School Leadership Tools and Resources, Advice and humor

To pass along to school guidance counselors when talking about career planning and post secondary school plans. Something to consider. But the students should also know what it really looks like...

from the article: "To the data scientists themselves, the job is certainly less sexy than it’s being made out to be. Josh Willis, a senior director of data science at Cloudera, says most of the time it involves cleaning up messy data—for example, by putting it in the right columns and sorting it.

“I’m a data janitor. That’s the sexiest job of the 21st century,” he says. “It’s very flattering, but it’s also a little baffling.”

I can see the meme now...

Data Scientist...what friends think I do, what my parents think I do, what I tell my friends what I do, and what I really do...

This one makes me stop and think. How often does it seem that you could substitute the word "parent" with "teacher"? Sometimes, we teachers imagine how great we would be as teachers if it wasn't for certain students...

referred to by Gene Bellinger of System Thinking World. Not the full article, but has a nice introduction. Maybe applicable to the chages education is encountering? Something to think about. 

This seems to be a great resource for dialogue, deliberation and public engagement. This topic interests me because, for all of the training I have attended and participated in, I have rarely, if ever, encountered this topic. It needs to be explored academically and the skills need to be learned and practiced towards mastery. It may be a trend in only a few school districts, but we often need to promote problem solving with the public. Public engagement is needed for discussing program offerings, student needs, goals, maybe even cafeteria menus.  

Reasons given for the growing group of activists pushing back against the Common Core. (from the article)

1. “Top-down” Adoption
On both the right and left, some oppose the top-down, elitist way in which the new standards were adopted,” says Bob Schaeffer, public education director at FairTest, the National Center for Fair and Open Testing. “The initial wave of acceptance was fueled by a strong promotional campaign coupled with federal government incentives. To prevent rollback, proponents will have to show that the Core is somehow different than the previous remedies for the nation’s educational problems.”

2. Testing Overload 
The Common Core involves competency-based, or on-demand, testing, which proponents say will build more accountability into the system and give a truer picture of students’ actual learning. Opponents say more testing is not the answer. “Many new tests will be required without an appreciable improvement.… The two consortiums designing Common Core tests must demonstrate the increase in the number of exams … will improve school quality, not further undermine it,” Schaeffer says.

3. Incomplete Resources 
Some opponents may not disagree with the fundamental reasoning behind Common Core adoption. But they say their states or districts lack the necessary resources to meet the Core’s rapid implementation schedule, including developing the new teaching materials and tests and the infrastructure to support them.

Does this apply to educational settings as well?

We receive conflicting advice on why we should not apologize. But the reasons listed for why we often choose not to apologize helps explain a few things about how insecure people feel. We choose to win an arguement more than we care if we are right. Effectiveness is another loss in such exchanges where sometimes winning the battle is losing the war. Especialy, when the war is a complex or wicked problem.

I like the connections made to Toffler's description of the family, learning, and work in the different ages and eras. The hetarchy was something I had been exposed to when reading Michael Maccoby. Some of the statements are kind of empty though. Basically the same as every society era encountered--don't follow, lead. Get rich and be successful hasn't changed either from each era to the next. It's just that communication and sharing of information is faster and we are increasingly more integrated into our machine environments. Systems are starting to learn us just as we are learning our systems. We need to become system thinkers--that's missing from this presentation. 

We educators have difficulties expanding our horizons, networking for real professional growth. Maybe this is true for people, in general. After all, the author indicates what almost all of us believe, that “Every single person we choose to associate with brings out a different side of us. Therefore, the more diverse our group of friends is, the more dynamic and flexible we become as an individual.” But the proof is "in the pudding." We don't do this, really. there is even a name for our behavior: the similarity attraction effect. The author provides excellent instruction, "Be interested in people in general. Everyone has their own stories and peculiarities. When you approach everyone with the intent to get to know them and understand them, you’ll often find that most people are pretty damn awesome in their own way."