Philidor Percussion Ensemble

As a cultural arts outreach to area middle school students, Philidor brought its percussion and teaching talent to the WCHS auditorium in September. In case you missed it, here’s a photo story of the performance.

NCVPS Update, Sept 25

North Carolina Virtual Public School may have jumped out of the gate this summer and fall with irrational exuberance. Imminent challenges soon surfaced. Many schools and students were left scrambling. NCVPS is making decisive moves to correct the course.

Today, we had our first advisory board meeting under the new administration of NCVPS. The challenges of the rollout were addressed head-on. I left the meeting with renewed confidence in NCVPS as an alternative education delivery resource for North Carolina students.

State Superintendent June St. Clair Atkinson released a memo on NCVPS today. In it, she reaffirms the commitment of NCVPS to provide 24/7 learning opportunities. She alludes to the evolving course catalog and the fit of NCVPS with the North Carolina High School Athletic Association. She reiterates that local schools will be responsible for textbooks.

NCVPS is a service to North Carolina Public Schools. At the moment, NCVPS has 5700 students taking 46 courses. The spring course catalog is scheduled for release in early November.

To ensure quality in the future, NCVPS is building in department chairs and content specialists. It is working to streamline its communication and grade monitoring processes. It hopes to be textbook-free in two to three years.

Students and parents alike must be made aware of the risk and reward of on-line classes in general. It may be a good idea for schools to have a sign-off sheet for NCVPS students in the future.

I am envisioning a sheet that speaks up front to drop dates, grade monitoring, cheating, materials and textbooks, rigor, and credit recovery. Students, parents, and schools have responsibilities in these areas. Not addressing and signing off on these responsibilities up front will yield consequences down the road.

Superintendent Atkinson summed it up rather neatly in today’s meeting:

NCVPS is trying to promote independent learning in a somewhat dependent school culture. It is aiming for flexibility in a rigid public school structure. It is begging for 21st century processes and policies in a system mired in the twentieth century.

Folks, NCVPS is not only here to stay . . . it is here to flourish.

The Peloton and Good Organizational Karma

Early this morning I jotted down some thoughts at LeaderTalk on the Power of the Peloton. In it I ask some questions that help extend the metaphor of the peloton to organizational life.

So how did this morning’s ride go?

Six riders (five regulars and one new guy) met at daybreak. We agreed upon a course—forty-three miles at a brisk pace. And we set out.

Early in the ride, the new guy was charging too hard up a hill. I had to let him know that we would have a rider or two crack at that pace and that we would need everyone over the long haul. So he adjusted his speed to keep the group in tact.

Soon, though, one rider cracked (which in cycling parlance means he fatigued beyond comeback). That rider informed a rider who dropped back that he had already run six miles this morning, and his legs were shot. He would spare the group and drop out.

From there, the five of us picked up the tempo and finished strong. We timed forty miles, averaging a tad over 21 mph. The power of the peloton—riders taking turns out front—allowed the group to finish faster and stronger than had any of us gone the route solo.

With a few miles to go, we pulled off the main road onto a beautiful beach drive. We powered down to a conversational pace and reflected on our successful ride. As we rode side by side, instead of in a line, we laughed and drank . . . Gatorade.

So, what’s all this got to do with organizational life?

1. We effectively and efficiently communicated our common goal.
2. We indoctrinated the unfamiliar with group norms.
3. A team member who was holding back the group graciously dropped off. That doesn’t mean he is out of the group or won’t come back. It just means he has to think about how he can be best prepared next time out.  (We would have adjusted our pace to keep him in the pack over the duration if he had chosen to stay in, but we would not have accomplished the same finishing results.)
4. We flew like the wind.
5. We reflected and celebrated our success.

We have been doing this for years.

The Power of the Peloton

It’s 5:30 a.m. on Saturday.  While my household slumbers, I’m gearing up for my Saturday morning bike.  Anywhere from six to ten of us will meet at  daybreak and pedal our bikes for forty to seventy miles depending on circumstances.

