From the Principal's Desk

Just because THEY don't know how to act...

... doesn't mean YOU don't know how to act.

That's a line I heard long ago from a wise professor of mine, and it's stuck with me ever since.  And I've been thinking about that line a lot lately.

Yes, I'm blogging again.  No, I'm not going to make any claims as to whether I'll be blogging again next week, next month, or next year - I've gone through the ups and downs enough to know that I just don't know.

But I've felt the need to blog again, even if it's only once for a long time, because of the whole controversy swirling now over Natalie Munroe, a Pennsylvania teacher currently in some very hot water for a personal blog she maintained, on which she wrote some very disparaging comments about her students.

I have many thoughts on this issue, but I'll try to keep them relatively brief.  My bottom line, though, is that I believe that what she did was wrong.  Why?

Well, first, because she appeared to think it was okay to use the internet as her own personal slam book.  In my opinion, that's wrong from a decency standpoint, and from a professional standpoint. 

• From a decency standpoint, one negative side of the internet is the venom that is spewed from behind the cloak of anonymity - we see it all the time from anonymous posters commenting on news reports or blogs; and from individuals who hide behind internet facelessness to say things they'd never say in person.  We lament it when we see it from our students.  There's no excuse for it.  And, from all accounts, some of the things Ms. Munroe wrote were just plain mean.  And claiming that they're "the truth" (as in, "the truth hurts") doesn't make THE WAY in which they were said, any more appropriate.

• From a professional standpoint, I cannot understand why someone in our profession - actually, why anyone in any profession - thinks it's wise to go on the attack on the internet.  Don't we, as educators, talk about wanting to teach our students about wise use of the internet, and how to be good digital citizens?  There are educators all over the globe who are using digital media wisely, and thoughtfully.  Often, school districts get nervous about this - and this mess is Exhibit A as to why.  Professionals who use social media to speak or behave unprofessionally make it harder for other professionals to defend the use of social media in schools or by educators as reasonable and appropriate.

Even more than my concerns over her use of the internet as a way to air her grievances, though, is the nature of those grievances, themselves. While Ms. Munroe is now defending her actions and saying that she's pleased that her scandal has opened up a conversation about students today, the fact remains that the *way* in which she expressed her thoughts, the words she chose to use, reflect a deep, deep cynicism; a terrible negativity; and, indeed, a strong dislike, toward the students she was teaching.  Chris Lehmann, over at Practical Theory, has articulated everything I'd want to say, far more eloquently than I ever could.  EVERYONE is someone's Patrick, and our moral and professional obligation is to never give up on our students, no matter what.

If Ms. Munroe really believes what she wrote about her students, it appears that she has given up on them - in which case, perhaps she should think twice about continuing to teach.

If she doesn't really believe what she wrote, if she was just blowing off some steam, then perhaps she should think twice about continuing to blog. 

A blog is not your own private diary.  It is not your closed circle of friends.  It is not a momentary vent at the end of an especially bad day. It is not your forum to air all of your grievances with the world - at least, not unless you're prepared for the world to air its grievances with you, in return.  Words have consequences.

If you wouldn't say it in a crowded room, or into a microphone, or in front of your students - don't say it on the internet.

Just because they don't know how to act, doesn't mean you don't know how to act.

The Difference Between Try and Triumph

... is a little "umph".   (author unknown)

The school year got off to a terrific start with our students this past week. Returning adult students threw themselves right into the new term, with just two weeks off during the summer.  New adult students began their studies after a successful orientation, and getting to know their instructors and our campus.  Returning high school students were thrilled to see friends they hadn't seen over the summer, and to take their place in the next grade level of school.  And our new high school students learned quickly how unique our campus is - from the absence of bells ringing, to a unique teaming and scheduling structure, to a campus that is one-of-its-kind in the county.

Our staff, more than 100 full time in addition to all of our part-time staff, embraced the challenge to "kick it up a notch", and in doing so helped show the same "umph" we're already seeing from our students.  From our plant operations, which got our campus in great shape; to our tech staff, getting our many resources ready for students and staff; to our support staff, helping to take care of much of the "business" of school in support of students and teachers; and, most of all, to our teachers, who dedicate themselves to the success of their students.  They've shown the "umph" that all outstanding educators give to help ensure their students' success... and so "triumph" for our students is only a matter of time. 

