Lately I have been asked more than once the million dollar question: What is your leadership style?

I find the question a bit loaded.

It is loaded with possibilities, opportunities and HUGE potholes.

The answer can be simple or complex.

My advice to those who are asked the question is to stage your answer carefully and place it in the context of your passion for learning and for leading.

For me, leadership is about connecting at a human level to the people that you are leading. Being seen as available, open to new ideas and a flexible thinker willing to consider alternatives while keeping your eye on the ultimate goal.  Leaders must model resiliency. Leaders must have a vision for the future, but must be willing to creatively and pragmatically adjust and then deliver “the goods” for the organization.  In his book Linchpin, Seth Godin talks about “shipping” being the act of meeting a deadline and/or a set of expectations. Leaders in the educational context “ship” the completed task or the “art” of educational wizardry. They “ship” the implementation of a program. They “ship” the staffing model to the students.  Shipping, in educational terms, means bringing the organization to the next step or the next level.

In thinking about my leadership style and the style of those are leaders around me has forced me to consider my way of thinking and acting on the opportunities and challenges that face me in my work. Peter Drucker in his book about effective executives (strong leaders as I see them) has guided my thinking on this by helping me segment my actions into three catagories.

The first action is “data gathering”.
This always gets the real numbers people excited as they see an opportunity to sharpen the pencils or get the spreadsheet program revved up.  In my case this activity does not necessarily mean building a gant chart or a data table, but instead asking the important questions, becoming familiar with the issues and getting to know the people.  After it is all said and done, this data gathering process gives me more information and access to the people in the organization. This is information and access that I need to move ideas forward or to address opportunities and challenges. In this process I ask myself after each conversation, 1)“What needs to be done?” and 2)“What is right for the school?”

In the second segment of decision making I look for ways to convert this information into actions.
I believe this is where many leaders become hamstrung.  It is the inability of the individual to take the next “informed” steps that make them ineffective leaders.  Drucker suggests that effective “executives”…

• develop action plans
• take responsibility for decisions
• take responsibility for communicating and
• focus on opportunities rather than on problems.

Finally, the third segemnet of my decision making process closes the deal to full implementation.
Ultimately, the strongest, most effective leaders ensured that the whole of the organization felt responsible and accountable to a decision, a vision or a direction.  I am sure you can quickly recall where this has and has not happened in your school, and what the results were on both accounts.  Effective leaders create this dynamic by running and facilitating (two different things) productive, insightful and interactive meetings. Meetings where participants gained insight, had input and were able to buy into a decision for the good of the organization.  Effective leaders acted in thought, word and deed with the “we” in mind, instead the word “I”.  There is no room for the lone individual acting for only himself.  Success is built on the success of the whole organization and is only as strong as its weakest part, thus “we” thinking is imperative for strong leadership.

Taken one by one, each segment of this construct would mean a lot to a school.

Taken as a whole would means that the organization will move forward and will make difference in the lives of the children and adults who work and learn in our schools.

One useful tool for looking at your own leadership style is the Leadership Resilience inventory from The Resilience Initiative. This seventy-three line inventory tool from the University of Alabama-Birmingham allows the survey taker to…

“reflect on your own leadership behavior in the face of adversity. All of the items contain statements that most leaders would find desirable, but we want you to answer only in terms of what your leadership behavior is actually like.“

I encourage you to try it and think about your own leadership style and your “resilience”.

Technorati Tags: leadership, thought leadership, leadership styles, Resilient leadership

Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/14445655@N04/1494590209

This has been cross posted to www.leadertalk.org.

Sometimes work gets tough.

We have tough days, tough hours, tough meetings and tough conversations.

It ain’t fun.

Nobody likes conflict and sometimes things happen that make you wonder if it is really worth getting up and putting on that nice Dolche and Gabana tie and pretty pinstripe suit to get insulted, slammed and put down.

Yes… sometimes that is exactly what happens and we all hate it.

