Happy Martin Luther King Day! I hope you had a good three-day weekend.

I got a little over 600 responses to the question in last week's cover e-mail about possible new labels for my teacher evaluation rubric.

Along with these opinions came lots of thoughtful commentary:

- There was quite a bit of support for couching evaluation in terms of results (i.e., effectiveness). "The point of teaching is student learning," said one reader. "I like the use of 'effective' because it is Dweckian," said another, "i.e., one can become effective through effort and practice, and if effort and practice cease, one might become less effective."

- The word "Expert" came in for some criticism because it sounds like it's describing the teachER rather than the teachING and suggests that the teacher has nothing more to learn.

- The word "Proficient" struck some as not robust enough for the kind of solid performance described in Level 3 of the rubrics. In addition, one reader said, "Proficiency is something you have or own. Effectiveness is how well you DO something."

- There was some uncertainty about whether "Minimally Effective" was too positive for Level 2, given the truly mediocre and ineffective teaching described at this level in the rubrics. On the other hand, "Needs Improvement" didn't get a strong vote of confidence since, as several readers pointed out, everyone needs improvement.

- There was some queasiness with the word "Ineffective" and support for the lowest rating including the idea that standards are not being met.

After reading the incredibly helpful responses and pondering for a week, and with a last-minute assist from my son, David, who teaches high-school history in California, I've decided to change the labels on my rubrics. Click here to see the new formulation:
http://www.marshallmemo.com/articles/Kim%20Marshall%20Teacher%20Eval%20Rubrics%20Jan%202010.pdf

This week's Memo is dominated by a very strong issue of Principal Leadership, a magazine that just keeps getting better.

My best,

Kim

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Quotes of the Week

“Students know what educators value – they pick up their messages and act on them.”
Carol Dweck (see item #1)

“You mean I don’t have to be dumb?”
A seventh-grade boy, upon learning that his brain could develop (ibid.)

“We recognized that we were never going to close the achievement gap while the curriculum gap existed.”
Carol Corbett Burris (see item #3)

“Each new generation of children grows up in the new environment its parents have created, and each generation of brains becomes wired in a different way. The human mind can change radically in just a few generations.”
Alison Gopnik in “Mind Reading”, a review of Reading in the Brain: The Science and
Evolution of Human Invention by Stanislas Dehaene, in The New York Times Book
Review, Jan. 3, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/books/review/Gopnik-t.html?scp=1&sq=Alison%20Gopnik&st=cse

“[H]uman beings are happier, more productive, and more likely to make positive changes in their behavior when those in positions of authority do things with them, rather than to them or for them.”
Jay Zaslaw (see item #6)

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1. How Educators’ and Students’ Mind-Sets Influence Achievement

