February 2009 Archives

What does it take right now to register a student in your school and have them fully functional as a part of your learning community? Really think about it. They have to go to one office and register then that clerical staff will have to either walk or send, in some way, his/her information to probably four or five different offices at the very least.
What if I were to tell you that my school district will have it down to one office in our school district by the beginning of next school year. What if I were to tell you that the same will be for staff? This sounds like a Utopia kind of situation but it is not something mythical. It is actually something technological. It is SIF. SIF stands for Schools Interoperability Framework. It is a way that multiple databases can talk to each other. The states of Virginia and Ohio are really leading the charge from a top down approach but there are also other school districts that are also starting to really get into SIF. SIF is really a specification that vendors have to adopt to become "SIF certified". Once they do, their data can be passed to other databases or they can receive data. I do not want to get into all the technical jargon but I rather lay out some scenarios for you.

Johny Smith and his family have just come to your district mid- year. He goes to your registrar's office and they fill out a few forms that are common to most school districts. The registrar confirms the information and then types it into the computer. By entering it into the student management system, it then blasts through and out to all your other systems. Within seconds, he can now check out a book, log on to a computer, be on a teacher's roster, be assigned to the right bus, have lunch, and even possibly have an IEP started for him, if needed.

Second scenario is similar, except it is a staff member. They come to you at the beginning of the year so you put them in your student management system. Now they can check out a book, sign onto a computer, be in the payroll system, sign up for professional development, start to access their student's data, see the curriculum maps for their classes, look at the IEPs for their students. All of this within seconds after being put into the student management system.

This is the power of SIF. If you are school districts has not already started to look at it, they should. It will save hours of time for your clerical staff and keep your data clean since there is only one entry point. Again SIF is not a vendor but just a specification. There is a good chance that a lot of the vendors you already use, have a SIF "agent". Our district has invested heavily already and it is paying huge dividends. I hope your school district can have the same benefit. To learn more go to http://www.sifinfo.org

James Yap

Posted by LeaderTalk Contributor at 8:25 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

in·no·va·tion (noun) 1: the introduction of something new; 2: a new idea, method, or device
Merriam-Webster online

The term innovation is becoming more and more prevalent in education-related discussions. Schools from coast to coast are adopting "innovative" models to address educational needs in local communities. The range of practice associated with these models is wide. Some models are prescribed programs with detailed requirements for professional development and implementation. Other models are more tailored to an individual community and somewhat less specific in structure and delivery. The development of these K-12 programs has been accompanied by university programs designed to facilitate growth, increase successful outcomes, and analyze results.

At the core of these innovative school models are a couple of key ingredients that greatly benefit students. First, innovative models are thoughtfully designed to meet student needs in a variety of ways that are highly relevant for the 21st century. These schools are not delivering a curriculum that has slowly evolved over decades into an often disconnected series of topics. Second, innovative models strive for small school characteristics that create fewer opportunities for anonymity between and among students and staff. Third, innovative models attempt to maximize school and community partnerships. By harnessing the resources and support of the wider community, learning is more powerful and connected for children and adults alike.

What are the predominant innovative models being implemented in K-12 schools around the country? Here are a few models with links to relevant websites. Keep in mind that some of these models are relatively new, while others have been around for many years.

KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) - This program was started by Dave Levin and Mike Feinburg. A recent USA Today article noted that there are currently "66 schools in 19 states and the District of Columbia. It educates more than 16,000 children from preschool through high school, virtually all of them low-income." In a nutshell, KIPP has a demanding college prep curriculum that is delivered through extended hours and days throughout the year. Parent involvement is also a key component of the program.

Expeditionary Learning - EL is a K-12 model that grew from the original work of Kurt Hahn and Outward Bound. EL has a strong constructivist approach to education. Students are highly active in this model and curiosity in encouraged.

Early College High School - ECHS is a model designed primarily for secondary students, but preparation for successful ECHS experiences often extends into middle grades. The ECHS model grows the traditional dual credit opportunities for high school students into a structured program designed to deliver associates degrees or two years of transferable credit concurrently with high school graduation. ECHS models partner with universities and colleges to add high levels of support to high school students who are largely underserved in the traditional programs.

There are other examples including The Project School, New Tech High School, Project Child, language immersion schools, Key Learning Community, and countless other programs ranging from magnet schools and charter programs to redesigned traditional settings. Information about these programs is scattered across the Internet and in a range of publications. I encourage readers to visit these links and add others in comments. I would love help identifying the best of these programs from communities across the country. If you have a model you'd like to share or a school you'd like to highlight, be sure to share it with us.

Innovative models are not the solution to all that ails us, but the conversations surrounding design and delivery of these many programs has fostered great enthusiasm for our work even in these difficult times.

Resolve Revisited - In my December post (Resolve for the New Year) I offered several suggestions for resolutions that would be appropriate for educational leaders. I mentioned the high failure rate of many resolutions and encouraged thoughtful consideration of both the resolution and planning the support to make it happen. If we all could reflect now on the resolutions we made (I know some people don't believe in annual resolutions), how many of us are on track? One resolution I made was to be a mentor to a student in our district. While that effort got off to a slow start, I have now met with the student twice and talked with the parents and teachers on multiple occasions. The student and I are meeting every other week, and since we started, his attendance has improved and his organizational skills are being addressed. If you are on track with your resolutions great. If not, this is a great time to refocus your efforts.

Dave Dimmett

Posted by LeaderTalk Contributor at 11:44 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

If you have not read the McKinsey report - How the world's best performing school systems come out on top - you need to download and read it!!!! What you will find is a lot of influence from Michael Fullan and other international education thinkers.

Bottom line - school outcomes will be no better than the quality of your teachers.The evidence on this has come from Boston, Dallas, Tennessee, Marzano's research, Sanders research, and from all OECD countries. Two consecutive years with a low quality teacher and it is almost impossible for children to recover.

What are the three things that the world's best school systems do?

1 - improve the quality of teachers entering schools of education
2 - improve the quality of instruction
3 - ensure that every child has access to high quality instruction

As always, the devil is in the details of how nations do these three things. While somewhat different in approaches, the top performing countries limit the number of applicants who can enter schools of ed, they recruit from the top 10% of high school graduation classes, and they guarantee a good starting salary.

For improving instruction, the strategies usually include more application based training (internships) during the 5th year of a degree program, instructional coaches in schools, just-in-time professional development on high yield instructional strategies, and learning from peer teachers.

For ensuring access to high quality instruction, the strategies usually center around strong standards, formative assessments, strong instructional leaders, interventions at school, teacher and student levels, and strong accountability systems with tons of feedback loops.

Everything sounds familiar and we in the US know how to do all of these things. Why don't we have more deployment of these strategies? The KNOWING and DOING gap.

Terry Holliday

Posted by LeaderTalk Contributor at 5:22 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

My wife has told me many times I put my "rose colored contacts" in each morning before I go to school. I don't dispute my looking to the silver lining in things but have become a bit worried lately.

I have struggled with how to address this post for a while now - so much so I have missed my publication date for the past two months (Sorry, Scott.) I might be taking some small steps down the path towards being a curmudgeon. I am far too optimistic to allow this to take place, but I am at the point in my career where I have seen some folks take the path towards cynicism. A couple of items that concern me:

1. I now remember some educational initiatives that have been repackaged into new ones. A few new bells and whistles, but essentially the same idea.

2. I have been seriously considering one of Doug Johnson's laws - a report not worth writing is one that is not worth writing well. I have grown weary of authoring required reports in which the same items are regurgitated over and over again and, to be quite honest, I am not sure anyone reads.

These are just two examples of items that distract us from the important mission of fostering student growth and achievement.

Despite these emerging tendencies, I remain hopeful. I believe we are entering a time when education will be intelligently overhauled to meet the needs of individual academic and social needs of students.

Great and experienced LeaderTalk contributors and readers who have been through this before - what strategies have you used to maintain positive attitudes despite some of the realizations I have listed and inferred here?

Matt Hillmann

Posted by LeaderTalk Contributor at 9:55 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

The Flip camera seems to be just about everywhere these days. The Flip makes it very easy to record and share video with other users, a fact which has not been overlooked by our hardworking teachers in the field. But, I feel that we should not overlook the potential of the flip in helping leaders help make us better teachers. Having conducted many an observation, and having many more conducted upon me, I know how difficult it is to visualize where my teaching could improve. The Flip has the potential to make to make visualizations unecessary. The video does not lie, and at almost no effort to the administrator or the teacher involved in the process, a lesson could be recorded and jointly reviewed either in person or online. I have been using the Flip for some time to provide videos of my lectures to students who missed one of my college courses when it first occurred to me that the Flip has the potential to revolutionize evaluations and shadowing as we currently do them. Obviously, there has been the technology to do this for some time, but the equipment and methods were often bulky and complex. The Flip makes the process as simple as click, record, upload, and view. I have no doubt that this ability will revolutionize the way we do observations. I also have little doubt that its use will be subject of much ethics debate, however I am hopeful that the little camera that can will help us become better teachers if our leaders will use it properly.