A few years back I stumbled upon a book in an airport that caught my eye.  The book titled “Anyway: The Paradoxical Commandments, Finding Personal Meaning in a Crazy World” soon caught my imagination and a bit of my heart.  The author Kent Keith outlines the 10 Paradoxical Commandments in a clear, easy to read document that made me really dig down and think about my work, my life and my approach to challenges. You can see the commandments at the bottom of this post.

But, this is not why I am writing tonight. Tonight I am writing about the real challenge we have in schools.  The real challenge is facing the facts that schools, private, public and charter face an identity crisis of sorts.  We are struggling like adolescent kids trying to figure out what we are and we have so many people telling us we should be this, that or the other.

The fact is though that we have a set of clients that don’t really care what we are. To them we are THEIR school.

We are required to deliver the best to them that we can offer and no matter what people say. What board members, politicians, other administrators do, we must do the best for those kids in the rooms waiting with hope and fear and excitement and boredom and interest and… (well you get the point)… we must do the best for them despite the issues.  No matter what happens they deserve the best education we can provide ANYWAY.

I want to thank my colleague Alan Knobloch for the inspiration to this blog post.  Today we were venting and complaining and he piped into the conversation and reminded us all that tomorrow the kids come back to school and they deserve the best education we can provide. It does not matter what the adults do or say or vote. They deserve the best anyway. Thanks Alan.

Now… introducing the The Paradoxical Commandments by Dr. Kent M. Keith.

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.

Technorati Tags: Anyway, Paradoxical Commandments,

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I don’t often get a chance to quote Arnold Schwarzenegger but I will today. This from an edweek.org article:

“How can kids compete in the global economy when the information the schools feed them is stale and is outdated and is old?

Then, while minding my own business at home on a lovely Saturday in Shanghai, one of the teachers at our school sent me this link to an article stating that 1:1 programs are only as good as their teachers. The article titled, “One to One computing programs only as effective as their teacher” by Meris Stansbury states that:

Not surprisingly, the researchers say the most important factor of all is the teaching practices of instructors—suggesting school laptop programs are only as effective as the teachers who apply them.

Let’s apply some common sense here:

1.  Students need up to date resources.  Not “stale” or “outdated” ones.
2.  Students need effective teachers with effective teaching practices.

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Again, not surprisingly The authors of the Texas study conclude:

“Respondents at higher implementing schools reported that committed leaders, thorough planning, teacher buy-in, preliminary professional development for teachers, and a commitment to the transformation of student learning were keys to their successful implementation” of the state’s Technology Immersion Project.

Let’s add another layer of common sense:

1.  Students need up to date resources.  Not “stale” or “outdated” ones.
2.  Students need effective teachers with effective teaching practices.
3. COMMITTED LEADERS!

Another educator listed in the same article states:

“In our 1-to-1 program … we put a big emphasis on project-based learning; otherwise, the laptop is no more than an expensive notepad. … Research needs to show the effects of this different style of teaching in terms of student engagement, motivation, and so-called 21st-century skills. The subject matters themselves don’t have as much room for improvement,”

Ok…once again,some common sense here:

1.  Students need up to date resources.  Not “stale” or “outdated” ones.
2.  Students need effective teachers with effective teaching practices.
3. COMMITTED LEADERS!
4.  STUDENT CENTERED learning approaches.

Then they state in the article:

Given the importance of teachers in the success of school laptop initiatives, it’s no surprise that “teacher preparation through [ongoing professional development] was important for successful implementation,” write Bebell and O’Dwyer. “As 1-to-1 programs become more popular, the quality and depth of preparation that teachers receive for implementation will become a central predictor of program success.”

They go on to say:

“Buying laptops is the easiest part of the process, but too often school districts neglect such fundamental items as providing initial and ongoing professional development for the teachers and providing sufficient tech support,” Thompson said. “Taking a true TCO [total cost of ownership] approach would avoid many of the mistakes, as schools often do not have a good grasp of the real costs of starting and continuing a 1-to-1 program. And part of the TCO approach should be setting measurable program objectives and then doing formative and summative program evaluations, whose results are made known to everyone to provide a feedback loop in the continuous planning and re-planning that characterizes successful programs.”

