As we find ourselves at the end of June it is time for the men's college world series. As this year's college world series has unfolded there have been many moments of suspense, excitement, and disappointment. There have also been moments of inspiration and even affirmation in leadership principles but you have to really be paying attention to catch them. One such moment for me came during the elimination game between TCU and Coastal Carolina. During this game there was an interview with the head baseball coach for Arizona Jay Johnson. As a former athletic trainer there was not many discussion points that Coach Johnson said that I have not heard other outstanding coaches state in the past but he did say something that really resonated with me. During the interview one of the broadcast announcers asked Coach Johnson what he thought he did that created the buy in needed for Arizona to make it to the college world series. This question was asked because this year is Coach Johnson's first year at Arizona. Coach Johnson discussed many excellent points but what stood out to me was his statement of instead of focusing on goals he really emphasized focusing on the process and the day to day improvement. The key is to focus on the day to day. When you focus on the process and the daily improvement goal outcomes take care of themselves. This way of thinking is not new. As a matter of fact you can google focus on the process and you will find 421,000,000+ results in 0.42 seconds. So why am I sharing this you ask? Well, hearing Coach Johnson discuss the impact that focusing on daily improvement and the process affirmed what I feel to be the key to success in achieving success. When you focus on the day to day, taking care of business, working toward your goal by making positive steps toward the desired outcome the more likely you are to achieve that outcome. Sometimes we do not need to hear something that is earth shattering or revolutionary to remind us of what needs to happen. Sometimes we need to hear what we know to be true from someone that has experienced success by practicing the same principles and beliefs that we believe as well. I do not know how the 2016 Men's College World Series will end up. As of this blog post I do not know if Arizona will be playing TCU or Coastal Carolina but I do know that Coach Johnson and his Arizona Wildcat baseball team will do what they did to make it to the finals of the CWS. I also know that the Wildcats are going to focus on the everyday work, each at-bat, each defensive play, each pitch and do what they know they need to do to be successful. When you focus on what you can control and you strive for success the outcomes usually take care of itself. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Please feel free to leave a comment or contact me to have a discussion.
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Many people think that summer time is a quiet and slow time for school administrators. In fact the summer months are often the most important time of the year for administrators. Why you ask? It it because during the summer months that school administrators should be taking the time to reflect upon the prior year, work on growth plans for the coming school year and tend to their own professional learning needs. After ending the year in a flurry of activities, celebrations, exams, emails, and ceremonies it is really easy to want to take the month of June "off" even if you are still on contract. I would argue that taking this month "off" would be detrimental to the planning process. Taking time to reflect upon what went well as well as not so well over the previous school year helps to place the focus in two areas. The first area of focus is to examine the strengths of the year. What went well and why did it go well? Take the processes that were utilized in the areas of success and apply them in areas that you feel could have been better. The second area of focus involves looking at what could have gone better, why it didn't go as well as planned and what needs to be changed. Remember to look at the processes from the areas of strengths and see what can be applied to growth areas.
When developing campus plans be sure not to include every single item that you want to do in the coming school year. Focus on the areas of growth. Write your goals so that you must work to achieve the goal and be sure to keep student learning at the forefront of your plans. Summer time is also when most campus administrators tend to their own professional learning. Often this comes in the form of attending conferences and reading a new book or two. For me the question is what are you going to do with all of your new knowledge and inspiration you gained during your investment in your own learning? How will you take what you learned and implement the needed changes in a positive and supportive manner for your teaching staff? As you continue to work your way though the summer months what will you focus on? How will you keep student learning at the forefront of the decisions that you make? What will you do that is different from what has been done in the past with the expectation of improving the teaching and learning on your campus?