Regards,

Jason Hancock
www.drhancock.net

Posted by LeaderTalk Contributor at 2:57 AM | Permalink | 3 Comments | Recommend

Every semester I review (or create for the first time) the readings I require for the classes I teach. I am always thinking about a good blend of theoretical and pragmatic readings for my principal preparation courses. The polemic notions that programs either teach too much or too little theory bothers me. Ask a pre-service principal candidate if they should be reading Weber, Parsons, and Callahan and they will complain the preparation program is “out of touch” or does not understand what they will be asked to do as school leaders. On the other end of the spectrum are too many normative models or pragmatic books that are free of theoretical underpinning. For example, reading about professional learning communities through authors like DuFour is helpful, but understanding the theories of professional development (Huberman), joint enterprise, mutual engagement, and shared repertoire (Wenger), and so on will the future school leader understand the functions, or dysfunctions, of the organizations they will soon be asked to work in and manage).

So as I look at my syllabi for principal certification courses I think about what students need to know to practice their practice. For future school leaders that includes an understanding of curriculum, instruction, and assessment. They also will need to master management skills such as teacher evaluation procedures, school safety plans, etc. (yes I said it, management—becoming a naughty word in my circles, but people are fired for mismanagement long before leadership performance). Leaders also need to understand how to manage conflict and work with others in their school, within their district, and with the surrounding community. I could go on of course.

Last week LeaderTalk Blogger Jon Becker threw out the “Mt. Rushmore” of our field challenge. I have a similar challenge: Can we name the anchor readings in our field? That is, for pre-service principals candidates, what are the must reads? Do we have a “Fav Five” (that’s Top Five for the non-hip) that we can lean on?

Allow me to create an initial list, my "Fav Five”:

Surprisingly, students in education are not necessarily students of education. A dose of educational history is often warranted. On my speed dial you will find Fav Five #1:

Tyack, D., & Cuban, L. (1995). Tinkering toward utopia: A century of public school reform. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Distributed leadership is an overused concept—rarely do authors provide details of what these practices look like in action. To help students understand the concept through live in schools I dial up Fav Five #2:

Halverson, R. (2003). Systems of practice: How leaders use artifacts to create professional community in schools. Educational Policy Analysis Archives, 11(37), 1-35.

How about general leadership skills? For me, I want to help students understand how they build organizational capacity (knowledge and skill for their teaches) and simultaneously deal with issues of organizational coherence. So much to choose from—so I will cheat a bit here and provide my two readings that pop-up when I press Fav Five #3:

Elmore, R. (2000). Building a new structure for school leadership. Washington, D.C.: Albert Shanker Institute.

Wheatley, M. J. (2006). Leadership and the new science: Discovering order in a chaotic world (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler.

To link management and leadership I dial in Fav Five #4:

Gosling, J., & Mintzberg, H. (2003). The five minds of a manager. Harvard Business Review, 81(11), 54-63.

Finally, for a great account of the problems associated with instructional practices I am fond of my Fav Five #5:

Cohen, D. K. (1988). Teaching practice: Plus que ca change... In P. Jackson (Ed.), Contributing to educational change: Perspectives on research and practice (pp. 27-84). Berkeley, CA: McCutchan Publishing Corporation.

This was a difficult task—narrowing my list to just five (I know, I have six). I could go on and on, just ask my students! The list above does not have educational policy, accountability, school data, etc. literature. What make this task difficult is the limitation of documenting only a handful of readings-- from the King James edition to the bottom-line anchors, the readings you would have with you if you were stranded on an island and had to teach your mates about becoming a school principal (either I need to be committed on that one or I just named the sequel hit to Lost).

I finish with a set of questions:

What’s missing?

What readings actively contributed to your pre-service learning?

What readings are on your shelf that you often reach for? That is, what’s in your Fav Five?

Next month I will post a summary of results from our LeaderTalk community and issues a new challenge of creating a Fav Five for doctoral students in educational leadership programs.

* * * * * *
Matt Militello
North Carolina State University

Posted by LeaderTalk Contributor at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

One of the criticisms I've come across about accountability measures based on standardized tests goes something like this: If we assess students based on standardized tests, teachers will "teach to the test", which when translated, means drill and kill, followed by rote memorization and robotic hypnosis while all creativity is thrown out the window. Here's another one of those false dichotomies that is propagated throughout the educational kingdom.

When I think of creativity and flair on the basketball court, one of the first players that comes to mind is Pete Maravich. He was one of the most creative and flamboyant players of his day and age. No one would accuse him of being boring or stale in his approach to the game.

However, the funny thing is, when reading his biography, I noted that his dad, a high school and college basketball coach, instilled in Pete the necessity of learning and practicing the fundamentals until they were second nature. He performed session after session of ball handling drills that helped him master the basics. Indeed he was fanatical about practice, repetition, and drill. The end result is that he was able to create and ad-lib because he had mastered the fundamentals of the game.

Bringing this back to education, I value students who can think critically and reason with complexity and synthesize information in order to create, and produce new products, but this can only be accomplished by students who are masters of the fundamentals of language, math, and subject matter content. I think the debate would be furthered by a "both/and" mentality as opposed to an "either/or" mentality.

Finally, I'm thinking of classrooms with teachers who get the most remarkable results on standardized tests and those classrooms are lively places with rich interaction and student enjoyment. It's just that those teachers are also attuned to the building blocks of academic success and don't allow their students to miss out on these critical components of learning. Our standardized measures are not the ends that we seek, but I contend that they are a requisite means toward those ends and we are justified in pursuing those goals, measuring them, and expecting all students to achieve them.

Dan Winters
Principal Learner

Posted by LeaderTalk Contributor at 12:02 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

"Yikes! I feel for Ms. Gerald," wrote one teacher in an online learning course of her principal, "being at work until 10:30 pm. On top of working, we all have our home lives too!" This comment was in the midst of an active online learning course where participants were online as late as midnight participating in the conversation, or up as early as 5:00 AM. Did they have to do this? No. They were engaged, excited about discovering each other online.

The campus principal who learns online with her staff sends a powerful message about the value of online learning environments and their use in schools.

One of the points that Ms. Gerald makes as a result of participating in online learning course appears below:

Imagine an elementary school where all students have access to all the technology "gadgets" that enhance their learning! I appreciate the information Miguel posted from Susan Patrick because she touched on something that I strongly believe in - the need to move from teaching as we were taught to teaching using the technological skills the students either already have, or will need to be successful. The day of the 1 textbook and the "sit & get" way of teaching are over! It is time for educators to move out of their comfort zones and get with it - principals included!

For a campus administrator, it can be tough in a high stakes, cut-throat environment to pull a team together. An online learning course--that experience of learning something new together--can bond the campus team together in a way that maybe face to face time can't do. It's the power of learning something new while you reflect on your current circumstances.

CAMPUS COMMITMENT

An entire campus signed up to be a part of the Intro course, and the principal came along...and not just for the ride. That principal led from the front, jumping into the online learning experience, modelling that learning is for everyone, not just the teachers in the trenches.

Online learners in my intro class shared their reflections of what online learning is:

• • "I realized that online learning gives those of us who work opportunities for continued education at our own time and pace."
• • "I know that I am an independent learner, but I also know that I am one to respond positively through active conversation with others. I felt that the only way to do that was in a traditional classroom; now I understand that I can have that active conversation through others' comments and postings."
• • "This introductory course has greatly influenced how I feel about online learning. Although I was very nervous at first it has clearly given me the self confindence to take on a course of this nature. In addition this course has given me the opportunity to reflect on my own experiences and evaluate those skills I already had. I encourage anyone who is skeptical about an online course to embrace it with open arms and reap the benefits it has to offer."

For each of these participants, there was a checklist about teaching and learning that they were working from. Such a checklist might be:

• • Traditional face to face workshops are the only way to learn.
• • I would not do well in an online learning environment because I am not that tech-savvy.
• • When you are online, you lose the affect of a conversation, you are distanced from other people.

Old habits have, perhaps, predisposed us to learning a certain way, or worse, limiting our understanding of what we believe we can do. As leaders, we have to be willing to embrace online professional learning, online conversations and begin to build online communities.

HOW TO GET FROM HERE TO THERE

Moodle, a course management system, can provide a solution that can be used to bridge the divide between school and home. Principals also can use it as a way to direct book studies with their teacher teams or conduct electronic coffee meetings with parents and the community.

As an administrator, I wonder if a minor adaptation of Bruce Wilkinson's "The Prayer of Jabez" might not be appropriate (my apologies to Bruce and Prayer of Jabez advocates!):

"Please let me expand my opportunities to authentically engage my staff, parents, community and my impact on them in such a way that they understand how to help their children -- my students -- be and do more in life."

While you can find out about how to get Moodle going in your District--read one approach here--consider that every few years, an opportunity comes along. It is an opportunity to begin again with your team, to show how you are a learner just like them, swept up in the tidal wave of change and that survival depends on commitment and coordinated effort. It is an invitation to reinvent ourselves in a public way, as leaders and learners. Robert Quinn, author of Deep Change, puts it in this way:

Empowered leaders are the only ones who can induce real change. They can forcefully communicate at a level beyond telling. By having the courage to change themselves, they model the behavior they are asking of others. Clearly understood by almost everyone, this message, based in integrity, is incredibly powerful. It builds trust and credibility and helps others confront the risk of empowering self."