Beliefs about intelligence have a major impact on student achievement, says Stanford professor Carol Dweck in this Principal Leadership article. Teachers, administrators, students, and parents tend to see intelligence in one of two ways:
- Fixed – How bright you are is set at birth: “Some students are smart and some are not, and that’s that.”
- Malleable – Intelligence can grow as a result of effort and instruction. “A growth mind-set doesn’t imply that everyone is the same or that anyone could be Einstein,” says Dweck, “but it does imply that everyone’s intellectual ability can grow – and that even Einstein wasn’t Einstein before he put in years of passionate, relentless effort.”
Having a growth mind-set is especially important for students who believe the negative stereotypes about their abilities – for example, many African Americans, Hispanics, and girls (with respect to science and math).
To test this theory, Dweck and two colleagues monitored hundreds of New York City students who entered seventh grade with similar math achievement. Over a two-year period, students who believed that intelligence could be developed significantly outperformed students with the fixed mind-set, and the achievement gap between the two groups widened with each passing semester.
Why? “Because they believed that their intellect could be developed, students with the growth mind-set focused on learning, believed in effort, and were resilient in the face of setbacks,” says Dweck. “Students with the fixed mind-set, however, worried more about looking smart and not making mistakes, thought that needing to make an effort to learn meant that their intelligence was deficient, and became discouraged or defensive in the face of setbacks because they believed that setbacks reflected limitations in their intelligence.” When they got a bad grade on a test, these students thought about cheating on future tests because they believed they didn’t have the ability to do well by legitimate means.
But can the growth mind-set be taught? Dweck and her colleagues identified seventh graders whose math scores were steadily declining and divided them into two groups:
- Students in the control group were taught study skills in eight workshop sessions.
- Students in the intervention group learned study skills and were also taught about the malleability of intelligence – that the brain is like a muscle and the more it’s used, the stronger it becomes – that when they learn something new, their brains form new connections, making them smarter.
“Students were galvanized by the idea that the growth of their minds was under their control,” says Dweck. One boy who had been a troublemaker heard this message and said, “You mean I don’t have to be dumb?”
What were the results of the study? The math achievement of students in the control group continued to get worse, despite instruction in study skills. Control-group students, on the other hand, showed marked improvement. Teachers (who didn’t know which students were in which group), immediately noticed the difference in control-group students’ attentiveness, study habits, motivation, homework completion, and achievement.
Dweck was so impressed with the results of this study (and others like it) that she and her colleagues developed Brainology, a software program designed to teach students the growth mind-set, and tested it in 20 New York City schools. Virtually all students reported positive changes in their ideas about learning and study habits. “Most exciting,” says Dweck, “many reported using the image of their neurons making new connections to motivate themselves in school, saying that they pictured their neurons forming new connections when they paid attention in class and that when tempted to not study, they rejected that idea on the grounds that new connections would not be formed.”
What about teachers’ mind-sets? Dweck reports a German study showing that low-achieving students who had teachers with the fixed-ability mindset made no progress, whereas students with teachers with the growth mindset improved to become moderate or high achievers. Dweck has found that adults with the fixed-intelligence mindset tend to make snap judgments, quickly putting people into categories. “This means that once they have decided that someone is or is not capable,” she says, “they are not very open to new information to the contrary… When teachers decide that certain students are not capable (or when principals decide that certain teachers are not capable), they may not take steps to help them develop their potential.”
The differences in how students are treated by different teachers is stark. For example, when dealing with a student who just failed the first math test of the year, a fixed-mindset teacher typically comforts the student and says that not everyone can be good at math. A growth-mindset teacher tells the student he or she can do better, offers encouragement, and teaches specific learning strategies and study skills.
Students are quick to pick up on their teachers’ beliefs, says Dweck, as was demonstrated by a study of college athletes. “The more that athletes thought their coaches believed in hard work over natural talent,” she says, “the better the athletes did that year. Students know what educators value – they pick up their messages and act on them… It is essential for educators to communicate that they hold a growth mind-set.”
The way adults deliver praise is particularly powerful in shaping their mindsets. “When adults praise students’ intelligence after a student performs well,” says Dweck, “they send a fixed mind-set message: you’re intelligent and that’s what I value in you. When adults praise effort (or strategies), however, they send a growth mind-set message: you can build your abilities through effort.” Students who are praised for ability go to pieces when they fail or encounter frustrating tasks. Students who are praised for effort are undaunted by challenges and continue to improve.
Recent studies show that teachers’ mind-sets are key to closing the achievement gap. Students who believe that ability is fixed are haunted and discouraged if they believe their race or gender is less able. But students who see ability as malleable, even if they know their race or gender has underperformed historically, are willing to work on changing history through effective effort and working with their teachers. “When black and Latino students adopt a growth mind-set,” says Dweck, “their grades and achievement test scores look more similar to those of their non-stereotyped peers. When female students adopt a growth mind-set, their grades and achievement test scores in mathematics become similar to those of their male classmates. In these studies, every group seemed to benefit from holding a growth mind-set, but the stereotyped groups gained the most.”

“Mind-Sets and Equitable Education” by Carol Dweck in Principal Leadership, January 2010 (Vol. 10, #5, p. 26-29), no e-link available

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2. “I’m Just Not Good At Math” – Why Do We Tolerate This Statement?