Take advantage of the time you have in the summer months. Use the time wisely because it will go quickly. I know what you are thinking, I don't have time. That is what I first thought when I downloaded the Voxer app last spring. The reason I decided to down load the app was because there was a cool and different type of a Twitter chat that my wife shared with me. The chat was #LeadUpChat and it was really starting to take off in the educational twitter chat world. At the end of my first #LeadUpChat one of the last tweets said the last question would be posted on @Voxer to continue the conversation. I was intrigued.
overwhelmed and soon I stopped trying to participate in the Voxer chats. I didn't ever delete the app but I just ignored it. I do not really remember exactly why I decided to give it another try but a few months later I thought that I need to give it another try. This time I just decided to just jump into the conversation mid stream and see what I could hear from the conversations. I participated here and there but I was still struggling. I then heard Sanee Bell talk about how she uses Voxer as a principal while she was sharing with a whole group of principals and it made me think differently. I decided to try this from a different perspective. Utilizing the model that Sanee had shared I started a smaller conversation with people I already knew. That is when I was like WHOOAAAAA! I realized that I can talk with other educators on my time schedule without having to "add something" to my plate. Now I am a part of several outstanding small group conversations and a couple of large group conversations. That is when I was like WHOOAAAAAA! So I am sure that you are thinking, OK Jeff but how does this fit into what I am doing? Well, the best way I know to answer that is to just share how I use Voxer and how it has provided opportunities for me to learn and grow from conversations that take place anytime and anywhere. Anytime... You can download the Voxer app to your device or you can log on via a desktop or laptop. Listening to conversations is very easy and contributing to the conversation is even easier. Some people like to listen and talk while driving to and from school, others prefer to use it as a way to begin or start their day. You can listen at night or in the morning, it really doesn't matter but you need to join or start a conversation. What are you passionate about? What do you want to learn more about? That is what your conversation is about. Anywhere... With the mobile app feature you can take Voxer with you no matter where you go. Recently I was out of town and was able to participate in several different Voxer conversations either in the car, during a break in meetings, or at the hotel. All you need is an internet connection. I realized that I can talk with other educators on my time schedule without having to "add something" to my plate. Why...
In today's world it is very challenging to be able to get everyone in the room at the same time. With Voxer you connect with people you know within your school district as well as people from all across the country or the world for that matter. I have found that no matter the location there are common struggles in the world of education. Being able to use a tool like Voxer to connect with other educators to brainstorm, share ideas, discuss, and support one another is priceless professional development and connectedness. You can add several people to a group conversation and what you begin to have is an ongoing conversation that can last longer and go deeper than if you all were able to meet up for an hour or so face to face. Please know that I am not being paid by Voxer to endorse their product. I am sharing about Voxer because as an educator I feel it is important to be connected and to stay connected to other educators. Its these connections that will help us all become better educators for our students. If you would like to start a conversation with me on Voxer please feel free! I would love to hear others' thoughts and learning from Voxer or any other type of online conversation tool. Please use the comments section, tweet at me or send me a vox! Think. Achieve. Succeed. Jeff Voxer: @mann4edu Since the fall of 2014 I have been fortunate enough to be a part of an ongoing conversation about public education in Texas related to innovation and transformation. That fall I was introduced to the principals' vision institute program run by N2Learning. As a part of the institute we discuss the 'Visioning Document' that was created by a group of Texas Superintendents in 2006 with the creation of the public education visioning institute. Being a part of a conversation at this level with principals, superintendents, and education thought leaders from across the state and country (guest speakers) has caused a mind-shift affect on the principals that are a part of each cohort. I have been no exception. The conversations and the thought processes that come from my experience and discussions about what could be in education are very exciting to me. I began to think about what could be in public education. I began to think about what could be in my own school. On Tuesday March 22 a conversation was started in the library. Participation in the conversation was completely voluntary but open to all faculty and staff of AMCMS. The purpose of this type of a conversation is to open up the ideas as to what is possible in education. This entire conversation began with one simple question, "If you could change one thing about education what would you change?" The discussion was lively, open, honest, and real. The visioning document was not discussed in great detail as part of this conversation (that will come in time) but the ideas about what is possible was outstanding. It was wonderful to see educators talking about real issues, real concerns, real hopes, real dreams, and real desires for students and student learning. I cannot wait for more of these conversations because the more that we talk about these issues centered about what could be in schools the more likely we are to make actual changes that will transform the learning for our students. No matter your role in education I urge you to seek out opportunities to share your hopes and dreams... your visions... of what could be in education for our students. "If you could change one thing about education what would you change?" You do not have to go through a process such as the vision institute to start your thinking about what could be. You just need to find other like minded educators in your school and district and start taking about what could be. Identify your obstacles and then talk about what you can do to overcome those obstacles.
