Digital Leadership - Developing Capacities to Make A Difference for Today

It was May of 2011, and 94 year-old Grandma Bernice had a problem. She was disappointed that she could no longer read the Chicago Tribune because the font was too small. A bright, intelligent former teacher and school librarian, she was sad that she couldn't keep up with the stories in print. She had tried computers and for a while had made them work but over time it became too complicated. And then, the iPad 2 appeared. With cellular service in tow, she could with two touches to the screen be on the Chicago Tribune and reading an article. By pinching her fingers back and forth she could enlarge the article and read her item of interest. It was magic!
When technology works well, we no longer notice it. It's just there. What we notice is the change in our pattern of behaviors to access the technology. Each day there are so many new things that impact the learning world, shared documents and calendars, collaborative editing, pictures and videos integrated into writing, social media, and wearables. If we see them for the technology, as leaders its overwhelming. However, if we see it for the learning, the scary mountain of technology falls away and the paths of opportunity unfold.
As leaders, it is our role to help our staff, students, parents, families, and community members find the path. In this journey, if we can provide clarity to the learning task, the necessary technology will define itself. For example, if the writing process is the curriculum objective and editing is the learning target, a tool such as Google Docs is terrific. In Google Docs, students and teachers can see the changes that they have made through version history. Peer editors can be added to the group through shared documents, their contributions documented in the version history. Parents can be invited in as collaborators or observers through the sharing process. By defining the learning target one becomes able to define the appropriate tool to fit the needs.
As leaders, it is our role to invest in others. So often, we try to be the expert, the one driving the train. However, we are only as good as the members of our team. Leaders need to utilize their strengths of identifying where we are going while also investing in and learning from others on the journey. Using the Google Docs example, as a leader, one may need to ask the team what tool makes sense and learn from the team how to use it. In this journey, the team does not only include other members of the instructional staff but also the students. Frequently our children are the experts in the tool teaching us adults how to use it while we are experts in establishing and developing the appropriate instructional challenge to help the students grow. It is common within our classrooms and our buildings for students names to be listed on the board with different digital tools they are the experts in. Students become resources for other students and adults within the building. From ages 6 to 14 they are the "geniuses" in our tech support program.
As leaders, we need to go on the journey also. While we don't need to know every tool, like all members of the school community we need to grow our capacity and integrate tools each day a little better than the previous day. This may be as simple as using a shared document for a meeting agenda, emailing out a notice for a meeting, or texting a thank you to a staff member. Integrating technology into our daily practice may seem challenging at first, but over time the tools will becomes seamless in our practice. By doing little digital actions, we show we are not simply a digital leader, but a learning leader.

Digital Tools For Everyday Life

Look Who's Coming to Bat

We were like them once. Full of energy, passion, and laughter. Entering with a nervousness yet feeling we would make a difference. That first day we entered, overdressed for the occasion, nervous about who we might meet, moments of anxiety hiding a well of enthusiasm that we would change the world. We were all like them, know we would become leaders and difference makers. Knowing we would be great, just waiting for our first chance at bat. We were all Archibald "Moonlight" Graham ready to conquer the world.

Young Archibald "Moonlight" Graham

Like "Moonlight" none of us are sure of the adventure before us. We know it's beginning and that we have something important to offer. This month, throughout the nation, new teachers are lining up everywhere. They are entering their rooms, setting up their spaces, learning with new colleagues, preparing themselves to make a difference in the world. Within each of them, just like us, someone sees a unique talent to make the difference in the world. We think it will be the difference in the life of a child, a parent, a colleague, or a mentor. Someone sees the opportunity in them to change lives, we just need to open the door and give the chance to make it happen.

Moonlight Graham - Baseball-Reference.com

The adventure begins. Our young fireballers come to make a difference in the world. What that difference will be exactly? None of us can be exactly sure. It is our job to support, encourage, and provide the support necessary so when they come to bat, their hit makes a difference.

Archibald's Decision

The Real Life of "Moonlight" Graham

Education is different. The Revolution Has Begun.

I wonder how the story will be told ten years from now. Will it be the story of how grand legislation changed the course of history? A story of how brave business leaders and politicians came together in office meetings and despite political unrest and disorderly teachers pushed through tough standards and difficult assessments. Will it be the story of how communities came together and found each other? A story of teachers, principals, and leaders connecting with other colleagues, sharing, and caring about each others successes and challenges.