“While it is true that some people are better at math than others,” says University of Virginia cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham in this American Educator column, “– just like some are better than others at writing or building cabinets or anything else – it is also true that the vast majority of people are fully capable of learning K-12 mathematics.” What level does Willingham have in mind? High-school algebra, geometry, and probability and how they apply to our daily lives.
To what degree are our brains wired to learn math? It doesn’t come as naturally as speech; like learning to read, says Willingham, learning math “takes time and effort, and requires mastering increasingly complex skills and content.” Two important findings of the last 20 years provide the base on which teachers can build:
• Humans are born with the ability to appreciate the concept of numbers. We can quickly approximate how many objects are in front of us, for example, being able to tell at a glance that 100 beans scattered on one table are more than 50 beans scattered on another. Children can also gauge exact numbers up to four with precision; their error rate increases after that until they master counting.
• Humans seem to have an innate sense that numbers and space are related – number lines are used independently in many different cultures – but precise one-to-one correspondence of numbers greater than four on a number line takes teaching.
What’s the bottom line from cognitive science? Willingham says “we should not expect students will learn mathematics with ease. Rather, we should expect that mathematical proficiency will require careful cultivation and will develop slowly. At the same time, we should keep in mind that students are born with the ability to learn math, and we should not let students give up by concluding that they’re just not good at math.”
So what do students need if they are to be successful at math? The National Mathematics Advisory Panel (NMAP) recently zeroed in on three things:
- Factual knowledge – Memorizing the answers to a relatively small set of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division problems so that retrieval is quick and automatic. This is critical to solving more complex problems because it frees up working memory to focus on higher-order thinking.
- Procedural knowledge – Learning sequences of steps to solve frequently encountered problems, for example, borrow-and-regroup or knowing that multiplying two negative numbers produces a positive number (not why).
- Conceptual knowledge – It’s not either-or between procedural and conceptual knowledge, as protagonists in the math wars have contended – children need both. But does one come before the other – concepts before procedures or procedures before concepts? The answer, says Willingham, is to teach both together!
How well are American students doing in these three areas? Willingham believes our kids’ grasp of factual and procedural knowledge is middling and their great weakness is conceptual knowledge. Many students don’t fully understand place value, which led one college freshman to argue strenuously that 0.015 is larger than 0.05 because 15 is larger than 5. She would not budge from this belief. Another common misconception is believing that the equal sign = means “put the answer here” rather than denoting mathematical equivalence,
Unfortunately, says Willingham, conceptual knowledge is the hardest of the three to acquire, and it can’t just be poured into students’ heads; it needs to be built on previous knowledge and experience. For example, an abstract definition – the standard deviation is a measure of the dispersion of a distribution – is much easier to understand with an example – two groups of people have the same average height, but one group has many tall and many short people, and thus has a large standard deviation, whereas the other group mostly has people right around the average, and thus has a small standard deviation. “If students fail to gain conceptual understanding,” says Willingham, “it will become harder and harder to catch up, as new conceptual knowledge depends on the old. Students will become more and more likely to simply memorize algorithms and apply them without understanding.”
Manipulatives are touted as a way to help students gain conceptual understanding, but Willingham is skeptical. Manipulatives are themselves abstract, he says, and can be so visually interesting that they distract from the deeper concepts involved. “Concreteness is not a magical property that allows teachers to pour content into students’ minds,” he says. Working with familiar objects or examples is more important to helping students understand abstract ideas. “Crucially, students frequently fail to understand the concept if they are not explicitly told to look for the commonalities among examples, or are not given hints as to what the commonalities are.” As content becomes more abstract, teachers have to be very explicit with their examples and analogies, for example, using a balance scale to illustrate the balancing of two sides of an equation, making it vivid by actually having a balance scale in the classroom and showing how it works, making the analogy explicit by writing two sides of an equation on a drawing of a balance scale, and continuously reinforcing the analogy. Studies indicate that teachers in Japan and Hong Kong are especially effective at using analogies according to these principles.
What are the implications of this for American teachers? Willingham offers the following advice:
• Think carefully about how to cultivate conceptual knowledge, and find an analogy that can be used across topics so that students will make connections.
• In cultivating greater conceptual knowledge, don’t sacrifice the basics. “Procedural or factual knowledge without conceptual knowledge is shallow and is unlikely to transfer to new concepts,” he says, “but conceptual knowledge without procedural or factual knowledge is ineffectual.” The “how” and “why” of math reinforce each other.
• In teaching procedural and factual knowledge, ensure that students get to automaticity.
• Choose a curriculum that supports conceptual knowledge – which means a curriculum that focuses on just a few concepts each year and a sequence of topics that makes conceptual sense and proceeds in small steps.
• Don’t tolerate the statement, “I’m just no good at math” from a student. With persistence and hard work, students can do it!

