The sign on the door today, usually in block capital letters, is the same: PRINCIPAL. Yet, as I used to say to everyone, “The job is so different now!” For the 15 years I was a principal, that statement remained true as the role evolved to accommodate new technologies, new ideas, and new requirements. Never has it been truer than today.
Our current digital age is rapidly changing the role of the principal and the roles of all leaders in our schools.
Can a principal really be effective without a smart phone?
Is a blog or Twitter account necessary to keep parents posted on what’s happening at school?
How can leaders make the Internet and appropriate learning technologies available to all students?
How can we best provide professional development for teachers tasked with facilitating personalizedlearning?
It’s a challenging list of questions and it continues to grow. Today’s leaders—superintendents, assistants, principals, and support personnel of all types—are working to become 21st Century leaders. National, state, and local conferences (Leadership 3.0, CoSN, CUE, and ISTE come quickly to mind) focus on leading the learning through digital technology. TICAL provides online resources and free workshops across the state to help leaders meet the new demands.
Now a special, new type of certification is being offered throughout California and elsewhere. Called Leading Edge Certification, the program focuses on how to effectively utilize technology tools, resources and innovative solutions. School and district leaders learn critical skills such as how to infuse innovation, create optimal millennial learning environments, develop digital citizenship, and evaluate online and mobile learning programs.
These two headlines, both from Education Week, crossed my desk today. It was a poignant and instructive juxtaposition. I spent years studying (and experiencing) teacher burnout. I found that lack of control (perceived, anyway) was closely associated with burnout. The current research cited lack or control as a key factor in principal frustration.
After 15 years as a teacher, I became a principal. ”Wow,” I thought, “now I’ve got the power to make things happen.”
No and yes. I found that despite my new, elevated position, I had far less power than I thought I would have. Principal’s can dictate, surely; that doesn’t mean anyone has to abide by the dictates. A principal’s real power comes from sharing it, from persuasion, from setting an example, from inspiring people.
It doesn’t surprise me that today’s principals are feeling frustrated; given the context in which they work, why wouldn’t they be?
Assuming that it make sense to run education as though it were a business—a debatable assumption—then of course we need a metric for the bottom line. Test scores alone, however, are a poor surrogate for net profit.
As we venture forth into 2013, I thought it might be a good time to take a look at some items that should be on every administrator’s radar. We all need to be developing a plan on how we will incorporate each into our schools.
Learning Management Systems
A learning management system (LMS) is a software application or Web-based technology used to plan, implement, and assess a specific learning process. Typically, a learning management system provides an instructor with a way to create and deliver content, monitor student participation, and assess student performance. A learning management system may also provide students with the ability to use interactive features such as threaded discussions, video conferencing, and discussion forums. Read more.
Flipped Classrooms
Flip teaching (or flipped classroom) is a form of blended learning which encompasses any use of technology to leverage the learning in a classroom, so a teacher can spend more time interacting with students instead of lecturing. This is most commonly being done using teacher-created videos that students view outside of class time. It is also known as backwards classroom, reverse instruction, flipping the classroom, and reverse teaching. Read more.
BYOD
Bring your own device (also referred to as Bring your own technology (BYOT), Bring your own phone (BYOP), and Bring your own PC (BYOPC)) is a term that is frequently used to describe the policy of permitting employees to bring personally owned mobile devices (laptops, tablets, and smart phones) to their place of work and use those devices to access privileged company information and applications.[1] The term is also used to describe the same practice applied to students using personally owned devices in education settings. Read more.
MOOC
A massive open online course (MOOC) is a type of online course aimed at large-scale participation and open access via the web. MOOCs are a recent development in the area of distance education and a progression of the kind of open education ideals suggested by open educational resources. Examples include Khan Academy and free offerings from Stanford and MIT. Read more.
Google Docs
Google Docs is a free web-based office suite offered by Google within its Google Drive service. It also was a storage service but has since been replaced by the before-mentioned Google Drive. It allows users to create and edit documents online while collaborating in real-time with other users. Google Docs combines the features of Writely and Spreadsheets with a presentation program incorporating technology designed by Tonic Systems. Learn more.
