Category Archives: Education

Closing Thoughts

Greetings to anyone still reading (or at least waiting for new content).

I wanted to share with that, as you read this, today is my last day in my current role as a middle school principal. It’s bittersweet, but I am very excited to have accepted a position with a well-known technology company that is named after a fruit and was started by two guys with the same first names.

This decision was one that was both surprisingly easy and surprisingly difficult. It’s difficult to walk away from something you like doing and that you might be pretty good at. On the other side, working for this company has been a dream of mine for as long as I can recall.

I will continue to be involved in education in my new role, though moving forward it will be as a vendor and not a practitioner. I’m happy to share the details with those interested in knowing more, but for now I’d like to share some reflections on three years as the principal of a fantastic middle school.

A friend and colleague challenged me to identify top 5 characteristics of an effective principal and, while I’m not sure I’m the best qualified to do that, I think it’s a fitting way to close out this chapter of my professional career.

Vision

“Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.”
— Warren G. Bennis

One of the things I learned pretty early on is that it’s not enough to simply have a vision. You have to do a lot of legwork to communicate and get people on board and engaged with the the vision so that it can become a shared vision.

Without a vision, you’re just a manager keeping the status quo in place. With a vision you have an eye on where you’re headed and a “hook” on which to hang all of your other actions. If it doesn’t align with the vision and move the organization forward, it doesn’t belong.

Make an open call and invite those who are leaders in the organization to the table to talk about the vision. I did my best to engage not just “titled” leaders, but also anyone who had an interest and I was surprised to see some folks who had been marginalized take a chance and come to the table. These people have become some of my very best teacher leaders, titled or not.

Strength

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”
— Steve Jobs

Moving forward can be challenging. You will naturally have many folks who are on board with and have invested in the vision; these are the easy ones to lead. The challenge is to have the strength to push forward when you encounter the Nay Sayers and Sabateurs. Sadly, they’re out there and no matter how clearly you paint the picture or tell the story of where the organization is headed, you will never get everyone on board.

I think the “a-ha” for me was when one of my mentors in the District told me, “It’s OK not to have everyone on board. If everyone is on board, you’re probably not pushing hard enough.”

I also remember a college professor sharing a (NSFW) scene from the otherwise B-quality Roadhouse. In the scene, Patrick Swayze is telling the would-be bouncers of the shady bar at the center of the film that, no matter how rude or aggressive a customer becomes, they need to “be nice.” I’m reminded of this when I face a difficult situation with a beligerent parent, and I certainly think about it when confronted with a Sabateur.

Humility

“Do you wish to be great? Then begin by being. Do you desire to construct a vast and lofty fabric? Think first about the foundations of humility. The higher your structure is to be, the deeper must be its foundation.”
— Saint Augustine

This one speaks for itself. I don’t know much, but I am confident I can surround myself with people who know what they’re doing and trust them to do it well. The gestalt power of the group to move the organization forward far exceeds what the leader alone can offer.

It’s easy to get trapped into thinking you need all the answers, but showing your weakness and your willingness to reach out and ask for help sets an important example. It communicates that it’s not only OK not to know everything, but that it’s expected.

One of the things that I recall early on in my first year was turning to the blogs of folks whom I follow online. In many ways, this was helpful, but it was also incredibly humbling. Their schools always sound so perfect and so forward-thinking you can find yourself in a kind of blog-induced funk thinking you’re a horrible leader and your school is the only one with problems. The thing I realized is that every school has its good and bad qualities and that no school is perfect. It’s just our tendency to blog about all the things going well instead of about the angry parent calls or disgruntled faculty members.

Remember to be humble. You can’t do it alone and you probably wouldn’t want to.

Spirit

“A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.”
— Thomas Jefferson

The biggest compliment I have received over the three years in my current position has come up quite a bit when people visit our campus. Many have said, “There’s just a really great energy about this school.” It’s hard to place exactly what that means, but it always makes me proud.