Like you, I am called to reinvent myself daily. Let's do this together...embrace online learning and engage your teachers, staff, and community.

About the Blogger

Miguel Guhlin serves as Director of Instructional Technology Services for a large urban school district in San Antonio. Read his blog online at http://mguhlin.org.

Posted by LeaderTalk Contributor at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Chatting with a friend about losses in staff in my own office spurred a return remark. "You think you got it bad?" asked a close friend, whom we'll call "James." He continued, "I've lost half my team and I'm in a bigger district than you that's growing!"

In a relatively short time period, James, a fellow CTO, will have lost 6 staff members of his 10 member team. This constitutes half his highly specialized team, supporting special student information management systems that must work. Each staff member is in a highly specialized position, each, THE expert. Each has been offered better paying positions, called up for military duty, or left due to personal issues (e.g. family leave act with the option to not return).

"James," I joked with James, "what did you do to them?" While the answers to that question are great reflection questions for any leader--especially in light of the quote Steve Polin shared about unleashing team members' creativity--the question I want to reflect on is, how did these talented individuals contributions lead to what Robert Quinn (Deep Change) characterizes as "the tyranny of competence?"

Quinn defines the tyranny of competence in the following way:

An individual contributor is a person whose technical competence is judged in terms of singular rather than interdependent action. The more unique the individual output, the more powerful the person becomes. The overapplication of the technical paradigm by an individual can lead to a negative state called the tyranny of competence.

For James' team--now wondering what it will do without key staff members supporting large information management system the District had purchased and upon which it was dependent, it's clear that each person's competence in a singular area--and no one else on the team who knew how to do something--put them in this situation.

How many others leaders in this situation would do exactly what James did to deal with the problem? Here's how the plan goes:

When you find out a valued staff member is leaving, you have them

1. craft a transition plan,
2. schedule a series of meetings to explore how, not what, this person was accomplishing what s/he had been tasked with doing.
3. assign new roles to other staff and
4. adjust the deadlines and expectations (usually, longer and down, respectively)

But whose fault is this? Is this 4 step approach really the best way?

The fault lies with the leader, of course. There is so little time, too small a team to accomplish great things. The assumption is, we'll keep going as long as possible and eventually we can circle back to find out how, to do that much needed cross-training. But it's not enough when you have to learn it at the last minute. And, when you're in my situation, losing so much staff in 3 months, one of which was a backup for another, puts you in trouble.

In such a situation, a leader is faced with an impossible dilemma--do less in the face of increasing demands that result from past success, require less staff to learn more to meet rising demand, try to hold steady with existing commitments and delay new ones. All this in addition to requiring staff to learn what they can about areas they are not passionate about.

Quinn says that once you reach this stage, there is a lack of communication, commitment, and cooperation. The challenge organizations with these "teams of experts" face is that they do not function as a "cohesive team." From my reading of Quinn, James needs to do several things:

• Hire new staff that can 1) work as a team and 2) have the skills to be technically competent.
• Change the culture of his remaining workers to ensure that the focus is on teamwork.
• Establish a model of teaming and learning that does not make any one person a tyrant of competency.

A part of me says this isn't enough. What do you think? What would you do when highly competent staff members leave who you know you can't replace easily? What does your organization do?

About the Blogger

Posted by LeaderTalk Contributor at 10:21 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Image via Wikipedia

This entry cross posted to "Sentiments On Common Sense"

I found Scott McCleod's PDF handout on the 100 Principal Blog project almost 3 years ago when I took the initiative to start my school principal's blog. My tech integrator at the time, Jeff Utecht, was so proud. He had been gently encouraging me to think about taking it on as a way to communicate to our school community. One weekend, I sat on the couch, laptop at the ready and leapt into a wordpress blog provided by Scott.

One of the key reasons for principals to blog that Scott mentions in his handout is "Reason 10: Thought leadership".

Andrew Torris

A blog can be a great place to put thoughts out there for the community to chew on. Is a school considering a new initiative or an important change? Does the school want feedback on a particular topic or issue? The principal could post some information and questions on the blog and solicit community participation. This is similar to setting up a meeting with an advisory board or interested group of stakeholders, except that the potential reach is much greater since everyone in the school community can see and participate in the conversation, not just the few individuals who might attend a face-to-face meeting.

Hmmm... great I thought. I wrote. I wrote. I wrote some more. Then it happenned! Proof that somebody out there (except the few who actually left a comment) is reading my thoughts and perhaps internalizing some of my message! My personal blog was cited as a source of information in a committee meeting this week at my school. The teachers and administrators noted value in the post "When is it too much? AND When do we say “DO IT or GO!”?, which was posted on my blog and here at leadertalk and the post "I am probably jumping to conclusions here but- Professional Conferences/Seminars Probably DON’T work!"

Most notably, I write in the post about professional conferences about the need for follow through and deeper learning opportunities. I stated:

The key question that comes to my mind though is when will leaders be held responsible for the follow-up for their entire organization and when will we as learning professionals take on the sustained follow-up ourselves. Isn’t that what a PLN created to do for me? Can we not sustain our own learning?

Then I walked into the room yesterday and there on a piece of chart paper under the words "professional development" was "Andy Torris' blog post". The first words out of my mouth were, "Just another reason to be careful what you post online!"- which got a pretty good laugh from my colleagues! The follow up conversation was about what I had written- nothing to earth shattering if you ask me- but it did help the discussion as the ideas around the commitment of administrators in our organization have to deep, followed up professional devleopment. More importantly though, are the high quality comments to this post. Jon Nordmeyer, a colleague of mine, left some great links to the a site at Berkley. Another leadertalk contributor, Blair Peterson left a comment pointing to a post by Seth Godin.. And yet another blogging administrator Ed Shepard, who also is one of my twitter friends noted that my post made him realize that:

I am under the firm belief that I can get my staff to change or focus on doing one major thing really, really well during the school year. This could be anything from curriculum to classroom management. Either way it is a broad to specific focus designed to create a common practice and develop a common language within the school community. This focus is kept in the forefront and is ingrained in everything we do the entire school year. It requires a bit of research and development, but insures a long-term and long-lasting effect in the school. After the year ends, we start the whole process again with a new focus.

Well stated Ed! Can't that same thought hold true for administrators and blogging educators as well. Many, many educational bloggers and web-designers are quickly realizing that over time, your personal professional learning network is enhanced and thus your "Thought Leadership" is sharpened by leveraging the use of the web 2.0 tools available to us on a daily basis. This learning is not work. It is engagement. It is engagement on the deepest level, as it meets the needs of a social learning WITH access to a rich research base AND expert advice!

I can't close here unless I offer some common sense advice though.

1. Remember: What you write and create is essentially your professional persona that will follow you for years. Use the tool wisely. As I said in my last post on Sentiments on Common Sense, "You really do have to be careful what you write!"

2. BE CLEAR that your blog is YOUR BLOG or the SCHOOL's Blog. I need to go back to my blog and make sure it is plainly stated. People seem to know who I am. People probably know where I work. I hope they see my writing as professional and also a bit personal. I also hope they see that I am not crazy about the content.

3. Embrace the comments and respond to them. I am more apt to read blogs that I get notes back from authors after I have left a comment. Let the commentators know you have read the note and maybe even responded to their notes. It expands the learning!

In the end, it really is about reflecting, learning and modeling that for our community. Don't you think?

Posted by LeaderTalk Contributor at 12:00 AM | Permalink | 3 Comments | Recommend

stimulus | 'stim yul us
noun (pl. -li | -,li)
• a thing that rouses energy in something or someone;
• an interesting and exciting quality

On this, the thirty-day anniversary of the historic Inauguration of our 44th President, this much is clear: when it comes to leadership, Barack Obama has some game! In just four weeks (about the time it took most of us to figure out where the restroom was in our new school), President Obama has named and re-named cabinet members, passed a nearly $800 billion stimulus package, flown to Denver, Phoenix and Ottawa, launched Hillary into the Far East, visited a Washington DC charter school and took Michelle to dinner on Valentine's Day. Whether you agree with his policies or not, there is much to learn from this president's powerhouse approach to governing.

Metaphors for leadership abound-- in Fortune 500 Company CEO's, NBA basketball coaches, and admirals who have captained naval ships. You can find their books in Borders or read about them in Fast Company. Or you can follow CNN on Twitter and study how one man, our president, has approached his first month on the job and confronted the most complex and urgent crises of our generation.

So whatever your role in schools might be, here are "20 Leadership Lessons" from the dynamic presidency of Barack Obama:

1. Keep your eyes on the prize: There is nothing like a wordle to know you are consistently 'on message'.

2. Invite them to the barbecue: Stepping outside of the hallowed halls helps to build social networks with allies and adversaries alike. "Kegger at the White House!"

3. Don't wait: Hit the ground at a sprint and knock over the furniture. Launch and learn!

4. Keep your family first. Period.

5. Feed your inner gym rat: Stay fit!

6. Bipartisan "process" is secondary to doing the right thing: So do the right thing.

7. Be resilient: After the inevitable setbacks, betrayals, and disappointments... you have to bounce back stronger.

8. Don't be a sap: "I am an eternal optimist," said the President. "Not a sap!"

9. Read stuff!

10. Don't give up your Blackberry: Especially if it is your link to the only people who will tell you the truth.

11. Speak to the conflict: When you speak from the heart to the needs of people that didn't vote for you, that's real Servant Leadership.

