Category Archives: Leadership

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?”

Why you should rethink your “open-door” policy

For the better part of my nearly-nine-years as an administrator, I took great pride in the fact that I rarely closed my door. I’m not sure when in my leadership development I came to revere the open-door philosophy as the defining characteristic of great principals, but I’m rethinking this approach. After almost nine years as an administrator, including three as a principal, I’m pretty certain that an open-door policy is not good for anyone.

As teacher evaluations and school improvement plans increase in length and complexity (certainly a topic worthy of its own post, but right now it’s the hand I’ve been dealt if I want to keep my job — which I do!), I have found that the perpetual parade of pop-ins — these two to four minute, standup conversations — means no one is getting what they deserve. The constant shifts in my attention and the resulting on-and-off cognitive focus on a document I’m trying to finish mean that I am constantly working on things at the last minute. A writing task that should take me an hour or two takes me a couple of days.

On the flip side of this equation, consider the staff member who wants to talk about something important to him or her. Is it fair to that person to have the portion of my attention not thinking about the work I just abandoned in order to chat?

I’ve realized that I cannot do my job as effectively as my students and school deserve if I am constantly doing it in two-to-four minute bursts.

In re-considering the open-door norm I’ve established, I am looking at strategies that balance my need to handle the administrivia that comes with the job (always doing it at home at night is unfair to another group of stakeholders: my family), the need and desire of teachers, parents, and students to have my attention, and the need to just “wander around” and visit classrooms.

Some things I’m chewing in now thanks, in part, to an article in last month’s Phi Delta Kappan by Paul Bambrick-Santoyo:

  • It must truly become a norm that is communicated to all stakeholders. It’s not something I can just do without clarifying the purpose behind the shift. However,
  • It’s not necessarily something I’m going to ask “permission” for, either.
  • I evaluate 26 licensed staff members. If I set up short, biweekly meetings with each one, would that help? That way they’d know they have my time in the not-too-distant future and that it’s truly a time that we are “present” and not just shifting from some other task or having a “fly by” conversation.
  • How many non-assertive staff members have I missed talking to because the assertive ones are the ones being heard most?

As I approach the midpoint of year three, I am proud of the shifts we have made in our school. Now it’s time to dial in this open-door thing because right now, no one is benefiting.

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!

Convening a Professional Study Group

Our scores on state tests are not great. Overall, about 65% of our students are proficient in reading and writing and fewer than 40% are proficient in math. These are based on scores on state tests, sure. I will be the first to point out to parents, staff, and colleagues that state tests present a very narrow, very short-sighted view of what our students know and are able to do. While they may not be everything, it’s tough to dismiss data like this as nothing.

In my vast 19 months of experience as a school principal, I have made an observation. Many schools, when placed (or even faced with the prospect of being placed) on an “Improvement Plan”1, go into full-on panic/fight or flight mode. In that mode, some teachers and leaders will do anything to get above whatever “magic line” means that they will be off watch2. We pay ridiculous fees to textbook and content providers for intervention curricula and software. We remove kids from classes they love like band and art and “double-dip” them in classes they dislike and perform poorly in.

Strategies like these, in my opinion, are short-sighted. They focus on the specific goal of no longer being on an Improvement Plan.

I want more for my students and my school.

A few weeks ago, I blogged about what I called “Academic Alignment.” I want to put into place a long-range, sustainable plan for my school that goes far beyond playing the state-testing numbers game. In order to do this, we need a plan. This plan, however, cannot come from only me. There are too many highly intelligent and committed educators in my school who want to be involved in the process of making things better. I did not bring a “rescue plan” to my staff. Instead, I tried to lay out a vision for what this school can become. I shared that I want our school culture to be one of learning and high-level academics — a place that is 100% about kids and ensuring that they have the tools at their disposal to be successful in school and in life.

Our approach to this has been to establish a “Professional Study Group.” On Monday, we had about a dozen teachers come together to talk about what we want to give our students. With that as a baseline, we will move forward over the coming months and establish a plan to bring that to reality. I framed three critical areas and posed a couple of essential questions under each. At our first meeting, participants brainstormed “world cafe” style, in each of the three areas. Moving forward, I imagine having participants become more specialized into one of the areas.

How will it go? I don’t know. But at the very least I am hoping to harness the power of a motivated group of colleagues to help get this moving and spread the word.

