LeaderTalk

Your First 90 Days in Your New Role

An open letter to all who are moving into new positions...

Congratulations!  I'm really proud and impressed with you and your new school.  I'm sure you will do well.  As you know though, any new school assignment comes with some challenges-some are more explicit than others.  If your role is to improve the school, remember that you have to get this done through the willing participation of other people. Regardless of whether you are an insider or an outsider, you face the challenge of getting the people in your new organization to embrace you and buy into the vision that you have for it. These lessons are not a guarantee of future success, but they will substantially improve your chances for success in your new role.  These questions (to be asked of your staff, your boss, external stakeholders, and possibly the person you are replacing) may help you hit the ground...listening.

During these interviews, which should last about 20 minutes, giving you 10 minutes to catch your breath and  summarize any notes.  You should block out about an hour for your direct reports-you want to get a good sense from them and their priorities during your time together.  I’ve listed below some sample questions that you can use as a springboard for your discussions.  These questions were adapted from my friend and colleague in executive development, Jim Shanley-I’ve framed these questions as though for a principal for a new school-you can adapt these when you move to another role.

• What are our school’s top 3-5 priorities?
• How do we plan to meet and achieve those priorities?
• What are your top 3 priorities (you want to see how they match up with the school’s priorities)
• What are the 3-5 most important things we should preserve and keep doing here? Why?
• What are the top three things we need to change? Why?
• What do you most hope that I do?
• What are you most concerned that I might do?
• If you were in my shoes, what would you do first?

You will want to take careful notes-think like a researcher-and synthesize what you have learned. Be sure to share what you have learned back to your various direct reports and stakeholders.

Best of luck to you and let me know if I can help you in any way,

Chris

Uncovering the Path

The path to understanding and change. This is a personal journey but one that has been formed by the many people who form my personal leaning network. In the discussion surrounding NECC08 one of the things that people have talked about is how this NECC may have been different from the last.  NECC is different  each year because we are different having journeyed, grown, changed over the course of the year. In reflecting on this reality for myself , in thinking about about leadership and learning,  I have had cause to think about my journey, my perceptions and the ongoing act of transformation.

 
A vision is shared,  

       connections and exploration begin,

       a personal vision is developed,

                a shared vision is built,

                 learning about tools, connections, and possibilities,

,                 exploration/ practice begins,

                         reflection on practice leads to reflection on pedagogy, 

                           establishing big picture goals for student learning

                           and knowing where to find the tools to help achieve your goals,
 
Obviously this is not solely a linear process but it does summarize my journey and the journey for our school. (The highlights represent our current focus.)

The first agent of change I encountered almost 4 years ago was Alan November. At NECC this year I attended his session "Designing Rigorous and Globally Connected Assignments". The ideas were not new but their value lay in how they embrace the big picture and  they serve as a waypoint to evaluate your course of action. Alan always touches on the fundamentals like using country codes and other tricks of good searching and some basic tools ( a concept I will comeback too) but the heart of it all for me was in the following three statements.

• Give the children problems to solve. 
• Rewrite the job description of learners.
• We need more voices teaching

What impact does this have on my planning for next year? What do I need to do?

First, I need to know where my staff is with regard to the journey. I was fortunate to take 4 people with me to NECC and we will debrief tomorrow night and talk about where we are and where we perceive our colleagues are with this journey. The tools discussion also fits in here. What are the essential tools? We are re -imaging all the computers in the school with a basic tool box to ensure everyone has access to what they might need and to ensure some platform uniformity. We will include Google docs and open office, picassa for basic photo editing, skype, photostory3, Google notebook, diigo, audacity, Google reader, google earth, voicethread, primaryaccess one of the mindmap programs, wetpaint wiki and learnerblogs.  The emphasis is on ubiquitous access to tools but  it is driven by the pedagogy that says that learners need access to information, collaboration, global connectivity and the ability to be content creators.

With regard to Alan's statements particularly the middle concept  that we need to rewrite the job description of learners I am thrown back into the whole discussion of how to be an agent of change. Chris Lehmann's  NECC presentation on Understanding by Design (UbD) hit the nail squarely on the head because it addresses how we think about what we teach and what learning is all about. UbD will form the other part of our before school  to do list. UbD is not a magic bullet but it is about thinking and planning and with each passing year I become more convinced that one of the reasons change is slow is because  for the most part we plan like we always have, chapter by chapter, sticking in  blogs and wikis or some other tool because we know we should but not because we are thinking differently or setting different goals. Once the school year starts and the busier we become we are more likely than ever to fall back into what is easy and comfortable. So starting our planing with the big picture and working with Ubd can change our thinking , our framework for learning and become a tool of change. At least that is what I am thinking.

