Is your administrator on board for change? #bmswired

This year is the year of change for our district, especially our middle school.  New curriculum system (CSCOPE).  New laptops (beautiful HPs, thank you @rodleer!).  New teams and new classrooms.  New email system (sayonara First Class, helloooo Google!).  Change is good, right?!  Change can be terribly painful or just mildly inconveniencing.  If the campus administrator is on board, however, change can be fun and positive and enjoyable as heck!  Luckily for me, the administrator at Brenham Middle School is rocking out!  No only is she on board, she's jumping off the cliff and going all in!

Peggy Still has looked at just about everything her office (and campus!) does and is trying to streamline and "Google-ify" the process.  The office at BMS has gone totally paperless.  All schedules, announcements, rosters, flyers, handouts, and memos are now dropped into a shared Google folder.  (This is especially nice if you're mobile, like me!  You can get to anything from anywhere!)  Peggy is looking at every committee and meeting process to determine how to make this process easier.  Discipline Committee forms and observation requests...now done in a shared Google spreadsheet!  The coolest part: PEGGY EVEN KNOWS HOW TO TROUBLESHOOT!  Can you imagine such a thing?!  A principal who takes the time to go to a teacher having problems and solve the problem herself.  (Talk about being a Fred!  "Solve a problem you didn't create!")  What's happening in response is that the BMS teachers are trying to do the same thing!  They're creating shared Google folders for parent info, using Google forms to collect student data, and creating paperless newsletters using Google Docs!

If you need to get your teachers on board with something new, sell their administrator first.  If the administrator buys it, so will their teachers.  Peggy, this one's for you!  Here's your Google trophy!!!  Thank YOU for blazing a Google trail and leading by example!