The TWAIN blog

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

The past few days have been a whirlwind and I am glad to finally be home here in Kerrville. I spent last Thursday and Friday in Austin at the TEC-SIG Fall meeting with colleagues in the field. It was great to see so many people out there in the field and to hear the concerns we all share! As someone new to this field, it was a little daunting too because I feel so out of of it in just trying to transition from campus coordination to district director. I am such a NEWB!

I am also someone who is constantly comparing myself to the successes of others and in that crowd, there are some monumental leaders who will always be several steps ahead of the rest of us. Renegades and Mavericks – you know who you are (and if not, I will tell you in person!) and then there are those of us just happy to be following your blogs and to read a note from you on Twitter.

I already posted about the goings on in all these trainings but I just spent 6 hours in my car with the radio off in my own personal development. My own reflexive time to start figuring out how to make this work. And I wish I had a simple answer but I don’t. I have a very hard pill to swallow and much applied learning to put in place.

I know that I am a people-pleaser. Someone who wants to make everyone happy and that means selling out my own soul at times or my own happiness to make something happen. As a campus person who was tied to the teachers, this was easy to do because I felt I was making a martyr of myself and connecting to the teachers. I was scoring points for them so that they would like me more and then that was my “in” to get them to enjoy my training. I knew this as I was doing it. I knew it wasn’t right but it was my method.

Now, I realize in my new role that this won’t work. It hasn’t yet and if it continues it will blow up in my face. I have known this for some time but was fighting it because changing my method is very hard. Why change??

I am also now a supervisor of a group of people that serve the district in their capacity. This is new to me as I have only ever before had 2 assistants who reported to someone else. This is my first supervision role. The idea of making people happy all the time will not work here either.

So, I have to change….everything.

I am freaked out by this realization and rallied by it as well. I finally feel like I have some direction and resources. The Technology Directors Academy was just what I needed. I have been so overwhelmed that I did not even know the questions I needed to ask. It is the same feeling as the first year teacher thrust into a role and learning in the first few weeks that it isn’t like the lessons in college.

I haven’t been at this for more than a few months and I have already felt regret, depression, frustration, lost, ungrounded, self-loathing, and complete distrust in my own abilities – much like the first semester of my first year.

The Academy is something I recommend technology directors take if it is their first year or their 11th. I even recommend that if your instructional technology coordinator is separate from your infrastructure tech coordinator, that the two directors attend this academy together. It is collaborative and so helpful for developing those (BHAGs – Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals) and a plan for uniting the service orientation of our jobs together. I hear how districts have that rift between instructional and infrastructure and the rift that grows year by year between them and this Academy could be a solution for you both. Really! It’s definitely a good start in the right direction.

I am looking forward to days 3-5 of this group. It was great sharing with so many varieties of technology directors at different tables and group games. I hope we continue the conversation on our blogs, wikis, and NING groups. And if any of you are reading this blog would like to add your input, I would love to share it here with the readers as well.

Here is where you can find more information from TCEA about their Technology Coordinator’s Academy: http://www.tcea.org/Training/Pages/TechnologyCoordinatorsAcademy.aspx

And a huge debt of gratitude to our excellent trainers!! Not a moment of boredom or waste in the time we were together. Thank you for sharing so many resources with us and for putting me at ease in developing an action plan!

Kari Rhame from Deer Park ISD

Robert Harris from Highland Park ISD

Lori Gracey from Bastrop ISD