AWSP Blog

I had always been appreciative of the love and support of other caring teaching mentors and leaders in my system. They looked out for me, mentored my blossoming teacher leadership skills, and encouraged me to pursue school leadership and my passion for supporting students and families in my community. This support and encouragement put me on a path to school leadership and eventually, an AWSP-trained principal mentor in my district.

In this episode of AWSP News, we discuss establishing some new boundaries around your time, accessibility, priorities, and work-life balance, some great icebreakers and team builders for virtual meetings from AWSL, planning and preparing for virtual senior year-end events, innovative ways to educate each and every student, guidance from OSPI about grading, subscribing to our blog, the 2020 NASSP Advocacy Champion of the Year, Ready WA’s hashtag PlanYourPathWa student voice video contest, and a feel-good story.

AWSP supports OSPI’s and their workgroup’s guidance for grading. The guidelines are the right thing at the right time. They give districts a clear framework while maintaining the flexibility for districts to find the right solution for their students and community. The guidance was developed with input from a huge array of stakeholders, including our own Associate Directors Kurt Hatch, Gina Yonts, and Scott Friedman. The key message from OSPI and the guiding workgroup: do no harm.

Seniors across the state of Washington have been left without the opportunity to participate in many traditional celebrations including graduation. Our time during this webinar will focus on how we can collectively create create celebrations that students and families will remember.

My daughter was a 4.0 high school student with an impressive resume of accomplishments during her high school career. She went on to the University of Washington where she graduated with a 3.9 and two degrees in three years. While in high school, she tore herself apart studying and preparing for the SAT. As the testing date approached and her anxiety grew exponentially, I had to continually remind her that it's just one test, one indicator, one factor that colleges use for admissions, but certainly not the only indicator. That didn't matter. To her, because of such strong social pressures among her peers, the test was either the beginning of or the end of the world. "I'm forever labeled because of that score," she once said.

Our educational system struggles to avoid layering privilege upon privilege, often measuring punctuality and compliance rather than discernment, critical analysis and habits of mind.

We all know that self-care during this pandemic is important. Our wellness partner, Kaiser Permanente, has lots of great resources to help with this.

In this episode of AWSP News, we discuss our grade-level specific Office Hours, Our Networked Improvement Community grants, Kaiser Permanente's resources for self-care, the “Equity through Master Scheduling: Creating College Ready Transcripts Workshop” offered by OSPI, the “Labor and Management: Coming Together to Further Outcomes for All Students” workshop sponsored by CSTP, weekly discussions about the Science and Culture of Hope with Rick Miller, a Zoom discussion with educators about preparing other ideas to support the Class of 2020, and a fundraising campaign to help us bounce along until we can reopen our Learning Centers.

Principaling has always been difficult, but now the role building leaders play in our system has grown exponentially, even though they are not leading a physical building. Principals sit in the middle of policy (state and district) and practice (what happens in the classroom) and are expected to answer to both sides of the sandwich. If being in the middle was a challenge before, what's it feel like to be a digital principal in the sandwich now?

Seniors across the state of Washington have been left without the opportunity to participate in many traditional celebrations including graduation. Our time during this webinar will focus on how we can collectively create create celebrations that students and families will remember.