Authorized school districts, county offices of education, and charter schools to claim average daily attendance funding for student participation in approved online courses.
Authorized school districts to contract with public and private providers to deliver online courses taught by credentialed teachers.
Allowed students to take online courses offered by any school district, regardless of student’s residence.
Provided students access to courses required for admission to state universities.
Established the “California Diploma”, which would have demonstrated completion of courses required for University of California and California State University admission.
If students need flexibility in their schedule or a teacher in another district has a great online course, students will definitely seek out that option if available—and the ADA would follow the student for that course. Students will no longer be held hostage to what their local district, school or individual teacher of a course is offering.
Click image above to read this Huffington post article.
Personal Learning Networks
A personal learning network (PLN) is an informal learning network that consists of the people a learner interacts with and derives knowledge from in a personal learning environment. In a PLN, a person makes a connection with another person with the specific intent that some type of learning will occur because of that connection. Read more.
Sir Ken Robinson: Changing Educational Paradigms
This is a great 11 minute video by Sir Ken Robinson to open up the dialog about the need to change and adapt our schools to meet the needs of students today and into the future. Pay particular attention to the section on divergent thinking. As Sir Ken points out this is one of the most important traits students will need to be successful in our changing world. Learn more.
A Question
Let me finish by posing a question. If students truly have a choice about what courses they take and where they take them, will they choose to stay enrolled in a course that is textbook-driven and without access to technology or any expectation to use technology to produce evidence of their learning? Or would they choose a hybrid or blended course with online,24/7, access to highly interactive threaded discussions, media rich resources, and the ability to schedule the class around other commitments and activities?
Take for example this brief blog post. It starts with a brief description and includes links to other resources for those looking to explore a topic in depth. Compare this to a one page article with definitions of each trend. Which would provide a better understanding of the topic? Which would lead to a deeper understanding? Which is more engaging?
If you are looking to continue this conversation you should consider attending the Leadership 3.0 Symposium sponsored by TICAL, ACSA and CUE. It takes place April 11–13, 2013 at the Hyatt Regency, Irvine, California. Learn more.
Last April I found out late on a Friday evening that my school had been unexpectedly listed in a San Bruno Park School District governing board agenda for closure at the end of the 11/12 school year. Up to that point only one other school had been recommended for closure by a consultant firm hired by the district. To say the least, there was a strong reaction from our school community. At the next board meeting dozens of parents and students lambasted the board and district administration. The final vote was 5-0 to not close any school in the upcoming year. However, knowing that with the the state and federal budget crisis, the potential failure of Proposition 30, and the uncertain success of a district sponsored parcel tax (it did not pass on November 5), as a school community we knew that we had to do something to fend off closure for the 13/14 year.
For the last couple of years, the former PTA president had wanted to establish our school, El Crystal, as a charter school. We looked at the district policy but quickly decided that none of us had the time to invest in that endeavor. However, with closure on the near horizon, Vince (the former PTA President) and I sought school and community members to create a mini-task force to discuss and consider other alternatives. By June of 2012 we had a group of between ten and twelve regular participants that met every other Thursday over the summer to strategize a plan. Eventually, we settled on becoming a Magnet School for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). Our site has been designated by the district as a Demonstration School for the Integration of Curriculum and Technology for the last four years, so this move seemed logical. The staff had considered this notion during the school year, so it met with their overwhelming support.
Creating a proposal
We created our Magnet School Proposal throughout the summer. Just before school began, four members of what the district soon labelled “the delegation” met with the superintendent and one board member to present our proposal. The delegation was asked to come back with answers to a number of questions posed during the meeting. The district asked that I as principal, should serve as the liaison to the parent group. We met one more time to offer our responses. Our proposal was put on the board agenda in October as a presentation item. The board voted to place our proposal as an action item for the upcoming November 14 board meeting.
