Saturday, December 20, 2014

The 1:1 Initiative I Need


On page 74 of What To Do When It's Your Turn [and it's always your turn] Seth Godin writes:
Not even close
In Open: An Autobiography, Andre Agassi wrote about the secret he learned while playing tennis: "But I don't feel that Wimbledon changed me. I feel, in fact, as if I've been let in on a dirty little secret: winning changes nothing. Now that I've won a slam, I know something that few people on earth are permitted to know. A win doesn't feel as good as a loss feels bad, and the good feeling doesn't last as long as the bad. Not even close." 
Ouch. It's so easy to believe that five great Amazon reviews don't compare in impact to one bad one. Five closed sales don't compare to one "no." What a sad way to choose to live life.
No wonder we don't want to speak up or stand up or do anything much that matters. We've persuaded ourselves that good feelings aren't even close to outweighing bad ones. 
"What a sad way to choose to live life." 

I am struck by this. Is this indeed a choice? I've always made the assumption that this is "just the way it is" or the way that I am. My intense focus and reaction to negatives or naysayers is just a product of being human. Or so I believed.

But now I'm on the hook. 

The idea that this is a choice is empowering, but also scary because it puts the onus on me. It makes me responsible for when I fall into the trap.

As a school leader I try to see and promote the positive events, actions, and statistics, that exponentially outnumber the negatives. However, I currently allow my mental energy to focus too much on the negative, or as Seth put it, the "one bad" review over the "five great".

"No wonder we don't want to speak up or stand up or do anything much that matters. We've persuaded ourselves that good feelings aren't even close to outweighing bad ones."

There is real tragedy in this. Tragedy for culture, for communities, for families, for individuals, even for schools. How much more of our economic, human, personal and emotional capital is tied up in reacting to the 1 negative than the 5 positives? 

For me, it is time to change this deficit model of thinking. This deficit model of perception. The deficit model of how we run and view our schools. A change of how we perceive the range of students abilities. A recognition that we are probably not giving equally to all the positives that are all around us, especially in comparison to what we give the negatives. 

However, it is not just a change in thinking that will let me off the hook. This change must come with action. It takes showing up. It takes speaking out. It takes challenging those who try to make others believe in a false narratives about the state of learning and achievement. It may even require becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Personally, as a school leader I realize that this the 1:1 initiative I really need-- giving the same emotional capital to the positive as I give to the negative.

For me, it is time to give equity to recognizing, appreciating, supporting, and enjoying each positive, and put it on par with the capital I spend addressing, focusing and stressing about each negative. 


Thank you for taking the time to read this post. Please let me know if you have any ideas on how to improve, change, other ideas for next steps, or other ideas for modification.

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I am finding every page of Seth Godin's book "What To Do When It's Your Turn [and it's always your turn]" a source of inspiration, motivation, reflection and action. I have a feeling that I may write a series of posts just from this book, and if I do this is the first.

Monday, December 15, 2014

How Will I Make 2015 the Best Year for My Students? Empowerment or "Surveillance, Standardization, Assessment, Control"?

"Perhaps what we need to build are more compassionate spaces, so that education technology isn’t in the service of surveillance, standardization, assessment, control." -Audrey Watters
http://www.hackeducation.com/2014/11/13/convivial-tools-in-an-age-of-surveillance/

I originally wrote this quote down in a draft blog post a few days after I read the original post. I was not sure where I was going to go with it, or where it was going to take me. What I did know was that it stuck with me.

There was an uncomfortable truth.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/CCTV_Cameras.png
After two plus years of working to get to a 1:1 environment for my students, something was wrong with the questions I was being asked about it. The headlines, questions and inquiries were not about what my students were now doing differently, what were they now creating, or who they were now able to learn from or share their learning with. The inquiries were about filters, permissions, acceptable use, monitoring, etc. all valuable things (I guess)...but hardly about learning.

So now as I am asked to answer "How Will I Make 2015 the Best Year for My Students?" and the quote has led to this post and my goal for 2015. I believe I can make 2015 the best year for my students by trying to meet the challenge posed by Ms. Watters. I will focus
on the hard work of insuring compassionate spaces over attempting to parlay technology purchases that promote "surveillance, standardization, assessment and control" in order to achieve allegedly "meaningful" technology usage. Because really, how meaningful, open and honest can the learning be if you create a culture says you need to be monitored (not trusted), processed (made to fit in) and measured (constantly judged) at all times?


Friday, December 5, 2014

Faculty Meeting Recipe: Tony Wagner TEDx + Modified Protocol + Gdoc

Implemented this week at a faculty meeting

Step 1- Play, passion, purpose: Tony Wagner at TEDxNYED
Step 2- Ask educators to keep in mind when watching video our school's Core Value of- Creativity and Innovation: Embrace flexibility and individuality when explaining and demonstrating knowledge and skills.
Step 3- Implement "Save the Last Word for Me" Protocol from http://www.nsrfharmony.org/system/files/protocols/save_last_word_0.pdf (although usually a text based protocol, we adapted for video)
Step 4- At conclusion of protocol in its entirety, ask for groups to report via Google doc any collective key take aways or ideas that resonated with the entire group.

Results:
Key Take Aways
Put something here that your group agreed on, had in common, found important or interesting.

  • We all felt that we need a culture where students are OK with taking a risk and failure.  You have to wonder “what lies beneath” from so many students who are afraid of failure or of taking a risk in a classroom.  
  • If we want to be innovative, how can we also follow the flow of CCSS and the required elements of curriculum?  The two concepts are very disjointed.  The idea of a year of  beta is great, but we don’t feel like it is a reality.
  • Group work is not “division of labor”.  What does real “collaboration” mean?
  • The World of Innovation is interdisciplinary!
  • Making mistakes is ok...take risks together with your students...we feel lucky that our administration encourages risk taking and experimentation.
  • How do we teach kids to not be afraid and to take risks and be wrong.   It’s OK to be wrong, because 9 times out of 10, you learn from it.
  • Sparking intrinsic motivation.
  • Outliers are already outliers so they take risks and produce risk takers.  Students are fearful to take risks in this paradigm. 
There are tremendous ideas/feedback/conflicts here for me as a principal to reflect on, especially when looking through the lens, and trying to lead with all of the schools core values.  Personally, I am once again met with the conflict/pressure of what a "traditional" school is supposed to do and look like versus what it should and needs to look like to impact learning. (Then again what did I expect I was going to get given the premise of the video.)

Potential Next Steps:
  • Engage students in the process and see what the results are.
  • Engage parents in the process and see what the results are.
  • Follow up re: Key take aways- see how close people feel our reality is to this versus how close should we be (and ask what is helping or inhibiting us?)
Potential Modification
  • Use as a measuring stick to gauge how well you know your school/culture- Write down ahead of time what your take aways are. Write down ahead of time what you believe your faculty's take aways would be. Implement. Compare. 
What will you get when you "make" this recipe?

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. Please let me know if you have any ideas on how to improve, change, other ideas for next steps, or other ideas for modification.