Finished Reading

Professional

The Art of Gathering – Priya Parker

For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood… and the Rest of Y’all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education – Chris Emdin

Smart Leaders, Smarter Teams – Roger Schwarz

Collaborative Leadership – Peter DeWitt

Lead Like a Pirate – Shelley Burgess and Beth Houk

Wildflowers – Jonathan P. Raymond

Schools that Succeed – Karin Chenoweth

Personal

Jurassic Park – Michael Crichton (for the fifth or sixth time)

The Lost World – Michael Crichton

Origin – Dan Brown

Waiting on the Shelf

Professional

White Fragility – Robin DiAngelo

Other People’s Children – Lisa Delpit

Choosing Civility – P.M. Forni

Leaders Eat Last – Simon Sinek

Graphic Design Thinking – Ellen Lupton

Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team – Patrick Lencioni

Personal

Originals – Adam Grant

Sphere – Michael Crichton (rereading this…loved it 20 years ago)

The Wizard and the Prophet – Charles C .Mann

Congo – Michael Crichton (rereading this…loved it 20 years ago)

Using the front door to enter my house is a great experience. It was designed and intended to be the place that people use to enter. It’s decorated nicely inside the front door. It’s welcoming. It’s warm and inviting. It provides a well-defined threshold between the outside world and our home. However, most times we enter through the garage. Through the garage door you walk into the laundry room, then into the back corner of the kitchen. The garage blurs that threshold between house and outdoors.

In Florida today, most schools have exterior hallways, large fences or gates surrounding the property, and common areas outside where students wait before school starts. Very often, parent drop-off and the bus loop have students entering through a side entrance or gate, blurring the lines between getting to school and arriving at school. Students might be at school for a half hour or more before they actually step inside their classroom. Many students never use the intended entrance to the school.

In this way, we rely heavily on the teacher to be greeting students at the door once class begins so that there is a well-defined start to school. For some students (and staff), getting to school each day is already a struggle and having a well-defined start or an intended entrance allows there to be a threshold between the outside world and the school. This doesn’t mean that people shed their identities at the door. This doesn’t mean that who you are outside the walls is different than who you are inside the walls. All schools have an underlying culture. In a school where the school leaders and staff have worked hard to foster a caring and learning culture, it is important for people to feel welcome. Their life outside may have a lot of unknowns and may not be safe. Feeling the threshold between outside and the school becomes vital to these students. If you are thinking, we don’t have any students like that- you are wrong. Every school in every part of the world has students who struggle, who have a painful life outside of school. Make sure you are setting a threshold; make sure you have a welcoming, intended entrance for your students, even if they are entering through the garage.

In working on my ISTE Ignite talk with specific requirements: 5 minutes for 20 slides timed out at 15 seconds each, I’m reminded that it is important to choose our words wisely. This isn’t only true for 5-minute talks on a topic that we could discuss for hours but in our day to day work as well. We’ve only got two things to hang our hat on, actions and words. They aren’t both appropriate at all times. We know that actions speak louder than words, but in some venues, people don’t get a chance to see our actions. It’s here that our words take over. So we must be precise and accurate in choosing words to properly represent our viewpoint or represents the actions that we’ve taken.

To make the connection to my previous post on accuracy and precision: accuracy is how closely your words represent your viewpoint and actions, and precision is how consistently you describe these viewpoints and actions. 

If we design a classroom based on what the teacher and students are currently doing instead of what they could be doing, we are missing the mark and limiting their ability to learn and grow. If we want flexible learning spaces, provide desks, chairs, and tables that allow for that shift. If we want engaged, digitally-literate teachers and students, provide the tools that allow for that work. And it’s not just about providing the stuff. While there will always be teachers and leaders who ‘outperform’ their space, we’ve got to provide the instructional strategies, structures, and tools to be able to deliver the type of engaging learning experiences we want all of our students to have. This isn’t limited to dropping off some devices and leaving the room. Structured, job-embedded professional development and leadership development is a must.

If we are the ‘UPS guy’, dropping off a package of new tools and toys, ringing the doorbell, and leaving, we are missing the mark as educational leaders and instructional designers.

There are two types of speakers (or writers) that I appreciate and aspire to one day be:

1) the type that are so knowledgeable that they can speak for hours about their area of expertise or their passion, and

2) those that don’t have to because they are so clear and concise in their message.

If you are ever looking for the latter, check out Seth Godin at https://seths.blog/ – he has so many insightful and thought-provoking posts. One of my all-time favorites is “What’s high school for?“.

The world today is inundated with a deluge of modern technology. The world of education, as a microcosm of the system as a whole, is no different. You can’t read a blog, or a trade magazine, or a newspaper, or go to a conference without risking being washed away by words like augmented reality, 3D printing, drones, artificial intelligence, robotics, coding, programming, and ‘smart’ devices.

The craziest part is that in our classrooms these high-level options are available as a field to study and explore to almost all levels of learners, or at least they should be. Instead, what we see in too many cases is that these courses are reserved for students who excel and don’t need remediation. Students who struggle are often not exposed, widening the opportunity gap. We need to lower the threshold of entry into programs that learn about these advances to prepare ALL of our students for their future. High performing students, students with transportation, and students with money shouldn’t be the only ones who are able to enter this exciting world.

How can you help? Here are a few ideas!

• Offer intro to modern tech/CS courses to lower performers, remove some of the prerequisite barriers
• Replace remedial classes that don’t work with engaging, modern offerings that create a desire to attend school
• Offer before/after school clubs/activity groups WITH transportation
• Find meaningful ways to integrate into the core curriculum and then provide deep support for the teachers
• Celebrate pockets of greatness where it is already happening in your school or community
• Bring it to the masses through summer programs and/or nights/weekends out in the community instead of being tied to the school building

If you’ve got any other great ideas, tag me @dkonopelko on Twitter!

This was the title of a recent email I received from an edtech company looking to break into the education market.

TURNKEY DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP: NO WORK REQUIRED

And the be honest, I’m sure it worked for some people. Their marketing materials were great, the website was pristine. It all appeals to a group I’ll call the ‘no work required crowd’ (NWRC).

Here are a few things I’ve learned in the last decade or so:

• If there’s no work required, there’s probably not much to be gained from the product or program.
• If there’s no work required, it will not be a successful implementation.
• If there’s no work required, it means that there isn’t buy-in for the outcome.
• If there’s no work required, it means someone is probably purchasing this without input from the stakeholders.
• If there’s no work required, it means that the people who are going to be delivering this to their staff and then to the students- they don’t need to learn the material and can’t support the work. They can’t speak with authority to the concepts and ideas contained therein.

There is always an appetite for this type of program, the ‘get rich quick’ scheme for transformation appeals deeply to the NWRC. And this, of course, isn’t only true of digital citizenship programs. This is true of any project worth implementing at any type of organization. At this point, I would prefer to see this as a headline:

EDUCATIONAL TRANSFORMATION: REALLY HARD WORK REQUIRED, BUT IT’S WORTH THE EFFORT

It’s won’t appeal to the NWRC, but it’s worth it for our kids.