Thank you to all students and staff for a great first week - it was a great start to our new year!

A Year of Possibility

It's the eve of the first day of school for students.  After a great planning week with staff, we're ready to kick the year off tomorrow with what we expect will be an outstanding first day.

I had the opportunity to read the book The Art of Possibility, by Rosamund Stone Zander & Benjamin Zander, this summer, and I'm so glad I did.  Although the book was published a decade ago, its content is as fresh and relevant as ever.  It's a great book for anyone interested in examining the way they live their life, but I think it's especially relevant for educators.  Ben Zander is conductor of the Boston Philharmonic and a teacher, and thus so much of what the couple writes about has such resonance for all educators.

The basic concept of the book is that if we live our lives focusing on abundance, on the possibilities within ourselves and others, it can reframe every experience we have, can positively impact every relationship we're in, and can result in amazing things both in ourselves and in others. 

It's not a naive, pollyanna-ish view of the world, thinking that if we just wish it so, it will happen. To the contrary, the Zanders know that making those possibilities real may not happen... but they also know, just as strongly, that such possibilities will NEVER become real if we don't at least BEGIN from the point of believing it may be so.  From there, we act toward possibility, and the Zanders lay out twelve practices that they articulate as important in helping to live from a place of possibility, in ourselves and in others.  It's not easy, wishing-it-to-be-so, but instead is focused, determined, CHOICES every single day and in every single interaction.

Although simple and in many ways common-sensical, I found the book also to be profound, both personally and professionally.  I shared pieces of it with our staff during the planning week, and will continue to do so as the year goes on... as I work to "grow into possibility" as a person and a principal.

And so here, on this night before the first day of school, a day which is filled with possibilities everywhere we will turn, I share this from the Zanders:

A shoe factory sends two marketing scouts to a region of Africa to study the prospects for expanding business.

One sends back a telegram saying,

"SITUATION HOPELESS. NO ONE WEARS SHOES."

The other writes back triumphantly,

"GLORIOUS BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY. THEY HAVE NO SHOES YET."

(From The Art of Possibility, by Rosamund Stone Zander & Benjamin Zander)

How would you walk, how would you talk, how would you BE, if you just thought... it's a glorious opportunity!  They'll all want shoes... they just don't know about them yet!

To all educators and students about to embark on school year 2010 - 2011... it is a year of glorious opportunity.  May you make the most of it!

And So It Begins Again...

With a summer of:

• learning (two workshops on gifted education, a leadership institute, a school improvement institute, reviews of three years of coursework to prepare for my doctoral comprehensive exams, and some professional reading done on my own),
• laughing (with friends and family, most of all my now-nine-month-old niece Zoe, who I met for the first time in June), and
• licking my wounds (an unexpected hospitalization two days after graduation, and several weeks of recovery)

all behind me, it's time to turn my attention to the coming school year, which begins tomorrow for staff, and next Monday for students.  I feel energized, and rejuvenated, and am looking with optimism and determination toward a successful 2010-2011. 

For the first time in four years, we'll have no construction, no moving, no dirt, no portables.

For the first time in four years, we'll have no major new growth in programs, students, or staffing.

So, for the first time in four years, we - I - will be able to turn our - my - attention almost solely and completely to "just" getting better at what we do... at "kicking it up a notch", if you will.

The possibilities are endless...

But first, before we begin 2010 - 2011, since I missed the last week of the 2009 - 2010 school year, a look at some of the achievements of that year...  (using my first attempt at a prezi, so please excuse the novice-like quality of it):

Congratulations to Everyone's Patrick

This is my nephew, Patrick:

Cutest kid in the world.  When I look at this picture, I see joy, and sweetness, and kindness, and hope, and all the promise of his whole life ahead of him.  Only, this isn't what Patrick looks like today.  Today, he looks like this:

And when I say that today he looks like that, I mean that almost literally - he graduated yesterday, on the very same day that the Lorenzo Walker Technical High School (LWTHS) inaugural class of students graduated.  He began his high school career back in August 2006, on the very same day that the LWTHS inaugural class first walked through our doors.

