Kimberly Moritz BlogPosts

If you missed the discussion that took place in the comments section of my blog post Resistance to Change, then you missed a good discussion.

A couple of people have stopped me  since that “blog” discussion happened to say things like, “SEE! That’s why I’d never write a blog, you’re too exposed.” or “Are you okay?” and there was a general reaction of some that it was almost scandalous that anyone posted opposing thoughts here.

That’s exactly what’s supposed to happen on the blog. If I only wanted the conversation to go one way, I wouldn’t allow any comments. I’d just keep putting my word out without listening. But here’s the problem with that idea, I’m not always right. None of us is.

I realize I’m very comfortable with debate, argument, discussion, and conflict from studying the learning styles as advanced through Thoughtful Classroom, the work by Richard Strong and Harvey Silver. I’m an “understanding” learner and so one of the ways that I learn and improve my thinking is through analysis and discussion. Just because you disagree with me doesn’t make one of us right and one of us wrong.

It’s through discussion that we can come to better conclusions together. Knowing that I had a teacher who got a very different message than what I intended worried me. I called several people who I know read the blog regularly and were also in attendance at Thursday’s roll out of the Professional Learning Networks. I needed to know if others got the same message he did, “had I totally screwed up? Is that what my message was?” See, I learned that at least one person walked away with something other than my purpose–that’s important to me. And worse, if others read the blog and that comment and thought, “well, that wasn’t what I thought she was saying, but geez, is that what happened?” then I’ve got a bigger problem.

Here’s the thing, those conversations have always taken place in hallways, parking lots and faculty rooms—-but SELDOM with the administration. With the blog, I get to add my voice to the conversation and I also get to hear what some others are thinking. Best case scenario in the conversation on that post? I get to clarify some thinking and I get to learn from the readers who comment. Thank you to Teacher, Matthew K. Tabor, Cody Heaps and Dan Scapelitte for commenting.

I keep saying that we’re better collectively than we are apart–this is another example of that same thing–it applies to me too. I’m better if I know what everyone is thinking. I might not always agree and sometimes I have to take a stand that some won’t like, but we’re all better if it’s done openly and honestly, F2F or on the blog or in an email or whatever—collaborating and communicating strengthens all of us. Everyone doesn’t always get her way but together we make better decisions, especially if we can acknowledge that there’s more than just our individual point of view to consider.

Through our diversity we can come to better learning with passion, innovation and leadership—open minded and kicking the heck out of that status quo. Looking forward to hearing more from you!

Fred Deutsch is a school board member in South Dakota who I’ve been reading at School-of-Thought for a while now. I am usually struck by how much the same things are for Fred in his district as they are for us in ours. He posted yesterday about a presentation he attended at a conference he’s at in DC. The presentation was by Daniel Pink about the three levels of what drives us.

I’m particularly interested because we sometimes  hear teachers or parents complaining that a child just isn’t motivated. Fred recounts the first two levels of drive and I completely agree with Pink’s assessment of those two followed by his thoughts here,

But it’s the third drive that Pink spent most of the session discussing with us — the concept that people will do things because it’s interesting, because people want to get better at it, or because people inherently want to make a difference in the world.

Go read Fred’s whole post for more information. The first two levels are certainly nice, but the third is what pushes me to do my best every day. How about you? How about our kids? As a teacher, don’t you strive to provide learning opportunities to students that are interesting or that help them see their place in the world or that allow them to improve with 21st century skills? Aren’t those the lessons that most “grab” every kid, pushing him to learn more intensely?

I wonder, perhaps Pink’s book Drive might be a great book study for those teachers thinking about focusing on motivation in their Professional Learning Networks next year?  I bet our teachers working together can figure it out for our kids, even for our most reluctant learners.

During our staff development on Friday, I talked with teachers about our district vision of  learning with passion, innovation and leadership; about our commitment to focus time for teachers to learn though a different kind of opportunity next year; about how incredible we already are and how I know we are exactly the faculty to learn together, sharing ideas and finding our own way through Professional Learning Networks.

