My Business – My Classroom (Week
4)
There
were two things in this weeks Friedman readings that I felt related well to the
educational atmosphere. The first one was “Rule #4: And the big shall act
small…” I think this is something we have touched on in the previous weeks’
discussions in dealing with how important customer service is to a company’s
survival. While it may not seem as though this really relates to the education
and school spectrum, it is so incredibly important! Our school district serves
about 10,000 students total and our “business” is to educate each and every one
of those students. When I think about the fact that I am responsible for
teaching 115 students everyday, it sounds a little intimidating. Imagine these
were customers and you had to meet with each customer everyday. While my
“customers” get more comfortable with the business I run, our relationship
builds. Along with this I am able to continually focus my energy on reaching
each and every student. If I were to have a blanket method of teaching my
business would not succeed. The same goes for any business. If a business is
not flexible and able to adapt to the different demands of other companies and
potential clients they will lose those clients. The same is true with teachers.
If you are not adapting to the individual needs of your students, then you are
not servicing the client to your best ability. When this happens, there are
increased failure rates, student and parent complaints, administrative
meetings, and finally disciplinary action. The business (teacher) will not
survive.
Within
this rule, Friedman also states that businesses will need to help their
customers act really big. I think this is one of the ultimate goals of
teachers. We are constantly trying to aid students in their skills and just as
importantly in their confidence and decision-making. I am constantly trying to
hone my students questioning skills, which will in turn make them more
productive and better communicators. Businesses should be doing the same for
their clients. By being able to better communicate between companies productivity
and innovation will increase as well.
The
second thing that I felt related well to the educational atmosphere was that of
the last chapter “What Happens when we All have Dog’s Hearing?” The concerns
listed in Friedman’s book about digital footprints are things that today’s
youth need to be made more aware of. Teenagers are still developing their
critical thinking skills and cause and effect relationships. The number of
times a day I hear about what one student posted about another or about what
one student’s “status” was on their social network, is unreal. The social
impact the Internet has had on teenagers is obvious. The article by Gartner has
his number ten change being that there will no longer be offices and that
everything necessary will be able to be housed in a phone or computer. This
constant accessibility is causing a hindrance for my students already. I listen
to students complain about how they didn’t get enough sleep because they kept
texting all night or were updating their social networking site. These impacts
have moved over into the business world of teaching as well. The constant
connectivity of students and teachers has definitely placed them in what
Friedman claims the “Age of Interruptions.” Teachers have been having those
board meetings seven times a day for years, and beginning them by stating
“please put all electronic devices away, on silent, and take out your earbuds.”
This is a constant battle in the classroom and it is evolving into an issue for
teachers as well. The accessibility of Internet has provided outlets that
students are trying to tap into at all times during the day. It is also providing
a resource for teachers to stay connected to their life outside of school.
While both of these things can be helpful in several ways, there are many
drawbacks to them as well. As leaders we need to be able to harness this power
and guide our clients or students through it together. We need to educate our
employees and provide positive examples in order to build the most successful and productive businesses we can.
I enjoyed your post, particularly as you relate it to your job in teaching. Being on our local school board, I often fly at 10,000 feet, and we as school board members, must relay on the administrative staff to keep us informed as how our policies in place impact outcomes. My wife has been a paraeducator, and one of my daughters is also working in a classroom part-time, while finishing college. She is assigned as a one-one with a special needs student at the middle school, that is mainstreamed into a standard classroom. My daughter has enlightened me recently as to the struggle teachers have, begin "all things, to all students", given the variety of needs, coupled with class sizes. I applaud your efforts, as you seem to strongly recognize the necessity to adapt to your "customer base", your students.
ReplyDeleteWe've also had our share of issues, related to the Internet and social media. However, in our district, we lack the technology and connectivity at the present time, to make sure our students are competitive. Obviously the challenge, is making sure students efforts are focused positively.
Your analogy of school board members flying at 10,000 feet above the action got me thinking.
DeleteAt 10,000 feet, do you have oxygen? If not, that would explain a lot about some of the decisions that board members often make.
At 10,000 feet, do you see the entire district boundaries? Is that high enough?
At 10,000 feet, do you see the details you need? I jumped once from 12,000 feet and I could see the drop zone, but not the windsock.
Who cleared you fly at 10,000 feet? Were you asked to be that high up by the administration? Would they prefer you at a different altitude or even on a different flight path.
There were a couple of themes that I took away from your post. One was flexibility. As a former teacher and current central office administrator, felxibility, in my opinion, is the key ingredient to success. Not only does a classroom teacher have to be flexible enough to meet the changing needs of the students, he or she must be flexible and open to new ideas/technologies that will assist in accomodating those needs. Luckily, I learned more than enough about flexibility in my ten years of teaching Kindergarten that I can still apply that skill in my administrative role.
