Author: Matt Underwood

When you wake up in the morning, do you check your phone for new emails within the first few minutes of arising?  Do you repeatedly monitor a Facebook post after making it to see who has “liked” or commented on it?  Have you thought you felt a buzz only to check your phone and find…

Right now I’m in the first couple of weeks of teaching a class during our middle campus “academic growth period”.  For 30 minutes each day, I’m in a classroom of 18 middle school students discussing and debating whether and how the amendments in the U.S. Bill of Rights should apply to students through holding fictional…

This past Friday to Sunday, six of our faculty members attended the Coalition of Essential Schools Fall Forum in San Francisco.  Earlier last week, our Director of Business and Operations was in Athens for the first in a series of classes on human resources topics.  For a few days this week, our Middle Campus Principal…

In your school career, did you ever have a teacher who you thought was a “great” teacher?  Did you think he or she was great at the time, or later in your life with the wisdom of age?  What did the teacher do that made you consider him or her to be a great teacher?…

In place of a blog post this week, you can read all about our alumni in the quarterly “Principles in Practice” newsletter.  Click here to access it.  Back to regular blog posts next week!

Our school uses Conscious Discipline (CD) as a framework for managing the relationships we have with one another at school, and, through parent workshops and other means, we encourage our families to use the same language and approach with their children at home for the consistency that leads to the behaviors we want to see.…

Attracting people to the profession of teaching, training them to be effective once they commit, and rewarding them if that effectiveness is consistently proven—all of these are areas of considerable focus in education today, perhaps more so than at any other time in recent memory.  A somewhat controversial review of teacher certification programs around the…

Recently our ANCS principals and I attended a half-day workshop with all of the other principals and district staff from the Atlanta Public Schools.  The workshop was facilitated by the Gallup organization and was primarily focused on using Gallup’s “Strengths Finder” assessment to identify individuals’ strengths among the district’s leadership and to use them to leverage improvements…

This Friday is the last day to register to vote in the November elections here in Georgia.  If history is our guide, then we’re likely to see low turnout for these midterm elections, but if there were recognition of the impact these elections could have on public education in our state, then perhaps a few…

Twice last week I was fortunate enough to spend a couple of hours visiting two local schools—Toomer Elementary School and KIPP WAYS—to observe classes and meet with the school leader.  Since moving full-time into the executive director position a year ago, no longer with the split duties of also serving as the middle campus principal,…