And I told our staff back in 2006 that I knew there would be days during his high school career when he would drive his teachers crazy. Maybe he wouldn't do his homework. Maybe he wouldn't study as hard for a test as he could have. Maybe he would spend more time talking to the cute girl sitting behind him in class than learning quadratic equations. Maybe he would even try to text in class.  But despite all that, whenever I looked at him, THIS would be my Patrick:

And I asked our teachers to remember, as our LWTHS students were about to join us for that very first day of school (both for them, and for us), that each and every one of those students was someone's Patrick. Each of them IS someone's Patrick, still today, still four years later after we first met them. These young men and women have been their families' Patricks for seventeen or eighteen years. But, kids, we want you to know.

For the last four years, you've been our Patricks, too.

To all our Lorenzo Walker Technical High School members of the Class of 2010... to all the Lorenzo Walker Institute of Technology members of the Class of 2010... in fact, to all graduates everywhere, who have persisted, and succeeded, and accomplished their goals...

Congratulations.  You are all someone's Patrick, and that someone is very, very proud today.

Hello, Again, Hello

Well, so, it's been ten months since my last post.  What's been going on out there?

In that last post, I wrote about ebbs and flows in our work... and boy-howdy, has it been one big ol' ebb in my blogging for the last year!  I'm not sure if that's a result of the other things that have been on my plate; my time-management processes; an indicator of whether or not blogging is really a right tool for me; or some combination of the above.  Several of those things have changed for me greatly in recent weeks, so let's see where it takes me.

At work, the biggest thing off my plate is our construction project.  With the exception of punch lists and some final purchases, we're essentially finished with what has been an almost four-year-long process.  I sat in a set of construction contractor bid presentations on August 10, 2006...and on April 5, 2010, our final building was reopened to the public.  Our campus went through a three-stage, construction and renovation project, entailing almost 200,000 square feet of new or renovated facilities. EVERYONE on our staff of more than 100 moved at least once during the process, and most moved two or three times. There were portables, craters, temporary parking, packing, unpacking, packing, unpacking, packing, unpacking... weekly design meetings, then weekly construction meetings, then weekly furniture & equipment selection meetings. Deliveries, color selections, fabric selections, etc. The project took me far away from the typical duties of a principal running an established campus, and put many additional stresses on our staff and students. Throughout it all, people were absolute troopers, pitching in, working extra, and mostly grinning-and-bearing it all.  And now, we have a facility that is finally as amazing as the programs, staff, and students that have always been in it.

I wouldn't change the experience for the world (although, of course, there are some things I'd change about the facility choices if I had it to do over again).  It's been an honor and a privilege to lead this process, an experience many principals never have the opportunity to experience, and I have learned *so much* through the experience - not just about facilities, and construction, and purchasing, and equipment, but also about people... how to help people deal with pressure situations... how to coordinate massive projects... and about myself, as well. Some newfound strengths, some realizations and perspective, and some areas I want to continue to grow and develop in. I'm proud of our staff and students, I'm proud of our facility, I'm proud of myself... and I'm glad it's done. 

Outside of work, the biggest thing off my plate is my doctoral coursework.  Three years of coursework, with weekly assignments, texts to read, papers to write, projects to complete.  All of it finished about three weeks ago (how weird that the timing of the construction work and the timing of my coursework has been so aligned!).  What a relief to have the coursework done.  Over the next month, I've got my comps to complete (written comps the next two Saturdays, then oral comps in June).  Assuming I survive those, I then am an official doctoral candidate, and my work on my dissertation will be what remains. That will be an enormous item, of course, but the removal of week-in, week-out deadlines is a welcome change.

