Take a risk, try it yourself, ask a friend how they did it, when you get a weird message - click OK, Edit > Undo is your best friend ...and for everything else...call tech support.
From Beth Buke's presentation, which was hilarious. How fitting that it was held in Zanies. Her very energetic presentation had a smattering of technical issues, but she kept it moving. Beth worked very hard to put together an extremely informative presentation. Her presentation wiki can be found here. Her list of resources is very nicely organized and annotated.
Here's my "Big 3"
Use googledocs. I already use google docs in a very limited way. My boss loves the idea of posting our curriculum maps to google docs and giving all the teachers access to make them living documents. I want to really develop the use with students and teachers.
Animoto: take photos, upload them and animoto - 30 seconds is for free, would be a great alternative to those very hairy iMovie projects
Jing: already use Jing regularly for screen shots, but to demonstrate how to do something in a movie, I should use this more often, turn off the mic, since I don't like my voice.
prezentit.com - similar to powerpoint not quite as fancy very easy - maybe this would be a good tool to teach powerpoint challenged teachers
Screencast-o-matic - you don't have to create an account, record what you want, and download it, check this out!
Voice thread - example Mrs. Joe's class. Upload pictures and users make comments, Ridge has to use this!!! The power is the comments (different settings for privacy), public but keep it off of the browse - great idea, students create their identities within identities within her account to keep it safe and controlled, planning is extremely important - use a story board! Focus on the content.
I've heard of all of these resource and even signed up for every one. Beth has motivated me to get moving and use them.
The best advice from the Illinois Computing Educators Conference was from Vicki Davis. I attended her workshop on differentiated instruction using technology. She recommends that everyone "have a big three" from every workshop that was attended. Write down three things that will be done in the next seven days. That's great advice! After attending this conference for the past seven years, I always feel overwhelmed, excited, energized, and have my head stuffed with new information. It's really hard to process it all and make connections. This is particularly true when I am attending the conference as a professional development coordinator for the others in my district or my school. I not only have to fit pieces in for myself, but I have to have a handle on what the conference can mean to others that I work with - how I can disseminate information for others, how can I spread my enthusiasm for the new ideas, how can I inspire people. Start small. Write a big three for each workshop.
The first session I attended at ICE was Steve Hargadon's spotlight session at IL-TCE (Illinois Computing Educators annual conference). Click here for more information about his session. The highlights of his information are the ten web 2.0 trends that will have an impact on education and the shifts based on those trends. I hope that Steve annotates this wiki with more information. He was extremely passionate in the delivery of his message, I couldn't take effective enough notes to really tell the story effectively. I'll start with my Big Three and my Intentional R&D List for this session.
For my "Big Three" for this session, I'd like to do the following:
Check out diigo - Steve recommends this site as a way to keep bookmarks, annotate them, and collect information to use for collaboration
Use twitter - already looked at this and belong - kinda don't get it, but I started using it a little during the two days of the conference.
(That's more than 3...I'll have to prioritize these.)
That list seems kind of weak, based on the compelling information that Steve explained during his presentation. My notes had a few good quotes, one of which is, "The Internet is becoming a platform for unparalleled for creativity. We are creating the content for the web." The potential is there, but with few exceptions, we are not connecting content creating on the web to the educational experience of our students. Those teachers who provide those types of experiences are really the exception. One of the big reasons is because social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace were the first social networking sites. Educators didn't get the jump on the whole phenomenon before social networking got such a bad rap. People who are producing content on the web are doing so with no guidelines and no rules.
"Web 2.0 is the cause of this tidal wave. Web 2.0 is the solution." - another good quote from Steve. Examples of this are using social bookmarking sites to tag and share information with others. Another example is using a wiki to put together information about topics and collaborate with others to compile information and manage content.
Another example that works for me is tracking and reading bloggers. I follow about 25 bloggers and reading those blogs on a regular basis is the single most important professional development activity that I engage in. That's how web2.0 helps me with the tidal wave.
Here's something to look up....knowledge about career is obsolete in 3 years, meaning that the knowledge that one acquires for their profession is out of date in just a few years.