This from Knowmoremedia.com:

One thing that fascinates me is the power of the peloton. If the peloton organizes itself, they will almost invariably catch the breakaway riders. The peloton is just too strong. Surely there is little more disheartening to a breakaway rider than to look over his shoulder and see the massive peloton charging up his back.

And the rest of this story can be found in my latest contribution to LeaderTalk.

Instructional Leadership

School administration in a large high school is a wild bear. A mile a minute is the pace, and managerial demands never cease. But management and leadership are different animals.

Here’s a nifty self-test on the leadership/management dichotomy. (Of course, it pays to be both a leader and a manager.)

Management tends to be more concerned with preservation of the status quo.  Leadership is more concerned with the continuous improvement of people rather than processes.

Management in a school has as much to do with the very necessary bus routes and grade reporting as anything else. Leadership in a school has as much to do with quality instruction and thriving culture as anything else.

Check out LeaderTalk’s Making Time for Instructional Leadership for what other school leaders across the country are currently saying on the subject.

I have spent the majority of my career involved in innovative teaching and learning practice. So it was with a great sense of accomplishment today that I did my first full teacher observation of the year.

As I sat in the class, observing and making notes, I felt at home.

I enjoyed the respectful professional dialog with the teacher as we de-briefed. (Professional discourse is the breeding ground for good ideas.) I look forward to seeing and hearing more teachers and adding value during observation cycles.

A couple of other instructional areas are emerging on my radar screen. The English department is key. The first challenge we have there is in writing. That’s my background and my strength. The other is the Senior Project. I have been with this project since the beginning in our school system, and I am fortunate to be working with Senior Project trailblazer Nancy Reynolds.

I am the quasi-mentor to one student, Nick, who is interested in cinematography and Reusable Learning Objects as his Senior Project. This is one to watch as he creates a Reusable Learning Object repository for the Senior Project initiative at West Carteret.

And the kids with the Led Zep tees continue to ask me to sponsor their guitar club . . .

No surprises here: I still flex my tech zeal. Since everyone is doing Animoto, check out the 22-second French Chef Animoto I put on our French Teacher’s assignment page.

Frenetic Pace

Two weeks in as an assistant principal of a high school with close to 1300 students, I am coming up for air. After close to a decade away, I am back in the world of students with unbridled energy, creativity, and passion.

Now the trick is to get them to apply some of that towards their classes.

I have spent the first two weeks learning the ropes. A lot of “law and order” type chores . . . girl drama, mad mamas, f-bombers . . . a slew of sporting events . . . the five-minute lunch break . . . and good intentions for instructional leadership.

Add to that the time spent getting students in and out and in again of North Carolina Virtual Public School, and to say the least, the jumpstart has been frenetic and invigorating.

This coming week, I will start teacher observations. Being techno-savvy, I’m sure I will proceed as in this video— Walkthroughs and Learning Objectives.

I anticipate working with the English department to help crystalize a focus on writing. The test scores say we—and the rest of the state—need improvement there. And the school faculty is in the early stages of building Professional Learning Communities to attack such problems. So, here is where the real excitement lies.

My move from a Central Services position (Director of Many Things) to a school-based position is a long-term commitment. One of the drivers is the interplay between theory and application. I fully enjoyed and benefited from the research, reflection, and writing associated with centralized leadership. Over the last three years, my blog has flourished with evidence of that growth experience.

Now, I have the growth opportunity to add my capital in a real school setting. It will not happen overnight, but it will happen.

As I calculated the risk on this career move, I determined that my affect for reshaping high schools would be greater felt were I embedded in an actual context then were I to continue pontificating from on high as so many of us in the educational blogosphere are wont to do.

Why I Take Virtual High School Courses

I had scheduling conflicts.

I wanted to get in another AP course.

I wanted to be competitive for college.

I feel like I am better prepared because I know when everything is due. It has made my study skills and time management a whole lot better.

I like being able to work at my own pace so I am not crunched for time when I don’t need to be.

Here is the high school senior’s own words in a four-minute audiocast.

NCVPS is the Future Workplace

ABC News reports on a work world with “no commute, no corporate headquarters and perhaps not even an office in the physical world at all.” The 2-minute video clip says it all . . .

