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Blogging for District Leaders

I had my first meeting yesterday with my new boss, the Director of Secondary Education. She is the person whom I replaced as principal at my new school so we are both new to our respective positions.

She spent some time asking me about my vision for my school, but also asked for input on a few things. For instance, she wanted to know what I thought would be the best use of our monthly “levels meetings.” During these times, all the elementary principals, middle school principals, and high school principals get together with their colleagues. As a new principal, this time is going to be invaluable for me to learn from my colleagues at the other middle schools. My suggestion was that as much of the levels meeting time as possible be spent on sharing best practices, collaborating, and learning from each other. Administrivia, or the unidirectional flow of information items that could be handled via email or a memo should not eat into this valuable time that we will have out of our buildings once per month.

I was also very flattered that she asked me about blogging, and about how the Director of Secondary Education might make use of a blog. Like others I have worked with, she is an “article sender.” I’m certain most educational organizations have a person or persons who will send an email or two a week with some “suggested reading” attached or linked. I shared with her that with the high volume of email that I and other principals receive, it’s not unusual for something that isn’t an “emergency” to get overlooked for a day or two. Further, I don’t really care for email attachments as I think they’re an extremely inefficient way to pass along information.

One other assumption in the article-emailing model is that the information is getting to all of the people who need or are interested in it. This involves managing multiple email lists: one for high school principals, one for middle school principals, one for assistant principals… The list goes on. No matter how carefully you curate the lists, someone who wanted the information will be left out, and someone who doesn’t want it will have to either file it away forever because they think they might be asked about it someday, or (gasp!) delete it.

Even if the sole purpose for creating a Director of Secondary Education blog was to share articles and links, this would be a significant benefit to the folks at the buildings. My preferred way of receiving news is via Reeder on my iPad or Google Reader on my MacBook Pro. From there, I’ll often route longer readings to Instapaper so I can focus on them when I have the time.

Further, a blog would bring leaders and prospective leaders in as opposed to an email that is pushed out. I usually have one or two administrative interns who work with me and, despite my best intentions, I don’t always remember to pass along the articles and links that come my way. A blog would be a great forum to bring these up-and-coming leaders into the “fold” and increase their awareness of what is being discussed at the District and principal level.

Finally, with the ability to comment on blog posts, I could see a blog becoming a better place for discussion than the endless CC loops that email encourages and that, for better or worse, eventually get ignored or archived so I can come back later which I rarely remember to do.

It will definitely take some re-norming with principals, but I think given the success of June’s Leadership Bootcamp we are in a great position to start leveraging some more of these one-to-many means of communicating.

Overall, we had what I think was a very productive meeting and I’m excited to work with my new Director in the coming year. Plus, anyone who shows up in my office bearing breakfast burritos and Loveland Coffee knows how to set the tone for a great year!

Getting Down to Business

I started work on Monday at my new job in a new school. It’s the first time that I will be the principal. Going into my first week, I’ve given a lot of thought to my “entry plan” and the overarching areas I will need to address. It’s easy to get bogged down in minutia so I am trying to keep things “big picture” right now and focus on 3 primary areas.

  1. Relationships with faculty and staff
  2. Relationships with community
  3. Learning the school

Being appointed as principal (as opposed to going through a lengthy interview process) presents a unique situation. Being appointed as principal in the summer when the teachers are already on break presents still more uniqueness. It’s a challenge to begin building relationships when no one is physically present.

To start things off on a positive note, one of the first things I did after the official announcement was made was to send an introductory email to the staff. I’ve seen some graduate programs in ed leadership that make prospective principals write “introductory memos,” but I didn’t want to be so formal. I kept it light, shared how excited I was to be joining the staff, gave a little bit of my professional and personal background, and then wished them a great summer.

Finally, I invited them to call or email me and set up a time to talk in a semi-structured setting. When we chat, I am looking for three things: what they are most proud of at the school, what they think needs work, and what they expect from their new principal. I’ve already met with a few staff members and hope to meet with many more before we officially get together in August.