I really learn a great deal from watching the presentations on TED. The speakers and the content of their presentations are really inspirational. Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach is one of my favorite educators. I frequently read her blog. One of her recent posts summarized this presentation by Larry Lessig. Watch the presentation not only for his message, but for his presentation style and use of PowerPoint (even though in this case he was using Keynote from Apple.)
What I found most compelling about his argument is this sense that the kids and the culture are progressing, but the laws are making it impossible for us (particularly the kids) to live within the law. The culture is progressing, but the lawmakers are not keeping up. Neither is education for that matter, but how much does really matter?
This poor girl from Texas has her photo uploaded to Flickr, like millions of other teens and Virgin Mobile uses the image in their advertisements in Australia. You have to be kidding me! A billion dollar company can't hire a model, sign a release, and go through the proper channels to create an ad the ethical way? I would have loved to been in that marketing meeting - (marketing executive one): We'll get a picture of a girl and under her picture we'll put the tag line "Dump your (pen pal) free text virgin to virgin" (marketing executive two): Great idea! Which modeling agency should I call? (marketing executive one): Don't bother...I've got some time on my hands. I'll search through the millions of pictures of teenagers on Flickr and find the perfect girl for our campaign.
Drats! There are dozens of cute images of my daughter on Flickr. Why couldn't those guys from Virgin found her? Then we could be embroiled in a nasty legal battle over privacy and copyright laws.
This brings a whole new dimension to educating our kids about privacy and the internet.
I try really hard to know as much as I can about current technology. Even if I'm not able to put every available tool or trend into practice in my personal or professional life, I pride myself on at least being aware of what's going on out there among the most tech-savvy. I've been asked dozens of times, "How do you know so much?" My answer is, "I read a lot!" I read blogs, del.ico.us links, articles, and occasionally, books. I also listen to podcasts and watch videos of presentations, or sometimes at least look at the presentation, even if it's without the presenter. I spend sometime everyday expanding my knowledge about what's going on in the world, especially when it applies to education. Here are a couple of the coolest tools that I use on a daily basis:
Del.icio.us - this is a public book marking site. I have collected over 1000 links. I always start by looking at "popular" and "recent". One can find great articles, new web2.0 websites, and other useful web resources. I also have a network of educational technology experts that I follow and I check to see what they've bookmarked to make sure I don't miss anything important.
Google Reader - This is an aggregator that helps me keep track of all the blogs I read and news websites from this site as well. When I find a blog or new site I want to follow, I copy the link and "add the feed". Every time I return to my Google Reader page, the articles that have been posted since my last visit are available. I will eventually take advantage of the shared items feature so I can create a shared items page for my friends.
Clipmarks - This site/tool is hard to describe. Basically when I read articles that I want to keep for future reference, I use a clipmark to highlight the important parts of the article and the site saves my articles in a collection and using tags, I can access them later. It's important to read what other people are clipping and "pop" the articles from others as a way to participate in the clipmark community sharing information.
When I find a resource, website, or article that I want to keep, I decide how to mark it for future use. I usually bookmark the site on Del.icio.us. If it's an article that I want to refer to in a future presentation or blog, I use Clipmarks. Google reader lets me "star" a blog entry or news article. If I find a resource that I know is useful for teachers, I'll add the site to my wiki.
I have a real problem with collecting all this stuff. I need time to sift through all the information and organize and annotate the best resources. I have a huge collection of interesting stuff. I just need to put it to good use.
In November, there was a lot of buzz about a particular librarian in New Jersey and her anti-wikipedia campaign. I read about it in one my favorite blogs, Dangerously Irrelevant. Around the same time, I was up against a very small battle with teachers regarding wikipedia. The argument against wikipedia is valid. The articles can be modified by anyone, creating an opportunity for inaccuracies. Teachers who are against Wikipedia want to take the extreme position that the site should be completely avoided. I find that once we discuss the format of the site including the features of wikis in general, safeguards put in place to prevent all out vandalism of articles, and the Nature Magazine study comparing the results to Britannica the tone of the discussion usually changes. I can usually convince teachers that Wikipedia is a fine place to start gathering information, particularly if one needs some basic background information. After all, Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia never intended for the site to be used for "serious research".
