Cispus Forever Campaign, our former Learning Center Director Marty Fortin and his recognition by National FFA, Dr. Michelle Fox recognized for the 2020 Bell National Outstanding School Leadership Award, engaging with us in sharing the reality of your work in our weekly Principals Month Question challenge on Facebook, and a special message.

Rolling up in front of Liberty High School in Spangle, Washington was not like the traditional experience of which I was accustomed. For decades, if you pulled into any typical high school parking lot, you’d find cars parked everywhere and a busy scene filled with students moving about socializing in small groups. Not today. It was eerily quiet. Instead I found a half-full parking lot, void of typical activity. What I knew however was that Liberty High School opened in a hybrid model and that students were definitely on campus, but only half of them. I also knew that Principal Aaron Fletcher, a 12 year veteran principal (22 years in district), was somewhere inside principaling. What I didn’t know exactly was what “principaling” meant in our current COVID reality.

Every now and then, a conversation with a student becomes profound and life-changing. A conversation where you leave the conversation a different person than when you entered. Where students teach you a lesson that you never knew you needed to hear. That sums up a conversation I had with a student this week.