Educational Discourse

My family and I arrived home from a great two days away as I attended a day working with our Teachers’ Association President and then we decided that it would be nice to just spend another day away. We arrived home tired but happy from two days of just being away. This morning we were up and off to church then home for brunch. Things were going really well and then I did a stroll out back.

Some time during the night our deck and house was egged with about a dozen eggs. I’ve become kind of accustom to this happening as this summer saw my truck receive a little extra polishing a few times and there have been other small such things go on. I treat these as minor blips done by children who don’t know how to deal with things in any other fashion. For the most part, a little warm water and soap cleans things up. This time was as usual, they fired quite a number of missiles, most missing the house but a few hit their mark. What really gets me this time is they hit my outside stereo! I haven’t checked if it works but this faithful stereo has been with me for over 15 years and has survived all kinds of moves, drops and outside elements. I really hope it wasn’t affected. It provides me with outside music to cook by and allows me to listen to different CBC specials during the summer evening hours. I listen to ball games while playing with the kids and relaxing music as my wife and I sit by our outside firepit. It probably gets used more during the summer than any other stereo equipment during the summer.

As for the egging, it is nothing new. It is a tradition that goes back through the centuries. I find it quite amusing since I’ve found that, for the most part, people’s aims are pretty off when hurling the missiles. In fact, in this last round, approximately 12 eggs were fired and 3 hit their mark with most landing on the roof and a few not even hitting the house. I could be upset and go about trying to “punish” those responsible or, like I’ve learned to do,  let it go as youthful misconduct and not let it upset what I do at the school. As an administrator, I’m more worried about the big problems that are facing our youth, like the use of alcohol and drugs, than a few eggs.

I wish more people were concerned with such issues! It seems that I spend more time dealing with small, non-educational issues like hats in the hall and student parking, which create all kinds of problems, instead of working with parents and other groups to develop community programs that will help students deal with the pressures around them. I have people so concerned that I might have a run-in with their child that I end up spending more time than needed on such things instead of coordinating and helping teachers with our division SMART goal and working with community members on developing programs that will help our students. Regardless of what happens outside of school, my role in the school is to make sure that all students get the best education that they can and, despite what people assume, each new day brings about the opportunity for a student to try again. Sigh!

I’ve discussed often the many things that I am doing to develop myself in the role of administrator. My reflective journal has been very good for me, especially when I use it regularly. What I’ve noticed is that when I can reflect on what might be going on or contemplate some ideas for solutions, I have a better chance of success. I find this true about my blog writing as well. My absence is more a case that I don’t know what direction to go so I’m not writing.

As an administrator, I work very hard to develop myself, learning from my mistakes. Although I wish others would do the same, I have to remind myself that I control no one but me and I must learn to work with all types in all situations in order to be effective. I just wish learning wasn’t always so messy

As I working on various things today, I was struck by the amount of work that seems to come along each day which involves some sort of technology. Today was a bit different from most days as we had new students registering at our school (which we are very, very happy about!) With new students comes the usual amount of forms that they and their parents need to fill out (which have been reduced GREATLY by our division this year!) With that done, I toured them around the school showing off all our new upgrades, talking up our Art program and explaining the various policies that we have regarding different things like dress and computers. It was then that I had all kinds of work to do.

We have to register our students electronically with the provincial database, which the secretary does. I have to request a school computer account, have the student log in and make sure that their email account is working. It then becomes a series of requests as we try to get things up and running on the school system. In the mean time, we’re trying to get things going in classrooms with the computers with different teachers requesting things be done. As one of the technology people in our building and having “time”, I get called regularly to do this. Then comes work created by answering and sending emails, getting the various submission dates for the different forms required by different educational departments. This type of action continues as the year progresses as we collect data in the different PLT’s and begin working on our SMART goals for the year.

This is just a small taste of what happens with the addition of technology. This doesn’t include the time planning and using technology in teaching. This involves even more additional time as there are various things that one does including photocopying from a variety of texts in order to get a broad perspective or spending time investigating some of the websites that will be used when investigating a topic. As someone who is somewhat capable with technology, I find that it has not, in fact, saved me any time as a principal or a teacher. If nothing else, it has created additional work as the technology changes at an ever increasing pace, more “people” are becoming “important” giving their opinions about what should be happening in schools, education, society, with students, with parents and other things. Not only is if difficult to keep up with the reading from the various people in my network of working associates, my ever increasing social network increases my access to interesting ideas in many areas and these don’t include the books that are flying off the presses with ways for me to improve my leadership, which seem to change with each new moon, to how to deal with the ever increasing number of students who have a “learning disability” of some sort.