  1. That’s what we call it in Colorado. Fill in your state’s vernacular here. [↩]
  2. Again, every state refers to this academic purgatory using different, but equally draconian, terminology. [↩]

Back in Action

I can’t believe the amount of time that has elapsed since my last post in April. Here’s a quick recap of what’s been going on in my life over the last four months (four months!?!)…

  • May saw some significant layoffs due to a RIF in my district. Not a lot of fun for a first-year principal who spent the entire year building culture.
  • June was a great month for me as it was the second summer that I was fortunate to teach “Leadership & Ethics in Public Education” in the principal licensure cohort at CSU.
  • July started with an amazing family road trip to see my grandmother for her 90th birthday, take the kids to Washington, DC, and visit my brother and his family in Charlotte.
  • July into August I was back at work planning and working with my new assistant principal on clarifying a vision for my second year leading the best middle school on the Front Range.

And what’s to come this year?

  • I just finished and defended my preliminary exam so I’m officially a PhD candidate now. Or, “ABD.”
  • I am working on my dissertation proposal and hoping to defend this fall.
  • I’ve got several staff members who will be joining me as presenters at the CAMLE Schools-to-Watch Conference in a few weeks.
  • Hopefully, after a marathon 2010-2011 year in which I was a brand new principal and completed my final four (yes, four…) required grad school classes, Melinda and I will be able to make time to record your favorite podcast on a semi-regular basis again.

More later!

Engaging Teachers in Instructional Rounds

I had the good fortune to spend about three hours this morning with seven of my teachers as well as my instructional coach who are part of an intra-school “pilot” project inspired by Richard Elmore’s Instructional Rounds in Education. It’s a big chunk of my day, but this is the work that instructional leaders should be doing.

The Why

I have a personal goal to support teachers in talking to each other about their practice. As Elmore points out, “one of the greatest barriers to school improvement is the lack of an agreed-upon definition of what high-quality instruction looks like” (p. 3). The rounds process is intended to bring conversations about instructional practice into the school improvement process. The rounds process is adapted from the medical rounds model and includes “observing, analyzing, discussing, and understanding instruction” (p. 3).

My hope is that I can expand this school-wide next year, but I wanted to start small. I worked with my instructional coach to solicit seven teacher volunteers to be part of this pilot. I have a cross-section of disciplines, grade levels, and experience and we meet biweekly for a total of seven sessions. Each teacher will open their classroom to the group one time and have the opportunity to observe the other six over the course of the pilot.

In Elmore’s parlance, I have a theory of action that looks something like this:

If we develop and nurture a school culture that supports collaborative inquiry and the sharing of best teaching practices, then classroom instruction will be strengthened and students will learn in deeper, more authentic ways.

The How

The participants voluntarily come in to pre-brief at 6:45am on lab days. They have no incentive other than coffee and conversation along with their commitment to improve their practice through sharing in the lab experience. Though all participants are observing the same class at the same time, each bring a different inquiry question to the lab experience. These questions run the gamut and are highly dependent on the teachers’ interests and perceived areas for growth.

Some examples of inquiry questions from this group:

  • How can a teacher foster global citizenship in his or her students?
  • What strategies do teachers use to get students talking about text?
  • How can social studies teachers more effectively include historical fiction in their units of instruction?
  • How can I move students from external accountability to intrinsic responsibility for their learning?
  • How can I ensure that my lessons are authentic and connect students with the larger social context?

The teacher being observed may also pose a specific question related to their class being observed. These questions are posted on our neopolitan-colored “Board of Inquiry.”

At our pre-brief, we also assign people to track specific data that the host teacher requests. For instance, this morning we tracked:

  • Use of vocabulary by teacher and students that indicates “global literacy”
  • Connections from historical fiction text to self
  • Wait time between posing a questions and selecting a student to respond

The most challenging part is arranging class coverage for the observing teachers so that we can all be together to observe and de-brief the process. I am very passionate about the success of this pilot and have committed to using a chunk of the sub dollars allocated to me for professional development. On lab days, we use in-house coverage only when absolutely necessary, instead bringing in four or five half-day subs to cover for lab participants.

Following the one-hour classroom observation, we take a short break, top off our coffees, and re-convene for a de-brief.

