BFTP: The impeded stream

The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings. - Wendell Berry 

The quote above has been in my e-mail sig file for a number of years - and now and then someone comments that they like the sentiment. The selection is from this poem:

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

"The Real Work" by Wendell Berry, from Standing by Words. © 1983

Berry speaks for me. In my life I don't know what to do on a very regular basis. I am smart enough. I have a lot of experience. I can certainly sound authoritative when I need to. I like to believe I have acquired some modicum of wisdom through my experiences.

But more often than not, I am honestly baffled by new situations, new people, new problems. Much of technology use in education was (and is) about making it up as you go along since there were often no best practices established. 

One of my all time favorite articles appeared in Phi Delta Kappan in 2005.  In "Embracing Confusion:  What Leaders Do When They Don’t Know What to Do", Jentz and Murphy write:

... confusion is not a weakness to be ashamed of but a regular and inevitable condition of leadership. By learning to embrace their confusion, managers are able to set in motion a constructive process for addressing baffling organizational issues. In fact, confusion turns out to be a fruitful environment in which the best managers thrive by using the instability around them to open up better lines of communication, test their old assumptions and values against changing realities, and develop more creative approaches to problem solving.

Too many leaders feel the need to know it all and know it all the time. And too often their self-confidence (or thinly disguised lack of self-confidence) leads to poor decisions based on a closed mind.

Embrace your inner confusion, listen to the impeded streams in your life.

Image source

Original post October 21, 2014

BFTP: 10 norms for a 21st century tech department

A regular Blue Skunk "feature" is a revision of a previous post. I'm calling this BFTP: Blast from the Past. A link to the original post is appended below. 

  Source

Dilbert comic strip's character Mordac, The Preventer of Information Services, is regrettably an all too recognizable figure in many schools.

I've long shuddered when I hear a school's tech department called the "Prevention of Education Unit" or the tech director called the "Tech Nazi." Yes, I've actually heard both these terms - but thankfully not in the districts in which I've worked. 

A major cause of this disconnect is that educators and technologists have valid but very different priorities when it comes to technology. As educators, we need simplicity, abundance, convenience, and ubiquity. As a technologists, we must provide security, reliability, and adequacy.

But I also believe we can build a culture based on norms in technology departments that will build a reputation of being truly a vital partner in helping teachers and administrators effectively and efficiently complete required tasks and achieve their professional goals.

Here are some norms that consciously or not I've observed that keep tech departments from "preventing" education.

1. Education first. Everyone in a school must view himself/herself as responsible for the school's primary mission of education. This applies to bus drivers and cooks as well as superintendents, and technicians are no exception. Consciously, we must ask ourselves - how will this decision, rule, or action impact children's ability to learn. We are all of us educators first, technologists second.
2. User experience second. There is no such thing as a totally secure technology environment. Common sense, based on level of security needed and the ability of users, should dictate what security measures are truly necessary. Schools and the Department of Defense simply don't need the same complexity of passwords or login processes. Our goal should be to make technology use both transparent and secure.
3. Economy third. Too often departments with the biggest budgets view themselves as "winners." But in the zero sum world of school funding, such winners may be creating students who are losers if money is unnecessarily spent on technology or software rather than lower class sizes, better teacher pay, professional development, or non-technological curricular materials. (See Norm 1.) I always ask myself that when buying big ticket items, do we need the Mercedes or will a Chevy get the same job done?
4. Support mission-critical technologies really well. The only way most of us have time to do that is by prioritizing our support tasks. I've found that by clearly articulating to staff that only by maintaining equipment that is within the replacement cycle and has been purchased through departmental processes will eliminate the Sisyphean task of keeping obsolete and non-standard equipment running. Do I care if a teacher still uses an Apple IIe to run Number Munchers? No, but when the machine dies, all our department will do is carry it to the recycling center.
5. Over communicate. If even we can't get to a staff member's problem immediately, we always let them know we've been heard. If a system needs to go down for maintenance, let everybody who may even be remotely impacted (teachers work on weekends and late at night) several days in advance. Overestimate the time the service will be lost. And never assume by telling a principal or director something might happen that that message will get to everyone else. 
6. Always assume a task is possible, a problem has a solution. I once heard a teacher tell a technician. "When you say it can't be done, what you really mean is that you don't know how or you don't want to." If that is what we mean, then let's say that. 
7. Seek the "why." Some demands placed on the technology department and its workers sound kind of crazy. But once one learns the reason behind the request, additional, less onerous solutions may present themselves. By focusing on the goal, not a specific solution, creativity often kicks in and everybody benefits.
8. Work as a team. While everybody is usually busy, some people may be extra busy at times - a new lab needs to be installed, a whole slew of iPads need imaging, a new wing is opening in a school. Teams of technicians working together help each other out in times like these. Each member of the department brings specific skills and expertise (or that should be built). Make sure tech integration specialists, librarians, and information system managers are a genuine part of the tech team.
9. Check your work. Does the printer driver installed actually allow the teacher to print? Does the new login password actually work? Did the new cable to the IWB actually take care of the problem? My dad had a saying "There never seems to be time to do it right, but there is always time to do it over." Ten minutes checking one's work saves time, frustration, and builds one's reputation for service and competence.
10. Blame the director. If a staff member is unhappy about a technology procedure, the only person who should take heat about it should be the person making the decision. Yet, techs often hear from teachers about old equipment, inadequate wireless signals, or clumsy security measures. Operate under the assumption that conversations between two professionals are respectful and constructive. Offer and accept nothing else. "Take it up with my boss," is the standard response to disagreeable people.

