This post is my contribution to Scott McLeod’s Leadership Day 2009.  His site will aggregate the many excellent offerings from bloggers around the globe in the coming days. I’m writing my post for anyone who has influence in education–which is all of us, really. My hope is that it becomes a conversation starter. Please agree, disagree, and stretch my thinking.

Going to the dogs

I have learned a lot from the Cesar Milan, The Dog Whisperer. He’s a terrific teacher: he models, he encourages, he shares as much of the “why” as the “how”. His vision is transparent: achieving balance between people and dogs. He changes people by building a trusting relationship with them, and they in turn build trusting, balanced relationships with their animals.

On the episode I saw last night, Cesar was working with a family whose dog Hula was very fearful. Hula would run and hide when anxious, or bite the husband and children when she felt felt threatened. She was calm only when in her owner’s arms, but clearly the relationship was unhealthy. I can only imagine the ripple effects of Hula’s behaviour on the whole family: the tension, the anxiety, the resentment, the retreating from community. I am paraphrasing here, but Cesar’s response to Hula’s fear was to approach the dog from the side. His message to Hula was I am with you, I am not a threat, we can face what is ahead, we are together. Initially the dog struggled, trying to bite, trying to run. Cesar calmly persisted, and eventually Hula relaxed and found a more balanced way of being part of the family and engaging with the world.

Now, I don’t want this metaphor to get twisted. I’m not advocating for a “you’re my pack, I’m your Alpha, follow me” approach to technology leadership in education. But there is a lesson here about how to lead when teachers are uncertain or fearful, as many still are, when it comes to integrating technology. When people are anxious, stand with them. Edward Deming talked about driving out fear in his 14 Points:

8.  Encourage effective two way communication and other means to drive out fear throughout the organization so that everybody may work effectively and more productively for the company.

Most leaders are used to being out front, paving the way. Some lead from behind, distributing the leadership, helping others nurture their passions, find their voices, and influence others. In times of profound change, I believe as leaders we need to be beside the people we influence if all of us are to thrive.

Lead from beside, as well as from the front and from behind.

What does this look like in practical terms? I offer my thoughts on a 360° approach to (tech) leadership:

Lead from ahead:

• have a vision for learning that includes the wise, ubiquitous integration of technology in education to connect, create, communicate, collaborate, and care. Live your vision.
• model your own use of technology to meet your personal and professional learning needs and share your experiences with your colleagues.
  
• Be transparent. Build your personal learning network (PLN) Read blogs, get on Facebook and Twitter and figure out why others are there.
• advocate on behalf of the learners in your community (all staff, students, parents). Lobby for technology integration support positions in schools so staff, parents, and students can learn and practice new pedagogical approaches with a guide, not in isolation. Promote openness, not blocking.
• focus on what technology affords, not what it costs.

Lead from behind:

• encourage punishment-free risk-taking and experimentation. Be ready to prop up teachers and kids when they stumble–not shut them down. See failure as a stepping stone to success. Teach.
• build capacity for technology integration by creating on-going, just-in-time professional development that meets the needs of teachers. This should not be done off the side of someone’s desk, but by a dedicated position.
• translate the acceptable use policy into a document that kids, parents, and teachers understand. Frame it as an agreement to tap into the opportunity to learn and practice digital citizenship.
• read, write, and talk about technology. Understand that learning is social, and that social learning is facilitated and nurtured by digital communication. Know too that kids are using the tools and we are obliged to get with the program.
• do the behind-the-scenes heavy lifting by getting essential jobs done: for example, get data projectors installed in the ceiling rather than leaving them on carts. This will increase internet/Smartboard use ten-fold. Guaranteed.

Lead from beside:

• relationships are built side by side. Leading from beside people means you and those you influence are facing things together. Put the problem/challenge in the middle.  You communicate more effectively when you are close, you build trust, and as you experience struggles together you can reflect and tell the story of your journey as “our story”. Trust drives out fear.
  
