Sentiments On Common Sense

Having worked in two schools in the past 9 years that are behind significant firewalls run by the government, I feel I have enough experience to write this blog post…. at least from the educational leadership side of the conversation.  In surveying the countries around the world that filter and block the internet, Saudia Arabia and my current location here in Shanghai are near the top.  In Saudi it was a bit easier to operate as we were able to get some satellite systems put in place to speed our upload and download speeds, and provide our students with access to the information systems that were blocked. A well placed dish behind the A/C systems allowed us just the right amount of access for our little school. There is a different access issue in my current country.  But, no matter where you are and what the mission and vision of your school is, there is ways to give your students access to Web 2.0 tools that are now present on the read/write web.  Now that g0-0g-le has left the country of my residence, I am getting more and more questions about how we run our student services.

To me it is like playing on the beach with all of that sand, or in your own sandbox. The sandbox, while a bit confined, allows you to build castles, dig holes and feel the grit in your hands just like you do at the beach. That sand is just like that at the beach and people on the outside of the box can reach in and touch the sand too, but whatever is inside that sandbox cannot be blocked by those problematic firewalls. When I have spoken to my community about dealing with the firewall and access issues, I always say, “We are just going to build our own virtual web 2.0 sandbox and give our kids access to similar tools, and access to a global audience.

Thus we have done or are in the process of doing the the following:

• Student email: We established our own domain name which allows us to monitor, administer and maintain a email webpresence. The key is the domain name which, if monitored carefully will not be a problem for the firewall.
• A blog installation at a local level.  We currently use WordPressMU and have found great success with the installation. Our school built this from the beginning and now has hundreds of students and teachers blogging as a part of the educational process.
• Web publishing space for teachers and students will soon be the norm. As a Mac school, the students and teachers will begin using iWeb to create their own sites.  It is easy, fast and allows for a global audience.
• In place of Flickr and YouTube we have established our own installation to serve and share our own videos and photos. This customize installation was based on some opensource software.  The key here is having strong technical support.
• Moodle- by serving this installation on-site with strong technical and educational support has helped launch many classroom programs toward a blended learning environment.
• Social networking alternatives such as Elgg can provide schools with that all important methodology that engage students in an online social environment.
• Up next—our own wiki installation.  There a many alternatives out there, but this is something that you will likely want to spend somemoney on to make work well.
• Locally hosted academic databases are the norm, not the exception. This gives the student access to online data but without the challenge of slow or filtered access.
• Locally hosted student information systems and parent communications systems, we use PowerSchool, but there are many alternatives. With the exception of our school’s webpage, everything is hosted locally so we don’t deal with the issues of access and internet reliability. If there is a problem, generally we have only ourselves to blame.
• Calendar servers and internal email systems with more than ample storage. Again, strong technical support is important, but even more important is a vision based committment to providing resources to the professionals in the school.
• Off-site backup and mirroring setup. This seems so natural and important, but interestingly enough this sort of setup is not considered essential.

The key to the list above is targeted staff development with an adopted set of tools. With a variety of tools like you see above, it is about choices, continual support and technical expertise. Living in a firewalled country is a challenge, but I also feel like our students are getting a great educational experience that allows them to learn the skills of web use and practice digital citizenship in our sandbox of tools without the intervention of a government entity.

Technorati Tags: shanghai, Saudi Arabia, internet access, web 2.0, digital literacy, student learning

Photos courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/55934520@N00/32962238 and http://www.flickr.com/photos/55934520@N00/33546752

I had a nice compliment this week from visiting consultants we had at school. In our debrief with them at the end of an intense week of embedded PD, they noted to me that they liked working at my school because I keep my job focused on the big picture. Hmm… I thought… the “big picture”.   What exactly does that mean?

