Adventures in Administration

Photo taken by author in Belmont, CA Well, week three of the #EdublogsClub challenge has us reflecting on leadership. That is the topic tat drove me to blog in the first place.  And with the recent change of power in the United States, a very apropos topic. Eleanor Roosevelt is a woman and leader that I have come to admire and respect.  As a history teacher, I always spent time in my classes asking students to look at events through the eyes of the people and through the eyes of those in charge.  Because there are always multiple ways to look at every situation, every turning point. We would discuss the "what ifs" of history--Would Martin Luther have been as successful if Gutenberg hadn't invented the Printing Press when he did? Would the North American colonies have won their independence form Great Britain if George Washington had not been born? How would WWII have ended if the Allies had not developed the atomic bomb first?  These big questions have as muc...

Photo Credit Note: this blog was originally published in April of 2016. I have updated it in February of 2017 as part of the #EduBloggersClub challenge. This week's # EduBloggersClub challenge is to write about #Challenges. Now, for the past week I have been living with challenges as my school has been in the final countdown to our accreditation visit. But I have chosen NOT to focus on the plethora of topics that could provide.  Instead, I have opted to update and re-post an older blog that I wrote about a challenge I consider critical to our field: the Leadership Challenge... How many times a week do people say to you  in a conversation "I'm so glad I don't have your  job!"?  I have heard this a lot.  I honestly don't know if I am hearing it more than in the past, but I am certainly noticing it more.  So I started asking people: "Why do you say that?" and typically the answer I get is something along the lines of "I don't want to ...

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...