Hate School – Love Education

In the school division that I work in, for the past decade our teachers have collaborated, discussed and shared student assessment experiences. From these discussions came about our K-9 report card in 2012. This report card is designed to provide a broader snapshot of how students are learning. It also identifies ways to support student growth and development.
This approach focuses on the broader knowledge and skills that student should learning in each subject. Student performance is then report in one of four categories: exemplary, proficient, approaching proficiency and beginning. This report card emphasizes where student ARE in their learning. Multiple assessment tools, not just %-based tests are being utilized to assess student progress in skills and knowledge outcomes. (See our sample K, grade 4 and grade 7 report cards.)

The way I explain this approach to my non-teacher friends is:
• You go to your doctor for an annual check-up. He/she takes your blood pressure, weighs you, and asks about your overall health, takes blood and urine samples all during your visit. When the results come in from each of those “tests”, your doctor then adds up all these tests and gives you an overall health percentage rating of 81%. Does this then mean that each of these tests were equal in nature and measured the exact same thing? Are you healthier than your friend who received a 75% rating from their doctor the week before? Certainly NOT.
• In the classroom, teachers offer students a variety of assessment opportunities which are not equal in nature and do not ‘measure’ the same thing, therefore adding all of these together to produce a final percentage really doesn’t provide a legitimate picture. As well, adding in our Critical Thinking initiative and Inclusion focus allows students of any academic, behavior, cognitive, and physical level to engage in the learning environment. We want our learning spaces to be filled with exploration, creativity and imagination which make learning exciting and aspiring.

Watch the following video to see what a post-secondary student has to say about an education system that concerns itself with only the “what” of learning. 21st century learning can no longer be ‘sit and get’.

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Intentional Leader: Catalysts for Change

Monthly Theme: Change

Week 2

Change.

It. Is. Not. Easy.

 

Education and Change.

It. Must. Be. Different. To. Engage. Inspire. (our current students)

 

For those educators who are interested in taking time out of their work to really question their ideas, values and belief systems should take some time to view this incredible playlist of Re-imagining school TED Talks.

 

These videos are powerful as they allow us to question:

-         How is this change affecting my daily work?

-         What kind of professional learning support do I require to move forward in my teaching practice?

-         How can I share my learning and network with other teachers in my school, in my division, in the province and around the world?

-         Are there things that I am doing now that I should be stopping?

 

The Playlist consists of:

1)      Ken Robinson: Schools Kill Creativity

2)     Salman Khan: Let’s use Video to Reinvent Education

3)     Sugata Mitra: Build a School in the Cloud

4)     Daphne Koller: What We’re Learning form online Education

5)     Geoff Mulgan: A Short Intro to the Studio School

6)     Sugata Mitra: How Kids Teach Themselves

7)     Peter Norvig: The 100,000 Student Classroom

8)    Dave Egger: Once Upon a School

9)     Liz Coleman: Reinvent Liberal Arts Education

10)  Arthur Benjamin: Teach Stats Before Calculus

11)   Kiran Bir Sethi: Kids Take Charge

12)  Patrick Awuah: Educating Leaders

 

Watch these individually or with colleagues, you are certain to have some great conversations surrounding each one!

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Intentional Leader: Embrace Change to Avoid Complacency

Monthly Theme: Change

Week 1

As I look at my educational rooted surroundings, I am amazed at how much has changed since I went to school as a student. Yes, I could be dating myself in saying that when I attended K-12 school, the following educational learning conditions were present:

-         All students did all the same work

-         Videos were shown via 16mm film, VHS and Beta

-         Individualized work, memorization and proper study skills were predominant

-         I did have teachers who were passionate and engaged my classmates and I but that varied from year to year

-         Lots of paper and pen work, reading from textbooks, writing notes from a chalkboard or projector

And now, as an educator myself and former Assistant Principal, attending a K-12 school in 2013 now showcases:

-         Differentiation for a variety of student learning styles and student needs

-         Opportunity for students to interact with their environment through various media, with other classrooms throughout the world

-         Collaborative, cooperative learning environments

-         Thinking about the thinking = metacognition and building criteria to set a target/make a judgement on the learning experience (ie. Critical thinking)

-         Learning from online sources, developing own learning artefacts

-         More opportunities for student exploring, creating, imagining and aspiring

Changes that have affected our educational norms have been divulged via Sir Ken Robinson’s infamous February 2006 TED Talk on Schools killing creativity. As well, other changes, due to the internet revolution have challenged us as well. See an updated version of the Social Media Video 2013 below as well as the Social Digital Media Revolution Statistics that will have your head spinning as to the vast expanse and reach social media has on each one of us.