12. Have some courage. Enough said.

13. Sneak out to dinner: (But leave your Blackberry at home.)

14. Change the culture to change the outcomes: Replace the curtains hung by your predecessor and then make up your own rules.

15. Stand tall on the shoulders of giants: Don't wobble, they became giants for a reason.

16. Appreciate the ghosts. (If I lived in the White House I would walk around at night and listen to the spirits whisper.) Our schools have a history too.

17. Surround yourself with the best people you can find: Build your own team of rivals.

18. You belong in the room: So when you feel like you are over your head, it is good to remember that you were hired for a reason.

19. Communicate... communicate... communicate: Make it your gift.

And finally, whether you are an urban school district superintendent, the assistant principal of a small elementary school, or the most powerful leader of the free world, one month on the job--

20. Remember that HOPE is what brought you here.

Kevin W. Riley
El Milagro Weblog

Posted by LeaderTalk Contributor at 9:47 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A couple of months ago I wrote a post introducing a dilemma that my colleagues and I have been struggling to solve. The dilemma essentially is "How do leaders ensure that teachers are implementing best practices at a rigorous level in their classrooms?"

This year we launched a major literacy initiative (really just a major expansion of an existing initiative) and along with that we introduced "Literacy Commitments" to increase the use of literacy skills across the curriculum. Nearly all of our middle schools and high schools have a Literacy Coach assigned to their campus and this person is charged with increasing adult capacity for using literacy skills in their classrooms. This does not mean that all teachers will become reading teachers, but that all teachers will employ effective strategies that improve students' abilities to read, write, speak, listen, and think about the academic content of each class. How do we read and write about science? What is the language of mathematics and how do we speak it? What are the common "academic vocabulary" words that are universal and used across the curriculum?

The campus literacy coaches work one-on-one with individual teachers and in small groups with departments or Professional Learning Communities, and they use coaching methods to help teachers improve their use of strategies to increase literacy in all content areas. The expectations for this coaching are that we should see an increase in the use of literacy strategies in the classrooms and eventually an improvement in student academic achievement. No specific strategies are prescribed by the district to any campus, but all faculty and staff were provided with a booklet describing (with examples) ten research-based "best practices" that they could use. In most cases, the administrators allowed teacher teams on their campuses to review the materials and to select one or two strategies that were appropriate for their content area that they could all agree to implement during the school year.

After visiting a few campuses we realized that we were seeing an increase in the use of the "best practices," but I had a recurring, nagging thought running through my head about what we were observing. Was it rigorous use of a strategy if the teacher was just using an overhead to lead the students through it while they copied everything onto their papers? Was it rigorous use if the primary method of instruction was still just lecture and note-taking? Unable to shake the feeling that what we were seeing was base-level compliance I shared my doubts with colleagues and we engaged in many in-depth conversations around the issue. In the end we realized that all of the "best practices" could be used in multiple ways across a continuum that on one end was more passive, teacher-centered, and less rigorous and on the other end was more engaging, student-centered and highly rigorous.

We are now in the final stages of sharing an evolving "tool" with our campus leaders that we hope will be a catalyst for professional conversations on our campuses around the concept of what rigor looks, feels, and sounds like in the classroom. The danger of course is that the tool we created will become just another checklist for administrators to use in walkthroughs, but we are hoping that our message to campus leadership is very clear: This "Rigor Continuum" should be used as a talking point to engage teachers in a discussion around the nature of engaging, rigorous, and effective facilitation of learning. The power in the tool comes from the conversations and not from the tool itself.

Feel free to download and use our current "draft" of this continuum, and feel free to make changes in order to fit the needs of your campus or district. You may already have some other strategies that you are using in your work to improve the depth and quality of student learning in your classrooms. If so, please share those strategies in the comments on this post.

Regardless of what tools, checklists, or rubrics we use in our work, we must always remember that all of them are less effective than the professional conversations around effective facilitation of learning.

Stephanie Sandifer
Change Agency

Posted by LeaderTalk Contributor at 10:26 AM | Permalink | 4 Comments | Recommend

Dear A-Rod,

I just can't thank you enough. You have provided me with the perfect example to bestow upon my charges just when I really needed a new, fresh one. This example is not that liars and cheaters never prosper, because you certainly have prospered, but that the truth will always prevail. Kids just don't believe they'll ever get caught, especially if they bend the truth about their involvement. I'm sure you didn't believe you'd get caught, either. I am continuously counseling students on how not owning up to their actions will catch up with them, explaining that not only does it tarnish their reputation for whatever unacceptable behavior they have engaged in, but how lying about it exponentially deepens the hole they are currently digging.

A-Rod, you have not only provided me with a perfect example, but you have provided yet more proof that even big stars like yourself are not immune to falling from grace. Not only did you engage in the illegal behavior, you lied about it as well. Your behavior is no different from many of my students here. Whether it's about drugs, homework, cell phones, swearing at teachers, or steroids, the truth will prevail. Kids are always amazed at how I manage to get to the bottom of everything. Sometimes it takes a bit longer, as in your case, but in the end, justice is usually served.

Thanks for being a (not so) shining example. It's one I'll be able to use for some time.

Sincerely,
Nancy Flynn
Principal
www.randolph.spps.org

Posted by LeaderTalk Contributor at 8:26 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

In the wake of Presidents Day, and inspired by ESPN's similar sports-related effort, I find myself wondering who would be included in a Mt. Rushmore of Education. Who are the giants; the folks upon whose shoulders we as educators stand?

Here's how I'd construct the Mt. Rushmore of Education:

*Horace Mann - considered the "Father of American Education"

*John Dewey - the "Father of Progressive Education." His writings continue to influence educators worldwide.

*Edward Thorndike - we have him to thank for bringing testing to bear on education. (besides, he needs to be here to make sure that Dewey doesn't cause the monument to tilt too heavily to the left.. :-))

*Thurgood Marshall - nothing fundamentally changed the institution of public education more than desegregation. There are lots of names associated with the desegregation movement, but Marshall's belongs at the top of the list and, therefore, on this monument.

Who would you put on the Mt. Rushmore of Education?

Jon Becker
http://edinsanity.com

Posted by LeaderTalk Contributor at 10:11 PM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

This week, on Thursday at 10:00 am in an obscure room in downtown Saskatoon I will be delivering my third presentation. Now, my record of presentations is, well, unknown since I really didn’t get any feedback from the previous two. I’ve made a note to make sure I leave comment pages for the participants so I have something with which to work.

My presentation if focused on PLN - Professional/Personal Learning Networks. For me, both are so interwoven that I don’t bother separating them. Professional/Personal have intermixed with many of my personal pursuits also impacting my professional life. I am a technology kind of guy, always looking at the newest thing or looking for ways to get my personal and professional life to mingle more seamlessly so that I actually have a greater sense of how the two mix, allowing me to squeeze more time out of the professional for my own use. I especially need this now as I’ve had to pick up a few classes for a few weeks until a replacement teacher can be found. Using tools to organize is a whole post on its own!

My ideas for developing this presentation have been captured over at www.pln.wetpaint.com and it is open for anyone who would like to add ideas to what/how a PLN can influence and help each of us, both personally and professionally. I’ve already had a few people drop by and add their names. I’m looking for some more input about things that people really find are essential for developing a PLN.

My PLN Development

My own journey has been one of many side-trips and wanderings all over the place. I’m a tech explorer, looking and trying different things to see if they will work in an environment like education. I’m always trying to figure out how to add to my personal learning and then, if it fits, bring it over into the world of education. I began with blogging. My first venture was a discussion over on Will Richardson’s blog where I really questioned how all these tools and ideas would filter into a system that was already overfull. How were teachers, whose lives were mostly dominated by other working pressures, going to find the necessary time to bring about any type of significant change. Well, I can tell you that 3 years later and hundreds of discussions later and I’m still asking that question. I’m still searching for a way to bring the tools to the classroom teacher in such a way that they aren’t crushed by the enormity of what is being asked of them.

All those tools!

As I wandered all over the place and looked at different tools, I saw that the tools were endless, as were the possibilities for their use. Now, this presented an even greater dilemma for me as I began to realize that teachers weren’t always the keenest of learners. In fact, education has been going strong for years with very little change precisely because educators aren’t really open to new learning. They like new things that fit into what they are already doing or new ideas that enhance what they are already doing as long as the learning isn’t too long and the implementation is fairly straightforward. So as I looked at podcasts, blogs, surveys, mind-mapping, timelines plus some of the flat-classroom projects, I realized that there was a great chasm between these new tools, and the teachers using them, and where, in fact, most teachers were in their relation to using these new tools.

