Unconference

Today, the administrators in our district met for a learning session.  Typically, these sessions are designed and scripted, but this one was very different.  It was definitely designed, but the agenda--at least at the onset--was not scripted.  We had an unconference.

We are all familiar with conferences.  We have signed up, made the travel arrangements and paid the fees.  We arrive hoping--at least I do--that some of it will be of use to me.  I generally pick ones that have a speaker of some level of intrigue to me, and then I suffer through a few breakout sessions that don't seem totally applicable.

Today was different.  We arrive to a room with all sorts of ideas posted on the wall.  In our case, these ideas were generated from the feedback we provided to our steering committee at the end of last year.  Included along the walls we blank forms for us to add in our own ideas.  The group was given about 5 minutes to do a gallery walk around the room to get an idea of what was out there, plus add any ideas of their own.  We were then asked to select three topics that we would like to participate in a discussion in, and jot those down.  The organizers then took down all of the signs--and gave us a break--so that they could put together a schedule for the day.  After a few minutes, a schedule was posted with room numbers and we set off on three 50 minute sessions.

At the each session, there was a mix of people, and each mix had one common thread:  they all chose to be there.  Each had a mix of leaders and learners, and the each group would quickly decide how they would tackle their topic.  Some did a round table style sharing session while others had a more definite direction depending on how many people came to lead, share and learn.  In my three sessions, we had a topic where everyone directed questions to one person, one where we did a round table sharing session and one where I was the leader.  All were effective and all were worthwhile.  I am confident saying that the general consensus among my peers was that this was one of the most worthwhile meetings that we have ever had.

Unconferences are easy to organize...you really just have to meet long enough to explain the structure and to build the agenda.  They are collaborative and flexible.  How many of you have been to a conference breakout session where you quickly realized that you were in place that was going to have much less meaning to you than you though when you signed up?  At our unconference, we encouraged people to leave, and join, into rooms and discussion depending on how their individual needs were being met.  In fact, the session that I led had only two participants to start and 7 at the end.

I can see many applications for this style of meeting.  How about using an unconference to:

1. Run a meeting in your organization
2. Design a unit review activity or study session for your students
3. Lead a brainstorming session, on any topic
4. Plan for a retreat
5. Figure out what committees are needed to plan an event 

And, most of all, remember that in doing this you are setting up a structure that supports a system of collaboration and of choice.

Try it yourself, and let me know how it goes.

One a Day

We all have talents.  We all have special things that we do and connections that we make that make work—and life—more meaningful to those around us.  I really believe that it is important for us to celebrate our talents but, we tend to focus on our weaknesses and overlook (or underestimate) our talents.  So, to end this week think of something, one thing, that you can do—every day—that will make a difference to someone else.  Some ideas:

• Offer to help a colleague complete a task
• Select one person, every day, and make a difference to that person
• Send a hand written thank you card
• Call someone in a new position and check how they are doing
• Have a non-work related conversation with someone at work.  Find out something new about them.
• Share a lesson plan or teaching strategy
• Go for a ten minute walk and come back with a list of 5 things that you can do to improve your school
• Volunteer for something (or someone) in your community
• Bring in some treats to work
• Or, the next time you are stuck in line with a stressed mom whose kid is melting down, offer to have them go ahead of you

Have Hedgehogs Really Evolved?

 

I read a blog post today about hedgehogs (All the slow hedgehogs are dead) by Seth Godin.  According to him, hedgehog road kill was a common site in the UK 50 years ago and now it is something seen far less often.  His reasoning is that the slow hedgehogs, aka the road kill, were removed from the gene pool.  That left the faster, more street-savvy hedgehogs to repopulate the countryside with faster, more street-savvy offspring producing a faster breed of beast.

Hmmm...that poses some intriguing questions: 

• Did the UK hedgehog road-kill crisis solve itself with natural selection?

• Is our generation witness to the evolution of a new car-dodging, super-hedgehog?

To be fair, Seth also throws in a shout out to suburbanization and the inferred habitat loss, which itself infers a smaller population of either fast or slow hedgehogs.  And to be really fair, he asks us to draw our own organizational analogies from this example.

If we focus on that last thought about drawing our own organizational analogies, what “hedgehogs” have we adapted, evolved or changed as a result of a new technology (i.e. the car causing the road kill) or simply from any significant—environmental or otherwise—change resulting from the introduction of something radically new (i.e. the road plowed through the countryside for said cars to cause road kill concerns)?  What are the things that we do now, those commonplace things that seemed so challenging to us when they were introduced? 

