Connected Principals

I was recently asked by a superintendent if I had some questions to ask his principals to start off the year. The questions I gave him were based on the following areas: Fostering Effective Relationships Instructional Leadership Embodying Visionary Leadership Developing Leadership Capacity Creating Sustainable Change

We took another 20 minutes to use a force field analysis to explore the drivers and resisting factors around change. Since the presentation, I have had several requests for more details on using the force field analysis as a decision-making tool, so the following is more detail on how this tool can be effectively used in a variety of settings including education.

We are not going to have all of the answers or a foundation of knowledge and experience to guide us, which is somewhat daunting... What we do know is that we are open and committed to the learning that we, alongside our students, are going to experience during this process

The conventional wisdom in education is that any school reform--be it curriculum, instruction, assessment, or teacher professionalism--is most likely to take hold in schools that have strong leadership. The same holds true for technology.

I agree with Dave's observation. We have four elementary buildings in our district, each with a different principal and each with a distinctive leadership strength. It's just like when I was teaching, I tended to teach to my strengths and had to remind myself to be well-rounded, but my classrooms definitely had a technology slant to them. Now as a building principal, my staff professional development is also slanted to the technology side. That part comes easier to me. I just have to work harder at curriculum and instruction pieces when I "marry" them all together.

Zipkes begins with the three R's, which he is quick to note should be engaged sequentially, but not in the conventional order of rigor, relevance, and relationships. Rather Manor begins by building relationships, then incorporates relevance and rigor. "Many schools try to put the rigor in first, but then they've already lost many of the students," he explains. "If you don't have a relationship with the students, they're not going to do anything for you; if it's not relevant, you're going to bore them. But when you look at relationships and relevance and then rigor, you're going to hit all students."

How important is it to step beyond boundaries to test ideas and to test yourself? Beyond the boundary lies the potential for disruption, for innovation, for a different way.  Between the two, is the edge, the tension and dynamic between what has always been and what could be. ...stepping beyond the comfort of the status quo is how you become great.  It's how you become a true leader.  It's what true leaders do, and do without regret or pause. Because it's really the only way.

My list is very different: - emergent thinking: extracting patterns, rules, regularities, prototypes - sensing value - finding meaning, truth, relevance, purpose, goals - acting semiotically - using signs, signals, art, desig, etc., to do things - seeing beyond - describing, defining, drawing conclusions, explaining data - ecological sensitivity - placing in context, seeing frames, making meaning - living in change - understanding flow, adaptation, progression

The people in your life want that same validation. In fact, every single person you will ever meet shares this common desire. They want to know they matter.

The behaviours individually are not rocket science - they can be found in good classrooms everywhere - but it is the combination of all of them together which produces the chemistry to transform good to excellent practise and therefore children's academic and social/behavioural outcome

I think we've all got to stop cranking out blog posts and Tweets that tout new tools and the "10 Best Ways…" and instead begin to make the case in our blogs and in person that technology or not, this is about what is best for our kids. That in this moment, 20th Century rules will not work for 21st Century schools.

Based on my recent project with my students, I ask participants to take a recent concept or skill they are learning and to examine various facets of the experience. I'll offer them these questions as prompts:

"Google and Facebook would have you believe that you're a mirror, but we're actually more like diamonds," Poole told the audience. "Look from a different angle, and you see something completely different… Facebook is consolidating identity by making us more simple than we truly are."

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One forum that enables educators [including students, parents, community] to engage in meaningful and relevant professional development is the Edcamp model. What is Edcamp? Edcamp is organic, democratic, participant driven professional development for educators. There are no keynote presentations, there is no formal pre-set agenda, and participants set the course of the day. My thoughts on Edcamp:

To build upon this, we are about to embark on a "Learning Leader Project" which focuses on networking and connecting educators so that they are able to shape their own learning based on personal interests.

Looking for that perfect gift for the leaders in your school or district? Not sure what to get that principal or superintendent that has everything? Search no more. Get them What School Leaders Need to Know About Digital Technologies and Social Media

That's because all the major search engines have revised their formulas to include social media data-such as how frequently we've visited a particular website before, or how many of our online friends and acquaintances have endorsed it-as key indicators of a website's importance.

I tried playing Angry Birds the other day on my iPhone and found tons of teachable points of view on leadership issues.Here are twelve of the hidden nuggets I found:

When software -- or idea-ware for that matter -- fails to be accessible to anyone for any reason, it is the fault of the software or of the messaging of the idea. It is an Accessibility failure.

"Anti-creativity bias is so subtle that people are unaware of it, which can interfere with their ability to recognize a creative idea." In other words, our aversion to uncertainty means we find it difficult to even recognize a creative idea when we see it, focused as we are on removing the risky, uncomfortable strain on the status quo.