 

Twitter Cheat Sheet for Alberta

Over the past few weeks I have been gathering information from various sources around Alberta regarding teachers and school division relevant hashtags. As more and more educators and educational institutions use Twitter for discussions, sharing, networking and events, I believe it’s important for teachers to have access to some good Twitter resources. So….. I created this Twitter Cheat Sheet for Alberta teachers.

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Intentional Leader: Excellence is Doing Small Things in a Big Way

Monthly Theme: Excellence
Week 4

This week I was to focus on how I can model excellence by putting my signature on the work that I do through the small things I do.

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I really appreciate Booker T. Washington’s quote made over 160 years ago. This reminds me personally of my parents who model excellence in their daily life. My father, a business owner and German immigrant, showed me that customer service and a flair for building strong relationships was key to his success (he’s semi-retired now). His fervor for making people feel at ease and including them in conversations helped his business excel. (For those of you from Southern Alberta you may have heard of it as Otto’s Spudnut and Ice Cream Shop.) As for my mother, her French Canadian agricultural background and career as a Teacher, allowed her to travel the world and challenge its occupants from time to time with my brother and I tagging along. My mother also became my dad’s business partner so they certainly showed how two people can work and live together harmoniously. My parents continue to have high expectations of us and now their grandkids. Their continued support is important in an age where 24/7 anytime, anywhere access and can be fleeting of support.

This quote also reminded me of a tweet from @shareski sharing a video about “The biological advantage of being awestruck” and then it hit me that there was a book I had wanted to read and not yet done so….The Book of Awesome. This book by Neil Pasricha is on my “read this” list and after reading through my Week Four work, thought I’d better get to it. So, at this moment, I have put both The Book of Awesome and The Book of Even More Awesome on hold at my local library. I’ve even started to follow Neil @1000awesome on Twitter and look forward to reading more of his blog where he initially started his 1000 Awesome Things as a small reminder of the free little joys that make life sweet.

So, I now thought (without reading the book of Awesome) why not think of little ways to put a personal excellence signature on the work that I do? What would it look like? Here are some ideas:
• Share tidbits of information via the weekly employee Online newsletter
• Send out specific emails filled with resources, PD opportunities for administrators, specific groups of teachers
• Tweet and retweet out #psd70 happenings
• Encourage and sign up PSD stakeholders to share their learning on the 184 Blogs project

My focus now is how to change the ordinary things I do into things that I do better or more memorable than ever before. No small feat/task but one I know that I can really on my Learning Services Team, network, PLN, family and friends to support me in.

 

Intentional Leader: Excellence Comes by Exceeding Expectations

Monthly Theme: Excellence

Week 3

This week I was to consider ways that I can set the tone of exceeding expectations and how other organizations have impressed me.

This week reminds me of a phenomenal TED Talk by Tali Sharot where she shares her research suggesting that our brains are wired to look on the bright side.

For me, in the work that I do, I make every attempt to link the PSD vision and initiatives. I take a lot of time to plan workshops, sessions, webinars and working meetings. I recognize that effective planning and up-to-date research and resources allow our staff to move forward in the learning environment. It’s also a great time to build on existing relationships and develop new ones.

I know from experience that people or organizations that have exceeded my expectations in a product or service have impressed me with their:

Promptness, effectiveness, knowledge and passion

I think it is important that I continually share what services, professional learning opportunities and support that I can provide our administrators and teachers. I cannot assume that they already know what I can do to assist them in their work with students. I need to think of ways to exceed their expectations.

 

 

Image: FlickrCC

 

Intentional Leaders: Excellence Must Be Internalized

Monthly Theme: Excellence

Week 2

This week I was to view how I can facilitate a culture of excellence in my workplace, look at our current organization values, describe what excellence looks like and how to further a commitment to excellence.

“…leaders display a passion for the possibilities of a better, brighter, more productive future….passion and dissatisfaction drive a leader to excel.” (Intentional Leader, p.41)

I must admit, the term excellence sometimes is used so easily in the world of education. I have read countless visions and missions all with the word “excellence” embedded in them. I also have wondered what truly excellence means in each of their contexts. Do the schools or school divisions have great stories to tell of the ways that excellence in learning has occurred around them? For me, it’s a drive to always want to make learning and leading better, more effective and more….(yes, I’m going to say it)….excellent. Take, for example the Disney story where animators on the first ever animated plus real-time video movie, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, were reviewing a particular scene that wasn’t quite right. In the scene the character bumps his head on a lamp which then swings but originally no shadows were displayed. Most audience members would have not caught on to the missing shadows, yet animators were relentless in spending many hours to fix the error. The nickname for excellence in Disney animation became “Bump the Lamp”. (To the see the actual scene, click HERE.)