Educating kids in the current political and economic climate, and with all the concerns fresh in our minds about student safety, is a unique challenge. A core belief of mine that I’ve shared before is, “We take our work very seriously, but never ourselves.”

Have fun. Joke. Laugh a lot, especially at yourself.

Patience

“I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.”
— Lao Tzu

Finally, give yourself a break. There are no quick fixes and no canned solutions that will miraculously “fix” any of the problems we face in our schools. I found it important to try striking a balance between “dragging my feet” and “pushing too hard.” You won’t always get it right, but be willing to reflect frequently and adjust as needed.

Though I will leave this blog online for the foreseeable future, I will not be posting any new content here and, to reduce management overhead, I’ll be turning off comments in the coming weeks.

I will continue to maintain a presence on Twitter, Google+, and App.net1 and I look forward to staying in touch with the friends I have made in these virtual spaces over the last few years.

Thank you to all who have read, contributed, and otherwise been a part of my personal and professional growth on this blog. It’s been a fun ride! Stay hungry, stay foolish.

  1. I love app.net. If you want to give it a go, you need an invite. I might have some. [↩]

Caught in an Ed Reform Whirlwind

My twitter friend Dave Meister wrote this the other day and it has stuck with me:

I’m guessing he was listening to or reading Diane Ravitch at the time, I’m not sure. Either way, this short post really struck a chord.

I haven’t written or shared much about it, but my district is currently a pilot for Colorado’s Senate Bill 191 (aka SB-191) educator effectiveness legislation. My district of 15,000 students was selected for this “opportunity” last January and I’ve watched it emerge over the last year feeling very conflicted about where this is all headed.

In addition to piloting the evaluation system — a 23-page-per-teacher document that comprises 50% of a teacher’s “effectiveness” combined with 50% from (you guessed it!) scores on state tests — we are also what is called an “integration” district. This means that we are also rolling out massive curricular shifts in the form of what are being called the math and literacy design collaboratives. These are huge initiatives that tie classroom instruction and assessment directly back to the Common Core State Standards.

None of these things is inherently “bad,” in fact much of the writing focus of the Literacy Design Collaborative I like quite a bit, but when I look at the intensity and speed with which these changes have shifted the work we do in our district, I’m crossing my fingers that it’s the right work. There is an awful lot of corporate funding behind this from The Gates Foundation and others. Last week, I read that Gates is out-funding the US Department of Education nearly 40-1 (You need to be an ASCD member to read the whole thing).

A friend shared his video with me last week as well.

I teach ethics in leadership every summer at CSU and, watching this video, something doesn’t pass the “stench test” for me. The companies that want to take over evaluation systems, create (and, of course, assess) new standards, and then sell us curriculum to teach to them are now essentially grooming superintendents with an astounding 43% placement rate.

I’m not sure what to make of any of this, but just watching the speed and scope of how this has played out in my own district, I can’t help but wonder whether, in 5 or 10 years, we will all be looking around at a Wal-Martized educational landscape, scratching our heads, and wondering, “How did this happen? Why didn’t we see this coming?”

Guilty

We’ve had iPads in every kids’ hands for a total of about 12 days now. We’ve also got a voluminous new state evaluation system we’re piloting, a key component of which is a digital management system for teachers and evaluators to keep track of their goals, observations, and artifacts1. Layered on top of that, we’re using an online tool to schedule parent-teacher conferences for the first time ever.

Needless to say, I have seen that some of my teachers and staff members are on technology overload. The disparity, however, between the newer and more veteran staff has never been wider. I routinely do a “ticket out the door” after structured professional learning opportunities and, while newer (often younger) staff will indicate that they are “excited” about the new tools and how much easier it will make things, some veteran staff are more stressed than ever. How, I wondered, could some people see such possibilities and some see nothing more than one more added stressor?

While I don’t think I’ve got it completely figured out, I had a small cognitive breakthrough while I was on my run last night (the best time to think!).

