Stepping Outside our Comfort Zone

On Monday nights, I co-moderate a Twitter chat along with Holly Sutherland, another administrator at our school. 

This past Monday night's topic was titled, "Risk-taking for Teachers is Scary. Is Failure an Option?" (Read the chat archive here: http://sfy.co/q4UT)

It can be scary to step outside of our comfort zone and take risks because those risks might lead to failure. Here's what some of the tweet chat participants had to say in response to the question, "Why are educators afraid to fail?"

Taking risks is scary!!

As school leaders and especially leaders with our technology initiative, Holly and I try to be as transparent as possible. We believe in the importance of a culture where teachers feel "safe" to take risks and experiment with technology. 

One of the ways we try to promote this culture is by modeling our use of technology and by risk-taking ourselves. For example, we create a Fun Fact Friday video each week that usually includes a tech tip as well as a funny (well, we think it is!) video clip.  

We poke fun of ourselves in the videos, and it's scary to create the video each week.... wondering if others will think it's stupid or irrelevant. 

Our BIG risk involves a party we are hosting soon. When we started our Alabama Education Chat (#ALedchat) on Twitter, it was scary because we wondered if it would turn out like the episode on the Brady Bunch where no one showed up for Peter's birthday party.

Click HERE to watch the Youtube video

And now we are taking it to the national level. We believe so strongly in the power of PLNs and Twitter for PD that we want to unite the state chats in one special quarterly chat called #USedchat. It's going to be Monday, April 22 at 8:00pm CST. We've invited everyone we know, and we're hoping at least a few show up. 

That same night - prior to the twitter chat - we're hosting a Parent Twitter Night in our school library where we'll teach parents how to use Twitter. After the parent session is over, we've invited teachers at our school to join us in the school library for a 30 minute training session at 7:30, then to stay for the Twitter chat where we will host from the library. Teachers will earn PD credit, enjoy snacks, and have fun fellowship with their colleagues in person and online.

Needless to say, 

we are nervous. 

And excited. 

And energized. 

We know where the fruit is.

Won't you join us?

Using Twitter at School

Our school uses Twitter a lot. Here are some examples of how we use it....

-Our school hashtag is #HHSiBucs. Staff and students "tag" their tweets whenever the news is school-related. (Update: At the time of writing this post, the hashtag was #HHSiBucs. Since then, it has changed to #HooverPride)

-Holly Sutherland (another administrator) and I use it when we visit classrooms to share what students and teachers are doing

-When a student receives a Praise Referral, I take his/her picture and tweet the accomplishments

-At our school-wide Curriculum Night, we showed the #HHSiBucs twitter stream on a huge screen in the cafeteria during the meetings. Parents, students, and staff tweeted during the night

-We take pictures at assemblies, athletic events, meetings, etc. and share via Twitter

-Holly shares a motivational quote each school day

-We share links to our school's Engaged Learning Initiative blog (Update: Blog is no longer active)

-The librarians tweet library happenings and events

-Each Monday night, Holly and I host #ALedchat from 9-10pm CST where we connect with educators from Alabama and all over the country

-Teachers share what their students are doing in class via twitter

Here's what one of our teachers did in his English class...he had music playing while the students entered class. He then asked the students to tweet how the music related to the selection they had recently been reading. The tweets led the conversation and instruction for the class that day.

Another teacher created class hashtags. She held a "Twitter Chat" during class by posting questions and having the students to respond to her and each other.

Not that familiar with Twitter hashtags? Here's a great article called The Complete Guide to Twitter Hashtags in Education. 

What other ideas do you have for using Twitter at school?

12: The Elements of Great Managing

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12: The Elements of Great Managing

Have you read this book? It's a book based on years of Gallup research, including 10 million employee and manager interviews spanning 114 countries and conducted in 41 languages. The research shows that there are 12 basic needs that employees need to have fulfilled at work for optimal engagement.

