The Struth

We have a visiting literacy coach working with our teachers all this week on professional development. We spent the first 3 hours of her visit with us yesterday pitching our work on what is 21st Century Literacy, which our Elementary leadership team has been teasing out over the past few months. We wanted her to ask big questions and really test our thinking, trying to understand how we propose to meet the needs of our learners and prepare them for success in the 21st Century. After our 3 hour meeting, her comment was “Wow- I haven’t been challenged on that kind of intellectual level in a long time”.

The other very cool thing about our 21st Century thinking is that it is available for all to check out in Google Docs. It’s not “our” thinking, it’s our thinking and we are putting it out there for all to see, use, comment on, change, think about……. share! We want this to be a cornerstone of the vision for our Elementary School and for how we need to change our approach to education.

Technology is changing the world at an exponential rate. Education will never keep up. We believe that by basing our teaching and learning on best practice and these essential questions and enduring understandings, we will prepare our children to learn and be successful in the 21st Century. Our students today are, after all, very different from what we were like even 20 years ago. They are wired differently, all of them having never known life without a computer in the home. We call them digital natives. Are we engaging them in deep learning if we are still using the same tools that we taught with when I was at school? What changes do we need to make?

Our work began with an essential question: how can a modern day technology curriculum stay current with the ever-changing world? This question morphed into deep thinking and collaboration between our tech-learning coordinators (Justin Medved and Dennis Harter), elementary curriculum coordinator (Teresa Belisle) , 21st century tech/literacy specialist (Kim Cofino) and the administrators (Annelies and myself). The result is our work in progress, our best stab so far as to how we can meet the needs of our students and make them effective learners, communicators and collaborators in the 21st Century.

Why do I share this thinking and this story? I come back to the opening anecdote about our visiting literacy specialist who was impressed with our intellectual thinking. It made me reflect- through our daily collaboration, I am challenged everyday. We are asking big questions and although we don’t have all the answers, we are hungry for more. 21st Century thinking… bring it on!!

It is Sunday November 11th. The eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month. Will you REMEMBER? As a Canadian living overseas, there is no ceremony I can attend to show my respect and gratitude for the ultimate sacrifice that was made by thousands of Canadians in the past century for our freedom. How lucky are we? How often do we actually stop and think about this question? Would we make the same sacrifice that our forefathers (and mothers) made? How quickly would we sign up to cross the Atlantic and fight on foreign soil? According to the CBC website, there is one Canadian WWI vet still alive- he is 107 years old. Even vets of WWII are dwindling, as time passes. How will we continue to honor their memory and show our appreciation?
I have included this photo because it struck a deep hole in my heart this past summer when I was home in Canada on holiday. The photo shows 6 hearses returning the bodies of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan and the thousands of Canadians that lined Highway 401 from Trenton to Toronto showing their respect. In many ways we are still at war in our role as peacekeepers throughout the world. I am very proud and thankful for these young men and women that fulfill this role.
My grandfather flew 3 tours of duty in the RAF during WWII. He won the Distinguished Flying Cross from King George and flew many bombing tours over Germany. His brother was killed when his plane was shot down returning from one of these bombing missions over Berlin. He was just 21. He is buried in a small cemetary in Oxford, England.
I have travelled to Vimy Ridge, to the beaches of Normandy. Even today it is hard to imagine what these men faced as they closed in for D-Day. The countryside surrounding that area of France is littered with cemetaries from WWI and WWII.
We are very lucky to have our freedom. This would not have been possible without the courage and determination of our many veterans. Take a moment, think about what freedom means to you and how lucky you are. Remember.

We just finished watching a potential teacher-hire teach his class of Grade 5 students at an international school in the Middle East from our office in Bangkok on Skype. This is INTERVIEWING 2.0!!!

Even cooler- after he finished his lesson, he set two of his kids up on Skype and we talked to them about their learning. Whoa!!! Cool!! Now we know what they learned and how they connected it to real life in real time.

Is this the future of hiring? First we tapped into talent through blogs and the blogosphere…. now we are watching potential hires in action, in their classroom, in real time, on Skype.

Are we now telling candidates…. don’t tell me how you teach…. SHOW me how you teach? Even cooler- let me look for learning by talking to your kids immediately following the lesson.

Some of the questions that Interviewing 2.0 allows you to immediately ask are: Do you use technology effectively? Do you use appropriate pause time? Do you use visible thinking routines? Do you collaborate effectively with other adults in the classroom? Do you engage all learners? Do you differentiate? And of course, for all these questions…. HOW do you do this?

Now- SHOW me!

But I think before we even get to what you see, how do you start Interviewing 2.0?

You start with a candidate that is open to collaborating and participating in an interview like this. Just having someone who is not afraid to try this is a start to hiring them. Right?

Second is establishing with them a relationship of respect and reflection. Tonight we will re-Skype this teacher to reflect on the lesson and find out from him what he thought went well today and what he would change about the lesson. Showing a teacher that you welcome open, honest reflection as an administrator establishes what you value at your school.

If we can interview in real time through Skype (and whatever else would support it), will we need to continue to go recruiting? What if you could watch a carpenter work and see the finished house? The make a decision if he is good enough to build your dream home? Does this whole concept relate to sports and the idea of a “try-out” for a team? What other implications does this have for hiring?

Bottom line- that teacher took a huge gamble this afternoon and needless to say…. we were impressed! Anyone else want to sign up for an “interview”??

On Monday night I found myself sitting in our Elementary Learning Hub (our brand new 21st Century Literacy Center) at 7pm getting geeked! Looking around the room, I saw our 3 ISB geeks (Justin Medved, Kim Cofino and Dennis Harter) a literacy specialist and my administrative partner. Why were we there you ask? We were geeking out! We were listening to David Warlick’s keynote address to the K12 on-line learning conference.

