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Posts Tagged ‘educational blogging’

This is Post 400

Posted in Change, Professional Development, tagged , , , , on January 12, 2022| 8 Comments »

I loved this quote above that I saw recently from Adam Grant.  It nicely summarizes what I love about this space.  I look back at posts I have written over the last twelve years and see how my thinking has evolved.  I was recently talking with my friend George Couros and we joked that we are two of the last bloggers out there.  While more people would read my posts a decade ago than do today, I never was really doing this for you – like Grant argues, I don’t blog for an audience, I blog for me.  I notice that the more regularly I write, the better it becomes.

I have written about the act of blogging a number of times over the years.  My list of reasons I had for starting this blog still hold today:

  • try to be transparent with my learning and leadership
  • model the “new way” many claim is the way students will learn — engaging with the world, and using digital tools to connect in ways we couldn’t connect without them
  • offer a different voice on educational issues from those in the mainstream media
  • work out ideas; get feedback, and push my own thinking

I would not be the person I am if I didn’t have this space to work through ideas.  And I have connected to many amazing people through this blog.

I still run across people who say they want to blog but they don’t have time.  They do have the time – it is just not a priority.  I have tried to make the case for more bloggers a number of times before.  I think for superintendents, it can really help to humanize the roll and make the position more accessible.  Here is a column from last year on Superintendents Blogging in the Pandemic and Beyond and one from 2018 Superintendent Blogging Should be a Fixture.  Of course, I think blogs are great for everyone – students, teachers, principals – anyone trying to work through ideas and create digital filing cabinet.

Here is some advice I gave to new and aspiring bloggers on blog post #150 that still holds true at #400:

  • be clear about what you will and won’t write about — it is easier if you know from the onset the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ behind your blog
  • it is a bit cliché, but write for yourself, not for what others may want; let the blog be a personal journal in a public space
  • do not be too ambitious with your writing — make plans to write once a week, or once a month and stick with it
  • use social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) to amplify your message
  • be thoughtful of the relationship between your professional role (teacher, administrator etc.) and your blog
  • think in blog posts — when you are at a conference, reading a book, or attending a meeting, begin to organize your thoughts and take notes like you are writing a story
  • the more voice you can have in your blog the more engaging it is for readers
  • be a storyteller — our schools are full of amazing stories waiting to be told

When I started blogging, I never really thought about how it would end.  And I don’t think I fully knew that it was actually hard to write regularly.  Anyone who tells you blogging is easy – is lying! But most important things are not easy.

And now 400 posts in, as long as there are new things to think about, and ideas to share and debate, I hopefully will be around for another 400 posts.

Thanks to all of you who continue to join me and connect with me in this space.

 

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10 Years and Still Going

Posted in Change, Professional Development, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 27, 2020| 15 Comments »

The Culture of Yes turns 10 this month. 364 posts later, and here we are.

Starting this blog seemed like a natural fit.   In an earlier time I had been a newspaper columnist so was pretty familiar with organizing thoughts into 550 words at a time.   And in 2010 I was just officially starting as Superintendent so I was looking to differentiate myself and find a way to have a voice in a way that was authentic and made sense for me.  At the time I had a blogroll that was inspiring.  I would read Dean Shareski, or Will Richardson, or David Warlick and be excited.  The world of web 2.0 was booming and each post I read was opening me up to new ideas and a new world I was trying to understand.

The world of education blogs has really felt like it has had a boom and bust era.  My 2010 entry was just before the boom.  We had a community in BC of edu-bloggers including Chris Wejr, Elisa Carlson, Cale Birks, Dave Truss, Brian Kuhn and others.  It was just as the way we get education news was shifting.  Blogs were opening up classrooms, schools and districts to the community.  It was interesting to see what was being written in local blogs driving conversations in school and in the media.  What I saw in a blog post Monday, I would read in a Janet Steffenhagen story on Thursday in the Vancouver Sun.  The modern network was truly coming alive.  I also loved how blogging came alive in our schools.  We still have a number of staff blogging – including Cari Wilson who is still so great at posting every week!