Education is different now. The children aren't different, but education is. Each day, parents send us curious children. Each bearing the weight of challenges of home life and school life on their shoulders. Each with hopes and dreams. Each wanting to grow and learn. Each wanting to connect with others in the classroom hoping that they will be friends. Our students, at their very core, are no different than we were. Sure they know more. They have had access to a world of information through the internet, television, video, radio, and books to a level that we never had. They are more persistent, hitting challenges within their games and seeking solutions, "cheats, walk-throughs, & lets' play videos" on the internet. But at their core, they are the same curious, interested, loving, and silly boys and girls that walked through our doors 10, 20, or 40 years ago.

Education is different now. Learning isn't different, but education is. When students make connections to the learning experience, they become interested in it. Investment grows, interactions increase, and the likelihood of being able to remember the content, concepts and skills to apply in the real world increases. When children are engaged in the learning, not simply observing the teacher or completing the worksheet, they retain more. The more they work collaboratively with adults and other students, the more likely the experiences will have a stickiness to it. Sure, technology has opened doors for us to do this more frequently. It has given us access to all the resources in the world and the capacity to make professional grade products. But at the core, meaningful learning isn't different than it was 10, 20, or 40 years ago.

Education is different now. Standards and assessments related to the standards are different. With the Common Core State Standards and Next Generation Science Standards there is a level of collective national drive to push content, concepts, and tests to all students as never before in history. Children have become very aware of instructional standards and concepts. They know that ISAT, PARCC, and SmarterBalance are coming and they they will spend over 20 hours this year on State tests that they will not use the results in their classroom. Tests are part of their lives. Some meaningful, impacting what they are learning and how they go about. Some disconnected, entities  of the "State." Our children are good children and most of them try to do well regardless. Our children have learned that many of the "State" tests will label them... Below, Meets, Exceeds, & Warning. They approach the assessments like we approached the Presidential Fitness test in the 80's, an obligation that must be done if it can't be avoided. Politicians and business leaders indicate that only through tough standards and assessment can we drive innovation and skills forward but has this ever really worked. Did it work when the standards movements began in the 80's? With the tough tests of the 90's? No Child Left Behind of the last decade? Our economy has moved forward, our innovation has moved forward, yet these leaders would have us believe that schools have become progressively worse even though it is they who have been tinkering with it for more than 30 years.

Education is different now. The revolution has begun. It started about five years ago. Teachers discovered Facebook. Many liked connecting with their friends and started sharing ideas. Then Pinterest came around. While they were looking for photos of wedding dresses, birthday cakes, and the perfect bag, they discovered activities, crafts, and learning projects that advanced their practice. Then, Twitter happened. Short, easy, and come whenever you like. 140 character bursts of ideas. It started with that's a cool idea and oh, I want to read that article. Then the two-way dialogue happen, the chats. Conversations between experts in the field and the classroom teacher next door. People brainstorming about ideas at the core of learning. The attitude welcoming, supportive, and encouraging. Whether its #ntchat (new teacher chat), #nt2t chat (new teachers to twitter chat), #satchat (saturday chat), #iledchat (Illinois Ed Chat - one of my favorites), kinder chat (kindergarten chat), #elachat (English-Language Arts Chat) or the hundreds of others, teachers, principals, and leaders are coming together. Like the gathers of Plato's time, the salons of the 18th and 19th centuries, and the New York City stoops, we are social creatures that want to talk, interact, share, and become better people. Instructional practices are changing daily based on learnings educators from New Zealand, British Columbia, Virginia, and Deerfield, Illinois are sharing. Dialogues are reshaping learning opportunities because someone from Arlington Heights chatted with someone from Baraboo, Wisconsin. The leadership and learning in East Alton, Illinois is shaping the work of thousands of students hundreds of miles north of them.

Education is different now. When I entered the classroom nineteen years ago, my support network was a couple of science teachers in the building and my principal. One learned the ropes and discovered possibilities from an expert group of three-five people. Occasionally one attended classes for a semester or a week-long workshop each of which you paid for out of pocket. Now our support group is literally thousands of individuals in a PLN (personal learning network). Have a question, tweet it out. People like @jedipadmaster, @mssackstein, and @stumpteacher will send you ideas, thoughts, and supports. Education is moving from independent practice to collective reflection, sharing, and growth. Our very nature of being social and wanting to be social is driving the change. Creating knowledge and experiences beyond the boundaries of our classrooms.

