1. Attached are quotes from the book How to Measure Anything. I recommend the book for administrators who are responsible for data and school improvement efforts. I particularly like the quote about no empty space in the brain.

2. The smartest student in the clasroom is not as smart as all of the students together. (a pharaphrase from a John Maxwell statement).

3. Some of the best work in regards to notifying students upfront what they are going to learn comes from Lexington, NE. Attached are the key concept lists for math from grades 1 through Algebra II. The files are in Excel so they can be adjusted to match state standards. The district does sell the accompanying LtoJ quizzes for all courses. Contact Julie Otero, Assistant Superintendent, if interested. julie.otero@esu10.org.

4. "Management is about persuading people to things they do not want to do, while leadership is about inspiring people to do things they never thought they could." (Steve Jobs, quoted in Everyone Communicates, Few Connect by John Maxwell, p.205-206).

5. "A motivational speaker makes you feel good, and the next day you're not sure why. A motivational teacher makes you feel good, and the next day you know why and take action. In other words, the first kind of communicator wants you to feel good, and second wants you to do good." (John Maxwell in Everyone Communicates, Few Connect, p 223)

6. Vocabulary idea: Tell students to write a twelve word sentence using a particular word. Then have a student roll a pair of regular dice. The number rolled is the placement of the word in the sentence. For example, if the student rolls 9, then the particular vocabulary word must be the 9th word in the sentence.

7. Chemistry teacher, Grazyna Zreda-Gostynska of the Tanque Verde School District in Tucson, Arizona, has put together a power point presentation for her LtoJ quizzes with 100 concepts and 3 questions per concept. Chemistry teachers who would like a copy of the power point can e-mail her at gzreda@tanq.org.

8. Special education teacher, Deb Webber, of Tanque Verde is determined that her resource students will keep up with the rest of the students. To be sure she is being successful she tracks the percent correct for her students and compares this number every week to the percent correct for the rest of the students. Her graph is attached.

9. From Jenks, Oklahoma science department two graphs are attached. One is the progress year by year for their biology students. Note in the legend that biology was first at the high school and then moved to the freshman academy. The second graph is a radar chart showing progress for all sub-groups on this end-of-instruction state exam.

Lee Jenkins
Lee@LtoJConsulting.com

John Maxwell

Participants in my seminars know I love to read and quote John Maxwell. So, here are three quotes -- one that isn't so complimentary for our profession and two that are right on.

1. "While educators often take something simple and make it complicated, communicators take something complicated and make it simple."
2." It doesn't take nearly as much skill to identify a problem as it does to find a good solution."
3. "The measure of a great teacher isn't what he or she knows; it's what the students know."

And from Albert Einstein, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it enough."

Quotes from Everyone Communicates, Few Connect by John Maxwell, Thomas Nelson Publisher, Nashville, TN, 2010.