Just as these two major commitments have been wrapping up, I've also begun a new approach at work in my time and schedule management. In late March, my secretary and I, along with two other of our campus administrators and their secretaries, attended a seminar known as The Breakthrough Coach, and it was a very powerful experience. I won't go into great detail here (although if I manage to maintain this whole blogging thing, I'll discuss it more in the future), except to say that the seminar helps school (or district) administrators and their secretaries examine what they do, and how they do it, in terms of managing their daily schedules, paperwork, email, phone calls, even their physical environments.  The goal of the approach is to get administrators into classrooms more, while at the same time helping them be more effective with the time spent in their offices, in order to accomplish more, in less time... and, most importantly, in order to more fully serve in their role as instructional leaders for their staff.  I attended because some fellow principals of mine had attended, and all used the word "transformational" to describe it.  I'm in the early stages of making the changes outlined, but I already see progress. I've spent more time in classes, more time with staff and students, more time on walkthroughs, in the last month, than I'd spent in the last year. Granted, part of that would have happened naturally due to the conclusion of the construction project, and the worth of this experience in helping sustain change will be demonstrated over time, but I feel very encouraged.

I'm spending less time at work, feeling more organized & in control, more effective, and more optimistic.

So that brings me to today, and to another re-entry into the world of blogging. Time has blurred over the last months, but things are finally slowing to a manageable speed, which is a good thing here in the always-insane last month of the regular school year.

We've had induction ceremonies, teachers and staff honored, celebrations, our first grad night (our inaugural high school class, which started in August 2006, is finally graduating this year). In the coming weeks, there will be awards nights, pinnings, our campus's first prom, and graduation, the school's first postsecondary-and-secondary joint ceremony.  We'll regroup through the summer, but it will be the first summer in four years in which there has been no construction, no addition of a new grade level or curriculum, no major staffing changes - so it should be a powerful opportunity to move from Emerging phase into Improvement phase.

I'm excited about it... and we'll see if I manage to share it here.

Leadership Day 2009

Today is Leadership Day 2009, a day on which Dr. Scott Mcleod calls on bloggers to post about school technology leadership in whatever way they wish: successes, challenges, top tens, etc.

Although I posted on both previous Leadership Days, in both 2007 and 2008, I hesitated to write this year - to be honest, I doubted that I had the "bona fides" to speak on school technology leadership based on this past year.  For a variety of reasons, my attentions as a school leader were elsewhere.  Yes, there were individual situations here and there in which I helped to support, or in some cases actually prod effectively, the use of technology in a meaningful way in our school and its classrooms.  We have some amazing staff doing incredible things to embed technology into our school, but it is by no means as comprehensive as I would like. 

In a way, then, I guess this is my contribution to Leadership Day 2009 - as leaders, we have "ebbs and flows" regarding where and how we use our energies, what we choose to focus on, what we work with staff on, how and when we build our team, when we push, when we back off, and so forth.  This isn't an excuse - it just *is*.  It can be frustrating to us; it can be frustrating to those who realize educational practices need to change and they need to change RIGHT NOW; but it is what it is.

There are some ed tech leaders out there who amaze and inspire me with what they accomplish.  Few of us get it exactly right all of the time - goodness knows I certainly don't.  But the trick is, what do we do when we don't get it right?  In that sense, I guess my message to school leaders, or to would-be leaders who aren't sure of themselves, is this:  Just keep coming back to it.  There will be highs and lows, successes and flops, because that's the way things are.  Build capacity.  Promote self-directed innovation.  Celebrate successes.  Recognize that systemic change takes time.  Take a breather when you need to.  Just remember to come back to it.

I know I will always come back to it, because I experience first-hand the power of technology to transform learning.  Like our students, I am a student, enrolled in an official program, pursuing an official degree.... and I am learning a good bit from some of my courses.  However, I seem to learn just as much, if not more, from my own network - especially the sites in my RSS reader, and those great educators and thinkers who I follow on Twitter. Indeed, one of my goals as a leader for this year is to work to engage more of our staff in developing their own digital PLNs - because seeing the value this can bring to them as learners is, I think, the single most important thing that can lead to their understanding of how digital technologies can help the learners they work with in their classes every single day.