Self-experimentation

I decided to see how these tools might be integrated. What was the timeline and time frame for bringing these tools into the classroom? Each day, I would wander into my classroom, usually around the right time, and spend about 50 minutes with a group of students. I tried out different ideas with my own students. I blogged, did podcasts, created mind-maps, used various SmartBoard lessons, used video, created video, experimented with different tools to create sounds. Some were successful and some were disasters. I truly like using blogs and creating podcasts but there is a need to have students create genuine learning responses which isn’t always that easy. Because many of the students are being exposed to these tools for the first time, I’d have to help them along by showing them the way these things worked in an educational setting.

Being an administrator means that most of my energy goes into administrating which doesn’t always leave time for greater development of teaching ideas even when I can see the possibilities. Time, as I’ve mentioned earlier, is something that I must use extremely carefully, especially when I’m teaching.

The Growth of a PLN

My PLN has really evolved this past year as I’ve added more blogs to my RSS reader of choice, Google Reader. I’ve also added a few news aggregators on my ipod touch and moved from Twitter to Plurk as my social network of choice. I’ve been able to develop a larger ichat group of educator and expanded my Skype contacts. I’ve been using itunes for various educational podcasts and subscribing to those that give me ideas, tips and suggestions to further develop myself. The one area that I’ve found very lacking is administration. I don’t find blogs of too many administrators and even few places where administrators can gather to share. My own version of this EdAdministrator2.0 is slowly growing but I do find that its growth isn’t like other nings I have been working in. I’ve had a number of people join but the discussions and exchanges aren’t picking up as quickly as in other nings. My reason for this is that administrators maybe don’t discuss their jobs, thoughts or opinions as much as teachers. Or maybe they’re just too busy!

Whatever the tools I’m using, the whole idea is about growing and cultivating a connection with other people. The easiest way to do this is through a network such as Plurk. It allows you to connect and discuss with other people who have similar interests. Whether you join Plurk or that other network, you have to remember that whatever you put up there can be seen by EVERYONE! Remember, just like an email, you don’t get to convey the tone of messages. If you think something might not belong in that forum of discussion, you’re probably right. For me, I’ve made all my discussions private - people can only see what I put out there if they are a friend and I’m careful about whom I friend. The same goes for your blogging or whatever you write on the net - it’s all visible. Like the saying goes “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t walk around naked.”

Tools for growing a PLN

This is the tough part since there are so many different tools. The primary things, I believe, that are important are joining a social network like Plurk and joining the conversation. It’s easier than trying to get noticed on a blog. I would then recommend a RSS reader like Google Reader. Using one isn’t too difficult. Once you have that in place, begin to search for blogs that have subjects that you find interesting. You can check my blogroll or go to a few of those I have listed and search theirs! A third tool that I think is essential is an online bookmarking site. I use both delicious and diigo. This just helps you to save great sites and ideas. I also use Evernote to save clips and make notes about things I find interesting. Like all tools, it looked cool but I had to find who to use it productively before it became part of my everyday work. To see more of my ideas about developing a PLN, go to www.pln.wetpaint.com and check out what’s there. As usual, all this is a work in progress.

Kelly Christopherson

Posted by LeaderTalk Contributor at 2:59 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

Last month, Kay Yow died after a decades long battle with breast cancer. Our local paper ran an article yesterday on five lessons that she taught to all of her players through the years. It's a compelling read and her lessons are as much a series of leadership lessons as coaching lessons. It's important to put her lessons into context. She was a basketball coach before Title IX and before women's sports were being placed upon an equal footing as mens sports. She labored in the shadows of a larger than life location as far as basketball is concerned. Let's face it-Duke, Carolina, and NC State are paramount in terms of college hoops in our area of the country. She led, cajoled, coached, reprimanded, and loved the sport and was instrumental in getting its footing in this part of the country. There are legions of stories of how she helped other coaches get their programs up and running. Yet, as the newspaper story link outlined, she was best known for leading and teaching.

I had the opportunity to run into her 5 or 6 years ago during a summer camp for young women. I was amazed by her energy and enthusiasm. It was the middle of the summer and I was one of about 8 basketball officials who were hired to help officiate some scrimmages during the camp. 8 basketball courts, 16 coaches loudly exhorting their players, and here comes Coach Yow, with a tray of small cups of water for the officials between games. She gave the cups to us during a break between scrimmages and reminded us of how important we were to these young ladies, some of whom had never been outside of their county before this camp. She took the time to tell us stories about many of her players who got an extra bit of help and encouragement from the most unlikely places. She ended up the story with a reminder that we played an important part, even though it seemed like we were simply officiating a series of scrimmages for about 200 young ladies. It didn't really strike me until I read of her battle with cancer that I more fully appreciated her example of servant leadership.

This part of the world misses Kay Yow. Basketball misses Coach Yow. Thousands of people who have been a part of her Hope for Hoops miss Coach Yow. And yet, I'm confident that her lessons of hope, positive outlook, and servant leadership lessons live on in the young women she coached, those she competed against, and people like me who were fortunate enough to be a very small part of those she touched.

Chris

Posted by LeaderTalk Contributor at 2:06 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

When do we practitioners have time to read current research studies that can assist us with our daily work? And, why does it seem so difficult to wade through the research terminology (e.g. standard deviation, fixed effect, coefficients, regressions) I recently took the time to read the 2008 paper Scaling the Digital Divide: Home Computer Technology and Student Achievement by Charles T. Clotfelter, Helen F. Ladd and Jacob L. Vigdor. How does someone who is passionate about putting technology in the hands of students and teachers use the results of this study?

The two research questions are:

"Do students' basic academic skills improve when they have access to a computer at home? Has the introduction of high-speed internet access, which in theory expands the set of productive tasks for which home computers can be used, caused further improvements?"

Some of the key findings include:

"Students reporting almost daily use of their home computer for schoolwork score significantly worse than students with no computer at home."

In terms of students who report lower test scores for students who use their home computer more extensively,

"the most plausible explanation is that students who
transition into the highest computer use category are using their computers for much more than just schoolwork, and these non-productive uses are actually crowding out productive study time."

In terms of high speed internet access.

"Previous studies of home computer use among young adolescents have documented significant disparities in access and use, and have frequently ascribed clear educational benefits to home computer use. Together, these patterns suggest that a policy of broadening home computer access through programs of subsidy or direct provision would narrow achievement gaps. This paper corroborates the existence of sizable socioeconomic gaps in home computer access and use conditional on access, but comes to the opposite conclusion regarding the potential impact of broader access on achievement gaps."

Of course, the "achievement" that was being tested was student performance on statewide testing which may not exactly align with the knowledge and skills that the students are developing using computers. Thankfully the authors acknowledge that students may actually benefit from access to the computers.

"While we find no evidence that this access improves math and reading scores, it is possible that computer and internet access improves important skills that are not directly measured by standardized tests in math or reading."

Again, what should we take away from these findings? I'm anxious to hear what others think.

Blair Peterson

Posted by LeaderTalk Contributor at 2:57 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

In a recent gathering of educators from different walks and disciplines headed by our own Scott McLeod, we discussed Seth Godin's book Tribes and how it affects the world of education. The discussion involved a round-table presence of 20 leaders and a world wide web of hundreds of people via various Internet outlets.

Some of the key questions and points:

• Is there any difference between leadership and marketing?
• How can shed a more positive light on "anti"? Rather than saying you're "anti-establishment, call them "anti-change"
• What is this secret society of "they"?
• How many does it take to make a Tribe?  2? 20? 200?
• How important is it to get "buy-in" from those above you in the hierarchical leadership?
• 3 Groups of people during change: Change people, no change group people, Tennis match changers (flip floppers)
• Change is more about trust and relationships than the change strategy itself!
• All teachers have the chance to be a Tribe leader -- at the very least with their own students.

Don't let the discussion end there. Pick up a copy of the book and chime in.

Related Posts:
 - Heretics: New Leadership for the 21st Century

Angela Maiers

Posted by LeaderTalk Contributor at 4:14 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

