My son is about to become a father. As I reflect upon how that experience changed my own life, I am reminded of this post I wrote as he was about to graduate from high school in 2006.,. Yesterday was Senior Sunday. Tonight was Taylor's basketball banquet - the last of 6 years' worth of football, basketball, and all-sports banquets. Prom is next week and graduation a month away. The days are dwindling in the high school chapter of our baby boy's life, and my time as a proud dad in the bleachers has come to a close. There have been many milestones already in the lives of both my children, and I have committed to being there as they have faced decisions about school, about work, about life and all those little things that occur as life progresses. As Taylor and Emily prepare to have their world rocked, I continue that commitment. I know that they will be wonderfully loving and capable parents, and I am thrilled to be there for this next step in their journey through life.
In the first chapter of The World Is Flat Thomas Friedman identifies what he describes as 3 eras of globalization. Globalization 1.0 was characterized by political and economic relationships among and between governments. Globalization 2.0 was characterized by international collaboration and competition among businesses and corporations. The first half of this era was driven by advances in transportation; the second half by advances in technology, especially telecommunications. The current era, Globalization 3.0, is characterized by individuals having the power to compete and collaborate on a global level.
In one illustration, he uses the example of airline reservations/ticketing. In a globalization 1.0 era, all ticketing is done manually and is on paper. In a globalization 2.0 era, ticketing may be done electronically, but is still controlled by the airline or travel agent. In globalization 3.0 the passenger makes his reservations, pays, and prints his own boarding pass all from the convenience of his own home or mobile device. To borrow from Friedman's analogy, Education 1.0 is characterized by standardization, with a defined curriculum being delivered by a teacher who is the source of content, to students sitting in rows and working individually to complete their assignments with pencil and paper. Education 2.0 may adopt the use of technology - calculators, whiteboards, computer labs, even individual student devices, but the delivery of curriculum, instruction, and assessment are still standardized and highly controlled. Education 3.0 is just beginning to appear in a few isolated instances. One of the ways Education 3.0 might be characterized is by what Gayle Allen describes as The New Pillars of Modern Teaching, where standardized Instruction, Curriculum and Assessment are transformed into Design, Curation, and Feedback, and where some level of control is shifted to the learner. You can join the Region 10 Digital Learning team in exploring this book beginning October 17. For more information go to tiny.cc/R10pillars17. I wrote the following post in 2006. There is not much I would change 11 years later other than to observe that an effective boss must both manage and lead. Management involves things and processes; Leadership involves people. A boss's authority is positional; a boss's influence is relational.
As Labor Day approaches I reminisce a bit about the jobs I have held over the years. The list as I remember it includes several part time and summer jobs, beginning with a paper route in the 6th grade. My mother and sister helped quite a bit for the five years that I had a paper route. It was an evening paper and I had practice after school for whatever sport was in season all through junior high and high school, so my responsibility was primarily summers, weekends, and collecting payment; they did a good job with my paper route... There were also the occasional odd jobs - lawn mowing, fence painting, etc until the spring of my sophomore year when I began working after school and on weekends at the garden center of the area's largest florist. That summer I worked at the nursery owned by the florist for $1.85 an hour - minimum wage was $2 but they had an agricultural exemption to pay less than minimum. The following summer I was set to work again on the farm and had actually worked for a week when I was informed that I would be required to pay union dues. Labor unions have served an important function for the workers in this country, but have at times lost sight of their purpose; this was one of those times - I was a high school kid working a summer job for less than minimum wage, would receive no benefits, and would have to forfeit my first 2 weeks earnings to the union. In the righteous indignation of youth I refused, and no longer had a summer job. A couple of days later I found a job for the summer with a home builder, made more than minimum wage, and spent the summer learning what goes in to building a house, from foundation to roof and everything in between. Beginning the summer after high school graduation I worked as a summer laborer for the gas company each summer until I graduated from college. I also worked in the university media center, at a Bonanza restaurant, and later as a stock boy at a pharmacy while I was going to school. The summer after I graduated from college I worked as a teacher's aide in a migrant head start program and umpired little league baseball. The next school year I got my Masters while working as a graduate assistant and part time as a custodian at a church. After graduating with my Masters degree I paid the bills working in a plastics factory until August, when I started my coaching/teaching career. I worked in a lot of different conditions during all these part time jobs. Some jobs were physically exhausting, some consisted of mind numbing repetitive tasks, most involved interactions with people. There were lessons to be learned in all of them, but I think the most valuable is the importance of how you treat people. Whether employer, employee, customer, or co-worker, to treat others as you would want to be treated is one of the teachings of Jesus that applies to any situation. I also worked for a number of bosses and experienced a wide range of effectiveness and ineffectiveness. The most effective have been those who treat employees with dignity and respect, communicate clearly the expectations and vision of the goals to be accomplished, and to the degree within their control provide the resources or to accomplish the task. And did I mention treat people with dignity and respect? I have been somebody's boss for most of my career; I haven't always done a good job on the communication part, and sometimes have been unable to provide adequate resources, but I have always tried to treat everyone as I would want to be treated - with dignity and respect. I recently had the opportunity to attend the annual Region 10 Teacher of the Year luncheon. More than 100 teachers were recognized as the teacher of the year for their respective districts and charter schools, and the finale was the announcement of the Regional Teacher of the Year. As the festivities progressed there were a couple of reminders of how much teachers matter.
The honorees were accompanied by family members, principals, and district administrators. As we were waiting for the program to begin a superintendent seated at my table called his grown son and then handed the phone to a principal from another school district. It turns out that she had been his teacher in junior high and had not seen or spoken to him for several years; her joy at getting to speak with him was contagious. Part of the program consisted of a slide show consisting of a photo of each Teacher of the Year accompanied by a recorded comment by the teacher. What was striking about the comments was that there was no mention of test scores or curriculum or covering content. What each of these teachers commented on (independently of each other) was the relational nature of teaching; getting to know students and their needs, helping them develop their potential, helping them develop curiosity, character, a love for learning. The tone was set by remarks from the outgoing Regional Teacher of the Year who quoted Maya Angelou I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. As another school year begins the list of questions above from ASCD (thanks @kklaster for sharing) serves as a reminder: relationships matter. What is it that you hope to accomplish? Not what you hope to measure as a result of this social media strategy/launch, but to actually change, create or build? He was writing about a marketing strategy, but it struck me how strongly his description resembles assessment practices, particularly standardized tests. Standardized assessments are easy to calibrate, arbitrary, easily administered, and can be mistakenly confused with the purpose of education. The purpose of our work is not to raise test scores but to grow learners. Yet, how many dollars are spent on testing? How much time and energy is spent on preparation for testing? How many kids are sorted and labeled as a result of testing? For all the cost - financial, emotional, time, and energy - how much does testing contribute to learning? We expend so much attempting to measure progress that we actually impede real learning. Godin ends his post with the following statement: System innovations almost always involve rejecting the standard metrics as a first step in making a difference. We may not have the option of rejecting standardized tests, but unless we reject the notion that test scores are what matter, we won't be able to focus on the metrics that actually make a difference. |