As a school administrator, I’ve always attended workshops, conferences, and other staff development opportunities with my teachers. I guess I’ve just always seen it as one of my primary responsibilities to be the Instructional Leader in the building and now, in the district. For 20 years in education, I’ve continued to learn and grow each and every year–if I ever think I know all that I need to know, someone please push me out the door to retirement. I also want to know what my teachers are learning and what’s considered best practice. I like to analyze, research and discriminate what’s worth our time and energy vs. what’s wasting our time. And I write about those experiences here, on Kimberly Moritz BlogPosts.
Will Richardson talks about this very transparency in learning in “Leadership Goes Public”for District Administration. Much of my daily learning comes through my RSS feeds into bloglines, my conversations with colleagues on our blogs, and the on-line newspapers and periodicals that I read, as well as list serves that feed into my email.
In the article Will says,
I’ve often wondered what the response would be if we asked the kids in our schools to reflect on how their teachers learn. Not on how much they know or how creative they might be, but on how they learn—what their process is,what their passions are. My guess is that few if any of those teachers have made their own learning transparent to their students to any great degree.
Now turn that around a bit and ask how your teachers might answer that same question about you. Would they be able to identify what you’ve been reading of late? The questions you’ve been grappling with? The best conversations and debates you’ve been engaged in? Could they see and learn from your own efforts to move your thinking forward?
As usual when I read Will’s blog, I’m inspired to keep writing and reading, exchanging ideas and having my thinking provoked a bit. I hope my teachers and administrators get a chance to read and write this summer, to think deeply about their practice, and to read for pleasure. I hope when they stop for a well deserved break and a chance to breathe that they keep thinking and learning, returning to RCS in September refreshed and enthused. Happy Last Day of School tomorrow Randolph! Thank you for a job well done this year.