There has been a great deal of effort throughout history focussed on transforming America's schools. There have been many attempts to bring schools up-to-date with the latest technologies. Sadly, most schools throughout history have been good at preparing students for a work environment which is already in the past. Good schools may be preparing students for the present, but few schools are preparing students for their futures. There have been significant changes in which the focus of education has shifted. Early on, the focus was on skills and basic literacy, in the not so distant past, the focus was on the quick recall of specific information. These were both economically adventageous in their time. We have now entered a new economic age which, coupled with rapid advancements in technology, has a made creativity and ingenuity necessary. Not that being creative has ever been a bad thing. We know that it has always allowed organizations to be successful, but there were so many other factors which also contributed to organizational success. Organizations who were dependable and produced quality were often able to out compete those who were creative.
Individuals like Seth Godin, Daniel Pink, and Thomas Friedman all point to a new global economy where creativity, ingenuity, and effective uses of communication technology will be the most marketable traits of successful individuals and organizations.
Schools, however, still focus students on content rather than on concepts and skills. Why is this the case?
Teaching the way we were taught
Teachers in schools today are doing what they were taught to do. Teachers are teaching with techniques which have been modeled for them in every aspect of their education. How do we expect our teachers to practice any differently, unless they are taught to do so. Even many of what are considered to be some of the best teacher preparation programs do not model what they propose are effective teaching strategies. Instead, they may expose students to techniques which will be far more effective, but they do so in a lecture format, using often what appear to me as poorly designed summative assessments to determine their students' levle of understanding.
Professional development in schools is no better. As educational leaders we are aware of the research regarding quality professional development, but most districts still bring large groups of teachers together to a "sit and get" experience where a one-size-fits-all program is delivered. This is normally done in a large uncomfortable room and quiet often there are not even attempts made to relay to teachers how one professional development topic is related to another. This often leaves the idea of professional development as less than appealing to teachers and they often adopt the "one more thing on my plate" mentality towards any new idea or initiative.
Underfunding
Legislators, in their infinite wisdon, have continued in their belief that they can legislate quality. The attempt to do so through constantly proposing additional requirements to be placed on schools. Rarely, however, doe they allocate funds to support these new requirements. An example of this, in Iowa in just the last two years our Legislators have added requirements for counselors and teacher-librarians in every school. Many districts had reduced these positions as budgets became tighter. Now, there is ample research to demonstrate that these two positions in a school can make a significant impact, but with many schools having reduced positions outside of regular classroom teachers due to a need to continually increases teacher salaries (much needed increases), increases in the cost of benefits for employees, and increases in the costs of many of our classroom supplies. These have all been ignored when our politicians consider the allowable growth in budgets for schools. To require the addition of staff in specific areas when most of the school resources are already spoken for, without an increase in funding, was not a great move. It required schools to cut other necessary positions in order to meet these new requirements. The impact is higher class sizes, and a reduction in funds available for supplies and technology updates.
Past Practices
We focus all school reform on "improving" the existing system rather than transforming it. Any contractor will tell you that remodeling is messy and expensive. New construction is so much more efficient. "New construction" is taking place in countries like China and India. They are not bound by many of the traditional practices that we must first tear down prior to putting new practices in place. We continue to teach courses in isolation and seldomly look at merging subjects or addressing knowledge in themes rather than disciplines. We know that there are natural connections between disciplines yet rarely provide students with opportunities to see them. We make very few connections for students even within the same discipline. Our focus is still on content and the teacher is expected to be the expert. We assess facts and often deem students with good short term memories as being proficient despite their lacking a true understanding of the concepts. Highly qualified teacher legislation judges a teacher by the number of college credit hours they have in a very specific area. Teacher preparation thus involves very focussed instruction particularly in secondary education programs. Today's world is not in need of students who are able to quickly recall vasts amounts of information in a specific content area. Most can get that through the use of technology. Today's world requires individuals who are indeed specialists, but their specialty is learning. The ability to learn and solve problems creatively will be necessary for the students we currently have in school to be successful in the jobs which will remain in this country. Most of the jobs we are currently seeing leave the U.S. to less developed countries do not require these skills.
The loss of confidence
A move away from the use of grades to sort and select, and towards a method of reporting a students' mastery of concepts and skills, will be necessary if we are to hope to regain confidence in schools and a focus on learning.
We have established a culture in schools where the grade is the target and not the learning it represents. The grade, which has lost its ability to communicate anything, and the certification or diploma is seen as the passport to success. Unfortunately, this belief has led to a loss of confidence in public education. We have a growing number of people with a degree, but without the higher order thinking skills and depth of understanding they are supposed to represent. Parental pressure for the grade and our desire to provide all students with success has caused a lowering of expectations in the classroom. Standards based report cards, which truly communicate a student's current level of performance, are possible, but not widely accepted by parents and teachers. This is despite the fact that the process of assigning a single letter grade is quite different for every teacher in a school. This includes that same class within the same school but taught by different teachers. Some give a great deal of the "points possible" to homework, while others to tests. Some deduct credit for behavior or late work while still others give extra points for things like bringing a box of facial tissue to class. So what does that grade really communicate to anyone? There are teachers who provide students passing grades due to effort, while fail others who have demonstrated competency on assessments but refuse to do the abundance of homework often assigned as a classroom management strategy. I know I don't want to be asked to do 40 practice problems if I am able to obtain the skill by doing only 10.
At some point we have to break the single letter grade into the actual components it represents.
Schools need to be honest about a student's level of performance by reporting exactly what areas are strengths and where deficiencies still exist. Those looking at a report card or transcript should be informed about about exactly what skills a student has and what other desirable characteristics (soft skills) they possess.
Community of Learners
Schools need to change from being a building full of administrators, teachers and students to a community of learners. They need to become a place where teachers are no longer seen as the experts but rather as experienced learners who intern are facilitating the learning and learning beside others. It must also seen as a community that extends beyond the walls of a building. Learning within this greater community would involve learners being presented or actually establishing their own authentic tasks and made to use resources not currently sought out by our existing system.
I look forward to seeing this transformation take place and to be a part of moving our schools and our country into the 21st century.
Dave Keane

Posted by LeaderTalk Contributor at 12:00 PM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

What happens on a daily basis in the classrooms of a school committed to 21st century learning? What would you expect to see? Students in most every room busy with computers or handheld electronics?

All too often I think that many people equate the equipment like interactive white boards, and new state of the art computers with a good technology program. Don’t get me wrong having good equipment is always nice but it is just the window dressing. Likewise visiting classrooms and seeing students busy on computers can be equally deceptive.

The heart of a quality program is much deeper than either of these outward signs. A recent experience with some visitors on campus made me realize that it is difficult to clearly give voice to the deepest levels of transformation that are foundational and formative for a school curriculum that is focused on 21st century skills like researching, validating information, using information to construct new meaning and becoming effective communicators in a digital world. On the surface a lot of this kind of learning can look much more traditional than many might expect. It is the underlying assumptions, the goals and the applications of learning that is radically different but not always the delivery. For example, an eighth grade class embarked on a two and a half week project with a partner class in another country. Each student was going to make a photostory about why their country was important to them. The project started with a skype video call- an easily observable application of technology. For the next 2 weeks however an outside observer would see little classroom use of technology because the students were engaged in a whole host of critical thinking activities, learning about storyboards, making drafts and discussing ideas for concepts and pictures, writing scripts, discussing copyrights, imagery, writing styles and a host of other things. Finally, time would be spent producing the photostory another easily observable application of technology. These students were actively engaged in 21st century learning even though they were only using technology tools a very small percentage of the time.

So here is the challenge. What is a meaningful measure of a schools integration of technology and/or of a schools commitment to the kind of learning I defined above as 21st century skills.? And the corollary question How do we create an understanding among the stakeholders in the educational community that effective technology integration is not measured by the amount of time students are using computers but rather by the framework and context of learning?

Barbara Barreda

Posted by LeaderTalk Contributor at 1:17 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

I blogged earlier this week about the potential for collaborative technologies to have a significant impact on the way we deliver professional development in our schools. The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that we are right on the precipice of some really powerful transformations in the ways that schools have traditionally handled staff development.

The PD Spiral

Think about professional development and you'll often think of what I've heard described as "drive by staff development." We've all been there. We talk about something (or we bring in a highly-paid consultant to talk about something), we spend a day or two on it, and then it's forgotten; vaporized into the ether like the opaque projector and the mimeograph. No one knows how it will be implemented or even whether it will be implemented. There was little or no discussion on how it will look in practice. It's just gone.

Worse, we meet after the students have gone home for the day. Everyone is exhausted and time is limited. But before the actual PD can begin, we have 87 announcements and a mess of administrivia to get through. That leaves roughly 11 minutes for the planned inservice session, by which time everyone is transfixed by the clock on the wall and ready to go home.

The Perfect Storm

I can't help but think that everything is coming together. Online tools available for free or cheap are sufficient in features and quality to deliver a powerful learning experience for teachers and administrators. Further, in our current economy, it's safe to say that districts will be scaling back on bringing in high-paid consultants to "teach us" something. Finally, the trend toward building-level instructional coaches means there are dedicated teacher leaders on campus who can support classroom teachers in implementing new teaching strategies.

Vox Populi

At my school we're not just talking the talk. When our new administrative team came to the building last year we heard the complaints loud and clear. Rather than talk about making PD meaningful, we put together a simple, online survey that took teachers less than 5 minutes to complete. We asked them rate themselves on a 1-5 scale of proficiency in several different areas that were part of the district's initiatives. We also asked them to give the top three PD topics they'd like to see as well as the one (or two) that they hoped they'd never see again.

While it now sounds forehead-smackingly obvious, how often have we as administrators taken the time to ask the teachers what they wanted? OK, maybe we've asked, but have we listened? Have we delivered? Or did we ask because that's what some seminar on shared decision-making told us we should do and then just do whatever we thought was best anyway?

No More Secrets

Using the data we gathered from our faculty, at our next pre-determined PD time, we didn't jump right in. As the resident presentation guru (gratuitous link), I prepared for the faculty a brief but comprehensive overview of the survey results so that everyone was on the same page. This way, when we announced that we would be doing a session on a particular topic, it was obvious that it wasn't just The Suits pushing their agenda, it was what people wanted.

For example, if 85% of our staff felt comfortable with accessing our district's data warehouse, we knew we didn't need to spend 4 hours on it. We offered an optional session for our new teachers or for those who wanted to refresh their memories about the site.

