Category Archives: Blogs

Recently, I attended the Southside Virginia Regional Technology Consortium Annual Banquet.  The Keynote speaker was Dr. Pam Moran, Superintendent of Albemarle County Public Schools.  This was the second time that I heard Dr. Moran speak.  She is an inspiring leader who “practices what she preaches” in regard to teaching 21st Century Learning skills.  She shared […]
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This year’s focus for class has been on completing our mock Capstone project.  This experience was beneficial in more ways than probably anticipated.  The project that my partner and I selected was based on the effectiveness of a phonics program being implemented at the Kindergarten level.  Not only did we learn about the process for […]
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This school year our school division has been reading The Global Achievement Gap by Tony Wagner.  Administrative staff read the book last year and discussed it at our Administrative Retreat last summer.  The administrative team developed a year-long plan for a book discussion in each school.  During the course of the year, division staff members […]
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Last week, I attended the STEM Summit at Longwood University.  It has been a while since I have been inspired by anything in education…I mean, really, truly, inspired.  However, when I left the STEM Summit, I was inspired.  This year’s theme was “Nurturing Inventive Thinking.”  All of the speakers were engaging and spoke about how […]
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The experience of using focus groups for research is a good way to glean information about almost any program being implemented in a school.  Focus groups can give insight to the researcher.   “Focus groups are effective when it is possible to get people together to discuss a topic or when individual interviews are not possible” […]
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Since our first class on June 2nd, I have been attentive to practice “active listening” while at work.  Although I would like to think of myself as an active listener 100% of the time, I find that I actually get distracted a lot during work and therefore I find myself trying to multitask–listening to those [...]
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As I prepare for the Formative Assessment, many things come to mind from our first class meeting until now.  We all began together in the summer with some “getting to know you” activities with all three cohorts.  We took the MBTI and the LCI and found out “who we are” and who our peers are.  We [...] Read more »

Over the last couple of months, our office has been hot and heavy with making budget decisions.  Budget time always brings about speculations and rumors… typically dealing with personnel issues.  The biggest issue that most divisions face in regard to personnel decisions is the RIF (Reduction in Force) policy.  Our policy is written so that [...] Read more »

HB 642/ SB 514 will allow the Board of Education to adopt regulations adjusting the formula for calculating the final high school accreditation rating to add points for each student obtaining a diploma and industry certification, industry pathway certification, or an occupational competency credential in a career and technical education program.  The additional points will only [...] Read more »