I recently wrote a note to a friend and colleague. It was one of those stream-of-consciousness type of emails where afterward I thought maybe it should have been a blog post. It is now. I feel like I wrote it to send to my old friends and colleagues in the places I have worked before. This is the note that says camp is fine and I am better because of it.
To my colleagues back….[home?]…..in my previous place,
I am learning a lot. Or to take Toffler’s line: I am “learning, unlearning, and relearning”.
Just when I think I have something figured out, it changes. The new job is really an adventure. There is so much I want to do and so much I want to give to everyone in the district. But I can see how frustrating it can be with rules, restrictions, laws, expectations, and steep hills of resistance to change.
I miss being able to hide out in your classrooms, offices, or libraries. Taking that moment to watch students engaged in learning or hearing someone share more than just a frustration with a piece of equipment. I miss hearing people talk about the shows they watch, the events with their kids, or the movie they went to see. I miss the copy room chatter, the early morning coffee drinkers moving from a low grumble of speech to…well….speech itself.
I miss the energy of the campus and being an integral piece of it, instead of feeling like a guest to all the campuses. (At least I now have a badge and don’t have to sign in each time I visit or run my Raptor badge in my own district.)
This week, I got to watch the local channel which broadcasts district events and saw myself sharing about Trumba calendars, Google Documents, and Internet safety tools for families. The communications director for the district is a parent who reads the calendar events on air for the community. She interviewed me for 45 minutes the other day on camera and we posted it on the community access channel.
What’s amazing too is getting stopped running in to Blockbuster by someone who watched the show and them asking me about Google documents! I went to the local grocery store tonight and heard a mom say to her son in the shopping cart that I did look like the guy they saw on TV.
And I think of the other broadcast ideas I have for not just me sharing technology tools but a live classroom experience of me sharing tools with a groups in studio. Perhaps we could live-blog, Twitter, or even share resources with others while recording the show for the channel here. My brain swarms with ideas!
That’s the fun part of the job! The ideas! I am also on a committee of teachers, principals, a board member, and support staff helping develop ideas for instructional technology for the district. Developing the “vision” if you will for our students. I have done this before and witnessed excellent leadership on how to lead a group. I infused wikis and our conversation is really interesting on that site (wish I could share but it is a closed conversation).
Showing the team a wiki has not only allowed up a common collaborative place but it sparked a new tool for the members to use. This is the first time many of them have seen a wiki. I imagine the same look on the faces around my conference table when showing our wiki was about the same look on the faces of early man seeing a stick on fire the first time.
Something else I did this week, I took my entire team of techs to the high school to work on over 70 old tech requests stuck in the system. That wasn’t as fun! It was one of those “have to do’s” rather than we “want to do”. Before we went, I organized all the requests and then we “huddled” where I told them to do four things:
1) Smile
2) Think “I like you!” – this is based on a customer service technique from a video called “Give Them the Pickle!” with Bob Farrell. I told them to just think that they liked everyone no matter who they came into contact with.
3) Take notes based on what the teachers say. – I told them that half of what they hear isn’t the message. The message is that the teachers want to be heard. If you take notes, you are paying attention and they will LOVE you for it. Truth is – the notes can be used to provide more information about what happened so we can fix it better in the future as well.
4) Test what you complete to make sure it works not just for you but for the user. Common mistake in tech repair is to fix it but not test it with the user’s login.
An entire day of the entire tech team at one campus. And you know what? We did a great job! I think it inspired my crew more than it helped those teachers. The fact that they spent the first hour huddled and reviewing ideas for each request was great as well. Group brainstorming! Teamwork!
I love it. It is definitely these little moments that make it all worth while.
There are LOTS of problems too. It isn’t perfect. People are mad at me. People are frustrated. There’s those kinds of issues of people and progress that go with any job and any day of the week.
But all in all, I am learning more and more about how I can be better and to be a better person. This is just the right training for me at the right time.
Now if only the paddle-boats worked….;p
