Mission Statement: "All Means All"

"We will ensure that all students acquire skills and knowledge necessary to be successful and responsible citizens."

Friday, November 30, 2012

“Rediscovery”


As we draw closer to the beginning of a new year I would like to take full advantage of time for reflection, retrospection, introspection, metacognition and just about any other type of inspection of self before the year ends.  In part motivated to initiate reflection now given we are all too busy with the holidays, family, and life to do justice to the power of review and in part to give each of us something else to think about other than shopping – not sure how many more we can take - Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, Coupon Tuesday, Wacky Wednesday, and on and on.
Though new records for online sales were set, we learned that most brick and mortar shoppers checked online for sales, prices and availability before committing to face-to-face transactions. Stores have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to associate their brand with trust – trust of price, quality, experience, and etc. Now, trust is a click or double click, swipe, or quick surf. 
Things have change!
Traditional shoppers are conflicted if not confused by how the Internet has redefined the purpose of shopping let alone redefined trust.
Of course my sense of shopping is pretty Neanderthal – you know the whole hunter and gatherer mindset.  I know what I want, see it, “shoot it”, and bring it home – pretty simple.  So the whole online thing works for me. 
However, for many, technology has not only redefined shopping but also has repurposed it.  Unlike me, many view shopping as an experience – a social experience.  The advent of online shopping shifted the social experience of shopping in ways that few anticipated.  Certainly brick and mortar stores have attempted to create something more alluring, more attractive than what the Internet can offer shoppers.   For some stores this has worked; for others it hasn’t.
Cross-walking from shopping, technology to the call for reflection I ask each of us to consider two very important areas – our sense of purpose and our sense of trust.  Similar to the online versus traditional face-to-face shopping, educators, too, must rediscover a sense of purpose as well as rediscover trust.  With no shortage of change, reform educators must know clearly and without apology or compromise their (our) purpose.  The adage “if you don’t know what you stand for you will fall for anything” could not be truer. 
Why are we engaged in this work? 
Why is this our chosen profession?
What is it we are attempting to accomplish?
In a like manner trust capacity is at an all time low.  Educators are not trusted. 
Yet, why? 
When did educators become untrustworthy?
Rediscovering trust will require embracing unprecedented transparency, truth telling even when it is not popular or convenient. 
We have for the past five and half years attempted to face our deficiencies, shortcomings and underperformance with not only the reality of data but with sincerity, ownership, and a sense of empowerment to adjust and correct not excuse or blame others. 
We must assist our community as well as critics in rediscovering trust – trust in their public schools to meet or exceed high expectations for achievement and performance.  If for nothing more than an opportunity to engage in conversations, our performance over the past five years should speak volumes to our desire and efforts to improve.  Our staff and more importantly, our students have risen to the occasion giving concrete, empirical evidence of their ability, their capability, and their capacity to achieve to high standards.
Yes, I do believe it is time to rediscover trust.
Sense of purpose and trust in no uncertain terms will be under attack in the weeks and months ahead.  With a new governor along with newly elected and re-elected members of the General Assembly, we will certainly experience a redefining and repurposing of public education.
It is my best hopes that in our reflections of our own sense of purpose and trust that we will become embolden with a new found sense of courage – courage to speak up and out for our students, our community, our state, and our nation.
We must rediscover the importance of education and our role in creating a preferred future for each of our learners – education is more than economic development, more than global competiveness.  It is the essence of what makes our community, state, and nation the envy of the world. 
Education is freedom. 
The rediscovery of freedom and what it means will have a profound impact on pondering purpose and trust.  Imagine if you will what this would look like, feel like, and sound like in action rather than just in thought. 
Come to think of it – we can make this a reality!

Friday, November 16, 2012

“Sometimes …”