Whether or not our proposal gains the needed wind to take flight is in the hands of the governing board. But what I want to share is the extraordinary relationships that were established within the parent group known as the delegation. Ten regular participants composed the group:
Parent and former PTA President who is a property manager
A nurse
A real estate broker
An architect from the community
Manager of a major department store
Director at a bio-medical company
Self-employed illustrator and author
A former parent and community activist
Director of fundraising at a public television station in San Francisco
Webmaster for a non-profit organization
A model of collaboration
I have been an administrator in public schools for almost 25 years. I have facilitated, met with, and participated in numerous parent groups including PTA, ELAC, School Site Councils, and special committees designated by the governing board. Those meetings are usually agendized, focused on support for a specific school or school system, and driven by interest or protocol. Folks can participate or just ‘sit on their hands’ and let others do the talking and decision-making.
The delegation turned out to be a much more intense, personal, and gratifying experience. The participants were open-minded, candid, task-driven, solution-oriented, focused, and respectful to the perspectives brought by each member. The STEM idea was offered by Vince and myself. The group took this notion as a great idea, did research away from the meeting, brought their individual experiences and perspectives into the discussions, read everything given to them, and asked driving and well-thought out questions. In other words, they were the ideal collaborative group. They were a model for what any teacher would want to see students achieve at any level in any classroom learning any subject.
Invest time with parents in open-ended problem-solving
I said at a recent conference that every principal should figure out a way to invest time regularly with a group of parents and an open-ended problem to solve. From this experience I gained insight to how parents perceive my behavior as an individual and administrator, how they perceive the goals of our school, how they perceive classroom activities, and how they perceive the intended culture of the school. If you asked folks to give you this insight straight up, you would receive nothing. In many ways, these participants were the faces behind the survey questions you send out about your school. I learned that some people perceive me as sometimes too frank and honest, that I could be more tactful, and that there was tremendous respect for how we care for the students in our charge especially with the technology we offer throughout the curriculum. In the final analysis, I learned that collaboration is an essential condition at all levels if any system if it is going to function at its maximum.
After 13 wonderful years with the Carlsbad Unified School District, I made the leap to neighboring Vista Unified as the new Superintendent in July. Vista Unified is the fourth-largest district in San Diego County with over 22,000 students (25,000 when charters are included) and 32 school sites. To help me to understand the new setting I made it a goal to visit every classroom within the first two months of the school year. While I still have a few to see, I have managed to see hundreds of classrooms within that timeframe.
Though the duration of each visit was relatively brief, I saw amazing consistency in many respects and I also observed some unique and innovative practices. In all, it has been a tremendous learning opportunity and I wish that I could share the experience in great detail. In the spirit of brevity, here are three examples I doubt I would have seen even a few years ago.
High School
At Rancho Buena Vista High School the students in an English class had worked in small groups to create posters with content that would be used in an upcoming test. In lieu of having each student copy the documents, the teacher invited students to take photos using their smartphones and then share the images with peers. Brilliant!
Rancho Buena Vista High School student uses phone to capture image of documents in English class.
Elementary School
In a primary classroom at Beaumont Elementary School, one teacher asked students to compose messages that could fit in a 140-character Twitter post to share their impressions of the classroom with me. This was a great cross-disciplinary idea that required students to use a sentence frame and their writing skills. Counting the characters required some number sense and application of mathematics. Who knew that a Twitter assignment could be used as a prompt for first-grade students?
Twitter messages to the new superintendent.
Tablets absolutely are beginning to transform the educational experience for students. In this photo from Temple Heights Elementary School the teacher was able to replay the work that a student had done on a particular math problem to better understand their reasoning and problem-solving approach. The ease of use, portability, and flexibility of the tablets seem to be leading to higher levels of use than the computers that have all-too-frequently been left alone in the corners of the classroom. I saw tablets being used for independent work, guided activities, and direct instruction in conjunction with LCD projectors. I suspect that what I saw was simply the tip of the iceberg.
Elementary student using a tablet computer.
Insights
In reflecting on this experience, here are two quick insights:
This is an amazing time to be in education. New and innovative options for teaching and learning are emerging daily.
Any educator in need of inspiration should find a way to visit classrooms. The enthusiasm of the students—and the adults—is absolutely contagious.
I am already looking forward to the next round of visits!
As we venture forth into 2013, I thought it might be a good time to take a look at some items that should be on every administrator’s radar. We all need to be developing a plan on how we will incorporate each into our schools.
Facing incipient school closure
