Philosophy Without A Home

I’ve learned a few things about being a leader during the last 3 weeks. I think the first thing I liked was Gardner’s use of the word constituent instead of follower (Jossey-Bass, 2007, p. 18). As a budding leader I don’t want people to follow me around like lost puppies. I do want people to believe in me and and follow my lead, even as I learn and grow over time. When we initially think of a leader for some reason our brain shoots towards the great and mighty leaders. As Murphy describes it, those with tremendous vision, knowledge, strength, initiative, courage, tenacity, power, and a take charge attitude. What we don’t think of is the “unheroic” side of leadership, the shared vision, asking questions, coping with weakness, listening, dependence on others, and letting go. (Jossey_Bass, 2007, pp. 52-53) Leaders, at least good ones, need to fulfill both of these visions of leadership if they expect to lead our schools. I suppose in some idyllic world there exists a scho

This was a very difficult task for me specifically. First of all there is my strong desire to pass a test so I'm always fighting the urge to give myself the benefit of the doubt on what I think is important. For example I want to be more of a change agent then I probably am, at least according to the test. Then there is my tendency to underestimate my expertise. Secondly, I started working at a new district in January, less than eight months ago and we have been on summer break for two of those months. I don't know the schools, the staff, the culture, the key players, or even where (or if) I'll be working next year. This really is an exercise in; if I'm working next year and at this school as the unknown, but new principal, this is how I think I will score. I first filled out the paper based self assessment sheet ( linked here ). The next day I filled out the online survey. As you can see I added a column for those results. I thought it interesting that only 25%

The Rules I was brought back to thinking about my experience as a computer room teacher this summer. Technically I suppose I could also have been thought of as the Assistant Principal for the ARRA Summer Program. But for the most part I was running the computer lab. This post by Chris Lehmann caught my eye. I know I’m like 10 posts behind on his blog, I’ve been busy.  I think I showed the computer rule s in a post last week. They caught my eye for two reasons. First I was led to believe that rules are more effective if you present them in a positive way. Instead of No Cellphones, it could be presented as Cell phones are to be used during free periods only. Second, I had one rule at the start of the summer, “if you think its wrong it is, and if you don’t know what Iis wrong you should not be here.” I did have to remind some students to sign in and get to work when class started. I did have to split up some students. And I did boot one student from the room, actually a classroo

         Based on the readings over the last two weeks I define transformational leadership as a leadership style that is focused on creating change. When a leader wants to make a transformational change in a school he/she starts by creating an empowered culture in the school. As teachers feel more comfortable with the power to make change they begin to see problems in a new light. Problems move from being obstacles that someone else needs to remove to opportunities for change. As a culture of transformational change takes over the school it is hoped that the change that happens will be greater than the sum of the parts of the change that has been implemented. As a teacher my philosophy of education included a strong student-centered classroom. In a nutshell this philosophy can be described as students learn when they do. Studying transformational leadership, servant-leadership, steward leadership, I see these styles of leadership to be a natural extension of my teaching in the class

Image via Wikipedia “The illiterates of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn ”-  Alvin Toffler If you are still teachnig your child to be a geek because that is where the money is your too late. the information revolution is in the second phase. The invention process while still going on is not the hot topic, the hot topic is the ability to use those inventions to change the world.  

These are the rules in the computer room I am in charge of for the summer. no! No ! NO   ! I wonder if I should point them out to the students?

Week 1 is finished with the JHU / ISTE program. our first week in reading and discussing Effective Leadership. Leadership is a good sized topic and I won’t bother writing what I think about it at the moment because we have another eight weeks of study and I’m sure my opinions will be evolving over the next two months. What I did learn what that I love this format. Read discuss reflect online. For the last few years this has been exactly what I have been doing on a variety of subjects. I’ve even been known to say that my twitter and blogging has taught me more about education that I learned in m first six years being an educator. Now to have the opportunity to do the same, but with the guidance and focus of a teacher. One is like trying to drink out of a firehose and the other is more like being served tea in fine china. I’ll let you decide which is which. Sometimes I love directing my own learning and just going where my whims take me, but sometimes, quite often actually

Originally posted at http://schoolfinder.globalscholar.com/blog Award or Scam June 6, 2008 – 7:22 am by Brendan Schools in Grayslake Elementary District 46 have been examined closely. It has been determined that they should win the Blue Ribbon Lighthouse award . This award should under no circumstances be confused with the U.S. Department of Education’s No Child Left Behind Blue Ribbon Schools award initiative. See the blue Ribbon Schools of Excellence Inc. gives away one award and the U.S. Department of Education gives out the other. The other significant difference is that blue ribbon Schools of Excellence Inc. is also an educational consultant company. They charged the Grayslake school district over $20,000 for consulting fees before giving the schools this award. It sort of makes me feel slimy now to call myself an educational consultant. On the other hand I don’t live that far from Grayslake, I could have done the consulting for less than half the cost. I don’t have a problem with

Social Marketing and Bettering Communicating Between Teachers and Administrators A member of my Personal Learning Network, PLN, Ben Grey is starting a new job . In his post he says: It seems to me as I’ve observed the advent of modern technology increasing in utilization in education, there has grown a rift between those in the Director of Technology role and many of the others in an educational institution. Somehow the two sides seem to be at odds. Neither understands the other. As it is most often manifested, the one side is prone to thinking in terms of restricting what takes place in the technological environment, while the other side believes those running the technological environment know very little about education. As a “teacher” who is also a qusi-administrator I hear both sides of the communication complaints. I don’t know why it is, but teachers in general seem to have a pretty low opinion of most administrators. While administrators in general seem to think that teache

The BYOL No Paper? No Problem! Effective Teaching in a 1-to-1 Classroom sounded like something that would be interesting. While the basic premise, that of a classroom working solely with 1-to-1 computers, was true I, and I think about half the participants expected something a bit different. Image via Wikipedia I was kind of expecting to see free range students plucking tools from the Internet to solve real world problems collaboratively. What I got was teachers using technology to control the content their students could work from to complete rigid and structured lessons. Way back on day 1, Saturday for me, I caught the end of the discussion on iPads and their role in education. The debate there was that some felt that iPads were more suited to consumers and didn’t allow for the creation of content. Thus they restricted the ability of student to SHOW what they learned. Others felt that not every tool needed to be a Swiss Army knife . At times students would be asked to build conten