When teachers complain that students should never check Wikipedia because the content is created by "anyone", they are missing the point. "Anyone" includes experts in the fields, graduate students, professionals (like teachers), and people who care a great deal about the content of the article because the subject matter is their passion. Just as we would never want students to use an encyclopedia article as the only source in an essay or research paper, we could recommend that if Wikipedia is used, the student must add a resource to their list of sources sited. In addition, high quality Wikipedia articles include a bibliography, from which further research can be done. I can make a really good case for using Wikipedia and I've even had a few workshop attendees sign up for an account and begin an article about their own school or parish.
Here's the weird thing - with lots of discussion about how "dangerous" it is to ask the community or the public to write articles for one of the most widely used online encyclopedias, why don't we hear an equal amount of caution about asking the community/public to tag and comment on the photos from Library of Congress' Flickr collection? I see no caution that the public will negatively impact the integrity of the project with inappropriate comments or irrelevant tags. By the way, Library of Congress sounds ecstatic over the results of their pilot so far.
I've been a big fan of the Library of Congress for several years. We've used many of their collections for writing and social studies projects. With more than 10 million primary sources, the resources that can enhance a lesson can be very overwhelming. A good place to begin is The Learning Page which includes a database of lesson plans and activities using various collections. Examples of units and lesson plans that I've been involved in using the American Memory Collections include the following:
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project with 5th grade students. They were assigned to select a couple of the pieces and read the stories to familiarize themselves with the stories as told in first-person accounts from former slaves. They were then assigned to write their own narrative in the voice of a former slave. The writing was assessed based on the facts surrounding the character's life and the reflection of emotion in the story.
The collections from the Library of Congress are vast. For anyone studying American History, they are essential resources. The challenge is to find the right resources to help in the study of a particular topic. There isn't an effective way to search through the millions of pictures to access the appropriate group that illustrate a period in our culture. It takes a great deal of time and familiarity with how the Library organizes the collections to select the images. Students, particularly those in elementary school, or even the general public would find navigation impossible. Perhaps recognizing this, the staff at the Library offices have posted thousands of images to Flickr, the world's most popular photo-sharing site. The plan is for the the Flickr community to tag, comment, and make notes on the images. Flickr users use 20 million unique tags to categorize the hundreds of millions of photographs on the site. That's the idea. The Library wants us to go th the collections on Flickr, called Commons, and add information to the photographs to make them easier to find. The whole concept is amazingly innovative and I for one am looking forward to years to come, when every one of the 10 million images are tagged, commented on, and easier to find and use because of the contributions of the Flickr community.
I recently made a disturbing discovery in my school district. Students in the middle school have never actually been "taught" information literacy skills, particularly effective ways to find information. I helped a teacher check this history of a web browser and inadvertently noticed that the child was using complete questions in the search box of Ask and then presumably when he didn't get a good answer, wrote the question in the search box of Google. I surmised from his history that he never used search terms that would help him drill down to the correct information. It appeared that he didn't have any idea where to begin. He even tried the old "searchterm.com" technique. The history of his internet search disclosed a great deal, although I need to check with the classroom teacher to get the whole story. The student (along with the rest of the class, as verified by the tech-aide assigned to supervise the children) was assigned a task to research a broad topic. The goal was to prepare for a "geography bee". He was given very little guidelines and no specific websites whereby to start gathering some background information. Not knowing where to begin and with very little to go by, he starts "asking" the search engines questions. The results that were returned were of little help. I checked and discovered that his question was answered with results that are completely unrelated and irrelevant to the original question. Now here's the interesting part. Frustrated and clearly getting no where, he starts searching on google images of pop stars. He stumbles upon an interesting article on a web magazine which would qualify as completely inappropriate - and gets caught on this website. That's why I got called in; to show the tech aide how to search the history of the browser to see where else he had been during the class. He is in big trouble now for not only being off task, but clicking in to a site that should have been filtered.
This scenario brings me to a little research. I ask the following questions:
What was the assignment or the task the students were required to complete during their time in the computer lab?