We now:

• Manage attendance and student records electronically
• Frantically scramble to piece together a Plan C, when the Internet goes down or our server crashes
• Have an over-reliance on the instant gratification of cell phones and social media.  Seriously, do you actually know someone who can unplug for more than part of a day?  I have multiple friends who forced analog family time on their kids this summer, but still maintained use of their own cell phones and electronic devices for “work” purposes (aka. Email,  Facebook, Twitter, Instant Messaging, Bejeweled Blitz—I saw your score posted online JP—etc.) 

We have become so reliant on technology at work that a brief interruption in service translates to great hardship for us.  At my school, we are currently struggling with the idea of maintaining an analog calendar—yes, you heard it...,on paper—for a short period of time as we transition from one communication platform to another.  When the server crashes, we have to remind ourselves that there are actual student files stored in the front office.  We have to remind ourselves that telephone books work just as well as digital address books.

In a very positive way, I am seeing some very positive hedgehog adaptations evolving every day.  Worksheets are being replaced by problem-solving models.  One-size-fits-all lesson plans are being replaced by individualized instruction.  Learning is becoming more and more differentiated not only between individual students but for individual students.  Data is being collected to inform practice and to improve it. 

Choice replaced script.

I worked as a teacher in an online learning environment long before it was en vogue anywhere else (Florida was doing some innovative things then, but not much was happening elsewhere).  The first bit of time brought some interest and a lot of misunderstanding, and then the rhetoric started that online learning was here to replace teachers, to raise class sizes and to generate more money.  If anything, learning and blended instruction have proven that quality teachers are needed more than ever in the learning process, albeit with their roles changing from vessels of knowledge to facilitators of learning.

Do I see hedgehogs?

 I see them every day at my school.

(...and I see far more fast, car-dodging ones than I do road kill!)

Principal Survival Kit

This was definitely the nicest "welcome-back-to-school" gift that I have ever received.  Actually, the entire staff received them, compliments of our wonderful school PAC.

It speaks to all of the wonderful parts of our work:

• the kids
• the creativity
• the fun
• the light-hearted moments
• the learning

Most of all, it was a wonderful reminder of the terrific place that I get to go to work to.  It might be my job, but it is also the place that I want to be every day.

A few of my favourite lines/items:

• Chewing gum to help you stick to it
• Eraser to remind you everyone makes mistakes
• Paperclips to hold it all together
• Rubber band to remind you to be flexible

And, most of all, a Shiny Penny to remind you that each will shine in his or her own special way.

Thank you for a wonderful welcome to the new school year!

Auroras Borealis

Wow, what an important lesson I learned last night...

Yesterday was a very busy day for both my wife and I.  We had extremely long and demanding days at work, and then had a tonne of running around at home with kids and dinner and activities.  After all of that, I even had to pull out my lap top and put in another couple of hours of work.

As I was shutting things down and getting ready for bed, I remembered a chore that someone else had forgotten to do.  Grumbling, I stomped outside to get it done, when something caught my ear:  packs of coyotes were singing in chorus on the hillside above our house.  The noise made me pause--wiping away my  grouchiness--and provided me with a deep calm.  In that calm I turned and looked down the mountainside and my eyes focused, slowly, on strange shimmer in the northern sky.  The Northern Lights!  They were beautiful and bright, and so spectacular that I had to run into the house, pull my wife out of bed and away her book, and drag her outside.  The two of us stood silently in our front yard gazing at this amazing phenomena.  It was especially meaningful because we had shared a conversation this weekend about her feeling like she always missed the Northern Lights, whereas me, an avid outdoorsman, have seen them with some regularity on my fall hunting trips.  And now here, on our doorstep, were those beautiful colours dancing across the sky to a haunting chorus of coyote calls.  It was magical--a "time-stopped" experience.

It was really a special moment for us.  It reminded us how wondrous the world is and, more importantly, how we can miss so much of it--so easily--by not paying attention.  It is so easy to have a bad day, to slump around feeling sorry for ourselves forget the world around us.  It is so easy to have tunnel vision and get stuck on what ails us.  Yet, the moment of our summer came to us last night because we stopped.  That's it, we just had to stop.

It was there all along, and we just had to look up to see it.

It's Been A Long Day When...

You know it's been a long day when something like this looks good (well, sort of...).