As I was talking I was thinking about the teachers and teaching aides and administrators before me. What were they thinking? Did they understand where we want to go? How could I help them realize that what I say is what I mean and there isn’t some covert, hidden agenda? How can we best support and encourage them in their own learning?

And I was thinking about resistance to change. I was wondering if I had any teachers who were thinking, “please just leave me alone in my room!”

But where positive energy and enthusiasm for learning and leading sometimes end, is at the point in time when we start focusing our plans on the 2-5% who are negative and critical, no matter the plan.

We have an incredible faculty who at their core want to do what’s best for kids, who want to inspire and lead and teach with meaning. This is a faculty who does their best each and every day, whether or not anyone is watching. This is the faculty I’m focusing on as we set out to form Professional Learning Networks where teachers will learn together, in self selected groups on topics of their choice that enhance learning with passion, innovation and leadership. I refuse to lead by thinking about the one or two potential nay-sayers to any plan.

And when I read Seth Godin’s post about the lizard brain, it made me think about brain chemistry and general human nature. Here’s the post, in its entirety.  Seth says,

Here’s something that comes up every year as a topic of discussion—the school calendar. As you probably know, it always comes down to the question of a two week break in April or a week in February and a week in April (better known as the split break). There are all kinds of arguments that people make in support of or against one or the other.

The most significant argument of late surrounds the concern over our grades 3-8 state testing which is scheduled for late April through May. Opponents to the two week break are concerned that it’s bad for our kids—two weeks away and then start the NYS testing cycle?

What’s my 2 cents? I hate to think that our students won’t do well on the NYS assessments because they’re away from us for two weeks. The last thing all this state testing should have resulted in was months of test prep, so I like to think that we’re preparing our students to do well throughout the school year, to be good thinkers and readers and writers, and that a week prior to the test of “test taking strategies” should suffice.

I also think the break in February is a needless break in learning. If I had my way, we’d take a week in April and end a week sooner in June but last I checked SED isn’t asking my opinion on the Regents testing schedule. Better yet, let’s go year round in four quarters with two weeks in between each quarter.

The BOE members here elected to keep the two weeks together for next year, but we’re keeping them near the beginning of the month to coincide with the week in April that the “split break” schools take. We need to do that because districts  aren’t independent entities on islands–we send students to other locations and to BOCES for programs and the more we can do the same with our schedules, the better for those Randolph students attending classes at other schools or BOCES.

We haven’t approved the final calendar yet, but we’re close. We also have to start the Friday before Labor Day with students again–whenever it falls a bit later in the month, that happens. It’s either that day for students or the day before Thanksgiving in order to get in all of our student days.

The only other change that I’ll write more about here in the future is in line with our vision of Learning with Passion, Innovation and Leadership. We want to focus more on our teachers as learners too and so are planning for collegial circles or learning clubs next year–where teachers will work in groups over the course of the school year to learn more about topics like project based learning, improving student writing, Thoughtful Classroom strategies, technology integration—topics that they will choose to study that align with our vision—and will allow them to learn and grow as educators.

Research has proven time and again that there is no more significant factor in your child’s success than the teacher in front of him or her in the classroom. Investing in our teachers, in their learning and further developing their expertise, is one of the best investments we can make.  Therefore, we’re planning for one Friday per month when students will be dismissed early so that we can work with our teachers as we focus on learning how to be the best educators we can be— as we learn with passion, innovation and leadership.

If you thought you’d heard the last of the problems with the mechanics’ bay, think again. I’d like to update everyone on where we are with this issue. It was a year ago in May that our proposition for an addition to the bus garage was defeated at our public vote.

Since that time, we have worked hard to maintain our buses, pass our NYS inspections and of course, to keep our children safe. Brian Hinman and Amos Cowen have done an excellent job of focusing on preparing our buses for NYS inspection and our passing rate has increased significantly. We are carefully considering our preventative maintenance, completing all of the work that we can do in house and working with J&R Auto Repair in Olean for all of the work we can’t do here without a lift. Very recently, J&R has become the site we’ve moved to for our NYS inspections and they are helping us to prepare for those inspections. A huge thank you to Cattaraugus Little Valley district for the time and space they allocated to us over the past year to have our inspections conducted there. The move to J&R allows us more opportunity to have the pre-inspection work done that we can’t get done here.

