Thoughts, Comments, and Observations: We All Win!

Thoughts, Comments, and Observations: We All Win!: With the testing season just around the corner, the “race” to equip students with the skills as well as knowledge to b...

We All Win!

With the testing season just around the corner, the “race” to equip students with the skills as well as knowledge to be successful on end of grade or end of course tests will go into overdrive.  The last minute "cram" or "review" for those students on grade level will hopefully "do no harm".  For students whom need a full year of instruction will, in all likelihood, not fair so well!

Teetering on the obvious, students entering a grade level behind their peers or who may have barely passed their previous years end of grade assessments are at the greatest risk.  Students significantly behind are already significantly disadvantaged and unless we have the courage to radically shift our approach to address failed learning as well as the failure to learn, those students will not advance towards standard.  Please note; this is not about closing the performance distance with their peers.  Rather, this is all about each learner meeting or exceeding standards.

The goal, our goal is to have each student, each learner "summit".  Irrespective of how long it takes, the route they take, or order in which they arrive, the goal must be mastery of the standards.

While speaking at SXSWedu two weeks ago, I make the comment that one of our greatest attributes, as a nation is also one of our greatest liabilities - competition.  Competition is part of the American DNA.  We are competitive.  We want to win.  We want to be first.  As the great sports prophet Ricky Bobby stated, "If you ain't first, you're last!"

Competition has served our nation well.  Yet, it has also been a disservice with respect to education.  We know that competition results in "winners" and "losers".  However, this mindset works against the very goal we desire to achieve in education.  Simply put, we can't afford losers as a result of our education system.  We must have winners - all winners.

Lest you think this is idealistic socialistic babble, please consider that a fundamental tenet of education is to raise individually and collectively the quality of life, the quality of community, and the quality of our nation.  We all benefit from an educated society - hence the commitment to providing a free and public education for all.  

Education has been used to "sort and select" individuals or groups of people with respect to "station in life".  I get this.  I've benefited from education.  My children have benefited as well.  However, I do not believe that I have benefited at the expense of others.  My point, our point!  An educate society benefits each of us not at the expense of any of us.

We continue to confuse the issue and therefore are woefully ineffective in addressing the root causes of failure.  We continue to make way too many erroneous assumptions about the causes of failed learning and the failure to learn.  Consequently, we have and will continue to treat the symptoms and wonder why students are not progressing towards meeting or exceeding standards.

I am convinced that until we make this shift in our thinking we will not make the critical, necessary, and essential shifts in our behavior as well as practice for each learner to benefit from the promises of an education.

Thoughts, Comments, and Observations: Success or Failure? You Choose

Thoughts, Comments, and Observations: Success or Failure? You Choose: I was recently honored to participate on a panel at SXSW (South by South West) in Austin, TX.   The panel's purpose...

Success or Failure? You Choose

I was recently honored to participate on a panel at SXSW (South by South West) in Austin, TX.  The panel's purpose was to articulate the power, success, and necessity of private-public partnerships especially as it relates to ubiquitous broadband connectivity, access to rich, interactive digital content and tools, and the most obvious - a "learning for all - whatever it takes" mission for learning.

My role was easy - drive home the reality that we already know more than we need to "get this done".   The "game changer" is leadership.  A key component to leadership is vision.  I firmly believe and practice that vision is more than an ability to articulate a picture of the future, an ideal state, or what the work looks like completed.  Vision must be compelling, motivating, captivating, and most of all the vision must be clear.

When President John F. Kennedy challenge our nation with the mission of sending to, landing on and returning safely to earth a man within a decade, he casted a vision that no one had ever done before.  There was no "best practice", "research base", "expert consultants", or "model" to replicate.  Rather, the vision inspired a sense of imagination, curiosity, creativity, and innovation.  The vision certainly had critics and those who questioned the cost, but the vision created unprecedented opportunities for learning.  This more than anything was and remains today, “mission” critical.

The learning from what didn't work was more important than what did work.  

Before I leave the 1960s and the vision of President Kennedy, I turn to his brother's paraphrase of George Bernard Shaw's quote to affirm the role of leadership especially as it relates to what is desperately needed to realized the power, the promise, and the vision of universal connectivity, access, and results of, for, and by digital learning.  Robert Kennedy said,

"Some me see things as they are and ask, 'why'. 

I dream things that never were and ask, 'why not'."

Being critical, the landscape of digital implementation initiatives has more failed examples than successful.  There are several reasons for the failure of these initiatives to meet or exceed their promises or "best hopes".  First, most schools and school systems started with the wrong questions.  What device do we want?  What can we afford? 

These are important, but they aren't where you start.  The most important question is centered on student learning.  What do we want students to know and be able to do as a result of teaching and learning?

Schools and school systems have failed to adequately address this question.   Those that have are much further along and are the success stories that are being told.  This is as it should be.  However, too many school and school system leaders are not addressing what they should. 

In what can only be called a "race" to keep up with the "Jones", the acquisition of devices without first addressing and therefore thoughtfully, intentionally, and deliberatively planning the following will result in failing to transform teaching and learning.  Ultimately, wasting resources, trust, and the future of our young people.

Too critical, possibly? 

Here's what must be addressed before device select and deployment.

1.     Assess infrastructure and ensure bandwidth, Wi-Fi density, and etc. are not just adequate but able to ensure the assumption you will have 100% of your users using uninterrupted - any time and in any space. 

2.     Assess and address the capacity, competence, confidence and capability of the instructional staff to integrate, convert, and transform teaching and learning with digital tools, interactive digital content, instructional methodologies, and clear learning outcomes. 

3.     Assess and address community awareness, understanding, and support.  Work with community officials to assist with the learning initiative especially as it relates to ubiquitous connectivity and its power to educate all irrespective of the age of the learner.

4.     Adapt, adjust, or amend local policy to include constant, consistent digital literacy, digital citizenship, parental responsibility, the district's role in monitoring not just acceptable use but public domain social media and etc. to ensure safe, responsible, and productive teaching and learning.

5.     Identify, plan, and implement a learning management system to integrate or support transformative teaching and learning, digital tools, interactive content, on and off line learning, social media, and other collaborative teaching and learning tools.

6.     Lastly, device selection – what device will drive, leverage your learning initiative producing the results you and your community desire?

Above all else, assess your position on innovation. Do you want to be successful?  Of course you do, we do!  Decrease the opportunity for failure by addressing the aforementioned.

Thoughts, Comments, and Observations: Are you Teachable?

Thoughts, Comments, and Observations: Are you Teachable?: John C. Maxwell challenges us with three statements to reflect upon daily - Everyone has something to teach me. Every day I have somethin...

Are you Teachable?

John C. Maxwell challenges us with three statements to reflect upon daily -

1. Everyone has something to teach me.
2. Every day I have something to learn.
3. Every time I learn something, I benefit.

I appreciate his ability to get to the point - He defines "teachability" as "possessing the intentional attitude and behavior to keep learning and growing throughout life" -

Are you learning? 

Are you growing?

If not, check your humility meter. 

One of the keys to teachability is humility -  being intentional about our attitude!

The modern day definition of a leader is "one that does not know it all and one that cannot do it alone".  I've learned this and have the scars to prove it. 

How about you?

What is your definition of leadership?  What do you most admire in those you follow?  Is "teachability" one of those traits or characteristics?  If not, why not?

Just something to think about -