I probably will have to stop here but… some more common sense:

1.  Students need up to date resources.  Not “stale” or “outdated” ones.
2.  Students need effective teachers with effective teaching practices.
3. COMMITTED LEADERS!
4.  STUDENT CENTERED learning approaches.
5. ONGOING Professional Development!

Schools moving to a 1:1 program needs to read this article. It is a great summary of issues. I believe I have only scratched the surface.

In closing, I draw your attention to a quote from Tammy Stephens, CEO of the Stephens Group LLC, a private investment firm, is working on a dissertation that focuses on the evolution of transformational communication patterns in 1-to-1 computing environments. She has been evaluating a 1-to-1 program in the Milwaukee Public Schools for the past three years.

According to Stephens, changing teaching practices to incorporate 21st-century skills with laptops “is definitely an evolution, and it takes time for teacher practices to evolve.”

Technorati Tags: 1:1, PD, Professional Development, resources, teachers, k-12, leadership, eschoolnews,

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 finally got around to reading Scott McCleod’s blog post “Notes from India – I’m not sure you appreciate…” which he wrote on the 18th of March. As an non-international educator, poor Scott sometimes gets the usual push back from my colleagues and peers working in international schools around the world. His time at the American School of Bombay, it seems, is no different that most.  Many of the international school educators think we are ahead of the stateside schools or national schools from where we come from, and our friend and colleague Scott points out in his own way that it is really not about being ahead of the pack, but instead it is about where you are going. In his blog post he paraphrases his statement in his 3 minute wrap up presentation:

One of the participants in my morning session said that I didn’t appreciate how far along you all are and that you are way above average when it comes to integrating technology into your instruction. And yet, from my conversations with many of you over the past few days, it’s very clear to me that there still are many things you’re not doing. For example, most of you have yet to put a computer in every kid’s hands; that’s why you’re here at this 1:1 conference. Most of you have yet to incorporate online courses into your curricula in any kind of substantive way. Few of you are teaching students to be empowered – not just responsible – digital citizens in our new information landscape. Few of you have a staff full of educators that are modeling active participation in that landscape. As far as I can tell, none of you has robust student assessments at every grade level that target higher-level, more cognitively-complex thinking and doing and being. None of you has moved to a truly personalized learning environment for every student, one in which students’ progress is facilitated and perhaps assessed by technology and is organized around student competence and completion rather than age and grade level. So some of you are sitting there in the audience feeling pretty good about yourselves. And you should. You’re blessed with wonderful financial resources, fantastic facilities, and amazing faculty. But for those of you who think I don’t appreciate how far along you are, all I can say is that I’m not sure you appreciate how far you still have to go.

Good, strong, progressive leadership requires that we keep our eye ahead, with our mind filled with the lessons of the past.  To pause, revel or rest on our successes will send a clear message to our communities that there is an end to this educational journey, and once arrived, the work will be done. Those of you will a full ounce of common sense will know at a gut level that there is no end, only another step to further challenge ourselves and our students to learn, grow and engage in an ever changing landscape for learning.Thanks Scott for holding us accountable and providing us some thinking points for our road ahead. Here is Scott’s TedxASB speech. A good one if you ask me!

Technorati Tags: scott mcleod, Dangerously Irrelevant, Digital Learning environments, international schools, ASB Unplugged

Photo courtesy of www.zoo-m.com/flickrstorm seach keywords “road ahead” and http://www.flickr.com/photos/14438701@N00/3389991715

Our educational blogging process has its ups and downs.   The teachers use the medium as an instructional tool and a tool to widen the audience for their students.  It is a collaboration tool and even an assessment tool.  Communications and Marketing people use it as tool to draw in potential customers and clients, or to get the message out that makes a difference for the school community.  Alas… my colleagues and peers, the administrators struggle with the medium and the purpose.

Thus, I was thrilled to read this article from www.inc.com, titled “Let’s Take This Offline”, by Joel Spolsky.

