On the technology front, I managed to get myself back into Twitter again. I use the Twhirl program to access my account. Many people scream the praises of Tweetdeck, but I just can’t use that thing efficiently or effectively. The interface reminds me of a student with ADHD — all over the place. My schedule has me in the classroom more this year, which gives less time for such endeavors like Twitter; but, I really enjoy more face time with teachers and students.
We discovered that Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) isn’t playing well with Snow Leopard, so we had to tell students to stop updating their software. This I find personally problematic because the computers belong to the students, but there really wasn’t another solution at the moment. We have a bunch of students who have account issues on the network and need to be worked out. Plus, Bruce, Greg, and I need to train the middle school and high school teachers how to use ARD, so when we return from vacation, we will hit the ground running… Not that we ever stopped running since the beginning of the year.

One of the art teachers has decided to use a blog as part of her class as a way for students to reflect on process. She got the idea from David Gran and we sat down and brainstormed some possibilities for it. I was pretty excited about this development because the three middle school departments that were having the most difficulty shifting in the past were art, music, and math. The music department made a giant leap last year and had students produce music videos to go along with their choir arrangements. Now the art department is seeing action with blogs and the math department has a new member who is keen to try some tech infusion. Awesome!

On the discipline front, I’m trying my best to be supportive of teachers and students, but sometimes both sides make it difficult. An example of this is a situation where a teacher lost a student’s assignment and later found it; but between the time of losing and finding, the student turned in a buddy’s assignment as his own. The teacher put the student in a difficult situation, but the student still made a bad choice while trying to solve his problem. Of course the student thinks the teacher is a little responsible for this situation. I addressed the issue, but was very curt with the student when pointing out that two wrongs don’t make a right. Overall the students are doing very well this year. The 6th graders have made the difficult transition from elementary to middle school and we have planned some orientation programing for next year that should smooth the transition even further. Also, many of the students are looking at ARD not as a policing threat, but as a way to help them stay on task during class. Nice!

“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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

Here is a short collection of some of the reflections I am currently working on.

1 — The Phoenix Film Festival — The festival hasn’t even happened yet, but Greg and I have thought of some improvements for next year. First, we plan to start promoting and planning from the beginning of the school year with a calendar of dates with different tasks that need to be accomplished and time frames for finishing those tasks. Greg and I want the festival to live beyond our time at KIS, so this type of planning is necessary for the future of the festival. Second, we plan to offer clubs at the middle and high school levels, so student can begin to take over the process. After all, it is their festival. Third, we plan to reflect on the festival once it is over.

2 — Recent communication — I had an unfortunate communication with one of my colleagues recently where I inappropriately communicated my frustration with a situation involving a duty schedule for our parent-teacher conferences. Due to the great demands on my time as the Dean of Students and the Technology Integration Specialist, I try to plan ahead at least one or two weeks in advance so I can focus my time correctly. Robin Schneider, my principal, had came up with a great idea of having a showcase of digital work done by students on display during the conferences. Sadly, his idea came the week before the conferences, but because I felt the idea was great, I told him we should move ahead with the plan. It required me to collect a lot of student artifacts in a very short period of time and then compile those artifacts into presentations. We looked down the road at what else was coming and saw the Middle Matters staring us in the face. At that point we both felt that it was manageable because during conferences I could work on the layout of the Middle Matters. On Wednesday, the beginning of the conferences, I received an email with a duty schedule for the conferences. I was surprised to find that I was listed on the duty schedule with 12 hours (four hours per day) of supervision duty during the conferences. Instead of taking a deep breath and counting to ten, I exploded and shot off one of those emails that you aren’t supposed to write when you are angry. I have apologized to Jamie Otis, but still can’t believe my own behavior. We all make mistakes and the best thing to do is to admit the mistake and apologize to the appropriate people. In addition to my unprofessional response, I do feel that the problem highlights one of the major concerns at the school — time lines and planning. Why was the duty schedule handed out on Wednesday morning of the conferences? It should be out at least one week before the required work so people can plan accordingly. This doesn’t excuse my behavior, but it does place a framework around it.

3 — KIS Podcast and KIS YouTube Channel — Both are off and running and the important point now is momentum. We need to continue interviewing teachers, students, and administration about the 1:1 program for the podcast and continue uploading student samples to the YouTube channel.

4 — Discipline — I am currently trying my best to add a guiding and mentoring approach to our behaviorist/control discipline policies. This is an example of merging two philosophies together to make a livable situation for everyone concerned. Our school-wide discipline approach is very much from the behaviorist philosophy of education — a system of rules and punishments. My personal philosophy is more to the guidance or constructivist approach, so each major discipline case is coming with some serious discussion of appropriate behavior and what can be learned from the situation. I’m feeling better about the situation, and the students involved so far seem to leave the room feeling better about receiving discipline.

Reflection is an important part of education and we must all engage in it.

Also, we have a Youtube channel now up and running. We will be adding some content in the next few days. I was busy, busy, busy dealing with wave of student discipline last week as well as collecting samples of students’ digital work to display during the parent-teacher conference going on this week. The whole thing almost killed me, because I also came down with a cold in the process, but it is finished. The parents and students are enjoying watching the short movies I put together with iMovie about different things that have happened in the middle school this year. After the conferences I will upload the movies to the Youtube channel. The idea for making a school channel came from a colleague in Shanghai — thanks Amanda!