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!

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.

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.

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.