We can use the phrase, “Bump the Lamp”, to remind ourselves to aim for excellence. Most people won’t notice the excellent part of what we do, but certainly some will and those people will share their experiences to others.

Some examples of “Lamp Bumpers” in PSD:

• The teacher who writes notes in students’ journals or blogs.
• The administrators who find time in the school timetable for teachers to meet in order to plan more effective learning opportunities or PD for teachers.
• The sharing of a good learning experience with a large audience (tweeting about a school event, blogging about daily learning, sharing a story in the school newsletter, inviting divisional employees to school activities).
• The administrator who believes in arranging the learning environment in a new way with no grade levels for all students to benefit.
• The teachers that engage students digitally and model ethical online practices.
• The facilitators who not only offer professional learning opportunities but also teachable moments during their sessions.

Our organization values are:

• Collaboration and engagement with students, parents and our communities. Our successes are not possible without these contributions.
• Trust and mutual respect among all of our education stakeholders.
• Inclusion and diversity within our schools.
• Citizenship and recognize our central role in guiding students to understand their responsibilities and their place in the world.
• Leadership in all places – everyone in our Division has the potential to be a leader.
• Excellence, innovation and risk-taking.

As one can see above, PSD incorporates “excellence” as one of our values. I believe that we need to share more “excellence” stories so that we can see the experiences and influence this has within our organization. I am thankful to have a Communications Director who is now starting to share these stories on our division website.

What does excellence look like in my role? I hope that my ability to ensure that teachers and administrators questions and support opportunities are allowing their staff and students to move forward in their learning environments. I also hope that my own PD, committee work and networking is allowing further connection to the latest research and resources for PSD staff to tap into.

Excellence is not achieved overnight, it is a journey and it takes time to deeply internalize it. Take time to view this video on Everyday Leadership.

Drew Dudley will be a keynote speaker at the upcoming ATLE (Alberta Technology Leaders in Education) Convergence Conference in Edmonton.

I leave you with this….what does excellence look like in your role? In your organization? What are some ways you can encourage your team to further its commitment to excellence?

 

Intentional Leader: Coming Together

Monthly Theme: Relationships

Week 4

It is the end of October and throughout Canada, schools will be starting their Remembrance Day and/or Veteran’s Week preparations. This time of year, teachers and students are remembering the courage, sacrifice, leadership and relationships that have been affected by war and peace in the World. I am reminded that our military ‘demonstrates a certain reality of interdependence of leadership and relationships’ (p.31, Intentional Leader).  Each leader within the military has a specific duty and the more influential that leader is, the more he/she relies on the relationships within their team to maximize their work. The best leaders are the ones work side by side with their colleagues and success is gained through the support and skill of all of the team members. For this week, I was to review individual ambitions versus team agenda, valuing of ideas, and relationship investment.

I am fortunate that I have a team of people within my department to rely on, yet I also have other colleagues in other departments and school sites that I am also able to connect/share/query ideas. As I think about my main Learning Services Team, we all have our individual ambitions and personal growth plans yet we are focused on supporting our district vision and its initiatives. This allows our team to move our projects forward in an effective manner. In the past, when I think about someone who failed to sacrifice a personal agenda for the good of a team that I was part of, it was:

-          Frustrating

-          The project took longer

-          Communication between members broke down

-          Outside sources were unable to trust the group

-          Main goal(s) were not reviewed on a regular basis (more transparency).

It wasn’t until a new leader came aboard and a review of work in progress was articulated that the group members were able to re-adjust for the good of the team.

Valuing others ideas comes with strongly built relationships.

-          I can remember that my first mentor-Principal sat me down and said that I would make a good Masters of Education candidate. The way he pulled out my interests, my present work, etc. made me really think about a professional direction that I had not thought of beforehand. (I did pursue my M.Ed. in Educational Leadership – I have fond memories of our cohort and the extreme learning that took place!)

-          During a SLItech (Supporting Leaders in Integrating Technology) PD session, team members indicated that they were wanting a change in the way the PD was being laid out for them. As leader of this project, I asked for feedback and then adjusted the work accordingly. This resulted in a more effective learning opportunity for the team.

-          At present, my current team members have specific duties and responsibilities in supporting the work in PSD. Although each member has a specific focus, they definitely overlap and result in many internal collaborative opportunities.

