February+2013

Thursday, February 14, 2013
Today was day one of a two day top-shelf, world-class education conference right here in Winnipeg. Did I oversell that? No, not really. [|Damian Cooper] in the morning, [|George Couros] in the afternoon. In the middle, time to catch up with old friends ([|Cam Symons]) and new ([|Darcia Light]) as well.

The [|Manitoba Council of School Leaders Winter Conference] gathers together school Principals, Vice-Principals, Superintendents and Divisional Coordinators for two days of Professional development. The theme this year: Navigating Change...Embracing the Leadership Constant. The morning plenary sessions challenged us to consider how to redefine "fairness" and to see that it can't be defined as "sameness". Damian Cooper is an engaging speaker, and his call for relevant assessment practices is logical and compelling. Delivered to school leaders, the call is to carry these ideas back into schools and to amplify them in such a way that teachers are emboldened to fairly assess, using the most recent of student practice, and to apply differentiated learning where it is warranted. More than once I found myself nodding in agreement to ideas that would have raised my eyebrow in suspicion a few years back. Damian's message is the same, but I know that I have changed.

The afternoon sessions that I attended were both by George Couros, the Twitter-using-Connected-Principal-Blogging-Dynamo from Alberta. George's presentation was peppered with humour, fresh examples of hilarious internet content, and a reasonable call to contribute on line. The two reasons why all school leaders should share more online boiled down to this:

//1- if you do not share about yourself, somebody else certainly is.// Every Principal and every school already has a digital footprint, and many are far from flattering. Can you imagine if all that someone could find about your school was a stub of a website and (digging a bit deeper) all of the "Rate My Teacher" comments? Thin gruel at best. Every school and every leader has an opportunity to showcase the very best of what is going on in their schools. We all know that we have incredible stories to tell, but many are never told. Sharing on line (through a Twitter account and Blog, for example) gives a Principal and a school a way to provide a thicker, richer and more nuanced digital footprint. So, Principals should share because it is the best way to manage their ever-growing digital footprint. George moved on, and the reason second to share is:

//2- sharing helps to consolidate your own knowledge, and helps others with theirs too//. Principals are busy people, but even the busiest Principals seem to find time to think about how to make things better. All of that thinking usually leads to meetings with staff, reading books, developing fixes and solutions, and these things can be shared. It should surprise no one that other schools face similar challenges, and so sharing solutions (and struggles) is a way to make things better. Who knows? the solution to your problem might be as close by as a reflective colleague's professional blog. Conversely, maybe you can help someone with a post about a few things that you learned recently.

So, what stops Principals from sharing? It is scary. It takes time. It seems a bit presumptuous to assume you might have something to offer. The potential benefit is tough to quantify. However, I know that I am certainly a better-informed and hopefully more thoughtful educator for the little bit of writing and tweeting that I have done. Hardly anyone will turn into a George Couros with 25,0000 twitter followers, so don't sweat becoming instantly famous. Aim to contribute, and meet a few like-minded people world wide.

Cam Symons has known me pretty much since I was born. I met Darcia Light for the first time today, the old fashioned way, at a meeting of like-minded people. In between I have met all kinds of folks like George and Damian-both of whom I first learned about via the internet. It is important, I think, to remember that all of these computer networks are really human networks. The flash and lights and megabytes tend to distract and mystify. At the end of the day, and at the end of this post, it is me typing up a few ideas, and you taking the time to read them. And thanks, by the way, for reading.