Chris Lehmann continued the discussion over at Practical Theory that started with my earlier post about the disclaimer added to the tagline of this blog. I appreciate Chris’ work as he writes about the Science Leadership Academy in Philadephia. He talks in this post about the questions some have about blogging, and concludes with this,
Any student who wants to come to SLA, any teacher who wants to teach here, could Google SLA, find this blog and learn a lot about our values, our process, and the thoughts (and ramblings) of the principal. With luck, that will be part of the process of enhancing our community and strengthening its values. If nothing else came of this blog, that’d be worth it.
Earlier, Christian Long posted at think:lab about this issue , including his tips for success with blogging. His suggestions are prudent and certainly ideas that I follow. However, I do think it’s okay to post first names of students and full names of other professionals when the post is positive in nature. Public recognition is a form of praise that we have much too little of in education.
Both posts listed above remind me again of a conversation I had with Will Richardson at the start of my blogging endeavor. We were talking about audience and I asked Will what will happen when I’m interviewing for a superintendent’s job someday and the interview team looks to my blog to see how I think about different issues. Will’s response, “they’ll hire you.”
I think of Will’s response often, and I keep on writing. Our schools need leaders who are willing to take a stand.