Did I just say on-line learning conference? Yes- I sure did! In front of me was my laptop and I was “Twittering” (a form of chat) with the other 300+ people world-wide that were also trying to listen to David’s keynote. It was taking a long time to download. At one point it was decided through the Twitter that the bandwidth was too small for everyone to listen at the same time…. so through Twitter, people problem solved by posting the address to a “mirror” site.

So- in the end, with a little help of our geek friends around the world, we were able to tap into David Warlick’s keynote address here in Bangkok. Afterwards, we held an animated discussion amongst ourselves as to what it all meant to education….. but that’s another story.

What I think is so cool is that we problem solved a major issue through Twitter with people all around the world working collaboratively and nobody expected any payment or payback??

It was about PAYING IT FORWARD.

Remember that movie with Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt? The little boy has an idea about paying it forward- that if you do a good deed to someone, they will in turn do good deeds to others and so on and so on…..

We have perfect example of this going on in the world of geek. Our deep thinkers are constantly problem solving collaboratively in an effort to bring the best learning opportunities to each other’s schools. Whether it is asking each other to comment on student blogs, or pairing kids in different countries on flat classroom projects or sharing ideas for engaging kids in learning- this is happening daily through our geeks.

I guess my question is that if this is happening daily through the geeks in education and daily through the geeks in the world of on-line conferences….. how can we move our leaders to pay it forward and problem solve on a much higher level? What skills can we instill in our students that will make them share their thinking in order to problem solve at the highest level of world government, environmental issues and even business? How do we make sure the geeks are in these positions? (Clearly that is not a problem at Google!)

How do we make our kids want to be geeks? Or…. do kids already want to be geeks and we haven’t reinvented the word’s definition yet?

Bill Gerritz asks the question “What is origin of the word (GEEK)? For what I understand, it originated in the traveling carnivals that moved through the U.S. mid-west during the 1920s and 1930’s. The geek show was a big favorite. At the end of his show, the geek, who had been acting strangely to attract laughs and amazement, would bite the head off a live chicken. ”

Now I am not advocating that geeks bite the heads off chickens…. but I am advocating for a shift in how the word is used. I say embrace the geeks, teach us how to be geeks and support being a geek. Annelies Hoogland, my admin partner, has pioneered a new project: a GOD (Geek-On-Demand) for administrators. She has asked a colleague in the High School to assign her a geek for mini-lesson tutorials in technology. Cool eh?

Geeking Out and Paying it Forward…. embracing technology, understanding that we need rapid change in our approach to education and sharing our ideas about how to do this on a global scale…. I am starting to think that this is what the future looks like.

There are so many thoughts in my mind from this weekend’s Learning 2.0 Conference. Where do we begin with our school (ISB)? Can we really achieve what we have set out to achieve? What does that look like? What would Alan November say about it? But before I try to answer (is there an answer??), I want to address what I call the future of the international recruiting fair. Blogging!

I guess one of my reflections from the weekend is on the talent we have at ISB. Justin Medved, Kim Cofino and Dennis Harter are amazing! Until you hang out with the Geeks of the world, you don’t really realize how impressive the Geeks of the world are. You don’t really understand their jobs and how they make our (my) jobs easier. Would I deeply value technology as the future of education if it weren’t for Justin’s thinking all last year? How lucky are we at ISB to have dedicated Geeks whose main job description is teaching teachers how to use technology to enhance student learning? Do our teachers truly understand that this job does not yet exist at most international schools? And at ISB we have 3 Geeks- 2 in the Elementary School alone. We are lucky!

I was also amazed at the impact of blogging. We met and hired Kim Cofino last year through blogging because we (Justin) already knew how/what she thought. Are we “inventing” a new way to run our HR Dept.? We hire people because of how they think independently of what “smart” things they write on their CVs? How could that impact international school job/recruiting fairs? Kim came up to me on Saturday at the conference and excitedly told me how Will Richardson wanted to meet her. Why? Because he follows her blog (Always Learning) and wanted to put a face to the mind, not a “name to the face”. How different is that? Justin and Dennis saw Jeff Utecht from SAS (Shanghai) and greeted him like an old friend. When I asked Justin how long they had been friends, he replied that this was the 2nd time they had met. In other words, because they read each other’s blog and know how the other thinks, they are great virtual and real-life friends. Whoa!!!

As an international school administrator, how amazed would I be if a potential recruiting teacher contacted me through my blog or discussed it during an interview? What if I read their blog? I would already know how they think, not what they think of during an interview in order to get a job.

Does this apply to other HR fields? Other businesses? I am sure it must. How can we as educators get into each other’s minds? Should there have been more international school administrators at the Learning 2.0 Conference? Now that I read Will Richardson’s blog, if he contacted me on Monday morning and asked for a job, would I even need to interview him in person?

I know the Geeks already use this practice. I know we have (indirectly with Kim), already used this practice. My question is now how will we continue to use this practice further to recruit great thinking, highly tech-able minds to come share in our vision of a 21st century education at ISB? Will we have to actively attend recruiting fairs?

Only time will tell…..

Why am I doing this? What could I possibly add to the world of blogging? Why would anyone want to even remotely know what goes on inside my head? These and many more are/were some of the thoughts in my mind prior to going to the Learning 2.0 Conference in Shanghai, China this past weekend (Sept. 14-16). However, upon my return, I am now seeing more and more why this is important and fun?? work. As a leader in education at a large international school in Bangkok, I want to tap into the world of blogging for a number of reasons: sharing my experiences with other int’l school leaders, tapping into others’ ideas and suggestions, but most importantly being savvy about why people blog so that I can “keep up” (is that possible?) with my kids when they start blogging.
Out of all this is born “The Struth”. Good luck and god speed!