What guidelines were given to them to support the task?
How were the other students doing searches? Were they using key words, going to websites like wikipedia, asking for help?
Who taugh
t these students how to use a search engine to find relevant and valid information?
It's no wonder the student was off task. The task was impossible. They were given a couple of example questions from the geography bee. No relevant websites were offered as a starting point. Most of the students were using the same ineffective search techniques. Basically, the kids were turned lose with about 6 billion websites to learn about a very broad topic.
This brought me to the librarian at one of the elementary schools. I asked her when or how are the children taught information literacy skills like searching and evaluating websites. Her response was, "They're not." Apparently the librarians in the district wrote an entire curriculum around these topics and somewhere down the line it was scrapped. Along with several other factors, there was some disagreement about who was in charge of teaching these topics, the computer teacher, the librarian, or the classroom teacher.
The experience of the middle school students demonstrate how imperative it is to implement some kind of instruction or at least support. I come to find out that the experiences of our students are pretty much right on target with the rest of this generation, coined the "Google Generation". A study in the United Kingdom found that children really lack the skills needed to effectively use the internet. The report can be downloaded here and you can read a very thorough review here. It turns out that young people, who are extremely competent with technology, do not read for information on the web. They prefer not to read a great deal of text. They like to get information from multimedia sources rather than from text. In addition, there is a great deal of plagiarism taking place and information is "cut-and-pasted". They know about intellectual property, but feel it is unfair and were unlikely to respect this issue of copyright.
It turns out that we're not unlike all the others in the world, trying to understand what training is needed to teach our students to become effective and efficient information seekers.
Teacher Magazine - good quality articles, research, and resources
Pete MacKay's Teacher's List - I get an interesting website sent to me each day. This is one of my favorite subscriptions. Pete sends me some of the bests sites ever. I've never seen one I couldn't use with teachers or students.
Education World - I like the administrators and the professional development newsletters
Edutopia - from the George Lucas Educational Foundation, topics including professional development, technology integration, and comprehensive assessment
NetFamilyNews - among all of the high quality resources that guide parents and educators, this is the BEST resource for current and relevant news, research, and tools to deal with how web-savvy young people are using the internet, particularly in the area of social networking.
These subscriptions are helping me enhance my own professional development. I learn something every day from my email.
In an earlier post, I explored how PowerPoint is being used these days in the "real world". The way to produce high quality presentations is to avoid the templates, slide layouts, and Microsoft produced slide designs. I found a terrific blog by hosted by Tom Kuhlmann. He provides some fine examples of how the program is used as an "authoring environment". I particularly enjoyed his tutorials on how to create animations using PowerPoint.
I tried out these techniques and created some nifty animations. The motion path feature doesn't work on a Mac (phooey) but the other techniques are really fun and produce some cool techniques. Here are some possible edtech possibilities:
Create an animation or set of animations and record narration of the story
Use animation as a "special effect" to help illustrate a message, to really engage the viewer
Save the animation as a .mov file (Mac only) and embed in another project (haven't tried this...wonder if it'll work?)
It wouldn't be enough to just teach students how to create the animation. They would have to be able to use it with some kind of story telling. It's something to think about.
Clarence Fisher of Arapahoe High School in Colorado made a presentation to his staff in August 2006. His PowerPoint presentation was on his blog that week and I found it really compelling. His purpose was to get his teachers to really think about what students need in their learning environment to be prepared and to be successful in the 21st century. The message of the presentation is that we need to pay attention to factors such as the growing importance of India and China and globalization that has made our world "flat" provides tremendous opportunities for our children as our society shifts. We need to reflect on our own teaching practices and attitudes in response to this change.
During the next several months, the Shift Happens presentation was seen all over the edu-blogosphere. They call that "going viral". In the past year or so, estimates of over 10 million people viewed various versions of the presentation. See the shifthappens wiki for information about the presentation.