Do we still need a bus mechanics bay with an approved lift? Yes. It’s more cost effective for our own mechanics to prepare our buses here than to pay to transport them to Olean and then to pay for the work that J&R has to complete that we can’t.

What are we planning to do about it? We committed to study our operation without the lift, comparing the costs of taking the work we can’t do ourselves elsewhere and most important, to improving our NYS inspection passing rate.

We’re also working with a new architectural firm, Habiterra,  on our NYS required 5 year facilities plan. It is our hope that we will work with them to develop an addition that is as affordable as possible to our taxpayers. With all of the cuts the State is making right now, there is still no indication that they will reduce their commitment to capital projects.

Will the proposition for an addition to the bus garage come up again? It’s likely but we have no definite project or time table in place at this time. It is a priority for us in our NYS required 5 year facilities plan. We want to take the time to look at our facilities as a whole and to identify any other items that may need our attention, like the roof we need on part of the high school building or pursuing green initiatives and/or our own fuel source. We also continue to think about our playing fields, our limitations to parking and our maintenance of the beautiful facilities we have now.

The Board of Education and administration have been researching the addition of a buildings, grounds and transportation supervisor for several years. They created the position of buildings, grounds and transportation supervisor in August, 2008 but have yet to fill the position.

When I arrived as superintendent here in December of 2008, it remained a priority for the district. In districts of our size, it is common to have mid level managers such as our cafeteria manager, Lori Benson, in the areas of buildings and grounds and also in transportation. We’ve not had that here and a need was identified so one position was created to manage those three areas.

Why do we need this? Just as a superintendent and administrative team are needed for a district perspective and expertise in things such as teaching and learning, personnel, contract negotiations, team building, long range planning, budget preparation and management, discipline, athletics, cafeteria management, and building level student management, administrative expertise is also needed in the areas of buildings and grounds and transportation.

Simply put, we are more efficient and effective if we have someone with a district perspective taking care of our facilities and the personnel employed to manage those facilities. While we have knowledgeable employees who work hard in these areas, they report to building principals who may or may not know the most effective and efficient ways to complete their tasks. And both buildings function separately while we would be better collectively, especially in the area of supplies and ordering plus sharing of staff.

Are we hiring someone? That’s a bit complicated. When I arrived, along with the BOE members, we decided to move forward with this position. Since it’s a civil service position, that means we have to follow the rules and procedures governing civil service and hire off of the certified list. Since no current list was available, we requested that the civil service exam be given. Well as you might imagine, that takes a while. The civil service exam was given on October 31, 2009.

Did we advertise the exam? No, it’s not our place to do so. Civil Service posts the exams on their website and advertises  in all of the local papers, according to Civil Service this includes the Olean, Salamanca, Randolph Register, and Pennysaver papers. It would not have indicated anything about Randolph Central–it only advertised the exam date for the position of superintendent of buildings, grounds, and transportation.

As it turns out, only one person took the test and therefore we’re not required to hire off this list. From my perspective, a candidate pool of one person is insufficient to hire from for any position. Civil Service then indicated that we may either hire the person on the list or we could advertise, interview and hire someone who meets the minimum qualifications and then that person would have to pass the test within a year.

To further complicate matters, all of the news about the state budget and cuts to our state aid are looming. So the BOE was faced with helping me make a difficult decision. Our options were as follows:

1. Hire the one person on the list.
2. Post, advertise and interview for the position, including the one person on the list.
3. Change the position to consider a lower level employee, perhaps one head custodian for the district. We never replaced the elementary head custodian when he retired–we’ve always planned to redirect his salary to this new position.
4. Wait to see what the budget looks like before filling this position in any manner.

It was important that the BOE consider this position as part of a larger picture. Right now our admin team is preparing the 2010-2011 budget and I have charged them with the onerous task of compiling a list of possible cuts should we need to make them. Once the state aid picture is more definite and we can more accurately estimate our revenues, we can know better what needs to be done. This position for buildings, grounds and transportation should be included in that broader discussion so it can be weighed against other possible cuts and prioritized appropriately.