“Is It True That Some People Just Can’t Do Math?” by Daniel Willingham in American Educator, Winter 2009-2010 (Vol. 33, #4, p. 14-19, 39)
http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/ae_winter09.pdf#page=2

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3. A High School Eliminates Tracking

In this Principal Leadership article, Long Island (NY) principal Carol Corbett Burris describes how her 1,100-student high school did away with tracking and made impressive gains closing the achievement gap – the percent of African-American and Latino students earning a Regents diploma rose from 32% before detracking to 95% afterward.
In 1989, the district’s middle and high schools had 2-5 tracks in each core academic area, with minority students overrepresented in the lower tracks. Middle-school detracking began in English and social studies, and then science and math classes went to two tracks, offering all students the opportunity to opt into the accelerated level. When few black and Latino students took advantage of that opportunity, the district concluded that the only way to close the achievement gap was to detrack all classes and differentiate and accelerate instruction. For math, heterogeneous groups started with the sixth-grade class of 1995, accompanied by an enriched curriculum in alternate-day before- and after-class math workshops. More students passed the state exam, the percent of minority students in advanced math classes soared, and the achievement of high achievers stayed high.
Meanwhile, the high school cut down to two tracks, Regents and Honors, and between 1995 and 2000 the number of students earning a New York Regents diploma rose from 65% to 80%. But the percent was only 32% among black and Latino students, with most gravitating to lower-track classes. “We recognized that we were never going to close the achievement gap while the curriculum gap existed,” says Burris. “And so tracking was phased out.” Between 1999 and 2006, the high school gradually eliminated tracking in 9th and 10th grade. What was formerly the honors curriculum (geared to prepare students for International Baccalaureate classes in grades 11 and 12) became the curriculum for all students in ninth and tenth grade.
The detracking plan encountered its first serious resistance when it reached 10th grade, with angry parents protesting to the board of education. But the district’s leadership held fast, providing support for struggling students and enrichment for high achievers. The high school offered new teachers a 10-hour PD course on differentiating instruction and veteran teachers a Lesson Study experience. The result? Enrollment in 11th and 12th-grade IB courses rose from 35% of graduates in 2004 to 54% in 2009, with minority students making the biggest gains – from 13% to 38% of black and Latino students. By 2009, the 56-point achievement gap for Regents diplomas that had existed in 2000 had been erased, with 95% of black and Latino students reaching that level.
Achieving this was a multi-year effort involving policy, instruction, data analysis, and leadership, says Burris. Here are her recommendations for other schools:
- Study tracking across the grades. At what grade level does it begin? What are the long-range consequences of being in lower-track classes in elementary and middle school?
- Study the effects of tracking by looking at students’ transcripts to see whether students move to more challenging classes or stay in the same track – or lower tracks.
- Examine placement patterns. Disaggregate the membership of each track by racial and economic groups. Are all groups represented in the same proportions across the board?
- Look to see if tracks are really academically homogeneous, or are they skewed by parent pressure. “You will be shocked to find how heterogeneous each track already is,” says Burris. “This can be powerful evidence when demonstrating that homogeneous classes really do not exist and that students of lower achievement can be successful in high-track classes. You will also discover the tragedy that some very capable students have been placed in low tracks by mistake, as a result of poor counseling, or because they did not have a strong parent advocate.”
- Take a hard look at teaching assignments. Are the most experienced and effective teachers assigned to high-track classes – and vice-versa?
- Communicate what you learn to build support. “Those who are well served by the status quo honestly believe that tracking is a meritocracy,” says Burris. “It is your job as a school leader to expose the inequities that exist and to explain how those inequities cut off later opportunity.”
- Start small. Detracking takes years, says Burris, and is not for short hitters or the faint of heart. She advises beginning with the lower track, opening access to higher tracks, revising curriculum while preserving rigor, providing appropriate staff development, and supervising classrooms to make sure teachers aren’t watering down the curriculum. “Finally,” she concludes, “you must hire and retain only those teachers who believe that all students deserve access to your school’s best curriculum.”

“Detracking for Success” by Carol Corbett Burris in Principal Leadership, January 2010 (Vol. 10, #5, p. 26-29), no e-link available; Burris is at cburris@rvschools.org.

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4. A School District and a University Work Together on a Common Problem