Once everyone is back together, we sit silently for a few minutes to reflect on our initial observations. We go quickly around the table, sharing an objective, non-value-laden observation about what we’ve seen. Our instructional coach then leads the group through a discussion connecting one or two of the principles from the Elmore book to the lesson we observed.

It is at this point in the process that the requested data is shared and processed, along with other relevant information. For instance, this morning one of the participants noted that the host teacher had asked 70 questions in a 60-minute observation.

The hour-long debrief process usually flies by, and ultimately ends with each participant sharing something that they believe they have learned about the host teachers core principles. Examples include:

  • Ms. X seems to value every student’s contribution to her class.
  • It seems very important to Ms. X that her students access their personal experience to build background knowledge before tackling new text.
  • Based on the discussion, it seems like Ms. X has high expectations that students are able to connect course content to real-world contexts.

Final Thoughts (For Now)

We are two lab cycles in to our pilot project and we continue to re-visit the norms we established at the outset. It is incredibly courageous of the teacher participants to open up their classrooms to their colleagues, and all have expressed their nervousness to do so.

All in all, I think the two teachers who have hosted to this point have come away feeling positive about the experience. My hope is to generate enough energy and momentum to roll this out school-wide next year. The logistics of pulling this off with 44 full-time faculty will be a bit of a challenge, but I believe passionately that this is the work we should be doing so I am committed to figuring out how to make it happen even if it means I’ll be covering classes.

Moving to a Staff Blog

In August, I went cold-turkey and informed my teachers that I would not be sending mass emails this year. I briefly touched on how inefficient email is as a one-to-many communication tool and most nodded along as they’ve all fallen victim to the “TMI” of a colleague who uses “reply all” to share that they wouldn’t make the faculty meeting because they’d been having stomach cramps all day.

As with the introduction of anything completely new, I explained to them the trade-off I was willing to make. My school was functioning under an intense “culture of meetings” that, in my opinion, was a little excessive. I committed to them to cut down on meeting times, but the trade-off was that all “FYI” items — without exception — would be posted on a private staff blog and that they were responsible for checking it every day.

Knowing that there would still be some for whom this was uncomfortable, I enabled a “subscribe by email” button at the top of the page. This meant that it was up to each individual to subscribe if they wanted to continue to receive school news via email. For me, this meant that I still only had to post in one place.

As a last bit of insurance, I worked with our school technologist to ensure that our staff blog was the browser start-up page on teacher computers. This means that it’s staring them in the face every time they open their browsers.

The benefits of the staff blog as I have seen them unfold this year are:

  • Information is archived. How many emails do you get from staff who absent-mindedly deleted that email with the attachment they needed? I’ve been guilty of this myself! On the blog, everything is categorized and archived by month so the assembly schedule we used in October is still there when we need it again in January.

  • Information is searchable. Technically, email is searchable, too, but if you’ve ever used FirstClass as your email client you’ll know that this is less than ideal. Plus, with the small mailbox sizes we are allocated, and the wonky way FC duplicates emails when you reply or forward, people tend to delete stuff.

  • Comments are way more efficient than emailing. This one was a bit unexpected, but it’s probably the biggest benefit. Say you post about an upcoming event and you omit an important piece of information. If you had emailed it, you’d get 10 or 15 emails asking for clarification and you’d have to either reply to each one or send one of those, “Oops! I’m sorry I forgot to tell you that Friday’s dance has an 80s theme…” emails. On the blog, one person asks the question in the comments and I can answer it once,

Overall, I think this has been a successful experiment. I think one of the primary reasons is that I articulated the purpose clearly as a reduction in wasted meeting time. Also, the cold-turkey approach was the only way to go. I don’t think this would have worked as effectively had I continued to send emails and post on the blog.

It didn’t take long for the hold-outs to come around when there was something they didn’t know about. I overheard more than one conversation along the lines of, “How did you know about [whatever]?”

“It was posted on the blog yesterday. Don’t you check it?”

Also, as with the team blogs, support is critical. This was new for people so hand-holding was critical for some while some were off and running right away. Some people stress out very easily because they “just aren’t good with technology” so it’s critical to support them in the early stages.

At this point in the year, there are four of us who have rights to post on the staff blog. I want to expand this next year to make it even more collaborative and to reinforce it as the “one-stop shop” for all things school related.