Blog | National SAM Innovation Project

SamTastic Weekly Tip: 3/2/26 - Find What You Are Looking for in TimeTrack

Jim Mercer
7 days ago

This week’s tip: Find what you are looking for in TimeTrack

SAMs know when the principal is available with the click of the Auto Select button. (Circled in GREEN)

A list of open times for the current week immediately appears with links for easy scheduling.

Another TimeTrack button allows you to locate any item regardless of the entry date. You need to contact the state Title II director you met with last August concerning summer school? Who from the district attended? Perhaps you need the agenda from the staff meeting last December on the new reading program? What was the name of the presenter? You can use the search function in TimeTrack by using any key word or phrase. It is the magnifying glass icon to the right of the leader’s name. Enter a key word or phrase and TimeTrack will immediately display each time it appears—going back in time. Clicking the eye icon will take you to the event. If there is a mail icon, it means you sent a related email. Click the icon to retrieve the message.

Would you like to narrow your search? Would you like to be more specific? You can select search areas in TimeTrack by clicking the inverted pyramid. Then, select the area of TimeTrack you wish to search. Of course, access to NoteTrack is limited to the TimeTrack owner.

The Event Note/Additions box makes the search feature even more valuable. Many users report that entering notes or links for meeting agendas, websites and minutes makes their work easier. Being able to easily find this information weeks, months or even years later is invaluable. Each link entered is active. The user can click on the link for immediate access.

Your Time Change Coach will schedule the annual SAM Team Performance Rubric Assessment meeting with you soon. This annual review is held during one SAM Daily Meeting in April and May. The session provides a time for reflection, goal setting, and celebration.

It is budget time in most schools and districts. Be sure to include your SAM services for the 2026-27 school year. You can request an early invoice now by using this link: https://bit.ly/40GtA33

Consider budgeting for the 20^th Annual National SAM Conference, too. The conference provides an opportunity to learn from SAM teams across the US and an amazing array of national and international speakers, authors and thought leaders in leadership, education, and psychology.

20^th Annual National SAM Conference announcement video: https://www.wevideo.com/view/4003300281

What does a SAM conference look like? https://bit.ly/4cxGEw7

SamTastic Weekly Tip: 2/23/26 - Mattering Matters

Jim Mercer
Feb 23

This week’s tip: Mattering Matters

Is feeling that you belong at a school the same as feeling that you matter?

“Belonging is feeling welcomed and accepted in a group, whereas mattering is feeling significant to the group’s individual members. Mattering is an even more fundamental need than belonging. Mattering—a mainstay concept in the fields of psychology and sociology for more than 40 years—is the experience of feeling significant to those around us because we feel valued and know that we add value. It is a primal need. When people know that they matter at work, they thrive.” Zach Mercurio, The Power of Mattering at Work

SAM teams track time spent with each teacher, and other staff members, to improve their practice. Can you use your TimeTrack data to consider if your work conveys a belief that each person matters? You might start by looking at data showing time spent on celebratory feedback. Did each staff member receive one or more celebratory feedback sessions this year? Was your feedback for the year more directive or non-directive? Did you ask a lot of open-ended questions, or did you make a lot of statements?

Mercurio suggests: “Renew your intention to pay close attention to others. Begin by asking more-meaningful questions. We tend to begin conversations with “How are you?” or “How was your day?” These standard greetings don’t give us any insight into the people we lead. Instead ask questions that are clear, open, and exploratory.

For example, instead of saying, “How are you?” you might ask, “What has your attention today?” Open questions give people the opportunity to share their experiences.

You can access Mercurio’s article by using this link: “The Power of Mattering at Work”

Research continues to paint a worrisome picture concerning the result of tech use in schools and challenges investment in laptops and screens, rather than books and other print materials. Neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath says Gen Z is less cognitively capable than previous generations, despite its unprecedented access to technology. He said Gen Z is the first generation in modern history to score lower on standardized tests than the previous one. He suggests the assumption that AI use in schools will be beneficial in student learning lacks evidence and may be even more damaging to student learning.