In this Principal Leadership article, Connecticut superintendent Gary Chesley describes a pivotal conversation he had several years ago with the dean of a nearby state university that enrolled many of his district’s graduates – and supplied many of its teachers. The dean complained that lots of district students did poorly on the university’s placement tests and needed to take remedial courses. Then it was Chesley’s turn to complain about the mediocrity of many teachers produced by the university, which, he said, was the reason for the district’s large number of remediation-bound students. The dean and the superintendent realized that they were describing the same problem from different perspectives, and launched a two-part strategy that has paid handsome dividends.
• The student achievement strategy – The high school’s students are now required to take the university’s placement tests in February of their junior year. University personnel and high-school teachers grade the tests and sit with students to tell them specifically what they need to work on during their senior year – for example, a science test might show that a student can’t identify independent variables and must focus on that concept. Data from these tests have led to major revisions in the high school’s senior-year curriculum, and have served as a wake-up call to many students who would have ended up in remedial classes. Parents have been grateful for the advance warning of their children’s ability to handle university coursework before they start paying tuition for remedial courses that don’t count toward graduation. In the first year, the number of district students who needed university remedial courses was reduced from 62% to 34%, and the number is now even lower.
• The teacher training strategy – The university expanded the pre-service experience its teachers-in-training have before their student teaching, requiring them to spend two weeks in the middle and high school working with mentor teachers and analyzing teachers’ differentiation, questioning, and classroom management. Teacher candidates also teach a short class, debrief several times each day, and attend after-school seminars conducted by school administrators. This in-school training gives budding teachers a much better understanding of what the pubic schools expect and what the demands of the profession will be and positions them to take better advantage of their remaining university courses. In addition, the university now gives discounts to district personnel who want to pursue advanced study. Chesley believes this will produce more effective teachers down the road.

“Quid Pro Quo” by Gary Chesley in Principal Leadership, January 2010 (Vol. 10, #5, p. 40-41), no e-link available

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5. Success for Students with High-Functioning Autism

In this Principal Leadership article, New York middle-school principal Michael MacDonald describes how schools can improve the achievement and reduce the anxiety of students with high-functioning autism. These students’ obsession with doing well and not disappointing adults can cause severe stress – stuttering, rocking, hair-pulling, and hitting and scratching themselves. “Should schools reduce students’ course loads and force them to take less-rigorous academic schedules than their classmates?” asks MacDonald. “Absolutely not!” Instead, he suggests the following strategies to maintain high achievement while reducing stress:
• Stop thinking in terms of modification, because these students can do the same work as other students – they just need to have the method of delivery differentiated and adjusted to meet their learning needs.
• It’s very helpful for these students to get a daily homework sheet that spells out how long each assignment is expected to take, which assignments can be done at home, and which should be done in the resource room. This way, the special-education provider can be on hand to provide help with the most stressful assignments.
• It’s also helpful for these students to get the assignments for the upcoming week each Friday, including tests, quizzes, projects, and readings, so they can use the weekend to read or prepare for the week ahead.
• Getting diagrams, maps, and other graphics in advance can help reduce anxiety completing assignments.
• Teacher-created notes can be provided, since high-functioning autism students often obsess over writing each word correctly and do not focus on the lesson.
• These students should have extra time and teacher assistance for creative and document-based writing assignments, since they are concrete thinkers who want an explanation for each assignment.
• Students need time and support in social situations to practice interacting successfully with their peers. Close supervision is required in the unstructured parts of physical education classes, and a private changing area can help.
• Students with high-functioning autism generally do better with adults than with peers, but adults should avoid expressing disappointment and using sarcasm, which cause severe stress.

“Invisible Disorder, Visible Effect” by Michael MacDonald in Principal Leadership, January 2010 (Vol. 10, #5, p. 42-45), no e-link; MacDonald is at mmacdonald08@yahoo.com.

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6. Restorative Dispute Resolution

Rigid discipline plans and zero-tolerance have not improved student behavior or contributed to school safety, says consultant Jay Zaslaw in this Principal Leadership article. Suspensions and expulsions are counterproductive because they label students, create idle time, lead to risky or illegal behavior, and cause students to fall further behind academically. A much more effective way to deal with conflict, he believes, is restorative dispute resolution (RDR). “The philosophy underlying those practices,” says Zaslaw, “is that human beings are happier, more productive, and more likely to make positive changes in their behavior when those in positions of authority do things with them, rather than to them or for them.”
Here’s how it works. Using cognitive behavioral processes – role-playing, discussion, feedback, demonstration, and activities – those involved in a conflict – the offender, the victim, parents or a support group, and a trained facilitator – negotiate a settlement that addresses the harm to the victim and the school community and spells out what each party must do. The key principles of restorative dispute resolution are:
- Victimization is an injury.
- Victimization hurts victims, the school community, and sometimes neighborhoods, and creates an obligation to make things right.
- All parties should be part of the response.
- The victim’s perspective is central to finding how to repair the harm.
- Empathy for the victim is a key component.
- The offending student is accountable for accepting responsibility and acting to repair the harm he or she has done, and may be required to write a letter of apology and or be assigned community service, clean-up projects, tutoring, etc.
- The school community does not accept excuses or rationalizations for violence or victimization.
- School administrators are responsible for the well-being of all members of the school community.
- Restoration – repairing the harm, holding the offending student accountable, and rebuilding relationships in the school setting – is the primary goal of RDR.
A 2005 pilot RDR program in a Lansing, Michigan middle school had the following results:
- A 15% drop in suspensions, while the suspension rate in other district middle schools increased;
- Averted two expulsions;
- Resolved conflicts effectively;
- 92% of 292 participating students reported using restorative methods to resolve their conflicts.