Beyond the school, relationship-building with the parents and community will begin with a redesign and modernization of our school’s webpage. Once “live,” the web page will include a “Principal’s Message” in which I will share much of the same information I shared with the staff about who I am and how I got here. Among other things, I am striving to soothe any anxiety about the change in leadership at the school and communicate that I am kid-focused and committed to maintaining the school as a source of pride for students, parents, and the neighborhood.

Learning the school is far more personal. It begins in the conversations with staff, but also includes a review of relevant documents, including accountability reports, test data, parent/teacher/student climate and culture survey data, and any written history I can find. I have been very fortunate that my “ethnography” has yielded a wealth of information on the school’s namesake, Conrad Ball, and the history of the building since its construction was approved by the Board in 1969.

A visual ethnography of the campus can yield data about the hidden or unspoken culture of the school. What messages are the walls and classrooms communicating that the adults may not even be aware of? There’s a small window of time, during which I am still a newcomer to this culture, where I can observe it as an outsider before becoming part of the fabric.

It’s hard to believe that some of us are back to work already, but I am doing my part to ensure a smooth start to 2010-2011 at my new school.

My Latest Project

This two-days-in-a-row posting pattern is not indicative, by the way, of any nascent desire to participate in Melinda’s latest Twitter challenge. It is, however, an indication of how excited I am to have been asked to facilitate an extension of today’s Tech Bootcamp for leaders.

Inspired by the work of Bud and Michelle in the district to my south, I will be facilitating what amounts to a year-long, embedded PD experience for leaders who are motivated to stop simply talking about making change and actually start doing it.

I have to confess, the iLead name is not original. But I like it. (Or, iLike it…) It’s catchy. And “I lead” really speaks to what I hope participants will get out of this. We will work to build leadership capacity around robust, 21st century learning by supporting the cohort members as they build their own professional and personal learning networks. Reflection and data collection will be key components of this project, and with a little luck we’ll have this year’s cohort mentoring next year’s participants.

I hope to get a lot of interest from district leaders who want to play in our sandbox.

Spreading the Word

I am both excited and nervous about tomorrow.

Over a year ago, I pitched an idea to one of our district-level tech folks to do a hands-on, immersive day (or series of days) where school and district leaders could just… play. We spend a lot of time debating the theory of this or the data supporting that, but too many leaders lack the fundamental knowledge and skills to move forward with using technology to facilitate communication and collaboration in their schools and departments. And unfortunately a few are afraid of looking “dumb” and therefore not comfortable in their ability to support their staff in jumping into this stuff.

They really want to know. They’re hungry to know. But some just don’t know where to start.

It’s taken me a while to bring this to reality (huge thanks to our Director of C&I for actually thinking I was onto something with this idea…), but tomorrow I will be hosting our district’s first ever Leadership Technology Bootcamp. The format for the day was inspired by the bootcamps that Scott McLeod and his posse at CASTLE present to leaders in Iowa. The agenda is very aggressive for the time we’ll have (I doubt we’ll get past podcasting), but I’d rather keep it that way and leave folks wanting more.

My biggest concern going in is the diversity of proficiency in the group. I plan to do a little show & tell, followed by some hands-on time. I’ve also dragged a couple of my fellow TSD Twitterati along to help facilitate small groups.

My greatest hope for the day is that my colleagues see a lot of different tools and, through some experimentation, find one or two that they can see themselves using in the 2010-2011 school year. I also hope that by exposure to some of these tools, they will be in a position to better support their teachers — not necessarily because they know everything about Google Reader or WordPress or Etherpad, but because they know enough to steer a teacher in the right direction when they think something might be a good fit.

And it would also be nice for all of us to continue working together to improve our skills. A true community of practice. A Twitter colleague said it better than I ever could.

As it stands, I have close to 50 school and district leaders signed up to spend the day learning and collaborating. Quite a nice start, I think.

Wish me luck!