The Audience Is Not Captive Anymore

In the presidential debates last fall, President Obama and Mitt Romney sparred repeatedly over the issue of manufacturing jobs.  Each went to great lengths trying to convince the audience (not each other) that they had the magic elixir that would “bring those manufacturing jobs back.”  They both knew that those manufacturing jobs, for the most part, will never again return to human hands.  Everything that can be automated IS being automated.

The same thing is happening in education, at warp speed.  Historically, schools and teachers have had a captive audience in their respective communities.  That paradigm has shifted.  The delivery of academic content (math, science, English, and social studies) is now being automated and packaged in such a way that any person (regardless of age) can sufficiently and inexpensively learn any of those subjects, with nothing more than a digital device and an internet connection. 

That reality begs the question – What then is the role of schools and educators? The best of both have always been focused on goals much more lofty than simply delivering academic content.  Now, however, any school or educator that sees themselves ONLY as content deliverers will find themselves going the way of all those manufacturing jobs – into irrelevance.

Guthrie CSD has rightly chosen to reshape our approach to educating children.  Certainly, delivering academic content is a part of that picture, but it is framed in conjunction with equally important and worthy intentions.  Through the Guthrie Graduate Profile (on our web site), the school and community of Guthrie have chosen to teach our children ways of thinking and ways of behaving, in addition to the academic subjects.  The Guthrie community assumes that our children stand the best chance of being happy, successful, and prosperous citizens if we can equip them with those kinds of future-ready skills.

Education Service Center Region 17 in Lubbock invited a team of Guthrie teachers and students to share elements of the work along those lines at their annual Technology Conference in Lubbock on August 15, 2013.  Guthrie teacher Aleshia Withers and students Kara Briggs and Aubrey O’Neal shared with the audience of 150 educators their projects centered around the school garden (known as Plantopia) and their interactions with adventurer Elia Saikaly who was climbing Mt. Everest last spring and communicating throughout that journey with the Guthrie students.  Guthrie teacher Darren Wilson and student Tito Contreras shared the features of the Black Box Studio in which students work on robotics, computer maintenance, video editing, and multimedia.  Contreras explained how he created his own “first album” of music which he mixed and edited himself.  Finally, Guthrie Virtual School teacher Summer Reel shared how Guthrie spreads its approach to education to every corner of the state of Texas through its online learning model.

Guthrie CSD will launch its first day of school on August 26, 2013.  Classes start at 8:00 a.m. and end at 3:30 each day.  Details about activities and the school calendar can be found at the GuthrieJags.Net web site. The excitement is building, and the learning never ends.

Accelerator or Brake?

I once heard leadership analogized with the act of driving a car. As drivers we make thousands of decisions (most rather unconsciously) about when to press the accelerator and when to press the brake.  In fact, there are thousands (if not millions) of shades of gray between those two acts. 

Knowing how much accelerator or how much brake to apply, and more importantly, when to apply them, is a skill that is learned over time.  Yet each new day as drivers provides us opportunities and challenges that are similar, yet not quite the same, as the ones we have faced before. 

In leadership (just as in driving), we are compelled to speed up and slow down on a continual basis (personally, in our relationships, and with respect to the organization).  And, what evidence do we use to make those decisions to speed up or slow down?  It is the stimuli (the data, the feedback, the results) we encounter.  In driving a car, those stimuli are things such as environmental conditions, the regulatory environment, safety considerations, levels of risk, defensive considerations, desired time of arrival, etc. Very similar kinds of stimuli exist for us in the leadership realm. The underlying assumption is that we are actually paying attention to the stimuli. 

Yet, in leadership (just as in driving) the objective is always the same - to get us (and those in the vehicle/organization with us) to a desired location, safely, within an optimal window of time.  

Districted driving is a huge problem.  Distracted leadership is a bigger one.  Are we pressing the accelerator or tapping the brake? Which one? With how much pressure? How long? (and most importantly) Why?  Sounds like leadership to me.

Want Banality?

We often seek to fix organizational problems, or set organizational agendas, through committees.  Committee work almost always seeks the “average,” like water seeks it’s own level.  

Sticking with that analogy, the result is the same as that between observing a stagnant pond or observing a magnificent waterfall, both the result of water seeking its own level.  

Our policies/procedures in organizations either activate and encourage energy, growth, and the carving of new paths (like the waterfall), OR they promote the status quo, stagnation, and slow but certain death (like the stagnant pond).  

We get to choose…

Butterflies

As we stand on the threshold of significant events we often experience the feeling of "butterflies" in our stomachs and minds. I remember getting that feeling as a high school athlete just before kickoff or tip off.  

That feeling represents an excitement, an anticipation of the upcoming event.  Hours of preparation, conditioning, strategy development, and practice culminate to generate a heightened mental, physical, and emotional state.  In effect, we become hyper-focused and are enveloped in a state of hyper-awareness.  The opportunity to "show our stuff" triggers that crescendo of energy within us.

School is about to begin for another year.  In the school district where I work, today is the day the professionals return to launch the school year, beginning with a couple of weeks of adult learning and preparation.  

Developing children.  What a blessed and honorable vocation. I'm thankful for the opportunity to give our best effort (to "show our stuff") in the interest of giving our students the very best chance of a full, successful, and happy life. 

I'm feeling those butterflies... 

Always, Sometimes, or Never

How would your family, your friends, your colleagues, your customers describe you on a scale of integrity?  

Would they say you:

a) ALWAYS do what you say you’ll do

b) SOMETIMES do what you say you’ll do

c) NEVER do what you say you’ll do  

Funny how large the implications for your happiness (and theirs) and your success (and theirs).  

It’s also kind of invigorating (or frightening) that we actually have so much control over how they might view us in this regard. 

Who Built That?

Learning is a layered, intertwined, interdependent process. It occurs in fits and starts, and refuses to follow a steady trend line. 

There are virtually NO new ideas or thoughts.  Every “new” idea/concept/finding/product is built in one way or another on previous work and knowledge.  

In education circles we describe this concept as constructivism. Our knowledge and skills do not spring solely from some content to which we were exposed (perhaps via a teacher, a mentor, a video, a friend, some software, etc., etc.).  

But what really makes learning “stick” is the context within which we learn it and within which we use it.  Most of us can peel a banana; few of us can tell how, or from whom, we learned that skill. We each “got there” through different pathways. 

Such is all learning.  It’s really one of the coolest things about learning – it’s personal and customized (and too often not intentionally so).  There are some interesting implications here for those of us who would like to teach something important to our children, our grandchildren, our students, our colleagues.  Context matters, A LOT!

Balm for the Blah Stuff

An unfortunate reality of surviving in organizations is that some of the work is simply not very much fun (some of it rather unpleasant, in fact).  

One strategy that serves to mediate these unpleasant but important tasks is to bookend them with tasks that are just the opposite – things that energize and enthuse us.  In Be Excellent at Anything (2010, Schwartz, Gomes, & McCarthy) we are encouraged to use another strategy to enhance our performance:  engage in frequent “resets” during the course of a workday (and life), whether it be in work tasks, exercise, emotional rebalancing, or personal growth. 

The combination of these two survival skills - bookending not-so-pleasant tasks with more energizing ones, and engaging in frequent “resets” - can have a powerful and positive impact on our performance, our psyche, and our effectiveness.