After it is all said and done, my search for the view from 35000 feet continues to keep me up at night. I wake up suddenly with a start and realize that we had not thought of this or that, and I really need to hone in on that idea further.  One of those is the role of libraries in our effort to provide a balanced digital and print environment to our students.  Yes… that’s right.. BALANCED!  Seeing as how the idea of balance needs to be defined, I was glad to see that one of my favorite blogger authors Doug Johnson (note:this site is blocked in China) has co-authored an article with Joyce Kasman Valenza in the School Library Journal titled “Things That Keep Us Up at Night”. (SLJ, 10/1/09) The article is targeted at librarians, but really has hit home with our administrative team at my school this week as well.  They write…

The future of the school library as a relevant and viable institution is largely dependent on us and how quickly we respond to change.

Libraries are no different than the classroom environment in many ways. The library, like the classroom is beginning to face an identity crisis of sorts.  The role of the learning space is being stretched by always available, always accessible and always relevant resources at the fingertips of the students.  The people who run libraries and classrooms are facing a sea of changing faces, with our students being completely at home in the digital environment and engaged in what seems like so many, many things simultaneously. Some of it good, and some of it bad and some of it useless and some it needing the guiding hand of a

trained professional educator, while other parts of it can be easily mined, harvested and mashed-up and republished.  Johnson and Kasman Valenza note that the challenge of keeping up with these trends will keep us all busy. Again, speaking to librarians they state,

Look around your state conferences. How many of your colleagues graduated from library school more than 20 years ago? Remember what the landscape looked like in 1989? How do we stay one step ahead of our staff and students in information accessing, evaluation, use, and communication in order to be seen as experts and collaborators? Do we know more about current information strategies than our school’s technology coach? No excuses. We must! If we are truly information professionals, we need not only to keep up, but also be on the cutting edge of changes in the search and information landscapes.

My favorite part of the article though speaks to “Advocacy by nonlibrarians”.  Here they write:

Rather than creating a perfect library, we need to reshape our thinking and create the perfect library for our individual institution. We can do this by changing our mind-set from adopting best practices as defined by our own professional organization to adopting a “customer service/support” orientation by crafting goals that support the larger goals of the organization.

Should this not hold true for all parts of our schools?  The best part of this though is that this is librarians thinking about and discussing their craft knowledge and reapplying it to a potentially new setting with a focus on the goals of the larger organization.  This is big picture thinking in action!  No wonder they can’t sleep. This is exciting stuff!

The authors write at the end of their article a bit of a call to action for libraries and librarians.  The word apathy certainly is written here, but I that the gist of the message is that without urgent action educational change, technological change and the variety of political forces in schools will define the role of the library for us.  I agree with the authors when they state their clear warning that:

Our best librarians will evolve, adapt, and thrive in effective
schools. But will they be called librarians? And will they be in
sufficient numbers for the profession as a whole to survive?

From 35000 feet I know that some things will be changing soon.

—————————————————-

Flickrstorm Photo Tagged “38800 FT” on : http://www.flickr.com/photos/20420218@N04/3903688501

www.schooltechleadership.org

Scott McLeod has pulled together a nice list of some of the more innovative blogs written as a resource for busy admin. He has provided you with a recommended list of blogs for busy administrators (and educational leadership faculty). You can subscribe to them individually by clicking on the relevant link or you can read/subscribe to all of them at once by using one of these links:

• Read posts from the overall feed on a web page
• Subscribe to the overall feed via RSS
• Subscribe to the overall feed via e-mail

It is worth a look!

Andy

school technology leadership, school administration

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Author’s note: I wrote this post about a year ago and updated a little here for Leadertalk. I stumbled upon it the other day while cleaning out my hard drive. It hit home with me as we all are facing some tough community issues right now and I decided we really need to get our PR machine running at 110% capacity. Thanks for reading. This post is also is cross posted on LeaderTalk. Thanks for reading this post! Andy

—————————————-

We need to do a much better job of self promotion or we will be run over by our own failures and lack of progress.

