Duties and Relationships

I had some teachers that I really loved and who could have told me to learn almost anything, and I would have done it. Why? Because in addition to the work done in the classroom, I had a personal relationship with them. I went out for the school activities they sponsored or coached. I saw them at all the school functions - plays, concerts, ballgames, and more. They were the ones who punched my activity card at basketball games and worked with me in the concession stand. The teachers I remember as my very best teachers were those who believed that relationship was everything and who looked for ways to build relationships outside of the classroom.

Because of those experiences and my resulting world view, I think it's a missed opportunity when teachers choose not to do their assigned school duties, the ones who pay to have someone else take tickets or supervise the events they are assigned to. I believe it means the world to elementary students coming through the high school football gate to be greeted by classroom teachers, and it's uplifting and affirming to high school students to see their current or former teachers at their concerts, games, and plays. As human beings we are dying to be validated as whole human beings who share more than the classroom assignment that's due tomorrow.

I know it's a different world than when I was in school. More teachers live out of town, raising their families in different schools. There are personal and family conflicts with assigned duties. I am also certain that teachers aren't maliciously having others do their duties. My point, however, is that our communities aren't as closely knit as they once were, and there aren't as many opportunities for us to cross the same paths as our students. Therefore, being at a couple of school functions a year has become much more important than simply the means of earning one's activity ticket.

Please think about the opportunities missed by not participating in the events that your students and their families are involved in. These tiny commitments on your part may just help build a relationship that keeps a child in school or gets a child to work harder or helps them feel like a part of something bigger that is safe and supportive and caring.

Think about it. You may even decide to attend more events than just your assigned duties.

Storm Lake High School Groundbreaking

With every high school student and staff member, with few exceptions, in attendance, a cold fall breeze blowing, sunshine so bright you had to squint, the high school band playing, and community members from the School Board to the auditorium committee to the architects to the builders to just plain interested press and friends, we celebrated the beginning of the Storm Lake High School renovation project.

We renewed both our commitment to our belief in the importance of education for the future of our country and also our faith in our public schools to accomplish that task. It was a joyous event!

Trust

I just got notification today that the area EdTech powers that be are going to meet with the area Tech powers that be, and I couldn't be happier!

I wear both hats at my school, although I certainly can't take the credit for the great learning with technology that takes place in the Storm Lake Schools. It's the teachers and students working together in the classrooms, the outside world that collaborates with us, the technicians traversing the district each day, and the administrators who have bought into the validity of technology for learning who are the ones making sure the learning takes place. No amount of vision, dreaming, persuading, deploying, troubleshooting, training, or planning on my part alone can accomplish this. Like all things, it takes a team and a lot of focused hard work by many different people.

When any team can get together, hash it out, and then work for the same goals, magic can happen. Our students deserve this. This is the way we do business: Together.

It's about time.

My Inspiration

This is personal. My dad, at the age of 81, was just honored by the Tampa Bay Lightning for the pro bono legal work he's doing for those who are in need in Sarasota, Florida.



On the other hand, this isn't a bit personal. These are the kind of people I work with everyday. Teachers, administrators, technology directors, instructional assistants, cooks, maintenance personnel, and all those who work in schools. Talk about serving those in need! I am honored everyday to work with such selfless, caring people.

On a personal note, love and congratulations to my dad in his most noble work. On a professional note, my deepest respect and admiration to all those who also do such noble work in our schools.

Collaboration, Expertise, and Compromise

Anyone who knows me knows two things about me:

1. I am a team player. I like to bring people together, bat around ideas, present evidence, sometimes disagree vehemently, and then make decisions and plans based on facts.
2. I respect the fact that people have different backgrounds, education, and expertise, and I purposely search out the opinions of those who are experts on various topics and who have actually experienced various situations when formulating my own thoughts.

Watching Congress the past few weeks and then participating in a meeting recently, where people I consider experts were feeling completely disenfranchised, have brought the two beliefs I listed above to the forefront of my thinking today.

