Educational Discourse

Well, I’ve run across posting problems again. I don’t know what to do. Please check out the post here for all the links that I included. I will update here later.

Today was our admin meeting day. On this day, I travel about an hour to meet with the rest of the administrators in our school division. At this time we are focusing on PLC’s, SMART goals and, finally, a bit of technology. Another key component is our grade-alike groups in which we discuss different issues that are affecting our schools and brainstorm ideas that might assist us in finding solutions to these issues.

Now, I’m in a particularly unique situation as a school administrator. In the present school division, I am the largest K – 12 school by approximately 70 students. This means that I have more staff and more admin time than other schools. I also do not have the problems of offering senior options and finding ways to combine classes like my counterparts. Interestingly, I am one of the few k – 12 schools that does not have a vice-principal, meaning that schools with much smaller populations than ours have an adminstration team that works together within the building. I may have more administration time but I spend that time alone. This is the result of the almalgamation of six school divisions and the legacy division I was in did not have vice-principals. All this puts me in a very unique situation in that I have to use a variety of different leadership skills in order to be an effective leader. However, today I made, or realized, an amazing thing.

Remember this, it will come back into play later.

Yesterday, our school hosted a GAL day (Get A Life) for our grade 11 and 12’s. The day was organized around ideas and themes that students gave to us. We dealth with self concept, relationships, stress, living on your own safety tips, responsibilities of being on your own, resumes, interviews and optional educational opportunities for students. The day was successful. We had good participation and we have learned much that we will apply to our organization for next year. My role was as host, organizer and presenter. Oh, and tear-down manager.

My first presentation was called – Flat is Where It’s At. I took information from the book The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman and mixed it with information from the book A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink. I then used the TED presentation by Jeff Hann and the movie mix of Did You Know? by Scott McLeod which is a remix of Karl Fisch’s original. This is the first time I have done anything like this. Now, the first presentation of this to the students went okay. They were interested by the facts from Did You Know? and we were able to dialogue about some of the implications for them as people in Canada. After seeing the Jeff Hann presentation, we then discussed how something like this might impact them in their future careers. What was great was after seeing the presentation, they began to see how that type of technology could impact everything from engineers to dress designers to medicine to video game makers. The more they talked, the more they were willing to explore the possibilities. Some of them asked for the TED url, which I gave them, so they could see other things that were going on there. With this in mind, they moved off to other presentations.

Later in the day, I did a presentation of alternative educational opportunities. Part of the presentation dealt with apprenticeship opportunities and careers in these areas. The students, referring to what we saw earlier in the day, began to ask about the viability of such careers. We then had a good discussion on their need to continue learning after highschool and they came to the conclusion that, for them, learning was going to be a continuous thing that would be part of their entire life. What a lightbulb moment that was!! I then added some information on Second Life and distance education, giving them some idea of what some universities and tech-schools are doing with on-line learning. This really sparked the conversation, which is what I wanted it to do. They began to wonder about the viability of studying in various universities all from one location by being able to tap into the opportunities offered in a place like Second Life and how this might impact their ability to determine which was a better method and, wait, how they would know if the person who was instructing was in fact a certified professor or credible in that particular area. Unfortunately, our time was over and the students had to disperse.

My day was not over. At 7:00 pm the people who presented during the day offered a parent evening and gave an overview of what they had done during the day. My presentation was very similar to the morning although I did add some other information from Daniel Pink’s book that I thought they might find interesting. What caught me off guard was their reaction to the two movies. Instead of being scared and concerned by the numbers and information presented, they were intrigued. They did admit to being overwhelmed by some of it but they had many more questions than the students. In fact, I had a number of requests for copies of both so that they could share the information with some other people. These parents were very interested in SL. In fact, the reaction was so positive because the group was able to discuss the information and take some time to put into context what was given to them. One of the presenters wants my blog url for him and his wife, who’s a school administrator, as he felt it would be good to see how this works.

Today, when we came to technology, I was still kind of “high” from my experience the previous evening. Well, imagine the crash that happened when it became apparent that many of this group were not really interested in any of the new information I was wanting to share from what had taken place but, as one person stated “Technology really uses alot of time. Why do we spend so much time on it” HUH??? As I began to explain the implications of what was happening with the technological innovations and how we are just a bit behind, I was reminded that this was off topic and we had better get back to discussing the task at hand, what were the plus and minuses of the software we currently had. Smack! The crash.

Tonight, as a sort of therapy, I’ve spent the last bit just reading about what is going on in other schools. Now, not all the posts are about technology. In fact, most of them aren’t. But, what I realized tonight was that I just don’t have one vice-principal to share with and discuss things with, I have a whole RSS feeder full of people who share common interests, have a common passion and will be there to tell me that I’ll be okay. I’m not limited to those I can see f2f. I have a support network that is, really, unlimited. Now, in reality, I’m not that popular and I can only read so many posts. But, new people are always leaving comments and I’m always reading new blogs.

I have also realized that my staff is much farther ahead than most of the other staffs. I usually find that I am frustrated by the slowness at which we are moving but, today, I realized that my staff is very much moving ahead and willing to try new things. Hey, we have a staff pbwiki calendar that almost all the staff is now visiting and adding events. We are using email regularly. We are trying different things with the technology. We are starting to have conversations about literacy outside of text and wondering about how students will develop digital literacies.

Today, driving home, I felt very much distant from the other administrators. I don’t worry about cellphones or ipods or coffee cups in the hall. I encourage students to use alternate methods of presentation in my classes, although my CPT class is a whole other story, er, post!

Then, I realized that I’m not doing this job for other administrators, I’m doing it for the students that were in the school yesterday and my immediate focus needs to be on the school in which I work and the teachers and students whom I serve with your help. Yes. You are the administrators and leaders whom I look to for inspiration and support. You are the administrators and leaders that provide me with the insights and ideas that I then take and use with the staff and students in our school.

Last night, one of the presenters asked me why I blog. I explained that it is because of the knowledge that I gain from the vast wealth that is available to me. I realize, however, that it’s more than that. I blog because I want to share with those with whom I have connected. I blog because I realize that the synergy created within the blogosphere is so tremendous that it has the ability to transform education. Maybe only one teacher and school at a time. It is changing education. Differentiated leadership – matching the leadership to what is needed by the people/person. For me, it is happening because I have the opportunity to be connected to a larger group of people who are leaders.

Today was a very good day.