The final piece I am going to strive for in the coming school year  is to create an environment that values, supports and rewards risk takers.

So here are the questions: Tools are cool but what are the basic elements we really need?   Personally and for your school -How did your journey unfold- Where are you and what is next? How can you rewrite the job description of learners? What agents of change are you putting into place for the coming year?

Photo credit: Uploaded on January 21, 2007
by ionushi

Turn Off and Tune Out

                  

I am currently sitting in a 40 year old cabin located at 9,800 feet at the base of Wheeler Peak - the highest point in New Mexico.  I wasn't going to do much in the way of blogging for a few weeks, but responsibilities and obligations do continue...and when I discovered that I have access to wifi even here in the Kit Carson National Forest, I had no excuse not to submit my post.

To read more about the technology that I have access to even while on vacation, you might like to read a post I wrote over on The Faculty Room.

In the meantime - and certainly not unaware of the irony, I am writing to remind us (or maybe just myself) that from time to time we need to shut it all down.  Walk away from the technology.  Turn it all off and just tune out for awhile.

Re-Fresh.  Re-New.  Re-Create.  Ourselves.  Naturally.

I saw a t-shirt that said, "SpellCheck cannot fix stupid".  It reminded me that we CAN become over-reliant on the tools of the digital age.  And as much as I'd love to send everyone a Powerpoint full of music and pictures from this beautiful wilderness, it could never take the place of encouraging you to take a drive out to the country and observe the scenery first-hand.

You can watch all the fishing shows you want on the Outdoor Channel - or you can pick up that old rod and reel and head out to your favorite stream, river, or lake.

You can watch all the golf you want on TV this weekend - or you can pick up those clubs collecting dust in the garage and head out to your favorite course.

I can continue to write this post, or I can assume I have made my point and send it in, turn off my laptop, put my iPod, PDA, and cellphone in the drawer and go take a long hike into the beautiful mountains.

Hmmmm, not much choice there.

See y'all when I return to my office in a few weeks!

The humming noise of All Things Technological will now be replaced solely with a totally different and totally natural humming...

                     

Walkthroughs and Learning Objectives

I had to post this. I laughed out loud. You may have already seen this, I think it is a couple of years old, but still some of the funniest 45 seconds I've seen.

Do you know what is going on in your school the way these guys do?

Principal Walkthroughs and Learning Objectives

(Am I allowed to double up on posts? ;) )
Tracy

How does one conceptualize education in a contemporary environment?

[This is cross-posted as a (lengthy :) ) comment to Digitality or Why ‘Literacy’ is Dead on Christopher Parson's Blog, Talking Creatively About Education 2.0]

Chris ponders:

"How does one conceptualize education in a contemporary environment?"

I'm going to answer that main question by answering some other questions...

Question 1:
"When a student is taught how to upload videos to YouTube, or how to create a ‘mash-up’, are they really being ‘educated’, or are they learning a set of useful skills?"

It depends how this is taught and why. The first step is definitely skill-based - in order to use any technology comfortably (including pen and paper) one needs to be skilled in using it, so that the technical process or methodology does not get in the way of the thought process. Once the technical skill is acquired however, it remains merely a useful skill unless we delve into why we are doing it.

For example. In my classes last year I had a number of students with difficulties concerning print - both in reading and writing. One student in particular has very little access to the printed word due to a deep case of dyslexia coupled with a lot of moving around and changing of schools as a younger boy. As a consequence, it was not 'diagnosed' and therefore not 'treated' (and there we have the medical terms for disease when all it is is a different way of learning...). This boy is 16 years old and has not learned appropriate strategies for communication as a dyslexic learner, up until this year he was being asked to struggle with pen and paper writing and asked to read text that was decidely immature for him (babyish) because it was of a lower level. I felt this to be insulting. And he did as well, apparently, since he spent most of the first 2 weeks of school skateboarding...not at school but at the park. So I taught him some useful skills, like uploading pictures and working with video, audio, and text to speech software. And then I taught him how to use those skills to enhance how he communicates and how he makes sense of the world. For example, I organized a special day for him with a skateboarder I know (see here:
http://leadingfromtheheart.org/2008/01/13/a-day-at-the-parkliterally/ )

Not all of how he processed the day is on the web. He wanted to keep his experiences, as well as his experiments with new technology, a bit private. He wrote some simple, very basic questions to Marc (the skateboarder) as part of the post-day experience. He was able to write them legibly by using an at&t natural voice reader that read his writing so he could hear any errors and fix them. Marc responded to his questions with a long letter that my student NEVER would have attempted reading had he not had had the text reader. I had taken pictures of his day with Marc and, because he had learned how to upload images, he was able to document his day using Photo Story where he narrated his day instead of writing about it. In this way he could communicate his experience to and from the world in ways he couldn't before he learned the nifty skills.