Education is different now because the revolution has begun. Five to ten years from now, politicians may claim, if it is convenient and in their interests, that it was standards and assessments that moved the profession forward. Twenty years from now, sociologists will look closer and discover the reason education changed: the revolution has begun because interested people went out and found each other. Each day, the conversations and ideas inch us forward. Our "Tweeps" are becoming that support network not to clamor against the government or advertise the latest product, but rather to find, share, discover, connect, and learn. We have some interesting roads ahead, but we will discover, just like Plato and Socrates when we share our thoughts we expand our horizons. It is a great time to be in education.

Socrates - Dust in the Wind

Beginning the Journey

In forty minutes the sounds will come. For some, the pulsing beats of a siren. For others, the blaring notes of the radio. A roll to the right. Left eye. Right eye. A roll to the left. Stagger seventeen steps and then it hits. The slow glance up to the mirror and the questions arise:

What will today bring?

Am I ready for this?

Can I do this job?

What have I gotten myself into?

What new thing are we going to have to do today?

Is this worth it?

What difference can I make?

Am I a fraud? Can I really do this?

Will there be a problem at my desk when I arrive?

One hundred minutes later, the journey begins. Each member of the quest begins down the same exact road but sees a different path before them. Each member bringing their own hopes, their own dreams, and their own fears. For this is who we are. For every external moment of confidence their is an inner moment of doubt. For every external moment of doubt their is an inner moment of faith.

Four hundred and fifty minutes later the day will pass. Us a little step further down the path as we realize that for all of our questions, our companions have the same within themselves. Our fellow adventurers also have faith. A belief not that we are already the expert that we imagine that we need to be but rather a fellow adventurer who is growing into the companion we want to have.

And thus the journey begins. Novices and experts, veterans and rookies, companions walking together on a road to becoming something greater than what we are and possibly who we hope to become.

An Unexpected Journey

Engage Me!

When asking teachers and principals what are they looking for when they work with students, I frequently get the response, " I want them to be engaged in the learning." Sounds great! In the simplest terms it is true, we want them to be engaged with the learning, but do we have a common understanding of what does that mean and how we create situations in which engagement occurs. 

Inigo on Definitions

For many, engagement is the act of demonstrating on task behaviors. Children's eyes looking at the teacher. Children dutifully completing assignments. Quiet calm as children do the work of schools.

Ditto's Class

However, these behaviors of completing assignments and paying attention to the teacher are acts more of compliance than engagement. Students fulfilling the obligations of school rather than meaningfully participating in the learning process. 

Engagement seems like it should be more. Engagement means an active involvement in thinking about the task, taking personal ownership, and creating something over their own. Students intake a new challenge or concept, play with the idea, converse with other, and the learning evolves into a dialogue or product. Engagement involves energy, investment, passion, and creating something of personal connection. 

Thorton Mellon Finds Poetic Meaning

In order to accomplish this, one needs to question our assumptions of what a class needs to look like. It may look like children actively sitting in the desks reacting to instruction and completing assignments. It also may be students on the floor building recreations of ancient castles, filming stop motion pictures of life within the castle. Engagement may be argument over whether the "patriots" or "loyalists" had the moral high ground during the revolutionary war. Engagement requires students to take a stand and actively cultivate a personal position. It is then, when learning is personal it is meaningful. Learning experiences that require solely compliance last only as long as they need to be completed. However when learning experiences create engagement, the skills, competencies, and knowledge are sustained for a much longer period of time.

Learning History

The Swiss Army Knife - Why Districts Need to Thoughtfully Develop Learning Ecologies in the 1:1 World

The Swiss Army knife was the first guy gadget that I remember. My dad had one. In fact, I think most dads had one. I remember in the late 70's, my dad pulling it out and cutting a rope with it or pulling out a sliver from my had with its tweezers. It had so many useful tools. We tightened screws and opened bottles with it. There seemed always a need to have the knife around. I remember going in stores and looking through the glass cases in awe of the different Swiss Army knives. Over time, my dad purchased a different Swiss Army knife. This one was larger and had even more contraptions inside. It was the early Swiss Army knife version 1.8 or 2.2. I remember getting one for my Bar Mitzvah, but as a 13 year-old kid in the 80's you were never allowed carry a knife so it never became a habit for me and I had the ultimate useful gadget of my generation, the digital watch. It could do splits for me as I swam underwater. Some of my friends even had ones with calculators.

Growing up in the 80's, I never understood why school's loved textbooks. They were big, heavy, and often had too much in it. Becoming a teacher in the 90's, it dawned on me. The textbook was the Swiss Army knife for teachers. If you wanted to teach poetry, "BOOM!" there it was. Need a short story on the Civil War, "SHAZAM!" you had it. What's more, in the 90's textbook companies started getting smarter. Like the ever expanding Swiss Army knife, they added kits of manipulatives, leveled readers, and audio tapes for listening centers. Then the Internet happened and they added web links and evolved into carrying audio CD's. As a teacher, a textbook system was your gadget of gadgets, it had a resource when you had a need. It was a powerful tool that over time has perhaps even become just too much stuff.