Those of us who grew up or came of age with technology think less about the tools themselves. I haven’t done any research on this, but I’ll use myself as an example. When I am told that our state evaluations will be collected using an online tool, I launch my browser and type in the address. When someone mentions using a particular app in their class with their students, I have built-in schema that tells me to open my iPad, launch the App Store, and search for the app. I spend little or no time thinking about the tool (the computer or the iPad) and, instead, set about doing the task.

Those who either did not come of age with technology or who have been able to get by with minimal use of technology struggle, first and foremost, with the tool. For these staff members, what I take for granted (e.g. they said it’s a website so I opened my browser) has to be explicitly scaffolded. I think back to the number of times I have led a conversation like this: “So you go to the school website…” only to realize that someone needed me to say, “You go to the Dock. That’s the little bar at the bottom [or side] of your screen with all the little pictures of apps. You click on Chrome [or 'the stamp' or 'the compass'] which is the little circle with the colors around it. No. The other one. Now, when it launches, put your cursor in the address bar and type the school site. No, you don’t need h-t-t-p-colon-slash-slash. No. The other slash…”

So my struggle right now, as a leader, is how to run with the front of the pack while still coaching and supporting those for whom even the most basic task is a major hurdle. I worry that I have been complicit for too long in not pushing hard enough or providing enough support and, now that we’re a 1:1 school, even the learning oportunities we’ve already provided hasn’t been enough.

  1. I’ll withhold commentary on said evaluation system for another day [↩]

Flip This

I need to stop myself from engaging in the same conversation over and over.

Take this Tweet from my online colleague, Amber, who is an elementary school assistant principal:


Amber is one of many virtual colleagues with whom I connect frequently and banter about all things related to education, technology, and even family. Her Tweet offers some strong support for the idea of the “flipped classroom”; an idea which has gained a lot of momentum among progressive, well-intentioned educators in the last couple years. It ensures success for ALL students, she states.

I have three main cognitive hurdles that prevent me from fully jumping on board with this idea:

  • First, we lack the common language to meaningfully engage in a dialogue about flipped classrooms. Many times I try to tweet back at someone to probe their thinking further. Unfortunately, no matter how softly I try to couch my questions, they are often met with fierce defense of the Flipped Classroom.
  • Next, amidst much debate about the effectiveness of any kind of homework, proponents of classroom flipping generally frame it as an opportunity for students to view the “lecture” portion of class as homework. The rationale, as I have understood it, it so that there is more class time for “fun stuff” like labs and hands-on activities. Doing so carries a load of assumptions, including (minimally) the fact that students (1) have access, (2) will bother to watch it, and (3) have the skills to process and make meaning of what they’re watching (note-taking, summarizing, and the ability to ask good questions about what they don’t understand for starters). In my experience, these skills often need to be explicitly taught and scaffolded for students.
  • Finally, I have not seen any evidence that suggests that a flipped classroom is better than a traditional classroom with all other things being equal (same content, same instruction, same teacher…). I often read words like “better” and “improved” (again, laden with assumptions about what’s going on in other teachers’ classrooms) without any qualifiers. Better than what? Based on what? Improved compared to what?

Taking a great lecture and “flipping” it removes the interaction and shared experience of being in a classroom or lecture hall with a strong teacher who can read the room — a teacher who knows how to coax the best out of students through purposeful, intentional verbal and non-verbal cues. Flipping a lousy lecture just tortures kids at home instead of in the classroom. There are just too many variables missing from the conversation around flipped classrooms.

If we want to create relevant, problem-based, constructivist learning opportunities for our students, simply rearranging the “old way” of doing things won’t be enough.

Going 1:1 with iPads

In late-May I received an interesting call from our deputy superintendent who told me about a local community group that was curious about putting iPads into a middle school. Specificaly, they wanted to start a three-year, phased-in implementation where, at the end of three years, students at all three grade levels would have iPads. Their goal was really just to see what we could do; what would happen.

I had spent my first two years as principal creatively getting as much technology into the school as possible: MacBook carts, iPads, iPod Touches, Apple TVs… Whenever I had the financial resources and a teacher demonstrated an aptitude and interest, I’d do what I could to make it happen. I didn’t set up an “application process” or create any hoops to jump through. I wanted to empower teachers to try something new and different. And it was starting to work.

