Teaching, Learning, Leading

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Teaching, Learning, Leading

• National Teacher of the Year Program Conference
• Dallas, Texas

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• SO
• WHAT?

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Can All Kids Learn?

• All kids can learn to the level of their
  abilities.
• Reality/Expectation?
• All kids can learn to the extent that they take
  advantage of the opportunities we provide for
  them.
• Reality/Expectation?
• All kids can learn and its up to us to see that
  they have opportunities to learn and to grow and
  to develop.
• Reality/Expectation?

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Moment of Contact

• I believe
• The greatest gift
• I can conceive of having
• From anyone
• Is
• To be seen by them
• And Touched by them.
• The greatest gift I can give
• Is
• To see, hear, understand
• And to touch
• Another person.
• When this is done,
• I feel contact has been made

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How Do We See Things?

• We do not see things as they are!
• We do see things as we are!

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Disposition Check

• I feel much better now that I have given up hope.
• Ive given up my search for the truth and am now
  looking for a good fantasy
• Im not perfect. But, parts of me are excellent!

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• Roland Barth says that the nature of the
  relationships among the adults who inhabit a
  building has more to do with the success of the
  school than any other factor.
• So What?

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• Do not call the forest that shelters you a
  jungle.
• It is the calm, silent waters that drown the
  workers, the group and the participants.
• No one wants to test the depths of the river with
  both feet.
• Those who are absent are always wrong.
• He/she who learns must teach.
• Those who are unwilling to dance continually
  explain that the floor has small rocks on it and
  hidden problems in it.
• I do not know how to be happy any more as I do
  this! They did not teach me how to be happy. I
  am angry, unhappy and ineffective.
• My biggest problem is what to do about all the
  things I cannot do anything about.

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Things I Learned Last Week

• Ants, when they meet each other, usually pass on
  the right.
• Sometimes you can open a sticky door with your
  elbow.
• A man in Boston has dedicated himself to telling
  about injustice.
• For three thousand dollars he will come to your
  tow
• and tell you all about it.
• Schopenhauer was a pessimist but he played the
  flute.
• Yeats, Pound and Eliot saw art as growing from
  other art. They studied that
• If I ever die, Id like it to be in the evening.
• That way, Ill have all the dark to go with me,
• and no one will see how I begin to hobble along.
• In the Pentagon one persons job is to take pins
  out of towns, hills and fields, and then save
  them for later.

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Why Do We Do The Things We Do When

• The achievement gap grows?
• Kids are graduating who cant read and write well
  enough?
• Kids are walking away physically, emotionally and
  intellectually?
• Schools continue to resist change?

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DISRUPTIVE

• POSITIVELY
• DIS

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• Quotation I
• Student achievement and teacher development are
  reciprocally related. When a school has one or
  two good teachers, it is usually a matter of
  individual initiative. But when a school has
  many good teachers, it is a result of leadership.
• Paraphrased from Fullan and Hargreaves (1996)

• What conditions should exist for a school to have
  many good teachers as opposed to one or two?

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• Quotation II
• Elmore, Peterson and McCarthy (1996) found that
  changes to core instructional practices were
  rarely achieved in the reform efforts they
  studied. When such changes did occur, they
  occurred in schools where professional
  conversations about specific instructional
  practices had been fostered, supported and
  sustained.

• How do these conversations happen?

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• Quotation III
• Some schools change because the teachers push
  for change and initiate and carry much of the
  effort. Other schools change because a school
  district or building leader pushes change and
  creates an environment that encourages and
  supports it. This simplification illustrates the
  ideas of bottom-up (teachers initiate) and top
  down (administrators initiate) approaches to
  reorganizing schools. Truth be told, we think
  that few pure examples of either approach exist.
  In our experience, change has occurred when
  teachers, administrators, and supervisors somehow
  come together around a common core of concerns.
• Johnston et. al., 1998

What is the somehow that brings together
teachers, administrators and supervisors?
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• What would you do if you werent afraid?

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Where Are The Teachers?

• Where are the teachers?
• What do we believe about teaching?
• How and where do we express that opinion?
• What is our message to each other, our kids and
  our community?
• How do we become doers in our stories instead of
  those being done to?

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Why Do We Do The Things We Do?

• What is one thing I will do in my school this
  year to answer that question?
• Can I do one thing in my district, my state, my
  country?