Bringing it Together

So now we have the data on what people want and it's pretty clear that one-size-fits-all is not going to work all the time. Sure, sometimes there are initiatives and mandates and new software that make an all-staff meeting necessary, but more often teachers' and administrators' staff development needs are pretty individual.

This is where virtual PD fits perfectly. If four people have a desire to learn best practices for digital storytelling and ten are jonesing for more info about Lexiles, you can meet those needs without subjecting every single staff member to some one-size-fits-all inservice activity that may not even make sense to them.

If we put the pieces together, it's simple. We need to honor what our teachers already know and find out what they want to learn. Collecting data, aggregating the results, sharing the results with the faculty, and using them to build a comprehensive PD plan can not only change the culture of the school, but it can raise the level of quality and engagement in your school's professional development.

Scott Elias
[Cross-posted]

Posted by LeaderTalk Contributor at 3:05 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

Dear Mr. Secretary,

Congratulations on your appointment as President Obama's Secretary of Education.

Thank you for sending the message that you want to address and fix elements of NCLB rather than scrap the entire piece of legislation.  While I am not as supportive as some, I do agree that NCLB started a meaningful revolution that has pushed the evolution of our educational system forward.

Thank you also for expressing the fact that you want to rename the legislation.  I cannot recall any other legislative title that has been so misleading in its use (if not original intention).  As a principal working with at-risk high school students I am faced daily with the task of helping to motivate students who do not fit within the traditional system.  I work with the kids who have failed the state mandated tests and face the reality of not receiving their diplomas. Each year I have witnessed the expanding bubble of students who cannot pass a portion of the high stakes testing mandated in one form or another to the states.

I am the man who sits across from the crying student who has failed a test multiple times and realizes that...

they have just been left behind.

NCLB has possibly driven more students out of the system and left demoralized kids pondering their futures without a diploma than any other single action taken by our educational system since its inception.  And it is not just individual students.  Your own department's statistics clearly indicate that AYP (as currently implemented) is labeling more and more schools as unacceptable. 

Your three points of expanding early childhood education, creating better student assessments, and improving teacher quality are excellent starting points for your planned national discussions.

I argue that NCLB has restricted student choices and options by too limited an application of research and best practices.  Somehow excellent pedagogy has become the new dogma - non-negotiable and non-adaptable.  The opportunities for early childhood education (and success) are out there...well-developed assessments are available...and I would posit that our teachers are increasingly among the most highly skilled and knowledgeable in the world when it comes to effective methodology.

So what's missing?  NCLB has taken the art and heart out of education.  Ask the students. Learning is no longer fun.  The pressures are immense.  The anxiety attacks of elementary-aged children are testimony that while we may be on-track with what research tells us about learning theory, but we are destroying the true underlying motivations for learning - a child's natural joy, curiosity, excitement, and desire to explore and grow.

If you can find a way to re-introduce - or combine - what is right with No Child Left Behind with every student's innate desire to learn, then...and only then...will we as a nation begin to have an educational system that does not leave a single - not ONE - child by the roadside.

How can we do this?  I sincerely believe that any educational legislation must allow for more Options and Choices.  We have become far too restrictive in our final accountability standards. Does anyone truly believe we will have 100% mastery of subject area knowledge by 100% of our students by 2012, 2013, or 2014.  Noble? Yes? A worthwhile "ideal" target? Absolutely.  Realistic? No.  I have never met another parent, professor, politician, or educator who believes that it is. 

But what about legislation that paves the way for every child to be prepared to take advantage of new learning opportunities that arise over their lifetime?  What about legislation that somehow encourages everyone to develop abilities to disregard information as it becomes out-dated and acquire new knowledge as it is discovered?  Wouldn't that be a logical life-skill to encourage among all children?  It would certainly be a starting point for better surviving in Friedman's flat world of global revolution in communication and technology.

Mr. Secretary, as you move forward with your plans to evaluate and re-think NCLB, please consider revisions that emphasize OPTIONS, CHOICES, and ALTERNATIVES for all students.  Think less in terms of INCENTIVES and more in terms of INNOVATIONS.

Please redefine certain critical attributes of needed educational reform.

Redefine success.  Please do not restrict success to passing scores on the types of summative assessments currently so wide spread.  Success must be measured in ways other than pencil and paper tests.

Redefine gifted to include the TOTAL CHILD and promote academic as well as esoteric learning accomplishments.  (You are no doubt familiar with Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind.)

Redefine all time lines.  Learning does not - and never has - occur exclusively between 8:00 am and 3:00 pm Monday through Friday...everything one needs to learn may, or may not, fit into a kindergarten through senior 13-year window.

In closing, I would like to share the input of one group and encourage you to visit their work.  As you begin your dialog with leaders around the nation, there is a powerful document a group of superintendents in Texas have published.  Working under the name of The Visioning Institute, their brief document is titled Creating a New Vision for Public Education in Texas - A Work in Progress for Conversation and Further Development.  The true beauty of the document is that it does not dodge, run from, or argue against the continued need for accountability and testing.  The document does not call for an end to monitoring student achievement and holding staffs, schools, and districts accountable for results.  The document consists of Six Articles.  Under each Article, profound and positive changes to the educational system are outlined and specific actions are recommended.

Again, congratulations on your appointment. I sincerely believe you are taking the task of Education Secretary at a historic crossroads at which the motivation and abilities of this nation's educators come together ready to support and implement meaningful reform, renovation, and recreation of the educational opportunities we want all our children to successfully experience.

Greg Farr

Posted by LeaderTalk Contributor at 6:58 AM | Permalink | 6 Comments | Recommend

I have been in the field of education for more than a few years. And, there's a resounding sense of change that has begun to happen beyond the constant talk about the need for change and then the multiple voices calling out to "come this way" only to find that "this way" wasn't the solution.

To state the problem succinctly: public education has failed to teach everyone. To state three of the most pertinent issues surrounding this statement: 1) many teachers (far too many) want to teach the way they have always taught (which is primarily the sit and get model, particularly on the secondary level), 2) when hard to reach (low socio-economic-- primariliy generational povery--, English language learners, learning handicapped students) students fail to learn we arrange blame rather than take responsibility and change, 3) teaching hard to reach students (particularly on the secondary level) is tragically difficult and onerous-- to the point that most professionals avoid the challenge.

Nothing about the problem is particularly new, and nothing about the pertinent issues is particularly new. What is new is our response. First, I have to say that, regardless of what anyone thinks or says, what No Child Left Behind did for public education is nothing short of the most momentous educational legislation ever passed. Every school has had hard to reach students since... hmm... forever. NCLB evened the playing field and let us take a look at how the hard to reach students performed in the glowing schools that boasted incredible results with their incredible students; and oftentimes, the picture painted of the hard to reach students' progress there was not pretty--- just the same as the performance of those students (whose numbers were far greater) in those schools that were "terrible." Essentially, pretty much everyone was doing a terrible job with hard to reach/teach students.

But, the remarkable thing that came of NCLB is that suddenly the greatest thinkers in public education began to address how we could reach and teach all the children regardless of what overwhelming odds that existed against the children. This weekend I went to Washington, DC for a Symposium for School Improvement presented by the ASCD. For two days we talked and explored research proven strategies for reaching and teaching the most difficult to teach children. Popham engaged us in a meaningful dialogue on formative assessment and how to use it to guide us reaching/teaching all children, Addison helped us refocus on RtI. Gene Carter talked to us about Marzano's work and challenged us to reform education using his three platforms of most effective ways to reach/teach: 1) formative assessment, 2) effective instructional strategies, and 3) academic vocabulary. Research proves these techniques; we only need listen and act.

As I worked with other educators from around the United States and Canada (there were only 40 of us), it became clear to me that the answer is just now emerging on the FIX. And, I realized as George Bush leaves the ranks of our leadership that he did far more than any other president has ever done to reach all the children and improve the brain capital of our country. So, as he leaves a country rife with problems, it is still appropriate to thank the man who might just have started the turn around. Thank you, George Bush.

Jan Borelli

Posted by LeaderTalk Contributor at 6:57 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

I have to admit that I watch the reality show called “Supernanny”. If you arent’t familiar with the show the concept is pretty simple: the Supernanny (a family coach)) is invited into a family by parents that are being driven nuts by their children. I began watching the program as a guilty pleasure; but soon I realized that it was an excellent tutorial on good leadership consulting

“Say again?”

Let me give a simple example. Three pre-adolescents kids are running wild, throwing toys and fighting with each other. Mom is doing her best to maintain order; but the kids are doing as they please. When she tries to discipline them two run away,; and the one who stays behind hauls off and smacks her. Her husband works long hours so she is trapped with these uncontrollable kids all day. To make matters worse, they won’t go to bed. Mom is at her wits end and driven to tears.

It may not be obvious, but many of us in positions of leadership are dealing with very similar issues, although age and professionalism generally damp down the direct defiance and outrageous displays of misbehavior (think slapping).

Over the last decade I have worked with many educational leaders who are trying to manage dysfunctional teams where members are sabotaging each other, or the leader, or the direction of the organization. They generally do this covertly, but the effect is not much different than the effect the disrespectful and misbehaving children have on their mother…the leaders get frustrated, angry, and a feel like they are ineffective.

