Educational Leadership & Technology

On Saturday June 13, my wife and I will be flying to Peru. We will spend the entire summer traveling and studying Spanish. My beloved Macbook will be turned into the IT Office, so I will be with it for an entire seven weeks (I’m already suffering from separation anxiety). But I will have my iTouch with me, so when and if I find free wifi, I will be updating from it. This will mean that the blog is basically finished for school year 2008-09. It was been a fast, productive, and rewarding year as the middle school dean of students and middle school technology integration specialist. I will be back blogging on a regular basis in August — when school year 2009-10 kicks off here at KIS.  I plan to do some summer reflection on the school year and write in an old fashioned journal that I will be carrying with me. Thanks for reading and following the events at KIS through my blog.

Well it is time to say goodbye to another school year, but I think 08-09 will be one I remember for a very long time. It was an action packed year for me as I learned the ropes of administration and worked closely with teachers to encourage and support their use of technology. The list of achievements for the Technology Integration Specialists at KIS is quite impressive:

1. First ever Phoenix Film Festival
2. First ever Korea International School podcast
3. First ever Korea International School Youtube channel
4. First ever Technology Showcase
5. Development of the Middle Matters KIS MS publication for parents
6. Several on going Wiki projects like our technology sharing wiki and middle school advisory wiki
7. Not to mention the countless hours spent planning and supporting teachers

I feel like it was been a productive year with technology. Teachers are trying new things in the classroom and students are making amazing collaborative projects with technology. It is actually working!

First, trust me, I see the irony about writing a blog post about blogging being dead. I wrote it for all the bloggers out there, not for myself. Second, just as God was declared dead quite some time ago, and billions of people are still going to churches, mosques, and temples, I doubt that my proclamation will stop many people from blogging. So then…

“Why,” you ask, “why is blogging dead?” Blogging is the Internet’s newspaper. Just look at the competition — multi-media, video, Twitter, and podcasting websites all offer a richer exeperiences to the audience than blogs. Sure there will be some old professors somewhere in universities that continue blogging, but the majority of us will move on to other forms of communication. We will use Twitter, PodOmatic, and YouTube to micro blog, podcast, and share our self created videos. Who will blog? And more importantly why? With more and more teachers assigning blogs to students and grading the blogs like assignments, less and less students will blog for pleasure or personal reflection. It will become just another assignment to do and, as Clay Burell said, “It will be full of too much schooliness.” So goodbye blogs! Rest in peace.

Today I will continue with number 8 of the 12 Commandments for People Who Work with People: Help People More, Hassle People Less. I think when you read the commandment, it seems like something everyone would aspire to do, right? But in reality, we all know better than that. There are those people out there that thrive on hassling people, and it is our job to deal with them, but it is also our job to avoid being those people who do the hassling.

Let me tell you a little story about a high school job I had once had in my home town of Bigfork, Montana. I worked in a very popular restaurant and, of course, I started at the bottom like everyone always does in those jobs — washing dishes. We had a chef, who was in charge of the kitchen, and a hostess who was in charge of all the waitresses, but was also the owner’s wife. The chef would tell me to make salads a certain way, and she would come and demand them a different way. There was a procedure for cleaning the silverware established by the chef, the hostess would come and tell me to not follow the procedure. In this situation, I blame both of them, because if they disagree with each other, they should sort out the problem, not put me in the middle of it. Of course, being adults, they weren’t able to solve or confront their problem, so it continued to be my problem as well until I finally left that job to work at a pizza place as a delivery driver. How much money, time, and energy had been lost on having to train another worker? Who knows! But those are the type of expenses companies should avoid. The moral of the story is the commandment itself — help people more, hassle people less.

Especially in education I see a lot of hassling people needlessly. One example of this I discussed in a previous post about not making rules or policies for the sake of making rules and policies. Schools are horrible about this activity. One student, or even a small group of students, makes a mistake and then we punish all with a new policy instead of educating the few about proper usage. In 1:1 schools this tendency must be avoided at all costs; otherwise you will find yourself working at a 1:1 school with no websites available for access to students or faculty and no computer programs that can be used other than Word or Pages. Recently another ADE asked about blocking Facebook, I informed her that Korea International School doesn’t block it, because we feel it is more important for students to learn correct usage of the Internet and computer than to make a rule about it. Our computer use policy states that the teacher has the right to decide if the website is appropriate for class or not; after all they are professionals and can decide best how to use the tool, why take it from them for no reason? Facebook, and any other social network site for that matter, is a part of life; students need to know how to manage their time and use of these tools; they won’t learn it from their friends or parents, trust me on that one. It is our job to provide guidance, not to simply outlaw it. Help people more, hassle people less!