And yet within 4 or 5 years the internet was littered with well intentioned but discarded educational blogs.   It is not as bad as it sounds.  Like with any trend or fad you get this huge growth, and then some people decided it wasn’t for them, and moved on.  We began to consume more through social media – twitter posts were far easier than 500 word blog posts. And as I wrote, the comments really slowed down (ironically that post about the lack of commenting has 86 comments). And the comments that came were not on the post but on Facebook or Twitter.  The conversation actually happened in multiple places which was not really a good thing – I would often think of a conversation of a post on Twitter, that these people should meet the people talking about it on Facebook, they would really learn from each other.  That said, my thanks to the close to 4,000 comments that have been shared directly on the site – they have challenged me, taught me and encouraged me.  I looked back at my first post – thanks to Brian Kuhn for being the first person to leave a comment.

In my first post I wrote:

It is an exciting time in education.  I feel like we are in the middle of a dramatic shift in what “school” looks like.  We will look back on this time as a pivotal point of change.  I look forward to sharing ideas, and connecting with those inside and outside our system as we work our way through it. 

And it was an exciting time, and is an exciting time in education.  This blog has really been career defining for me.  I love to look back at what I used to think and write about, how I believe some things more strongly now than when I wrote them and on other topics my views have changed – that is what is great about learning in public – I can share this.  And if nobody else even reads it, the act of writing down ideas and taking a position has been exceptionally powerful for me.

When I was asked to describe my blog goal, I have said, I know I am not the New York Times or Wall Street Journal of education blogs.  I am more USA Today.  And while we need the more formal writers, we also need those who are trying to be accessible to those not in education.   I have tried to be a serious thinker who doesn’t take himself too seriously.

Today, I love following other superintendent bloggers.  In BC I read everything that Dave Eberwein, Kevin Godden and Jordan Tinney write.  I just wish more of my colleagues would blog.  As my regular readers know, my doctoral research is around the role of the superintendency and I am fascinated by the role and the work.   I also really appreciate how supportive Jay Goldman and the AASA (School Superintendent’s Association) has been to regularly highlight superintendent blogs in their magazine and to take several of my pieces and work with me to convert them into magazine columns and articles. 

As to my posts – if I want to chase clicks, I find if I write about parenting and sports those fuel interest.  I really enjoy writing about both topics so it is fun to stir debate around them.  They are actually the easier posts to write.    My most-read post to date comes from November of 2010 on Stuart Shanker and Self-Regulation.  I have written about Stuart’s work a number of times, and it is an example of thinking that has really changed my view of education in the last decade.  More personally, my post Teacher during the 2014 teacher’s strike about my dad really sticks with me.  

And yes, every-time I still hit publish I feel anxiety.  I think my high school English teacher is out they’re noticing grammar errors (that was intentional).  And I worry (it has only happened a handful of times) someone will splice a  part of my text and re-post it social media to try to embarrass me or make a political point.  But my blog has changed me.   It has opened doors for me for work, it has introduced me to many new people and given me a platform to share.  Most importantly, it has given me voice and confidence.   I am still a proponent of having everyone write for the world, as we all have stories to tell and we want our children to feel this comfort from a young age.

So, to all who have read and engaged with me over the last 10 years – thank you.   Hopefully I have helped assure you that superintendents are actually human being and not just “those guys” in the board office.  I love our community and my head is full of ideas I want to write and think through with you in this space in the months and years ahead.

I look forward to the next 10!

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Do Digital Leaders Have to Lead Digitally?

Posted in Change, Professional Development, Social Media, Technology, tagged , , , , , on May 11, 2016| 7 Comments »

leader

I attend a lot of Superintendent events where there are discussions on the digital transitions of districts.  These discussions  are often about how “we” need to change, and far too often these conversations are being held in very traditional ways.  One is left often believing that the changes are about other people and not really about those leading the system.