I can only assume that all of this had not gone unnoticed because when my deputy superintendent called me she asked something like, “Are you sitting down?” She then proceeded to tell me about this iPad opportunity and how she felt I was the principal to take this on.

I met with the board of the foundation the next week and they explained in more detail their vision. I guess I did a fair job of telling them what I thought we could do at my school because the very next day my deputy superintendent called back and told me to sit down again. The foundation, she said, wanted to do a whole-school, 1:1 implementation right out of the gate and they were going to find the funds to make it happen.

Now, during all this time, none of this was set in stone. It was a handshake here, an email there, and I didn’t believe it was real until the last week in July. In a perfect world, I’d have had the last week of school to share the news and all summer for teachers to play with iPads and get comfortable. I’d had none of that. My leadership team were the only ones who knew about the possibility, but all of us were pretty tight-lipped about it until I went before the Board of Education on August 1, 2012, to take questions along with our Director of Curriculum & Instruction.

The BoE was supposed to vote two weeks later, but voted unanimously on the spot to support the project. They asked a lot of questions and, honestly, I was so nervous I don’t remember many of them. I remember them asking the usual and expected questions about how this would help student achiement, what would happen if one got lost, stolen, or broken, and how the cost would be covered.

As of Wednesday night, we are officially the second 1:1 iPad public school in Colorado, I figured I’d better start writing some of this down for my own reflection and so others might benefit. So far it’s been an incredible ride!

PhocuseD 4: Light at the End

I successfully defended my proposal a couple weeks ago. It was anti-climactic. I likened it to turning 18 in that it’s all this build-up to not much different. I’m still a “candidate,” I’m still writing, but it’s one more hurdle behind me.

For those who are interested, the defense involved me sitting at a small conference table with my committee and explaining my research in about 5-8 minutes. They asked some questions, made some suggestions, and that was it. All done. See you when you’re finished.

I’m putting my nose to the grind in order to get this thing done so stick around.

PhocuseD 3: I’m doing this, why?

At some point in your program, it’s likely that you’ll have an existential crisis. When this happens, you’ll begin to question your sanity for even getting involved in this whole “PhD thing” in the first place.

For me, this was roughly the spring of 2009. At that point I felt like I was in a very long, very dark tunnel. I was right around the halfway point in my studies with two kids, a wife, and a full-time job. Who does this to themselves? I don’t need a PhD. I can do almost anything I want to do in my career without one! I mean, what do I want to do? Publish papers in journals no one will even read?

Had I been not so far along, I’m not sure I wouldn’t have quit. I felt like I was too far in to turn back but too far from the end to see the “light.” I reasoned that if I quit, I’d hate myself forever. So the only way out was through. I focused on my love of learning and the reason that I, personally, had decided to embark on this journey: The prospect of contributing to changing an aging system and being paid to learn and write. In truth, a job in higher ed is probably a long way off for me since I truly love what I do in my school, but I like knowing that when I’m ready I’ll have the option.

If and when you begin a PhD program, you can be almost certain that you’ll question yourself at some point (or points) along the way. Try to keep in mind that you’re in a marathon, not a sprint. It requires moderate, sustained effort over a long period of time. Heck, if it was easy everyone would have a PhD.

Here’s the thing: You can always find a reason not to get your doctorate. A corollary of this is that there is never a good time to begin. There will be kids, bills, mortgages, and a myriad of other things going on. But the time will pass, whether you’re in grad school or not.

When the doctoral doldrums hit, consider taking a semester off to rejuvenate. Change up your schedule. Take an online class or something outside of your college.

Most important: Stay focused on why you started on the journey. You had your reasons.

Academic Alignment

“Academic alignment” is a phrase that I’ve been using with increasing frequency to describe our efforts to maximize our use of instructional time at my school. Ira is someone whom I’ve admired for some time and whose work always engages and excites me and, while I’m not quite ready to rip the clocks off the wall, his recent post on undoing academic time hit my Twitter feed at exactly the right time.