That's one example.

Question 2:
"The concern that I have is that literacy was born from an ordering philosophical position - literacy campaigns were designed around the need to order media in particular ways - whereas it seems to me that contemporary ‘literacies’ aim to provide exposure to, rather than an understanding of, new environments that students find themselves in."

You are making an assumption here. Students are already exposed to these environments, I don't need to expose them to it. I need to teach them both how to use the tools properly and appropriately and how to critically analyze the environments they are in. In fact, the edubloggers I read on a daily basis are not necessarily concerned with teaching students nifty skills (thought sometimes that can be fun and valid in itself) but how to use the skills for sense-making and how to make appropriate decisions for when the skills need to be used.

Question, er, statement 3:
"The most obvious response (which I don’t buy, but that’s another post entirely) is that students aren’t able to grasp broad epistemologies, and our teachers aren’t capable of explaining it. I think that this is blatantly false (students aren’t dumb, and teachers aren’t inept fools), but lets suppose that the position is as fair as I’m told it is."

Who told you this Chris? I'm glad you don't buy it. A major part of school reforms in Quebec and in other areas has to do with incorporating metacognition into learning, so that students need to be encouraged, nay, taught how to think about thinking, how to think about what and why they make the decisions they make about learning. Granted, it is not an easy process, and teachers are struggling with how to do this effectively and how to assess and report on it, yet it is made easier via the diverse tools available to us.

So, how does one conceptualize education today?

The focus needs to be on sense-making. Knowledge is out there. It is no longer the property of the teacher until she or he shares it with students. It would be unfair not to acknowledge the roles that digital tools play in literacy. And so, I agree with what you write "...teachers should focus on why we use particular environments for particular things." Definitely.

I am really enjoying our latest conversations on literacy, Chris. You are inspiring me to think more deeply about something I care about very much and I hope this continues. I also hope that others join in.
Thanks,
Tracy

Tips and Techniques Approach to Leadership?

Cross-posted at Ed Tech Journeys

In seminar after seminar I encounter educators who are looking for a simple ‘tips and techniques’ approach to mastering the art of leadership. While tips, techniques, and the experience of others has some value; I believe that by itself, it is very limited.

Talk is cheap. Advice is plentiful. Yet, effective leadership remains rare.

Authentic leadership is less about what you know and more about who you are. Improving our effectiveness is not only about collecting more advice and information about leadership, it is also about the very difficult task of personal change. It requires commitment and practice.

It's only human nature to look for the "magic bullet" or the secret shortcut to being a great leader, so to illustrate my point I took a few minutes to pull together the highlights from just a small number of the books, blogs, and other resources that are happy give you the road map to success.

Seven Habits of Successful People -Stephen R. Covey
1. Be pro-active
2. Begin with the end in mind
3. Put first things first
4. Think Win/Win
5. Seek to understand, then to be understood
6. Synergize - collaboration
7. Sharpen the saw - balanced self-renewal

The Eighth Habit - Stephen R. Covey
Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs

The Six Secrets of Change - Michael Fullan
1. Love your employees & your customers
2. Connect peers with purpose
3. Capacity building trumps judgmentalism
4. Learning is the work
5. Transparency rules
6. Systems learn

The One Thing You Need to Know - Buckingham
Narrowing your focus is a fundamental element of success.

Do Schools Kill Creativity? -  Sir Ken Robinson
“If you are not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”

Turnaround Leader - Michael Fullan
Relentless instructional focus
Leadership depth
Capacity building
Non-Judgmental
Data Driven
Define closing the gap as the goal
Attend to the basics
Tap into people’s dignity
Be sure the best people are working on it
All successful strategies are socially based
Stay the course through continuity
Build internal accountability
Establish conditions for the evolution of positive pressure
Use the previous 9 strategies to build public confidence
Effective leaders are energizing - not just innovative
Recognize you are dealing with well-qualified and well-educated group of folks that deserve to be treated like mature adults
Don’t be afraid to compliment people for their efforts
Keep your ego in check
The term ‘principal’ used to mean ‘principal teacher’. Try remembering what it was like to be a classroom teacher.
Never use your authority to threaten, intimidate, or demean.
Lead the school with moral conviction.
Be humble.