As you begin to think about the possibilities and begin conversations about the possibilities with others you will find there are many things that you can begin today within the current constraints within public education and make real changes for your students. If you are passionate about doing what is best for kids then you need to develop a vision for your classroom and your school that is centered around doing what is best for kids. Read the visioning document. Become inspired. Become excited about the possibilities. Start a conversation! Think. Achieve. Succeed. Jeff Each week I send a weekly message to my school staff of outstanding professionals. The purpose of my weekly message is not only to share a calendar of events with the staff but more importantly to push their thinking about what we are doing in schools. Often in my ongoing conversation with my staff I will discuss creativity because I feel that creativity in schools is vital to our students' success as adults. Take about 2 minutes to watch the above video I came across this afternoon. As you watch the video you will see that there is one important question at the end of the video. Are you ready... "How do we stay that way?" You have to watch the video to understand the context. Being a principal I do not think that schools intentionally beat the creativity out of kids but I do think that the "fear of being wrong" does scare the creativity out of most of us. As a society we have created an education system that is built upon a GPA race because as humans we have an insatiable need to measure ourselves against everyone and everything. Sir Ken Robinson argues that the system is set up to kill creativity and he is correct. It isn't intentional, but it is a sad outcome. We must be the best and compare ourselves against those that we believe are the best. When we feel we are not the best, we have failed, we often give up and begin to think we are not capable. We are not creative. This same mentality spills over into life in general. We have the top _________ (fill in the blank) in almost every aspect of life. We have rankings for almost everything in life. I challenge you to find major life events that are not associated with a ranking of some sort. We are afraid to let our creativity loose because others will judge it, rank it, and tell us all the reasons why they think we are wrong in our creative interpretations and learning. Think about that for a minute. Do you like to be wrong? Doubtful. Do you learn from being wrong? Definitely. Why? Because you did not like being wrong you most likely went back to learn from the mistake. In the end isn't that the point? Learning? That is what it is all about right? So as school leaders...principals, teachers, directors, superintendents, parents... how do we overcome this fear of failure within students? How do we overcome this fear of being wrong within our students? How do we inspire creativity within our students to a level that even though they may be wrong and make mistakes they are still successful and still learning? Are we going to be able to do away with the GPA race? Not anytime soon because it is too ingrained in the educational culture. Can we just stop assigning grades? Not without a huge re-education of society and parents. These are entire system approaches. So what can we do? We focus on what we can change starting today. As district and campus leaders we can promote creativity by providing teachers permission to fail. Now, this does not do any good if we are right there when they fail and instead of cheering them on, supporting them, and encouraging them to take a risk we write them up because it did not turn out as planned.