It has been a busy couple of weeks, which is my excuse for not blogging more this time… But, seriously, it has been crazy busy! I went to the Apple Leadership Summit in Hong Kong and listened to some amazing presenters discuss the improtance of shifting education and bringing it into the 22nd century (I’m not writing 21st century anymore, because we should strive to be head of the game and not behind). John Couch, vice president of education for Apple, Tom Kelley, manager of IDEO, Marko Torres, and several other educators shared the stage to impress educational leaders that it is time to move or go the way of the T-Rex. It was a huge honor to present at a conference with such giant names in educationa and innovation. There were several ADEs from my 2008 class in Singapore, so it was a wonderful chance to catch up and check in with everyone.

Also the Phoenix Film Festival finished its first ever awards ceremony on April 30th in the PAC at Korea International School. Greg Israel and I would like to congratulate and thank all the students and teachers who were involved in the process. We’d also like to thank Apple, Korea for donating 9 iPod Nanos to the event and the KIS administration and PTO for ponying up the money for the other Nanos. We had 31 films from five countries and seven different schools. The winners list can be viewed on the Youtube channel as well as the awards ceremony.

Commandment #7 of the 12 Commandments for People Who Work with People is strive for quality in all that you do. I suppose it goes without saying that anything worth doing is worth doing well, but often you can see examples of people doing jobs part way, half way, or practically not at all. Don’t do it! If you have in the past, stop and never do it again. Always, always, always put your best effort in when teaching and working with students — they deserve it; furthermore, you owe it to them. Too many people get into teaching and go through the motions; our students want more, need more, have a right to more. They have a right to your best performance and effort. When I received my teaching certificate from Montana, I took an oath to do my best and help protect and teach children. It wasn’t an oath I took without care or without thought. I gave my promise, my word of honor. I entered my marriage the same way — I promised to love, honor, help, and protect my wife. I don’t go around promising things without thinking, and no one should. If you give your word, follow through. Being a teacher requires commitment, commit and do your best; otherwise, quit and work in some other field. Most teachers who leave the profession become insurance salespeople, I’m sure there is always more insurance that needs to be sold, so if you can’t give your best to students, go sell insurance. Please!

Hand-in-hand with the previous commandment, Display a Can Do Attitude, is Commandment Six: Beware! The Chicken Little Syndrome is contagious. Ever notice how a bad rumor spreads faster than a compliment? Ever notice how terrible news covers ground quicker than good news? Did you ever wonder why that is true? It is because the Chicken Little Syndrome is contagious! I think it is a throw back to our survival instincts that were necessary when we were all hunter-gatherers. Danger was around every corner waiting! Large animals were stalking us; predators were common; survival was hard. Now we struggle less to survive day-to-day, but the basic genetics that made us successful over the last couple of hundred thousand years are still inside. It is easier to believe that something horrible, terrible and disastrous is about to happen than to believe that things will work out fine. And this commandment deals with that human problem — the nay-sayers. Never be afraid to push ahead and do the right thing, but also be careful never to fall victim to thinking disaster is on the horizon because your colleagues believe it is impossible for problems not to occur. Problems are always going to occur; change is always going on; nothing will be the same tomorrow, and we need solutions. It is natural for people to think the solutions won’t work, but it is also our job to get them to try. Will we be able to solve all of life’s problems? NO! Of course not, but we will improve the situation and find new solutions; the new solutions will bring new challenges — that is life. Life is a challenge; anyone who says different is trying to sell you something.

On to the next commandment of the Twelve Commandments for People Who Work with People. Number Five is similar to Number Four; as you recall Four is Exhibit a Spirit of Caring, Number Five is Display a Can Do Attitude.

How many times have you been in a faculty meeting and heard, “We can’t do that,” or “We tried that before,” or “That never works.”? I bet you can’t even count the number of times on all of your fingers and toes combined. I hear it all the time with administrators, teachers, and students. In fact, some administrators think it is their job to say this all the time, but the best results come from having the Can Do Attitude. When educational leaders step forward with the Can Do Attitude, things get done; plus, the attitude is infectious. The can’t do attitude is infectious as well, but the Can Do Attitude really moves quickly, especially if you have a few other positive staff members to work with. My personal mentor, Dr. Larry Creedon, once told me if you want to make progress in a school, take the ones who are willing and move ahead, the others will eventually come along or leave. It may sound a little rough, but that really is the way it works in international schools. During one of Larry’s staff meetings, he was explaining some changes he wanted the school district to make in order to improve student learning and teacher instruction. One teacher stood up and said, “Why should I listen to you? I have thirty years of experience?” Larry responded, “Do you have thirty years of experience or did you have one experience thirty times? There is a difference!” The point being that experience isn’t an excuse to not improve and change with what research says works.

When Rich Boerner arrived at KIS, there wasn’t a process in place for teacher evaluation. When he proposed the idea, several teachers asked him why, but there were other teachers who celebrated the giant step ahead in teacher professionalism. A few years later, the teacher evaluation process is still here and being improved and the teachers appreciate it; the ones who didn’t want it have either changed their opinions or left the school. In the end, it was Rich’s Can Do Attitude that moved the school forward as a learning community.