• bring people together to talk about their challenges, successes, and failures with technology. People who complain about BCeSIS, ReportWriter, problems with logins, screen resolution, access to the lab–their concerns and frustrations are real–seek to understand, commiserate, and find solutions to problems. If you can’t, communicate the problems to those who can make a change. Understanding drives out fear.
• learn and teach a trouble-shooting mindset and skills to kids, staff, parents. Getting unstuck builds confidence. Confidence drives out fear.
• connect people to each other. Become a social convener. Create structures that allow people to collaborate face-to-face and virtually. Community drives out fear.
• being close means you can strike a balance: provide scaffolding but don’t do for people what they can do for themselves. This is an old idea by Pearson and Gallagher (1983)–gradual release of responsibility: moving from demonstration, guided practice, independent practice, to application.  Adult learners need support as they learn to integrate technology into their lives.  Lev Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development applies, too. Learning drives out fear.
• laugh together. So much of the net is devoted to humour for a reason. Laughing feels so good. The video below was shared by Lesley Edwards, a friend and mentor. Pay attention at 2:54. I haven’t met anyone who doesn’t see themselves in this sketch. Laughter drives out fear.

I’m not a tech whisperer but I am a learner. And I am working on driving out fear by leading and learning side by side.

Yesterday at 6 pm I published a post on our class blog about our Heritage Fair. At 7 pm I received an email from one of my students:

Hi Mrs. Smith

That is a great post you worte but i have some suggestions

1. Add links to the names of the class mates
2. Maybe share more info on what classmates said about the differences in presentations in the library to the class.

signed ***

I have to say I am thrilled with this email because this tells me a few things:

1. What I’ve been saying about linking is sticking. She noticed that I didn’t do it.
2. What I’ve modeled about the power of feedback to help a writer improve is sticking.
3. What I have said about reading thoughtfully is sticking. She obviously read deeply enough to notice what was missing–I had not included the really important conversation we had following the Fair
4. What I have been saying about the subtleties of what sorts of comments should be made on a blog, and what should be made via other means is sticking. Although her feedback would have been just fine on the blog, I think it was thoughtful to choose email instead.
5. Most significant to me, her email says something about our relationship. She trusts me enough to feel confident that her feedback would be welcomed.

There are days when I suspect that I am just so much white noise in the lives of my students. And then there are others when I notice a change in attitude, a strategy applied, growth in thinking, or more mature behaviour. Blogging has created fertile ground for all of us. The roots go down and the plant grows up.

Have you ever had feedback from your students, parents, or colleagues that has made you aware of the postive effects of your teaching that you weren’t expecting?  I’d love to hear it.

Now I’ve got a post to edit.

I joked with my colleagues that I should never stand outside my classroom door, as I am likely to get asked to do a job I hadn’t planned on. A few weeks back my principal asked if I would present something on Smartboards for the annual gathering of Vancouver Island school trustees which our district was hosting. I asked if I could do something on blogging instead as it is the focus of my action research.

What to say to Trustees?

As the event got closer, I was beginning to wonder what a trustee would know or want to know about blogging. I would have a context for a teaching audience–and a parent audience, but what would be the background knowledge, interests, and concerns of trustees? Enter the trusty PLN –personal learning network via Twitter. I tweeted and got some great responses from Lorna Costantini, Kathy Cassidy, Cindy Seibel and Heidi Hass-Gable, who was so generous with her time that we had a Skype call.

How much to say?

I had to think about how deep to go in the time I had (and that seemed to float–initially 15 minutes, then 45, settling at about half an hour), which wasn’t a lot. Or too much, depending… I decided they might need the context of Web 2.0 and an explanation of the concept of a read and write web. So I created a short PowerPoint (below) and decided to focus on two aspects of blogging that seem to be especially important to my students: their digital identity (pride, confidence, the desire to represent the best of themselves, their learning profiles are less visible or a barrier) and the audience that blogging gives them (family, peers, students around the world). After that I’d share a video of interviews that Paul Hamilton did with five of my students in December. I was then going to tour them quickly through our class blog, Huzzah!, and the student blogs, and then invite questions or conversation.

How it went

I arrived for the set up and realized I could load all the student’s blogs in the lab so the trustees could see individual ones after the fact. A senior administrator popped in, and gave me a really valuable head’s up: the trustees were from an older demographic than he expected. His job was to shepherd the 50 trustees between presentations, and they were getting tired (oh dear). My time was going to be about 25 minutes.

I am pretty pleased with the way that the presentation itself went. I have been living blogging with my students for four months and I am very proud of their growth. I was only somewhat nervous, and the technology didn’t fail me. The questions were interesting: Kathy Cassidy was right: the first audience statement during the presentation was, “You mean anyone can see them?” Other questions after I spoke were about parent involvement and education, one about spelling,  and my favourite, “What did you need to do before you were successful?”. I said I had to fail. I had to learn what blogging wasn’t before I understood what it was. I said I also have to be able to fail in front of my students so I can model the two most important tech skills: troubleshooting and having a plan B (and C, and…).

