BFTP: What will you leave behind?

A weekend Blue Skunk "feature" will be a revision of an old post. I'm calling this BFTP: Blast from the Past.  Original post July 20, 2008.

The last post asked: "What skills do you have and contributions do you make that make you essential to your organization? Like most people, I would like my boss to regret eliminating me or my position should he make the misguided decision to do so.

But I also look at this from another perspective. Were I to suddenly disappear from my place of work, my community or my family, I would hate to think that the people I care about would be left in a difficult situation. 

There is some irony in these observations: 

• The proof of effect parenting is independent children.
• The proof of effective teaching is self-directed learners.
• The proof of effective administration is empowered workers.
• The proof of good leadership is a vision and philosophy that continues when you are gone.

Ethically, I believe I am always working my way out of a job, not creating situations where success or sustainability depends on my presence.

As a librarian what would continue after you are gone?

• A climate of intellectual freedom, a respect for a diversity of ideas?
• Students with good information seeking, evaluation, use and communication skills?
• An atmosphere of inclusiveness and welcome in your media center?
• Excitement about learning?

How long will your passions, your policies, your philosophy remain when you are no longer there to shore things up? How do you shape your organization's climate beyond doing important daily work? What long-term efforts are you working on?

If Kirk's indispensability is the theme of the last post, perhaps Obi Wan's ongoing guidance, even after being zapped by old Darth, is the theme here. A paradox? Perhaps.

Will your students and teachers hear your voice, feel your force after you meet your Darth Vader?

Small signs of change

Do  the little things tell us that we are making changees?

• I saw this sign entering one of our high schools this week. Is my personal jihad on 3-ring binders working?
• All the librarians brought tablets to the first meeting.
• The superintendent showed a speaker how to use the computer remote and had pictures in all her PPT slides.
• A parent told me how excited she is that food services will now be part of our parent portal.
• Two principals bragged on the Moodle course they made over the summer.
• In sending out a district-wide email to over 800 professional staff that Microsoft Office would no longer be installed on student computer labs, I only got one negative reply.

Yes, we have big numbers to show as well, but sometimes the small things are telling - and gratifying as well.

Making kindness my goal

 

My friend Gary Hartzell passed along this wonderful link: George Saunders’s Advice to Graduates (NYTimes Magazine, July 31, 2013). I suppose everyone else in the world has read this very funny, but very touching and very profound granduation speech from last spring. In it, Saunders writes:

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. 

Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded…sensibly.  Reservedly.  Mildly.

...kindness, it turns out, is hard – it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include…well, everything.

Read the whole thing. It will take you less than five minutes and you will thank me for asking you to do so.

I spent today in some very, very warm school buildings, walking about, checking to see if teachers were having any problems or had any questions about technology as they prepared for the kids coming back after Labor Day. I was actually able to fix a few tech problems - hooking up phones, showing some tricks in GoogleApps, setting up e-mail in a teacher's new iPhone, and even establshing a network connection. Pretty good for me. And most people were happy, friendly, and excited to be back.

But then there were the few. Those who were angry we are moving from Office to GoogleDocs. Those whose files did not get moved from old computers to new. Those simply frustrated or overwhelmed by technology, the heat, the new pressures and expectations of teaching.

I takes some effort to be kind sometimes and I thought about teachers dealing with kids who are angry, who are frustrated, who feel overwhelmed - and face challenges and fears greater than most of us can imagine.

I don't know if kindness is contagious. If by experiencing it, one is more likely to pass it along. I hope so. I'm making kindness my goal for the year.  After all, as Aesop reminds us, "No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted."

See also: A Secret Weapon: Niceness