Seth Godin’s post today really resonated with me.  He wrote, “Remarkable visions and genuine insight are always met with resistance.”  When in college, I worked at a Chicago-sytle pizza restaurant owned and operated by a man who had made a good deal of money working in the mercantile exchange in Chicago.  I have lots of good memories of working there, but the one thing that I remember most vividly is when Tony (the owner) told me that in life, there would always be naysayers and people trying to get in my way.  At twenty or so years of age, that didn’t mean a whole lot.  But, together with Godin’s words (and a whole bunch of years of life under my belt since then), I’m reminded of Tony’s words of caution.

I think of myself as a key member of a team coached by Scott McLeod; a team with the objective of evangelizing about forward-thinking, digitally-conscious school leadership.  Scott was the first and is the lead evangelist; he’s been nothing short of persistent and a visionary.  Our team is a small (though growing slowly…very slowly) group of professors of educational leadership who go about our work through teaching, research and, most importantly (IMHO ), advocacy.  That advocacy comes in many forms, including blogging, networking, presenting, consulting, etc.

Resistance to our team’s efforts comes in many, many forms.  I think the leading form of resistance lies at the intersection of tradition and fear.  I can write gobs about that but won’t (at least not now).  For now, I’ll just say that today I’m inspired by Godin’s post and the resulting memories of the words of my former employer.  Godin concluded his post with this: “The yin and yang are clear: without people pushing against your quest to do something worth talking about, it’s unlikely it would be worth the journey. Persist.”

So, persist I will.  Onward and upward!

Tags: education, leadership, resistance, Scott McLeod, Seth Godin, technology

I remember walking into the bookstore at Teachers College, Columbia U. as a new doc. student and thinking, “what value am I going to add to the ed. research enterprise?  A book has been written on everything; all the answers to all of the problems in education are right here in these books.”  I still have those feelings when attending major research conferences. 

Today, I was looking through one of the many catalogues I receive from publishers of educational texts.  This one is from Corwin Press, one of the biggies.  There are over 130 pages in the catalogue with 5 or 6 books described on each page.  The range of topics and title is incredible, and this is only one of the many publishers of educational texts.  I was amused when browsing through just the sections on Leadership and Principals I found the following titles:

• Twelve Roles for Facilitators for School Change
• Eight Habits of the Heart for Educators
• More than 50 ways to Build Team Consensus
• 36 Tools for Building Spirit in Learning Communities
• Leading Every Day: 124 Actions for Effective Leadership

Can you imagine the permutations?  If as a school leader, I could/should take on 12 roles, develop 8 habits, use 36 tools and take 124 actions, that should do it, right?  No problem.

Tags: education, leadership, research, texts

 

Originally uploaded by seduction by snapshots

Those of us in the business of preparing school leaders through universities and those of us who work in institutions accredited by NCATE are held accountable to a set of standards developed collaboratively by a bunch of different organizations. Those standards, formerly known as the ISLLC standards, have been revised and re-named the Educational Leadership Policy Standards. They were approved in December and released within the last 6 weeks. You can see the new standards here (go to the links at the bottom of the page), along with the “research base” behind the standards. These are very important standards since, much like in the K-12 realm, the curricula of school leadership preparation programs will (for better or worse) be guided by them. That being said, before soliciting your opinions, here are a few of my own thoughts:

Of course, the first thing I did was a search for any form of the term “technology.” And, surprisingly, there are two such references (Standards 2H and 3B). That’s progress, but there’s still a significant part of me that feels like the NETS-A (National Education Technology Standards for Administrators) were not considered enough (if they were considered at all).

On one hand, I’ve come to believe that leadership for 21st Century schooling is not about the technology per se as much as it is about having a forward-thinking vision, the capacity to take risks, and the willingness to think about learning in accordance with 21st Century skills and dispositions. And, so on the first and last points, Standard 1 allows for facilitating the development of such a leader. That is, the standards don’t commit to any particular vision or conception or definition of teaching or learning.

On the other hand, that Part I of the NETS-A did not explicitly make its way into Standard 1 of the ELPS is disconcerting. Imagine if this statement, directly from the NETS-A had made its way into the ELPS: “Educational leaders inspire a shared vision for comprehensive integration of technology and foster an environment and culture conducive to the realization of that vision.” Can you imagine what the inclusion of such a statement in Standard 1 would have meant to/for leadership preparation programs around the country? Furthermore, synthesizing Standards 2H and 3B, if educational leaders obtain technological resources and promote their use to support teaching and learning, shouldn’t there be a vision/plan for that?