You will find the entire article, below.

The U.S. spent $30 billion to ditch textbooks for laptops and tablets: The result is the first generation less cognitively capable than their parents

Sasha Rogelberg

Sat, February 21, 2026

In 2002, Maine became the first state to implement a statewide laptop program to some grade levels. Then-Governor Angus King saw the program as a way to put the internet at the fingertips of more children, who would be able to immerse themselves in information.

By that fall, the Maine Learning Technology Initiative had distributed 17,000 Apple laptops to seventh graders across 243 middle schools. By 2016, those numbers had multiplied to 66,000 laptops and tablets distributed to Maine students.

King’s initial efforts have been mirrored across the country. In 2024, the U.S. spent more than $30 billion putting laptops and tablets in school. But more than a quarter century and numerous evolving models of technology later, psychologists and learning experts see a different outcome than the one King intended. Rather than empowering the generation with access to more knowledge, the technology had the opposite effect.

Earlier this year, in written testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath said that Gen Z is less cognitively capable than previous generations, despite its unprecedented access to technology. He said Gen Z is the first generation in modern history to score lower on standardized tests than the previous one.

While skills measured by these tests, like literacy and numeracy, aren’t always indicative of intelligence, they are a reflection of cognitive capability, which Horvath said has been on the decline over the last decade or so.

Citing Program for International Student Assessment data taken from 15-year-olds across the world and other standardized tests, Horvath noted not only dipping test scores, but also a stark correlation in scores and time spent on computers in school, such that more screen time was related to worse scores. He blamed students having unfettered access to technology that atrophied rather than bolstered learning capabilities. The introduction of the iPhone in 2007 also didn’t help.

“This is not a debate about rejecting technology,” Horvath wrote. “It is a question of aligning educational tools with how human learning actually works. Evidence indicates that indiscriminate digital expansion has weakened learning environments rather than strengthened them.”

The writing was perhaps already on the wall. Fortune reported in 2017 that Maine’s public school test scores had not improved in the 15 years the state had implemented its technology initiative. Then-Governor Paul LePage called the program a “massive failure,” even as the state poured money into contracts with Apple.

Gen Z will now have to face the ramifications of eroding learning capabilities. The generation has already been hit hard by the transformations of the 21st century’s other technological revolution: generative AI.

Early data from a first-of-its-kind Stanford University study published last year found AI advancements to have “significant and disproportionate impact on entry-level workers in the U.S. labor market.” But a less capable population means more than just poorer job prospects and less promotions, Horvath warned; it endangers how humans are able to overcome existential challenges in the decades to come.

“We’re facing challenges more complex and far-reaching than any in human history—from overpopulation to evolving diseases to moral drift,” he told Fortune. “Now, more than ever, we need a generation able to grapple with nuance, hold multiple truths in tension, and creatively tackle problems that are stumping the greatest adult minds of today.”

Technology’s impact on learning

Classroom technology usage has ballooned in recent years. A 2021 EdWeek Research Center poll of 846 teachers found 55% said they are spending one to four hours per day with educational tech. Another quarter reported using the digital tools five hours per day.

While teachers may be intending for these tools to be strictly educational, students often have different ideas. According to a 2014 study, which surveyed and observed 3,000 university students, students engaged in off-task activities on their computers nearly two-thirds of the time.

Horvath blamed this tendency to get off-track as a key contributor to technology hindering learning. When one’s attention is interrupted, it takes time to refocus. Task-switching also is associated with weaker memory formation and greater rates of error. Grappling with a challenging singular subject matter is hard, Horvath said. For the best learning to happen, it’s supposed to be.

“Unfortunately, ease has never been a defining characteristic of learning,” he said. “Learning is effortful, difficult, and oftentimes uncomfortable. But it’s the friction that makes learning deep and transferable into the future.”

