Educating Student in Poverty: Effective Practices for Leadership and Teaching, by Mark Y. Lineburg and Rex Gearheart provides essential strategies to help socioeconomically disadvantaged students achieve academic and lifelong success. This tip provides five tips for effectively communicating with all families, especially the familes of children in poverty.

One of the most effective interventions for improving student performance and relationships with parents and families is communication. Each day school leaders and all school personnel have the opportunity to engage with families. The communicated message to the families is of paramount importance.

The following guest blog post was written by PJ Caposey, author of Building a Culture of Support: Strategies for School Leaders. PJ is the principal of Oregon High School, an adjunct professor in the educational leadership department for Aurora University, and he is currently pursuing his Doctoral degree through Western Illinois University. He can be found on Twitter @principalpc, and he is a guest blogger for many websites such as ASCD, Edutopia, and Test Soup.

Just because something is discussed does not mean that collaboration has occurred. I think this is one of the most common misnomers in education today. Teachers talk about curriculum and instruction an awful lot—but are these discussions really collaborative?

Dropout Prevention Fieldbook: Best Practices from the Field showcases the collected efforts of dedicated educators from across the country, selected and presented by one of today's leading experts in dropout prevention, Franklin Schargel.

Research consistently finds that family engagement has a direct, positive effect on children's achievement and is the most accurate predictor of a student's success in school. When family provides support to the school, a strong infrastructure sustains a caring, supportive environment where youth can thrive and succeed. Below are 10 practices designed to make your school family friendly.

The following guest blog post was written by PJ Caposey, author of Building a Culture of Support: Strategies for School Leaders. PJ is the principal of Oregon High School, an adjunct professor in the educational leadership department for Aurora University, and he is currently pursuing his Doctoral degree through Western Illinois University. He can be found on Twitter @principalpc, and he is a guest blogger for many websites such as ASCD, Edutopia, and Test Soup.

We are nearing the end of the school year—and we have two options: grind to the end or think of new and exciting ways to challenge ourselves to continue to grow. As most schools are now approaching the final 45 days of school I would like to provide ten challenges to teachers everywhere to complete before the end of school to facilitate their personal growth and hopefully the process will ultimately benefit the children we serve.

In The Trust Factor: Strategies for School Leaders Julie Combs, Stacey Edmonson, and Sandra Harris provide practical strategies to help you build and sustain trust with faculty, staff, students, and community. This tip presents eight listening habits to avoid as you look to develop strong active-listening techniques.

In the same way that there are techniques for developing stronger active-listening habits, there are also behaviors that have a negative impact on the listening experience. When you listen to people, avoid these common bad listening techniques:

The following guest blog post was written by PJ Caposey, author of Building a Culture of Support: Strategies for School Leaders. PJ is the principal of Oregon High School, an adjunct professor in the educational leadership department for Aurora University, and he is currently pursuing his Doctoral degree through Western Illinois University. He can be found on Twitter @principalpc, and he is a guest blogger for many websites such as ASCD, Edutopia, and Test Soup.

The following guest blog post was written by PJ Caposey, author of Building a Culture of Support: Strategies for School Leaders. PJ is the principal of Oregon High School and can be found on Twitter @principalpc.

This will be the fourth and final installment on this blog series trying to answer the question, “What is school for if it is no longer the place to go to acquire knowledge?” The responses to this prompt have been varied, mildly divergent, and many times brilliant. Thank you to @timfarquer, @bcurrie5, @RabbiRoss, @MrsCBunton, @ScottRRocco, and @PrincipalBrent for their contributions. While today may be the last of the formal series run through Eye On Education I encourage all of us as educators to continue to ponder the question and look toward the future in order to ensure we provide the best possible service and support to our students and community.

In Rigor in Your School: A Toolkit for Leaders, authors, educators, and consultants Ronald Williamson and Barbara R. Blackburn provide tools to raise the level of rigor in your school and dramatically improve student learning. This tip identifies four necessary steps to effectively manage data in order to effect a positive change in your school or district.

The following guest blog post was written by PJ Caposey, author of Building a Culture of Support: Strategies for School Leaders. PJ is the principal of Oregon High School, an adjunct professor in the educational leadership department for Aurora University, and he is currently pursuing his Doctoral degree through Western Illinois University. He can be found on Twitter @principalpc, and he is a guest blogger for many websites such as ASCD, Edutopia, and Test Soup.

Mentoring and Coaching Tips: How Educators Can Help Each Other is packed with creative, use-now tips and activities to support new and struggling teachers. In this tip, Sheryn Waterman provides four strategies that leaders, coaches, and mentors can use to support a close mentor relationship.

The Principal as Student Advocate: A Guide for Doing What's Best for All Students by M. Scott Norton, Larry K. Kelly, and Anna R. Battle offers practical tools and strategies to help principals become strong advocates for every student in their schools. This tip provides the top nine traits that a principal needs in order to become an effective student advocate.

The principal student advocate possesses several special traits that ground his or her personal administrative philosophy...

The following guest blog post was written by PJ Caposey, author of Building a Culture of Support: Strategies for School Leaders. PJ is the principal of Oregon High School, an adjunct professor in the educational leadership department for Aurora University, and he is currently pursuing his Doctoral degree through Western Illinois University. He can be found on Twitter @principalpc, and he is a guest blogger for many websites such as ASCD, Edutopia, and Test Soup.

In The Fearless School Leader: Making the Right Decisions Cynthia McCabe identifies the six fearless decisions that school leaders need to make to be successful. She then analyzes the top feas that impede effective leadership and lower student achievement, and provides step by step antidoes that change fear into intention, increase confidence, and produce positive results in your school. In this tip, McCabe outlines three steps leaders can take to support their teachers as they undertake the task of improving student learning.

When you set and share the intention to improve student learning, teachers will suddenly feel pressure to get results. To help alleviate some pressure, the drive to improve must be balanced by caring for teachers...

The following guest post was written by Jacqueline E. Jacobs and Kevin L. O'Gorman, authors of The Learning Leader: Reflecting, Modeling, and Sharing.

In February most faculty and administrators have forgotten that they have passed mid-year: the break in December but a distant memory and spring break seeming far away. Even with fun thoughts of Groundhog Day, Valentine’s Day, and the shortest month of the year, February can often seem challenging. Will you and your teachers be like the groundhog that comes out of his hole and can examine where you are in your instructional year? Or will you be the groundhog who stays buried in the hole of work that awaits you?