2025-26 Student Leadership Events – Registration Now Open!
Spots are limited – reserve your place today! Ready to level up your student leadership experience? Our statewide lineup of Student Leadership Events is now open for registration! These one-of-a-kind workshops and conferences are designed to help students grow critical skills in communication, collaboration, problem-solving, and school impact. Our events are open to EVERY STUDENT! Whether you're a student council officer, leadership student, or just someone who wants to make a difference,…
What Your Culture Is Saying (And Are You Listening?)
This spring during a site visit, I joined a team of building leaders for instructional rounds. In classroom after classroom, I noticed something subtle but telling—teachers delivering content with routine precision, students nodding occasionally but otherwise passively compliant. Later, during a staff meeting to share our observations, the pattern repeated. Staff sat silently, disengaged but polite, waiting for time to pass. When a few informal leaders began packing up, others followed suit.…
May LegalEase 2025 | Compliance Reminders – One for This Year, and One for Next
With the end of the year upon us, there’s still time to focus on one big compliance change for this year (teacher evaluations), and one compliance change for next year (cardiac emergency response plans). Teacher Evaluations Last year’s legislative changes for teacher evaluations are coming to a head as we reach the last few weeks of the school year. While teacher (and administrator) evaluations are now potentially collectively bargained, there are a…
Delegating with Purpose: How to Free Up Time for What Matters Most
As secondary principals, we’re constantly pulled between the urgent and the important. Student needs, emails, staffing issues, walkthroughs, behavior follow-ups, meetings. The list never ends. But if we’re not careful, the urgent will dominate our day and crowd out the deeper, strategic work that actually improves schools over time. That’s where the Eisenhower Matrix comes in. Made popular by Stephen Covey, it’s a simple but powerful tool that helps you sort tasks…
Bridging Secondary and Postsecondary Success: Why Building Leaders Should Pay Attention to Whole Child Support in Higher Education
Across Michigan, colleges and universities are beginning to rethink what student support really means. The Basic Needs Task Force Report, released by the Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement and Potential (MiLEAP), makes it clear that access to food, stable housing, mental health care, transportation, and other basic needs plays a critical role in helping students stay enrolled and complete their degrees. While the report is focused on higher education, its findings…
The Power of CTE: An Unforgettable Experience for Two High School Students in a Hospital Emergency Room
The patient had driven into a ditch, gone home, and when checked on, seemed fine. However, he was later found passed out in his garage. He was suffering from hypothermia, and he was rushed to the hospital. In the emergency room, medical staff performed CPR for an hour at which point a nurse invited Lana, a Chippewa Valley High School senior in the Medical Careers program, to take over the CPR. Lana…
Rethinking Transparency: Lead with Clarity, Not Clutter – What if the problem isn’t how much you communicate, but how clearly you lead?
Transparency builds trust—but when everything is shared without strategy, it creates noise instead of insight. As school and system leaders, we often err on the side of openness. The result? Teams overwhelmed by updates, buried in dashboards, and unsure what truly matters. The goal isn’t just more transparency. It’s purposeful, clear communication that fuels action. We often treat transparency as a virtue in itself—something to maximize without question. But here’s the truth:…
Strengthening Leaders Across the Pipeline: MASSP’s Continuum of Support for Aspiring, Emerging, and Advancing Principals
The principalship is one of the most complex and critical roles in public education—and one of the most undersupported. In Michigan, we face growing shortages not only in our teacher pipeline, but in school leadership as well. That’s why MASSP developed Strengthening Leaders, a comprehensive, research-based suite of induction, mentoring, and coaching programs that support educators at every stage of their leadership journey. Whether you are preparing for your first leadership opportunity,…
Getting a Head Start on 2025-2026 Teacher Evaluations
As the 2024-2025 school year winds down and the new school year approaches, building administrators should begin preparing for 2025-2026 teacher evaluations by reviewing teacher rosters, past performance data, and evaluation scheduling requirements. Recent updates to teacher probation and tenure requirements under the Revised School Code Section 1249 and the Teachers’ Tenure Act make early planning essential for teacher evaluation compliance and effective teacher support. Importantly, because teacher evaluation is no longer…
How to Protect Youth with Tobacco Dependence Treatment and MDHHS Available Resources.
E-cigarettes’ aggressive marketing, flavors, and high concentrations of nicotine are predatorily designed to encourage youth initiation of e-cigarettes and turn that initiation into addiction. Youth are exposed to high concentrations of nicotine when vaping, and can quickly become addicted to affordable and accessible e-cigarettes. Prevention and tobacco dependence treatment, sometimes known as cessation programs, through the Tobacco Section can help reduce student absenteeism, frequent and unnecessary breaks, and reduce or eliminate exposure…