Cool Cat Teacher Blog is at coolcatteacher.com

There is a short, three letter hop from leading to misleading. Having a position of leadership is a very important calling in life. You have a lot of responsibility. It is hard to be a leader but the truth is,as flawed humans, most of us who lead in anything have a very short step to being a misleader. Here's how. You become a misleader when you mistake popularity for an inability to make mistakes. No leader is always right. Yesterday someone pointed out to a critic of mine on Twitter that I was better because I had more followers and he had 6. No! Never do this. Everyone is important as a human being. Listen but then make up your own mind but never let the number of followers someone has make up your mind for you. You become a misleader when your become mislead by your own audience. Pride will kill you faster than a poison blowgun dart in a rainforest. If you look at many of the great falls of history, they came quickly to those who had believed the flattery that the au...

Tom Peters  is right. You can tell a lot about an organization by looking at the bathroom. The first chapter of  The Little Big Things: 163 ways to pursue Excellence , Tom says: "To me a clean and attractive and even imaginative loo is the best..." He's talking about retail shops and he goes on to say that a nice employee restroom is even more indicative of the pride in an organization. I'm thinking back on the school's I've visited and I think this applies to schools as well. A nice school bathroom shows how willing you are to seek excellence and pride even in the small things.  In our school, although there is sometimes drawing on the bathroom walls, we as the faculty go in there enough that if it is there, it is usually gone pretty quickly. This is so hard to deal with, especially in the elementary boys bathroom (I'm sorry but there's no delicate way to talk about this.) Think about it, besides the cafeteria, it is the one place...

Dan Pink 's 2008 Ted Talk should be watched by everyone who thinks that teachers and principals being paid for good test scores is something that would actually work. Incentives only work when you have "simple rules and a clear destination." When you have tasks that require creative solutions, right brain creative thinking , incentives lead to worse performance. In fact, the higher the "bonus" or incentive, the worse the performance. How do you improve creative performance?  You harness  intrinsic motivation by giving: Autonomy - flexibility, independence Mastery Purpose We want to be held accountable and be good at what we do. Teachers want to be great teachers. We want to do a good job. And we all want purpose, or else we wouldn't be teaching. We are modern day nobility - when we act like it. Lucky to make no money and have no benefits? I'm blessed to be at a school that only tests 3 days a school year and gives us teachers a...