I’ve had this feeling of helplessness myself and have to admit that when I called in a consultant to help I was really saying,

“Please, SuperNanny, fix this team! They aren’t acting the way I’d like them to act. They aren’t listening. They aren’t cooperative. They aren’t reasonable. No matter what I try to do, nothing works! FIX THEM!"

So, in comes SuperNanny!

Interestingly, she rarely begins working with the kids. The kids will come later. She almost always begins by working with the parents, the leaders. Her first order of business is to help the parents understand that they are accountable for how their children are acting. If the parents don’t like the situation, then they need to change their own behaviors, which will in turn shift the behaviors of the kids.

I have to admit, this is the last thing that I want to hear from a consultant.

“Look at how well I treat them. Now look at how bad they treat me. It is not my fault. It’s them. I can prove it. You need to fix them, not me!"

Another common reaction is, “How dare you say I’m accountable! You don’t know me, or this situation, that well. You’re a consultant that has only been here a short time. There is no way that you see the whole picture!” That one's a classic...hire a consultant and then ignore their advice.

The clip below shows two parents that accept their accountability and are open to change their behavior. Supernanny, the consultant, helps cut through their rationalizations and stories about why things are the way they are, and acts as a mirror so that the young parent leaders can see themselves and their situation more clearly. Watch the young mother come to tears when she fully internalizes what has been happening.

It is a universal truth of leadership development that until the parent/leader is ready to embrace their own accountability, SuperNanny isn’t going to get very far and there will be little significant change.

One of the best expositions of the concept of leadership accountability took place on a show where the misbehaving child was an adolescent who engaged in fierce outbursts with her father. Dad would say something and the daughter would respond angrily which got Dad even angrier. His next response would throw more fuel on the fire and soon the whole conversation would spiral out of control.

To help him see the negative pattern they were in the Nanny takes some toy bricks, one color representing Dad and one color representing his daughter. On each brick she tapes a brief snippet of their words; Dad’s on this brick and his daughter’s on the next brick. She continues to line the bricks up, while continuing to alternate colors to represent the back and forth that takes place when they fight. She asks Dad to push the first brick over. He does, and one by one each brick falls and knocks over the next successive brick until they are all down.

“That’s how your conversations spiral out of control” she explains to Dad.

“Now to change this pattern we change how YOU  behave. We can’t force your daughter to change. I want you to take the brick with your own reaction on it out of the chain of bricks. He does. Now, push the first brick.” He pushes the first brick with his daughter’s words on it and because he has removed his own ‘reaction brick’ from the sequence, his daughter’s brick falls harmlessly. All the other bricks remain standing.

“Yes, I get it now! Changing my own reaction and my own behavior changes everything!”

Ah! The first step in resolving the situation has been taken.The parent leader fully comprehends their own accountability…

Now, the Supernanny is ready to go work on Step 2 - improving the dysfunctional situation with the children.

Pete Reilly

Cross Posted at Ed Tech Journeys

Posted by LeaderTalk Contributor at 6:53 AM | Permalink | 3 Comments | Recommend

Three years ago I dove head first into the Web 2.0 pool. I passionately embraced blogging, wikis, podcasting, digital storytelling, RSS, social bookmarking, social networking, and so on. This has been one of my main areas of professional development, and I have written short-term and long-term professional goals for myself in this area of education. Furthermore, I have been working very hard to teach these tools to teachers, and I have made it clear that they need to incorporate these technologies into their instruction. We have dedicated many hours of faculty meeting time to discuss the importance of embedding technology into the curriculum and the necessity for creating authentic units of study.

The other day I had my mid-year evaluation with my district superintendent. As part of my review, my boss challenged me to "evaluate the effectiveness of the use of the Web 2.0 tools." Continuing, she wrote "Mr. Sherman might gain evidence that explains why and how the integration of a wiki or a blog has improved the probability or depth of learning for students."

She is absolutely correct. As with any lesson, unit, or instructional strategy, we must collect data to assess what our students have learned. How will we know if our teaching is successful otherwise? For three years I have been asking myself if student achievement really is improving with the use of new and innovative technologies. I can see that students are more interested and engaged when their teachers incorporate authentic uses for technology into instruction, but I have no evidence to prove that students are becoming better readers, writers, thinkers, mathematicians, historians, or scientists through the use of technology.

This has led me to the idea of creating an action research project in my school and across the school district to assess whether the use of Web 2.0 tools is leading to improved student achievement. I plan on surveying teachers to discover the extent to which they are incorporating technology into their lessons. I can collect anecdotal information based on teachers' observations of their students, but I have not discovered an assessment tool that will provide quantitative data to prove (or disprove) my hypothesis that the use of Web 2.0 tools in school will improve student learning as compared to the use of more traditional means of instruction.

In a few months, I will be speaking to a group of principals about new and innovative uses of technology in their schools. I am expecting at least one person to ask me to prove that students learn better through the use of blogs and wikis. I am not sure I will be able provide any evidence of gains in student achievement and learning.

The majority of educators are not yet convinced that students should be using web-based tools in school (see Scott McLeod's post from February 2). Ultimately, our credibility as agents of educational change hinges on providing proof that our students are learning in response to the new and innovative instruction about which we so passionately write and discuss in this blog. How do we find the proof to back up the claims?

Dave Sherman

Posted by LeaderTalk Contributor at 6:51 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

As technology continues to revolutionize communication (everywhere but schools of course), a proliferation of tools are becoming available. Some older applications like blogging are still slow to catch on and are very underutilized by administrators. In my book "The School Administrator's Guide to Blogging: A New Way to Connect with your Community," I outline many ways blogging could help administrators as well as the drawbacks. Yet everyday new technologies and new applications of old technologies keep emerging. Some districts use email and cell phone texting for emergency notifications now. As old hat as that sounds, many schools still do not use anything more advanced than calling the radio station and hope they make a timely announcement (right after this message!).

I recently received an email from a business manager of a school district asking me if I knew of specific school districts utilizing Twitter as a notification system in case of emergencies.

So I wondered what this illustrious group thinks. Are you aware of creative uses of technology by administrators? Is there a creative application of technology that you would like to see schools use that they do not?

Or is it the same old song and dance we have heard before. You know..."Our technology department has blocked that one from our school computers!"

Mark Stock

Cross linked at The Stock Mark Report

Posted by LeaderTalk Contributor at 6:46 AM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

[Download this file: png ppt pptx]

Imagine that, day after day, all you have to eat and drink are bread and water. When that’s all that you’ve ever had, it tastes good. Even wonderful, sometimes.

Imagine that on one special day someone gives you a little taste of honey. Maybe a small smear on your piece of bread. From then on, of course, your normal diet never tastes as good again.

So what? Well, I think that increasingly our schools will have to recognize that…

Our kids have tasted the honey.

When our kids go home, they get the opportunity to interact and connect and collaborate with people all over the globe. If they wish, they can do this on a regular basis.

When our kids go home, they get the opportunity to learn about areas in which they’re interested and to act on issues about which they’re passionate. They get the opportunity to be creative. They can make and share videos and stories and pictures and other things and, if others see value in them, find audiences in the hundreds or thousands or even millions.

When our kids go home, they get the opportunity to be immersed in personalized, individualized learning environments. We call them ‘the Internet’ or ‘video games.’ These environments are characterized by active inquiry and – in the case of video games – continual problem-solving.

What do our kids get when they go to school?

Do they get the chance to regularly and frequently interact with diverse people from all over the planet? Nope. If they’re lucky, they might get the chance to interact with other students in their class, who like as not come from the same place and/or culture that they do.

Do they get the chance to be active content producers rather than passive information consumers? Do they get the chance to reach authentic audiences? Nope. If they’re lucky, they get to be creative every once in a while for a ‘special project’ or occasionally exhibit their work one evening at school for the local community.

Do they get the chance to experience individualized learning? Nope. Instead, they’re exposed to a mass model of education, one in which they’re lucky if occassionally the lesson is at “their level.”

Of course there are some exceptions to what I’ve written here, but for the most part this holds true for most students in most schools.

Our kids have tasted the honey and they have no interest in going back to what was.

Scott McLeod

Posted by LeaderTalk Contributor at 3:51 PM | Permalink | 12 Comments | Recommend

When we usually talk about teachers and their technology skills we usually separate them into two categories: technology averse or technology savvy. However I believe that there is a third category that is gaining traction. This new category I am calling tech-welcoming. These teachers are the teachers that need extra help to really understand the technology and to get it infused into their pedagogy and curriculum. However, they are trying. They really try to understand the technology and they are willing to try it out and make it part of their instruction.

Especially with the tough economic times we are facing and that we need to start to target professional development dollars so that we get the most out of it, I believe that this group of teachers are the ones that we really need to target. The technology averse will come up with excuses as well as just not want to take part in the training. The technology savvy teachers either usually know it or if you just barely expose them to something that could help them, they are off and running. That leaves us with the tech welcoming teachers. These teachers need our help but they are willing. They will take longer to get it and it sometimes it might even get frustrating but they usually become your biggest advocate.

What do you think of the term "tech welcoming"? How are you targeting these teachers in your school or district?

James Yap

Posted by LeaderTalk Contributor at 11:34 PM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend