Rwanda 2012 Reflection #4 – do you use your role for a higher purpose? As Principals, Superintendents or school leaders, do you use your position to try and ‘be the change’? It seems like a straightforward enough question – but probably one that bears a...
Rwanda 2012 Reflection #1 Circumstantial Privilege I probably think way too much and I’ve had the opportunity to travel a fair amount in the last few years as part of a process to determine ‘next practice’ for our school. When in the air and looking at a map of the terrain over which...
Isn’t Twitter amazing! I have been in schools since 1978. But nothing has been like 2011, a real game-changing year for me, because I decided to take Twitter seriously. What I have discovered is a world of like-minded people who daily provide inspiration and ideas. A tribe. My tribe. I have also worked...
“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.” -Abraham Lincoln January 1st brings about a unique opportunity for school leaders that often goes unnoticed. School leaders actually have the benefit of celebrating two “New Years”. The initial New Year arrives on the first day that...
The title for this particular blog had its origin as I listened to a number of presentations on ‘blended learning’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blended_learning) at the Virtual School Symposium. I have for some years liked the notion of blended learning and it seemed a generally suitable term describing a learning environment where students could transition from the...
Okay … this lesson probably commenced in my early childhood if I count the number of hospital visits from bumping into (stupidly designed) concrete telegraph poles in Auckland, slipping off high chairs to raid the top kitchen cupboards or eating poisonous plants because they looked nice. But the notion of learning by doing...
A few weeks ago my school district was visited by a team of educators from the Hallsville R-IV School District. Since my district is in year two of implementing Professional Learning Communities, we are interested in hearing from other districts on how they got started and their advice as we move forward. Though there was...
I find leadership a fascinating topic. If something typifies our 21st century world for me, it is the lack of leadership where and when it is needed. This is evident in micro and macro contexts – in countries, communities and schools. The issue is possibly that the media focuses way too much on political...
2011 has been an amazing year for me professionally – a year of great change at NBCS and a year of outstanding opportunities, travel and thinking for me. It has also been a year of new connections. I am going to try and capture some of the main insights during 2011 gained in...
It has been almost a year since I made the statement to my staff that I do not want them to assign a zero to any student until they intervene in some way (ask the student why the work wasn’t turned it, call the parent of the student, do something besides assigning a zero...
On Thursday, December 8, 2011 I attended the Ohio Summit 2.5, which is a conference that showcases what Ohio schools are doing to integrate 21st Century skills and technology in the teaching and learning process. I wanted to attend the conference to hear some of the keynote presenters: Karl Fisch (@karlfisch), the creator of...
It’s mid-May and I’ve been thinking a lot about next school year. To say that this has been a challenging year is an understatement. I began the year telling my staff the “Who Moved My Cheese?” story as we were planning a number of changes. I wanted to set the stage for us to...
There comes a time in the life of every leader when we have to take a hard, honest look in the mirror and ask a fundamental question: “If I weren’t me, would I want to follow the example I set?” You know you better than anybody else in your classroom, school, or your home....
The following has been cross-posted at the Will Deyamport’s blog. “Bosses ought to be judged by what they and their people get done and by how their followers feel along the way.” Robert I. Sutton, Good Boss, Bad Boss Reflecting on the weekend about a presentation that Patrick Larkin and I did on Connected...
I am not a music guy. I appreciate one’s ability to create music, but I can’t read music at all. However, I absolutely love attending quality high school music performances and observing sight-reading events. Have you ever experienced a sight reading at an adjudicated music competition? If you haven’t then you are missing out...
Sometime in December, 2010 I read a blog post by David Truss, principal of a school in Dalian, China titled, “No Office Day.” The title piqued my interest, but what really got my attention was something he wrote. “If a principal stays in the office all day, he/she might as well stay at home.”...
“If You Don’t Create Change, Change Will Create You” I’m currently reading Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott. One of the principles discussed in the book that most resonates with me is to be here, prepared to be nowhere else. As leaders we have hundreds of conversations each day with a variety of stakeholders. Often we...
I participated in my first ever #edchat conversation on Tuesday, January 18, 2011. The topic was how to make the teacher evaluation process more collaborative. This is something many educators have wanted for a long time. Generally speaking, I believe most districts may be using something very different. They may have a simple check list...
A principal has an overwhelming amount of tasks to complete on a daily, monthly and yearly basis. From discipline, facility and student needs, staffing and who knows how many others, the job can be exhausting at the best of times. Over the past couple of years, I began to think more about teacher professional...
I have been deliberating many things as we prepare for the start of the school year. One of these items has been advancing the technological literacy of my staff. With so much social media available, how does one prepare their staff to advance their technological skills commonly? In many instances, teachers investigate technology on...
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