Mr. Spolsky is the founder and CEO of Fog Creek Software, and a regular contributor to Inc. magazine, although I am sad to report this is his last column.  Inc. does have a nice archive there of his past articles though and they are very good!  In the linked article, He notes he too struggled with the formula for success in using blogs to draw in business customers and clients. Noting that…

“It takes real discipline not to talk about yourself or your company. Blogging as a medium seems so personal and often it is.  But when you are using a blog to promote a business, that blog can’t be about you.

Mr. Spolsky then goes on to credit Ms. Kathy Sierra for clarifying for him what successful blogging looks like for the entrepreneur

To really work, Sierra observed, an entrepreneur’s blog has to be about something bigger than his or her company and his or her product. This sounds simple, but it isn’t. It takes real discipline to not talk about yourself and your company. Blogging as a medium seems so personal, and often it is. But when you’re using a blog to promote a business, that blog can’t be about you, Sierra said. It has to be about your readers, who will, it’s hoped, become your customers. It has to be about making them awesome.

What this would look like for schools is endless, but in the end I will tell you a few things I believe it should and should NOT be for administrators.  In the end, it is really about making our school community feel “awesome“.

Shoulds:
1.  Sharing news with a leadership voice.  This is not about you, but it should clearly come from you.  In the absence of news, people will make something up so give people something to talk about.  If it is bad news, then it is your chance to get the facts out there!  You can give short updates, status updates and the like!  Again… add your voice to the mix and make it about the organization. Parents will feel “awesome” when they feel involved and informed.  Thus, use your blog to help them be both.

2. Scott McLeod of the CASTLE Project in his document titled “Why Blog as an Administrator?” notes that marketing of your school is very important.

Because they’re electronic, blogs are both faster and less costly than paper communications. If the savings in paper alone aren’t persuasive, administrators should consider additional advantages that blogs often have over other communication channels. Web sites and paper newsletters are static, noninteractive, and often dated (who wants to readabout something two weeks after it occurred?). E-mails, electronic newsletters, and/or listservs contribute to clogged inboxes and get caught by spam filters. In contrast, blogs are timely, interactive, and avoid some of the issues that accompany e-mail communications.

Potential clients, customers and students want to go to the best schools with the best resources and the best teachers.  This will also help them be “awesome” now and in the future.

3.  Public relations is so important to school leaders and we need to think about the power can harness around getting our message out there without the filter of the media.  Again McLeod notes:

Frequent, transparent communication, with the opportunity to receive feedback through
comments, is a strength of blogs that administrators can leverage to their school organization’s
advantage.

Common messages bond a community and make it “awesome”.  Blog posts that can be referenced, printed and cross posted will help school leaders do that for their community.

4.  Finally, blogs are a powerful demonstration to your internal community (teachers and fellow administrators) that you are in thoughtful discourse about the school, its direction and its future.  The ideas of thought leadership and visionary leadership can be demonstrated for your school community.  By doing so, you and the school will be better set to have more conversations about the teaching and learning.  This is, as one person has mentioned to me, the “bread and butter” of schools.

Schools with a clear and common vision are seen as “awesome”.  This is just plain common sense!

Should Nots:
1.  Blogs should not be for announcements and dates.  Reason: Boooorrrrrriiiinnng and more easily found on a simple web page. In the age of google calendars, ical compliant software and rss feeds, I really don’t think this is a good use of web space.

2. Movie and photo warehouse. Reason: People will visit once or twice. You will have to maintain a flow of media akin to YouTube and Flickr to keep people enaged. Instead weave this media into your posts when there is a reason to do so.

3. Be simply a mass email.  Reason: If you want me to be sure to read it, then send it to me and mark it urgent.

4. Be a first line of emergency information.  Reason: Let’s face facts here. In an emergency the first place people will go is your schools main webpage. If your blog is the school’s main page then fine, but otherwise don’t rely on people clicking through to see your blog for this information.  In the age of mobile and cell phones, people expect a text message if there is an emergency anyway. If you school has not thought about implementing such a process, I would encourage you to do so.

