InfoTeacher

I have recently completed six hours (the first six hours of about 30 required in all) of study in my training for a principal’s license.  In a short word: very interesting, very challenging, and very definitely the beginning of a process that will enable me to grow and learn in ways I otherwise could not.  What is especially surprising is the group of people that I am doing this with — the fantastic members of the “Cohort V” community.

I describe the first set of classes as interesting and challenging.  I’ve just finished three courses:  (I’m not using quite the actual titles of the courses, here, the titles are slightly changes). (1) Leadership and Values for Education; (2) Leaders Building Collaboration; and (3) Communication for School Leaders.  These three courses were all offered in week long segments. Assignments overlapped a little as the final project was to be turned in after each class. I worked hard to finish one and turn in the final project before another started. In another class, I ignored the final project until I had finished all three. Shortly after all were done, though I had it all done. Three quick weeks of class and another week working on projects while doing some work around the house.  It’s a great way to spend a summer. I’ll still have the rest of the summer free — so it’s mostly still like being a teacher (Fall and Spring will be tougher, though, as I give up almost all Saturdays and will have projects to do while teaching).  All three courses were different with different emphases, yet they seemed to harmonize.  Part of this was our groups’ growing together and becoming a cohesive unit.  Some of this was a shared growing time — and a very large part was the amazing Leadership professor who helped us engage ourselves, get in touch with our emotions and motivations, and bought us together as a group.  The courses seemed to blend.

The opportunity for growth set before me is profound.  Just from these courses. The Leadership course encouraged self-awareness and self-understanding. Nothing really “new” here, except it brings much heard in various contexts and places it before you as a challenge. Know yourself. Use your self-knowledge to prioritize and lead others through authenticity.  Again nothing new — I’ve heard it and to some extent I’ve lived it. But do I really own it in a way that means I will be an authentic leader and have a genuine and lasting impact on those whose life I touch. It was a challenge.  Another class was taught by a leader in our district who teaches many continuing ed courses. I’ve had her for any number of trainings and classes. I always learn a ton. I generally know how she teaches, where she is coming from and what she is going to emphasize (not that I know everything — but I’ve become familiar with this instructor/leader, and I know the kind of beliefs and practices that she will stress (again, though I feel going in to her classes that I know where it’s going, I still always learn a ton). Yet this time the context was just a little different.  It made the learning even more enlightening.

Finally, the group I’ve joined is an amazing and diverse group.  I’ve done a cohort once before and grew quite fond of all the people in that group. We had two years of learning together while we earned certification in School Library. I started out doing it for the degree, and ended up happy to know those I worked together with. I’m quite happy with the cohort system from my previous experience, Yet, I’m not one of the real joiners. The library cohort has had at least two get-together’s, and I haven’t been to either. I’ll admit it — I’m a loner. I’ve always been one to some extent. I’m comfortable with that. I’m a part of the group and thoroughly enjoy it — but my real close relationship won’t be made there. I’ve really only had about two or three “real close relationships” in my entire life. I consider myself lucky. Still, I’m in a new such group, and already I’ve grown fond of being a part. I know it will be a learning experience. Talk about diversity — this group has it. Yet for many differences, everyone seems to relate and know one another — surprisingly quickly. I went in knowing that I’m usually very bad about names, so I has a list of all the people and made notes about each one on the first day — just to know names. It made me be more observant. It was a very good exercise for me. And, I knew all first names by the second day. I went away from the first two days knowing of myself that I am usually “bad” with names because I don’t listen and observe. So, by determining to know the names of my colleagues quickly, I made myself observe. It is a practice I must continue.  I’m usually all about a task. Let’s see what needs doing and get it done. Yet, relationships are not what I think about in the middle such a task. It’s a weakness. I’ve known and admired leaders — and thinking about now I realize that all the leaders I’ve admired are about building relationships. It doesn’t mean I have to change who I am. I’ll always be introverted and somewhat of a loner cherishing the few relationships I’ve got. But, at work relationships must and will become more important to my goal setting and contemplation of the ends of it all. Leadership is about relationships. I will learn much more about this as I grow.

I’m looking forward to a little more time off and then the teacher’s new year (i.e. fall — for teachers, the beginning of the fall semester is the real new year’s celebration).  I’ve also had a lead about an interesting position that has more than intrigued me.  I’m going to find out more and I could be seeing big changes. The future is interesting. Whatever happens, I’m looking forward to it.  Teaching is the world’s greatest profession — for me.

