Shelley’s Blog

This month in District Administrator, Gary Stager, wrote an article about building relationships with students and that can give all students the opportunities to be successful.  It is in the February issue of District Administration 2008 Teach the Kids You Have. He continues to challenge our ideas about diagnostics, learning styles, testing, putting students in groups based on whatever a test says, etc.  His point is if we just build relationships our experience will pave the way to educate all students through the use of compassion and a knowledge of working with kids not at them.  As educators we have a bag of tricks that includes the latest in pedagogical skills but also weaves that in with instinct, keeping students engaged and believing there is a way to reach all.  He says that too often ” the emphasis is one what the teacher does to the student as opposed to how to create the conditions for learning.”  I was working with some of our guidance staff a few weeks back and found that their primary job is to test and provide results for diagnosis and analysis.  I question if their time could be better spent working directly with children.  Do we need to categorize and constantly put students in boxes or perhaps have a diagnosis that aligns to some sort of plan?  Gary says that ” teachers who read, engage in professional activities outside of class, and knows each student will help them progress forward.”  It is really why I originally became a teacher.  I thought I had a gift to be that person.  How many of us are tied by so much administrivia that we can’t move forward?  The infrastructures alone to support the intense lists of tests and diagnostic tools is staggering.  There are technical, personnel, and supervisory systems in place to be successful.  I am not sure of the exact number but I might venture to say we could significantly reduce class sizes and have a lot more hands on time with our students.  As an administrator who manages these systems it is frustrating and sometimes debilitating.  I can’t always see the connections or the improvement it is making for our students that come to school without being fed, they were up all night because their parents were fighting, they are homeless, they just have not hope.  How is testing helping them?  Just some rants for the hour! 

As we try to increase our leadership capacity in our district we continue to want to engage teachers in the process.  We look forward to promoting leaders from within.  Teachers are our greatest asset and to really plan and implement new programs their inclusion is critical.  I have approached this with open arms and have been slightly side tracked in my thinking as I grow through this experience.  My first comment centers around teachers seeing themselves as leaders and how that impacts their relationships in their respective schools.  We all talk about building a trusting organization and in promoting that we need to include all.  I wonder if we can ever get there and how do we change that culture.  I think it is with teachers.  As teachers sit alongside us in planning and strategizing there is sometimes a sentiment that they are crossing over to the darkside.  They begin to feel a bit alienated and have to really juggle their feelings of inclusion in their schools and what it means to be part of “us.”  There are some that might begin to distrust them and their effectiveness might be hampered by that.  There are tough decisions to be made and those decisions don’t always come with favorable feedback from staff.  Now they are making decisions and supporting initiatives.  Their support comes out of the fact they are involved and engaged in the process.  We are hoping they can transmit that to their colleagues to garner support and feedback to help inform the process.  I have had some feedback that they are not always comfortable in that role as they get a bit of resistance and don’t always know how to react.  In this process I realize we need to train and have those conversations with our teacher leaders to impart some of the strategies we use. 

My second comment relates to scheduling and the general infrastructures of schools.  We are trying to have two groups come together when one of these groups is booked everyday from 8 - 4 with no breaks (I did not say they can go to the bathroom). Meetings are difficult and time to network and just converse is at a minimum.  If you ask our teachers they want to be in the classroom and they are just as torn.  There is a “meeting” culture that is necessary to occur to move forward.  Sometimes we as administrators move ahead leaving our teachers behind because of their jobs.  How do we attempt to adjust that?  I have often thought of partner teachers that can team with our teacher leaders so instruction is not impacted when they are out of the classroom.  We need them to keep us on the right road and keep us connected to what is happening daily but have little access to teachers to do that except in hallways and maybe in the stall next to them as we meet in the bathroom.  I know there are initiatives such as teachers on special assignment that can keep teaching in the loop and that is an option.  In order to really impact the process and bring teachers into the fold I believe we need to relook at the whole infrastructure.  I would like it to be more open to everyones involvement so all voices are heard.

I guess I will answer or respond to my own post concerning VOIP since I am living it right now.  I had wrote about the need to really understand what it means to become your own phone company when installing VOIP.  Do we really understand all of the hidden costs associated with giving up the shared experience or service you have with a traditional phone company?  Most of us don’t know what happens behind the scence.  I think the New York State BOCES and RICS encourage us to move towards these solutions but don’t always paint the whole picture. 

I just had a failure that took down our phones for an hour.  We were able to resolve the problem with the help of an outside source.  One of our servers was down so our redundant server picked up the slack.  This was great but we do not have the monitoring equipment to know that first server was down.  If we did this would have been avoided.  Again should we have been able to do this?  In a normal system we would pick up on it just by our users and activity on the network.  The phones are different.  An outside company is telling us they can set up remote monitoring for $44,000 a year and they were also the company that sold us the system?  They did an outstanding job don’t get me wrong - but I think if we had more idea as to what type of monitoring we needed we might have budgeted differently.  Does this save money?  No but it offers more flexibility.

