Archive for May, 2009
05 29th, 2009
I’ve been thinking a lot about coaching lately. Partially, I’m sure, because I’m reading Making Learning Whole by David Perkins (thanks, Gary!) but also because I think so much of the way we learn and the way we set up smart systems can be seen in smart coaching.
When I first became an Ultimate Frisbee captain in college, one of the former captains of the team told me, “Don’t try to do everything in a time out. Give everyone three things to think about and nothing more.” It was great advice because it was always very tempting to go over EVERYTHING I saw on the field in every time out. But whenever I did that, folks never retained everything, and now everyone walked away with a different piece of what they thought was important.
This became great advice as a high school coach as well… and not just for timeouts. One of things I learned as a coach was not to try to do everything at once. Before every season, I laid out all the skills and concepts I wanted them to master, and then I laid them out across the season — how I would introduce ideas and then constantly spiral back to them… so that we could build slowly and smartly together. But I also learned how to focus on certain ideas, certain concepts, player by player, skill by skill. And I learned that, whenever possible, connecting ideas together, so that players could see how what they did related back to the whole was incredibly important.
But I also realized that I couldn’t teach everything. I know coaches whose teams had twenty plays with multiple offensive and defensive sets, and more often than not, those teams could be beat just by out-executing them. Our teams did what we did very well, and what we did was rarely scripted, but rather we put in systems that relied on players to know what they were doing very well and then make smart choices based on what they saw in front of them.
Yeah… allegory, right?
But what made me think about this was not about teachers teaching kids, but how too many places deal with teacher learning and school improvement. So much about the current school improvement ideas are about trying to improve twenty different things at once, and I don’t think that works. It sounds good — especially because we can all see that there are often many, many problems in schools — but it rings hollow, because the sum of all those parts rarely add up to a whole.
What amazes me, more and more, is how few schools have a clearly defined pedagogical practice that can be articulated simply and powerfully, and are therefore, even more susceptible to this kind of problem.
Let us think about how we build smart teams and build smart schools. Let us realize that we’re better off picking the things we want to do well and then work tirelessly to do those things well. Let’s be smart about what we want to be, how we want to get there, and how we get there collectively and individually, and then let’s stop trying to go over all the ways we want to get better in a 30 second time out.
05 27th, 2009
Today, President Obama nominated a very experienced center-left jurist for the Supreme Court. The nominee is a Hispanic woman. If confirmed, she will be the first Justice of Hispanic descent to serve on the Supreme Court.
Today, the Supreme Court of California ruled that Proposition 8 — the ballot initiative that outlaws gay marriage — was legal under the California Constitution.
Today when White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked about President Obama’s reaction to the California decision, he responded with a very politic non-answer:
This was a moment when President Obama could have spoken out. He could have spoken about how his desire to nominate someone who represented the diversity of our country was reaffirmed by a cowardly decision made on procedural grounds by the California Supreme Court. He could have spoken about how decisions like that one were why he felt that compassion and empathy why he has talked about compassion and empathy as necessary qualities for a Supreme Court justice.
He didn’t. And as a result, he missed an opportunity to speak about real change. He missed a chance to speak out for policy change that affects millions of Americans. Instead, he leaves himself open to criticism — from the left and the right — that his pick of Judge Sotomayor is (from the right) tokenism and (from the left) empty symbolism.
A year ago, I went to my friend Jason’s wedding in San Francisco. I was able to return the favor he paid me nine years ago by standing with him as he married the love of his life. For Jason and Kevin, it meant that the state could claim that their love was any less meaningful, valuable or powerful as the love another couple may share. It was a wonderful day, and as his friend, it meant the world to me that he was able to have that day.
Several months ago, I stood with my friend Steve as he had to bury his husband after a horrible accident. We spoke at the wake, and he talked about how much harder it would have been if he had to fight to be allowed to make funeral arrangements, deal with his husband’s finances, etc… At his lowest, most difficult moment, his marriage meant that his grief, as overwhelming as it was, was not compounded by the anger and frustration of not being married in the eyes of the law.