Bloomberg News is reporting that Google is considering writing an Operating System to compete with Microsoft Windows.  Link here.  Very interesting.  It looks like they will start with an OS for low cost laptops — and see where the market takes them.

I, for one, think competition is always good. Competition makes public education better, too — but I realize that opens about 144 can of worms for many of my colleagues.

I upgraded to IE8 (actually, the upgrade is nested into the Windows Update, so if you click “Next” too quickly without paying attention, you upgrade to it without realizing it).  IE8 has a couple of new features — nothing that I would write home about; a private browsing feature, but if you really want privacy there’s been portable Firefox around for years). Looks and feels like IE7 (which I thought was a big improvement over 6).  I like IE8, and like to keep up with the security features they bring with updates.  Again, 7 was a giant leap forward, but 8 seems to be mostly cosmetic and hidden updates.

However (and there’s always a however in life), when I upgraded to IE8, I can’t get to this blog. I seem to be able to surf everywhere else fine – except here at Edublogs. My Blogspot blog is fine as well as all other (so far) secure pages. But when I come to this page, it freezes every time. Happened on both my desktop at home and my laptop. I was actually going to only upgrade on one computer and see, but I clicked “Next” too quickly on Windows Update, and both computers got IE8. I didn’t mind, until I went to write a post about finishing school. Both computers, newly upgraded to IE8 freeze. One runs Vista and one is XP — so it’s not the OS.  Well, …..

I’m writing this post in Firefox.  I’ve been wanting to jump on board and see about Firefox anyway, so this gave me the opportunity to try. I’ll be surfing with both browsers for a while and see what the differences are.  Want to see which one I like.  But, unless the BFG (per Roald Dahl’s book the BFG, I refer to Microsoft as the BFG) creates a patch for IE8, I’ll have to use Firefox for this blog.

I’ll get back to my post first semester of Leadership training post by end of day today.  Got a couple of other post ideas I’ve had to skip, too because I haven’t been able to get in for a few days.

So, I’ve entered a new program which will eventually lead to a Colorado Principal’s license. Yes, I am a student again (interesting conversation in the Adkison household about how many paying college students we can afford at one time; how many years of college are adequate for me, . . . .)  I have begun  classes this week, and continue this summer for two more weeks. Then I will have classes on Saturdays throughout the school year and again next summer three weeks on intensive work. In about 18 months I should be nearing the goal.

So I will try to post at least one contemplative post per class here as a way of being reflective in my learning. At the very least, one post as a summary of learning gives me a chance to reflect and summarize learning as well as have one concrete accomplishment to do when a course is done (kind of like marking that “to do” item off the list — it gives a sense of finality when one thing is done!).  Hopefully I will post even more than that as I continue to journey toward more jouraling/reflection/contemplation in the way that I grow and develop.

The cell phone. It’s now a source of information.  Sure, I could buy an iphone or a Blackberry, but I’m a guy on a budget.  So, I’m talking about the simple cell phone (with unlimited texting — I found that to be indispensable with two teenage daughters, one away at school. We text more than we talk).

Well, text for information. Two sites (that I know of)

1. Text Cha-Cha (spell it, 242-242). Text your question and get an answer. It’s free.
2. Google (of Course!! – spell this one, too 466-453). Send your question and get an answer; also free.

I tried to ask both for the definition of pusillanimous (but I spelled it wrong). I texted “define pussilamous.” From Cha-Cha I got two responses. First, they told me it’s not in dictionary. I tried a different (still wrong) spelling and got the answer, still not in the dictionary, but it seems to mean . . .” followed by a somewhat accurate, but clearly kind of made up definition. 

From Google (sendng the exact same mis-spelling), I got a corrected spelling, “did you mean pussillanimous?” followed by a dictionary definition. Then Google followed with a second text (limited characters allowed in phone texting, you know). The second texttold me the definition came from wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn.

I find Google especially to be pretty handy. The “human” response of Cha-Cha might also be handy at times. I’m told you can ask current scores of games, what’s on TV, etc. (limited only by your imagination; trying to ask for a definition was just a way to try it out). Although I don’t know how I would cite that definition, I don’t see using this in a paper so much as just needing on the spot information. I can use this for a lot more than asking for definitions. 

