Tag Archives: blogging

It is about relationships and balance

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I hope I can keep this short and powerful. In the past few days, I have experienced a number of thoughts that weave together for me – all about the interesting intersection of relationships, technology, and learning. Let me see if I can draft a thesis statement:

As a learner in the 21st century, I strive to find balance among face-to-face relationships and virtual-tool connections, and I realize that both can enhance or conflict with the other. I am the fulcrum for my balance, and I will be in a state of dynamic equilibrium, not static equilibrium.

Through 21st century tools (like Twitter, WordPress, Google Reader, etc.), I can co-build a rich network of “pen pals.” Yet, I need to be mindful of not having my nose pointed at a screen at the expense of those humans most closely situated around me currently. It is a balance. Picture a scale adjusting to equilibrium as different weights are added and deleted from each side – the face-to-face side and the virtual-tool side.

For almost all of my life, I have been a runner. [Sorry for jarring shift. I promise this is a connected thread of thought…at least to me.] Since I was 9 years old, I have run most days of my life. At various points in my life, though, I have experienced ebbs and flows…ups and downs. Like a balance adjusting. And it has felt cyclical. Some years, I have trained to the point of being super competitive (in 2007, I was the fourth ranked short-distance triathlete in the state of Georgia). At those times, a middle-distance run for me is about 15 miles at a pretty fast clip. But I teeter close to over doing it. And the time comes at the expense of other life pursuits. This week, I struggled to run a mile. Seriously. I have been neglecting my running life for several months – the longest bout of that I have experienced since third grade when I started running 31 years ago. My son wanted to run a one-mile fun run, so I dusted off the shoes last Monday morning. I walked for 12 minutes and ran for 8 minutes. That was the entire work out. I was sore, sore, sore the next day. I had neglected a good balance of exercise. And I ridiculously thought that starting “training” on Monday would help me for a Saturday event. Thank goodness it was a Kindergarten mile. But I learned a valuable lesson…again.

I am blessed to have a powerful memory of when my running has gone overboard and when it has been neglected entirely. SO, I know from experience that I can get back to longer distances with less soreness, but I have to practice and be consistent. I have trained on that route before, and there is an implementation dip (as Michael Fullan adeptly explains in a number of his books) when I start doing something new, or even relatively new. And I need to be mindful not to do too much, too soon. And I need to stay mindful of not letting running – or whatever the action is – become my single pursuit that runs my life rather than the other way around. I am the fulcrum. I decide when to run – not too little or not too much, but just right. Likewise, I decide when the mobile technology is turned on and turned off – not too little and not too much, but just right. I decide.

Several colleagues have written this week about the delicate balance of social networking and face-to-face relationship-building. I encourage you to read them – I am pasting them in below. The balance is like running. If we want to be healthy, we have to find a balance. If we do too much or too little of one activity, we will get out of balance. When we strive to get that balance back, we will experience some soreness – one way or the other. But the soreness helps us calibrate our efforts. It is formative assessment and feedback about getting that equilibrium just right – in this case, the equilibrium among building a PLN and enhancing professional practice AND sustaining and improving those face-to-face relationships that are essential, critical, and vital.

It’s About Building Relationships | PCHSdirectorBLOG http://davemeister.net/2011/04/16/its-the-relationships-stupid/

Losing humanity? http://lynhilt.com/losinghumanity/

April 15, 2011: Jason Mollica – the3six5 http://the3six5.posterous.com/april-15-2011-jason-mollica

My Principal Doesn’t Need to Blog, Metanoia http://www.ryanbretag.com/blog/?p=2275

A Fair Comparison https://itsaboutlearning.wordpress.com/2011/04/15/a-fair-comparison/

10 Minutes to Blog – A Random List of Learnings Today https://itsaboutlearning.wordpress.com/2011/04/15/a-fair-comparison/

What connections do you find? How’s your balance?

10 minutes to blog – a random list of learnings today

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1. I am grateful for the place and the people that I call “work.” My school allowed me a five week sabbatical to do some important things: 1) further my study of the future of schools and schools of the future, 2) temporarily reduce my typical work week from 75-80 hours to about 35 hours so that I could spend more time with reflection about 21st century learning and, more importantly, my wife and two sons. By doing so, the school sent a powerful message to me and others – you are important to us…your health and happiness and passions for learning are important to our work as a school and a community of people and learners. Many people stepped into the gap for five weeks so that I could take this opportunity and make the most of it. A host of people did more than they even usually do so that I could have this sabbatical. Unboundary hosted me as a 40-year-old intern, and several people welcomed me to their schools (Lovett, Trinity, Bay School, and St. Gregory) for extended visits and observations! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

2. It is an adjustment to return to work and the routine of the usual after a rare and special opportunity to do the unusual. Also, it is virtually impossible to summarize my five week sabbatical in the time and space that many folks want me to do so. I am so thankful for those who have read my blog, posterous, and tweets during my sabbatical…we have been in an ongoing, virtual conversation that enabled some richer face-to-faces today! Thank you readers and commenters and encouragers. And thanks to the fellow sabbatical-experiencer who gave me much good advice today! Invaluable!

