On the career trapeze – a leap of faith

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September 19, 2011

Dear Westminster Junior High Faculty and Parents:

Last week, I submitted to Bill Clarkson my letter of resignation from the post of Junior High Principal, effective at the conclusion of the 2011-12 academic year.

While my choice has been difficult, it has been fully mine, and I now feel great peace about the decision. In all honesty, my life and career path have been well illuminated by serving in the principal role, particularly in the most recent two years. I simply know in my head and in my heart that I need a change – my journey is taking another path. I am grateful to Bill Clarkson for the encouragement and understanding he has given me both professionally and personally, and which go with me on this journey.

In my eight years as Junior High principal, I have learned that I cherish the time and involvement with faculty colleagues, students, and parents. The work surrounding educational innovation and enhancement – the people-work that finds me as a team member in the Junior High School professional learning community, as a co-facilitator of Synergy 8, and as a co-leader with the Junior High Guidance Committee – fills my soul and ignites my deepest enthusiasms as an educator and learner. Also, my connections with the Center for Teaching and the Glenn Institute stand out for me professionally. Nevertheless, I believe I can continue – even improve – my leadership in such work by focusing more specifically on these areas of education, while reducing the other administrative responsibilities that specifically come with the demands of serving as a principal at Westminster.

During my spring sabbatical, I began to explore the possibilities of such a path change, even though I did not start my sabbatical with that particular intent in mind. Additionally, my participation in the blogosphere reveals to me daily the myriad possibilities in schools.

In the coming months I will continue to explore my own learning and career path to serve education in that magical place that exists in the crossroads of what ignites one’s passions and where one can make a positive difference in the world. Like the trapeze artist we discussed at a recent faculty meeting, I must let go of my current bar to reach for the next. The timing of my leap-of-faith decision allows me to look for my next job with full integrity, and it allows for the school to maximize its potential for finding the next principal of the Junior High. I can continue for the academic year to participate in much exciting work we have before us. On every level, Westminster is thoughtfully preparing to meet the challenges of the future, growing in its commitment to honoring Jesus Christ and providing the BEST possible education for our young people.

It has been a great privilege to be a part of the Westminster Community.

Sincerely,

Bo Adams
Principal, Junior High School

Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story

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Recently, the History Department at my school has circulated the TED talk from Chimamanda Adichie, The Danger of a Single Story.

The talk is a beautiful challenge for us all to remain diligent about learning the complexity of people – not to rely on the shallowness and incompleteness of a single story. In the talk, Adichie makes numerous statements of profound importance, full of thought-provoking resonance. I include two quotes below:

So that is how to create a single story. Show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.

The single story creates stereotypes. And the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.

Now, Adichie’s message is richly and deeply human. And I mean not to cheapen the message by reflecting on just one of the applications that is presently poignant for me. However, I believe a number of schools are in danger of committing the “danger of a single story” as it relates to the way in which some view global connectedness for young learners. As I explained in my post, Be Safe and Teach Them to Drive, I believe adamantly in keeping children safe. Nevertheless, I also worry about the power of some single messages – some “single stories” – to demonize the effect of the online community on young learners. Certainly, there are dangers, but there are also amazing opportunities to connect with countless teachers and co-learners. We can make our decisions as schools from a perspective overly dominated by fear, or we can make our decisions as schools from a perspective more evenly dominated by positive possibility. Both demand that we protect children and keep them safe, but they are not at all alike in how the perspectives shape how we step and walk down the path – with anxiety-ridden trepidation or with confident thoughtfulness.

A tapestry of perspectives needs to be woven from a diversity of view points and multiple stories – stories rich in visual detail and purposeful imagery. Guiding our students to become global citizens who understand the danger of a single story demands that we do so.

Valuable Time – Invaluable, Shared Insights

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When I first began my role as principal (this current year is my ninth year in this role), I was not systemically connected to the work and learning of the faculty in my care. Ironic maybe, but true. In the ensuing years, I have developed systemic ways to plug into the work and learning of my colleagues. The efforts have resulted in valuable time and invaluable, shared insights.

1. Weekly, I attend at least 25% (1 of 4) of each of the PLC/PLT (professional learning community/team) meetings. Over the course of a year, this provides me with at least 144 hours of time with the teacher teams who explore ways to enhance learning for students and adults alike. I am able to learn side-by-side with those purposefully and collaboratively exploring curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment.

