mrplough07's Blog

To add a slightly different twist to the reward/punishment conversation, I wanted to bring up kids.  The entire chapter I was thinking, okay how could I use this to influence my kids to try more creative options/tools. Right now I use an option based system in my online classes.  Students can do a project in MWord for a regular grade or attempt that same project using Voicethread or a blog, or other more creative tools for extra credit points.  While I get a variety of kids choosing to do the extra credit, its a very low % of the total students.  I know thats pretty normal in a high school setting, but I feel stuck.  Even after reading the chapter I dont feel like I have a grasp of how to get these kids to turn in anything but the very basic format without just removing those lower level options.

Im pretty sure I need to refocus my reward system, like the book suggests, to target the students personal and social motivators first.  The hard part in online teaching is to actually make personal connections on deep enough levels to be an influencer.  Still strategizing on that one too :)

Do you have a reward system in place that effectively motivates students to try new things without just making those new things mandatory?

Reading this chapter really got me thinking about one thing I could do to promote changing the system at my school.  I came up with the idea of Plus 1. 

I want to call out educators to try and actively promote a Plus 1 policy when registering for conferences this year.  Most of us attend conferences that we feel comfortable in, conferences where we are supported by other like minded individuals, conferences that allow us to take part in conversations we feel pretty knowledgeable in. This was especially true at NECC 2008, and its true in the online conference I am actively participating in right now.

While I was in the backchannel chat today, I thought “wow, everyone in here is ahead of the curve and is pretty sold on what this conference is promoting,” which happened to be Web 2.0 tools.  The theme of the conference isn’t the point, but the fact that we were all chatting away in a gigantic Echo Chamber started to bother me.  There wasn’t anyone on that chat that was disagreeing with anything that was being said, even when prompted to.

The point is, most of us really want to change education.  We aren’t going to do that until we get more teachers, administrators, district personnel, lawmakers, and politicians involved.  To do that, we should invite them places. Get them to witness what we are trying to do.  Get them to argue with us and make us justify why we are changing education in this particular vision.

So, for all the conferences we are planning on going to this upcoming year, let’s either make sure we bring a person that doesn’t agree with us or might not understand what we are doing, or if money is an issue, have them REPLACE us at that conference.  You know they will get more out of it anyway.

This will take some work.  We will have to be unselfish, almost altruistic in some cases.  In other cases we will have to work hard to convince colleagues they should attend and will have to hound them to say yes when they don’t want to work over the summer or write extra lesson plans for a sub.  Whatever it takes. This is easy in the scheme of changing education!

Conferences in the next year that I really want to go to and will make PLUS 1 a reality in: K12 Online Conference,  Virtual Schools Symposium, Educon 2.1, NCCE 2009 , and NECC 2009

Someone does, someone has to stand up, someone has to be aggressive thats why I'm reading this book.   I'm sick of not being effective!

Fun story....I called out my bosses this summer through an email after some very dramatic, non-transparent, non-justified, non-shared leadership decisions were made altering the vision of our school in a pattern that seemed to go against major reforms we established pre-summer.  The bosses called me in for a meeting and I tried to stand up to them.  Still couldn't get all the elephants out but definitely stirring up the pot.

We have such an interesting interpersonal dynamic and negative culture at our charter school that 4 years ago our principal brought in a relationship coach.  She was trying to get us to trust each other and be better at working together.  All the teachers thought the trainer was a joke, including me.  I didn't see the need, and I couldn't stand the trainer. 

 Four years later, 2 principals later, 3 assistant principals, two executive directors later but still the same core group of teachers, I see the need.  I  understand what she was doing.  She was trying to build a foundation that believed in social capital.  It didn't work and our staff is full of cliques and people who promote school reform for very selfish reasons. 

You are on to something here.  Ask teachers that are interviewing or for their performance evals what networks they are involved with that they have access to on a daily basis.  If none, then there is a good chance they might not be bringing the desire to find answers and improve regularly to the table?

Our biggest elephant in the room at my small charter school is the fact that the principal will never make drastic personnel decisions and it kills so many routes of change for us.  Most acknowledge that there are some very bad teachers at our school.  Due to the nature of our online environment we have uncommon access to their lesson planning, gradebooks, student interaction logs, etc.  We have a variety of ways to judge teachers that most don't in a traditional school.  This and the fact we work in an office environment with 20, 2 man cubicles all piled on each other, we know who is working hard and who is slacking off.