Regrets

I wish I had:

• first surveyed the audience about their use of the Internet, and knowledge of blogging;
• been more thorough in defining or touring a blog–what a post is etc.;
• edited the video–at eight minutes it was too long;
• emphasized more the need for peer-to-peer teacher support while teachers are taking risks. It would have been the perfect opportunity to get the bug in the ear of people who can make change happen and maybe get technology integration support positions in our district.

Learning

• I have a fabulous PLN through Twitter.
• Drinking water and not wearing under-wire are important to presenter comfort (learned that before–this is gender specific advice).
• I know enough about the richness of blogging with students that I can actually say I have expertise, which surprises me.

No doubt I’ll present again–in fact I have to in April. So I am open to suggestions from your experiences–any advice on how to plan for and deliver to an audience about the power and potential of technology? Love to hear from you.

This weekend I was in Philadelphia. I met amazing people, had great conversations, and attended inspiring professional development sessions. All from the comfort of my office swivelly chair. And yes, I watched most of it in my pj’s.

I was at Educon 2.1 via Mogulus, a broadcasting platform that allows for video streaming and simultaneous chat. I really do wish I had been there in person, but to attend virtually was a great second-best. Maybe next year? I’d probably have to take a week off to get there and back! There were 350 physically attending. I wonder how many took part like me. Chris Lehmann, the faculty and students at Science Leadership Academy did a great job of bringing in a wider audience.

The conversations in the chat room were fascinating–at times a lot of “push back” on my own thinking (a term new to me in the last six months–not all heads nod, respectful disagreement, alternate points of view). I wish I could find the chat logs to see what I read and said.

In Bud Hunt’s presentation he used a tool called Ether Pad. Looks like an amazing tool for synchronous collaboration. One chat room discussion was about the true value of blogging. Someone contended that most blogging was essentially drivel, and not worth an audience. (I hope I am being fair, because I don’t have the transcript). I guess blogging either finds an audience or it doesn’t, like any other form of publication. Think of those bins outside bookstores with deeply discounted stuff that won’t be read. At least dead blogs don’t clog the landfill.

Another discussion was about whether books belong in school anymore. I really want to read the chat log on that, because I was a bit incredulous. This is not about textbooks, but any book. The chatter said they were inefficient. Can’t get my head around that. Maybe I was feeding the trolls on that one.

Alec Couros’s session on open learning was lively and satisfying. I wish I had thought to change browsers to Internet Explorer from FireFox as it was really choppy. They talked about online identity, sharing and the “gift economy”, who owns data and more. I actually recognized a dozen faces in the room, which in itself is quite amazing to me. Again, can’t wait to see the encore presentation.

I could not have pictured on-line learning being this engaging and inspiring a year ago. I have been taught so much by so many in such a short amount of time. It’s remarkable and humbling.

How has learning on-line through such virtual conference experiences affected you? What is missed? And does it matter?

Image: Grace’s Ghost by Pickadillywilson

So…

1. My dad was a pilot in the RCAF and we moved to France when I was little. We used to play in a concrete bunker, but not for long. The girls wanted to play house, and the boys peed in the corner.
2. I repeated grade 1 and didn’t read until grade 3. I got through school by talking and listening. Probably more talking than listening. I started reading for pleasure as an adult, and I started with all the great children’s literature I had missed. Mistress Masham’s Repose was a turning point.
3. I was an officer in the Reserve Navy. I still can’t believe I had command of a vessel (65′ WWII diving tender). We trained Sea Cadets and dragged pilots around to simulate a parachute ditching over open water.
4. The worst thing that ever happened to me was that our second child died at birth. It was 14 years ago. It is also the thing that has taught me the most.
5. In 2004-05 my son, daughter, husband and I sailed around the world on a 188′ tall ship called Concordia. Chris and I were on-board directors for Class Afloat. Forty-eight high school students, five teachers, and a professional crew. A challenging year (I was often sea-sick), but rewarding too. We met amazing people, saw amazing things, have amazing memories. Wish I was a blogger then.
6. I have had rheumatoid arthritis for 11 years. Most of the time my joints are fine, but other times notsomuch. My knees often look like footballs.
7. I am a quilter in exile. I have a fabulous Bernina sewing machine that I saved for two years to buy, and a fabric stash that calls to me. An unfinished quilt hanging on the design wall in my sewing room tries to attract my attention. Wait til I finish this master’s thing. Then we’ll be swimming in quilts.