This was the action we determined to take at this time–#4 waiting to fill the position until we can weigh it against any other cuts that need be taken.  After all, this Board of Education continues their commitment to keep taxes at bay and we are working to present a 0% increase to our taxpayers despite escalating costs for TRS/ERS and health insurance while balancing reported cuts to our revenues.  And it isn’t going to be easy.

This is a true story. I couldn’t make this up. Here’s the voice mail message I had to leave for my business official this morning:

David, I’m going to be late for work. You have to take the conference call at 7:30 with the attorney and tell him we’ll call him when I get there. I have an Amish guy in the car with me and we’re looking for his horse.

My commute from home to school is 22 miles of  beautiful country roads. No traffic jams, no toll booth, no guy next to me with road rage.

This morning, like every morning, it was dark out and I was humming along as usual.  As I rounded the corner by Everett Mosher’s old farm, I saw a horse racing toward me down the side of the road. Before I could think through what the heck I should do about it, I came upon an Amish man standing in the road, waving his tiny flashlight wildly.  Not being the dumbest person on the planet, it didn’t take much to realize, “here is the owner of the rogue horse”.

I don’t know what you would do, but I stopped. I was worried someone would hit that horse or this Amish guy! As you would expect, he wondered if I’d seen his horse. I naturally exclaimed, “Yes, I just saw him racing down the side of the road, get in and we’ll go get him!”

It wasn’t until we were headed down our third back road when I thought, “how am I going to get out of here? I’ve got a lot of work to do today.  I can’t be chasing down run-away horses with some Amish guy!” But what could I do? I made every turn he asked me to, looked for tracks in the snow on the side of the road, and peered into every field. When we stopped at every other barn and I waited as he ran around it looking for his horse, I couldn’t help but think, “now here’s something that doesn’t happen when you’re the superintendent of Williamsville or Clarence or Orchard Park.”

His frequent expletives of “doggonit” and “that fricken horse!” were hysterical but I didn’t dare laugh because the guy was ticked. Here was my glimpse into another culture, right here next to me in my car. When he saw his horse in a pasture on some godforsaken back road, I felt immense relief. As he jumped from the car and said, “I hope I can catch him”, I did what any working woman would do. I hightailed it out of there before the horse took off and I was back on the hunt again!

Only a small school rural superintendent gets adventures like this one–gotta love it.

When my time in education is done and I’m ready for a second act during retirement (teaching again? writing that book?), I want to know that I’ve made a significant positive difference. To know that I’ve left the place BETTER than I found it, that we’re learning more and that it’s significant learning for everyone. I want to knock the heck out of the status quo.

I think that’s  how most BOE members feel when they serve on a board of education. So it’s with much excitement that I met with our administrators and teachers to talk about the vision/mission set by our BOE at it’s Fall Retreat–Learning with Passion, Innovation and Leadership.

If you think about it, isn’t that what we want for everyone? For every student, every teacher, every athlete—meaningful learning experiences when they can feel passionate about what it is they’re learning. Meaningful learning experiences which they can approach with a curiosity about all that’s in the world today and where they can lead with influence.

Think about your own child. When she goes forward from Randolph Central, what do you want for her? Do you want to know that he can ask good questions, pursuing the life of his dreams with passion and leading with influence and collaboration? Do you want to know that she can communicate her ideas effectively and to think well?

When I think of my own children, I want this for them. It’s nice to know that they did  well in school—as we’ve always measured that anyway–they both achieved honor or high honor roll every quarter, did well on Regents exams, graduate in the top of their classes. But what good will that do them if they can’t THINK through the situations they face, if they can’t advocate for themselves or ask good questions? If they have no flexibility and can’t work with others? If they aren’t curious about everything that’s so amazing in this world? If they just accept everything the world throws at them as their lot in life?

I don’t want my own kids to go quietly through their lives. And I don’t want that for our RCS students either. I hope we’re graduating students who can research and analyze and take the initiative. I hope we’re graduating students who can help to solve the many problems that our world faces–making it a better place than it is today. I want our graduates to know that they have the power to do so. And so I’m always wondering, what are we doing to prepare them to be good thinkers? To let them practice these things?

