by andrew@learnedleadership.org | May 18, 2012 | Blog, Video
A few weeks back I wrote a blog about my frustration as a 12th grade IB teacher. Like many of my fellow 12th grade teachers can attest to, student effectiveness drops of a cliff in second semester. So when my students suddenly came to class excited and inspired by the Kony 2012 campaign (a global movement to arrest the Ugandan warlord and war criminal Joseph Kony), we were all disappointed when after a quick discussion we had to return to the IB curriculum. Now, by no means am suggesting that the IB curriculum is inadequate or too restrictive, but I think as educators we should challenge ourselves to continually look for ways to harness our students’ enthusiasm to increase learning. The other day a colleague of mine, who I had discussed this idea with, passed along this Tedx talk by Zoe Weil. In it she discusses the idea of teaching our students in a way that gets them to not only learn about and identify problems, but create solutions. She goes on to introduce the idea of Solutionary Teams, groups of students who compete with each other to create solutions to identified problems. Take a look: Now whether you agree or disagree with her views on Humane Education, I think the idea of empowering students to choose their own focus/curriculum in a class is very powerful. Obviously it’s easier said then done, but definitely worth pondering and worth an experiment. As a social studies teacher I see many practical applications and horizontal collaboration opportunities, but see some big school wide opportunities too. For example, many school organizations (NHS, CAS, StuCo) vie...
by andrew@learnedleadership.org | May 4, 2012 | Blog, Teacher's Corner
Over the last few weeks of interviews with school leaders, I’ve heard the common theme that being able to communicate effectively with others is a priceless skill for leaders. This isn’t shocking news to any of us, yet sometimes it can be very easy to shutdown the lines of communication with our coworkers when things don’t go the way we planned. Recently a school head in Hong Kong reminded me of this by saying “we can never forget that we’re working with human beings”, and I would add; the good and the bad. Keeping this simple truth in mind as we operate in our schools may hopefully bring a higher level of civility in the midst of discussion. Simply knowing this is great, however, what’s transformational is setting a framework of expectations with each other when collaborating, negotiating or building consensus. A friend of mine at the International School of Kuala Lumpur forwarded me their Seven Norms of Collaborative Work, which I believe is powerful tool for building a share vision for our schools. The Seven Norms of Collaborative Work Pausing: Pausing actually slows down the “to and fro” of discussion. There are fewer ‘frames per second’ to deal with. It provides for the precious “wait time” which has been shown in classrooms to dramatically improve student critical thinking. Pausing and the acceptance of moments of silence creates a relaxed and yet purposeful atmosphere. Silence, however initially uncomfortable, can be an excellent indicator of productive collaboration. Pausing also signals to others that their ideas and comments are worth thinking about. It dignifies their contribution and implicitly encourages future participation....
by andrew@learnedleadership.org | Apr 26, 2012 | Blog, Guest Blog
I’m excited to introduce our first guest blogger at Learn[ed]Leadership. Patrick Love is a upper school counselor at Brent International School in the Philippines. In addition to college guidance and counseling services, Patrick has a real passion on the role of school counselors as leaders, and has been embodying that through designing a school wide social and emotional counseling program and championing data driven change. Outside of school Patrick is a talented and accomplished travel photographer who’s been published in various national and international publications (view his work at patricklovephotography.com). The Complaint Box Versus The Ballot Box By Patrick Love Teaching our students to solve problems and find solutions is one of the overarching goals of education. However, most individuals and schools out there have room to improve in this category. What can leaders in education do to improve their problem solving skills? Surprisingly, the answer may lie with our students. Solving problems and working towards school improvement is always a challenge. As a school counselor, I believe that advocating for others is a key part of my job. Much of what I do tries to forward the academic, social and emotional development and well being of my students. Simply put, I want my school to be a great place for students to learn and develop. Of course, I am not alone in this, I work as part of an amazing team. We have found that almost anything can be fixed or improved upon. However, success often hinges upon whether the people working together are willing to join together to work on the issue at hand. This should be...
by andrew@learnedleadership.org | Apr 13, 2012 | Blog
Despite a tsunami of books, classes and ‘experts’ on leadership, countless school leaders struggle to do their jobs effectively…they fail to lead. Why is this? Why do some of us continually fail to reach the high expectations we hoped to achieve as we watched others lead, promising we wouldn’t make the same mistakes? As I’ve spoken to different school leaders in international ED, I continue to hear a few major themes needed in order to be an effective leader. One of these themes is that effective leaders only become great leaders through experience and reflection. Like most things in life, experience is the key to mastery, after all you wouldn’t let a surgeon operate on you who only had textbook knowledge (at least I wouldn’t). Since it’s impossible to really learn without this experience, we should be gracious to those who are willing to step out and up into leadership roles. On the other hand, as leaders we must honor those we work for and reflect on our experiences, so we don’t make the same mistakes over and over. I believe it’s this time of reflection that will produce the best results in our development. As I’ve been thinking more about failures of leadership, I came across an article by Patrick O’Niell, President of Extraordinary Conversations. He observes from over 30 years of leadership experience that of all the major reasons leaders fail, there are four common themes: ” lack of vision, poor communication, tolerance for organizational fragmentation and character flaws.” Although he is primarily speaking to a audience of business people, I argue that his four themes are...
by andrew@learnedleadership.org | Mar 27, 2012 | Blog
Do you have an iPhone? I don’t, although I’ve often wished I did. In fact I’ve never had a smart or smarter phone. I missed the wave that propelled the average lay person into ultra high tech gadgety-phones back in approximately 2007. I was living in Korea at the time, and got by on a borrowed phone, which probably cost me about $10 a month to operate. When I moved back to the US for a year and half, iPhones had just hit the market, but were out of my price range. So even though I have an iPad now, I’ve never been exposed too heavily to apps. That’s why I was surprised to find out the other day that the average American spends 81minutes per day using apps, and another 74 minutes per day mindlessly surfing the internet. If you add it up, that’s 77.5 hours a month doing almost nothing. I once heard Jeff Utecht, the tech guy at International School Bangkok, say that our current students are a part of the “mobile generation.” These students, not only don’t remember a time when there was no internet, they don’t remember a time when there was no internet on their phones. Crazy…but no doubt true. It’s understandable that some believe that we can’t possibly expect these students to disconnect, since they were practically born connected. On the other hand, I’ve been hearing more and more a similar message from some who argue that some of their clearest thoughts came not when they were plugged in, but when they retreated. This last week I had the chance to to...
by andrew@learnedleadership.org | Mar 19, 2012 | Blog, Education, Teacher's Corner
Last week during my interview with Dr. Dick Krajczar he stated that school leaders need to envision what classrooms and schools will be like in 2030. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, but still have few answers about what my 8 month old daughter’s classes should look like in 18 years. As I think about it from the perspective of a teacher I think how depressing it would be if 18 years from now I was doing the same things in my classes. This is not to say that innovation requires us to throw out everything we’re doing now for some flashy new techno-classroom of the future. In fact I often hear a lot being said about schools integrating technology into the classroom. Often evidence of this is that the school has LCD projectors in every classroom. How is this much different from the modern day equivalent of the overhead projector? I know what you’re going to say, “overhead projectors can’t show clips from youtube.” Valid point, but an iPhone in the hands of my 83 year old grandma is pretty much just a phone and although we talk-up the use of technology at our campuses, its frequency of use is often generational. So toss out the old teachers, right? The other day I pulled out much of my hair trying to explain to some “older” teachers how to use googledocs and was amazed to find out that one of our teachers was unaware that if you double-click on a file it will open automatically, which she remarked is much faster than highlighting and selecting open from...
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