3. Saying “welcome back” and seeking out a newly returned person are critically important. I so appreciated the folks who hugged my neck today and, at least, seemed to be glad that I was back. I can get so caught up in my busy-ness that I do not do a consistently good job of this when other people return from an absence – a family medical leave, a conference, a wedding or funeral, etc. – and today I got a taste of how important this human connection is. It feels good to be welcomed back and asked about the time away! I love my faculty, and I need to make sure I show it. This is one important way. Also, I particularly appreciated the folks who simply came to say hello and talk…no work-related question/problem to ask when done with the chit-chat. They just wanted to talk about my time and experience and theirs. I need to do this same for others more often.

4. People need to slow down. Years ago, in the tunnel at Westminster, on my way back from lunch, Lauren Martindale (a former student of mine and now a many-years graduate) said, “Mr. Adams, slow down. You always seem like you are in such a hurry. You would be much cooler if you reduced your speed from place to place.” Today, during re-entry, I remembered Lauren’s sage advice to me. Many of us are too hurried – trying to do too much. We should teach less, learn more…moan less, celebrate more…hurry less, enjoy more. My sabbatical helped me get re-balanced – like good car maintenance – and I hope I can maintain that deliberate, careful choice of pace and number of irons in the fire. Choosing the “right” number of things on one’s plate means we can do more (all?) of them with more greatness. The more we try to bite off – the faster we try to get through the tunnel – the more we miss opportunities to really understand some important things in life.

5. My four year old cried last night and tonight that my sabbatical was over. “Daddy’s ‘sabbitical’ is over…I wish he was still on it!” That’s good feedback. The future-oriented feedback that John Hattie explains is the real, critical kind of feedback.

6. I am so blessed to work with those I worked with today. We had an in-service, professional development day today. We structured it as a “FedEx” day with differently structured time for people to get together in self-assigned groups to collaborate on innovative ideas and educational possibilities. In the morning, I worked with my PLC-F (professional learning community facilitators) team to brainstorm some lesson study possibilities around PBL (project-based learning, problem-based learning, passion-based learning, place-based learning) and current events. It was so fun to work this way and have the gift of time and willing collaborators and creative thinkers. Then, I got to do it again in the afternoon with a team of 6th and 8th grade teachers of students in math (I meant to write it that way – not “teachers of math”). For a few minutes this morning, our whole faculty interacted and engaged with our developing vision statement for learning in this century, and then I had the good fortune to work on two teams who are taking this vision seriously…taking ownership of it…wanting to roll up sleeves and do the work that will narrow the gap between our current reality and our vision. SO EXCITING! Those who took initiative and advantage of today surely got a lot and gave a lot!

7. According to a post from a colleague and blogger I admire greatly, I am a scientist! SEE HERE FOR CHARACTERISTICS THAT I USE IN MY WORK AS AN EDUCATOR!

8. My PLN is a great source of wisdom and encouragement – I received the following email moments ago. It was titled “new lenses,” I think after a blog post I recently completed for edu180atl. I was not supposed to write for 4-8-11, but I would do just about anything for my tribe of fellow educators on Twitter and the blog-osphere. And the idea for the post came from a blogger that I follow and have never met. Being connected is the way to be. Working alone, without a tribe, is not my preferred way to work…and I think not the best way to work for anyone. Have a tribe!

Bo,

As I was channeling my inner-origami artist and simultaneously figuring out how to get a little bit of TED Stage magic, I was thinking of you as you embark on this new beginning. You know how much I LOVE Maxine Greene’s Teaching as Possibility: A Light in Dark Times, but this especially resonated as I reread her words this evening:

Sometimes, introduced to a reflective or a learning community, someone will become aware of the dearth of understanding in her/his own domain, of the blocks to knowing and to questioning. Sometimes, a teacher or a relative or a friend may pay heed, as does the singer Shug Avery in The Color Purple (Walker, 1982). She suggests to Miss Celie a way of being without “that old white man” in her head, actually a way of becoming free. Celie writes: “Trying to chase that old white man out of my head. I been so busy thinking bout him I never truly notice nothing God make. Not a blade of corn (how it do that?) not the color purple (where it come from?) Not the little wild flowers. Nothing” (p. 25). She, too, made aware of alternatives, can discover that “she feels like a fool” because of what she was never enabled to notice and about which she had never asked.

I love that your sabbatical enabled you to notice the big and the small things. To shed light on all that is possible.

Keep up the fine work, Bo.

9. I started writing about an hour ago. I thought I had NO time to write tonight, but my relatively recent commitment to blogging has caused me to practice writing-to-think and feeling positively compelled to take “just 10 minutes” to get something recorded about today. I am glad that I made the time to write and to think. Also, blogging is just different than the writing I did for years that only I could see – creating the potential that even one reader may comment on a post is a kind of art and potential energy and collective-thinking invitation that I have grown to find invaluable…even if no one comments. (But a comment – of just about any nature – is so great!)

