5 years ago, I made the decision to accept a position as an Assistant Principal. I got the congratulations and tired jokes about joining the Dark Side you would almost undoubtedly anticipate if you were in the same position. Also, equally as predictable, I made that vow to be that administrator who never lost sight of what it was like to be a classroom teacher. But how do you do that?
After all, the volume of things any campus administrator is being held responsible for continues to grow just like a teacher does; and most of the items being put on their plates are things that can seem like they're being forced to be away from the classroom. Now, I'll be the first to admit that I can't get to every class every day or even every week. But physical presence is not the only thing being in the classroom is all about. Yes, it's a piece of the puzzle without a doubt, but there are more ways to be plugged into the classroom than just your average appraisal, walkthrough or casual visit. So, in a world that seems to force administrators to anywhere but the classroom, how can you stay connected to the classroom when it's only up and running a few short hours of the day? Twitter Chats If you follow me at all on Twitter you know that I began my journey on the Twitter Chat full force during the '17-'18 school year. It began as part of my action research project for my district leadership. While I certainly found my share of times feeling redundant, I also found something unique, I felt a greater connection to the classroom. I particularly enjoy chats that are teacher heavy. Chats like #tlap and #kidsdeserveit really have given me a lot of great perspective and insight into the classroom. What's working? What needs improving? It's opened my eyes to great things educators are doing all over the country and the globe. It's also given me some great ideas to take back to my own school. Not to implement as some sweeping reform, but more of along the lines of "I'm going to leave this here in case anyone would like to use it." Social Media Recently I've become a big proponent of following, friending (or any other term that's used) the people you work with. No, not as a gotcha for the things you post but as a way to get to know you. I'll be the first to admit that I don't go to work in order to expand my close-knit group of friends and I do enjoy some secluded moments when I'm not working as a campus administrator. However, I also know that no matter your opinion about how good, bad or indifferent it is, people live a part of their life on social media. As educators, what we do impacts so much of our lives and it comes out on social media. It might not always be in the glowing form of celebrations that we would like but there is no denying it's there. It's also a great look into a classroom. No, a post that reads as a negative or challenge is not something to be balked at, dismissed or labeled as naysaying. For starters, if one educator is feeling it odds are so are others. It can become a great opportunity to close a gap at your campus that you otherwise might not have been aware of. It can also be a great way to help bring a classroom or campus together. No matter what, I would encourage you to challenge the notion that somehow being connected on social media outside of school blurs the lines of professionalism. Office Out of a Classroom As I said earlier, physical presence isn't the end all be all but it is a piece of the puzzle. I get that there are some conversations and points of business that just have to be held in private. There are also quite a few that don't. There are also a lot of opportunities for conversations that get missed because we're in our offices. This year, I'm going to try to find some classrooms that I can office out of. I'm going to start by playing it safe and using classrooms where the teacher is on their conference period and students aren't generally present. I want to be able to talk individually with teachers about successes, failures, student struggles and student celebrations on their home field, not mine. My ambition is to eventually find a way where I can just be present in a room where learning is taking place without it being tied to something evaluative. It seems simple enough but all of us in education continue to get second helpings on our plates despite the fact that we're already full. As simple as it sounds I know it won't be that easy to make this happen, but I want to do it. The classroom is still the most important place we have on our campuses. I, as an administrator, cannot afford to lose sight of what it takes to guide students through the learning process on a daily basis. I want to see and hear about the struggles and successes first hand to ensure that all teachers, support staff and anyone else who calls a classroom home daily for 8+ hours know that I'm not too far removed from the experience of being a classroom teacher.
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There's been enough writing done on how change will always be a part of life and how we will need to embrace it or be conquered by it. Fair enough. In a world where the average time a company is in the S&P 500 ( a stock market measure) has shrunk from 33 years to less than 20 years, you can see that change effects, people, businesses and so much more at a pace not yet seen. Yes, those not adapting to change are often getting left behind.
But why? Why do we need to change? We get that the way we've always done it may not work anymore, but why? Honestly, I have never had a great answer for this until this week. Ironically, it's simplistic enough to write, a little bit of an oxymoron, but it sure seems to work. Credit for this idea has to go to Cordel Robinson. He is the Pastor of Leadership Development at the church my family attends and his message this past week really made me see the why behind why change is essential. "The key to growing old is living new." That's it. That's why. While Mr. Robinson was speaking to the spiritual side of things, the truth is, that's why we have to change in education, or any other industry. The key to growing old (which we'll define as becoming rooted and established as a school, district or industry) is to live new, Think about it. It's how we're designed as humans. From the time of our birth until the time of our death, our bodies spend our entire lives making us new again. You shed your entire top layer of your skin about once per month. Your body replenishes over 200 billion red blood cells per day. You shed your baby teeth for your permanent teeth. Your hair goes from... well, we won't go there. You get my point. It's our human design. We grow old by living new. Education has to do the same, we have to grow old by living new. That's why we have to continue to change, often times at a rate we're not comfortable with. While we might wish we could slow down sometimes, at least we're not responsible for rebuilding something 200 billion times a day. I started this blog a year ago. I have to admit, I was skeptical that it wouldn't be worth my while, but I committed myself to at least giving it a chance. With that year now under my belt, what have I learned from this experience?
