leading – Jonesytheteacher's N + 1

I’m making an effort to blog more often. In fact, my aim this year is to set a goal of one post per month and just reflect on what I’ve experienced in the job, rather than just lobbing something out there when that something happens.
Mind you, I have a habit of taking tangents, so who knows what will happen.

So the school year has started, and I’m feeling under pressure (RIP David and Freddie)…

I’ve got a bit on my plate this year, and the more I think about it, the more it worries me. What I most worry about is, as a “leader” in my school, I find myself moving further away from what it is I love so much about teaching – working meaningfully with the kids in a classroom, and having fun.

I’ve noticed that my attention is being shifted by forces outside my control. Don’d get me wrong. I’m all for big picture vision and whole school outlooks, and this has become more important at my school where we face pressure from independent schools with respect to maintaining student (and staff) numbers.
My leadership role continues to expand. I’m leading a BYOD project; I’m heavily involved in in our feeder schools transition program; I’m in charge of a faculty of 6; I oversee the school Sport program and I’m part of the professional development team.

Not to forget my direct work with the kids – I’m teaching a HSC subject and 5 other classes. I also want to have a bit of fun with some extra curricular projects – a games building club, and a transition project that involves building a virtual copy of our school in Minecraft.

There’s a lot of “I’s” in that – I don’t like lists or self promotion so I, weirdly, feel awkward even mentioning what I do. As if it’s almost an excuse or justification for a whinge. I don’t like whingers either. But it sets the context for why I don’t feel exactly ready to leap into the new year. Bron Stuckey, someone I admire for her passion and ideas around games and education, posted this on Facebook and it sums up pretty much how I feel at the moment

I have lots running through my head at the moment. I know I will have to fulfil my systemic responsibilities – that’s my job. If I don’t – I don’t have one. Teaching and learning is an inherent part of that, but I feel I’m being distracted by systemic requirements that are now compulsory. The formal workload and responsibility for “middle managers” in this area has suddenly increased. That is scaring me.

What scares me even more is that school will not be the fun and exciting place it’s proven to be in the past because of the hard fun some extra curricular projects have provided. I honestly see that hard but enjoyable part of my job withering as time goes on. And I don’t like that idea. At all.

I am focussed on making some changes to the way I go about teaching so that my day to day contact with the kids maintains it’s appeal, for if I lose that, I lose the will to teach. Playing with 3D GameLab will be my fun learning focus this year, making it as authentic as possible. The importance of connecting what I do in class with the real world is a priority, so balancing course outcomes with real life skills is the aim. I’ll probably explain that a bit better with examples as we move through the year. Hopefully.

One thing I can guarantee is that I’ll be very judicious in the way I interact with Twitter. I am becoming increasingly disillusioned with the #eduTwitter community and I find some aspects of it greatly irritate me with the vacuousness and self promotion of it all. I like new ideas – they are essential for growth and sustainability. But what I’me seeing are people rehashing other people’s existing IP as their own, claiming credit and demanding people broadcast their greatness. Twitter has become the echo chamber it always threatened to be, and it’s getting harder to sift to the dross to find the diamonds. Maybe I’m getting old, pining for the old days (ha! – 2 years ago) when collaboration and sharing actually came without catches or muffins.

Anyway, maybe I’ll see you out on the Interwebs. I’ll be the bloke with his head down, bum up.

In the years that I’ve tried to lead doing new or interesting things at school the same lesson always comes back to me – you can’t just “build it and they will come”.
What I mean is – you can’t just build a Moodle, or grant access to Google Apps, or start an Edmodo class, or give out a device without some established meaning or purpose. It’s the same with books and pencils – just giving them out only suggests that they’ll be used, but the way they could be used remains a mystery to the people that get them.
Until you add the purpose.
Hopefully the purpose will be sound, and sound in many ways. Pedagogically, relevant and engaging to kick off the list. These require thought. Planning. An understanding of students, settings and goals or outcomes like assessment or wider community engagement.
I saw a perfect example today as I sat in McDonalds enjoying a frozen Coke with my wife on a stinking hot day.

We’ve all seen QR codes before. They were trumpeted as the next big thing in making information available to smartphone savvy people. “Just stick them out there and the kids will love them”. The trouble was, their success was dependent on a few variables – you needed a smartphone, you needed a QR scanning app, you needed an internet connection (or at the very least a local wireless server). But most importantly, you needed a reason beyond a clever parlour trick or gimmick. I’ve seen some clever uses (instruction sheets for gym classes, orienteering courses and daily notices) but the “completeness” of the McDonald’s implementation (regardless of how you view their junk food culture and advocacy of wasteful consumerism) is neat, purposeful and a case study in design.

It involves a dedicated app that allows you to order and buy stuff, information about their range, a built in QR code scanner to jump queues, hints at freebies and bonuses – couple that with a motivated audience with a need for fast service and you have the package – innovation, audience and purpose. It addresses that idea of an ubiquitous application of innovation, not just technology. The ever present, Swiss army knife of innovation, so to speak. Something that does many things and potentially becomes indispensable.

Obviously this is a high end example, backed by a multinational’s coin and a well groomed clientèle. But it certainly made me think about school and how we roll out innovation. We have a clientèle that could benefit from innovation in our teaching, but the gap we have to bridge first is the “why” rather than the “how”. We have the “how” nailed – tools abound for us to use. A meaningful “why” is a lot trickier.

Jonesytheteacher's N + 1

Tag Archives: leading

“Tomorrow gets me higher”

Thinking “why”, not “how”