Tagging:  Neil Varner, Bernadette Rego, Cindy Martin, Sue Hellman, Errin Gregory

Please link back so I can read your 7 things…

I am re-tagging Claire Thompson because I want to know more about you, Claire!

Image: You don’t look quite right by Gunnlaugur Þ. Briem

Folks (like me) make sweeping resolutions about the things they will change in their lives. I will lose 10 lbs! we say. I will be more organized! We want to be better than we are, so it’s a hopeful act. Well, despite good intentions most of my resolutions don’t last much past February.

This year, though, I think I have a resolution that I can keep. Because I know I can. It used to be a habit. This year I am going to be on time, meaning before time. I am never atrociously late for work events, I just arrive as things are starting, as the meeting is called to order. I get in few minutes after a hair appointment should begin. Worst of all, I tell my family I will be home at 5:00 and I don’t come in the door until closer to 6:00.

My mother is always early. Because she doesn’t drive, she depends on others to give her lifts, and she never wants to keep people waiting. I have an imprinted memory of her leaning out the back door, looking down the driveway, ready to jump out and trot off with someone.  For her, being late is discourteous because you are really saying your time is more valuable than another’s. A neighbour’s saying, “on time is late” really says the same thing. Arriving before “on time” gives you time to meet, greet, and honour the people you are spending time with. I need to re-remember that.

I know this, but have forgotten it. I have dropped the habit of punctuality that was part of my bones for my early years. So time for a change. I am going to show those I know (family, colleagues, and the businesses I frequent) that I value them enough to be on time.

Image: In Search of Lost Time by Bogenfreund

The givens:

I have decided my action research question will focus on the circumstances and beliefs that lead to student engagement in learning. I really want to use blogging or digital storytelling as the lens through which to explore engagement. I also want to build my own skills in integrating technology so I can help my colleagues do the same.

The challenge:

At this point we are struggling for lab time. We have 500 + students with one 30 person lab. My students may not get enough time for these tech-intensive tasks. We may get a new lab sometime in the spring.

The fall-back position:

I could go to plan B (which was my plan A): investigate the effectiveness of action (drama) strategies such as hot-seating, role plays, and mantle of the expert in promoting student engagement in the content areas. I have been knocked out by Jeffrey Wilhelm’s excellent book Action Strategies for Deepening Comprehension. I know his techniques grab and engage kids.

But…

I really get excited by using technology to create, communicate, and collaborate. I just don’t want irregular or limited access to the lab to frustrate my students or me to the point of giving up on technology.

So…

I started blogging with my students anyway. I was able to do a lot of the teaching part in class (yeah, laptop + data projector!), so the students could really use lab time for writing.

And then!

I got a call on Friday: we are going to have a 30-laptop cart in three weeks! I am not sure what kind yet (Dells? Asus EEE?) but they are wireless and have long battery life. I know there will be a steep learing curve, but I am game. It will double our access opportunities, which means I have a green light for the action research.

The moral of the story: Just do it.

Image by carbonated under a Creative Commons license.

I was just looking.

Used to be, I would browse the bulletin boards of my school at the end of the day to get a sense of what other teachers and students were doing. This teaching gig is pretty lonely, so I’d prowl for inspiration. I’d see the products of teaching and learning, beautifully displayed, and I would try to infer the process behind them. I suppose other teachers (and administrators, and parents, and kids) have done this, too. There is a lot of imagination required to figure out the teaching behind the results–and I know I wasn’t always right about what really went on.

Now I’m looking elsewhere.

Personal learning networks have changed all that. Teachers are opening their classrooms to each other and the world. I have learned so very much from others. Case in point: via Twitter, I began reading Diane Cordell’s blog. She shared a fabulous beginning-of-the-year activity to get her students thinking about class rules using images from Flickr as visual prompts. She wrote about the process, shared the links and the finalized SlideShare. The activity got her kids thinking both divergently and convergently about how a classroom can work as a community. I needed to do that, too.

So, I stole her idea.

It’s a good thing.

I used some of the same images, close to the same process, and like Diane, I’ll be sharing it with parents. The ideas the students came up with weren’t always what I expected, as was the case in Diane’s class.