 I added both Cha-Cha and Google to my phone’s address book.  Isn’t the age of instant information exciting? I have my computer with me a lot (though I don’t have mobile broadband), but I have my phone almost all the time.

Kathryn Greenhill from librariansmatter.com – a librarian from Australia posts this on Slide Share.  Really having trouble with the embed, so here is the link.  (I’m not that happy with WordPress’ format – chose it and Edublogs so my district wouldn’t block it; gotta say – Blogger is MUCH easier!!)

In my district, even those of us who TALK quite a bit about these technologies are not DOING them enough. Quite a few more as asking “why bother?” – this show says a lot about why we should bother, though it only touches the broad range of what’s new – no details. In the end, a push to at least try one. (I especially like slide 137 — “No offense, future man, but is everyone in your time retarded?”). Very creative, broad encompassing and interesting.
 

My last entry was about (OK, so I rambled a bit before I got to the point) teaching as a calling. I am taking a class, and in that class we are having a discussion about this very issue. I will share my thought and those of one of my colleagues (anonymously)  as we tossed this football around .

My thoughts (I was actually responding to the thoughts of another colleague):

I couldn’t agree more that collaboration and RtI can and should go hand in hand. If we want to move toward a culture that is data driven, end-result (outcomes) targeted, and student-need focused, then we need to put our best collaborative relationships together with our best early interventions for those students who are identified as not meeting the standard (as early as we can identify this), and work together figure out what we need to do to help students achieve. (I’m pretty sure that was a run-on sentence).

The days of, “I taught it, those students just aren’t doing their part” need to be distant memories. We need to see ourselves responsible for student accomplishment (or lack of it). And, by that definition, we will see where student’s didn’t achieve (and yes, we will have to say, I take responsibility for X who didn’t make it). But at least if we take responsibility, we can look at ourselves and ask if we did EVERYTHING we could to make sure X didn’t fail.

One response from a colleague I respect greatly. I post it so that I can post how I responded. I value the chance to make my thoughts more clear and better defined. In the end, I don’t think we disagree, but see both sides of the coin.:

When a student fails or fails to achieve anywhere near his potential, who is responsible?  When I think about responsibility and children, I think of a continuim.  As our children grow older, as parents we lengthen the apron strings.  We give them more responsibility and hold them to a greater degree of accountablility.  As educators, I always saw us doing that in like fashion.  If I teach 6 year olds, my level of responsibility and their level of resposibility for their learning is different than if I teach high school seniors.  As my daughters grew, my wife and I trained them to be responsible, hard working students.  Now that they are teens, they have taken most of the ownership for their learning.  I know in a few years when they go to college they must take full ownership.  I see a continium. 

My response:

I completely agree –the continuum is how it should be (and works for 80-90% of kids). We teach all kids in public schools, however, and the difficulty comes from those kids who we have to teach but who have not grown to that level of responsibility. We get kids whose past we can’t control; whose home life we can’t control. These get passed on to us. Kids whose who will never learn responsibility in their home, never see responsibility modeled in their home; some kids who have parents and families who have given up on them, and all of society wants to give up on them. All I am saying is WE (public educators) CANNOT, MUST NOT give up on them. We have to teach responsibility (that’s what these kinds of kids must learn; history, English and math are just content — and this content becomes a conduit for teaching responsibility — in high school or first grade). If you try to teach responsibility to them with a new strategy or technique every week then that’s what we must do.  I fully know that is unrealistic, but we must try anyway — which is what I meant when I said we will fail. We will have to say I should have done something else for X (even when I don’t know what else I might have done). Yes, we take responsibility for their failure.  But I can live with those failures (i.e. kids not making the standard) if I know I as a teacher (or better yet my team of teachers) have not given up (and even when we did all we could we got together to see what we can do differently next time). I’ve been in conversations with teachers who have given up on kids — and frankly it makes me angry  — angry at the teacher, not the kid. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve gotten angry at kids, too. But what you have to do is get over the anger at the kid and come back tomorrow with something else — something new to try to help that kid do what he or she needs to do. This is what makes teaching so exhausting, but it’s our job.

