21st century Personal Learning Network - Richard Jones, Executive Director

I still remember my first year as a teacher. It was one of the most exciting, challenging and frustrating experiences of my life. I survived my first year and realized that I was beginning to make a difference in the lives of several young people. It convinced me that my career should follow a path in education.

One of the people that helped me survive my first year of teaching was an elderly teacher named Joe, who worked across the hall. Joe always welcomed me to wander into his classroom at the end of the day to vent my frustrations and seek his advice. He always had time for me, constantly offered encouragement and wisdom from his 30 years in teaching. Looking back, I realize Joe was part of my personal learning network that enabled me to become a competent teacher.

We all have our personal learning networks of colleagues in our school, mentors from previous jobs, or family members who work in education. These people offer advice, a sympathetic ear, or new ideas enabling us to continue to improve in our craft.

The challenges in education continue to mount with so much expected of us on a daily basis. Teachers work hard satisfying an ever-increasing number of administrative requests and increasingly complex demands from the dozens of students we see on a daily basis. To meet these, we all must be continual learners, acquiring new skills, trying new approaches and contributing to our schools collective success. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find time for the casual chats with people face-to-face that may be part of our personal learning network. However, social networking tools and the Internet allows us to develop a unique 21^st-century personal learning network.

Over the last several months I have become convinced that Twitter is a powerful professional learning tool. Twitter is not about pumping out marketing  information to the masses like a web site or email. Twitter gives individuals the choice to read information that meets his or her immediate needs. This is empowering professional development where you can listen to experts anywhere in the world. You can ask questions and receive advice from talented educators. Whether you are reading short messages from a leading author or reading blogs from other 3^rd grade teachers, there is a wealth of knowledge to be gained.

We all enjoy reading books by popular authors such as Dan Pink (@DanielPink) or Stephen Covey (@StephenRCovey), Ken Robinson (@SirKenRobinson) or watch TED Talks (@TED_TALKS). We are eager to attend presentations by education thought leaders like Heidi Hayes Jacob (@HeidiHayesJacob), Steve Barkley (@stevebarkley) or Diane Ravitch (@DianeRavitch). These talented authors not only write books periodically but they use twitter and they write and offer advice every day. If you’re interested in what they have to offer you can tune in and listen to their advice. Every moment hundreds of teachers are writing and sharing advice about their effective teaching. Any teacher can seek out these individuals and listen to their advice.

Will Richardson, (@willrich45) and Rob Mancabelli (@RobMancabelli) have created a new book; Personal Learning Networks available from Solution Tree in May. 

Twitter may be in the popular media as a way to follow entertainment personalities or it can be used by companies to market their products. But, you control and decide who to follow and pay attention to.  

You can create your own personal learning network and listen to educators who will help to make you a better teacher. Join twitter, create your network and follow learning forward New York (@LFNewYork) where you will learn about cutting-edge practices in professional development.  BTW, I tweet under @RDJLeader

Passion Provokes Action by Richard Jones, Executive Director

“Forget dry statistics, real change comes from real feelings.” This quote comes from Chip and Dan Heath in a recent article in the February issue of Fast Company. I have mentioned before the powerful and practical books by the Heath brothers, Made to Stick, and Switch. These two books provide excellent mental models and practical advice for leadership and change in any organization, but especially schools.

Those of us in leadership roles in schools are likely to share the responsibility for some of the most significant future changes in education. We “cut our teeth” on standards and new Regents examinations and new accountability requirements. However the looming budget cuts and common core standards and next-generation assessments are likely to result in more significant changes than we have experienced in the last two decades. To sustain the burden of leadership, it is helpful to think of ideas from outside of our everyday education realms.

In the Fast Company article, the Heath brothers tell the story of an overweight young woman who, after many unsuccessful diets, finally had an emotional epiphany and committed herself to losing weight. She ultimately lost 150 pounds and wrote a book about her experience called the “Clothesline Diet.” The insight from this experience, is that this young woman knew intellectually what needed to be done, but until an emotional event triggered her passion, she was unable to make any progress. We need to recognize that organizations are not machines driven by carefully prescribed procedures that can be quantitatively measured. School organizations are comprised of people and those people are heavily influenced by emotions.

For example, the emotions around budget cuts and impending staff cuts are likely to generate more pain and loss of productivity than the actual cuts themselves. In the book Switch, the Heaths use a mental model of a rider and an elephant to describe leadership in change and the power of emotions. The rider represents, intellect and planning for appropriate change. Without plans there is little movement. So the rider (plans) are essential for moving an organization forward. However, the elephant is a metaphor for emotions, much more powerful than the rider. While the rider may direct the elephant in a specific direction, any emotional event can trigger the elephant to take control. When this happens, all plans are abandoned! 

This is a useful metaphor for us to recognize that we not only need plans as we move forward but to engage the positive emotion and energy of staff.  Leaders need to engage staff on an emotional level, with positive optimism to overcome negative fear.

We use the term passion to describe the energetic infusion of emotion in a positive direction. Leaders must exhibit passion in order to move any group of people forward. Passion is key. Without passion there would be little religion, love, innovation in this world. Effective leaders need to arm themselves with passion for their work, inspire passion in others and pay attention to passion that may be counterproductive in the organization moving toward its goals. Be proactive with your passion and lead your school to positive action.

Events vs. Routines by Richard Jones, Executive Director

Did you enjoy the holidays? Did you spend quality time with friends and family? Did you make any New Year's resolutions? 

We all enjoy the holidays this time of year. These are special events that create great memories and are times for celebration. However, in the days that follow,

some of us experience feelings of depression as we descend from the emotional highs of gifts, gluttony and greetings. We slip back into our routines and pay our credit card bills. Events like holidays cause peaks and valleys of emotion. Without special events, our lives are dull. It is events, we look forward to. Events give us memories, but it is routines that give us meaning. Events come and go with the emotional highs and lows. It is our routines that make a difference. Think about the stereotypical New Year's resolution. We all profess to lose weight, exercise, eat better and be more patient and tolerant. Most of these resolutions fade into distant memory until we dust them off, next year at this time. However, those resolutions that we do successfully transfer into routines make a difference and lead to a better life.

What does this have to do with professional learning? Well, I ask you do think about professional learning. Is it an event or a routine? In your mind is professional learning one of those Superintendent's day presentations or workshops? It is an event like an online course we complete, or a conference we attend. We enjoy and remember those professional learning events. They give us memories but do they make a difference.

It is the professional learning routines that make a difference and lead to true growth within the profession. Think about how your learned a new software application. You may have been excited about a learning event when you were introduced to an exciting new application, but if you failed to fold this software into your routine, you soon forget it and lose the skills. It is the new things you do on a daily basis that make a difference, new things you try, conversations you share, constant reflection on your work. These are professional learning routines.

Even within professional learning, we tend to think of evaluation of professional learning as events - an evaluation form, a survey or even a test. Those evaluation events are memorable and give us some data. But to truly make a difference, evaluation needs to be a routine - more formative evaluation. When we do formal workshops and presentations (there is still a place for workshops) we should use technology to solicit ongoing feedback as to how participants are processing the new learning, right during the workshop. What is repetitious? What is novel? What is practical? In addition to conducting surveys, let's incorporate professional learning evaluation into team meetings, walkthroughs, even submission of daily lesson plans.

Convert events into routines, it will improve professional learning and help you reach one of those New Year's resolution goals.