-          Our Learning Services Team develops through offering PD, sharing PD opportunities, engaging in PD, sitting on various committees and working /learning collaboratively.

Investing time in others doesn’t take much effort. Performing a small act of kindness for a colleague, family member or friend is as easy as:

-          Buying a cup of coffee/tea/hot chocolate

-          Baking a loaf

-          Making muffins (I know, my first three examples involve food….for the majority this is a good thing!)

-          Brushing off snow on a car parked all day

-          Writing a thank you note or email

-          Sharing your small heater for a cold office

-          Saying that you appreciate them

Investing in people and contributing with small acts of service strengthens the team and allows you to get to know individuals in a more personal manner. A more synergistic team will result of these actions.

After viewing the video above, can you think of how you can perform a small act of kindness?

 

Intentional Leader: Team Unity – We Before Me

Monthly Theme: RELATIONSHIPS

Week 3

This week, I had the opportunity to look into my working relationships, team dynamics, team contribution and to take action on a challenging experience.

In thinking about team unity, I am reminded that I have a choice to commit and contribute to PSD’s Vision of creating a place where exploration, creativity and imagination make learning exciting and where all learners aspire to reach their dreams. I appreciate that I have an opportunity to work with various departments, administrators, teachers, organizations and community members to accomplish PSD’s vision. I can make a difference MYSELF, but certainly when I move from ME to WE, the making a difference piece is further empowered by multiple contributions. These multiple contributions can also be difficult. Everyone brings different experiences and perceptions to the group. At times, some group members do not share their thoughts or work in silos; not seeing the BIGGER picture or conversation. If it affects the work that I am doing I find that a one on one conversation with that particular person to connect the pieces in my mind and clarification from their end, usually suffices in moving forward. I recognize that individuals are at different points in their journey in fulfilling the greater vision and I also realize that time and understanding are key. Trying to separate data from emotion when people are passionate about their work, can be tricky when a pathway or journey is not clear.

Last year I was able to participate in two important professional learning programs which gave me clarity to maneuver that tricky pathway/journey – Cognitive Coaching and Fierce Conversations. Cognitive Coaching is a model for deeper conversations and thinking about planning, reflecting or problem solving. Fierce Conversations deals with leaders that have conversations that interrogate reality, provoke learning, tackle tough challenges and enrich relationships through four different conversational models for teams, coaching, delegation and confrontation. Each of these programs proposes understanding; meaning, taking time to understand a situation before sharing an opinion (if any). They promote seeking out resolution, communicating clearly, willing to ask for help and looking at the BIGGER picture (or VISION).

As I write this, WEDAY Alberta is streaming live on my computer screen. I see that this organizations theme of “We Inspire the Change” fits perfectly with my week long look into my working relationships. As part of an educational organization, I ask myself and the people I work with, “How can we inspire change in our organization?” and “How can we commit to our PSD Vision?” What evidence should we gather to know that we are on the right direction to fulfilling this vision? These are all questions circulating in my mind as I watch the morning portion of the live #weday webcast.

I also add in a few inspiration quotes heard during the #weday live webcast:

We are not asked to do great things. We’re asked to do all things with greater care. ~ Martin Sheen, actor

Overall, daily actions in collaborating with others are not easy, but it is so worth it when you see the results!

 

Learning for ALL: Opportunities in Transforming Education

I just had the opportunity to read through a through-provoking document, “A Great School for All-Transforming Education in Alberta” that I believe all educators should take time to read. Its thirty-five pages are full of information pertaining to Alberta’s journey in curriculum redesign, innovative learning practices and finally Twelve Dimensions for Transforming Education in Alberta.

This is a document that showcases the successes that provincial teachers have acquired while also presenting some challenges to political leaders on how to best partner together to further launch lasting and effective innovative teaching and learning practices. One cannot sit still, for me; a commitment to education is a commitment to learning. I need to model my learning outwardly, I need to stimulate discussions with colleagues, I need to spur action and encourage innovation.

The following WORDLE, (which is a word cloud where the words with greater prominence are the ones that appear more frequently in the source text), was generated using the thirty-five pages of information found in this document. What strikes me with the wordle image is that the words – students, learning, education, and teachers are prominent, yet all pieces of this wordle require connections in order for education in Alberta to move forward, to be innovative and to reflect on the path taken over the past century.

Do take time to read, “A Great School for All – Transforming Education in Alberta”. Hopefully it will encourage some reflection and pose some questions.

What are some achievable actions that are innovating the way you teach and learn? How are you sharing and engaging your colleagues? Please share.