__ LIPS – Leading in Public Schools

This week, as another group of school leaders stood ready to accept their accoutrements of office, I had the opportunity to reflect upon what leadership might mean, and tell this to a hall full of students and proud parents.

It was good that we acknowledged the traditional custodians of the land, and acknowledge the passage of time, the continuity of culture and the richness which comes when we are able to effectively balance our need for renewal with a conservation of things of value from the past.

Our leaders of today will be the leaders of tomorrow. 

Leadership is about that curious ability to be at once part of the scrum of human reality and its scrabble for existence, but to also rise above, and perceive a horizon of possibility which extends to more distant places.  Vision, hope and aspiration to the expectation that ‘just because it is, does not mean it has to be.’

This was happening on a day of bizarre juxtaposition: red Valentine’s roses handed out on Black Friday, and the horror of fire and its aftermath. 

There are some seismic shifts happening.

The election of Barack Obama goes beyond the fact that he is the first African American to be elected President. It also demonstrates that the harnessing of the internet, of social networking and the ability to connect in very meaningful ways with an entire new generation of voters made a dream a reality.  We are now into an era where few would be bold enough to suggest the absolute impossibility of much at all. The affect of the internet world has moved mainstream.

In Australia, we see the imminent rollout of the National Secondary Schools Computer Fund.  The implications are at once both exciting and frightening.  We have a huge challenge in supporting the transformational shifts needed in pedagogy but know that this program places the idea that the internet is here to stay right in the very middle of mainstream thought.  And that, is a good thing!

Leaders need to see beyond the melee of human existence and help us see that more is possible.

I am confident that the young leaders we see in front of us are wonderful people, and while they are challenged to compound the successes and shifts of recent times, they will make it happen: because they can.

We have all, no doubt, been humbled and horrified by the scenes from the fires in Victoria: the sheer magnitude of human tragedy and the stories which will continue to be told.  It leads us to reflect upon the nature of material possessions, of absolute failure to begin to understand the motivation for those who would start such a blaze, and awe at the power of nature with its capability to create an inferno on earth.

Each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. 

~ Edgar Allan Poe

Our thoughts are with those whose lives have been taken from them, in each and every sense of the words.

Given the lifetime in which this was written, its invitation to consider a humanist curriculum is wonderful!

The entire object of true education, is to make people not merely do the right thing, but to enjoy right things; not merely industrious, but to love industry; not merely learned, but to love knowledge.

John Ruskin (1819-1900)

What a great description!

Once again, this is a ‘lesson’ from Obama’s victory and the campaign which won him the role.

A good read and a call to us to stand up for the things which really matter.

Read ‘Obama’s Seven Lessons for Radical Innovators’

It’s been interesting this week to watch some of the stories coming out about Obama cutting a deal to keep his Blackberry and his team being confronted by older PCs and clunky protocols: anathema to a team who demonstrated with absolute clarity the power of the web to reach out and connect.

There’s also been some interesting commentary around this saga.  There are, after all significant questions for leadership in lot sof organisations: least of all those who are about to be riding the peak of a digital wave.

Triple J’s ‘Hack’ program today contained some interesting perspectives from current and former students: especially in relation to their perception of IT teaching and practices in schools.

You can hear the program here.  The piece about schools and IT is in the later half.

With the commencement of  the school year here in NSW tomorrow, and another great Australia Day getting toward its twilight, wouldn’t it be great to think toward the year ahead with these words resounding within us.

What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child. 

~ George Bernard Shaw

Engagement: we talk readily about it.  The nurturing of curiosity, however, takes this a leap forward from here.  We have a world in which the information is there for the finding.  The burning, learning curiosity exists within all of us unless we are faced with the conditions in which fires will eventually go out, or be ‘contained.’

Let’s fan a few of those young human fires. Let’s use our pride in the place we live as a driver for wanting to produce our absolute best: who fearlessly ask the questions which will get them the answers they need to create a bright tomorrow.

With the Australia Day weekend coming up and the start of the school year here in NSW next week, this presentation on the SMH site is an enormously powerful reminder of the value that we can add to so many lives.

I can imagine that it might be a great discussion starter in a range of groups: considering the commonalities which link us, and the richness that the variety and difference which each one brings to the group adds to our collective understanding.  As a teacher, I would think about using it with my class, followed by some good discussion about the ways that groups need to work out ways to work effectively, and then assisting them in designing the “protocols” for use within our particular environment.

  Click the icon to go straight to the presentation

I thought it might be fun to try to come up with a quote of the week each week as a way of keeping a regular commitment to the blog.  We’ll see how it goes

Here’s the first for 2009

One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings.  The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.  ~Carl Jung

For brief information about Carl Jung :   

For more information about Jung’s main ideas, have a look at the presentation at this link.

The concept of the collective unconscious is interesting when thinking about some of the demographic concentrations within our teaching workforce profile.

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet (Romeo and Juliet)

To what extent does a name take on a sense of its own?  What do you think of changing the name of this blog?  Vote for your preference in the poll to the right hand side of this blog.

It is a reminder of the concept of gestalt: so beautifully captured in the statement that ‘it’s had three new handles and two new heads; but it’s still grandpa’s axe!’

Yes, the spelling is deliberate.  The Fischbowl is a blog maintained by Karl Fisch who is also responsible for the Did You Know/Shift Happens series of presentations.

The blog contains hours of great reading and links.  Readers may be interested to see the comments Karl has made about the role of the internet and online social networks in the election of Barack Obama, and the imperatives this provides in working with those who will be voters in the future.    He makes the following observations:

But a thought occurred to me this morning – all of our current high school students will be eligible to vote in the next presidential election.

Think about that for just a minute. All of our approximately 2,150 students at Arapahoe – most of whom have never voted – will be eligible to vote in the 2012 elections. And all of the other 17.5 million students currently in U.S. high schools will also be eligible to vote in 2012. Which brings us to the money question (or two or three).

What are we doing to prepare these students to be engaged, intelligent, informed, and competent voters in a world that is very, very, very, very different than the one we grew up in?

How are we preparing them to be successful citizens in a publish-then-filter world?

Are we transforming our classrooms to reflect real-time, instantaneous access to factual and political information?

You can visit this blog entry by clicking here

And, for those concerned about the nasties who want to use the online world as a predatory place, you may be interested in this story about the relative safety of online social networking sites.  Writing in the SMH, Brad Stone makes the statement that:

THE internet may not be such a dangerous place for children after all. A taskforce created by 49 US state attorneys general to look into the problem of sexual solicitation of children online has concluded that there really is not a significant problem.