So when Scott asks us to reflect on school leadership in a digital age, I understand how valuable being a learner in the digital age can be, because I have become such a learner.  And that's what makes me determined to "keep coming back to it" as a leader. 

Twitter Teaches Me Again

This one's not so much something I learned today, but something I re-learned with quite a specific example after having realized it a couple of years ago.

Namely, that Twitter can be such a powerful learning tool, not just because of the ideas of individual tweets, but because of the intersection of those tweets and twitterers.

Earlier this evening, I noticed a tweet from @TheGilch regarding an NPR item - it pointed out how Wordle had been used to take a look at two speeches, one from Khameini and one from Moussavi, in Iran.
I think Wordle's a neat thing, so I clicked on the link in @TheGilch's tweet, and read the full NPR post. Very interesting stuff - about Wordle, about what's going on in Iran, about Twitter.

So I retweeted @TheGilch's post.

At that point, two of my followers, @GardenGlen and @lbott, retweeted my retweet.

And @GardenGlen added the following comment:  "Great use of Wordle 4 comparisons".

I was interested because of the "neat" factor of Wordle, and the issues swirling around Iran.  To be honest, I wasn't even thinking about educational uses.  But @GardenGlen's comment was such an "aha" - Oh, holy smokes, what an AWESOME way to teach students to compare/contrast two sides of an issue, two speeches on a topic, whatever... I've talked with staff about using Wordle to let students see key themes in a piece of writing... but using TWO Wordles to compare/contrast?  Hadn't even occurred to me!

So here you have it...

• A really interesting item I saw because of a tweet from one person
• Two other people who may have also seen that same neat item because they follow me, and happened to be noticing my tweets at that particular time (I think one or both may also follow @TheGilch, but may have missed her original tweet due to timing)
• Those two people then retweeted the item out to an even broader audience - so who knows who else may have seen and thought about it?
• And one of them kicked the tweet around with an idea tying it to education and an awesome use with students... a connection that completely escaped me the first time around... but that I can't wait to share with some of our teachers.

Yes, the power of Twitter... who knew? 

I wonder if Ashton Kutcher retweets anything I could learn from?  ;)

What I Learned About Living Longer

Six ways to live longer, according to More magazine:

• Live a "boring" (aka conscientious) life
• Embrace your age
• Move to an older neighborhood
• Drink some coffee
• Add spices to your meals
• Hang out with happy people

I've got several of these covered, but can definitely do more.

And how's this for an odd fact?  People with lots of moles (more than 100) seem to live longer than those without.  Nothing I can do about that, but I'm working on getting more sleep, and I've got the whole wide-hips thing down pat.   ;)

What I've Learned Over the Past Week

In a tough economy, vendors are a whole lot quicker, and a whole lot more thorough, at filling purchase requests.  Understandably, they want to get orders filled so they can get bills paid.

Of course, it would have been helpful if I'd thought that through as we arranged for all of our purchases related to our new construction.  Here would be the typical thinking:

Certificate of Occupancy for one building: likely for June 15
Certificate of Occupancy for remaining buildings:  likely for July 15
Want items to arrive no later than:  August 1
Want items to arrive no earlier than:  July 1

Okay, so figuring (the old way) that it would take at least 8 weeks to get orders filled, you place the orders in early May, figuring everything will start coming in early July, and you'll be all set. 

But, just to encourage those go-getters, you say you'll start accepting deliveries as of June 1.  You figure, hey, most won't be ready then, but for those few who are, you can get their orders to arrive on campus and be accounted for.  So what if you don't have any room to store anything - there can't be THAT much that would come that early, right?

Oh, but you didn't account for the bad economy.  And so here's what you wind up with, on June 9, sitting in your cafeteria with nowhere else to go:

Did I mention that this is supposed to be a functioning cafeteria, since many of our programs operate year-round?

You have no idea how much I am hoping and praying that we get that CO as expected on Monday.

You also have no idea how glad I am that we're closed on Fridays in the summer - one less day for more stuff to arrive this week.

Now that I've learned this, I'll be sure to remember this the next time I'm involved in the construction of a new school.