Open Monologue
Just because I'm making it up as I go along doesn't mean I don't know what I'm doing

As mentioned in my previous post, I was lucky to be in a meeting facilitated by Rick Schwier today. This wasn’t just because Rick, being one of the most positive people I know, is always a great person to be around. The meeting involved educators of all levels within my school division (well – not mine personally, but it is the one that I teach in). From my perspective as a classroom teacher, it’s often easy for me to think of classroom teachers as being the only educators in a school system. But I need to expand my personal concept of educator beyond just classroom teachers to include everyone who works to facilitate and improve the learning of students.

As the meeting ensued, I became more and more impressed that everyone had the same primary focus for the discussion – student learning. An ancillary focus was empowering teachers to do their job. I was sitting beside one of the central office staff who noted that it was great to have this discussion with some teachers being involved because they (central office staff) don’t have that first hand student contact. I responded, somewhat cheekily, that teachers often remark the same thing. So often throughout the school year, we (teachers) will get some kind of survey or form that someone at central office would like us to fill out, or every year there seems to be some new initiative or focus that displaces the previous year’s primary focus. What struck me about her remark, though, was that the staff at central office seem to be genuinely interested in a dialogue with teachers about improving student education. I hope that teachers keep this in mind and be equally interested in that dialogue about student learning.

I was also impressed with the in-school administrators who were in attendance. I often see them in a role of representing central office concerns and initiatives to us. It was great to see that they also represent the ideas and concerns of teachers to the central office admin.

Aside: Wow – two posts in one day! Maybe there is something positive to my abstinence from Twitter!!