Having a big desk as a sign of status with lots of family photos and you know, carpeting that’s fluffy and nice, that is a vision of the past,” said Hoffman, executive vice president of Accenture.

42 percent of IBM’s 350,000 employees rarely come into an IBM office.

With no corporate headquarters, if you need a work space, you reserve it like a hotel room — checking in and out at a kiosk.

This forecast presents a challenge to traditional high schools that are charged with preparing students for the future workplace. That is . . . unless we embrace, promote, even mandate on-line learning as part of a comprehensive high school educational experience.

In our school system, we have around 40 students taking 22 on-line classes through the North Carolina Virtual Public High School. The one early guarantee I am coming away with is that these classes are rigorous. It has been an eye-opener for some students.

The on-line educational model is fairly new terrain for these students and their guidance counselors. I applaud them for “jumping off the cliff.” I am confident that our local support team and the provider support team can enhance their experience for a safe landing.

This NCVPS experience will give these trailblazing students a leg up in their quest for a place in the future of work.

For more, check out the News-Times article on Virtual Courses.

Catching up with Keough

Many Carteret County instructional technology facilitators recall last year’s Audacity training with Patrick Keough of Carteret Community College. His energy, passion and creativity are not soon forgotten. Patrick’s latest is a 9-minute You Tube video called “What is Art.”

How are we doing with video this year? Anybody using video clips as a substitute for mini-lectures, as Patrick has done? With the availability of digital video cameras and the pending arrival of 264 data projectors, this seems like the direction to head.

I signed up for an account with School Tube. I’ve been able to embed School Tube video in my web pages, as with this sports short. No luck yet with embedding School Tube into WordPress or Edublogs. Help!

Dispersed Discretion on the Wane

In the latest Newsweek, Jeffrey Adler sheds light on “Super Crunchers,” the new book by Ian Ayres. Ayres is an econometrician and law professor at Yale. He contends that “objective, data-based decision making, made possible by a virtually inexhaustible supply of inexpensive information” will replace human expertise and intuition.

Increasingly, jobs that used to call for independent judgment, especially about other people, are being routinized and dumbed down.

Banks no longer care about a loan officer’s assessment of whether a borrower is a good risk; everything they need to know is in the numbers.

Baseball managers increasingly judge prospects by quantifiable statistics, not their drive or hustle.

Clearly, educators in the era of NCLB risk being induced into a numbers-game frenzy that fits this broader trend. “Did you know” it’s current fodder for Karl Fisch over at the Fischbowl?

The school year has hardly begun, and already school systems are aswim in numbers as last year’s high-stakes testing results churn out to the public. In response, collaborative school teams are conjuring up research-based instructional remedies to try to make this year’s numbers add up.

The more synergistic our teams, the greater our consensus building—then the stronger our remedies.

“Not with a Bang: Civilization’s Accelerating Challenge” (Brown, 2007) backlashes our information culture. The author points to a growing belief in business that we are facing a talent shortage. Businesses, like schools, are looking to build teams rather than perk individuals. This team focus is not without its own challenges:

One apparent problem is the innate competitiveness of those who are both capable and ambitious. They not only want to win, but they also want to get recognition, reward, and advancement for winning.

So companies that want to go the team way—or feel they need to because of a shortage of talent—will have to find ways to meld the star and team systems. This is the problem that those who run athletic teams seem to struggle with endlessly.

If team-building is the answer, then people skills are paramount. In an information-rich age, people who are wise and effective processors of information gain value. Leaders who demonstrate that “their instincts are more accurate than their reading of test data” gain value. Managers who “give more thought to the increasingly complicated nature of human-machine interfaces” gain value. People, make that teams, who demonstrate adaptability gain value.

Efficiency—doing things right—should not be the goal. Instead, it should be effectiveness—doing the right things.

The data on student performance gets right granular these days. Strong teams in schools can use that data to focus on the unique challenges of students. From there though, we should buck the broader trend.

Our solutions should remain human relationship driven, not data driven.