I once had an outstanding teacher friend tell me he heard a lot of teachers talk about how they like to teach the kids who are in school to learn, but didn’t want to waste time with those kids who didn’t want to learn. My friend said (and I agree) that saying something like that is a lot like a doctor saying they like practicing medicine with those patients who are well, but didn’t want to waste time with those patients who were always sick (an absurd thought, really). We have to be there for those kds who don’t want to learn and have no idea how (or desire to be) to be responsible. Who is going to be responsible for them if not us? Who is going to teach them responsibility if not us? We can (and sometimes must) teach responsibility by letting the consequence of the students action or inaction fall, but we must be proactive before it comes to that, so that we can say, “it’s going to hurt me as much as it hurts you” (to return to the parent metaphor that I am responding to). These words are the words of loving parent teaching a child responsibility. If a kid sees us saying and meaning these words, it may be that first step with that child that can make a difference. But it won’t ring true if they know and see we already gave up on them.  Still, after that consequence falls on the student, we should be the first one at that kid’s door saying, “here is what you need to do to remedy that F”, “here is what you need to do to make up that paper I didn’t accept”, ”here let me help you enroll in summer school to make up this class”, or “let’s look at this alternative school to see if it might be the place for you”, or whatever. Bottom line: TEACHING IS A TOUGH JOB, but kids are worth it and there is nothing more rewarding.  If you are willing to give up on students, I think you should consider giving up on teaching.

Last night President Obama gave his first major presidential speech. With our nation’s current economic situation, it really is a big speech. He spoke one easy-to-miss line about public school about which I want to comment.  But, first, an aside (forgive the rant). . . .

I am an Evangelical Christian (in the classic sense of Evangelicalism – really I hate the term as it is used today). In 2009, Evangelicals are almost synonymous in the public mind with Fundamentalists. I went through a Fundamentalist war in my denomination a few years back (one of the reasons I changed careers), and the Fundamentalists won (which means the denomination [and the cause of Christ] lost. In the classic sense, Evangelicals emphasize the Gospel. Today’s Evangelical emphasizes Politics (Pat Buchanan’s term is “The Culture War”). I grew up in church where Gospel was everything, and Gospel was how we were to change our world. When we emphasized Gospel, our manipulative invitations (and other peculiarities) were an exception to the way things were done, and they didn’t do as much damage to the cause of Christ. But in the late 1970s, everything began to change. Evangelicals discovered political activity, and they have done great damage to the cause of Christ (some time later they discovered Rush Limbaugh and even though politically I am in agreement with much of conservative philosophy, Limbaugh and his ilk have done much more damage as the GOP and Evangelicalism have become fused (see this book and this one). I feel I must lead with this rant because in some circles anyone reading this post will equate my reference to any speech by Obama as the thoughts of a “liberal public school teacher.”  I am anything but. I am a conservative, though I am a conservative who laments the death of thinking conservatives now that Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh are our de facto leaders (what a vacuum of leadership we must have!).  Please read this post from the Internet Monk about how Christians should be careful about how we speak about our president even when we disagree – note, we (Christians/Evangelicals) did damage to our reputation by violating these principles during the Clinton administation. We accelerated the downward slide of our ability to speak Gospel to our world and be heard (see this link and this one on why conservatism is “dead,” though I choose to think it’s not dead but in dire straights until we can find another leader to pull our diverse elements together into a positive whole as Reagan did — NOT that Reagan was an Evangelical or even a Classic Christian [many forget history], but he was a great conservative). OK, this Rant is finished, so I can now post the comments I received from another teacher  who, in turn, just passed along what she reveived from another teacher.  I have taken the liberty of highlighting some sentences.  Along with the original writer of the post, I have MUCH that I disagree with from our president and his politics, but he is our president (and the republic will not come to an end just because the GOP does not win every time). 

Last night, during President Obama’s speech before congress, I was inspired by something he said. “Dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It’s not just quitting on yourself, it’s quitting on your country — and this country needs and values the talents of every American.”  Though I may not have agreed with most of the President’s solutions, I feel that the sentiment of this line needs to become a clarion call to our students. Education is not just about them. It is a call to the very heart of this country. It is every student’s patriotic duty to become educated.  We as teachers assume a patriotic duty to teach our students. It is this attitude that can rejuvenate our hearts and maybe rise up the next “greatest generation.”  