If You Don’t Feed the Teachers They Eat Students - Neila Connors
1. Care and be concerned for others
2. Desire to be successful
3. Handle stress
4. Be in good health
5. Think logically

Leadertalk Blog
One can’t overemphasize the value of building relationships with colleagues
Taking notes makes a difference - simply ask to take notes during a conversation
If you don’t know something don’t try to fake it
Roles and value are not the same. We may have different roles but doesn’t mean we have different worth.

LeaderTalk Blogger’s Advice for New Administrators
I will do it. Volunteer to do just about anything
Tackle a major project
Get involved at the District/State level
Understand your School’s and District’s priorities
Model online collaboration and enabling others
“Staff your weaknesses” John Maxwell

National Ed Tech Plan
“For educators to get the most from the rapidly evolving development of information and communication technology, leaders at every level; must not only supervise, but provide informed, creative, and ultimately transformative leadership for systemic change.”

There isn’t much to argue with in all this advice. It’s like ‘mom and apple pie’.

The problem is, even if you memorized every one of these points, even if you discussed each item for hours with other prospective leaders, even if you wrote essays about them and gained a deep understanding of their meaning; it would not make you a better leader.

Knowing the elements of leadership in your mind is not the same as embodying the elements of leadership in your actions.

Like most things in life, there are no shortcuts to effective leadership.

Let's take one example from the lists above to illustrate this point. One of the "tips" is to 'be humble'.

Let's agree that knowing that it is important to be ‘humble’ does not make you humble. If, in fact, you are not humble, you won’t become humble by just ‘wanting’ to be humble. Having the insight that humbleness is important to being a good leader  isn’t enough to change a lifetime of behaviors that make you the person you are. Learning to be humble will take a serious commitment to personal change. Real change comes through ongoing reflection and daily practices. It is a journey.

I’ll never forget the Principal who raised his hand during one of my sessions and proclaimed emphatically,

“I already know about leadership!”

I’m sure he did. He could probably recite the “7 Habits” or the “6 Secrets” with no problem; but as the rest of the class looked at him, it was clear that his leadership journey was going to be a very, very long one.

pete

First Principalship!

I am very excited to announce I have been named to my first principalship!  I have actually been on the job officially for 3 weeks.  Before the end of the school year I was working with the leadership team to begin preparations for the upcoming school year.  So while I am still new, I have been on the job for a couple of months.

To say the least, I am very excited for the upcoming school year.  The faculty and staff at my new school are wonderful.  I have had the chance to meet with about 50 teachers individually.  I enjoy spending time with them and getting to know them. 

We are having our first annual Summer Bar-B-Que in a few weeks and we are all looking forward to that as well.  It will be another opportunity for all of us to get together and continue getting to know one another.  It will be fun as all employees and their families are invited.

Now I am reaching out to my fellow educational leaders....What tips do you have for new principals?

Administrator or Leader?

There is a not so secret, ‘secret’ among educators:

While every school has at least one administrator, few have leaders.

A recent workshop participant paraphrased Peter Drucker and said it this way,

“Administrators do things right. Leaders do the right things.”

While that simple statement captures some of the gulf between leadership and administration, I think it falls far short.

I have a long list, developed over many educational leadership seminars, that outlines the differences between administrators and leaders; but let's start with the one element that seems to encompass so many others…

Leaders deal from their hearts as well as their minds; administrators work almost exclusively from the mental framework.

We’ve all encountered administrators who kick off the school year with speeches solemnly stating the districts goals and objectives, or by reciting well meaning and elaborate mission statements; but it is rare to find leaders who start the year by articulating a deep felt vision...or by inspiring their staffs to embrace that vision.

Administrators are comfortable speaking from, and appealing to, the cognitive domain; hoping others see the logic of their goals and objectives; while leaders want to stir the hearts, as well as the minds of those they seek to lead.

It is the power of the heart that injects a special life into the team. Leaders who use their hearts and minds when they speak have an authenticity that creates trust. Administrators who speak only from their heads may say the right words; they may have perfect scripts; but they appear less authentic, less fully committed, and therefore they create less trust.

Without trust it’s difficult to lead effectively.

I remember the Principal at my son’s eighth grade graduation ceremony speaking to the audience of proud parents and students. His first words were,

“I can’t tell you how excited I am to be here with you tonight.”

Unfortunately, he spoke these words in a monotone with no emotion (heart). Even worse, there was no smile, no crack in his bland and blank façade. He continued this way through the entire speech.