Photo courtesy of www. zoo-m.com/flickrstorm, search term “awesome” and http://www.flickr.com/photos/13069239@N02/2409278113 and http://www.flickr.com/photos/66076061@N00/3767881751

Technorati Tags: blogging, thought leadership, INC.com, Joel Spolsky, AWESOME!, School communications

This entry has been cross posted to LeaderTalk.

As I work this academic year in rolling out a 1:1 program, I have thought long and hard about the next steps after the initial “out of the box” experience has worn off and the machines find their place in the daily lives of the students and their teachers.  Now in month 6 of the implementation, I am faced with some decision making about the next steps to drive home the initial success of our program.  Success, in this case, is a feel of “normalcy” around the school with technology.  The networks is working well. Service centers are up and running.  Teachers expect things to work most of the time and indeed, I think they do.  They are also meeting the daily challenge of using the machines in activities and units daily.  Technology standards are being met more readily.  Students are expecting to use their machines for projects, research, lessons in all subject areas.  Again… the normalcy of the implementation is beginning to set in.

Most recently though I  have struggled just a bit with the integration of the walk through protocols we have established at our school and the clear, consistent identification of quality technology use by teachers and students.  I believe that many administrators and supervisors are still struggling with clarity around the NETS-S and NETS-T and the identification of specific examples where and when the standards are being implemented in classrooms.  To the neophyte technology user, any technology use must be good technology use. We all know this is wrong!

I will be rolling out for my leadership team this next week the ISTE Classroom Observation Tool (ICOT). We will have them share specific examples of the “look-for” clues are to determine appropriate, strong and progressive use of technology in our classrooms.  We will do side-by-side walkthroughs to develop our common understandings around the use of this very useful framework.  It should be noted that the ICOT tool online is currently out of date as ISTE has not updated it for the updated NETS-T but that is an easy trade off for the other parts of the tool, and I (heaven forbid) even PRINTED it out for them to look at, pull apart and examine the sheer genius that is this observation tool.

The tool asks the observer to evaluate:

• the physical layout of the room
• student groupings
• the role the teacher is playing
• learning activities that are being used
• the essentiality of technology to the activity or lesson
• the specific technology tools being used by the teacher
• the specific technology tools being used by the students
• The NETS-Teachers being addressed (see attached)
• Total time for technology use during the walkthrough and…

A Three Minute Chart is provided to track technology:

• Use by Students (For learning or not?)
• Use by Teacher (for learning or not?)

I believe this framework has tremendous potential to help educational leaders as we learn to train our eye to the key components of technology use in our classrooms and make it possible for us to more effectively lead technology integration at our school.  In the course of classroom observations school leaders make hundreds, if not thousands of professional judgments every week.  This tool guides the user to structure those judgments more precisely and I also believe that over time the administrators will be able to use this information to make technology expectations more ubiquitous in our organization and judgments based on data gathered over time.

The fact is that we are at the point next academic year where the communication of expectations for teachers in the use of technology is going to be more important that the actual implementation and training of the use of technology tools.  It is obvious that we have got to ramp up our expectations (with continued, persistent, consistent and insistent professional development support) or we will plateau and that could sound the death knell for our 1:1 program.  Value added results are expected and if we don’t deliver the program is done.

As part of the increase in expectations, I am hoping that next year we can do an all out ICOT observation month to gather school wide data for technology use in our classrooms.  This will indeed bring forward the power of the NETS-A, and show the school the importance of implementation attention for systematic improvement, visionary leadership and a focus on professional practice.

Technorati Tags: tech plan, implementation, PD, proD, professional development, 1:1, technology

This entry has been cross posted to www.leadertalk.org

I just returned from a trip to the U.S. to hire some teachers for my school.  Those trips are grueling, intense and a chance to examine my personal educational beliefs at a core level.

We move out on these trips with great purpose.

We work in teams.

We talk. We collaborate. We commiserate. We come home exhausted.

We interview 15-18 teachers a day and make some very basic decisions (to offer a contract or say “no thank you”) which are VERY important decisions about who will be the teachers in some of our classrooms this next academic year.