Greg Israel and I could have decided that doing the Phoenix Film Festival was too much work, too hard to arrange, and simply too difficult to deal with, but instead we approached it with the Can Do Attitude and now KIS has a student film festival of its very own, a website for the festival, and a Youtube channel. The festival also had several international entries. Not bad for a first effort! Never underestimate the power of positive thinking, positive energy, and positive attitudes.

Number four of the Twelve Commandments for People Who Work with People is to exhibit a spirit of caring. I think we can all agree that caring about what people are doing and saying is important, but how many of us truly do it? The fact is that we, as teachers and administrators, get busy. We have papers to grade, tests to mark, lessons to plan, budgets to develop, curriculum to align, data to analyze; in other words, there are plenty of traps to get caught in. And that is exactly what happens, we get caught in traps. We forget the most important point of this job of education — people. The papers, tests, lessons, budgets, curriculum, and data don’t mean a damn thing if we forget that in the end it is all about people. Teachers need to remember that students come first; administrators need to remember that students come first, teachers second, and all the other junk comes after. The people need to know that the institution cares! The only way the instution shows care is through every member of the institution displaying care towards each other.

A student comes into the office for discipline, he/she has already had a conflict with another person — a student, a teacher, an administrator. The last thing that student needs is another difficult conflict; now is the time for care. The student needs to understand that even though a rule was broke, even though a conflict occurred, that the instution still cares about them. This is a time to listen and remain calm. Clearly the student needs to explain their side of the story and normally some form of discipline needs to be given, but it doesn’t need to be given with anger, malice, or spite. It needs to be given with care. The student wants to hear that they have been listen to by an adult. Sometimes they expect that adult to negotiate with them; sometimes they expect that adult to forgive them; sometimes they expect that adult to deliver bad news; but one thing they never expect is that adult to be aggressive toward them, because it simply shouldn’t happen.

Now I have violated this myself, and freely admit to making mistakes, which is exactly what students need to hear from the adult. They need this “You made a mistake, it happens. There is nothing wrong with making a mistake; it is human to make a mistake, but when we make mistakes there are consequences. And the consequence for this mistake is…” Now the student is ready to hear the bad news, the punishment, the discipline, but I think every time they are able to leave the situation knowing that they aren’t a bad person. I’m sure there are people out there who will call me a weak liberal person who is added to the downfall of American society (someone like Rush Limbaugh, for example), but the fact is (and unlike Rush, I have research to support this) this method works and produces results. Educational psychology has years of data displaying that students need positive interactions with adults, not negative ones. But all too often this is mistranslated into weak and watered-down self-esteem education that allows students to do whatever they wish, which is the mistake of soft-minded liberals. Then comes the attack from the crazy, right wing, nut jobs who believe all students who ever speak out in class should be placed in a reform school. Trust me friends, a middle path exists and it works. Students need firm, yet fair treatment, just like any other human being. Students need to know that you care.

The third commandment is to “Fill the “buckets” of others. Talk to them in such a way as to increase their self-esteem.” Amen, brothers and sisters! Seriously, how much extra effort is needed to add something complimentary or kind in a discussion? It costs you nothing and means the world to the other person. In the discipline game it is quite essential. Sometimes you need to break a person down in order to get them to admit to a mistake, but after the tearing down, there must be a building up. Students who admit mistakes and seek to correct them need to be complimented for the action; even if it takes some work on your part to acquire the statement of guilt. It is a mark of integrity when a person owns their part of a mistake, and it shouldn’t go unnoticed. When students come to my office for discipline or as part of an investigation, they need to know that I will treat them firm, yet fair; with gentle respect, yet with high standards. I think I have pulled this off in most cases. I’m not perfect and I have made my share of mistakes, but I believe most students leave my office feeling like they were dealt with fairly. When I see them in the hallway or cafeteria, they harbor no malice or ill feelings toward me, which I think is a pretty good sign. I always try to make the final message that no one thinks any less of them as a person for making a mistake, but that part of being an adult is to take responsibility and accept the consequences — but learn from the situation. I don’t have to leave them feeling better about the situation, I could simply hand out the punishment and move on, but where is the learning in that way? How is another person’s bucket filled with that way?

As the Technology Integration Specialist I need to help a lot of teachers who often feel very uncomfortable with the technology. I make sure to compliment what they of accomplished and I point out the wonderful work I see the students doing. This helps them try more and to adventure further into the waters of technology as a vehicle for teaching and learning. Again, I could have a pragmatic approach — time is money and the extra time and care really doesn’t pay off in the end, but I know that isn’t true with teachers who are experimenting with new ideas. Compliments pay off bigger dividends than the cost required to give them; not to mention the fact that is the human thing to do.