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Posts Tagged ‘Thomas Friedman’

Books That Stick

Posted in Book Club, tagged , , , , , , , on December 19, 2017| Leave a Comment »

As we come up on the holiday break, it is a time that we often give and receive books, and look for some reading material to get us going again for the second half of the school year.  This post is inspired by the June 2017 edition of School Administrator Magazine.

The magazine had a great article on Books that Resonate – asking district leaders to reflect on one book that has carried a profound and lasting impact.  It was introduced by editor Jay Goldman, “The printed word still matters.  In fact, a good book can carry meaning for an educator across a lifetime.  A good book conveys resonating value at potent decades later as on first reading.”

And while I always enjoy reading the newest books with the latest thinking, there is often great wisdom in some books that were not published in the last 12 months.

So, as we look for books to get us going for 2018, I have three to share that have had a great impact on me.   Here are their stories:

Professional Learning Communities at Work

It was in the late 1990’s that I saw Richard DuFour speak.  I can remember his talk still today.  I was an early career teacher focused on what I needed to do in the classroom, and DuFour opened my world to the work we needed to do collectively in the school.  DuFour got me less focused on what I was teaching, and more focused on what students were learning.  After a group of us heard DuFour speak, we took on his book as a study group book at the school.  We began to talk about creating a culture of collaboration.  It seems for schools, particularly for high schools, where we had a tendency to close our doors and focus only on our classroom and our practice, DuFour’s thinking opened us to a different way.  Still today, the book holds up.  While some of the terminology has changed, the goal of working together for student success with a focus on student data, is one alive in all of our schools.  My sticky-tabbed copy Professional Learning Communities at Work is a book twenty years later I still reference.

The Big Picture: Education Is Everyone’s Business

Denis Littky’s book showed me that there are other ways to organize a high school.  I read this book just as I assumed my first vice-principal assignment, and again we used it for a study group book at the school where I was working.  Littky focused on real world education for his students at “The Met” school in Providence, Rhode Island.  This is still the first book I would recommend to people who want to think about doing high school differently.  Students have an internship, and a mentor and parents are closely connected to the learning.  Littky made me think that we didn’t need to organize school into separate subjects every hour, and that learning could not just be what the adults wanted the students to learn, but also what the students wanted to learn themselves.

The World is Flat

So DuFour got me to think differently about how we need to work together in schools, and Littky got me thinking about how we organize schools, it was Thomas Friedman who let me know the world was changing around our schools.    It was hard not to think about Bangalore, India after reading Friedman’s book.  If when I ordered at McDonald’s drive-thru I might be speaking to someone in India, or if the reviews of my x-rays could be done by a doctor in south Asia, what would that mean for schools?  Until The World Is Flat I tended to believe that changes were happening around schools, but after reading it, I came to believe that schools needed to change to stay relevant.  I know the Friedman book has faced some thoughtful criticism, but I still find it a helpful introduction to what global changes are doing this century and a great book to open the questions around knowing all of this, how must we change.

The Christmas break is a good-time to sit back with a good book.  My next two books for the break on my shelf are What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation by Frans Johansson and Wooden on Leadership by John Wooden.  While neither is specifically about education, I am sure there will be ideas that will apply to our field.

I have mine lined up, what is on your reading list?

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A Job at Google or a Principal Job in West Vancouver?

Posted in Change, SD45, tagged , , , , , , , on March 11, 2014| 10 Comments »

Google

Thomas Friedman recently wrote a piece in the New York Times on “How to Get a Job at Google.”  As I read the comments of Laszlo Bock, the Senior Vice President of People Operations for Google, the more I found that Google is looking for many of the same attributes in its employees that we are looking for in West Vancouver, when we hire principals and vice-principals.

One of the more common questions I am asked is just what does someone need to do to secure a school principal or vice-principal job?  The truth is there is no one thing or an exact path.  In West Vancouver we do receive dozens of applications for any job opening, and many of these candidates have all the required boxes checked for what is needed in these leadership positions.  Many who apply believe there is a certain ‘formula’ in getting a job as a principal or vice-principal, but I haven’t seen it yet. I have heard,  “you need to be on district committees,” or “you need to have experience in multiple schools; to have experience in different subjects and at different grades.” And the list goes on.  In the end, our view is similar to that of Bock, “Talent can come in so many different forms and be built in so many non-traditional ways today.”

Bock identifies five key attributes in hiring:

  • learning ability — the ability to pull together disparate bits of information and process on the fly
  • leadership — when faced with a problem at the appropriate time you step in and lead
  • ownership — the feeling of responsibility
  • humility — the ability to step back and embrace the better ideas of others
  • expertise — it is important, but less important than the other four

The list really speaks to the skills we are looking for with our school administrators and the kind of attributes we are seeking in our leaders. We want them to be able to be smart and make decisions on the fly; to lead — not only from the front, but to feel like their school is theirs; to step back and allow others to share in the success and, finally, to have the expertise in many of the learning and management areas that are regular parts of the job.  Friedman is right, “In an age when innovation is increasingly a group endeavour, it also cares about a lot of soft skills – leadership, humility, collaboration, adaptability and loving to learn.”  This is why we almost always ask candidates about who is in their network and how they learn with their colleagues. We want our buildings to be about learning, and that includes our leaders being model learners themselves.

And, really, this entire list and conversation extends to the qualities we are looking for in our teachers. We want our teachers to be innovators, leaders, and owners of their classroom. We do want them to be humble and, yes, we want expertise — but I will take someone with the other four qualities and lacking in expertise rather than the reverse, any day. Good grades don’t hurt, but we are looking for more than that with our teachers and educational leaders.  I agree with the notion Friedman shares, “Your degree is not a proxy for your ability to do any job.  The world only cares about – and pays off on – what you can do with what you know.”

Of course, the teaching, principal and vice-principal jobs in West Vancouver involves different perks than Google (sorry about that) but it looks like we are looking for many of the same qualities.

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