“Restorative Resolution” by Jay Zaslaw in Principal Leadership, January 2010 (Vol. 10, #5, p. 42-45), no e-link; Zaslaw can re reached at czc2@mchsi.com.

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7. How a School Cleared the Halls by the End of Passing Time

In this Principal Leadership article, Virginia assistant principal Tiffany Hardy describes her 1,900-student high school’s unsuccessful use of hall sweeps to get students into classes at the end of their five-minute transitions (sweeping after every class change was unsustainable, she says, and students took advantage of adults’ inconsistency), and describes three new strategies the school is using this year, which she says have resulted in empty hallways at the bell:
• Programming a warning bell one minute before the end of passing time. The warning bell has a different sound than the tardy bell; it gives students a heads-up and removes the excuse many students previously used – “I didn’t know five minutes had already passed.”
• When the tardy bell rings, teachers close their classroom doors and don’t admit students unless they have a pass. Students who are not on time have to go to the Dean of Students, who gives them a discipline notice that gets them into class. Students are highly motivated to avoid getting more than one notice because tardies are cumulative and result in further disciplinary action, including a parent conference with the principal. “It has been surprising how many parents have jumped on board to reinforce the expectations from home to avoid that!” says Hardy.
• There is a schoolwide policy that teachers must have an engaging “bell-ringer” or “Do Now” assignment that all students are required to work on as soon as the tardy bell rings. “Students have shared that they will make certain they get to class on time for the classes in which they know they will be engaged from the moment class starts,” says Hardy. “They reinforce what research shows – they are going to be on time and perform better for teachers who make the learning valuable, personal and meaningful to them instead of painful, boring, and pointless.”

“Suggestions from an Assistant Principal” by Tiffany Hardy in Principal Leadership, January 2010 (Vol. 10, #5, p. 6), no e-link; to sign up for the assistant principals’ discussion list, visit http://www.principals.org/aplist.

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8. Outdoor Recess in Middle School?

In this Principal Leadership interview, Sarah McKibben asks award-winning Georgia principal Sheila Kahrs about her unusual policy of giving middle-school students a ten-minute recess every day. “The recess policy is an important factor in the give-and-take between teachers and students,” says Kahrs. “The teachers make demands on the students, and the students are expected to remain on task throughout the school day, even during transitions between classes… and in return they can enjoy 10 minutes of recess outside.” During the break, students chat, circulate, run around, play ball, and generally let off steam.
Interestingly, teachers are not allowed to punish students by denying them recess, and recess is never cancelled (during inclement weather, there is an alternative ten-minute recess indoors). “We believe that rewarding our students accomplishes more positive results than punishing them,” says Kahrs.

“A Rewarding Philosophy” by Sarah McKibben in Principal Leadership, January 2010 (Vol. 10, #5, p. 22-25), no e-link

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9. A Survivor Tells All

In this Principal Leadership interview by Sarah McKibben, veteran Alabama middle-school principal Debra Beebe describes her seven-week ordeal on Survivor (she was the eleventh castaway to be voted off the show). Some excerpts:
• How did being a middle-school principal prepare her for Survivor? “If that doesn’t prepare you for almost anything, I don’t know what will… I felt right at home living with these ‘strangers’ for 34 days. We acted like middle-school kids the majority of the time! We would talk about each other, how much someone was eating, how hard they were working, etc.”
• What was her students’ favorite moment? “When I missed a math problem in the challenge! They also loved how ugly, dirty, and nasty I looked each week.”
• Did being on Survivor affect her as a school leader? “I have always been very nurturing, but now I understand how a child who has nothing can get upset when a possession as little as a pencil is missing.”

“Survival Skills” by Sarah McKibben in Principal Leadership, January 2010 (Vol. 10, #5, p. 80), no e-link; McKibben can be reached at mckibbens@principals.org.

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