So what works for your tech department to make it an effective partner in the education of your kids? As a teacher or administrator, what makes your tech department effective? 

Related articles:

• A good policy for good policies
• Advisory Advice
• Librarians are from Venus; technologists are from Mars
• Keep your techs by keeping them happy
• Making Good Technology Choices
• Problem or dilemma?
• Who should be running your technology department?

Original post September 1, 2014

Back in the classroom - sort of

One of the things I've been doing to fill my post-retirement days is some substitute teaching. I have a current teaching license, there is a company here that organizes subbing allowing one to select jobs online, and I have a thick hide. Or at least I thought I did.

After subbing at a number of different buildings, at several levels, and for a variety of types of teachers (classroom, music, special education, adult ESL), I've come to some realizations:

Today's classroom is a different place than the one I left in 1991. I have to admit that the children I encountered were (ahem) a challenge to work with. I always expected every class that I taught back in the day to have a couple kids who challenged the rules, craved attention, and could not sit still. Those one or two kids of the 1980s have become what feels like 75% of the class. Yeah, I know it is probably a substitute thing, but in the classes I co-taught, the regular teacher did not have much success in maintaining discipline. It's not that I was actively defied, but simply ignored. 

I like working with adults. On a more positive note, I truly enjoyed time spent teaching English Language Learners (beginning class). I am not sure I actually taught anyone anything, but I loved the interactions, the willingness to try the activities, and the mutual cooperation of the students in a class with wide ranging ages, languages, and cultures. And they didn't ask for bathroom/locker/nurses passes every two minutes.

Teachers are totally undervalued. I came home exhausted each time I subbed, and quickly learned that about a half day was all I could handle - physically and mentally. While a regular teacher develops routines and learns ways of dealing with challenging students, the regular teacher also has the work of lesson planning, grading, reporting, and a dozen other tasks not expected of subs. As I liked to say, "i'm not used to working this hard - I'm an administrator."

I need to improve my handwriting. As I was working with the ESL students writing on the whiteboard, I noticed that I used both small and capital letters within single words, wrote very quickly, and scribbled letters that were far too small to be read from the back of the room. (I also spoke far too fast, I realized.) Next time I sub, I will try to remember to write and speak more legibly. 

I don't know if I taught anyone, anything during my hours as a sub. How much of substitute teaching is simply being a placeholder, a babysitter, a legally required licensed professional in the classroom? i am ashamed to admit that I don't know if any student - adult or child - came away any better for my being there. I felt some bonds formed between me and a few special education students and the satisfaction of knowing some of my ESL learners "got" the concepts they were working on. But mostly, I was a warm body - not the hoped for result of this experiment.

I wish I had spent more time in the classroom as an administrator. Probably the biggest take-away from my initial subbing experiences is that every district administrator, every legislator, every education journalist, and every parent should be required to teach in the classroom at least five times a year. Theory and reality in education are two very different animals - and seemingly grow more different each year. I reflect on some policies and programs I initiated in my years as a technology director and how they might have been different if I had actually worked in the classrooms and not just walked through the halls peeking in classrooms and waving at teachers. This one will haunt me.

At heart, I still feel I am a teacher. I would like to find a new place in education that gives me a direct teaching role. But I don't think subbing is it. I will do more volunteering as a reading/math coach. I am looking into TEFL certification. I will focus on helping adult learners or individual kids in some capacity.

Even if I did not teach my students over the last couple months much of anything, they taught me some valuable lessons.