There is a widely held view that migrating to a VOIP phone system saves money. It is mentioned in publication repeatedly, both in journals and in marketing material. School boards are sold VOIP based on the premise that it will save them money. Outside of those who are intimately involved with the planning, installation, and maintenance of these systems, the impression is almost unanimous. The fact is, however, that VOIP is not cheaper, even if it is better.

My intention is not to bash VOIP. In fact it has been a wonderful addition to our district. What I want to do is reframe the way the decision to migrate to VOIP is made. The assumption is that one can leverage the existing data network to support all IP based services like phones, video surveillance, intercoms, video streaming, etc. The perception is that because the network exists you don’t need to replicate infrastructure for multiple services, and hence you save money. Numbers are thrown around like reduced cost for monthly telephone lines, and eliminating maintenance costs to telephone companies. Within the sales pitch there is little reference to the expansion necessary to accommodate the load of all these new services, or the staff necessary to secure and maintain these systems. I challenge those who use these products to say they save money.

We need to reexamine how we understand the benefits of VOIP telephony. Technology provides more flexibility, efficiency and a more effective communication system that we can customize. It has opened the door to possibilities that we had not known were available to us, and allowed us to expect more from what were mere desk phones.

I have installed a VOIP system and I am extremely happy with it. We now have phones in every classroom and we are in total control of programming and functionality. But there is a cost. We needed to make sure our data network was secure and that we had adequate power and switches in closets to maintain integrity in the system and calls. One of our inside technical staff has been assigned to manage all of the users (500) which would have been done by the phone company in the past. If there are any issues or problems our network administrator is responsible for repair. We have added a layer of complexity as we connect to a phone company in resolving possible issues.

The IT department had never before been directly responsible for student safety or for handling critical downtime. Our most valuable resources running on the network were the financial and student systems. These rarely go down, and when they do it has no impact on the safety of students and staff. Now, downtime is more than an inconvenience. We have always needed to plan for redundancy, disaster recovery, battery back up, data backup, and monitoring of equipment to anticipate issues down the road. Reliability has always been important, but now uptime is critical.

In the past the telephone utility provided us with a stable, shared service. They consolidated the network hardware in environmentally controlled, constantly maintained central offices. As we move towards VOIP we are essentially creating our own isolated networks. We have given up the shared environment assumed some of the responsibilities of the utility ourselves.

Further, we must analyse the long terms costs of a VOIP system. There is the costs of training the technical staff as people, products, and security issues change, and there is the cost of new switches and batteries, which only last five years. Because the entire network runs on the same hardware, replacing VOIP components does benefit the entire network, but these are no longer optional upgrades. They are critical maintenance issues.

My VOIP system has given us more flexibility in terms of a phone system. It still makes calls in and out and functions as a phone but has evolved to be another computer on the network that needs to be managed as other computers do. Our district has 2000 workstations and we have added 500 phones which is an increase of 25%. Our staffing has not increased but our responsibilities have. If I compare the yearly maintenance costs for the traditional system with the current costs I find that they are about the same (this is not a scientific comparison, but it comes from an educated perspective). The difference is the shift in responsibility from the phone company and Buildings and Grounds, to Technical Services. We undertake this shift in order to take advantage of the features that a VOIP system offers, not to save money.

The intent of this article is to illustrate the typical voices that are heard when moving to any technology. Saving money becomes the mantra that drowns out discussion of the real benefits of VOIP. I am hoping to take away the notion that technology saves money and replace it with the notion that technology enhances our ability to do our jobs, increase flexibility and customization, and gives options that we had never thought about before. It is essential that we make this transition because VOIP has become the primary option for large phone deployments. It has become an unavoidable technology and we need to be able to talk about its real implications.

In USA today - Tuesday October 24, 2006 there was a great article called “Generation Y gets involved.”  In this time of increased “internet safety” programs for parents and increased paranoia about the internet and our children, this article shows us the power and positive impact the Internet should and can have.  Our children need to make choices at every age and instilling that value in them is something we do as guardians or parents.  That value should stretch across many arenas.  This article shows how millenials are reaching out to create a civic minded and socially conscious website to express their views.  They are working together to promote volunteerism and an interest in government.  Visit Generationengage.org and celebrate the positive accomplishments of our youth and see how they can leverage social networking of the internet for a positive cause.

 In an article that Peter Reilly wrote, Article: Certification for Technology Directors: in 2002 he outlines a certification process that would accommodate the changing role of the technology director in schools to provide them with the tools and education they need to be successful. 