The biggest take away is how blogging has made me really become a thinker again. Thinking about things was never really an issue for me, elaborating and clarifying those thoughts was. Pre-blog, many of my reflections were just an unorganized, chaotic mess that I would often struggle to remember in the first place. Blogging brought about not just a way to organize my thoughts, it brought a way for me to extend and reflect my thinking while hopefully inspiring others through my own words and thoughts. The second take away; blogging saved me from trying to become a "know it all." Instead, blogging has given me a chance to re-frame that mindset into becoming a "learn it all" and "learn from it all." The latter of those two might be greatest thing to come of this journey when it's all said and done. Being a blogger has opened me up to a world of other bloggers as well garnering important feedback from those who read and challenge my thoughts. I also enjoy the public accountability it gives me. It's out there for the world to see and I think it's made me a better professional and person. Finally, it's a great way to measure personal growth and evolution in your own thought process. I enjoy reading old things I've written. I enjoy seeing things that I have grown or shifted my thinking on since writing. It's helped me realize that your thinking does evolve and that the worse thing you can do is dig your heels in on something just because you thought that way in the past. The bottom line: start writing your thoughts, reflections and challenges down. Share them with others. Watch the growth that comes both personally and professionally and above all else, get excited that your work just might be the missing piece that someone has been waiting for. Life is messy, but you already knew that. If you have kids (or work with kids) you live it every single day. The good news is that messes are able to be cleaned up. Some messes require more of a cleanup than others. No matter what though, no mess is so great it cannot be cleaned up.
No matter what your messes are in life, you clean them up. But is that where you stop? Why not turn your mess into a message? It's amazing what you learn when life gets messy. It's also amazing how many of us encounter the same messes in life. When we don't turn our mess into a message we miss a great opportunity not only to reflect upon our own struggles, we miss the chance to bring what we learned from the experience and share it with other so that they can grow with us. Remember, some messes are harder than others to clean up. Much of that depends on your personal preference. Think about your house. You have chores that you despise and things that you really don't mind doing. What fits in each of those categories is different for each one of us. Some of us like to vacuum, some don't. No matter what it is, the messes that you handle well can and should be turned into messages that will help and inspire the rest of us. The greatest teaching and learning tool that we have is our interactions with each other. In a world where you need to be a "learn it all" and not a "know it all" we have to create messages from our messes. What messes do you currently have or have recently cleaned up that need to become messages? Once you've figured that part out, share them and do it face to face where possible. Before going on vacation, a long weekend getaway, or even just to a day-long meeting, many people will set their out of office auto-reply up on their email. Well, I'm thinking of doing this permanently. No, I'm not resigning my position or going completely off the grid (but we've all thought about doing that before), I'm thinking of doing some of my more "daily" functions that don't require strict confidentiality etc. outside of my office next school year. Specifically, I'd like to find a teacher or teachers that would allow me to come into their rooms as a shared space.
I've tried this before with using flex spaces and other types of areas but the disconnect between the pulse of the school and myself still feels the same. I want to go into classrooms, possibly even when their in the middle of something. I don't want to distract or take away from the learning, I just want to see what that days to my perception and understanding of the school environment. Will I feel or view things differently? Would it do anything for the way a teacher views an administrator? Hopefully, I will get some takers for this little experiment of mine. Soft skills are all the rage right now. I'd probably even describe them as existing in that "buzzword" category. You can Google "employers soft skills" and come back with thousands of news articles about the soft skills that employers say they want to see in the 21st-century employee. What are those skills? Communication, emotional intelligence, patience, persistence, perseverance, adaptability etc.
Soft skills? More like essential skills. The name soft skills just carries too many implications of these skills being secondary or complementary skills. These aren't just skills you pair with your knowledge of website design, engineering to make yourself a more complete professional, employee or anything else. These are often times the skills that allow people to be distinguished in a crowd. They're a part of why a cool and collected Kennedy beat a sweaty-mess Nixon and why Mondale could only laugh when Reagan said he refused to exploit, for political purposes, his opponents' youth and inexperience when asked if he was too old to be President. None of the skills are revolutionary. In truth, these skills are no newer than Oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere. What seems to be new is the attention they're receiving for their perceived lack of existence in today's modern world. That's where schools, and, more importantly, governing bodies that right learning standards come in. Our standards reflect words like analyze, evaluate, compare and many others taken right from Bloom's Taxonomy. The thing is, with the emphasis being so much on the Bloom's verb, little time is given to the development of these essential skills. Let's take adaptability for example. What if a course was designed so that in the middle of a really long project, we scrapped everything and started over from scratch and going in a completely different direction? Yes, I know this might cause a small (or large) explosion in the amount of email and phone calls you receive so you would want great communication (an essential skill) beforehand. But ask anyone in any professional capacity how many times this has happened to them. I bet they run out of fingers and toes to count on. We could go through countless more examples with each of these so-called "soft skills" but I think you catch my drift at this point. We need to stop marginalizing these skills by name and we need to start writing standards at the state level that reflect these skills being embedded in the learning process. I recently read Katie Martin's blog post about whether or not we need PD. It's a good read and you can read it HERE. One of the examples that she cited in her post was about how a group of teachers got to go to a lab an see some authentic work being done there. With those experiences, they returned to campus to begin designing some engaging, authentic lessons and experiences for their students based upon what they had seen and experienced that day.