So now 1:1 devices are our powerful tools. Whether you use Chromebooks or Netbooks you can welcome your students and teachers to a wonderful world of productivity. They can create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. They can share their work and collaborate on projects together. One can search the Internet for resources and record their data on a spreadsheet. They can even annotate and take notes on the screen. For the same price one can also choose a tablet such as iPad Mini or a Nexus 7 v2 that can accomplish all the tasks of the laptop-like devices and add the value of mobility. One can have reminders that beep in the hallway, use the camera's to record a lab test and screencast a reflective dialogue on it later, have a personal reader for annotation, and keep a practical calendar.

These are all wonderful gadgets, but like me carrying around a Swiss Army Knife now they are a whole lot of tools without a defined purpose. If schools want to make these tools effective, they need to create a Learning Ecology to support the tool. Using self-created websites - whether shared internally via Google Docs or externally on the web, schools need to build a system for teachers and students to apply these tools in areas within and beyond the curriculum. We need to connect the curriculum objectives to possible learning targets, assessment rubrics, usable content resources and supplementary video supports. It is too much to ask students and teachers:"Hey, go learn about recycling. There is a lot of information on the Internet about recycling. Go find it, curate it. Select the important parts. Make a product. Share with us the product. Can we have that on Friday? Great!" Handing teachers and students digital devices is wonderful, but sending them out on walk-about for resources to make it useful is a recipe for disaster. Many districts are holding iPad seminars or Chromebook institutes to help teach teachers with ways to support classroom management and workflow with digital devices. These are wonderful and necessary. However, they are just the start. If we want to seriously integrate these into learning, Curriculum Departments need to openly connect and make available to the teachers, students, and parents clear resources that connect links between curriculum objectives, content, assessment, and digital tools. We must do more than say go look on Khan Academy. Rather we should directly link the items in Khan Academy to the learning we want to occur.

Students and teachers will always search for more ideas than we provide. Twitter and Pinterest seem to be endless sources of ideas, materials, and support for most of our instructional team. These tools are great supplements. As a district it is our obligation to provide core digital resources to make the system go. The starting blocks for our teachers to expand out from. Give them a plant and they will create a magnificent garden.

Original Ginsu Knife Comercial

Achievement Gaps, Raising the Bar, and Vertical Learning

The fire on the grill was burning low. The coals almost spent. The kids were roasting marshmallows. The process was arduously slow. Logan didn't have the patience for it to turn golden brown and popped it in his mouth after the marshmallow had warmed. She, on the other hand, counted slowly. The entering kindergartner stated digit after digit up to 30 before she flipped the marshmallow to the other side and methodically completed the process again. As she spoke, the native English speaker calmly stated the 30 digits in Hebrew.

For many years, the standard for completing kindergarten would be for a child to name, write, and identify objects up to 30. In the new Common Core State Standards, the students need to complete the process to 100. I'd feel pretty safe thinking the young marshmallow roaster could complete this task right now. I'll admit my evidence is anecdotal. Observations of a child's work in practice only completed to 30. But with some quick assessment it could easily be assessed whether she had completed this standard. 

In my second month on the job as Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction, I shared this informational video on the Common Core State Standards from the Common Core Website. In three short minutes it spoke of even steps grade by grade. It spoke of children throughout the country learning the same thing. Right now my family has children attending school in Washington, California, Georgia, Illinois, and the District of Columbia. The film is captivating, graphically appealing, and simple in its message. It feels positive. A message that hits home.

The film's message looks to eliminate differences in learning opportunities across the land. This message focuses on the delivery of instruction. It complements the message being distributed from the Department of Education regarding Achievement Gaps. The Department has a significant interest in reducing the gap in performance between different subgroups of our population. In this analysis, the Department would like schools and educators to eliminate the performance disparities between white, black, and hispanic performing children in their schools and districts, the disparities between socioeconomic groups, and between regular education, special education, and non-native English speakers. All of this measured by standardized tests. 