Before we went out on our recruiting trips this year, I had our administrative team review an article from Independent School Management titled “Why the Worst (and Best) Teachers Matter”.  Unfortunately it is a copyrighted article not available on the web unless you are member of ISM, but I will quote from the article which focuses the reader on the aphorism that “a rising tide lifts all boats” is not necessarily true day in and day out in the classrooms.  The author notes that “bad” teachers also have an effect on the good teachers in the schools in which we work.  Evidence points to the fact that..

Relationships among people in an organization matter a great deal.

Simply put, students get higher marks when both their teacher and their teacher’s peers are above average; when teachers peers are lower in ability and effectiveness, students achievement levels reflect that.

Technically speaking….

…the study notes that “replacing one peer (teacher) wiht another has one standard deviation higher value-added will increase her students tests scores by 0.86 percent of a standard deviation.” That improvement is noted for reading; for mathematics improvement “is associated with a 3.98% of a standard deviation increase in math test scores.”

Noteworthy?  I think so!  In fact as I read the article, and did as the author suggested and examine this trend in it’s entirety, I believe it confirms just what I believed for some time.  Teachers, like students, benefit from direct learning from their peers, and that learning and professional improvement result from exposure to better peers.  It is probably a “no-duh!” for many administrators out there when I state that it really has nothing to do with the school, and the organization and more about the quality of the teachers in the classrooms.  Great schools, as common sense would tell you, have bad teachers and bad, or poor performing schools have some good teachers.  In the Atlantic Monthly article “What Makes are Great Teacher?” author Amanda Ripley notes in her article detailing the “New Teacher Project” that,

For years, the secrets to great teaching have seemed more like alchemy than science, a mix of motivational mumbo jumbo and misty-eyed tales of inspiration and dedication.

She goes on to share that…

But we have never identified excellent teachers in any reliable, objective way. Instead, we tend to ascribe their gifts to some mystical quality that we can recognize and revere—but not replicate. The great teacher serves as a hero but never, ironically, as a lesson.

Noting that…

Parents have always worried about where to send their children to school; but the school, statistically speaking, does not matter as much as which adult stands in front of their children. Teacher quality tends to vary more within schools—even supposedly good schools—than among schools.

So, what should we be looking for out there?  What kinds of traits do we look for, and HOW does my team of administrators gleen realization of these traits from brief 15-30 minute interviews. My take as always been to find learners, not learned teachers.  I have always looked for teachers who have an innate joy and love of life.  I look for teachers who have demonstrated leadership and goal aquisition in the past.  I look for teachers who have perserverved, not through hardship, but toward a single-minded high standard for the student learning experience.  My common sense is once again confirmed as noted by Ripley when she quotes the Journal of Positive Psychology.

In a study published in The Journal of Positive Psychology in November 2009, they evaluated 390 Teach for America instructors before and after a year of teaching. Those who initially scored high for “grit”—defined as perseverance and a passion for long-term goals, and measured using a short multiple-choice test—were 31 percent more likely than their less gritty peers to spur academic growth in their students. Gritty people, the theory goes, work harder and stay committed to their goals longer. (Grit also predicts retention of cadets at West Point, Duckworth has found.)

Interestingly this hit a nerve with me.  It makes a lot of common sense.

Grit.  Stamina. A learner. Flexible. Adaptable. Grit.

Technorati Tags: recruiting, hiring, great teachers, bad teachers, supervision and evaluation, Atlantic Monthly, What Makes a Great Teacher?

Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/68898571@N00/3562074395

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Dispatch from the Road: Shanghai, Jin Qiao, January 13, 2010.  My first posting of the new year and new decade.
I have fallen a bit off the blogging wagon as of late, and need to step it up a bit more again.  This reflection habit keeps me a bit more balanced.  Shanghai winter is upon us and the dashboard says 30 degree F. / -1 C as I look over my driver’s shoulder.  Brrr….

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Ok… you have to admit. You have toys in your house.  No matter what you do. No matter how old you are, you have toys!

