Education Week - November 11, 2015 - 20

COMMENTARY
The Challenges

of School Leadership

ABOUT THIS SPECIAL SECTION
The job of the school principal is a difficult and
demanding one, and the attrition rate bears this out:
According to a 2014 study from the School Leaders
Network, 25 percent of principals leave their schools
each year, and 50 percent of new principals quit
during their third year.

I Must Be Everywhere at Once

Against this backdrop, Education Week Commentary
invited four school leaders from across the country
to write about their biggest professional challenges
and how they manage them. On the back page,
former school leaders Deborah Jewell-Sherman and
Mary Grassa O'Neill, who are now both faculty at
the Harvard Graduate School of Education, take
the broad view, answering the question: How can
we keep good principals in their jobs? The package
continues online with audio slideshows, in which
each principal discusses what he or she would most
like policymakers to know about the job.
This special section is supported by a grant from The
Wallace Foundation. Education Week retained sole
editorial control over the content of this package; the
opinions expressed are the authors' own, however.

Photos by Leah Nash for Education Week

M
By Tim Lauer

eriwether Lewis Elementary School,
where I work, is a
neighborhood K-5
school located in the
Woodstock section
of Portland, Ore. We
serve 385 students in
16 classrooms, including a special-needs communication classroom. A majority of our students live within walking or biking distance of
the school, and close to 40 percent qualify for
free or reduced-price meals. Our approach to
learning includes opportunities for expression
in music, art, gardening, and a 1-to-1 technology approach in grades 2-5.
As the principal of Lewis Elementary, I try
to visit each of my classrooms every morning
to check in and say hello to students and staff
members. I also attempt throughout the day
to spend more-extended time visiting classrooms, talking with teachers and students
and gaining a better understanding of the
work taking place, as well as looking for ways
that I can provide helpful feedback and support. From my first year as principal at Lewis,
it became apparent to me that building leaders need to be seen and need to see what is
happening in classrooms-and not just during
formal observations.
One of the benefits of ubiquitous wireless
access in a school, and lightweight laptop
computers and smartphones, is that it gives
administrators the ability to get out of their offices and spend more time in classrooms. Not
being tied to a desktop computer to deal with
school business allows an administrator the
opportunity to keep up with that work while
out and about in the school.
Spending time in classrooms enables a
building administrator to be closer to students and staff members, and to develop a
better perspective on the work being done.
Keeping track of those visits, and making
sure I'm visiting all classrooms on an equal
basis, is a challenge I have been working on
for a few years.
Over the years, I have developed various
methods for logging informal classroom visits. These have included simple paper checklists and charts and, more recently, Webbased reporting tools that allow me to enter
information in a smartphone or laptop and
place it into a spreadsheet for later analysis.

Meriwether Lewis Elementary School
Principal Tim Lauer makes his normal
visiting rounds of classrooms,
in Portland, Ore.
LEFT: An iBeacon, a battery-powered
Bluetooth device, sits next to Lauer's
laptop. The principal uses beacons and
an app called Proximity Log to track how
he divides his time between his office
and classroom visits.

AUDIO SLIDESHOW: Tim Lauer discusses

what he'd like policymakers to know
about his job.
www.edweek.org/go/Lauer

I want to make sure I am spending an appropriate amount of time in all of my classrooms.
While these tools have been helpful, I found
myself recently looking for a way to track and
chart my movements throughout the school
in a more ambient manner. I've been searching for a method to record my movements
almost automatically. While checklists and
charts were useful for informal observations,
I found that when I was not specifically recording data, I was not always charting my
visits with fidelity.
In my search for a solution to this challenge,
I have become interested in a technology
called beacons, more specifically iBeacons, and
how it can be used to help me keep track of my
movements around my school, and provide me
with ambient logging of my classroom visits.
The small (an inch and a half in diameter)
battery-powered Bluetooth devices called
iBeacons emit a low-power radio signal.
(Originally introduced by Apple, the broadcast
technology is now being produced by other
vendors.) Smartphones, equipped with various

20 | EDUCATION WEEK | November 11, 2015 | www.edweek.org/go/commentary

apps, can connect with these beacons, and as a
result, things can happen based on proximity
to the beacons. For example, beacons and apps
on your smartphone can be used together to
initiate alerts or notices based on proximity
to the beacons. There is much discussion now
about how these beacons can be used in retail settings to alert customers to products
and services based on proximity. I have been
thinking about a school setting and how the
technology can be used in interesting ways in
our classrooms.
Recently, I placed an iBeacon in my office.
Using an iOS app called Proximity Log, I
started having Proximity Log track my time
spent in my office based on proximity to the
beacon. Whenever I enter my office, Proximity
Log connects with the beacon, and notes the
time I am near that beacon, and thus in my office. Proximity Log keeps track of the number
of visits and the duration of each of those visits. The data are exportable and can be used
in programs such as Excel or Google Sheets.
While this one beacon gave me a good

understanding of the amount of time I was
spending in my office, it did not tell me
where I was when I wasn't in my office. So,
after my experimentation with the iBeacon in my office, I decided to place others
in classrooms. Subsequently, I have placed
iBeacons in all of my classrooms and set
up the Proximity Log app to interact with
these specific classroom beacons. Now, as I
move in and out of classrooms, Proximity
Log notes when I enter the room, and how
long I stay. I have been able to analyze this
ambient logging to make sure I am visiting
all classrooms on a regular basis.
One of my chief professional goals is to
spend extended periods of time in classrooms,
providing feedback and support. With the use
of iBeacons to track my movements in the
school building, I am able to do a better job
keeping track of these visits and make sure I
am not shortchanging any classroom. ■
TIM LAUER is the principal of Meriwether Lewis
Elementary School, in Portland, Ore.

http://www.edweek.org/go/Lauer http://www.edweek.org/go/commentary

Education Week - November 11, 2015

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