It's All About Learning

Leadership Lessons

I’ve been reflecting a great deal lately about what I’ve learned (and continue to learn) about leadership and leading. I would like to share a few of these reflections here. During my nearly 8 years as a vice-principal (with two 6-month maternity leaves thrown in there), a number of leadership lessons stick out for me (if you click on most of the bolded titles, you will be brought to a more in-depth post on that topic).

1. Go slow to go far. We will move forward faster, with more sustainable change, if we go forward slowly than we would if we moved forward quickly without the input of those we work with.

2. Relationships first. We truly can not move forward without first developing relationships with those we work with – students, teachers, education assistants, or parents. It is important to develop trust with everyone – without trust, people will not feel comfortable to take risks in their own learning which is what is needed to move forward and make change.

3. Parents are our students first and most important teachers. They know their children better than we ever will. It is imperative that we realize this. Parents are also doing their best with their children, even if sometimes it may not seem like it. We are all after the same thing – for students to be the best they can be – to prepare our students/children for their future. We must keep student learning at the centre of all we do.Continue reading “Leadership Lessons”

Inspired

The other day, I was asked a question about who inspires me.

What a great question!

I could go on and on for hours about all the people who inspire me each and every day. As administrators, we are fortunate to have the opportunity to work with many people: kids, teachers, education assistants, parents, community member, administrator colleagues, and our PLN. I general terms, let me tell you about some of the people who inspire me:

I am inspired by those students who struggle on a daily basis to work at the level that is expected of students their age.
I am inspired by students with learning disabilities who find ways to display their learning in unconventional, but very effective, ways.
I am inspired by students who come to school without breakfast and welcome what we have to offer them.
I am inspired by students who are pushing their learning to new levels and who are embracing new ways of learning.
I am inspired by our students who are blogging for the world to read.
I am inspired by our education assistants who are embracing new ways of learning and ways their student’s can express this learning. These professionals are rolling with it and doing their best to make the learning of their students the best it can be – all with a positive attitude.Continue reading “Inspired”

Not Only About Passion-Based Learning

In part, he World English Dictionary defines passion as

“A strong affection or enthusiasm for an object,

concept, etc: a passion for poetry.”

We’ve been hearing a great deal about “Passion-Based Learning”. People are realizing the importance of giving our students the opportunity to learn about things that are of interest to them – things they are passionate about. We talk about the importance of involving students in real-world solutions to real-world problems. Our students and children thrive on doing things to help others. They thrive on knowing they can (and are) truly making a difference. They are motivated by knowing that they are making a difference and that they can inspire others to do the same.

Here are a few examples of passion-based learning:

Bill Ferriter (@plugusin) visited our school district in January to talk to 200 very enthusiastic educators in our school district about how his students were clearly making a difference with their involvement with KIVA. They were making micro-loans to people in Third World Countries who were trying to raise money to start a business to support themselves and their family. These students were passionate about supporting others around the world. They were so passionate, in fact, that they took their own time to support other classes, make videos to promote their project, and present to businesses to raise money for their passion. Continue reading “Not Only About Passion-Based Learning”

A Smackdown and More

A couple of weeks ago, I received a surprising, but very pleasant, direct message on Twitter that went something like this, “Going to be in Surrey in a couple of weeks… want to get together?” Umm… Yeah! Absolutely! The message was from Dean Shareski! Dean presented at our district’s Engaging the Digital Learner Dinner Series in the fall and has also been involved in the #ETMooc currently being offered by Alec Couros and crew.

Dean expressed interest in doing something in a classroom with kids and maybe doing something after school with educators around the district. So, that’s what we (meaning @teacherdiana1) started planning.

Grade 3 teacher, Diana Williams, was very excited and took the idea and ran with it – literally. She had already planned on creating a video to promote her student’s involvement in KIVA (a website where you can make micro-loans to people in Third World Countries who are trying to start businesses). What a better opportunity than to create the video with help from Dean Shareski! So, through pneumonia, Diana worked tirelessly (even though we did ~~order her to stay home~~ recommend that she stay home and rest and this opportunity would present itself again another time) rewriting the lyrics to a song so her students could become KIVA Ninjas. She taught the song to her Grade 3 students, complete with props and actions. They were adorable!Continue reading “A Smackdown and More”

It’s All About Sharing – SurreySchools.ca

We had one of our Digital Sandbox for Administrator sessions last week. You can see more information on the other sessions here, here, and here. The most recent session was about our new district website and sharing platform. Sharepoint allows us to share as a district in ways we have not been able to in the past. Not only can we share with one another, and only one another, if we choose, but we can also choose to share with the students in our class, or we could even share with the world. We could also create private or public groups in which we could share opening. These are all very powerful options.

Once more people begin to use SurreySchools.ca, it will become more and more useful and more and more powerful.

One of our main purposes to demonstrating some of the capabilities of SurreySchools.ca was to have people realize how powerful it can be to share with others. In doing so, it was important to share some of the main parts of our new platform and some examples/possibilities of how to share with each of these components.

In addition to presenting our administrators with information about our Sharepoint platform, we also provided our administrators with something even more important – time. After the brief presentation (below), everyone was given time to explore, ask questions, and create in SurreySchools.ca – together. This togetherness, experimenting, sharing, and exploring together, is imperative in the development of our community of learners.