Creativity in schools begins with school leadership, period. As leaders we must be willing to take a chance ourselves. We need to be willing to take a chance with students and teachers and see what happens. We may fall flat on our face and we will learn. We may soar to new heights because we took a chance and we will also learn. Either way, we are modeling what we need from our teachers and students. My risk-taking with students will become apparent as a "success" or "failure" in a couple of weeks and I cannot wait to share the results. No matter the results, I am doing what I expect from my staff. I am taking a chance and encouraging students to put themselves out there with their ideas to change the world. I will let you know how it all turns out. What are you modeling as a school leader? Think. Achieve. Succeed. Jeff Over the past 3 years or so I have been focusing on developing my #PLN which stands for both professional learning network and personal learning network. How you use your #PLN is up to you! I have learned that along with reading books, articles, and attending professional conferences that I need two other forms of professional learning. The first is daily doses of professional learning from Twitter and Voxer. The second is more sustained professional learning conversations with fellow educators. Do you seek professional learning on a daily basis? Twitter is my go to place to connect with educators and see what thought leaders have to share regarding the world of education. If you are looking for some education minded tweeps to follow please leave a comment below and I will be happy to send you several outstanding names. All of these educators will share differing thoughts, opinions, ideas, learning strategies, and so much more that will really push your thinking. Voxer has been gaining momentum in education circles recently because educators are learning their connections with others can go into more of a conversational realm through the use of technology. I am a part of three different conversations on Voxer that all push my thinking in different ways. One conversation is a world wide group that brings in so many different thoughts, opinions, struggles, ideas, and successes around common themes discussed on a weekly basis. A second conversation I am a part of is with a local group of educators. In this group we discuss and share what is occurring on a more local level as well as encourage, support, and celebrate our day to day work. The third conversation I am a part of is with a fellow principal in a neighboring district. We are learning from each other through our conversations and I have actually taken teachers to his school to see the excellent work he and his staff are doing for kids. Voxer is way better than talk radio for your drive to and from campus. Perhaps the greatest addition to my professional learning has been working on "The Visioning Document" through sessions lead by @N2Learning and with @TASANet.
To read more about the visioning document please click here. In short the visioning document was written by a small group of Texas superintendents that saw a need to change the current direction of public education in Texas. The thinking, conversations, and outcomes from this type of work are extremely powerful! I have been fortunate enough to be a part of the conversation since becoming a principal and it has really shifted my thinking as to what we should be doing in our schools. I have connected with many different education thought leaders from across Texas and I have learned so much from being in the room with those leaders. The thinking and learning I have done with these educators has shaped the work I do at my campus and in my district. I challenge all educators, regardless of position, to really be intentional in your own professional learning. Find your longer view professional learning options AND find your day to day professional learning options. You will be amazed at how this shift in personal learning will change you and your daily work. I will be more than willing and happy to help you learn more about anything posted here. Just leave me a comment below! Think. Achieve. Succeed. Jeff
Earlier this week I was visited by my math department head. She wanted to run some things by me to either get my opinion or approval. We discussed the items that she brought to me and after the discussion I asked her one of my favorite questions.
"So how's it going?"
She began to share with me her risk taking adventure in her math classes. For those of you that know me, I encourage my teachers to take risks in their instructional practice every chance I get. The reason for this is to let my teachers know that I am okay with them mixing things up, changing how they have always taught to how they would want to be taught, to look at their lessons from the eyes of their students and ask themselves, "would I want to be a student for this lesson?"
Her risk taking venture has been utilizing the app Explain Everything to provide her students the opportunity to go back as often as they need to hear her working through the problem, step by step, as she went around the room to work with individual students.
As I sat and listened to her talk about her experiences, struggles, student success, and changes in student engagement and learning I felt very proud of her for taking a risk. These moments are the moments that I enjoy as a principal. We had a great conversation about what she has learned and where this can lead her and the math department with regards to how to improve student learning and support. It was very exciting for both of us!