Most administrative positions in school districts require an administrative and teaching degree.  With those degrees comes an education in administration, management, budget planning but in a generic sense.  When most of us are in administrative programs we sit around the table with those seeking to become building principals, assistant superintendents, department chairs, business managers, etc.  It is a generic degree made to prepare us for the roles we seek.  The technology director position is a highly specialized position that requires a blend of management skills, systems thinking to improve process, leadership to give direction to appropriate technology acquisition and the leveraging of funding, understanding security issues, responsible for all data that is confidential and critical to the running of an organization, supervisory responsibilities that usually are not certified teachers but technical staff, building quality professional development, just to name a few.  Peter continues to say that many tech directors experience burnout because of the diversity of their responsibilties.  This position requires an unusual blend of management, technical and instructional responsibilties that most administrative programs do not prepare us for. 

In an effort to address the need to provide more support to this evolved role of the technology director Peter Reilly (Lower Hudson Regional Information Center, Carol Troskosky (Western New York Regional Information Center) and I are suggesting to NYSCATE we put together a certication program that will help to provide education and support.  Some of the questions we are reviewing are how do we provide this instruction, who should be be involved in planning, writing curriculum and administrating this.  Let us know what you think. 

It is time for me to take a step out of my professional life to take a moment to discuss another passion. The Boston Red Sox are a team that stirs emotions, crazy feelings, debates, discussions, and other life expanding conversations that we revel in for only a few short months. It is this time of year, as a Red Sox fan, that we hope the season goes by quickly and we begin to set our sites on the New England Patriots. But there is a definite struggle because no one wants the summer itself to end. As the leaves change so does any possibility of the Red Sox going anywhere. You wonder how a team can be on top for so long and then float away. With all of that being said they are still the best team in baseball in my mind and have the best fans in the world. Whether they are winning or losing we still cheer, swear, pay outrageous prices for tickets and beer, take the T and hoot and holler on the train, and just plain love being at Fenway. I can’t say any other ball team or park sparks so much enthusiasm. So in my mind the Red Sox are and always will be winners. Winning the world series was icing on the cake and we will all be licking our fingers for another century. Who cares -it is the good times and thrills that make them so great. Only Red Sox fans would understand that.

I often wonder why positions have such static names and responsibilities.  I am suggesting that projects dictate the types of teams to be brought together and that can include anyone that fits the criteria of what the goals of the new project are.  Teams and management could be fluid.  Are we sometimes stuck with titles.  In education it is tough to be fluid and access experts because schedules are created and time to collaborate is at a minimun.  It thrusts the “administrators” into more decision making roles with only minimal input from those it might ultimately effect.  It isn’t done maliciously but it is part of the design schools employ - can’t get subs, students need a consistent teacher, teachers feel responsible when they aren’t there and so on.  Some of our greatest team members are in the classrooms.

I am suggesting we become creative in restructuring and how we do business and allow all leaders to emerge.  Adminstration can be facilitation. I have tried to find research that supports what I am suggesting but haven’t found anything.  Any ideas from anyone out there? 

 Take advantage of thinking outside the box with everything we do.  We can’t be expert in everything and by spreading expertise we can strengthen our abilities to provide effective education.  When projects emerge it is necessary to bring those experts into the room by what they know and have been educated in not by what their title dictates!

There has been so much controversy over what works and what doesn’t. Our students are failing and leave it to the “experts” to figure out why. I came across an article “Dropping out is hard to do” in the Center for School Reform newsletter. I liked the ideas it put forth about developing relationships with students, making education more meaningful, encouraging rigor, early detection of students at risk, and most importantly improving the culture of our school to improve disengagement issues with our children. I feel we are constantly laying blame on home lives, poverty, and other contributing factors to our students failure in school. They do contribute and that is why we need to challenge ourselves to go through our own “industrial revolution” to look at education differently. Has anyone asked the kids??? If they do are they taken seriously?

The Northwest Regional Education Lab- quality and teaching division, created a guide to develop professional learning teams to bring teachers together as leaders in their own development and growth. High need districts were selected for the study. Teachers were put into teams to look at data, determine instructional strategies based on that data, use research based strategies, collect classroom data and reflect as a team to improve. The process also includes developing teams, resolving conflict, developing trust, and improving communication.

This model puts teachers in the drivers seat and administrators provide them with the resources they need to succeed. Those resources might be access to the data they need, professional development and meeting time, bringing in experts as they identify areas they want to improve, etc. Teachers drive the change by their own research which is what we encourage our students to do. Our teachers become learners, educators and decision makers in their own destiny with a common goal of improving student performance. With this vested interest teachers develop a process for growth and “life long learning” that we so desparately want to instill in our students.

This article provides a guide which I highly recommend. Administrators become supporters and gatherers of resources and teachers implement their plans as teams to provide constant feedback, improving of practice, and reflection.

The article is Improving Instruction through Professional Learning Teams, A guide for school leaders. November 2005, Dr. Susan Sather.  I have provided you with a link under other resources.