PowerPoint has been around since 1987. That makes this technology application 20 years old. I was surprised to find out (from wikipedia) that it was originally a program that ran on the Apple Macintosh. Microsoft purchased the program from the original developers for $14 million. Since the 1990's, PowerPoint has been used as a presentation software by business people, teachers, and students. I don't have any real statistics, but I'm venturing a guess that it is used in every school. Even by non-techy people, it's easy to use due to the features that Microsoft has put into the program to meet the needs of presenters and audiences.
When I taught second graders how to create a slide, I told the students that this program is very easy to use, because it's "built for grownups". Kids of course, would be able to figure out what to do to create slides with images and text just by following the directions right on the screen. I worked with children in every grade level as they produced PowerPoint presentations for a variety of classes and for a variety of purposes. Along the way, students would learn the features of the program: animations, charts and graphs, sounds, embedding movies, and using the programs to create products other than presentations, such as picture books and scrapbooks.
If I were still a computer teacher, I would have to be aware of the fact that there is a great deal of criticism over the use of the program. I'm not sure where it started, perhaps with Yale's Edward Tufte and his book PowerPoint is Evil. Read the review from this link to get a sense of the major criticisms of PowerPoint. Basically, it's believed that most presentations created with PowerPoint are pretty awful. Even the creators, Rober Gaskins and Dennis Austin agree as told in an article in the Wall Street Journal.
The major complaints include:
The slides are used as "cue cards" for the presenter, not to help the audience understand the message
Poor layout and design due to the use of default templates make presentations hard to read or hideously boring
Ideas are are simplified into bulleted lists and stories are sometimes turned into a set of disparate facts
Every slideshow usually ends up looking like everyone elses
Don McMillan encapsulates every kind of mistake made by bad presenters. This movie is hilarious, but really gets the point across. I sent this to my husband last summer as he was struggling to complete a 60 slide presentation that was supposed to sum up his business to a set of investors. I'm sure his presentation didn't have any of these common mistakes.
One of the most compelling criticisms is that creating PowerPoint presentations do not develop writing skills. Particularly with students, assigning PowerPoint presentations instead of writing essays is most likely a disservice because students are not utilizing a more important literacy skill - that of writing. In the articles I mentioned above, the big complaint is that business people do not write, instead they formulate a presentation, with a bunch of bullet points and charts.
Even with the criticism, it is still one of the most widely used applications, so everyone has to know how to create a PowerPoint presentation. Teach children how to use the program in a whole different way. Teach them to use PowerPoint as truly a visual aid, not as the sole source of information. It is a medium for communication and can be used effectively and ineffectively. We need to learn more about it's effective use. We've all seen really bad presentations with really bad PowerPoint slide shows to go along with it. Think about how we teach our students. Always start with writing - students should write out their essay or speech and that piece of writing should be assessed using the same rubric and grading criteria as an essay not requiring a visual component. PowerPoint presentations should help tell the message of the essay (which presumably could be used as a script) and students should approach the presentation that way Each slide can use the following
Beautiful images, even if they seem unrelated, to fill the entire slide and use not text (Godin Method)
Combination of both - some slides with images, some with really big important text
Avoid the templates at all costs!
Check out this video done by an educational technology specialist:
By the way, if you following the links to the Presentation Zen, you'll find it is an extremely interesting blog if you want to learn more about presentations. In addition, check out SlideShare - "the world's largest community for sharing presentations on the web.". Look for presentations that are featured and popular. Most of them follow "the new rules".
When one tries to describe the current state of technology and it's impact on education, it's difficult to help people understand the magnitude of the effect. I've done a few presentations for small groups about Web 2.0. Reading educational blogs and belonging to a couple of social networks really helps me learn about the Read/Write web. It's important to note however, that most of the people I know, my face-to-face friends don't have any idea. They don't use social bookmarking, the don't read, much less write blogs, and their feeling about wikis are really negative as a result of their limited understanding of wikipedia. My presentations are pretty lame compared to one that I ran across today on a blog that I read on a regular basis. Lucy Gray does an amazing job in her presentation The Winds of Change - Emergent Technologies in Education. I'm sure she had a few videos embedded in the PowerPoint so I wish I would have seen it live. The message is really thorough. Here are a few of my favorite elements of Lucy's presentation:
Today's teen - born in 1990 (same year as my middle son), and the technology that has become important throughout his life; there's something to think about.