This year we have allocated larger blocks of time to 4 longer blocks; each is about 90 minutes long. In the past, the school operated on a 6-period day with significantly shorter class periods. In order to accomplish this, we took a look at our data, “faced the brutal facts,”1 and committed to focus — at least in the short-term — on math and literacy. Each of our students receives 90 minutes of math and literacy every single day. Science and social studies are taught for 90 minutes every other day or for a semester2.

I believe that the closest thing we in education will find to a “silver bullet” are time and instruction. Purposeful adjustments to those two levers can pay dividends that exceed any canned academic program. I shared the graphic below with the staff and challenged them to dream up ways to see less of the orange circle. Now that we have adjusted to our new schedule, the remainder of this year and beyond will see our focus shift to maximizing every student’s academic learning time during that 90 minutes.

Our priority will be on a common academic language that communicates a culture of high expectations and academic excellence. We will also identify and adopt school-wide systems that are aligned from classroom to classroom. I made the comparison to Starbucks. You can go into any Starbucks and, while they all look a little different and have their own personality, there is never any doubt that you’re in a Starbucks. They don’t change the latté recipe. A Venti is still a Venti. The menu looks the same. The customer knows what to expect and doesn’t have to re-learn the menu every time they’re jonesing for a caramel macchiato.

At the end of my presentation, I asked the staff to reflect on a simple question: What do we want to give to our kids? I’m truly motivated and ready for the work that we have ahead. It’s good work and it’s important work.

  1. I don’t care for that phrase. Sometimes the facts are not pleasant, but the word “brutal” is just so… well… Brutal… [↩]
  2. During our pilot year, some teams teach science and social studies on an A/B rotation and some flip classes at the semester. [↩]

PhocuseD 2: I’ve been accepted to a PhD program. Now what?

The first thing you really have to do is start taking some classes and get familiar with the faculty. I had the good fortune to have had a good relationship with one of the Associate Professors on the educational leadership faculty. This helped immensely when I was getting started. The best advice he gave me was to identify a focus area as early in your program as you can and make sure that you tailor as much of your research as possible around this area1.

I’m [obviously] interested in technology leadership. One of the “rite of passage” classes I was required to take focused on educational policy. Dry and dull, right? How are they connected? Well, I ended up writing my final paper in the class on DOPA, COPA, CIPA, and COPPA and how the relationship between these pieces of legislation and E-Rate funding are commonly misunderstood or misapplied. The benefit of doing this is that when it came time to really identify a research focus, I had assembled a solid body of literature on which I could draw for my Lit Review2.

Once you’ve been accepted, it is also a good time to seek out the person who will be your adviser. In some programs, you may not have a choice. In others, you may have to choose within a certain window of time. The best advice is to get to know as many faculty as you can in your first two or three semesters.

Bonus Tip: Of all the books I read and was forced to read over the program, the best one — and the one I wish I’d owned when I first started — is “Complete Your Dissertation or Thesis in Two Semesters or Less.” I think this is an unfortunate title because it’s not something a first year PhD student would naturally pick up, but there is some very practical advice in the book for students at all stages of the program and even for those who may be pondering whether a PhD is for them.

  1. This doesn’t mean you’re making a life commitment, but if you have a broad area in which you’re interested it’ll help. A lot. [↩]
  2. The Lit Review you will have to write for your dissertation will usually be Chapter 2 of the final product. As much of this as you can get out of the way ahead of time, the better. [↩]

PhocuseD 1: What is this PhD thing really about?

Here’s a confession: For the first year or two of my studies at CSU, I had no real idea what completing a PhD entailed. No one told me. It’s sort of like an exclusive club where no one really tells you the rules before you join.

Let me give you the quick and dirty on what my program (and I believe many others in the US) looked like.

The degree is 90 semester hours. That sounds intimidating until you learn that 30 hours usually come from your masters program and 15 hours are dissertation credits. That leaves you with about 45 semester hours of coursework to tackle. No small feat, granted. But if you’re going to do this you need to know what lies ahead.