A Life?

Is if possible to have a life separate from the educational one that I have chosen to live? Has technology increased my workload and given me more things to do? Definitely. However, I have learned that one must not make mistakes repeatedly if one expects to get different results. To do something again and again and expect it to change is, well, down right dumb. This means that if I am going to have “a life” outside of school, I must see where technology can save me time, see where it is using up too much time and begin to make some changes, using techniques from the former to decrease the latter. So, first off, I’ve realized that I don’t need to put my contacts into my PDA or any other contact list. I just past the list from central office into my contacts folder and add the document to my PDA. All my contacts there. Also, I’ve found a To Do list that works and use it exclusively. No more transferring it from one place to another. I use a wiki for many of my communications and planning so I don’t have to transfer anything and I use an online document handler so I can access all my documents without having to use any jump drive or emailing. I plan all my meetings with teachers and other staff in the morning to end before 8:30 so I have time to take care of the minor things at the beginning of the day and use my PDA alarm to tell me when it is 8:30 so I know when it’s time to move on.

Technology – a blessing and a burden

I like all it has to offer but I am becoming more aware of the added “costs” of using it, especially in education. It has opened a whole new way of learning and teaching but it has created unforeseen work for many educators that is just “assumed” will be taken care of in some way. I have come to understand that all excellent leaders realize recreation is as important to good quality work as is hard work. Working longer doesn’t necessarily mean more is being done. As educational leaders, we need to demonstrate this by creating a balance in our lives, focusing on areas outside of school, taking care of ourselves physically, emotionally, spiritually and socially. For many of us, this may be one of the hardest things we do and a great test of our ability to be a complete leader.

School has been back for 4 days. We started three days before the long weekend and now today. Thus far it’s been a great start to the year. Now, I was hoping to do all kinds of reading and blogging this summer but, alas, the best laid plans of crickets and men. (We have a cricket infestation going on!) I was also very busy this summer doing a host of other things and spent less time than I usually do at the school. When I did come back, I was refreshed and ready to get back at the work.

Being ready does not mean that I’ve hit the groove yet. Like the start of any school year, there are many different things that need to be done, forms that need to be filled in and checked and other administration items. Then there is the teaching, which I have one class. I enjoy the class, Communication Technology Production, but it has been slow starting. Friday the site we had been using for mindmapping was down so we tried another only to find out that students couldn’t remember passwords. In the end, the students did a good job of the mindmaps and, hopefully, learned of a new tool that they can use. I still am not completely satisfied with my plan for the year so I’ve been redoing parts and I’m hoping to get it done soon.

This is where the difficulty has arisen. I can’t find my groove. I know it might take a few weeks but I’m just feeling something isn’t working right but I can’t put my finger on it. I know that within this week I’ll have most of my meeting dates organized and be ready to get back into action with some of the committees I’m on but I just don’t have any real flow going at the moment.

I could be that I have too much swirling around in my head and I need to get some things down and then I’ll feel more comfortable with what is going on and what I have to do. It’s not that I feel overwhelmed – I mean really, would I be typing this entry if that was the case! It’s more a feeling like – well – loose endedness. I know that one of my goals was to use my time at school much more efficiently but it seems that each day just blows by and I’m not sure what exactly I’ve been able to accomplish but I’m wiped at the end of the day.

It could be that I haven’t yet found an effective way to list and communicate all my upcoming dates with the people whom I’m suppose to be communicating. You see, I went out and bought  a PAD this summer as I thought it would really help with getting organized and I wouldn’t need to haul around my laptop. However, it doesn’t sync with my ical so I am using the software it came with and I haven’t had time to figure out how to get the two to sync so I’m listing things twice and missing items on both. I’d really like to get that figured out so if anyone has any ideas, let me know.

On the positive, the staff is using a pbwiki to share information, calendar dates and track student lates. So far it has worked great and I know when things are taking place at school, which students are not arriving on time and what different classes are doing. It seems that the staff is catching on to using such things. I’m also planning to help each teacher with using and integrating some form of Web2.0 into their teaching – helping them become more familiar with a particular tool and sharing things with people. Some people are really excited about this idea.

I know as a leader people look to me for guidance and if I’m having trouble getting organized, what will others think? That’s were it’s good to know that stuff like this isn’t the end of the world. Experience tells me that this is a learning curve that I’ll have to get through and the groove will arrive soon. I think it’s already there just hidden under a pile of paper that has invaded my desk along with the annoying sound of crickets that invaded our town and school. I never was really fond of Jimney!