Unprofessional Development

In thinking about and reflecting upon last year as a tech coach, it is hard not to dwell on the bad bits and negative stuff that happened over the year.  It's not that there wasn't anything good to think about . . . there were lots of victories and advancements big and small.  In fact, I would characterise last year as a series of really high-highs and low-lows.  Kind of a Karsh mountain-scape straight out of China.  Everyone always remembers the bad bits though - it's just human nature.  Last year, I had three events where people acted unprofessionally towards me, so I am going to devote my first posting of the school year to reflecting on some positive take-aways from those events.  First off though, I will not be getting into the who said/did what . . . no airing of dirty laundry here.  I have moved past all of that now - the perspective of time does wonders.

So here is my list of top-three take-aways from last year:

1. Perception can be everything - As the first tech coach in the HS here, how the people that I work with view and understand my position/role might not coincide with my day-to-day reality.  I am always there to help with anything tech-related, be it big or small, complex or simple, physical or digital, systems or tools based.  As a result, some people see me as being in charge of anything and everything that goes "bing", has a screen on it, or uses electricity (this is part of what I am talking about when I say "guilty by competence").  One of the incidents from last year revolved around what a faculty member thought was my job, as I was helping them with a number of issues and challenges.  But in fact, I was just trying to help mediate between Tech Services and the teacher, and support both sides of the equation.  This  ended up in a big mess and some heated talk when some decisions were made which were not in the teacher's favour.  My take-away . . . try to ensure that the people I work with understand my role, what I am in charge of and when I am merely a facilitator or mediator.  Being a teacher is so much simpler as everyone knows what your "job description" is . . . being a coach is a lot more fuzzy in many people's minds!
2. Sometimes you can't fix it and you just have to wait - Last year, I was put in a very uncomfortable position with an administrator where I had to sit on my hands and wait it out, no matter how illogical and irrational the "process" became.  I was unable to affect any positive change in the situation, nor could I inject any rational thought into the matter at hand.  Instead, I had to just wait for the year to end so that positive change could happen with the start of the new year.  My take-away . . . have faith that cooler/rational heads will prevail in the long run, and that things will be "put right" with time and patience.  Sometimes it is hard to give up that time, to have that patience, and to have confidence that things will get sorted out properly . . . this is one case that I will look back on that worked out in the long run.
3. You can't help everyone, and you can't make everyone happy - As a coach, my position means working with the entire HS faculty.  But what do you with a faculty member who is in a really bad place, and who is negative about everything concerning the school?  On a sports team, this would be like having the un-coachable player on the team . . . and there are no cuts and no trades.  Working with this faculty member became impossible as the year wore on, as they were prone to very unprofessional outbursts and rants directed at anyone nearby.  Unfortunately, I was on the end of one of those outbursts . . . but had no recourse other than to report it and move on.  Not a satisfactory conclusion by any means, but the person in question was leaving at the end of the year anyways so Admin thought it was best left alone.  My take-away . . . when working with faculty, they have to be in the right mindset in order to be receptive to coaching, must be internally motivated to learn and grow, and timing is everything (just-in-time learning rules).  If any one of these conditions is amiss for any reason (let alone all three of them), then the act of coaching may be poorly received or ignored altogether.  And sometimes, these conditions and the mindset of the faculty are completely out of your control.

Have you ever had negative incidents at school which were unprofessional in nature, that seemed to overshadow everything?  Did these incidents cause you to doubt yourself, or make you think that you somehow doing a poor job?  Was it hard to move past these kinds of incidents?  Reflecting upon them, and trying to pull some "lessons learned" from them is the best way to move on and take charge of things which you have no control over.  What stories do you have?

The Case of the Blue Chinese Teapot

Accidents happen . . . we all know that.  Some accidents are more dire than others, some have little or no consequences, and some make you take pause and think.  This morning, my son accidentally broke our old Chinese teapot.  It wasn't particularly special, expensive, or irreplaceable.  We can get a new one from Chinatown back home in the summer without a problem.  However, it was used everyday by my family for about 30 years . . . now that I think about it, it's something that I have had my entire adult life since university days when I was first on my own.  Same old teapot, new handles, many new lids, new tea cosy . . . but the same old teapot filled with stories and memories.  One in particular that I am fond of involves having my Tech Director and officemate over for dinner when we were living in Istanbul.  When Colin went to pour himself a cup of tea, he stopped and remarked that such a great old teapot must hold a lot of stories.  Which it does . . . or rather, did.

