This past week I was one of an incredibly lucky group of Administrators who had the great fortune to attend the inaugural CUE RockStar Admin Camp. For three glorious days, we escaped our offices and converged on Skywalker Big Rock Ranch in Marin.
While here we engaged in conversations that made our heads hurt by the end of the day, but also left us wanting more. Underlying our three days was the idea of the Hero's Journey. Here is a great video to explain this concept:
While we were exhausted on Saturday, it was still a bit hard to leave, at least for me, because I knew that I needed more time to process all that I had taken in during that short time.
Simultaneously I began reading Switch. As I am trying to digest and organize all that I took away with me from RockStar Camp, I was struck by the appropriateness of my current reading selection. Eric Saibel was one of my Yoda's at RockStar, and I took much away from his sessions on building culture. Where his work with us intersected with the ideas that I have begun to reflect on from Switch is where my new starting point will be for my work at our school. I put together this simple visual to help me with the process of synthesizing the many ideas from RockStar:
The quote from Switch really struck me as I was revisiting my notes from RockStar. And suddenly my big take-away was crystal clear: change has slowed at our school not because people don't want to implement change, but rather, because they are so tired that they have no energy left to dedicate to creativity. According to Heath and Heath, self-control is exhausting--this ties in with what Eric was trying to convey: we need to have room for dissonance and we need to learn to work with that dissonance for positive outcomes. If people don't feel they can disagree, they have to then exercise a whole lot of self-control. The more self-control they must maintain, the more exhausted they become. And once they reach that point of exhaustion, their mental capacity for creativity is gone and thus change can't happen. And this realization provided the clear link for me between all of my sessions at RockStar--everything from engaging adults through the 4C's to asking for feedback to sparking curiosity to building engaging presentations. My task this year is to find more "space" for our adults so that they can process, they can feel comfortable pushing back, and we can then move forward together.
Change is a constant in our lives now. So much so that I really dislike the term when applied to new innovations in education. We as educators must recognize the need to be agile and constantly accept that adjustments are just par for the course. David Culberhouse wrote a great blog post on the concept of agility that I find very appropriate. And thus, again, the need for "space" so that we as adults are able to reflect on "what's next" and engage in meaningful dialogue to ultimately move to a new place of action.
White space isn't the only idea that I took away from RockStar, but I think that this is the critical starting point for our community. I look forward to finding ways to provide space for our community to engage in honest conversations, healthy conflict, and ultimately creative collaboration.
This is part of the #EdublogsClub year-long challenge to blog every week. This week's focus is on Digital Citizenship.
Digital Citizenship is a favorite topic of mine. As a high school administrator, this is a topic that comes up in multiple ways every single year. As this year gets ready to launch, I see this as a wonderful opportunity to take stock of what we currently do and set a few goals for the coming year.
Opportunities to Teach Digital Citizenship
At our school, our process for instilling good citizenship, digital or otherwise, is part of our DNA. Several years ago when digital citizenship became a hot topic, we immediately turned to Common Sense Media's education page to augment a program we already had in place for instructing our students on plagiarism. Over the last few years, we have worked to be sure all faculty know about Common Sense Media so that they can utilize the rich resources there as they build their own lessons that involve digital tools.
Meanwhil…
This week's (well, technically now that it is Tuesday, LAST week's prompt) for the #EdublogsClub challenge was to write about a free tool that you enjoy using. It has taken me all week to find time to really reflect on this because my absolute favorite, can't live without and can't work without (yes, they are two separate things--you'll see) tool is the Google Suite. I know several people have shared some of the obvious tools contained in the GSuite so I am going to put forth a few of the lesser known, under-appreciated tools found within the Google domain. May I present for reflection Google Draw, Google Hangout, Google Calendar (and the cool Calendly site) and Google Keep.
Up first, Google Draw. I love the flexibility of Draw for creating colorful flow charts, having students design word maps, collaborate on infographics, create Venn Diagrams, or just present information in a more playful, optically inviting way. If you haven't tried Google Draw, I encourage…
This week's prompt for #EduBlogsClub is about pendulum shifts in education. I have been ruminating on this topic all week. And clearly many of my fellow bloggers are in the same boat as the posts have been coming in much slower in comparison to previous weeks. This week, I am sharing a few of my thoughts on the idea of 1:1 implementation in schools. I know that it has only been a nanosecond in time since 1:1 programs were implemented in schools, and that not every school is even there yet. However, the number of shifts that have already happened around this topic in education is fascinating to me and probably what drew me to it as a topic for reflection in the first place.
The iPad was first released in 2010. Schools began jumping on the iPad bandwagon within months. How wonderful to have all of the student work and text books contained on one light-weight device. No more heavy backpacks to lug around and students could learn anywhere--provided they have access to wifi. This was …
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Thanks for sharing your thoughts!