How Christian Schools Can Defeat Bullying-Part 1

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How Christian Schools Can Defeat Bullying-Part 1

Their letters are separated by zip code, but united through bewilderment and feelings of betrayal from the organizations they believed would protect their child from bullying—the leading form of child abuse in the nation, and the only form of abuse we tell the most vulnerable among us to “just ignore.”

Their pleadings are almost always composed by emotionally flailing mothers who witness a common but mystifying tailspin of their beloved child, a spiral born from intentional abuse that weds power to fear, making it formable, and due to its predatory nature impossible for Christian school teachers and faculty to effectively combat alone. One bewildered mother writes: 

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Why and How to Break Your Addiction to Meetings

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Why and How to Break Your Addiction to Meetings

You are probably having too many meetings, for too long, and with too many people.

Let’s say you hold a weekly meeting with five people that lasts for one hour. And let’s say you hold this meeting every week for the school year. Here is the math:

5 people x 1 hour = 5 cumulative personnel hours of work time per week.

5 hours x 36 weeks (average school year) = 180 hours.

180 hours = ~4.5 weeks of time devoted to this one recurring meeting.

What could you and or your staff do with an extra 4.5 weeks each year? 

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A $20,000 Opportunity

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A $20,000 Opportunity

I believe that adding online courses to your school can be a financially positive move. In fact, I will show how it is at least a $20,000 opportunity.

Online courses can help your school:

  • Grow new revenue streams 
  • Retain current students 
  • Recruit new students 
  • Expand course selection with fewer resources 
  • Meet the demand for personalized education 

However, before we go further, your school’s mission should drive decisions including this one about online courses. As a former Principal, I know that many good ideas were presented to me. If I did not evaluate them in light of the mission, my school would have quickly gotten off the course God intended for us. As the video below notes, online courses can help with the mission of most Protestant or Catholic schools. Bringing rigor with additional foreign languages, AP courses, dual credit choices from faith based colleges….. helps accomplish a common phrase in mission statements—“Excellence in Education.”

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Resolutions for a New SCHOOL Year

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Resolutions for a New SCHOOL Year

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions; I make New SCHOOL Year resolutions. I have never found New Year’s resolutions particularly helpful because my life revolves around the SCHOOL year, not the calendar year. This makes the summer an ideal time to pray and reflect on the past year and to plan for the next. Over the summer I reflect on and assess two areas: my leadership and my life-work balance. 

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The Shepherding Superintendent

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The Shepherding Superintendent

When I was in undergraduate school I had a classmate encourage me to become a pastor. His encouragement stemmed from his assessment of my teaching gifts, which he considered to be at least adequate for the pastoral ministry.

He was kind but wrong. While I do have the gift of teaching, I would make a poor pastor. For one thing I dislike hospitals, weddings, and funerals.

Although my friend was wrong about my vocational calling, I have come to realize that he was right about a critical element of my role as Superintendent. I am called to fulfill a pastoral role in my school. I am to be a shepherding Superintendent. I shepherd my staff, students, and parents, a responsibility that I take seriously because eternal souls are at stake. As C. S. Lewis observed:

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Thems and Usses

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Thems and Usses

It was one of those Saturday night banquets in 1970s Christian circles. The menu featured vulcanized chicken slices from birds that might well have spent their formative days too close to the local tire factory – they were a bit chewy I mean. A minor multitude of merry wives were socializing gleefully as their husbands did their best to sit up, bare up and smile, while silently wishing they were home watching Hockey Night in Canada. As for me, at this particular event I envied my right leg. It was asleep. 

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No More FrankenSlides! Tips for Better Presentations

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No More FrankenSlides! Tips for Better Presentations

If you are a leader or a teacher, you probably use PowerPoint or Apple’s Keynote program. Nothing personal, but you are probably using them incorrectly and in the process boring your audience.

I have.

Not wishing to bore my audience, I have read several excellent books on presentation design and delivery. What I have learned has transformed the way I design my presentations. No more FrankenSlides! 

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Lost in the Noise: How to Get People to Open and Read Your Email

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Lost in the Noise: How to Get People to Open and Read Your Email

t is hard to get people’s attention. Inboxes overflow with emails. Social media feeds compete for attention. Voice messages wait impatiently for a return call. Schedules are packed.

In all of the noise your emails can get lost or ignored. Here are a few simple things you can do to increase the odds of your emails being opened.

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A Good Idea at the Wrong Time

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A Good Idea at the Wrong Time

A Good Idea at the Wrong Time

Have you ever been in the position where you've implemented a new idea, having done all the necessary research, feeling convinced that it's a sound and feasible move, only to discover that, after a short while, it proves to be the worst possible decision - a monstrous failure. It's happened to me, and here's the kicker. After the project was abandoned, I reintroduced it much later and this time it was a roaring success.

This got me thinking about the importance of timing. I have consistently found that a great idea at the wrong time is ALWAYS a bad idea. When performing our due diligence in researching a new project, we almost always concentrate primarily on the mechanics - can this thing operate effectively?But perhaps we should also be asking - is it the right time?

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Are You Your Own Worst Enemy? When Policy Masquerades as Principle

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Are You Your Own Worst Enemy? When Policy Masquerades as Principle

Sometimes we are our own worst enemy. We create battles we don’t need to fight.

I avoided an unnecessary skirmish recently after receiving a call from one of our elementary principals. She called about a clear violation of our dress code policy.

The problem had to do with the language of the policy prohibiting non-school pictures or logos on clothing except for small monograms. This created a problem for parents who wished to purchase, or who had already purchased, tops for younger children with flowers, animals or similar imprints. Several parents were complaining about the policy. The principal believed we should enforce the “letter of the law” because it was clearly written and to “protect” the school’s culture.

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