Yesterday I spoke to a gathering of Superintendents from North Carolina, the Superintendents Quarterly Meeting. I had the same experience there that I’ve had with the two school board association presentations that I’ve delivered. They’re on board. They get it. They know we have to move forward. But they answer to someone else. Several superintendents asked if I could come and speak with their board members. Several board members from Pennsylvania and Maryland, want me to speak to their community.
It reminds me, in a way, of the peasant who wants to become the sun, and then, as the sun discovers that the clouds block it, and then wants to become the clouds. But discovers that the mountains can block the clouds, and becomes a mountain. Then finally learns that peasants are bringing down the mountain, chipping a way at it for gravel.
Does anyone know the name of that story and where I might find it?
Perhaps the final audience is the peasant — the students. Parents will pay attention to their children. Perhaps we should figure out how to do that as well — retell the story from the student’s point of view — shades of Deneen Frazier Bowen.
I also heard something very interesting yesterday, something that a superintendent said, while moving through the buffet table. He said, “You know, I think that the best assessment we can have is what we use to have — where you relied on the opinion of the teacher.”
We’ve lost confidence in our teachers — the best and most powerful computer, and processor and interpreter of complex information we can imagine!
Image Citation:
Julien. “DSCN1406.” Hi-d.Ch’s Photostream. 10 Oct 2007. 10 Oct 2007 <http://flickr.com/photos/hi-d/1529840971/>.
“We’ve lost confidence in our teachers” – ‘swhat I keep complaining about. Hence the “need” for a national curriculum!
One of my favorite stories! The Stonecutter:
http://www.storybin.com/sponsor/sponsor137.shtml
David,
I spent two years working in a digital media startup that had acquired “the storytelling company” (August House). Listening to you talk about stories and storytelling, and even your voice, remind me of a very special storyteller from your neck of the woods: Donald Davis of Okracoke. Have you ever come across one another? Donald and his wife are special people…
One of the things I believe, and I hear you say, is the need to keep telling this story of the paradigm shift–and telling it in a variety of forms so that people and their different learning styles “get the idea” that the shift is really about making these connections and having the tools to make connections absent time and place.
I enjoyed your preconference keynote and I participated in the the information-overloading fireside chat last night. Thank you for your dedication and commitment…and especially your stories!
Ok, we have a small number of experts and a large potential audience. Let’s reach out to those who make a difference because they vote, they legislate, they fund, they hire, they enforce, and so on. And let’s say, that most of the folks here, reading this, have already preached to their respective choirs. I know I have…
How do we make the next most influential connections? Yes, one way is through our students. What grandparent isn’t wowed by a picture of their third grade granddaughter using a proscope to examine soil samples? We’ve been doing that kind of splach for a while but by and large web 2.0 and other digital tools are still considered programmatic enhancement–“Yes, she’s a genius and she wants to be a forensic scientist when she grows up. She’s really tuned into science this year. It’s the gadgets, you know.”
The public hears a constant media drumbeat about the presence of danger on the web. Inappropriate, racy, porn, predation. I can’t dispute those darkside doubts. Heck, I’ve had them myself.
The essential questions are: How does the public get messages about the influence of the web on society? How do we influence the sources of these messages to present messages that are more balanced.
We identify sponsors, grantors, and connectors who have something to gain from cooperative venture. We ask them to fund projects and we invite the media to showcase our work. We hire media specialists, ad agencies, we buy space in the local papers or ad time on the radio or tv stations.
This a complicated answer but it’s simple too. We can wow the public one student at a time, or we can publish our efforts and broaden our influence.
David, as a school leadership professor, I’m going to (sort of) disagree with you on two fronts.
1. We have to stop passing the buck. Teachers want to blame principals for their own inaction, principals want to blame central office for their own inaction, superintendents want to blame boards for their own inaction, and boards want to blame the community at large for their own inaction. The truth is that each individual and/or group has the ability to effectuate and facilitate change at his/their level. Yes, we want to get those ‘above’ us on board, but we are not dependent on them to be change agents. We may be constrained, but we are not powerless. Our psychological dependencies emasculate us. We can do this if we so choose.
2. The ‘opinion of the teacher’ is extremely important. That said, we must have other measures of student success as well. Informed intuition alone, which ruled the day for decades, did nothing to close (and often exacerbated) achievement gaps. Schools with effective data-driven instructional processes are finding great power in going beyond mere teacher opinions and collecting student progress monitoring data. I remember asking a group of high school teachers how they knew when their students were learning. One of them said ‘by the gleam in their eye.’ That was his sole measure of success and further questioning illustrated that he truly didn’t know the difference between student LEARNING and student ENGAGEMENT. I’ve met a lot of teachers like him. We owe it to them, and their students, to do better.