G-Town Talks

I just realized something major through a conversation with other educators in a session with Will Richardson about changing school to keep up with the learning available in School 2.0. We’re talking about the urgency to really get educators to LEARN about everything that’s available through connections on-line, to understand the LEARNING that’s vital, and to see themselves as LEARNERS.

In the conversation, I mentioned that when I was a teacher, I often attended a workshop or a conference, returned to my classroom and implemented the idea into my own best practice. It impacted the students in my room, but I honestly didn’t care what happened in the rest of the school. It worked for me, for my students, and that was enough for me.

As a principal, I have the responsibility for the learning in every classroom in my building. But I realize now, if I’m really honest, that I’m still doing the same thing as the principal that I did as a teacher. I learned about blogging, bloglines, wikis, and podcasts. I returned to my office (instead of my classroom) and I added it to my best practice. I found the couple of teachers in my building who were doing it too and sought them out for conversations about this best practice.

I’ve done NOTHING to influence thinking or best practice in the rest of those classrooms. That’s my job now and I’m still behaving as I did when I was a teacher. Just doing my thing, what works for me, finding huge learning gains for myself, and letting the world continue as it always has for everyone who hasn’t happened onto what I’m doing.

Gutless. Safe. Not a leader. I need to make a change in my own best practice. I need to gather those teachers who are taking a risk, who are curious, who are learning on the Web, and along with them, we need to take our learning to everyone else. I’ve shown on this blog what’s important to me, I’ve had a strong voice, and I haven’t done squat to share it with my teachers, my students, my BOE, and my community. Let’s go, I’m ready.