The Lighting of a Fire

I think confident leaders and learners like to be challenged. Well…maybe not like as much as need. Confident leaders and learners need to be challenged. It’s too easy to sit and coast once a reputation is established. Is that always best for kids? Coasting? Thinking one has it all figured out? Probably not best for kids…or leaders.

Here are 5 challenging statements from George Couros. The 5 statements challenged me. I present them without comment, for one’s professional consideration.

Statement one. “I am a voracious learner, particularly when it comes to education. My wonder, curiosity, and openness to ideas, both new and old, have served me well, and, I hope, have benefitted those with whom I’ve worked though the years.”

Statement two: “What I am saying is that when we are averse to even considering how change may lead to something better for our students (which, in turn, leads to something better for ourselves), perhaps we are in the wrong profession.”

Statement three: “I hope I never grow tired of learning, but if I do, I hope that I have the courage to leave the profession before I stand in the way of anyone else’s learning and growth.”

Statement four: “No matter how much you know, however, you will always need to be learning.

Statement five: “Knowing is static. Learning, in contrast, is active.”

5 challenging statements.

“We do not learn from experience … we learn from reflecting on experience.” -John Dewey

Dropped by our superintendent’s office today. He was working on a presentation he’s going to give to his superintendent colleagues, describing our successful capital bond program. Peeking at a few of his slides, it looks like a great presentation. One of his comments was, “You know, we never reflected on that process.” And that reflecting on it now, for him, was a great review and learning experience.

This brief conversation took me right back to Dewey’s famous line. Reflection leads to learning. Do we build enough or any reflection time into our professional lives? Do we build enough or any reflection time into our students’ lives? If not…why not?

I just finished Innovate Inside The Box by George Couros and Katie Novak. It’s a fantastic, practical, helpful, and instantly useful book for all educators. Toward the end of the book, Couros talks about reflection. “Reflection is a process that needs to be learned.” He advocates strongly for blogging as a tool for reflection. “I can’t tell you that my writing is always good, but taking time to write and think helps clear my mind and deepen my own learning.” He goes on to add three questions for us to ponder and upon which to reflect.

1. What went well today?
2. Where do I need to grow?
3. What will I do to move forward to build upon my strengths and weaknesses?

Those are some darn good questions to contemplate! I can absolutely attest to the impact writing has had on me professionally. I can physically feel the difference in my brain and thinking as I write. In fact, writing has had such a strong impact on my learning, last year I set it as a professional aspiration. I wanted to encourage our leaders to discover what I had discovered. Writing makes me a better learner and leader.

We are meeting with that same group of leaders next week, bringing back all of our aspirations from last year to review. I’m going to stick with the same aspiration for the upcoming year. We still need to write. And more of us need to write.

We don’t learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.

Dude was right.

We had a great, learning meeting today with members of our Teaching Learning Innovation team. 3 former teachers of the year, including a two-time teacher of the year. I was also there.

We are planning and getting excited about our first professional learning day for all of our fabulous educators on October 11th. I was trying to recreate a quote I knew I loved, had seen somewhere, and posted on twitter. But I was messing up the words. I knew it had something to do with do kids see anything different after we have a professional learning day. Or something to that effect. My memory is not always perfect.

So. I cruised through the ‘media’ section of my twitter feed. Good grief. It was emotional. It was telling. I can literally point to times where my thinking and learning were absolutely turned on their heads. And then there were just a whole bunch of lovely pictures of awesome teachers doing great work with kids.

And these two quotes, among hundreds, that I love, jumped out. Including the one I was trying to recreate from memory. Of course, it’s a George Couros quote. What else would it be?

First one I love.

And the one for which I was searching, as we plan our professional learning day.

The power of words. The power of teachers. The power of learning.

Here’s the flow of a recent communication in our district. A proud principal shared part of an email from a teacher to her brand new assistant principal with me. One of the cool things they do on her staff is pass around the Jar of Wonder. The Jar of Wonder is kicked off at the first staff retreat, with someone writing something awesome about another staff member. Then that staff member chooses another staff member and writes something awesome about him/her…and so on. And it ends up as a Jar of Wonder.

Well the brand new assistant principal wrote a beautiful note about one of our gifted, veteran teachers. The teacher in turn wrote the new AP an email where she described the impact of his note, how touched she was by his words, and that it ranks up near the top of interactions over a 20 year career.

The final line from this amazing teacher’s email, to our new assistant principal, talking about how relationships matter in our district, just about killed me in its simple, powerful truth.

This is a great place to make a difference.

I don’t know why I can’t get that single line out of my head. My tenure in our district is now 36 years. I love this place. I love our teachers, administrators, parents, community, and kids. I’ve known what a special place this was from day one. But didn’t have the simple phrase to describe it.

Now I do.

This is a great place to make a difference.

Just back from a wonderful week with my family and friends. We spent part of our week on the beautiful Oregon coast, pictured here! Had the chance to play golf with my kids, and one of the highlights there was watching the two of them in a cart together, playing together, laughing together. A Dad’s dream!

Getting ready to head into work this morning, I caught myself whistling and excited about heading back to a job I love, in a place I’ve spent my entire adult life, working with people I admire and respect. That’s a pretty good realization to have!

I also had the realization that time away from work, makes you better when you’re at work. I supposed I’ve always known that, but heading into vacation, I wasn’t feeling particularly stressed or overwhelmed, so vacation was just a bonus. It’s possible I needed it more than I realized. It all has to do with balance. Even with jobs we love, working with people we love, spending time away with people we love more than our jobs, is the most important thing.

I hope everybody gets the chance to spend time away, refresh, reboot, relax, and then come back to work fired up and ready to roll!

Throes:

noun

1. intense or violent pain and struggle, especially accompanying birth, death, or great change.

Not sure which of those ideas is most on my mind as I write this morning, but here is what prompted my writing. I think I’m in the throes of change, absent the birth/death part.

Two worlds collided. One, I’m reading Transforming Libraries-A Toolkit for Innovators, Makers, and Seekers, by Ron Starker. So far, so good. I’m hoping to get some good ideas for three of our ongoing building projects. A new middle school, a new elementary school, and a new addition to our high school.

Hit this quote by Mr. Starker, “Those libraries offering only access to information will most likely perish, while libraries offering members the opportunity to build, create, problem solve, collaborate, network, innovate, and learn lifelong skills will become innovation hubs and critical change social institutions that carry us through times of turbulent change.”

I absolutely agree with this. Libraries are critical in our world, in schools, and for kids.

So I’m reading this book. And I get a message from a colleague about an article from Sydney, Australia, March, 2019, titled, ‘Major distraction’: school dumps iPads, returns to paper textbooks’.

Frustration was my first response. My assumption was that the sender of the message saw this as some kind of victory over change, over kids using technology in schools. Probably an unfair assumption. I make a lot of those. And I love that colleagues send me stuff to read.

And the frustration went away pretty quickly. Any change will happen in fits and starts. The quote about libraries above seems definitive in my opinion. Ultimately, for example, “…Google’s digitation project will greatly help libraries and will bring back thousands of out-of-print books, creating universal access that will ultimately benefit authors and readers alike.”

Reading the article made several things clear.

The ‘dumping’ of the ipads was to eliminate distraction from popups during reading. I suppose that’s kind of reasonable, but popups can be eliminated in other ways. However, the ‘dumping’ was also addressed. “The school will also phase out iPads and begin a bring-your-own device policy with a preference for laptops.”

Oh. Bring your own device, with a preference for laptops. That seems good.

Throes of change. Fits and starts. Intense or violent pain and struggle. Great change.

Bring it on.