In act one, scene two of Julius Caesar, Caesar asks a soothsayer what the future holds.

Caesar: Who is it in the press that calls on me?
I hear a tongue, shriller than all the music
Cry “Caesar!” Speak. Caesar is turn’d to hear.
Soothsayer: Beware the ides of March.

Let’s face it. Common sense would tell anyone that no school is perfect. In fact, by nature of the school improvement process, we honed our knives of self improvement by becoming very, very good at self criticism, and ultimately it is also deemed cathartic to announce our own weak points out loud and with robust vigor and valor. Alas, this time of year people get cranky and irritable. The ides of March saying often comes to my mind.

Such announcements like,

“Our school has progressed just 10 percentage points on the nationally normed test in the past three years, missing our target by 2 percentage points. We are disappointed in missing our target despite the tremendous progress we have made.”

The newspapers and online networks out there are all over this stuff, and the fuel for the school critics’ fire is among the worst in journalism falling just short of the criticisms and interrogations meted out on Meet the Press and Jerry Springer combined!

Sigh… why do schools insist on focusing on the negatives? Must we be so self critical? Is it a deeply held community expectation that we be negative about ourselves?

Would be appear to be a cover up if we instead said,

“The progress that our school has made in the past three years equates to 10 percentage points, and has moved our school to within 2 percentage points of our target. The school will reevaluate their academic targets and continue with our aggressive school improvement progress to ensure our students continued success.”

Much nicer if you ask me.

Alas… things do go bad in schools sometimes and black and white honesty is the best policy for sure. We seemed to have our share of them lately, and sadly some are really out of our control, although that is NOT the message a school administrator wants to send. To take responsibility and not being able to truly implement mitigating steps is certainly frustrating. I won’t make the laundry list of things that go awry, as I suspect you have two or three on your mind right now.

Instead let’s turn this coin over and I propose some positive communications that will rebuild the interest and confidence in the school.

Taking the old motto “Ten to glow on, one to grow on”, I figure that we must provide 10 or more quality examples of positive results in our schools to counter balance the single quality result.

Guiding factors for these include:
• Always tell the truth. (This should be easy)
• Do not exaggerate. (This is harder than you think)
• Make the message understandable. (This is the hardest thing to do!)
• Recognize your experts. Show them off to your community. Quote them frequently.
• Any school event or school personnel recognized by an independent source (i.e. newspaper, professional organization) should be published and republished. Theses events and people should be your poster children.
• Focus on direct implementation steps taken by the school, and not just mere happenstance occurrences.
• Student learning data must be targeted and not over generalized
• Over reliance regarding co-curricular (sports, after school, clubs, etc) for positives should be avoided.
• Concrete, real life celebrations of school events connected to learning are most efficient.
• Be visible with your positives and the positives will make your visibility less negative even when bad things happen.

My other suggestion is to think ahead of the curve. One area that I need to do a better job of addressing. Perhaps a weekly “devils advocate” session with some trusted colleagues will squeeze out those negative thoughts to address, change and squash in the public setting. My favorite recently has focused on a proposed program change in our school. The critics have come out in vocal fashion, spreading rumor by email and by voice to anyone on a mailing list.

What are we to do? My suggestion is the truth should be spread. Accurate, factual, research-based information and “on-the-ground” examples that share the positives. The mere thought that your veracity and honesty are being questioned hit hard with emotional impact. One must step forward professionally and let those attacks roll off your shoulders to the floor where they belong. The fact is, we may not always win the battles that we fight on these issues, but if we stay true to our beliefs about putting children first and focusing on what is best for our schools, we will most likely always triumph in the long run.

Image via Wikipedia

This entry cross posted to Leadertalk.

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”.

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?

Blog, commenting, Education, Feedback, Principal, Professional development, Seth Godin, Web 2.0

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Let’s apply a little common sense to our blogposts!