10. I am very excited to read the next edu180atl post. When will it get here in my reader?!

Threads of a Braided Cord…and Myelinating my Network

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This morning, I read about 30 blog posts from my feed reader. How blessed I feel to be connected to so many powerful thinkers – working hard to figure things out – via Twitter, Google Reader, WordPress, etc. Are you a school leader? You don’t need a formal title to be such, of course! How’s your PLN? Is your personal learning network full of ever-expanding nodes held together by evolving silks of connectivity? Are you taking risks, reflecting out loud, writing with your students, and getting up after every fall?

In the past 20 years, we have learned so much about the brain…about how synapses that “fire together, wire together.” Since I began tweeting and blogging, I have magnified the sparks that are firing and wiring my brain. And my social network is a professional network that functions similarly to the biology of my brain. I am grateful for my co-learners who are helping me to myelinate my thinking about schools of the future and the future of schools.

Of the 30 blog posts I read this morning, three in particular seemed to weave together for me. To write is to see what we think…and to write requires active reflection…and developing these habits means making errors and mistakes from which we can learn and grow and improve. Here are the three links to the braided cord of my morning’s thinking…my most recent myelination. What’s wiring your brain? Are you practicing writing, reflecting, and getting up after a fall? Who is in your neural network? Who is challenging you and spurring you to grow?

“Everyone’s a writer. NWP taught me that,” from Bud Hunt and the PLP network

“A Lesson in the Importance of Reflection,” from Jeff Delp (@azjd)

“Fall down seven times, get up eight: The power of Japanese resilience,” from Garr Reynolds

NOTE: Some people fear the “opening up” of so many feeds. I often hear, “I have enough to do without adding Twitter and RSS reads to my list.” If you dare, look at what Bill Ferriter and John Burk have written lately about how social networking saves you time. And never be afraid to “prune.” When I get overwhelmed by my feeds, I sometimes click on “mark all as read” and start with a clean slate. What about all that stuff I am missing? I would have missed it permanently if they were never in my feed reading. I – ME – I get to be in control of my reading…it does NOT control me. Take a chance today…try Twitter…start a blog. You will fall down, but you should get back up. Find the threads of a braided cord for your thinking. Provide some threads for others. That’s truly what learning is all about!

Tearing Down Walls

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We live in an increasingly connected world. Yet barriers to connection continue to operate in schools. Kathy Boles at Harvard has described school as the egg-crate culture. With some exceptions, teaching can be an isolated and isolating profession, unless teachers and administrators work to be connected to other learners. It is far too easy to go into one’s classroom and teach…relatively alone…siloed. Classes right next door to each other, much less across a building or campus, often have no idea what is going on outside the four walls in which they are contained. And departmentalization makes for an efficient way to deliver content in neat, organized packages, but departmentalization is not the best parrot of the real, inter-connected, messy-problem world.

What can we do to step closer to modeling and experiencing real, inter-connected problem-addressing?  How do we communicate with each other when we are assigned classrooms where we can be siloed?  What could greater connectivity look like for learners of all ages?

Recently, learning partners Jill Gough and Bo Adams submitted a roughly made prototype of a three-minute video to apply for a speakers spot at TEDxSFED. It’s about “Tearing Down Walls.” It’s about experiments in learning by doing. It’s about learning.

Flying in a Flock

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A particular line from an email I received recently keeps coming back to my mind and making me reflect (the full email can be found in my post from March 15 – “Dumber or Just Different?“):

We have even seen some of our faculty peers engaging in technological multi-tasking by tweeting each other during presentations (so-called “back-channeling”).

If you are a teacher, educator, or school person, do you believe in note taking? Do you encourage, or expect, or even require that your students take notes? Do you assume that note takers are dutifully engaged and processing the information? Do you think that the notes can be used later to remind and refresh the thinking of the note taker? Do you sometimes ask a student who is not taking notes, “Hey, don’t you think you should be taking notes on this stuff?” Perhaps you even use a stronger prompt to elicit a note-taking response. Have you ever considered that note taking is “multitasking?”

Well, tweeting is just a form of note taking! Dare I write it…”21st Century Note Taking!” However, tweeters leverage technology to enrich their notes and interaction with whatever is the source of discussion on the “so-called ‘back-channel.'” Do you ever wish, or have you ever wished, that you could see someone else’s notes? Just a peek, so that you can calibrate your note taking and discover what the other person thinks is interesting, important, or needs-to-be-remembered. Now you can! Just join the hashtag of the back-channel and explore what other engaged note takers are thinking, asking, responding to, contemplating, etc. Perhaps there are too many people in the room for everyone to have a fair shake at audible-voice air time. No worries. Now more people in the room have a voice. One does not have to concentrate on injecting one’s thoughts into the audible conversation, but of course one can do both – tweet and discuss out loud. In fact, in my experience the two forms of participation complement and expand and encourage each other.

Note takers have always been multi-taskers. Now, many are simply “smarter” about it. The connected note takers realize the value of shared, collective, collaborative notes. WE are smarter than me.

Maybe the tweeters understand the advantages to flying in a flock, rather than flying solo.