One of my colleagues has an unfortunate addiction to golf clubs.  He has about 5 sets in his garage right next to his motorcycle and beer fridge.  All of these items he refers to as his toys. Another colleague loves woodworking and has an admirable set of woodworking tools that he refers to has his toys.  My toys have, in recent years, been computers.  I practically wore out a Macbook Pro keyboard by using it for both my amusement and my work for two consecutive years.  Does the fact that I used the computer for fun and entertainment make it less valuable as a tool for work, for my own efficiency and my own learning?  Other “toys” I have are sharp knives in my kitchen, great bowls for cooking, a turkey rack (see photo) and even that cute little metal thingy that I use to lace my poultry for quality cooking results.  All “toys” that I use to create, and enjoy!

I sit in the car this afternoon reflecting (no stewing) over an email I received from a community member stating that some people believe that technology tools — computers — have provided students with toys but “many” wonder about the buy back in terms of student learning.  The fact is that the students are, in our 1:1 program, really enjoying having full, unfettered use of their computers.  I believe the same holds true with the teachers.  The students have loaded on their own music, began building their own photo libraries. They have added bookmarks, tabs and links to the multiple browsers they use on their machines.  The really like their computers and have “fun” using them to learn, to communicate (formally and informally). They use them to create artwork, movies, podcasts, reports and documents. They use them to research, learn, comprehend and create new understandings about their world.  In short, it is a great learning toy… er… tool.

Applying a measure of common sense here, I believe that any school worth its salt would certainly choose to have students use tools they like and can customize to be their own, or not.

Using the argument about the “return on the investment”, I would argue the schools that choose the tools that are usable, motivational, fun and engaging get far more return on their investment than those who choose tools that are arduous, annoying, hard to use, not engaging (read boring here!) and laborious. Are we not here to get kids to engage deeply, passionately and with great fervor?

Thoughts?

Technorati Tags: students and computers, laptop programs, toys, tools, learning

I have been bouncing around the new Google Chrome beta for the Mac for the last couple of hours.  My first impressions are very positive. It seems faster and more robust.  I can’t say much more other than I am bouncing back and forth between 3 browsers now using Firefox, Safari and now Chrome to do my websurfing.  I am using Firefox here because of the Scribefire add-on I like to do my blogging with in the window below. I just moved this article over to Firefox to pull quotes….

Will Richardson writes about some of his thought on what it means to “get it”.   He notes that he recently made a trip to the George Lucas Educational Foundation annual meeting- he apparently is a board member-  and notes that one of the most common topics of conversation in his circles is the idea of people “getting it”. Not to over simplify things here but…. what the heck is he talking about?  Will, may I ask that you define “it”? 

At my level of work, I spend so much time trying to get people to understand “it” as well.  “It” means social learning. “It” means 21st century skills. “It” means basic educational standards.  “It” is not as simple as “it” seems. 

Will notes that “getting it” can be taken in three levels:

Level 1 seems to be “getting” that there are all these new tools and technologies out there and that we can now publish all sorts of content really easily. And that kids are already using social networks and that these tools are cropping up more and more in classrooms around the world. When I hear the question “How do we help other teachers to “get it?” ….

Level 2 takes it a step further and implies that “getting it” means that there is some real change involved in what’s happening right now, that it’s not just about tools, but about connections and building learning networks for ourselves and for our students…

Level 3 is not so much about what happens in our practice or in our classrooms but what happens to our schools. That at a time when learning can be individualized and where creativity and passion are just as important as reading and math, our expectations for the roles of schools in educating our kids have to be more than just playing on the edges.

Taken as a whole I can see where Will is going on this “it”.    The key question is not in finding the right answers, but in asking the right questions.  I, like Will, ask the same question (just in a different way).    It is not, “What should we be talking about?”.  Instead I think it is “What’s there to “get” anyway?

Speaking of “getting it” or not…. check out this post from ASCD scholar facilitator Tom Hoerr in his post “Better Leading Through Technology?” (blocked in China) Where he asks: 

But . . . is technology being marketed as a cure-all? Do we seek technological solutions where none is necessary?

Thanks Will for the great post!

Will Richardson, GLEF, George Lucas Education Foundation, Educational Technology, Leadership IT, ICT

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