President Obama committed last night to a goal of making our nation the most educated nation in the world by the year 2020.  Today, as you teach your students, realize that your job is equipping these students to make our nation stronger. Communicate to your students that their responsibility to their country, to the freedoms they have, is to learn. Whether it is to write, to do math, to use a computer, to understand economics, to contribute through the arts, to become civically minded, or whatever educational endeavor they are participating, all will contribute to the milieu that will make America the greatest nation in world.  

I hope you don’t mind my sending these thoughts to you, but as one who has served in the military and loves his country I am inspired this morning. We as educators have a great calling and responsibility. Hold your head up with honor and pride, for you too are defending and strengthening your country.

The point is well made. I have very little to add. As a Christian (Evangelical Christian) who is proud to teach in a public school (a giant contradiction in many Fundagelical’s minds), I find these words encouraging, and they serve to call me to renw my committment to the heart of my calling as a teacher.  May all teachers view their career as a calling — we don’t just have a job, we serve in a vocation. 

Mike Shatzkin is founder and CEO of The Idea Logical Co. (IdeaLog.com). He has been involved in “digital change issues” in the book publishing business. Here is his informed imagination about what the book publishing business will look like in ten years. 

Some highlights:

The robust e-book market—more than 50 percent of the sales of many titles (also a bit more than 10 years off)—will have been fueled by features built into e-books that can’t be replicated in print versions. For example, e-books will frequently use moving images as illustrations, rather than stills. And, of course, e-books all will have links, which will be consistently listed as the No. 1 deficiency responsible for the rapid abandonment of paper books.

One can only imagine how these radical changes will affect libraries, the teaching of technology and information skills, and teaching in general. We had better be prepared for more and more change, fast-paced change, and doing things in new ways. The library as the central book collection headquarters for the school is already an old paradigm. If the library (and the meda center, computer lab, etc.) is to maintain its place as a central hub of the school, it had better become a place where teaching occurs and students come not just to access information but to synthesize and build a project around all of the information that they access in various places.

Our school board is considering closing schools. This is not unusual in our current climate. School boards all over the country are looking at numbers, tax bases, economic woes, and they are making hard choices. I talked to a friend of mine who teaches in Phoenix, and word is that they are looking at a large (shockingly large! It’s hard to believe the numbers he quoted me) reduction of their professional and paraprofessional staff.

The truth is, our board has put off making this decision for half a decade. We are an urban district (In a formerly large town which was, prior to that, a medium-sized town. It’s a town that still has a hard time thinking of itself as an urban). But the hard truth is white flight is occuring; families that move in who can afford it are moving to the more suburban school districts that surround our city. Even though we have one pocket of semi-suburban neighborhoods still within our district’s boundaries where we’ve build schools in the past two years to relieve overcrowding, most of the rest of the district is losing students. We have upwards of 4,000 fewer students now than we did a decade ago. We have a few half-empty schools and quite a few schools that are not half-empty, but are getting there quickly. Still, prior boards have avoided making the hard choices.  Here is an editorial from our local paper which speaks in favor of making these hard choices.  We’ve had public meetings and asked for information from groups of stakeholders, employee groups, parents, staff. They have enough information — really they have a ton of information. Here is another article about the information they have.  They started with some basic presuppositions, and a collection of data about school usage and programs in the various schools. All schools (not just those on the list) were asked to evaluate and list their own strengths and areas to improve. Then a consultant was brought in, and all of this information was tabulated in a plan that they took to employee groups, employee leaders, and to the public. They actually asked and solicited information, and they listened. The plan was changed and each change was posted (currently the district has Draft 18 on their site). At each public meeting they asked focus groups to record and give input about various options. Still, we have people crying that this decision is being made too fast.

The school board is caught between doing doing what is fiscally responsible and largely unpopular, and putting off the decision or doing some small measure that pretends to solve the problem.  It’s a tough position. I don’t envy the tough spot in which they sit. The problem with a true democracy is that people won’t make the tough decisions. Self interest gets in the way. That’s why our founding fathers made this country a democratically elected republic. That’s essentially what a school board is. A democratically elected republic presumes that those elected to the board will have the guts to make the hard and even unpopular choices.

I think we have a good board. Current information suggests that all but one member recognize the difficulty, and are willing do the tough but necessary job. I hope they make the hard choices. If they don’t make these choices, we will be talking about a fiscal crisis in a year or two. Decisions made in a crisis are not likely to be decisions that work to improve student achievement.