Much has and will continue to be written, discussed, debated, and legislated regarding Hurricane Sandy – not to mention litigated – someone has to be sued, right?  The destruction and loss of life are challenging for words to describe let alone for many of us to comprehend.  Watching camera footage along with the interviews of victims was difficult especially in the immediate aftermath.  Then came the unseasonably early nor’easter – talk about insult to injury.   The rebuilding of communities, towns, and cities will be an enormous undertaking not to mention expensive.  Yet, is there any doubt that it will be done?
Homes and businesses along with the infrastructure to support utilities, communication, transportation, schools and other public services will return.  So will the people – the human spirit - the composite of psychology, philosophy, and religion that define humanity is nothing short of amazing.  This is precisely why I have little doubt that from catastrophe there will be growth and renewal. 
It is against this backdrop that I move to the front and center of a different challenge – a challenge that if we collectively responded as if facing the severity of a Hurricane or some other natural disaster we would at last solve.  That is, the challenge of universal literacy!
I recently shared at the NC Legislative Research Council as I have in the past in other venues that we can eradicate illiteracy in three to five years if we really chose to – yes you read that right – eradicate illiteracy.  We already know more than we need to do to actually achieve this – we just have to want to.
This is where the sports commentator says, “C’mon man!”
Yes, indeed, c’mon! 
The knowledge we have about how the brain works especially the ability to watch, track, and affect the development of sight, sound, and symbol recognition is now a fingertip away.  We can aggressively increase both the requisite skills as well as intensify the acquisition of skills, experience, and knowledge commensurate with literacy mastery.  In fact, the cost of aggressively preventing intervention versus the costs of remediation of failed learning or better put the failure to learn is pennies versus dollars.  In fact, the longer a student is in remediation the more costly it becomes.
Hence the prevention to intervention model – it makes sense from both an educational and fiscal perspective.  So, why don’t we embrace it? 
We are but …
The “buts” are primarily our mindset followed by using time, technology, and teaming differently.  For example, we are still limited by how we use time.  The only time that should have constraints are the first bell at the beginning of the instructional day and last bell signaling the end of the day.  Other than that, educators should be compelled to use time to achieve mastery – literacy mastery.  Mastering literacy embeds all subject areas, content areas, and learning activities. 
Mastering literacy is not age bound or grade bound.  What we must do is to ensure it without compromising.
What will it take?
We have the tools, technology, theory, and teams.  We need to shore up training and permission to use time differently to leverage the aforementioned tools, technology and teams.  Permission?
Yes!
Our principals and teachers have permission – not that they needed formal permission to ensure literacy mastery.  Nonetheless, they do. 
A challenge, to be fair to our staff, is ensuring that students who have already mastered the essential skills of literacy move to even more profound skills, knowledge, and experiences.  Simply put, I am not suggesting that students demonstrating literacy mastery should in any way not be challenged or expected to learn to even higher levels.
Herein lies a second challenge – the bane of our existence is sameness.  Once we use permission to be different, we will begin to break away from sameness – treating each learner the same – same grade, same pace, same space, and same place.  As an example, the only factor that second graders have in common is “age”.
Is this practical? 
It has to be!
What we need now more than ever is the collective commitment and courage to make this happen. 

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

“The Certainty of Uncertainties”


I was finally able to finish what I started two weekend’s ago with respect to the first wave of leaf raking or more aptly put, leaf blowing.  Staff know that when the leaves fall, they endure the aftermath of hours of “think” time.  My thoughts have been consumed with the events of the past two weeks including the copper theft, employee issues, election results, presentations, and the challenges of continuing to improve all manner of individual and organization performance.
What can only by summarized as the certainty of uncertainties the days, weeks, months, and years ahead are uncertain.  Therefore all that is certain about tomorrow is uncertainty.  Uncertainty will create anxiety, confusion, conflict, as well as doubt. Uncertainty can be used as an excuse for inaction, slippage, or incapacitating behaviors. Uncertainty can also take us down paths that in normal times we would never entertain going. In some cases uncertainty will keep us longer than we planned to stay and cost us more that we were willing to pay.
Hence it is critical that we do not wavier from what we do know.  That is, we know we can and must do better.  Arguably, getting and therefore being better has not been easy or quick.  It has consumed a great deal of energy, time, and effort.  No one believed that overnight we would become a high performing school system.  In spite of the challenges we are close, so close to breaking through.  If the past five years are any indication (I believe they are) our plan is working.
The Strategic Commitments embody the direction, the plan, and the factors that must be achieved to realize success for each student.  Four words summarize the commitments – focus, alignment, and continuous improvement.  Woven into the fabric of each of our commitments are transparency, individual and organizational accountability, and evidence – evidence of performance improvement.
The commitments however are only as effective as we the adults choose them to be.  The power of the uncertainties of tomorrow are also only as controlling as we the adults choose or allow them to be.  We do not have to let circumstances dictate, control, or in any way determine our destiny.  This may be easier said than done.
The accomplishments to date are not universally known nor accepted.  In addition all who do know them have not embraced them wholeheartedly.  We still have doubt within our schools let alone our community.  We still have way too much complaining, criticizing, and cynicism about our staff, our students, our parents, and our leadership from both within and external to our organization.
The results to date are because of focus, alignment and continuous improvement.  Moreover, underpinning our work to date has been a shift in thinking followed by the shifting of practice.
In the middle of such change it is easy to miss how significant the change really is. The following comment was made after I shared several of the data points illuminating our progress over the past five years, “I didn’t know how much we’ve improved”. 
Though not entirely unexpected it was nonetheless illuminating of the need to increase awareness of the results our students and staff have achieved.  Each of us has the responsibility to communicate what is good, what is true, and what is right about our system.
I am confident that we can minimize the uncertainties of tomorrow by raising awareness and understanding of what has and continues to be our path of improvement.
If not careful we may easily slip back into previously unproductive, ineffective, and inefficient practices.  Hence, we must relentlessly pursue our plan – the plan of continuous improvement.
Any slippage in our individual or organizational performance can be attributed legitimately to the ratcheting up of the demands of deeper, more robust instruction driven by the new standards.  Without question or hesitation, the new standards require different instruction. 
The call to shift instruction will not become a reality for all until the results of the new assessments occur.  Sadly, the epiphany that the new standards demand different instruction will come at the expense of students.
Though much work has been done to build capacity in staff in the awareness and understanding of what the new standards demand in both teaching and learning, I believe there remains a contrarian attitude – an attitude that works against the very change we must become.
Thus, we must communicate loudly the success to date but equally communicate that we cannot for a second let up on our pursuit of improving continuously – stay the course irrespective of the uncertainties.