While I have no doubt that deep inside he meant every word he spoke; because he closed off his heart when delivered his words, it destroyed his message. It reeked of an administrator fulfilling his job requirements, when it could have been a leader expressing gratitude to his victorious 8th grade troops and sending them off to the high school full of inspiration and hope.

Not every leader needs to be a charismatic speaker. Even speakers who speak haltingly and uncomfortably, if they speak from the heart, touch the hearts of those around them; their authenticity comes through, and with that, trust flows. We feel their commitment.

One of the first steps in the transformation from administrator to leader is to access the power of the heart. Tapping into the heart is part of every aspect of leadership, not just in speaking. It is a way of tethering ourselves to something deeper than just our ideas and thoughts. It ties us to our purpose, values, and beliefs.

When we work from the heart, we are grounded. We don’t change directions every time the political breezes shift. We are more apt to go the extra mile, even if it seems risky. We walk our own talk. We don’t have hidden agendas, they’re all out there for people to see. When we work from the heart, we don’t make decisions based solely on complicated political calculations; but we factor in our deeply held beliefs and values.

Most importantly, when we are grounded in the heart, we have the courage of a leader. Interestingly, the word courage comes from the French root ‘cour’ or heart. As leaders we don’t avoid difficult conversations, or put off difficult decisions out of fear. We address them because they need to be addressed. The heart gives us the strength and passion to do the difficult things.

The transformation from administrator to leader is largely a journey of the heart.

pete

What's On Your Summer Reading List?

In her June 29 post on LeaderTalk, Reggie Engebritson encourages all of us to take some vacation time and get away from the stresses of work.  Well, I completely agree with Reggie.  So, we are packing the car and heading off to South Haven, Michigan for a week of R & R.  This is the type of vacation where we do a lot of nothing, and we love every minute of it!  Here is a typical vacation day in South Haven for the Sherman family:
Wake up whenever we wake up;
Eat breakfast;
Go down to the pool;
When hungry, go up and eat lunch;
Walk two blocks to the beach and hang out;
Walk home, clean up, go for dinner;
Go back to the beach for a classic Michigan sunset. 
After we watch the sun fall right into the lake, we go to Sherman's Dairy Bar (no relation to my family, unfortunately) for the best ice cream this side of Wisconsin.
Go to bed, and do the same thing the next day. 

I am planning to read at least two books this coming week in addition to the fun in the sun activities with my wife and kids.  I was planning to use this post to share some of my summer reading, and ask others to share their books for this summer.  So I was pleasantly surprised to read that I was "tagged" by Chris Lehmann who was asking for people to share their summer reading lists. 

In his July 3 post on his Practical Theory blog, Chris wrote about his summer reading list.  I must admit, it is quite an impressive and ambitious list of books for one person to read in the course of a short summer.

My list is much shorter than Chris's list.  It's not that I don't want to spend the entire summer reading, but I have been given quite an extensive "Honey-do" list of projects to complete over the summer!  A guy needs to put his priorities in order, right?  My goal is to read three professional books this summer and at least two novels before school starts up in the fall.  Here's my list.

My Professional Reads:

Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works by Howard Pitler, et al.  If you are a fan of Robert Marzano's incredibly powerful book Classroom Instruction that Works , then you should like this book as well.  The authors take Marzano's list of the nine most important instructional strategies that affect student achievement, and explain how technology can support and integrate these strategies.

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck. Dr. Dweck explains how our mindset shapes our goals, our attitudes toward work and relationships, and how we raise our kids.  Everyone has one of two basic mindsets:  a fixed or a growth mindset.  I am interested to learn more about my own mindset.

Schooling By Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe. There is a good chance you have read Understanding By Design, the authors' acclaimed framework for curriculum, instruction, and assessment.  In this book, they present a compelling argument for using the same approach to effective school improvement.

My Fictional Reads:

Once Upon a Fastball by Bob Mitchell. I am a huge baseball fan, and I enjoy reading history, so this is a perfect fit for me.  Mitchell incorporates baseball, history, poetry, family traditions, and noble values into his latest book.

Prince of Fire by Daniel Silva. This will be my fifth book by Silva, all of which have centered around a character named Gabriel Allon who makes his living as an art restorer in Europe, but who also is a secret agent for the Israeli government. He is tough and smart, and he is quite the man's man (if you know what I mean!).

Well, we're off to Michigan for the family vacation.  The books are packed, along with the sunscreen, beach towels, and a carload of other stuff, most of which we really don't need.  I just hope the weather cooperates.  I would love to see what others are reading this summer.  I hope you will share.