I am sure I am preaching to the choir but…  let me make this clear. You really have to be careful what you write!  It can get you in big trouble and could possibly ruin your career.  On my recruiting trip I found this article in the February 9 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle with this lead:

(02-08) 17:04 PST –
The Web 2.0 movement, which ushered in an interactive Internet, sought to put power in the hands of the people by tapping the so-called wisdom of the crowds to change the world – and to keep such a digital democracy in check.

This is all pretty heavy handed languague for some common sense if you ask me.  Doug Johnson has written about this, I have have even tip-toed down this path as well.  The fact is that our professional reputations and now our POCKETBOOKS are on the line when we decide to take on a individual or an organization.  Libel, as defined means:

An untruthful statement about a person, published in writing or through broadcast media, that injures the person’s reputation or standing in the community. Because libel is a tort (a civil wrong), the injured person can bring a lawsuit against the person who made the false statement. Libel is a form of defamation , as is slander (an untruthful statement that is spoken, but not published in writing or broadcast through the media).  Thank you Nolo.com

The Cronicle article notes:

Just last week, Juicy Campus – a Web site that was banned from some colleges for its postings of vicious anonymous gossip – abruptly shut down, its traffic redirected to a site called College Anonymous Confession Board, whose owner said he hosts “a higher level of discourse.”

One has to wonder what will be the result of these measures on those websites out there who slander international schools. I won’t name any names, but those of us who wander the circuit know what and whom I am speaking about. All these so-called professionals, cloaked behind avatars, and citizen’s band radio-like handles slamming schools, administrators and their colleagues.  How long will it be before these websites are taken to court or asked to edit and review the content of their own site which was posted “anonymously”.  The definition of “anonymous” in the Web 2.0 world also probably needs to be defined.  I am pretty sure just about anybody could be tracked down with the right resources.  Kinda makes you think doesn’t it?

The key concept here: Stick to the facts.  Just the facts.  The words of Jack Webb in Dragnet need to ring in your ears.  “Just the facts ma’am. Only the facts”. And then you need to be careful whose facts you are using.

Perhaps Thumper‘s words should really stick here…. “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”

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I was always told that it was unsafe to be facicious when writing.  Many people don’t get the subtly of the written language, and one might be accused of being a bit… well…. rude, or cruel, or STUPID…. or any other of the many derogatory names that are used in blogs today.  So, when I started reading the article “When “21st-Century Schooling” Just Isn’t Good Enough:  A Modest Proposal” by Alfie Kohn, I had to laugh, giggle and then it made me think. I immediately thought about my colleague and friend Jeff Utecht who states, adamantly, that the 21st Century is 9 years old. When are we going to start teaching the skills necessary be successful in it! 

I have always admired Dr. Kohn. He knows his stuff. He communicates in strong, consistent and understandable terms.  He has a strong sense of humor, and this article is buried in irony, sarcasm and thought-provoking imagery. 

At the end of the article- the last paragraph- which is also published in the February 2009 issue of District Administration he states:

One last point.  We will of course continue to talk
earnestly about the need for a curriculum that features “critical thinking” skills
– by which we mean the specific proficiencies acceptable to CEOs.  But you
will appreciate the need to delicately discourage real critical
thinking on the part of students, since this might lead them to pose inconvenient
questions about the entire enterprise and the ideology on which it’s based.  There’s
certainly no room for that in the global competitive economy of the
future.  Or the present.

The question of the day: Does the readers of District Administration have the critical thinking skills to figure out that he’s trying to make a point?

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It was a good holiday for me this year. My lovely wife got me a new camera, so that means more of my photos on this blog this year and less from others. Probably more photos of my kids, and of a few of my trips here and there. I am back on the road at the end of this month to go recruiting again, and for those of you who are going to be in Iowa for the UNI fair or the Search Fair in Cambridge, please come up and say hi. After returning to Shanghai after being at the clear, clean and cold Pacific Northwest, Shanghai feels exceptionally gray, cold and… well… HUGE! My car ride to the Puxi campus felt as if it took forever and now on the way home, even longer.

