A GREAT Day

I just finished going through my RSS feeds discovering a lot of interesting information and sharing some with various Teaching and Learning staff. In this process I reinforced for me the realization that I have far too many feeds. It took me almost one and half hours to go through them and that was with much skimming. So, I decided to start deleting. I deleted over 30 and still have a very long list, too long to count or maybe I just don't want to know the number. I've also switched to Outlook as my feed which I believe is slower in reviewing the feeds, but much better for keeping track because I use multiple computers.

My RSS feeds are similar I fear to our work where we are focused on many initiatives. Are we suffering from the mile wide and inch deep situation that we describe as one of the reasons for changing the curriculum? My behavior would say yes as does some of the recent feedback from principals (maybe just not recent feedback). Sometimes it makes me wonder whether those we support see us as knowledgeable and supportive or unknowing and overly demanding.

We had Teacher Leadership today and for me that is always an energizing time. Working with Connie is always amazing experience as I watch and learn from her. I think we shared some new concepts today about influencing behavior that holds promise for buildings to ask critical questions about change initiatives and think about demand and support in new ways. I am looking forward to some feedback as teams reflect on this new learning.

I also had the opportunity to dip in and out of the Technology Fusion meeting. In a short period of time I have come to truly enjoy facilitating and working with these people. We spent a lot of time on the front end creating process tools that are really paying off as we take what have been two silos and fuse them into a quality team focused on important work. I observed today one of the best examples I have seen of giving direct feedback around very emotional content that had the impact of supporting the conversation as opposed to killing it. It was a defining moment as they continue this journey. They really lived their Code of Cooperation. Put this together with the hour and a half debrief with Dawn and Connie and it was a GREAT day.