This past week I was meeting with colleagues from across the continent and leading a conversation around digital leadership for superintendents. What was impressive is that in some very simple ways, Superintendents are finding ways to lead digitally.  I do think the questions about whether digital leaders have to lead digitally is really rhetorical.  We are part of a learning system, we need to be learners ourselves.

So, what are some easy entry points for Superintendents?

Model

There are so many ways to model the power of the digital tools.  There are big steps like investing in a regular blog, medium-sized steps like starting social media accounts and small steps like collaboratively building a meeting agenda in a shared document.  I was interested to hear from one superintendent that co-constructs her Board agenda through a collaborative Google doc.

Engage

More and more district leaders are finding voice and connections through social media.  While some still use these platforms as a one way communication channel and worry about the push-back from constituents others are finding the power of building connections and relationships in social media and that the interactions are not a waste of time but really an investment.

Explore

I loved to hear of the variety of tools that Superintendents use to make their work easier, more engaging and connect with students, staff and community. To highlight just two, one Superintendent spoke of his work with VoiceBo – an app that acts as a voice recorder.  When visiting various classrooms he will often times use the app with the students where he records and shares their voices.   As he said, “what students don’t want to share and have the superintendent record what they are doing.”  Another tool that was new to me was Slack – a tool that a number of school districts are doing to better connect and cut down on the email clutter.

Attend

As I have written before, where leaders spend their time matters.

I have argued that digital literacy is really just becoming literacy.  It is implied that digital is just part of the large expected meaning of literacy.  The same line of thinking needs to hold true for digital leadership.  For those who hold leadership positions in education, really being a digital leader is just being a leader.  We need to be continuing to upgrade our skills and be pushed to use the tools and engage with the mindset we expect of our students and teachers.

This really takes two parts – superintendents need to be in classes where teachers are pushing new ways to engage digitally and they also need to attend professional events that allow them to learn from and with colleagues on the paths other schools and districts are taking on the digital journey.

I have been very hard on traditional conferences in my blog posts.  There are some major events I refuse to attend now since they continue to perpetuate learning about the new things in the same old ways.  What was great about the Superintendent Digital Transition Symposium was that is modeled many of the new ways we are trying to engage.  There were some traditional lecture presentations, but there were also student discussions, gallery walks, hands-on activities, chances to engage digitally and choice in how, where and with who we learned.  If we are going to come together face-to-face there needs to be value added over traditional conferences.  This event is one of the few that I have attended that has started to realize this.

Conclusions

I am reminded when I connect with other districts, that if I am looking for a district leading the way thinking about digital engagement there is almost always a Superintendent trying to figure it out for herself how she can lead digitally.  I am also reminded that slowly the word digital is disappearing in front of the word leadership – in the very new future it will just be leadership and digital will just be one of the expectations when we use the word leader.

 

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Writing is Writing

Posted in Professional Development, tagged , , , , on March 23, 2015| 8 Comments »

writinghardwork

Every month I read the magazine School Administrator cover to cover.  Produced by the AASA – the American Superintendents’ Association it moves from big picture issues, to practical current topics to interesting slices of life from a variety of others who serve in the same role as me.   It is my go-to professional journal.  Over the last four years I have got to know its editor, Jay Goldman.  Jay has been kind enough to take some of my blog posts and turn them into columns for the magazine, and I am right now working on a piece on school sports for an issue this summer.  It is not just the relevance that draws me to the School Administrator Magazine but also the quality of writing – which goes back to the tone and standards set by the editor.

