Adventures in Administration

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 Image Source 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 less...

I had to take a break from the weekly # edublogsclub challenge in order to attend to some family matters while also wrapping up the school year.  It got a little nuts. And though I have never been particularly good about blogging in the past, I found that for the past few months, the need to blog was always there.  They say that it takes 21 days to form a habit and while I was not posting EVERY week, I was posting consistently so it would appear that I have moved closer to forming a habit than I realized.  And not being able to blog for a while really solidified that fact for me. Thus, it seems appropriate that my first post back should be an opportunity to take stock of the experience thus far and identify some goals for the rest of the blogging year. Image credit: https://goo.gl/dWxAs6 What have I learned so far? Despite the fact that I have never had much confidence in my ability to blog, I have found that I no longer really care if I what I write is "good" o...

Photo Credit Wow!  It has certainly been a week.  But isn't the first week of the year always a little hectic?  No matter how well you plan over the summer, you never quite know how things will go once you add the students and staff.  This year was no different.  In reflecting on the week, I noticed a few points that I feel are going to inform my year and help me to be a better administrator. Photo Credit 1.  Lesson one: flexibility and patience!  Technology will always start off a little rocky so don't expect it to go smoothly!   We had so many IT issues I was ready to just hand out paper and pencils and call it a day.  But the faculty kept plugging along and the more I communicated with them, the easier it got.  By Friday, most of the challenges had been smoothed out.  We still have some big issues to tackle in the coming weeks in order to get everything up to full speed but I was very pleased with the progress an...

https://www.flickr.com/photos/never_surrender/739519564 This challenge could not have come at a better time!  I want to be committed to blogging because I appreciate the opportunity to reflect on my practice.  However, I will agonize over topics for an eternity, and before I know it the moment has passed and another blog is lost.  So thank you @teachthought for giving us a question a day to blog about.  Now no excuses!  So here I go with day one... Prompt: "Write your goals for the school year.  Be as specific or abstract as you'd like to be!" As an Administrative Team, we identified our goals a few weeks ago.  I am not going to list them here verbatim as they are very specific to our site.  However, I will gladly share the 30,000 foot view so as to keep me honest and to provide motivation and accountability: 1. Improve communication.  Many of our constituents have faulty perceptions of what we do on a daily basis to help the...