The marshmallow roaster counted to 30 in Hebrew. What will her journey be in school? If the school follows the Common Core, will she sit on the sidelines for a year, or two, or three as they work on those students with needs until the content and skills are that which she actually needs to learn. Do they promote her upon entrance? Thus, removing the benefit of 13 years of public education already because her parents helped her learn as she grew. I ponder this possibility and think of my oldest child. The young lad who entered Kindergarten doing reading and mathematics at the entering 3rd grade level. Sure he could have done most of the academics with the 8 year olds but emotionally and with his writing he needed to be with the 5 year olds. How much of his school experience should be one of sitting and waiting for everyone to catch up in order to lower the achievement gap, and how much should be him moving forward?

The authors of Common Core will note that they Raised the Bar. Our marshmallow roaster needs to count and identify numbers up to 100 where previous learners needed only to count to 30. She will naturally in the Common Core system have most of pre-Algebra in 7th grade and most of Algebra in 8th grade. She, like all American students from the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters, will have a more "rigorous" learning experience. They will be expected to learn more content and experience harder assessment questions. 

I look at the children around me and for some, Raising the Bar is not enough. It would be years before the education system catches up to those children. For others, Raising the Bar is too much. If they are expected to make equal gains and catch up the process will be overwhelming. And thus the failure of Common Core, the very foundation of common steps to eliminate Achievement Gaps and to Raise the Bar for everyone falters at the point of impact with the child learning.

Each day that our children go to school I hope they learn. I hope their teacher identifies their instructional level and helps them move forward. Whether it is my child attending school in the Chicago suburbs or his cousins in Seattle, Washington, neither of them should be held up waiting for the other. Instead of worrying about narrowing the Achievement Gap or Raising the Bar, we should be working to meet our clients where they are at and helping them move forward. We should look at education not as horizontal steps up a staircase but rather vertical rungs on a ladder, pre-kindergarten through post-doctorate. Encouraging each child to grab up onto the next rung. Don't worry if your brother, your cousin, or your friend is on a different rung, but rather to take that adventurous reach and grab the next rung. Learn the next step higher. Use each day to learn more. 

If we want the educational foundation of our society to improve, we need to focus on the growth of every student. Under the No Child Left Behind legislation, schools focused on moving at-risk students to becoming barely meeting expectations students. Over that decade we left a whole lot of meeting and exceeding expectation students behind. Yes, they were performing well. But could they have grown more? Could we have even higher performing students entering college had they not been systematically ignored by the legislation of No Child Left Behind and the regulations of the Department of Education? We need to focus on the growth of all students. If we honestly care about each child moving forward, progressing, challenging themselves. If we think in terms of vertical learning and provide that next step of challenge. They will grow faster and farther. It won't be about Raising the Bar, because some of our students will not reach the bar that year. It will not be about narrowing the Achievement Gap, because all groups are being pushed forward with energy, time, and focus. It will instead be about challenge, adventurous reaches, and climbing a vertical ladder to personal and societal success.

Growth matters. Personal development matters. I have sent two very different children to school, one a below grade level reader, one a ridiculous 4 grades above grade level reader. Born two calendar days apart in different years, they were at the same developmental age when they entered public school as 5-year olds. If their teachers got them to grow at the same rate, 1 year and 2 months per school year, when they entered middle school in 6th grade, the low reader would have caught up to "grade level" by the end of 4th grade and enter 3 months ahead of grade level going into middle school whereas the above grade level student would enter middle school 5 years and 3 months ahead of grade level. Both children equally pushed, equally challenged. Over time even the lowest surpasses the Raised Bar. The Achievement Gap remains but through the power and focus on vertical learning, school can be a challenging place where all children learn more.

I'll be honest, I am not invested in closing the Achievement Gap. I am not invested in Raising the Bar. I am invested in the families and children I work with. This past week, I have had the honor and privilege to work with 40 students as they learn programming code. The children are between 8 and 13. Each has different skills. Each has a different knowledge base. Some have significant background in mathematics and grammar. They know what a semicolon is. They understand what variables are and what functions do. However, age doesn't seem to be a barrier in the class. Background knowledge is only a minor barrier. We give children a learning framework but encourage them to advance at their own levels. We give space of choice and exploration. They help each other solve problems, analyzing each others code, discovering their mistakes. They push forward, create unique programs, dazzle us with how quickly they can progress. It is truly a vertical learning environment, one in which children are taking adventurous reaches to move themselves and their friends forward.

The fire burns down and the children head towards bed. We remember that they are still young, none older than seven. We marvel at the unique way each of them approaches their life and their world. We hope that when we share them with their teachers, their principals, and their schools that those leaders will embrace them the way we do and encourage each of them to make that next adventurous reach up the vertical ladder each day.

Armageddon Speech