If I had not asked her how it was going I would not have had this great conversation. Regardless of being a teacher or an administrator, I encourage you to always take the time to ask how it's going as a part of your conversations with your stakeholders. The best conversation you have may be the one that almost didn't happen. Think. Achieve. Succeed. Jeff "The best conversation you have may be the one that almost didn't happen." Today my 8th grade ELA teachers, 8th grade assistant principal, district ELA director, district math director and myself went on a journey. A few weeks ago I read this blog post from Mark McCord (@MarkMccord10) Principal of Katy Morton Ranch Jr. High School in Katy, Texas. After reading Mark's post I could not stop thinking about what he discussed in the area of TEKS based proficiency scales and how this guided the conferring sessions between teacher and students during Readers & Writers Workshop. Mark and I have both been fortunate enough to be a part of the Texas Principals Vision Institute #TXPVI as well as connected through Twitter and attended the first @EdCampKatytx earlier this school year. I reached out to Mark on @Voxer and before too long we were able to set a date for my teachers and I to visit his campus to see their Readers & Writers workshop in action. We were fortunate enough to see his Rockstar ELA teachers work Readers and Writers Workshop like the pros they are! 8th grade students were reading texts of choice, completing quick writes, discussing topics, and refining their skills with simple, compound, and complex sentences all in 45 minute class periods!! Teachers were conferencing with students purposefully because their TEKS based proficiency scales guided their conversations with students. The real power of our visit came with the conversation we had with Mark and his teaching staff during their PLC time. In the conversations Mark and his staff shared the success and struggles they have experienced in their journey with transforming their instructional practices. The take home message was the process is the key. It will take the teachers spending time working through the curriculum while having instructional based conversations to shape the outcome needed for student success. The outcome is having teachers that are well versed in their curriculum and a teaching tool that is tailored to the needs of the students they serve daily. When I say that our team left his school energized I mean we left his school energized! The thinking, ideas, and conversation were non stop. So I am sure you are wondering where all of this is going...
I am sharing this because all of this happened due to the power of connecting with other educators. We live in an increasingly smaller world. We are all connected in one way or another, even when we do not realize it. When you do see an opportunity to connect I encourage you to take full advantage of connecting. There is so much to learn from one another if we just take the time. Think. Achieve. Succeed. Jeff Over the last two days I have been fortunate enough to learn from and along side some outstanding leaders who are not only sharing their experiences but also listening to the story of others. I am currently in Austin, TX -- #ATX -- attending the Texas Computer Educators Association (TCEA) annual conference with 14,000+ other educators. My brain is so full it hurts, but in a good way.
I was fortunate enough to witness the caring heart of Angela Maiers --@AngelaMaiers -- as she reminded us of the importance of relationships with everyone in our school communities.... and everyone in our lives for that matter. Her message is passionate, uplifting and motivational. Angela displayed the power of student voice to the groups that cycled through the digital square during #TCEA16. Todd Nesloney -- @TechNinjaTodd -- shared with the crowd the work he has done with the community of Navasota, TX to improve the morale and culture of the entire school community. The outreach he and his staff are doing is tremendous. Relationships are at the very core of his work with all of his students, staff, and community. After hearing from Todd I was able to learn from George Courous -- @gcouros. What was at the hear of his message you ask? Relationships. He encourages you to have an innovators mindset but it all boils down to relationships for him as well. As educators we are in the people business, period. In the end as educators we must always remember that our relationships make the difference in the success of a child, not their grades. In 20 years after graduation people do not talk about the grades they earned in school as much as how they felt when they were in school. Think about it. I bet you can recall how specific teachers made you feel easier and quicker than you can recall the grades you made in their classes. How do you make students feel? Would you want to be your teacher? Think. Achieve. Succeed. Jeff As a principal I am always encouraging my teachers to be risk takers and think differently when it comes to their instructional practice. It is easy for me to tell others what they need to be doing but I often remind myself that I need to be taking risks right along side my teachers. This shows them that I am practicing what I preach and I am putting myself out there risking failure to do what is best for our students and school.I will tell you it is not easy to put yourself out there. Fear of failure is real, even for me. I will also tell you that when you take a chance, do something differently, try a different approach, the outcomes are often more rewarding because your ownership is greater. The sense of accomplishment is higher.
As a school leader I believe it is imperative to model risk taking and thinking differently for teachers and students. If you want your teachers to be brave enough to change what they are doing they need to see you doing the same. If you expect your teachers to create a risk taking culture and environment in their classroom, you need to be doing the same as their leader. You will find that as you think differently and take risks your school will begin to improve and transforms before your very eyes. I would love to hear about your risk taking and thinking differently in your classroom and school. Post comments below or reach out to me on social media! Think. Achieve. Succeed. Jeff |
Jeff MannA lifelong learner that is committed to asking questions to seek greater understandings. Do what you can, with what you have, where you are Archives
January 2023
Images & Quotes that Inspire |