Maybe I shouldn’t complain because I did have opportunities to comment on earlier drafts of the ELPS, but I know that other colleagues did make the case for greater integration of the NETS-A. And, while I’m not a huge fan of the whole standards and accountability movement, as long as we’re playing that game, I’d like for the rules to be appropriate.

What do you think of the new standards?  Do they resonate with your understandings/beliefs about effective school leadership?

Tags: education, ISLLC, leadership, standards, technology

 I’m leaving tomorrow morning for the annual conference of the Virginia Society for Technology in Education (VSTE), my new home state’s affiliate of ISTE.  I’m looking forward to networking and getting the lay of the ed. tech. landscape across the Commonwealth.  I’m certainly discouraged about the following facts from the 80 page program of the largest ed. tech. conference in VA:

• The program contains not one single mention of the word “principal” (or, therefore, AP). 
• Over 100 sessions and only ONE contains the word leadership in the title. 
• There are 11 sessions dedicated to the “leadership strand,” but they range in topics from digital safety to “using pivot tables in EXCEL to analyze SOL data” (I kid you not; that’s part of the leadership strand).

Still, it’ll be good to learn some cool new tricks.  I hope to report from there.

Tags: conference, education, leadership, technology

Thanks to Will Richardson for alerting us to an op-ed piece in the Washington Post that’s disturbing to the core (IMHO).  Clearly, there are details of the “technology initiative” (odd language, seems more like they just built a new school with cool stuff in it) that we’re not getting.  But, I wonder, did, as the author suggests, the administration just buy a whole bunch of stuff without considering the curriculum and/or the teaching needs?  I doubt that’s entirely the case, but it did remind me…

There have been many great sports coaches who were successful based on a “system” they installed.  Bill Walsh and the so-called “West Coast Offense” is one example.  Pete Carrill’s “Princeton Offense” is another.   Numerous proteges of those coaches have left the nest to coach their own teams using the system they learned.  These coaches struggle at first because certain types of players thrive within their system and those players are not necessarily the ones they inherit on the new team.  In other words, they inherit a team of players not necessarily suited to thrive in the system to be implemented.  Thus, it takes the coaches a couple of years to get appropriate players in place for their system to succeed.  Urban Meyer, the head football coach at the University of Florida brought his “Spread Offense” from the University of Utah to Florida.  He inherited a quarterback who was pretty good (although U of  F fans tend to disagree on that), but who did not possess the skill set to thrive in Meyers’ offense.  Once Meyers got a quarterback who could operate his system well, he was more successful.  Now, we see Rich Rodriguez bringing his version of the Spread Offense from WVU to the University of Michigan; the rising sophomore quarterback who would’ve been the starter had a coaching change not happened has transferred because he’s not at all the type of QB who can run the new “system.”

Some professional coaches have a harder time implementing systems because they can’t  as easily recruit the right kinds of players.  Long-term contracts and salary caps often force professional coaches to think differently.  Therefore, a successful pro coach is often one who is able to adjust his system to the personnel.  Bill Parcells is a great example.  He won the Super Bowl as the coach of the New York Giants with his system (ball control/rushing attack on offense; tough D).  When he took over as coach of the Patriots, he had a team more suited to the passing game.  So, he adjusted and was quite successful.  He made similar adjustments when he took over the Dallas Cowboys.

So, what does this all mean for education?  Well, I think educational leaders/policymakers are guilty of installing systems without regard to the personnel.  Much more so than in professional sports, school leaders inherit a team; absent retirements or mass exoduses, teaching staffs often remain fairly stable.  Yet, the ed. tech. policy agenda has been dominated by a focus on infrastructure development supported by a bit of professional development.  In other words, the “systems” have been installed and the leaders are then forced to try to fit the personnel into the system.  “Hey, we’ve got all these great technologies, now figure out how to use them!” (and that may or may not have been the case in the high school referenced in the op-ed piece; we don’t know)

Technology planning needs to be done with curriculum and teaching at the forefront.  In other words, the technology should be mapped to the curriculum (NOT the other way around) and the infrastructure should be shaped around the strengths/weaknesses of the team members (the teachers).  From there, as new teachers are added, they can be purposefully selected (i.e. they should be hired because they “fit” within the system that’s been implemented).  That means including curriculum specialists in the technology planning process and, more importantly, involving teachers. 

Make the system fit the team, not vice versa.

Tags: coaching, curriculum, education, leadership, teaching, technology, technology planning