II. Shadowing Experience

III. Standards Fulfillment

IV. In-Depth Practicum Project

Andy Retzloff may be the most beloved human being in the Hackley Middle School. No competition. He is this amazing science teacher who constantly has a pack of kids swarming around him. “Mr. Retz, Mr. Retz, Mr. Retz” can be heard down the hallway and students try and track him down to share their latest enlightenment, no only in science, but in all of their subjects. The students want to share everything with Retz and he always has some neat fact, joke, or bug to share in return! He is in constant contact with the students and information flows freely back and forth. Retz is immensely personable, easy-going, and has a very open communication style. His leadership strengths are approachability, availability, and his beloved personality.

However, I knew that upon entering the position, I would be completely unable to play off of Retz’s administrative strengths of personality. While I consider my administrative strengths to also lie in the realm of personality and approachablility, I am a high school teacher, and a new one at that. I don’t have relationships built with the students, a stellar reputation to proceed me, and the daily contact with the students that Retz has. The hardest part of the coordinating job is not to set up the program, but the day-to-day hunting down of students. With fifth and sixth grade students, we are no longer marching them around in lines and holding hands, but they aren’t really ready to be completely responsible for their own schedule either. All day long different kids will run into Retz and tell him about changes in their schedules, or he will ask probing questions, and it works for him. But I’m not in a position to do so. So I had to focus on my organizational skills and hope for the best.

I have since started a new trimester and been able to run the program for myself, but the thing that I noticed while working under Retz’s system was that he relied entirely on his strengths and didn’t necessarily cater to his weaknesses. What do I mean by this? It’s simple. Retz’s greatest strength is not organization, so when a kid told him something, he wouldn’t write it down, he would just try and remember it for a few hours, knowing that he could track them down at the end of the day if need be. For me, this wasn’t an option. I needed to write down the location of each kid the moment in came across my radar. I found that the attendance sheet didn’t reflect changes that occurred every week, and each and every Thursday, for example, Retz (and myself) would spend 20 minutes looking for the same little girl who was always down in the music center. For me, simply writing this down saves 20 minutes a week, per change, that Retz didn’t do. It’s a lesson in playing to your strengths, but also accommodating your weaknesses. If you aren’t going to remember the change every week (which I certainly can’t do), then it’s important to force yourself to write it down. Sometimes the little things make all the difference in leadership.

Standard 1: Ability to promote the success of all students by facilitating the development, articulation, implementation, and stewardship of a school vision of learning supported by the school community.

While working in the admissions office, I had the opportunity to help out with our open house one Saturday morning in the fall. Amongst the many things I did that day, the most important was to field questions from prospective students and parents. The questions ranged from “are you strict here?” to in-depth questions about the history curriculum. By describing our school culture and academic expectations, I was able to clearly articulate the already developed school vision of learning to prospective students, as well as report back the to the school the questions that people had and the impressions of Hackley’s ability to implement our vision.

The vision and mission of Hackley School, which I shared with prospective students and families at our open house, can be found at the school website,   http://www.hackleyschool.org

Standard 2: Ability to promote the success of all students by promoting a positive school culture, providing an effective instructional program, applying best practice to student learning, and designing comprehensive professional growth plans for staff.

One of the biggest challenges of taking over the ASK program was recapturing study hall, which had slowly turned into a free-for-all after the structured activities occurred. It was really important for the students to be able to use this time wisely while they were still at school and could receive help from myself or another teacher if available. Many of the students in the afterschool program have a long bus ride home when they leave us so it is imperative that they finish most of their work so that they can succeed scholastically at Hackley. Reimplementing this best practice of student learning took time but is back on track, and the students have benefitted from it significantly.

I do not have a good visual to accompany this post but I hope that it speaks for itself.

Standard 3: Ability to promote the success of all students by managing the organization, operations, and resources in a way that promotes a safe, efficient, and effective learning environment.