The idea that PD should experience a dramatic shift is not new. I loved this idea of teachers going to visit actual work places to see how the concepts they teach are being applied on a daily basis. The question is how do you grow that from isolated instance to movement? My idea came to from something totally unrelated. This week someone came in with a note regarding their absence to participate in Take Your Child To Work Day. That's when it came to me, we need a Take A Teacher To Work Day. It might be so great that we need to move "day" to "week." Instead of teachers trickling in over the course of several weeks in the summer to hear another stand and deliver session or participate in another gallery walk, let's get a movement going where teachers can routinely see how the skills, content and concepts they teach are applied on a daily basis; particularly those of us that live in a larger metropolitan area like I do. Here in DFW, Texas we are home to some of the largest corporations in the world. ExxonMobil, American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, AT&T and many more have their headquarters right here in our backyard. We need to foster partnerships and learning opportunities with them; not just as places to take our students on field trips, but for our teachers to learn and grow as professionals. I'll admit we might have to work on the name over time, but the concept behind Take A Teacher To Work Day could really be one of the innovative practices that we're always seeking. Don't blame standardized testing, a tear in the fabric of traditional families or anything else. In fact, let's stop wasting so much time with the "Blame Game" in general. It's not productive and has no track record of producing improved results. In a manner of speaking, it's the Diet Coke of dieting.
What we need is balance, focus and a willingness to not just push the pendulum all the way to the other side in the name of solving a problem. In THIS ARTICLE from the Washington Post and reprinted on the mySA website, Jeffrey J. Selingo points out the top job skills schools aren't teaching well. Ironically, it's not our curriculum or learning objectives that are the issue. It's the soft skills. In a world focused on standards, higher order thinking and STEM/STEAM many are asking for professionals that have skills like "critical reasoning, creative problem solving, collaboration and basic digital fluency." Bottom line: they're looking for people who generate creative solutions, ideas, and approaches, not right answers. There's a key difference between the two. A right answer means everyone should arrive at the same place. There's no variation and often times many take the same path because it is obviously the most efficient one. Creative solutions bring about new meanings to old understandings. They push boundaries. If answers are generated, they're often unanticipated or push beyond what was thought to be possible. We've got to push students past answers and regurgitation. We've got to create avenues for students to develop the soft skills in conjunction with the technical. I highly recommend reading the entire article. If you ask a teacher what they want from any school administrator you'll probably get answers along two lines. Some will say they want to feel supported and trusted. That's really what instructional leadership is at it's heart, an ability to support people, teachers included. The others will say that they want a way to be able to give administration feedback in the way that they receive feedback from administration.
This week I will be starting a How Am I Doing feedback form. I'm going to put it in my email tag line and collect data through a Google Form, Instead of posting it on a QR code or in any public forum. Instead, I am going to put it in my email tagline. I'm also going to open this up to parents, students and anyone else that wants to give me feedback. Names will be optional and the prompts will be simple:
I am looking forward to what I find out. Hopefully it will be humbling. Hopefully I will find out where I really need to grow and improve. Regardless, I am excited to put myself out there and see what I can learn. Want to participate? Just click on the link and feel free to let me know how you think I am doing. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdGw5J5-tepb6K-0imJ28Wd1f5CKaSPNH_DsOuQExCX5nJhYw/viewform?usp=sf_link I set two goals this year: start a nonprofit and write a book. The nonprofit organization is now official. You can follow us on Twitter @OLOM_Orphan and find our Facebook page under One Less for One More. I am about halfway to my goal of a 30,000-word book. I talk about these a lot and I don't apologize for that. I want people to see my work. I don't want them to see it for my own personal gain; to be placed on a pedestal or podium and viewed as someone of a higher status. I want to show it off because it demonstrates what I am about and what I encourage and ask of others. As a watered down, overused analogy, I want people to see that I walk the walk not just talk the talk. More importantly, I hope it will provide inspiration for others to engage in and realize their dreams.
There's enough do and do-not out there to last you a lifetime so I won't venture down that road. I don't want to tell you how you should or shouldn't share your work. I've never liked to. I will say it this way, it's okay to bring attention to what you've done and what you're doing. It's okay to show that you are the person you represent in your daily life. It's also ok to do it in your own way, the way that fits who you want to be. I'm enjoying working towards my two goals. I am enjoying sharing that journey with people. I've talked to a lot of students, parents, teachers, administrators and community members about what I've been working on. Their feedback and commentary have been a lot of how I've been able to keep going. Sharing your work isn't just a great way to show people that you walk the walk, it's a great way to find that motivation to keep going. So share what you are doing in a way that fits you, but please share. It won't just help you refill your cup, it will give great inspiration to someone else; a great gift to give to anyone. |
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