Sustained attention to a singular subject is anathema to how technology today has been deployed, argues Jean Twenge, San Diego State University psychology professor studying generational differences and the author of 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World. More time on screens isn’t just ineffective in facilitating learnings; it’s counterproductive.

“Many apps, including social media and gaming apps, are designed to be addictive,” Twenge told Fortune. “Their business model is based on users spending the most time possible on the apps, and checking back as frequently as possible.”

A Baylor University-led study published in November 2025 uncovered why this is: TikTok required the least amount of effort to use, even less than Instagram Reels and YouTube shorts, by balancing relevant videos with surprising and unexpected content.

Concerns over social media addiction have become so dire that 1,600 plaintiffs, across 350 families and 250 school districts, filed a lawsuit alleging Meta, Snap, TikTok, and YouTube created addictive platforms leading to mental health challenges like depression and self-harm in children.

Solving the tech crisis

Horvath proposed a swath of solutions to Gen Z’s tech problem, at least as it pertains to classroom use. Congress, he suggested, could impose efficacy standards to fund research on what digital tools are actually effective in the classroom. The legislature could also require strong limits on tracking behavior, building profiles, and collecting data on minors using tech.

Some schools have taken matters into their own hands. As of August 2025, 17 states have cracked down on cellphone use in school, banning the technology during instructional time; and 35 states have laws limiting the use of phones in the classroom. In fact, more than 75% of schools have said they have policies prohibiting cellphone use for non-academic purposes, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, though enforcing those bans have been met with variable success.

Ultimately, Horvath said, the loss of critical thinking and learning skills is less of a personal failure and more of a policy one, calling the generation of Americans educated with gadgets victims of a failed pedagogical experiment.

“Whenever I work with teenagers I tell them, ‘This is not your fault. None of you asked to be sat in front of a computer for your entire K-12 schooling,’” Horvath said. “That means we…screwed up—and I genuinely hope Gen Z quickly figures that out and gets mad.”

SamTastic Weekly Tip: 2/17/26 - Use Three Strategies to Be More Persuasive

Jim Mercer
Feb 16

This week’s tip: Use Three Strategies to Be More Persuasive

Leadership is the art of taking a person or group to a destination they might not reach on their own. Persuasion is a skill effective school leaders use to do this daily. Can you improve your persuasion skills? Communications guru Jefferson Fisher thinks you can by using three simple strategies:

#1. Make them first

Let the person you want to persuade be the first to hear something, be told something, or share something with.

It can be as easy as “I just had a thought that I wanted to run by you first.” People love to be first. It makes them more attentive and more likely to do what you ask.

#2. Anchor with positivity

Begin your sentence with “Because I know…” and tag a positive quality about them. For example: “Because I know I can count on you” or “Because I know you to be a dependable person.” What you’re doing is anchoring your message to a positive quality, making them much more likely to follow through.

#3. Use your voice

You might think you’ve written the perfect email or the perfect text, but nothing will replace the human connection of hearing your voice.

So call them—or even better—meet them face to face. You will always be more persuasive when you use your voice.

Congratulations Mahomet-Seymour Community School District SAM Teams!

All four schools earned the exemplary rating on the 2025 Illinois Score Card. This is Illinois’ highest possible rating and puts them in the top 10% of schools in the state.. All principals, the superintendent and assistant superintendent do the SAM process every day.

“We were very excited to learn that all four of our schools received the designation of exemplary. This was a result of our excellent staff continuing to seek ways to improve instruction and relationship building at all levels. Additionally, all four of our buildings have approached increasing student attendance with a laser like focus, and we have seen great result.’ -Superintendent Kenny Lee

Mahomet-Seymour Schools Rated Exemplary Under New Illinois Benchmarks

Mahomet-Seymour officials highlight all-district 'exemplary' state designations and push sustained focus on attendance and curriculum