In my role as ASK coordinator for Hackley, I had to make many tough decisions with regard to course offerings for the winter trimester. While we had overwhelming student interest in the program itself, some of the specific courses did not receive as much interest as others and therefore had to be cut from the program for the terms. This created tough situations with faculty who were prepared to teach the classes, as well as with the parents who had enrolled their children in those offerings that did not reach a minimum enrollment. However, as all of the components must work in unison for the program to be supported, and for all students to have an opportunity experience these very interactive learning experiences, I had to cut the courses and engage in a series of tough phone calls, conversations, and negotiations. In the end, with some creative maneuvering, everyone seems to be happy and the trimester is off to a great start.

Standard 4: Ability to promote the success of all students by collaborating with families and other community members, responding to diverse community interests and needs, and mobilizing community resources.

One of the tasks that I undertook from our admissions office was doing investigative work on interest levels in providing a school-sponsored busing service to transport students who live in New Jersey to school each day. Providing transportation from New Jersey is not something that Hackley currently does, and as a result, we lose many students to nearby schools that do offer this service. In order to look into the matter, without getting families excited about a service that we will be unable to provide, I called through all of our New Jersey families and asked them about how they got their children to and from school each day so that we could share this information with prospective parents at an upcoming open house. By approaching the question in this manner, we were not only able to gauge interest in busing, but to involve parents in our admissions process. Many of them offered to speak to New Jersey parents considering Hackley and several even offered to host events in their homes. Broadening the question allowed to us to obtain much more information and buy-in from parents than we ever anticipated.

New Jersey Student Info

Standard 5: Ability to promote the success of all students by acting with integrity, by acting fairly, and in an ethical manner.

By way of being in the admissions office, I have access to confidential information that must be kept confidential. I have done this.

Standard 6: Ability to promote the success of all students by understanding, responding to, and influencing the larger political, social, economic, and cultural context.

As an independent school, Hackley provides significant amounts of financial aid to many of its students in an effort to provide a quality education to a wide range of capable students. However, the hidden costs of Hackley can quickly build, ranging from sports equipment and AP test fees (which are covered in large part by an extracurricular scholarship fund) to proper attire for school (the only outerwear allowed is Hackley gear, which due to the high price tags, is now provided to all students on financial assistance by the Parents’ Association on the first day of school) to textbooks and tutors. One of the projects on which I worked for the admissions office, which also handles financial aid applications, was the sorting and cataloging of donated textbooks from past students. In an effort to provide free textbooks to many students, Hackley has started collecting used textbooks to distribute to families that have trouble affording them. We are still working on the distribution mechanism for the future, but as of now, they are all logged into the system and many have been distributed for the year.

This document is also in an excel format and I will include it through email.

My in-depth practicum project for this semester came up rather unexpectedly, in the form of working with the fifth and sixth grade After School Knowledge program. The day to day work of coordinating the program is fairly simple (with a few notable exceptions, such as this past Thursday when a student boarded a bus instead of coming to ASK and after running all over campus in a panic searching for him for 45 minutes, we discovered his location and that he was safe and sound).

However the bulk of the administrative work comes in spurts, at the beginning of each trimester. At the beginning of this trimester, I learned all that it entailed. I’ll walk you through a few of the steps.

1. Email faculty and staff to determine interest for offering after school classes in the winter.
2. Try and compose a schedule that accommodates all course offerings and faculty schedules, with a focus on variety and attracting a large number of students.
3. Prepare sign-up and informational materials to send home to parents.
4. Collect sign up sheets from students and parents in a timely fashion (by far, the hardest part).
5. Try and place students in courses requested. Make decisions about which courses will be offered and which ones have not met the minimum enrollment numbers.
6. Call back all faculty of courses that didn’t make and explain circumstances—politely telling them that we would love for them to offer the class again the spring. Call back all parents whose students were enrolled in those classes and determine second (or third) choices.
7. Email each parent with a confirmation letter regarding enrollment, pick-up times, and student obligations.
8. Prepare attendance sheets and financial statements (student fees and faculty pay) for the trimester.
9. Continue to change everything from step 4 to now because parents continue to change their mind and request to be a part of different programs.

10. Oh yea, and take care of all the students while they are at ASK each day.

I have included a variety of documents from the ASK program for review. The excel spreadsheets were not uploading properly, so here are some notes to parents, etc. The billing sheet, attendance, and faculty pay are all in excel documents. If you care to review them, I can include them in an email format.