Commitments to work by....

This post was inspired by one read through Twitter, my newly found PLN! Mrs. Ripp, aka 4thGrdTeach, posted a letter to herself about changes she would make in her classroom. Very inspiring! A curriculum guys take on it follows...

Dear me,
The changes in education continue to appear at a faster and faster pace. I commit to avoiding the blame game. Federal and state mandated tests are a fact of life and complaining about them is more like a rocking chair. It gives me something to do but gets me no where. Also, forget about building curriculum documents that everyone will abide by. The only way to cover our current curriculum documents is to sit on them. Pay attention to the day to day teaching and learning activities. This is where it all happens, in the classroom. Don't forget to get out of the office and collaborate with the teachers and principals that make schools work. Stay in touch with the true heroes in our profession! Finally, always remember it is about the kids. Filter every decision through the lense of what is right for kids.
Thanks,
Me

Any ideas you wish to add?

Our Promise

We the people of the education system promise to make certain all children are successful in school. We understand that we are the only place in society where every child must attend. Church is optional, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts is not mandatory, playing youth sports is an option but not mandatory. School is mandatory for all. What is not mandatory is learning. We promise to shift from a culture of teaching to a culture of learning. We understand that this will be hard work but our kids deserve the best. Excellence without equity is a hallowed prize but so is equity with mediocrity. We promise to educate all kids regardless of the challenges each student faces in and out of school. We will view kids no longer as victims but as survivors and will deliver the type of educational quality that will help all kids flourish. We will need to shift from a mind stuffing to a mind building mentality. Sometimes our brightest kids in our schools are the ones we have lost because they don't want to just learn stuff. They are the creative minds that have gone stale. This is our promise - schools for all!

School for All

A recent post by @gcouros about Emily reminded me of a time when serving as a High School Principal. We recently implemented an advisory program to help increase student achievement, create a sense of belonging and build community in a school experiencing significant demographic change. During that advisory it became evident that the school had not embraced diversity. Enter Meghan.

Meghan was a student with a visual impairment. A strong personality to say the least. In response to a Math assignment where students were to write a letter to the principal - me - Meghan penned a letter that changed me. Meghan wrote about her challenges in our hallways. Yes, I said Math assignment. The letter talked about the lack of signage to help her find rooms, students who were treating her poorly and a general sense of being disconnected. She talked in her letter about having her visual impairment cane being taken from her by students. The letter spoke so loudly we had it read by a student in every advisory. The beginning of change!

With one letter, Meghan changed our school. She brought awareness to the diversity in our school and the need to have Schools for All. The attitudes and perceptions of our school and greater community began to change. But Meghan was not done yet.

A year later Meghan and her mother approached us about having a service dog during the school day. She challenged our entire district to re-write policy and procedure to make schools for all a reality.

Over the years Meghan stayed in touch. She went on to the flagship university in Wisconsin and will most certainly change the world. Our schools are better places thanks to the Meghans and Emilys of the world.

Thanks Meghan!

Stop Doing List

Jim Collins writes extensively at his website about stop doing lists. After engaging in a recent conversation with folks who do not work in education something struck me. In Good to Great Jim Collins tells the story of how Darwin Smith, after becoming CEO of Kimberly Clark, started stop doing immediately.

Stepping back into the 1970's, Kimberly Clark was a paper product giant that had layers and layers of bureaucracy. The hierarchy was staggering. He began by stopping systems and processes that were not working. He created his stop doing list. Eventually this process would lead the the ultimate decision to sell the paper mills.

Translating that to the education sector made a lot of sense. 100 years old, bureaucracy, hierarchy, etc. What should we have on our stop doing list? Please share your ideas.

21st Century Curriculum

Heidi Hayes Jacobs coined a phrase that resonated with me. In Curriculum 21: Essential Education for a Changing World she used the phrase "remodeling units". In countless conversations with our most qualified and effective teachers the idea of abandoning current practice for one that matches the 21st Century seems like such a daunting task. Jacobs proposes teachers approach it like remodeling a house. You typically don't gut the entire house but you move one room to another because you still need to live in the house.

In this beach read, Jacobs proposes remodeling the content, skills and assessment of school. She suggests curriculum teams need to review curriculum from seven tenets:
1. Global perspective
2. Local perspective
3. Whole child
4. Future career and work options
5. Real world practice
6. Use of technology and media
7. Developmental appropriateness

This can be done by asking guiding questions including:
1. Within the discipline being reviewed, what content choices are dated and non-essential?
2. What choices for topics, issues, themes, problems, and case studies are timely and necessary for our learners within disciplines?
Are the interdisciplinary content choices rich, natural and rigorous?

The book's conclusions include how schools need to understand that this is a time of great change. A number of disruptors including technology, global flatness and accessible information are influencing this time of change. Presently schools look more like museums and it is our responsibility as the curators to change that. The students entering our schools a very different than earlier generations but remodeling one unit at a time will make the change easier on all.

How we work with our good teachers on changing this framework will be critical to the success of this change. Help ing them understand the simpliciy and complexity of the change will only help on this journey. How are schools successfully introducing this message? Feel free to share the stories!

PLP's for Administrators

After following a few #edchats and listening to conversation at Cardinal Stritch's Summer Institute for Doctoral students it dawned on me that we have a potential disconnect from the early adopters of technology and the educational leaders who set the culture, direction and tone of learning organizations. As a technological novice, I was struck by the tone that I heard in the two communities. The users - those with technology moxy - wrote about anti-change responses from admins that control decisions. The admins spoke and wrote about the pace of change, security, safety, costs, professional development, and related concerns. How do we merge these two worlds?

PLPs!

In our conversation with technological savvy school leaders at the Summer Institute it became obvious that those who are on the cutting edge of technology are not all digital natives. To help spread the power of this personal learning plan what if every technologically savvy leader adopted three or four colleagues from near or far and helped them establish a blog, twitter account, wiki or google docs?

I was surprised by the rhetoric by some regarding the rational some concluded to admin reluctance on technology which included: "They don't want to change." "They don't do anything anyways." and other tough comments. My experience runs contrary to those conclusions. The folks I work, collaborate, and network with all are willing to try if they have the right support and understanding of the rewards.

So - go out and and pay it forward! Find a receptive colleague and welcome them to the power of social media for professional development!

Pennies for Peace/Schools for All

At the Principal's Center through Cardinal Stritch we heard Dr. Jerene Mortenson present the Pennies for Peace story well documented in the best seller, Three Cups of Tea. This must read for educators documents one man's journey for peace in some of the most politically challenging places in the world - Pakistan and Afghanistan.

During the question and answer session some great questions about moral imperative popped up. Questions focused on what influenced Greg Mortenson, how he did what he did and what is next but the last one caught my attention. The final question really struck me. The audience member wanted to understand the moral dilemma presented by the success of the Pennies for Peace movement compared to the challenges our own country faces with educating all students.

Through fundraising efforts in American and across the world, Greg Mortenson has built 143 schools for 68,000 kids with 42 of them in Afganistan and 6 in Pakistan. This effort contributed to the dramatic explosion of school accessibility in these two countries - in particular the growth from 800,000 kids in school to over 9 million today. This is an incredible accomplishment!

How does that success lay over our own American Education issues - over 1 million dropouts, high unemployment rates in urban settings, etc.?

What changes need to occur to bring the same urgency to our own challenges in the American Education System?