Dangerously Irrelevant

Phi Delta Kappa (PDK) is going to do an interview with Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind. I’m part of a group that PDK has invited to submit a question or two for the interview.

If you’ve got a great question that I should submit for consideration, post it below as a comment!

This is the 3rd of this week’s blogs from the California School Leaders in Thailand.  They are participating in an international post-graduate leadership program in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Phra Saneh Dhammavaro is as far away from what we imagine what a global leader would be.  He is modestly clothed with an orange robe, and has very little or no use for anything else except for a pair of footwear.  After spending a few hours with him, however, we were floored as our preconceived notions were instantly shattered.  He speaks with the gentlest of voices as he shared his thoughts and described his way of life.  What he was really doing was speaking to our hearts as leaders.

We listened to Phra make comparisons between our western way of life and his practices, beliefs and ideals.  He shared with us the importance of establishing balance between mind and body.  As visitors, we took care of the body’s needs satisfying the senses with Thailand’s sights, food and massage.  Phra challenged us that the mind equally needs the same attention.  From this message we were reminded that sometimes leaders must remove and place themselves above tangible material things and non-tangible items such as politics and competing ideas that clutter decision-making and focus on what is right.

He talked about world events and offered a simple solution to everyday crisis and social ills that are readily applicable to our day-to-day lives as school administrators and most importantly our personal lives. Following the way of the Buddha, he suggests, “Instead of finding fault in others, look to your own misdeeds.”  He implored us to look within our own selves and strive to find UNDERSTANDING as a way to avoid conflicts.  While this idea is not new, it is often forgotten in the context of our everyday lives and our work at schools.  Towards the end of our time together, he asked us to meditate with him.  We closed our eyes and listened to him describe a happy place free of hate, violence and pain.  He then filled the void full of love, peace and comfort- an ideal environment we strive to achieve as educators.  In closing our eyes, our consciousness opened we were reacquainted to the reasons why we entered this profession.

In search of a place for training on global leadership, one might look towards a metropolitan city such as London, Tokyo, or New York.  Perhaps Chiang Mai should be included in this list.  Thailand’s 2nd largest city of is dotted with Thai wats or temples reminding its citizens of Buddhism’s ancient and lasting legacies.  Its people especially the Thai monks, at first glance, are seemingly unaware of things taking place around them and probably have nothing to offer to us.  All of our notions were immediately dispelled after meeting Phra Saneh Dhammavaro, Director of Academic Affairs at Buddhist University in Chiang Mai. It seems as if he has known us for while, where we came from and the weight of the baggage we carry.  The way he framed and made sense of our work in the context of our world demonstrated not only his knowledge but also his understanding.  And in doing so, he moved some of us to tears as we realize how much further we need to go not only as leaders, but most importantly as human beings.

Daniel Gumarang, School Improvement Facilitator, Los Angeles Unified
School District and
Craig Knotts, Assistant Principal, Celerity Nascent Charter School
Participating in the Thailand for School Leaders Program

As you can probably tell, I’m reading The New Influencers by Paul Gillin. I’ve already read The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil and Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble & Shel Israel. All three are good reads. Each has a slightly different voice and thus they complement each other well. I’ve learned a lot about organizational blogging from these three books. Time to put my new knowledge into action!

The latest installment of the Report of the Week (ROTW) comes from Education Sector:

• Labeled: The Students Behind NCLB’s ‘Disabilities’ Designation

Here’s a quote from the report:

[B]ecause the majority of special education students have disabilities that do not preclude them from reaching grade-level standards there doesn’t seem to be a need to rollback NCLB’s accountability measures for students with disabilities. To the contrary, doing so could hurt such students by reducing schools’ responsibility for ensuring that they are taught to high standards.

Happy reading!

I don’t like Internet filters, and not just because many folks can’t read my blog (thanks, Mark!).

I don’t like them because they impede political awareness (see, e.g., Andy Carvin’s fantastic post on this).

I don’t like them because in order to exercise one’s right to free speech one also must have access to speech:

[T]he Constitution protects the right to receive information
and ideas. This right is an inherent corollary of the rights of free
speech and press that are explicitly guaranteed by the Constitution. . . . The dissemination of ideas can accomplish
nothing if otherwise willing addressees are not free to receive
and consider them. It would be a barren marketplace of ideas that
had only sellers and no buyers. . . .
More importantly, the right to receive ideas is a necessary predicate
to the recipient’s meaningful exercise of his own rights of speech,
press, and political freedom. [Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School Dist. v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853 (1982)]

And I don’t like them because of the message they send to students: in an information economy, we don’t trust you with information.

Nora Carr wrote in eSchoolNews in February about the need for schools to have policies regarding employee blogs. I thought it was interesting that she cited Harvard Law School’s policy as the model for public school districts since Paul Gillin, author of The New Influencers, notes that it may be the longest employee blogging policy he’s come across. I suppose it may be too much to hope for a school district to adopt Microsoft’s two-word policy: Be Smart.

For those of you who are looking for some model policies to guide your school system, Gillin points to a few examples that Charlene Li has posted on her wiki. If you know of any school employee blogging policies, drop the link in the comment area?

Elephant Conservation Center

After an intense week of late nights working and fast-paced assignments, several members of our cohort took a needed reprieve Saturday to visit the beloved and endangered Asian elephants.  We were aware that elephant population in Thailand has declined from 5000 three years ago to less than 2000 now.  This decline has resulted from mistreatment, neglect, or abuse by trainers or owners, often vying for tourist dollars.  We also know that poaching and devastation of the elephants’ natural habitat have greatly contributed to their decline. We wanted to find a place where the elephants would be treated humanely.  Because the all-day visit to the Elephant Nature Park did not fit our schedule, we visited the Elephant Conservation Center in Lampang Province, south of Chiang Mai.  This is a government-run establishment with a unique “elephant hospital” that nurses back elephants before they are returned to the jungle.

We also had an opportunity to appreciate the skills and intelligence of these magnificent animals in an elephant show. The show was a re-enactment of the work elephants would perform in the logging industry. They have transferred these skills to entertain an enthusiastic audience. Walking in single file, holding each other’s tails, as they do in their natural habitat, the elephants enter the large corral. Guided by the ‘driver’ these enormous creatures perform their task with ease; pulling, pushing and stacking logs.  We were then treated to a musical performance and painting on canvas, done by the elephants!  Several of us purchased these paintings to hang in our homes.

Watching these animals demonstrate these amazing skills, our minds are drawn to the fact that there are similarities in what we have been experiencing as a leadership cohort.  We have all brought our unique qualities to this learning environment in an amazing country.

We have been encouraged by our teacher or ‘driver’ to perform many tasks, utilizing our inherent and transferable skills. We are all performing at a level we never thought possible! This unique environment allows us to open up to the possibilities of a new vision of leadership in the future. Our challenge is to bring this home and share our new canvas with students and staff in our schools.

JoAnne Motter & Minh Tram Nguyen

[JoAnne is Assistant Principal in the Tustin Unified School District & Tram is Principal at EnCompass Academy, Oakland Unified School District]

In his comment last week, Jack Phelps, founder of ChitCh.at (which looks interesting, by the way!), noted that there’s always an adoption curve. The challenge, of course, is to reduce that curve as much as we can. There always will be an implementation dip. Our task as leaders is to make the dip as short and shallow as possible.

I wish we could get rid of these adoption curves and implementation dips altogether, but they’re an inevitable part of human nature. However, as Kathy Sierra noted in the diagram below, we need to somehow figure out how to change faster…

I just learned you can post to blogs from Word 2007 (thanks, Six Apart!). Anyone doing this? If so, how’s it working?