While it is a book for leaders about employee engagement, I think it also provides opportunities for leaders and employees to self-reflect. When you read the 12 elements below, think of each statement as a true/false question. 

If the answer to any of the questions is false, how do you go about turning it into a True statement?

You can read more about the book and each element here.

When I read this list, I think about the teachers at our school and try to determine which of these elements I can influence and support. I hope that I have done a good job with supporting the teachers who would answer them as if they were a list of True/False questions. 

I'm interested to hear your thoughts about the 12 Elements. Does your organization use this list as a gauge for employee engagement? Please leave a comment on your most or least favorite.

Who's really in charge in the classroom?

I seem to always pull for the underdog. I love movies such as Hoosiers, Rocky, and Remember the Titans. The story of Helen Keller moves me. I pull for the contestants on shows like American Idol and America's Got Talent who have the rags-to-riches stories.

In recent news, the story of Florida Gulf Coast University is a cinderella story in the NCAA men's basketball tournament. They beat Georgetown (No. 2 seed) Friday night, then defeated San Diego State last night, making them the first No. 15 seed to ever win two games in the tournament and make it to the Sweet 16.

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Today I want to share an excerpt from an article by Martin Haberman I'm reading, titled The Pedagogy of Poverty Versus Good Teaching. (The bolded phrases are by me.) Until recently, I had never heard of Martin Haberman. I think we both shared a passion for the underdog, the overlooked, the unexpected victor. We also believe in (and the research proves the importance of) the power of a teacher.

From Mr. Haberman....

For any analysis of pedagogical reform to have meaning in urban schools, it is necessary to understand something of the dynamics of the teacher/student interactions in those schools. The authoritarian and directive nature of the pedagogy of poverty is somewhat deceptive about who is really in charge. Teachers seem to be in charge, in that they direct students to work on particular tasks, allot time, dispense materials, and choose the means of evaluation to be used. It is assumed by many that having control over such factors makes teachers "decision makers" who somehow shape the behavior of their students.

But below this facade of control is another, more powerful level on which students actually control, manage, and shape the behavior of their teachers. Students reward teachers by complying. They punish by resisting. In this way students mislead teachers into believing that some things "work" while other things do not. By this dynamic, urban children and youth effectively negate the values promoted in their teachers' teacher education and undermine the nonauthoritarian predispositions that led their teachers to enter the field. And yet, most teachers are not particularly sensitive to being manipulated by students. They believe they are in control and are responding to "student needs," when, in fact, they are more like hostages responding to students' overt or tacit threats of noncompliance and, ultimately, disruption.

It cannot be emphasized enough that, in the real world, urban teachers are never defined as incompetent because their "deprived," disadvantaged," "abused," "low-income" students are not learning. Instead, urban teachers are castigated because they cannot elicit compliance. Once schools made teacher competence synonymous with student control, it was inevitable that students would sense who was really in charge.

The students' stake in maintaining the pedagogy of poverty is of the strongest possible kind: it absolves them of responsibility for learning and puts the burden on the teachers, who must be accountable for making them learn. In their own unknowing but crafty way, students do not want to trade a system in which they can make their teachers ineffective for one in which they would themselves become accountable and responsible for what they learn. It would be risky for students to swap a "try and make me" system for one that says, "Let's see how well and how much you really can do".

Recognizing the formidable difficulty of institutionalizing other forms of pedagogy, it is still worthwhile to define and describe such alternative forms. The few urban schools that serve as models of student learning have teachers who maintain control by establishing trust and involving their students in meaningful activities rather than by imposing some neat system of classroom discipline. For genuinely effective urban teachers, discipline and control are primarily a consequence of their teaching and not a prerequisite condition of learning. Control, internal or imposed, is a continuous fact of life in urban classrooms - but, for these teachers, it is completely interrelated with the learning activity at hand.

Each of us will get a different message from this excerpt. I would love for you to leave a comment with your thoughts, questions, and take-aways.