Friday, November 2, 2012

“Taking Risk”


The famed former Dallas Cowboy football great turned bronco bull rider, Walt Garrison once said when asked why, do you ride bulls, “I would rather live with the 6 to 8 seconds of utter terror than living the rest of my life wondering if I could”.  In so many ways I am just not like that.  There is no way I need to take that risk – I sleep just fine at night.
Yet, there are some things that I as well as the collective “we” must risk:  though possibly not a risk at all.
Every day our teachers take risks with instructional strategies.  With the best hopes, intentions of each learner mastering essential skills let alone demonstrating ownership of their learning, our teachers work to stretch, challenge daily each learner. 
They also conscientiously work to reteach, remediate where instruction and learning have not achieved the desired or expected effect. 
Though a very natural step in the teaching and learning cycle, teachers have absolutely nothing to apologize for when re-teaching or remediation is required.  In fact, we expect it!
Believe it or not, to some this is taking a risk, a calculated risk, a planned, intentional risk.  Teachers have unrestricted permission to take this risk.  It is when teachers don’t risk in this way that we are each impacted negatively.
Why do some consider re-teaching a risk?
Each lesson is designed to achieve success.  When the desired or expected result is not achieved there is a sense of failure.  Our society has become more critical, judgmental especially with teaching and learning.  The entire accountability system is not about improving performance but rather to shame, embarrass, and yes, condemn individual students, teachers, principals, classes, grade levels, schools and school systems that do not meet or exceed externally set targets. As if those in a position to make policy believe that each learner, each child, each family, and each community are the same – you get the point – the bane of our existence is sameness.
Too often students get the blame for failing to learn.  Not far behind are the parents for lack of support, caring, or participation.  Of recent, it is the fancy of policy makers to blame teachers, principals, superintendents, Boards of Education, the community or everyone for that matter except themselves. 
Is it possible we have been looking at this through limited lenses?  What if we shifted our thinking to risk-taking through our ability to employ creativity, innovation and imagination? 
Teaching is constant hypothesis testing.  Teachers daily test instructional strategies and with significant success, these strategies are effective.  What we know is that not each learner brings the exact set of skills, knowledge and experiences to a learning episode.  Why would we even consider that one instructional strategy will work perfectly with each learner?  Talk about a set up? 
Of course, there are going to be, just as there has been in the past, variance in learning.  We have asked almost in more of a “super hero” expectation that our teachers perfect their hypothesis testing in every lesson, every day, with every child.  Did I say this is a set up?
In a different time it may have been more reasonable that teachers could test fewer hypotheses given the variance of student skills, knowledge, or experience were less diverse than today.  It can also be argued that in a different time our teachers were more valued, esteemed, and held in higher regard by students, parents, community and policy makers.  The times, however, have changed – did I say set up?
In as much as teachers take risk through testing instructional hypotheses daily, students also take risks through testing learning hypotheses daily.  Each learner, including adult learners, has preferences in the way we like to learn.  When we are asked to learn differently from our preferred way to learn, it is risk-taking. 
Query, both teacher and learner are simultaneously testing hypotheses – one for teaching and one for learning.  Hmm … we may be on to something.
So what is the point - bronco riding, taking risks, or testing hypotheses?
Daily teachers approach their work with the best intentions, best hopes of moving each learner to new content, new tools, new skills, new meaning, and new applications preparing them for the “next”.  They plan for success and when it is not achieved in the allotted time or in the prescribed way they must be risk-takers.
They must become risk-takers, either through the use of time, technology, different strategies, different materials, or through different evidence of learning.  I remain unwavering in my confidence that each of our teachers are up to the task – take a risk and watch our talented educators at work.

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