Adventures in Administration

With the Jedi Master himself! 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...

This is a great question and one that was chatted about in one of my Voxer groups recently.  This question stuck in my head and led me to this blog post.  So I am grateful to my #LeadWild Voxer #PLN for bringing this up.  It was actually quite timely as we have been, in slightly different words, grappling with this question at home as our son adjusts to 4th grade.  Sometimes work and home align, and this is one of those times. Image Credit To begin to answer this question, I turned back to my "roots" so to speak, of a history teacher, and began with Socrates.  Really, I could begin my quest in many places, but for me Socrates seemed an excellent starting point.  During Socrates' time, Ancient Greece was a democracy of sorts.  Citizens (read: free adult men) were expected to contribute in different ways to the running of society.  For Socrates, he encouraged his students to seek the truth (this eventually will lead to his death).  To se...

Photo Credit Invariably, at the heart of what we do as educators is our ability to manage, maintain, and foster relationships.  Without relationships that are open, trusting, and safe, no one learns.  And I mean, NO ONE.  No student or adult can learn if they don't have a positive relationship with the person sharing knowledge.  Think about conferences you have attended.  Do you often find yourself sizing up the facilitator in the first couple of minutes and deciding if they have anything to teach you or not?  I will never forget a week-long training I was attending.  Day 1, the presenter shared some statistics.  One of my table-mates decided to Google the stats that were shared and found some discrepancies between what the facilitator said and what was presented in the original study from which the statistics came from.  Oops.  There went that facilitator's credibility and that was a week of wasted time. So now think about all of ...