OK, it’s not technically stealing if it is offered to you. I could say I was inspired by her, or motivated by her creativity, or piggybacked on her strategy, but stealing does sound a bit more…subversive. And in a way this sharing across the distances is still revolutionary. She’s in up-state New York, and I am on the west coast of Canada. I won’t ever get to see her bulletin boards. But I won’t need to. With blogs, wikis, SlideShare, Twitter, the Classroom 2.0 Ning, and a host of other networking tools, I have other ways to find inspiration from colleagues I’ve never met in person.

Here’e what my students and I came up with:

Now go ahead, steal this, please. I’ll steal from you if you steal from me.

Image: Peek a Boo by John A Ryan Creative Commons

Teacher Beliefs

I have been reading a lot about student engagement and motivation as I prepare for my master’s degree action research, and the school year generally. I keep re-sifting the  research, and many interesting ideas are getting stuck in the sieve. My attention is being drawn to the idea of teacher beliefs. Two big ideas: a teacher’s sense of efficacy–my confidence about how effective my teaching will be to bring about student achievement, and a teacher’s expectations–my beliefs about my students’ ability to learn.

Our Identity, Our Mission

Here’s inspiration for a good beginning:

Each student’s heart must be caught up in the passion and enjoyment of learning and reading. This attitude is a mindset that must be nurtured daily. Time for this cultivating of spirit is set into every day’s lesson plans. It is imperative that I teach each student that they can learn, regardless of whatever they believe hinders them…Teaching students to know they can learn requires that I couple an academic sense of identity with a sense of mission. This begins the first moment I meet my pupils. (A. Isennagle in At-Risk Students: Portraits, Policies, Programs, and Practices, 1993 pp. 373-74)

Intention

Bud Hunt wrote An Open Letter to Teachers reminding us of the essentials; it’s going up on the wall in my classroom this week. It’s rich and full of encouragement–please read it. Here’s the part that gets stuck in my throat:

I wish you well. I ask you to be brave and humble and kind and tenacious and wise and caring and gentle and fierce. We so need you to do well… Do good stuff.

That’s what I hope for my students too, because we so need them to do well. And I hope–I intend–that my expectations and efficacy will show that I believe to the core that they will.

I often find myself wishing there was a way to watch people in action with their students. You get a sense of what they are about through their posts: über-organized, creative, resourceful, kind, funny, engaging, reflective, generous, approachable–or not. But wouldn’t it be neat to observe for a day? What would you learn? Some of your assumptions would be confirmed, but there’d be surprises, too.

Given the chance, I’d perch on the wall of Clarence Fisher’s class in Snow Lake, Manitoba. I’d rub my little forelegs together with glee. I’d be somewhat familiar with what goes on in his room, because Clarence is quite transparent about his practice. His podcasts from the K-12 online conference and his ustream presentations say a lot about what he believes about his students and what they can do. His recent pictures of his classroom (taken in that surreal time before the students arrive) had me (and Brian Crosby) wanting to channel him. I will, and am going to post pics of my work, too.

Clarence teaches roughly the same age group as I do, and he’s a generalist teacher, as I am, so I think I’d recognize many of his strategies, but I’d learn a bundle. I want to see how the learning is orchestrated. He talks about being a network administrator for his kids–helping them grow their personal learning networks. Does that promote student efficacy and engagement? Bet it does.

What I’d likely see:

• hive-like activity: not all doing the same thing at the same time, but a sense of purpose none the less
• students showing respect for each other’s opinions, but still willing to challenge them
• peer mentoring and coaching, students teaching the teacher
• students comfortable with thinking, willing to take risks
• students engaged with content as amplifiers not mirrors, as David Warlick describes

Clarence’s first unit on Global Lives sounds like a great hook, and he’s injected rich and relevant content and activities for his students to chew on. I’d love to be a kid in that class–forget being a teacher.

It is tempting to whine, I’ll admit. I have one computer in my room, so I can’t reproduce the circumstances (1 to 1.5) Clarence has. I’m 1 to 30. But, I now have a data projector + iwb and internet access in my classroom which is a universe more than I had four months ago, so I’ll go with that, and work for more.

So thanks for inspiration, Clarence. Thanks for modeling and sharing. Have a great year.

And fellow voyeurs: where would you like to be a fly on the wall?

Image: Green Bottle Fly by jpctalbot Creative Commons license