Tag Archives: John Tyler

The Important Stuff

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Whenever a school year comes to a close I like to look back at the things our community did to grow, and equally important, to reflect on the places I wanted us to get to but we didn’t. No matter what either of these reflections bring, I’ve noticed that relationships with others help to frame the impact around what did or did not happen. Without a strong focus on relationships, the learning and growth around whatever it was that we accomplished; new initiatives, new technologies etc., are less meaningful.

Thinking about these issues is normal when making transitions. Typically it’s when there’s a change and in my case, it’s to a new district. It’s easy to think back on the wins and gains, but takes so much more energy to dissect the areas that we didn’t quite get to and why. Leaving, I’ll wonder about what I’m leaving behind; will the steps forward our community took continue or take an entirely new direction?

What isn’t in question are the relationships. Education, like many fields, finds people spending hours together, often more time with your colleagues than your family – they don’t call it a ‘work family’ for nothing! The fun, productive, and sometimes most challenging relationships are the ones that seem to stay with us in transitions. It can be the simplest of things that keeps people connected. The truly important part is to stay connected – relationships are what matter most in our work. Not only because we want the other “productive” stuff to move forward, but because they help to frame the important stuff – the sense of community, the sense of accomplishment, the feeling and knowledge that we can make a difference.

I can’t control whether initiatives I worked on will move forward or come to a grinding halt. And really, I’m not sure that matters. By far one of the best parts of my job is connecting with others! What I can do is to stay connected to those I’ve worked with and continue to grow from their input and the conversations that will come.

Branching Out

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Updated April 1, 2013 @ 6:58pm

I hope you had a fantastic April Fool’s Day.

Yesterday my editor, who is my biggest supporter and probably my harshest critic (trust me you should see the number of posts sitting in the Draft box) – my wife Angela- asked my why I keep a Blog. I’ve written many times about how the process pushes me to reflect on my practice and my thinking – so she suggested I branch out on the posts and try to reach a broader audience.

Taking this into account after listening to the “other” JT’s latest release “The 20/20 Experience” I have been inspired to take this challenge up. Rather than weekly posts, I will release weekly singles. Here is a sample of what you might hear. “Branching Out”

Tell your friends – I hope to reach more people with this new approach to reflections.

 

Failure, Something to Ponder

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Earlier today I Tweeted this:

For contextual purposes I include a dictionary.com definition of failure:

“fail·ure [feyl-yer]

1. an act or instance of failing  or proving unsuccessful; lack of success.
2. non-performance of something due, required, or expected.
3. a subnormal quantity or quality; an insufficiency.”

This tweet led to an exchange of messages that centred around my choice of the word “failure”.  Most of the responses agreed with the sentiment as defined above, that in education, in order for us to learn, we need to experience setbacks en route to achieving greater success.  In fact, some have even retweeted my original message (even with my missing word error!).

However, even when people agreed with the sentiment, several messages challenged  whether we should use the word “failure” in Education.  There were a lot of compelling arguments for why we shouldn’t use this word and many of them were rooted in what the connotation meant to the responder.  For many the concern with using this word is the fact that it can evoke a sense of completion, an end point (and not a positive one).

A consistent theme evident in the arguments against using the word failure is a concern that those who are not actively engaged in discussions about education won’t have the experiences to make the connection of the word with the sentiment intended when it is used today.  I certainly agree that this is a valid concern.  I also agree that we need to be careful which words we choose.

There is a lot of dialogue around the evolution of education. This growth is not limited to what is happening in schools but extends to our conversations about school.  If the concern is that some, even many, people may misconstrue the sentiment of a word like failure based on their past experiences, then I see this as an opportunity for those people to learn.

In our attempts to move education forward, we need to challenge the thinking of those rooted in the past. In education we know what we mean when we use the word fail.  It is commonly accepted that we fail all the time, in fact I recently wrote a Blog about a failure  of my own. When I re-read it (you can read it here), I never used the term – probably because at the time of writing it was easier to use softer language but the reality is I fell short, I failed and just as I wrote, that was okay.

I am happy to see the dialogue that my Tweet has inspired.  In our attempts to evolve the way people think about and view education, we also need to address how people speak about education.  To do this, we can’t avoid words that carry connotations from the past, we need to use them – when appropriate – and teach to them.