ReplyDeleteAnother theme that you spoke of was communication. I wholeheartedly agree that communication is essential in today's world. Although I am not naive enough to denounce all technological advances, I am concerned that if students are not taught a balance of interpersonal skills with electronics, that their cpapbility of holding a conversation beyound abbreviations and tag lines might be in jeopardy.
I definitely feel students' communication skills are severely lacking. I am continuously trying to help students pose "good" questions and learn what makes a question good or bad. I am also constantly trying to get them to use the "official" vocabulary of the subject matter instead of them referring to it all as "thingys that are like...you know." Besides being able to communicate, the actual grammar of these communications are getting very bad. I am always correcting students' grammar, and I'm a math teacher!!
DeleteA big aspect of Friedman's Rule #4, as it relates to customer service, is meeting the customer's needs by allowing them to be "self-directed consumers"(p. 455). He even suggests earlier that customers have the ability to change an organizations practices, as in the case with Starbucks and the soy milk (p.454). With this thought in mind, I wonder if schools really are customer friendly? If adapting to a customer's individual needs is critical for the survival of a business, how can schools adapt quickly enough to meet the needs of students for faster, broader,collaborative information on topics? Since most schools are limited in the materials they can use as mandated by state, county and district approval for textbooks and supplementary materials, as well as daily instructional minutes, how due you see a teacher being able to adapt his or her instructional methods to meet the shifting student needs with these limitations placed upon him/ her?
ReplyDeleteYou brought up a good point on Friedman's danger of disconnect in discourse through interruptions. I see it all the time in a variety of ways at work and among students. Some of the ways my staff employed in trying to reverse this trend, apart from overly Dracoinian methods implemented, was to create learning projects that both students and teachers could apply their technological tools towards.
The creation of songs, videos, school logo designs, online newspapers, plays, speeches, academic competitions, chess clubs, oral presentations, power point presentations, narrations, art projects, community service projects, sports teams, children's stories and work schedules were encouraged for students and teachers to develop.
What happened after these projects were completed, the concept skills needed to be taught, learned and applied towards state standards such as perspective, cause & effect, time/order sequence, persuasive essays, number sense, geometry, etc. can be done. I have found that once the teachers and students are encouraged to use technology in an creative manner to develop a project, the foundational skills such as grammar, punctuation, capitalization, paragraphs, summary etc. can be taught more effectively and without as many interruptions. Everyone sees the practical nature of mastering foundational skills to improve the quality and interesting nature of the projects.
I really think the first step in meeting students needs is to ensure that students have the online resources they need. Then the teachers need to go further and show them how to actually use these resources to help them learn. I know of several teachers that helped students log on to their online book, but that is all they showed them. there are so many other resources available to use through our textbook that we as teachers need to be aware of and show our students how to use them.
DeleteIt is a really good idea to have projects for the students to take part in which involves technology. Do you find this easier to do since your school changed it's focus to the Common Core Standards?
Thanks for your reply.
DeleteThe projects that I mentioned were completed by my staff and student's prior to the Common Core Standards being published. These projects were developed by my former staff in 2007 and added to by my current staff. They were initiated through a survey made by me for the students, parents and teachers to generate ideas that would increase student achievement and participation in academic intervention programs.
For the 2012-2013 school year, my school will make its first year of the official switch to the Common Core Standards. The change will foster student proficiency with technology, since the assessments will be online. Moreover, the CCS will allow schools to collaborate through technology on joint projects because the content skills have been standardized.
I think "dog's hearing" is all the noise we are hearing to all of the new technology! We need to filter out much of it!
ReplyDeleteTom
I liked your post.
ReplyDeleteYou addressed that students have their devices with them and that teachers have been dealing with it for years. I am continously amazed by how many schools/districts still attempt to limit student devices. Setting forth guidelines for use is productive (not in class, silent them during the day, etc.), but there are still schools and districts that attempt to place a total ban on students carrying phones. Obviously, such rules are extensively violated, and such violation is encouraged by parents who feel the need to txt their students during the day. It is a losing battle. Sort of like trying to convince people to eat better.
I didn't read anything about the content filters in place at schools. While we are responsible for teaching students to not cyberbully and to not disclose personal information on the Internet, that too is a difficult battle. But think about some of the provisions we have in place to assist us and how quickly they are becoming obsolete. Any school that gets federal erate funding for computers and networking is required to have content filtering. They are not perfect, but they are a lot better than ten years ago. Students can usually find a way around them, while our tech folks can usually plug the holes.
But with our wonderful smartphones, our students can bypass our filters entirely. They get to go to any site they want and we can't do anything about it.
Nice post and some great conversation here. It is a good leadership lesson you suggest - if leaders made their leadership as personal as a teacher makes her class, what might be possible?
ReplyDeleteAnd I loved Tom and Ken's interplay on the metaphor of flying at 10,000 ft. I often tell my class let's fly up to 30,000 ft to look at something...and had never thought about the lack of oxygen before! Will keep that in mind.