Your 45 hours of coursework will be made up of a few different kinds of classes. Some of them will be research methods classes. These classes essentially teach you how to do valid research. In my program, I was required to take courses in both quantitative and qualitative methods. Some are very general and provide an overview of the methodological approach. In my opinion, these are good classes to take while you’re relatively new to the program because they will help you get your head around the kind of research you may want to do.

Other methods classes are more specific and deal specifically with a particular flavor of one of the methodological approaches. For instance, I took a class that specifically focused on narrative inquiry1 Still others focus on quantitative strategies, including one course at CSU in which you can spend an entire semester learning the ins and outs of the ANOVA procedure.

Bonus Tip: Methods classes, especially quantitative methods classes, tend to involve less writing. The ones I took rarely involved a substantial paper at the end of the term. If you’re going to take two classes in a semester, I suggest balancing a content-focused class with a methods class.

Another subset of the classes you’ll be expected to take will focus on your major2. In my program, these included courses with names like “Leadership,” “Teaching, Learning, and Professional Growth,” and “Educational Policy.” These are often very heavy on the reading and writing and you should think twice before taking two of them at a time while trying to work and actually spend time with your family.

As you approach the end of your coursework, you will eventually transition from being a “grad student” or “doctoral student” to being a “doctoral candidate.” I liked this. It made me feel like I was actually getting somewhere. I was frequently reminded in my program that about 50% of PhD students never receive their degree3. Some portion of those “drop outs” end up ABD4 because they make it as far as the candidate stage but can’t close the deal.

In order to become a candidate, you need to have completed most of your coursework and take what is commonly called a “preliminary exam.” These are different from school to school. I’ve also heard them called “comps.” Essentially, it is an opportunity to show your committee that you are ready to take on your own research. In my program, I had four weeks to write a research article from start to finish and then defend5 it. This basically meant that I had to field questions about what I did, why I did it, and how I could have done it better. For me, this was scarier than the dissertation phase because you have zero guidance and come into the meeting cold. At least with the dissertation, your committee will have seen drafts along the way and you can reasonably predict what they’re going to ask or tell you.

Once you’re a “candidate,” all that stands between you and your PhD is that pesky little paper called a “dissertation” or “thesis.” Here’s the rub: You are paying for the privilege of writing your paper at this point. You are no longer attending classes regularly, yet you are enrolled in those 15 credit hours I told you about at the beginning of this article. I have a hunch that this is where many ABDs lose their momentum since they are no longer accountable on weekly basis and are essentially on their own timeline.

Although there are always exceptions, the general rule of thumb is that your dissertation will have five chapters: Intro, Lit Review, Methods, Analysis, Conclusion. Before you will be allowed to actually do the dissertation, however, you have to “propose” your dissertation. My proposal consisted of the first three chapters of my dissertation basically outlining the problem, presenting a review of the literature, and describing how I plan to conduct my research. Once my proposal has been successfully defended6, I can go about collecting my data and writing chapters four and five.

Once all of that is finished, it’s time for the “Dissertation Defense.” This is a lengthier, two-hour-ish meeting in which you present your study to your committee (and, at CSU, anyone else who happens to want to come as they are open to the public). Once you’ve done your bit, the committee can ask you questions. After that, they send you out of the room and talk about you behind your back. At that point, the next thing you want to hear is your adviser coming to get you and calling you, “Dr. Such-and-Such.”

So that’s a pretty thorough description of roughly what to expect if you decide to take the plunge and start a PhD program. More to follow!

  1. This is a flavor of qualitative research that, at its most basic, focuses on gathering research that tells a story. [↩]
  2. for lack of a better word [↩]
  3. http://guidetogradschoolsurvival.wordpress.com/2011/11/28/phd-completion-rates/ [↩]
  4. “All but dissertation” [↩]
  5. There’s that word again. Remember, “defend” really means “meet with your committee and discuss.” [↩]
  6. Again with the defending? [↩]