Time will tell if my own kids can do more than be good students in school. I’m hopeful and optimistic, but I’m not sure that the ability to score well on the Global exam or Earth Science Regents or the 8th grade Math exam shows much more than an ability to memorize, study and take a test well.  Does this success indicate an ability to critically think, to problem solve, to collaborate, lead, initiate, communicate, analyze? To really understand the world around them and their places in it? I’m not sure. I’ve got a daughter who’s an adult and a son with his foot firmly planted on that threshold. It’s largely up to them now.

And our RCS students? Well that’s entirely within our grasp, isn’t it? We determine what happens here every day for our kids. I, for one, along with our teachers, administrators, staff and BOE members, am setting out to change the world. Seriously. I believe that if we truly focus on learning with passion, innovation and leadership, we can prepare our students to be innovative problem solvers who live their lives with purpose and passion. And just for the record, I’ll bet that when we do all of this–they’ll still get good marks on the state assessments, probably better.

Let’s get to it.

After over a year in this superintendency, I’m achieving one of the most important goals I set in my entry plan. When I started the job, I made a commitment to visit every classroom. It probably goes without saying that I’ll be more effective as a leader and make better decisions as I come to know our district well. One of the ways I can do this is by spending time in our classrooms.

However, that’s been easier said than done for me. After starting in December of 2008, there was definitely a transition period when I was learning 1000+ things at once while making decisions, developing relationships and trying to do a good job of it all. But even after this year started, I still struggled to make the time to leave all of the office work behind and head to the classrooms. There’s just so much in this position that I never even imagined existed when working in other capacities within a school system.

Problem solved now. I asked my secretary extraordinaire, Maureen Pitts, to help me be a better superintendent. Since she has access to my calendar, she agreed to schedule me for “unscheduled” classroom visits. By doing so, it’s a part of my daily routine and I don’t decide to work on something else instead. She’ll schedule me for two or three teachers at a time, all in close proximity to each other.  I get the chance to see what our kids are learning, come to know our teachers a little bit better and to show that what happens in our classrooms is the most important thing that happens in our district every day. I’m focused on learning. (Thanks Mrs. Pitts!)

It’s especially important as we set forth to follow our BOE vision for the district of “Learning with Passion, Innovation and Leadership”. If we say that learning with passion, innovation and leadership is what’s most important to us as an organization, then I need to walk it, not just talk it.

And the learning I’m seeing in our classrooms every day? As varied as the teachers and students in them with wonderful opportunities for learning at every level. Once again I’m reminded that Randolph Central is exactly the district where we can move forward as our learning opportunities become more and more filled with passion, innovation and leadership—–we’re well on our way already!

As a district, we’re working on identifying objectives and district goals that align with our BOE goals in following our vision of  Learning with Passion, Innovation and Leadership. The administrative team, along with teachers and support staff, are considering the steps we will take to get there.

Here are the BOE Goals for 2009-2011:

1. The RCS Board of Education will lead through active participation in professional development opportunities.
2. The RCS Board of Education will build trust through communication and collaboration with the entire school community.
3. The RCS Board of Education will hire and support excellent personnel who demonstrate learning with passion, innovation and leadership.
4. The RCS Board of Education will support responsible financial decisions that optimize district assets while meeting educational needs.
5. The RCS Board of Education will continuously support and evaluate the district goals.

These goals reflect the BOE members’ dreams for the district (and mine), along with their commitment to improve communication and collaboration which will build trust, a commitment to their own learning as BOE members, and their desire to support personnel who embrace the mission of learning with passion, innovation and leadership. The goals also reflect a continued strong focus on their financial responsibilities and the importance of defining a vision, long-range goals and resource allocation.

Our administrative team is presenting our professional and district goals to the BOE members at our February 3 meeting. I’m hoping that we will take some risks, that we set ambitious goals and that we realize it’s okay if we don’t get there on every one. Aren’t we better off by taking a risk and striving for more, sometimes missing the mark, than we are by playing it safe and setting goals we know we can achieve?