The Road Not Taken

One of my enjoyable finds over the holidays is the blog, The PrincipalsPage.
A recent entry started this way.

A big part of being a school administrator is working with students.

As a principal I've always known that by far the vast majority of students will like and respect you and that you will have many opportunities to see their wonderful work and watch them grow to become positive members of a community. This is particularly true if you teach and administer in a small geographical area for many years.

Today I was walking through the mall and met up with a former student. It has been a very long time since I have seen him close enough to talk with. I had a very brief, but enjoyable conversation with him today and walked away from it feeling pretty good.

Many years ago, when I was principal of an elementary school where this boy attended, we had lots of encounters, and the conversations were not always that friendly. I recognized in him an amazing talent that was not being fully utilized and spent a fair bit of time trying to get him moving in a different direction. This involved some negotiation with his parents as well as his teachers to try to keep him in class.

As his grade 7 year was drawing to a close, I decided to create a new Principal's Award just for him. I called it the "Road Not Taken". My rationale was that he had made some great strides towards making serious changes in attitude and behaviour. I think I was inspired by Yogi Berra and his observation about coming to a fork in the road and taking it.

Over the years I kept apprised of his progress as school became what appeared to be an unimportant part of his life. I never had the opportunity to talk with him about things and when I did see him he mostly grunted an acknowledgment that I had said hello. But, I kept saying hello when I did see him.

Today, his physical appearance was so totally different I almost didn't recognize him. We talked about how things were going. He asked if I was still a principal and I said I wasn't but was still working in schools with teachers and students using technology. "Still a geek, then." he said with a laugh.

He's been working in construction the past year and is enjoying himself.

It was a very positive part of my day, and a reminder that sometimes when you try hard with troubled students, the payoff doesn't come until many years later.

A list of lists

I was doing a random walk from a link that was referred to me identifying the countries in the world with the greatest number of computers per capita, when I  found that the source has a nice little pop down menu to choose other bits of comparative data. 

I'm thinking that lists like this would be interesting for students to review and to perhaps speculate on why the order is the way it is. For example, has the North American (well Canadian) move towards banning smoking in public places led to the fact that Canada and the US do not appear in the top 25. And what about health care? We hear a lot about the amount spent here in Canada... look which country is number one on the list.

Collaboration

If there is one thing I have learned this year it is the power of the internet to support the growth of one's personal learning network (okay, a group of folks with whom to collaborate). When I first registered with Twitter, I was underwhelmed. I let it sit in my bookmarks, visiting it occasionally only to find nothing there. Well, I wasn't really that dense, so I started to ask a few questions amongst my network of technology support friends. An invite to follow a peer in another city got me going and now I find the tool positively addictive. I've also met (virtually) a good number of new contacts and benefited greatly from the links and 140 character ideas they have shared. I'm now following 56 people and have 49 following me, a set of numbers above the norm, but far fewer in both categories from some of the folks I follow. Of course, they seem to share a lot more than I do, something I need to work on in the new year.

I also started to make more intelligent use of Delicious. I've set up some key, keywords, and plan to present at a conference in February on making the best use of this tool to build not only an easily accessed database of your own personal bookmarks, but also determining a schema for how best to share with others in your PLN.

Our district use FirstClass as mail/conferencing system and I have used a third-party application to build our school district website. Recently, with the approval of our laptops for teachers project, I've use the built in tool provided by the FirstClass software to develop a webpage for the 24/7 project. Over time I expect to use it to show teachers a simple way to use their FirstClass account to build personal or class websites.

The plan over the next four weeks is to get a good start on the professional development activities for the 24/7 project. It was unfortunate that the weather impacted delivery of the MacBooks to the teaching staff, only 155 of the 210 got in their hands before Christmas, but, for the rest, consider the laptop a New Year's treat. Can you tell that this teacher loves her MacBook?

A big job - first stage complete

Yesterday and today were big days for me and my department. Over the course of the two days, we imaged and marked 210 MacBook computers which are destined for the teaching staff in our school district. 

A website for the project is in its initial stage of development. 

I've posted a dozen pictures on Flickr that give a sense of what we accomplished.

The next step is to get the MacBooks into the hands of the staff and start on the professional development activities.

My thoughts about the current situation with government in Canada

Quite frankly I get rather annoyed at the concern being expressed by the talk show call-ins and the news "man on the street" interviews that suggest that what is happening politically today in Canada is "treason" or "unconstitutional" or "undemocratic".

Far from that, what is going on is well within the constitution and well within the democratic processes we have in place,

I have no quarrel with folks who express the opinion that this is the wrong way about going about things... though I disagree with them.

I wrote a comment from a hotel somewhere (I'll plead oldtimers since I can't remember which one) where I was in a lounge watching the leadership debate. I recall commenting on the fact that the leader of the Conservative Party refused to comment on the financial state of the country and seemingly had no interest in presenting the plan for his party to address this.

Consequently the debate turned into what other commentators felt was an attack on Harper ... a ganging up of sort. Responses to my stated opinion supported those who said that Harper was unduly maligned in that debate. I continued to question his approach to the campaign and eventually voted against the Conservative candidate in my riding.

When Parliament was called, I was itching for some leadership from our Prime Minister. I had not voted for his party, but I have a clear understanding of government and recognize him as the country's leader. Needless to say, he disappointed me, and that evening I reflected on my opinion formed during the leadership debate.

For me the issue of the formation of a coalition government is a non starter with respect to the constitution.

For me, the issue is, What would I do if I was the Governor General?

I think the Governor General should not allow the coalition government to be formed... as legal as that might be. Instead, I think we, as voters, should be sent back to the polls, and if we elect in the same way we did a few weeks ago, we should then allow the GG to let a coalition govern. A minority government, under the Conservatives, with their current (nil) economic policies, cannot succeed.

My 2 cents.

Dance for a Cause

Elias holds on to Eibhlin as he judges the dance contest.

A student holds Caia, while watching the dancers do their thing.

Students from Gibsons Elementary School (where I first taught in 1974!) held a benefit dance for my son-in-law, Elias, as he battles the cancer in his brain.

Gibsons Elementary Principal, Mark Heidebrecht, reported on this event in his blog. Thanks to the students from Gibsons and their guests from Langdale, Cedar Grove, and Roberts Creek for making this event a great success. 

Tomorrow (Tuesday, December 2), Elias has his next MRI. Here is praying it is a good one!

Photo credit... my daughter Chelsea who loves photography almost as much as I do!