Lots of statistics - not usually a big fan of numbers, but this message needs the numbers to back it up
The examples of blogs in chart form - really liked that all the blogs I read regularly are broken down in categories; teacher, student, professional development
Same with Wiki examples - (boy, someday I want to be a "heavy hitter" so my wiki would show up on a list somewhere)
List of cool web2.0 tools
Overall, I though Lucy's presentation was probably really compelling. It was thorough and provided a great deal of information. I'll bet her audience was really moved by her story. We all should be!
In August 2006, Clarence Fischer of Arapahoe High School in Colorado made a presentation to his staff. His PowerPoint presentation was on his blog that week and I found it really compelling. His purpose was to get his teachers to really think about what students need in their learning environment to be prepared and successful in the 21st century. The message of the presentation is that we need to pay attention to factors such as the growing importance of India and China and globalization that has made our world "flat". This shift should not be looked at negatively, but instead we need to recognize that this shift provides tremendous opportunities for our children. We need to reflect on our own teaching practices and attitudes in response to this change.
During the next several months, the Shift Happens presentation was seen all over the edu-blogosphere. They call that "going viral". In the past year or so, estimates of over 10 million people viewed various versions of the presentation. What would that be like for Clarence, I wonder. How could a simple staff presentation become so powerful that millions of people have seen it, quoted it, wrote about it, and let the story move them? See the shifthappens wiki created by Clarence and Dr. Scott Mcleod for information about the presentation.
Although the presentation is essentially over a year old, it's been reworked a couple of times to keep in fresh and clarify its message. His recent keynote at the K 12 Online Conference is worth a look. Anne Davis does a good job of summarizing his address. Here is Anne's description of Clarence Fischer's keynote at the K12 Online Conference.
Although blogging has been around since around the year 2000, I've finally set a goal for myself to take the plunge and become a full-fledged blogger. I have set a goal write a blog article 5 times a week for the next 10 weeks. Doing the math, that means 50 blog posts.
I am motivated to start this phase of my blogging by mentioning an article I read in Teacher Magazine by Anthony Cody describing the strategies to get students to do "hard things" - tasks that they don't think they are capable of doing successfully.
Research shows that students who lack motivation are often not convinced that the effort they invest in themselves is going to be rewarded. They simply have not been academically successful in the past, so why bother? Furthermore, their parents may have been ineffectual in school, creating a template for failure easier to live up to than disprove.
Another look at that research can be found in an article by Pro Bronson; How Not to Talk to Your Kids describes research that supports the position that children who are constantly told how smart they are tend not to takes risks to try something new. They don't make the connection between hard work and success. Children who are constantly praised for "being smart" lack confidence in their ability to tackle tasks that would require effort. When children feel that all that is needed is intelligence, the task is out of the child's control, and the effort that is needed to complete the task is looked down upon as evidence that they aren't so smart after all. We all know teachers who do not try something new, because they are afraid of failure, or "looking dumb" in the eyes of their students. The message in the article is that the real reward is in the effort it takes to succeed, or at least try to succeed.
Anyway, back to the original point. Cody makes a few specific suggestions about teaching strategies that will support students as they "do hard things". I can translate them to my own endeavor as an about-to-be blogger.
Keep a portfolio - That is what a blog is, isn't it? A blog can simply be a portfolio of writing where by the writer can expect to see some progress and growth.
Provide valuable feedback - Well, that is possible in a blog. Readers are invited to comment and trackback. The comments a blogger receives could qualify as feedback.
Provide clear models of high quality work - There are lots of models of high quality work in the edu-blogging world. I've been reading reading high quality blogs for a couple of years. Shortly after I post this, I'm going to create a blog roll to link to all the high quality blogs I've been reading. I only hope that I can come close to their success.
The "True Colors" activity was really interesting. I did a similar activity during the 80's while in the management training program at Marshall Field's (my old life). My profile was completely different. I was the traditional, analytical, organized type - like a "greenish-gold" person. I was not at all the high energy, creative type. I think that my profile changed not because I'm a different person, but because my profession helped bring out other characteristics. I guess being an educator brought out my spontaneous, high energy side. I don't think I could use the same criteria to characterize my personality many years ago.
