Interview with the boss!

Upon reflection I realized pretty quickly that my day in day out communication with our superintendent is a pretty special opportunity. While I’m involved in conversations that drive the district forward, there is still plenty that I do not know. While I have a long way to go, my understanding of the school business and what it takes to lead a district  is growing each and every day. I also learned in the interview that while you are the superintendent you’re not the most important person in the district. He continued talking about students and student success more so than adults. One sometimes forget being a removed from the campus, that students are the reason we have a job. Every decision we make should be influenced by how it affects student learning. Every department, every purchase, should affect student learning in a positive way. While I have aspirations to be a superintendent, my current role is the most important to date. Curriculum and instruction is vital to becoming a quality superintendent. The superintendent I’m working under truly understands the need for a quality curriculum and instruction department. Moreover, while policy is a force that we have to reckon with, it shouldn’t be the mainstay in our decision-making process. Successful students, quality teachers, and influencing the development of your community is why one comes to work.

Social media and the educational outlet

As an educational leader, working in a district, we often have to speak with people of media. Does your district have a PR person? If so, does that PR person only look at media relations from a newspaper, TV, and other traditional forms. The 5 o'clock news, often becomes the storyline that scares educational leaders to the core. With the advent of other media outlets i.e. social media, the relations piece becomes the Wildwest, and school districts oftentimes have to put on a different hat. Not addressing something, or having it brought to you out of the printer of someone's home, requires educational leaders to embrace 21st-century skills and the outcomes produced. Conversations with teachers students Capson district administration along with parents around social media, and acceptable use of social media becomes very important.

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Is it worth it? Does it make a difference? Time and effort, does it add up to a moral imperative? Educational leadership and the infusion of “21 Century Skills” need to come to the realization that we are over a decade in to the “21 Century”! While the adaptation in to this foreign domain by educators is progressing at a highly calculated, systemically slow, rate. The harsh reality is that blogging and technological skillsets in the hands of students operates within a binary system that adults hold all the “solutions” without a student voice. Moreover, implementation of technology is a fragment of educator’s moral imperative and a $2000 pencil for students alike…. All of that to say that we need to embrace the culture in which we operate and serve. It IS our moral imperative to embrace social media in order to answer the question of WHY. As an educational system, the answer of why we need to complete or embrace a certain something should drive us. Our emotional driver is what will separate the good from great, verses the “what” and “how”…. Till next time!!!!! Is it worth it?