Last week I was reading about how the new President’s stimulus package had money earmarked for educational technology support for schools in the US. My colleagues in the US seem to be optimistic about hopes for building better, more technologically “ready” schools. I have worked through a rather long process of organizing, designing and now building a new network infrastructure at my school this past year and a half.

It is not as easy as it sounds, and the pitfalls and processes that are involved are staggering, but I feel the time, energy and money expended will all be worth it. After all, you can’t have the kids use the superhighway of information in the classrooms without high speed on-ramps.

Things to consider:

• Quality consultations. My advice is don’t rely on resellers and industry “leaders” to provide you with solutions. Allow yourself the luxury of a person you can trust that can lead you through the process.
• Community support. Until the community, from the top to the bottom believe it is needed, you will not find your way to building this infrastructure. They must see the results in the way they source their information.
• Look at “add-ons” in a different way. Most schools don’t consider what a strong network solution can do for them in other ways. We are also adding a new phone system, security system and intercom system, all using the network system as the backbone. New technology solutions allow so much more to be driven over by power-over-ethernet (POE). The four for one deal seemed to good to be true for my community.
• Build your sandbox first. With the help of your technology leaders, build sandboxes for the students and staff to play in—such as video sharing installations, blogging installations, social media installations – all within our network. As you sell the idea of the network, demonstrate that you and your team are doing all you can to exploit what you have and connecting it all to curricular objectives.
• Don’t be afraid to demonstrate how slow your network really is for the kids. There is nothing like a failed network or a sssslllloooowwww network to show how painful waiting for information is for the kids. Pull up a webpage in front of a 100 people in an audience and then talk through what that is like for a teacher with 20+ kids in a classroom.
• Focus on expandable wireless options. Push your providers to SHOW you the options for the future and make them demonstrate it for your community. You will need to expand your network in the short term and I am guessing that wires will be the last way most of us will consider networking in the future. If Moore’s Law continues, then we may be looking at low cost expansions using plug and play wireless access points in the future.
• Allow your parents to have access to the old network. Promise them continued access to the “new” network. Hold open network mornings for Moms and Dads so they can see what can and cannot be done.

After you are done with the installation, focus your efforts on the use of your network and SHOW results. If you don’t, you won’t get anything else you ever ask for in the future.

Photo courtesy of CC: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8816624@N08/2899553904

technology infrastructure, wireless networks, educational technology, digital leadership

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Recently at my school, the focus on of many a conversations in meetings, in staff rooms and in hallways is the need for forthcoming, open and honest communications between home and school. I spent some time this weekend doing some online research on some information to share with parents both online and in blogs written by administrators.  Below is my article which will appear in our publication later this week. Readers of Sentiments on Common Sense get a slightly edited preview.

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Family-School Partnerships – A Recipe for Success

According to the National Parent Teachers Association family involvement promotes student success. There’s more than 30 years of research to back that up.

• No matter what their family income or background may be, students with involved parents are more likely to:
• Earn higher grades and test scores.
• Be promoted, pass their classes, and earn credits.
• Attend school regularly.
• Have better social skills, show improved behavior, and adapt well to school.
• Graduate and go on to postsecondary education.

Plus, when families, schools, and communities work together,

• Student achievement improves,
• Teacher morale rises,
• Communication among parents, teachers, and administrators increases,
• Family, school, and community connections multiply.

As a former elementary school teacher, I urged the parents of my students to let me know if there were problems or concerns right away.  Most people were great about it.  They would let me know if I wasn’t communicating enough or if I was communicating too much!  They voiced concerns about their children’s learning progress.  Unfortunately, some of the parents of my students made the mistake of hold back their concerns till parent conferences. Some even held them back to long that they left me letters and notes on the last day of school. Those notes, while helpful for me, failed to help the one person that needed it most- the student!  In the case of a classroom teacher’s work, no news is not necessarily good news.
One of the best ways that parents can help their children succeed in school is to be involved with their education. This starts with communicating well with your child’s teacher. Basically, good communication involves meeting with the teacher, being a positive and courteous partner in your child’s learning, and keeping the lines of communication open in various ways throughout the year.