Our world has become too complicated for individuals to claim expertise and make decisions based on "what's best" for the rest of us. Therefore, we owe it to the world to do the following:

1. We must all speak up, even when it's uncomfortable.
2. We must all actively listen to one another, even when we'd rather argue or remain removed from the situation.
3. We must all be open to changing our minds, to the point of admitting when we're wrong.
4. And finally, we must all realize that compromising and reaching consensus is not only possible but necessary under many circumstances when we hold conflicting views. It's not giving up to compromise. It's the reality of living in a free society.

These are skills we must practice as adults and model for our students. These are skills our students must be taught, because they will need them in our complicated world.

Social Media Guidelines for Teachers

As education continues to progress in a globally connected 21st Century, I hear more and more questions and concerns about social media. In my view social media includes anything through the Internet that includes sharing and allows collaboration, give-and-take, or conversations. Facebook and Twitter certainly come to mind, but I also include blogging, Google Apps in general, and some websites. Here in the Storm Lake Community School District, we encourage our teachers to become socially connected. There are three main reasons for our teachers to do so:

1. To develop an online Professional Learning Community. Continuing to learn, sharing ideas with other teachers, interacting with experts, and planning for future collaborative events are just a few of the things teachers can do through social media to further their own learning and to become better teachers. Twitter is often the tool chosen for this.
2. To foster communication between our school and our stakeholders. Our stakeholders include students, parents, other family members, community members, and sometimes other schools. Tools for this include blogs, websites, and even Facebook.
3. To model the appropriate use of social media to students. We know our students are using social media everyday. We know that they are building an online resume of experiences, learning, and behaviors that can either serve them well in the future or can be destructive to their futures. It's our job as teachers to help students see the best ways to represent themselves online.

As we become more and more active on social media as representatives of the Storm Lake Community School District, it is important that we think through carefully the best way to represent ourselves and our school. I will be outlining some guidelines in future posts.

Summer Tech Accomplishments

It's that time of year again when we are scrambling like mad, realizing the first day of school is just around the corner.

Welcome to all the families registering their children with us today. It's so exciting to see students in the buildings again. We may get a lot of work done when most of the staff and students are gone in the summer, but we really miss them! This place loses its soul when our students aren't here.

Here's a sampling of what we either have done or will have done within the next couple of weeks:

• 190 more Chromebooks. These devices look like small laptops and access the Internet through the Chrome browser. We piloted a lab of these in the high school ELL room and ten more all around the district last school year, and our teachers and students love them! No waiting to authenticate to the network or update virus protection. No unneeded programs to load. The ability to work in Google collaboratively, to access your files away from the school, and long battery life are only some of the things we've heard raves about. Five of the new Chromebook labs will go in our high school English classrooms as a chance for us to pilot technology in the hands of students any time, any day, all day in English classes. Another of the Chromebook labs will go to the middle school for checkout by classrooms. And, ten of the Chromebooks will go to elementary Title students for their use.

• Guest wireless network at both the high school and the middle school. The same will be coming at the elementary school at some point this fall.
• New Internet filtering that is less onerous to implement when we bring new devices onboard.
• New virtualized servers.
• New switches at the high school and new routing between buildings.
• Doubled Internet bandwidth for the district.
• Expanded monitoring of network to keep abreast of possible issues quicker.
• Brand new computers in two high school labs and one elementary school lab.

• Two new Smartboards, one at East and one at the elementary school.
• Several new document cameras and projectors for classrooms at all our buildings.
• Google Apps for our staff and our middle school and high school students, complete with email, has been updated. This is such a fabulous way for our students and staff to communicate, to collaborate, and to create their own learning.
• e2020 alternative high school and credit recovery software updated.
• Academy of Math for high school student interventions updated.
• Rosetta Stone software for the whole district updated.
• Middle School Family and Consumer Science software updated.
• Expansion of wireless coverage and density at the elementary school.

Those are the things that immediately come to mind. We are so excited at the potential for our students to learn with technology even more than they have in the past.

I'd better get back to it. The first day of school is staring me down!