During the campaign, time and time again, President Obama appealed our ideals of what our country could be. He spoke of equality and equity. He appealed the progressive ideals of young and old across the nation. Today, while on the one hand, he made an historic nomination to the Supreme Court, he betrayed those same ideals by staying silent when his voice was dearly needed.
I hope Judge Sotomayor is confirmed. I hope that she is more than a center-left jurist. I hope she does pass judgement with compassion and empathy. And I hope that she serves as a living symbol that our government is of all the people and for all the people. But on a day when a judicial body in this country dashed the hopes of millions in California (and millions more across the nation,) President Obama could have — and should have — made plain and powerful the link between the need for jurists like Judge Sotomayor on the Supreme Court bench and the need for the courts to overturn unjust laws like Proposition Eight. That’s what we needed today. That kind of leadership was the change I could believe in. Anything else, is sadly, to quote Vice-President Biden, more of the same.
Tags: politics, proposition 8, SCOTUS
05 10th, 2009
Clarence Fisher (@glassbeed) tweeted out the other day:
(Tweet Two) Why do you do it? What’s the greatest thing about being an administrator compared to being in the classroom?
I replied:
And several folks asked me to elaborate on that second part –
That’s more than a 140 character response… so here goes.
At its most basic, the skill sets that allow you to be successful as a teacher are not necessarily the skill sets that set you up to succeed as a teacher. For example, any photographic evidence of my desk and office back when I was a teacher / tech coordinator would show a cluttered mess. It was o.k., I have a really good memory and I could put my hands on just about anything when I really needed to. I enjoyed that mess, honestly. I felt comfortable in it, and I was pretty effective in it. However, when I became a principal, I found that methodology didn’t work for me anymore. I had to change a fundamental part of the way I worked. There was too much to keep in my head so that a major part of how I worked had to change. I had to become more organized. I had to develop new systems if I was going to be successful as a principal.
That may not sound that much, but for a lot of us (and I include myself in this), how we work often is part of who we are. I loved being that messy teacher. And it wasn’t enough for me to say, “I need to be more organized.” I had to say, “I have to be a more organized person.” Now, I don’t leave most days unless I go through the pile of papers on my desk. And moreover, I’ve noticed that I’ve changed the way I think about a messy desk. It actively bothers me now, which I never would have thought.
That’s a somewhat easy answer, but there’s a deeper level of this as well. One of my mentors pulled me aside as I was taking on more administrative roles back at Beacon and said, “Up until now, you’ve had a lot of success on the faculty being a passionate advocate for your own ideas. Now, your job is to support other people’s ideas.” That was a shift. There’s no question that being a principal — especially a founding principal — means having a vision and being able to articulate it passionately and powerfully, but after that, unless you want every idea to come out of your office, you really do need to be able to step back and let others inhabit that vision — sometimes (even often) in ways you have never thought of.
Those are two examples that are specific to me, but I’d posit that everyone needs to go through this process when they become a principal. Many of us who are teachers have made being a teacher a fundamental part of our identity. And while I don’t think administrators should ever stop thinking of themselves as teachers, there is a shift that must happen in the way we see ourselves. It requires different strengths, different skills, to be a successful principal than the skills that allowed us to be successful in our career up to that point. Going through that process can involve a bit of a sense of loss, but it is a necessary thing to do.
So now I’m wondering… for any admins who read this — do you agree? What did you have to give up or change in self-examination when becoming an admin? And for other folks… what skill or trait or tendency that serves you very well as a teacher could you see being less of a positive thing as an administrator?
Tags: admininstration
05 4th, 2009
… but first we have to ask ISTE to include him.
ISTE will be having a moderated debate as a Keynote Panel on June 30th. The six panelists have not been announced yet, and this is a perfect chance to lobby for one of the best voices we have to advocate for the intersection of progressive pedagogy and technology. I have known Gary for several years now, and I’ve even been lucky enough to be on a panel with him at EduCon 2.1. Gary speaks passionately and eloquently about the schools we need, and his debates at EduCon and with Will Richardson have sparked dialogue long after the events are over.
So sign the petition, and ask (dare I say urge) ISTE to include Gary on the NECC Keynote Panel.
Tags: NECC