2. I load into my reader the RSS feeds of the blogs from any Junior High faculty member who maintains a blog. What insight into the thinking, questioning, and practicing of my colleagues this provides!

3. I follow my Junior High colleagues on Twitter…if they have an account.

4. Maybe most importantly, I am given the great excuse (“professional responsibility”) to read the goals and self-assessments of the faculty. I do so to prepare for one-on-one or team conferences with each of the 80 Junior High faculty. These conferences provide opportunity for incredible dialogue about that which we are focusing on in our classrooms and learning spaces. These conversations are among my favorite of the year.

Reading goals and preparing for today’s two conferences is what inspired this quick post; reading a few faculty blogs and tweets also contributed to my compelling need to share.

From just these four, integrated, systems approaches to connecting with my faculty team, I am a part of an intricate web of deep thinking, rich inquiry, and innovative practices. I can see connections in people’s work…I can learn of what they are trying and researching to help students…I can be challenged in my own thinking and teaching practices. I can discern how they are using student/course feedback, peer visits, and administrative observations to reflect on their practice and improve their growing professionalism as educators.

‘Tis I who is blessed to be in this web of thinkers, doers, and learners.

Synergy 8 Update – Week 3, Part II…Game Plans

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Synergy 8 is an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized, non-graded, community-issues, problem-solving course for 8th graders at The Westminster Schools. Jill Gough and I co-created the course, and we co-facilitate it, as well. This morning, I posted a summary of our engagement in the “KP Challenge.” Today, we initiated the process of Game Planning – creating game plans to frame and scaffold just about any project work. Ms. Gough and I captured the beginnings of the game plans in a short, one-minute video:

Interestingly, we are using the same “Game Plan” framework with our adult teacher-leaders in our Junior High School PLCs (professional learning communities).[See an example here.]

The Synergy team is utilizing tools that are employed by the pedagogical leaders in our middle school. I find that parallelism so exciting!

Synergy 8 Update – Week 3

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Last week in Synergy 8, our team of 26 established and integrated our triad of foundational course-communication tools – Schoology, Posterous, and WordPress. After all, a learnopolis needs an infrastructure for advanced communication. Additionally, we began utilizing and practicing our #1 tool in Synergy – the observation journal. In the upcoming weeks, our team observations will allow us to develop projects of our choosing that address community needs about which we are curious…and about which we care.

This week, on Monday, August 29, we began Synergy with this short piece:

We wanted to use a compelling hook for enlisting the students in a prototypical project. By engaging this project as an “alpha project” for this semester’s Synergy 8  team, we could “learn by doing” within the context of a project – a project started by last year’s Synergy 8 crew. After watching the video, we coached the team through a process of determining methods and action steps for researching the perceived problem of keeping Malone Dining Hall clean. Based on the team’s gamestorming, we focused on four possible methods: 1) direct observation of Malone, 2) interviews with homerooms regarding KP, 3) interviews with Malone staff and director Robert Nash, 4) student body survey.

On Tuesday, we used Poll Everywhere to explore how we might operationalize our teams. Based on the results, we decided to jump into a “spontaneous lesson plan shift.” If we were playing football…we called an audible. We used the results to walk through eight mediated journal prompts created on the fly. We explored graphical analysis and numeracy, and we examined some misconceptions about what the Poll Everywhere data were telling us. The data revealed some teamwork issues, too, and the team members proposed solutions to the issues. We then implemented a solution and retook the Poll Everywhere survey.

Now, the Synergy 8 team is distributed in sub-teams, and we are working to develop the action steps needed to implement our community problem-solving. Before jumping in too deep, though, we paused to read Dan and Chip Heath’s Switch chapter on “Finding the Bright Spots.” We believe there is so much to learn from the example of Dr. Sternin and the Vietnamese-nutrition project. Now we plan to:

1. Enlist the community as partners in the problem-solving process, instead of swooping in and acting like we have all the answers.

2. Study the bright spots of what’s working and strategize how we can do more of that good stuff.

3. Empower the community to sustain the change needed to improve the situation.

Through this alpha project – the KP Challenge – we are addressing a serious community issue, we are bridging the work begun in Synergy 8 2010-11, and we are modeling a project process that can frame future projects that we undertake in Synergy 8. All the while, we are integrating content and skills that are typically distributed and segregated among various “departments.” We are engaged in a scientific process, we are collecting and analyzing data, we are discussing human psychology and sociology, we are drafting persuasive pieces and developing interview questions and protocols.

I cannot wait to see what tomorrow brings!