We are the lead learners in our schools and we are proud of it! It is when we share our learning, our mistakes, our challenges, and our triumphs that we get better – together.

Here is the presentation from our Digital Sandbox Session last week. Enjoy!

Surrey schools sandbox session ppt from Tia Henriksen

Battle of Technology and Pedagogy

First of all, I have a bit of a confession. When I started on Twitter again almost 2 years ago, I didn’t deeply understand when I read, “It’s not about the technology.” Yes, I understood it on a surface level, and nodded in agreement whenever I heard those words. But, I didn’t really deeply understand.

Fast forward almost 2 years and I am beginning to get it. I say beginning because, really, I am not sure if one can really understand the depths of this new ever-changing, ever-evolving learning environment. Just when we think we “figure” one thing out, something changes (similar to how I feel about raising my children, I might add).

So, this is my take on it….

It is not about technology at all. It is all about pedagogy.Continue reading “Battle of Technology and Pedagogy”

My Formal Leadership Journey

One of the topics of #etmooc has been Digital Storytelling. Telling stories through the use of pictures is a powerful way to share. One of the Digital Storytelling assignments for #etmooc is to do a Five Card Flickr story.

For this story, you are given 5 photos to choose from. You must pic one photo to be a representation of the beginning of your story. Each time you choose a photo, you are presented with 5 other photos from which to choose for the remainder of your story. You choose 5 photos to represent your story. Then, after choosing all your photos, you have the opportunity to share your story in words.

This would be a powerful activity (and fun) for students to be involved in sharing themselves and/or their learning. If you want to learn more about the 5-Card Story, click here. If you want to find out more about #etmooc, click here.

My Leadership Journey is below. Continue reading “My Formal Leadership Journey”

It’s All About Sharing!

Creative Commons flickr photo by The U.S. National Archives

When I started my blog almost 2 years ago, I struggled with coming up with a name for it. It took me a couple of weeks to finally decide my blog should be titled, “It’s All About Learning”. For me, it IS all about learning. Everything I do has something to do with learning something: when I take photos, I am learning new things all the time. As a parent, I learn new things about each of my children and about me as a parent each and every day, without fail. As a wife of almost 20 years, I learn things daily about my husband and our relationship (yes, even after that long). As a teacher, I learn new things about my students each day. I learn new ways of effectively working with individual students. What works one day, may not work another day. I continue to learn about the importance of flexibility as an educator. As a leader, I learn about our staff and myself each and every day. Some of these lessons are easy and quick to learn, while other lessons are slow and very difficult. Most importantly, I am continuously learning about the importance of understanding, listening, being patient, taking time, and focusing on what is important.

I have always focused on learning. I love to learn. If you aren’t learning, then you aren’t living! But, as I continue to learn about myself as a parent, a wife, a teacher, and a leader, I have come to realize that it isn’t just all about learning after all. In fact, it is all about SHARING!

What do we learn from sharing, you ask? Continue reading “It’s All About Sharing!”

SD36 Admin Blog Reader Bundle and Other Reflections

I always seem to feel “behind the times” and trying to “catch up” – if that is at all possible. HA HA!

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity, along with some other administrators in my district who are also Digital Coaches, to have lunch with Bill Ferriter (@plugusin on Twitter). Bill was presenting that afternoon and then at our Engaging the Digital Learner Dinner Series the following night. But, as a Digital Coach in the district, we get these wonderful opportunities to have lunch with our speakers beforehand. It’s always a great time to get to know the speaker on another level.

During our lunchtime discussion, Bill gave us some advice about engaging staff members and parents in online communities like Twitter and blogs.

One of his suggestions was to make a Bundle of blogs in an RSS feed for people to read. If we gather the bundles together for them, and share the blogs in this easy format, then we would be one step closer to engaging people with some of the wonderful educators online. He also suggested doing this with Twitter hashtags as well – put together a list of Twitter hashtags arranged by topic in a customized RSS feed and then give those to teachers (i.e. science, literacy, numeracy, parental involvement, etc…).Continue reading “SD36 Admin Blog Reader Bundle and Other Reflections”

Easy Movie-Making Alternative

In a recent post, I described a Digital Storytelling session in the Digital Sandbox for Administrators that fellow administrator, Antonio Vendramin and I offered for other Surrey School District administrators. You can read about that session here. During this session, we used iMovie on the iPad to make 60-second movies. These movies can be very creative and powerful. They don’t take too much time, once you are used to using the app.

However, as we all know, as educators (administrators and teachers) we sometimes don’t even have “that” much time. For instance, last Friday, our school had a Family Noisy Reading event to honour the upcoming Family Literacy Day. I wanted to share the photos of this event on our school Success Blog for all our families to enjoy. Usually, I just post some of the photos on the blog, but I really wanted to share most of the photos of this event. To do this, I thought of using Animoto. This is a great Web2.0 tool which allows you to upload the photos to the Animoto website and then it automates the video, based on which theme and music you choose. You can also add text to the pages. It is really effective and super easy to use. The thought of taking all the photos off my iPad, however, made me cringe a bit. So, I thought I would try the Animoto app on my iPad to see if it worked.Continue reading “Easy Movie-Making Alternative”