I had the chance to attend a session at the recent AASA National Conference on Education hosted by Jay Goldman and his colleague Jimmy Minichello on Publishing Professionally: Guidance for School District Leaders.  I went there to look for tips on how better to take what I am writing every week for my blog and make it something that would work in a variety of other forms.  And like many of you out there, I do have dreams of writing a book one day.  It was a great session, but the key message I took away was one not really about writing for a magazine or books or even for blogging – the message I took away was Writing is Writing.  Something that fits with a message I often share, “Good writing still matters.”

There is one particular slide that brought this message home for me:

whywrite

If anything, being a good writer seems to be more important now than ever for teachers and administrators.  And while Jay was speaking about the power of writing in the context of a magazine, this slide is a great slide to answer the question – why blog?  The goal is not bloggers, for our students or the adults in the system – it is writers for the reasons that Jay outlines.  What is true is that blogging allows the writing to be more dynamic and allows us all to be owners of our own publishing company.

In the end though, writing is still writing and all of us should take up the challenge to do more of it in our profession.

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Blogging and Modern Educational Leaders

Posted in Change, Social Media, Technology, tagged , , , , , , , , , on November 13, 2014| 14 Comments »

blogging

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern would be impressed — this post is somewhat a blog post about a blog post about blogging.

I had a recent email exchange with Janet Steffenhagen (Janet is the former Education Reporter with the Vancouver Sun and currently blogs for the BC Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils (BCCPAC)) about the state of educational blogging. She had been planning to highlight BC Superintendents blogging and noticed there seemed to be fewer blogging today than three years ago. I offered some of my thoughts in her post, Blogging Challenges for Superintendents, and listed below:

– Blogging is hard. You have to dedicate time on a regular basis to writing and it is not part of a traditional pattern for most people. It is also just hard to “put yourself out there”.
– There is uncertainty about what to write. Some Superintendents use it as a journal (like Monica Pamer in Richmond) to tell stories; others use it more for district news (like John Lewis in North Vancouver). There is no one right answer, but it is hard to determine “what” the Superintendent should write about. I have always tried to be broad – some of what I write is what I see in our district, some is what I think about education trends and some is future-focused in areas that may not be directly linked to education.
– If you don’t have an audience, it can be discouraging. With so many people joining the blogging community, it can be hard to gain an audience. While the role of Superintendent will immediately get some traffic, the numbers may be small to start. One has to see blogging as at least as much about the personal reflection to find it fulfilling.
– If you blog and don’t participate in the digital community, you likely won’t stick around. I would see some people blog but would not follow this up by engaging via Twitter or even responding (or soliciting) comments on the blog. The community is part of the power. Some who blog are really just writing newsletters online.
– The job action. I think it was hard to figure out just what to say during the strike, and very few district leaders blogged. The few who were engaged in social media often got targeted as the face of BCPSEA (B.C. Public School Employers’ Association) and at times the government, so may have thought there was no need to put themselves through that unnecessary backlash. For those new to the community – even in senior district roles – this can be intimidating. Nobody likes to be publicly criticized.

Shortly after this email exchange, I read a new article from Will Richardson, Eight New Attributes of Modern Educational Leaders. Will argues, “A new breed of educational leader is emerging from all parts of the globe. It’s a leader that fully understands the fundamental challenges to traditional teaching and learning that the new interconnected, networked world is creating. It’s a leader that also sees the amazing opportunities that abundant access to information, people, and technologies is bringing to all of our learning lives.”  Will sees the eight attributes of modern educational leaders as being:

1. They are connected to and engaged in online networks.
2. They are makers with (and without) technology.
3. They are innovators and support innovation.
4. They are models for learning both online and off.
5. They see curriculum as strategy.
6. They facilitate an “ever-evolving” vision for teaching and learning in their schools, with (or without) technology.
7. They are literate in modern contexts.
8. They know “learning is the work.”

It was a timely reminder from Will, and as much as I was giving Janet a series of reasons why leaders might not engage in modern learning, Will reminds us that it is our responsibility to be engaged — so I think it is not about any particular role like a superintendent, principal or teacher — we all need to be modern learners. No excuses.

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