The exact Chinese blue teapot that I had before it went for a tumble,
with a simple blue and white pattern and translucent rice grains
embedded in the porcelain.  Apparently available online for $30.
<http://www.laurelleaffarm.com/pages/kitchen&table/vintage-
rice-china-teapot-large-blue-white-Chinese-porcelain-tea-pot-
Laurel-Leaf-Farm-item-no-u71532.htm#.U0PeOBa-aJU>

Which got me thinking about this whole accident this morning and relating it to ed tech and coaching . . . bear with me for a minute.  In a round about way, this accident relates to working with the reluctant tech teacher with my work as a tech coach.  I don't blame my son at all for what happened.  Instead, I am upset with my wife who put the teapot in a precarious place on the little kitchen island rather than on the side counter.  She has been doing this since we moved into this house in Poland, just out of convenience and ease.  You see, the kitchen island is right there, directly in front of the door into the kitchen.  It's been 5 years of me moving the teapot to the side counter, me saying please don't put the teapot there, and me saving the teapot from being swept off of the island a few times.  It's not that the side counter is any farther away from the kitchen door.  What it really comes down to is convenience, comfort levels, and old habits.  Which is where I made the connections with ed tech and coaching.

Still with me?  In a previous posting (Some thoughts on working with the "reluctant tech teacher") I commented on some strategies for working with that teacher who just does not want to engage with technology in their teaching practice.  In that posting, I identified "fear of change" as being a major factor in a teacher's resistance to change.  After this morning's accident, I also think that comfort and convenience is another factor that needs to be considered.

Now, I'm not talking about someone being lazy or complacent.  What I see is someone who has become comfortable with their teaching practice, where their "go to", "tried and true" classroom practices are right there in their mind . . . comfortable, convenient, and ready to go.  So why change, despite being shown a different technique or tool?  Why do something different, despite being warned of possible negative outcomes or consequences?  Why change when it is much easier not to?  Do you see the connection?  My wife has continued to place the teapot on the kitchen island, despite my interventions, despite my warnings, despite my constant/repeated demonstrations of where the teapot should go.  In the end, it was a simple and easy solution (placing the teapot on the side counter), but it was never adopted.

In my other posting, I said that "a person will only undergo a process of change if it is easier for them to make the change, rather than to keep with the status quo".  I think this still applies in this case, but the motivation to keep with the status quo is comfort and convenience, rather than fear of change.  Now that the teapot is gone to the rubbish heap, change of habit has become forced and must happen.  With respect to ed tech and coaching the reluctant teacher who is stuck in their comfort zone, how do you "break their teapot"?  In my other posting, all of the strategies that I outlined there have not worked on this kind of teacher, save for the last one.  To break this reluctant teacher out of their comfort zone, perhaps a stronger course of action needs to take place like connecting technology integration to teacher evaluation.  This is what my school is currently in the process of formulating.  The school is already bringing in a new evaluation system for implementation over the next two school years, and the group of tech coaches is working on embedding the ISTE Standards for Teachers (formerly called the NETS-T Standards) into the new system.  For some, this will be no big deal at all - they are already meeting these standards everyday.  For others, it will simply be a case of tweaking their classroom practice in places, to meet all of the standards.  But for some, the reluctant teachers with technology, they will be forced to change their practice to meet the standards for tech integration . . . which they never have been forced to do before.  This one change will effectively "break their teapot".

Will this really work?  Well, give it a year or two and I will let you know what happens.  And we should have a new teapot by then . . . I wonder if the new one will last another 30 years or more?

The 1000th view . . .

When I started this ed tech blog about 15 months ago, I said at the time that it was mostly for my reflection on teaching and learning with/through educational technology . . . and I think that this statement still holds true.  This is my 23rd posting, which puts me right on a 1.5 posting per month pace.  Not bad for a first time blogger.  As I write this short post, I have noticed that I have just reached the 1000th view of my blog.

Now, I am not so naive to think that all of these page views actually came from real, live people.  Over the past year I have noticed a few hits along the way that have come from some automated trolling services in far-off lands.  Plus there's the clear evidence that my postings have only had a few comments left on them, or have had a few people Google+1 them.  So there is some evidence that people have read some of what I have written here, but I still maintain that this blog is for my reflection first, and sharing ed tech stuff with the world comes second.

So which posts have generated the most reads/hits?  Far and away, the clear winner here is my second posting about the Unplugged day that I held last year ('84 on 8/4 Unplugged Challenge - Revisited).  Coming in second was my posting about applying to the Google Teachers Academy (Getting All Googley).  After that, there's a bunch that have similar numbers of hits.  

Do you have a blog?  How long have you been writing it, and how one did it take you to reach a 1000 hits?  Do you know anyone who started a blog which they have since let fall away into the void of the internet?  Why did it fail, or why did they stop writing it?