I thought my husband was also orange. With the is high energy, rather competitive, and tends to be the "idea man" - thinking about how he motivates the rest of us. When he took the "test" he was so gold. Like me, he has a different profession within the past 10 years and that profession requires certain characteristics. Like me, the environment has shaped him to some degree.
My son Bryan is blue. He is so blue....I knew he was going to be blue when I looked at the material in class this week. When he took the "test", he seemed to really know himself and after he read about being blue, admitted that blue is him to a tee. He is sensitive, compassionate person who is reflective and empathetic. Those are all wonderful qualities, except the sensitive part can sometimes hold him back. I was impressed by how well Bryan knew himself (he is only 16). I know a lot of grownups who couldn't be as reflective.
I accused my husband of not taking the right answers. I still say he's orange.
Monday, December 04, 2006
The Interview
I really enjoyed talking to my assistant principal. She was such an excellent teacher. I have a great deal of respect for her. These were the ways that she was a wonderful teacher:
She had a great deal of respect for the students and they never felt that she was being unfair
She didn't get caught up in minutia, picking her battles with middle schoolers carefully
She was extremely student centered, working hard to make sure they were successful
Always used creative teaching strategies - really engaging teaching activities to help kids learn concepts
Loved her content area and was really enthusiastic about her topic
Always strived to learn new things, especially using technology as a tool
Had complete control of the class - even if the students walked all over every other teacher in the middle school, they knew their place in her room
When we talked and I asked her about the skills that were needed to be an effective administrator, she said that being a teacher and looking at her job through teacher's eyes was essential. I can definately see that. When asking teachers to work hard, learn new things, change their teaching, it helps to be empathetic because you were in their position at one point in time.
Here's the thing about the culture in our building that I find frustrating and I asked her, carefully without mentioning any names, how to deal with those who just refuse to step up. She said that one must "nag" that individual and make them feel so uncomfortable until they feel either compelled to change or compelled to leave. In the twelve years I've been in this school community, I have yet to see teachers leave because they felt it was time to move on. Usually, it is the really great teachers who leave (for more money no doubt). The other thing she said was that they key was to get the real superstars (who tend to be the least vocal) to get on board. Then, they kind of bring everyone else along. If the superstars tend to be the quiet ones, how is their voice heard over the sound of the whiners? That will be the challenge. I thought it was important the she recognized that all of us have our strengths and weaknesses and that it was important to look at each of us as individuals.
In my position, I work with every single one of the teachers in our building. We're expected to collaborate on integrating technology, and team-teach when the students are in the lab. I sometimes feel like a "mole" because I have information that I acquire from the teachers that I can not share with administration and vice versa. Things go on in the computer lab with teachers and students that I know should not continue. Specific teachers are not engaged with technology integration and bring down papers to grade and make it clear that their time here is planning so it is up to me to work with the students. I combat this by asking the teacher to help children every time they have a content-area related question, which accounts for half the questions. So I help the children by telling them what buttons to push, but I call the teacher over if the students have a question about how to word a sentence, spell something, or how to understand what it says on a website. Certainly, I could answer content related questions, but that is my way of keeping the teacher off the chair. The specific teachers however, have pulled some wool over they eyes of my favorite administrator. She mentioned names of teachers who she thought were very strong and could be real leaders in our efforts to improve. When I compare them to her based on how well we worked together when she was a teacher, I do not at all agree with her assessment of these teachers. As a "mole" I listen to people complain, put down administration, and flat out refuse to do what they have been asked (when it comes to implementing teaching strategies). Apparently, a couple of them are singing a different tune to my friend. I have to maintain the trust of the teachers in my building however, so I keep my mouth shut. I've gotten really good at that over the years. I think that will serve me well when I'm an administrator.
All in all, I think that my friend is a great assistant principal. She is just learning how to manage, but I am sure that her approach to this new job will be the same as it was when she was a teacher. She will show all the same degree of respect, engage all in learning, and effectively "control the class".