We discuss change a lot, we discuss reform a lot, and most of the teachers agree that there has to be some drastic measures taken to reform individual teachers or remove them.  But its not.  Year after year the same bad teachers come back and we all know that isn't going to change. How do you bring that up to your principal? How do you tell him that his lack of ability to make really hard decisions is what is preventing us from taking the next step at our school?  Its a big elephant.

I’ve been trying to frame this blog all day and my original thought was to call it Being Change without Being in Charge, but that isn’t quite right. Besides, the only thought I could come up with under that title was……..

Back to the book.  Here are some important things I learned about being a leader and being able to influence change, with a little commentary.

1.  The Power of One

Remember learning about Stanley Milgram?  The social scientist who had ‘teachers’ shock ‘learners’ when they didn’t get answers right, and even though learners kept messing up, 65% of the teachers kept shocking them, to near fatal levels.  The final limit was 450 volts where most were presumed dead or passed out as a result. However, if scientists added one person to the teachers room that said things like “keep going, its okay” that number went up to 90% of the teachers shocked to a deadly level.  But, if that same 1 person said “I’m not going to do this anymore” then the shocker stopped shocking.  The idea is that the power of one is all it takes.  One other person can influence us to great or horrible things.

2.  Opinon Leaders, not Innovators bring about change
Innovators are often thought of as the misfits who are disconnected from the rest of their environment.  They aren’t respected because they are on a different plane.  However, early adopters / opinion leaders are connected and respected by their peers and others in their community.  If you want real change, you have to be (or have to find) an early adopter.  You have to be connected to your peers.  You have to be respected by them.  Then, when the innovators come in with their cool new tools, you decide whether they are worthy and promote them.

This one takes some self-evaluation.  I have one other person at my school that would be considered the innovator.  He got me excited about Web 2.0 and the possibility of engaging students on a whole new level.  He has introduced some amazing ideas to our staff.  However, most haven’t taken to changing their style of teaching to meet the demands of today’s students. He is an amazing learner.  That being said, I don’t what I AM?   I don’t think I’m an opinion leader because I’m not vocal enough about the emerging technologies that I’m using or the impact they are having on the select kids using them.  In some instances I’m helping kids get excited about school again. That is a good thing.  I need to be more vocal about it, but it’s hard, especially when you don’t respect so many people in your organization.  That has to change.

3.  Influence agents have to engage the chain of command
“Smart influencers spend a disproportionate amount of time with formal leaders to ensure that the leaders are their social influence to encourage vital behaviors.”

Basically, if you want change then align yourself with the people who can make it happen in your community.  For most of us, that is our bosses who are automatically given the title of leaders when they take the job.  For those of us that have bosses that are innefective at bringing about change, we need to pick people in our organization that can (people who are the head of cliques), and try to show them what we are doing.  If they like our ideas then they will take it to their small groups and change will spread.

4. To become an opinon leader/ early adopter:

• You must be knowledgable about the issue you are trying to change
• You must be trustworthy, people have to respect your opinion
• You must be generous with your time

This hits home really hard.  We have a knowledgable administration.  However, not all are trustworthy.  Most of our faculty does not believe our administration will handle situations appropriately.  They don’t trust them to do the right thing.  Some of our administration is very generous with their time.  Others can never be found.  Do your leaders fit these three criterion?

5.  Make the undiscussable, discussable
There has to be a public discourse over the issues that are hurting your organization the most.  The elephants in the room.

Power to change comes from the ability to force undiscussable topics into the public discourse.  Long settled beliefs are suddenly opened to question and discussed at every corner, workstation, and shop- and eventually reshaped

We can’t sit in our classrooms, complain on our PLN’s, and just talk to our spouses about what is wrong, what needs to change. We have to get our ideas moving, make them kinetic, make them a fabric of our community.

In an ideal workplace, you have an “environment where formal and informal leaders relentlessly encourage vital behaviors and skillfully confront negative behaviors.  When this happens, people make personal transformations that are hard to believe”

What are you doing to influence your environment?

I copied the text from my blog, so if you want to start a more public discussion about this then go to the original blog post here

I'm migrating over from Group 1.  Have been fairly active in our group, but have to admit got behind at NECC, then trip to NYC, so still catching up.  Like the looks of #5 already. Cory