Consider these tips from the University of Florida:
1. Meet the teacher. Go to your child’s school open house or meet-the-teacher day. Even though time may be short, a few simple steps can show your interest and support:

• Introduce yourself and your child.
• Collect any information the teacher provides.
• Offer to help by signing up to donate items to the class or to volunteer for other jobs.

2. Go to parent-teacher conferences. Often schools schedule these sometime during the year. More information about how to get ready and what to ask can found at the following Web site: http://www.ed.gov/parents/academic/help/succeed/part8.html
Make sure that you schedule a conference if:

• Your child has special needs and your teacher needs to know this early in the year.
• Your child’s grades drop suddenly.
• You suspect that your child is having difficulty understanding her or his schoolwork.
• Your child is upset about something that happened in school – with peers, or with the teacher.
• Your child does not seem to have any homework.
• Something changes at home that may affect the student’s learning (e.g., new baby, parental illness, divorce, or upcoming move).

3. Find the right time to talk to the teacher. If you are at school, you may run in to teachers and be tempted to ask about how your child is doing.

• At school, ask the teacher if it is a good time to talk or when is most convenient for him or her. Just before or after school may not be the best times.
• If you run into a teacher around town, simply exchange pleasantries. This is not the time for a parent-teacher conference.

4. Write short notes and follow up. If you want a quick response to a question:

• Send a brief written note or an email message (if allowed) to the teacher with your question clearly stated.
• Include your phone number and/or email address.
• If you don’t hear back in a few days, follow up with a phone message to the school.

5. Follow email etiquette. Email is often a convenient and helpful way to communicate with your child’s teacher, but should follow the same guidelines for any professional communication.

• Be aware that teachers get many email messages – and have many other responsibilities during their day–and may not be able to respond immediately to yours.
• Identify your child and sign your name. Include a phone number where you can be reached if needed.
• Be diplomatic. You can’t take back an email message and email can be easily forwarded. Be calm, choose your words carefully and avoid criticizing the teacher. Don’t write and send an email when you are angry.
• Be brief and stick to the point. Don’t include animations, pictures, and graphics.
• Use upper and lower case, not all caps (that’s considered shouting).
• Stick to school-related matters. Don’t forward chain mail, jokes, or frivolous information.

6. Be positive and courteous. Many teachers are overworked and underappreciated. Speaking in positive ways opens up the lines of communication so you can work together to help your child succeed in school.
References:
http://www.pta.org/family_school_partnerships.asp
http://www.education.com/reference/article/Ref_Communicating_Childs

Technorati Tags: parent communications

I’ve heard it three times in the last week.

“I have to teach the content.”

Is it just me, or is this the same as saying “I’m just doing my job”?

Do we work in a factory?  Do we have widgets to produce or are we building learners here?

Seth Godin wrote a bit of a rant last week in his post “Just doing my Job“.   I want to print it off and share it with a few people. Seth states….

If you take a job, you’ve bought into what the company does. You’re responsible.

If you work for a company headed off a cliff, hey, you’re going too. The fact that you’re just doing your job doesn’t make unemployment any better. And if the company is hurting people or the world you operate in, it doesn’t matter who told you to do it, you still did it.

I suppose that this road runs both ways though…. if you take a job you’ve bought into what the company does, BUT common sense would also say that a company that puts up with a member of the organization that is doing something that is counterproductive to the mission and vision of the organization then does it not send the message that it is really not committed either? Are the supervisors and evaluators just as responsible for the mediocrity?

Food for thought.

Technorati Tags: Seth Godin, “Just Doing my Job”, Factory Mentality, Content

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