CEDU 527 Educational Leadership Week 3

There was one particular anecdote that I was reminded of as we were in our chat rooms for the breakout sessions online. The topic was: What are some of the advancements in different fields of society over the last series of years. The anecdote popped into my head related to the topic of telephones and deals with my grandfather and his proud LOTI level of 0.

Some time in the 1980s the Ohio telephone company was doing a major overhaul on it's phone lines presumably to modernize them in some way. One day they stumbled across on old "party line" that was still in use. Yes, that was my grandparents phone line. Of course all of the other people on the party line had long ago gotten their own private lines so that only my grandparents line was left connected. When the telephone company called my grandfather to inform him of this they seemed to assume he would be happy to switch over to their new and improve technology. They didn't know my grandfather very well. "If it ain't broke don't fix it" was a life philosophy for him.
After multiple dead ends trying to convince him over the phone they actually sent someone out to his house to "sweet talk" him to switch over. He was offered new phones, free long distance for a period of time and so on. Although my grandfather was the farthest thing from a sell out, he finally agreed.

The application of this anecdote to the broad topic of educational leadership is this. Maybe you have to do the sweet talk to the level 0 teacher and visit their classroom one-on-one to get them to come around. And all the while respect them and their views. The tools for schools article was extremely insightful on the Millennial generation but one thing I liked about it was it never ridiculed the older generations but merely pointed out the differences. As I'm more of a Gen-Xer myself I appreciate that view.

CEDU 527 Educational Leadership Week 2

I was very impressed with the format of last weeks online class. The "eluminate" online site is a great idea. I was impressed with how dynamic and interactive it was. With the written chat feature, the lecture, the slide show and of course the audio contributions it was enough to keep you busy the whole time and yet somehow pay attention to everything. Oddly enough there was no difference in my urge to contribute to class discussion as compared to a regular face to face class. I was a little unsure about my internal microphone and would have liked a "sound check" before the session began in order to confirm it but got just as much out of the written text and following along.

CEDU 527 Educational Leadership Week 1

At the risk of divulging too much personal info I've just never viewed myself as much of a leader in any school setting. For whatever reason I tend to err on the side of not making myself look bad so as a result little to no leadership action of any kind is initiated by me in a professional setting within the staff dynamic. - At this point I want to clarify that I initiate plenty of great things within my classroom and within the classroom dynamic as opposed to a staff dynamic. So where's all this going. . .
I'm very much looking forward to this class. Week one certainly felt different than the other classes and It was nice to get into the rationale behind leadership. I like the premise of the information from this first class and that was that teachers , with the right conditions, are in a position to greatly influence their school. This message was simply very encouraging and positive. I also like the premise of the Gabriel book on teacher leadership and that is that there is a "science" behind teacher leadership and these skills can be taught and utilized by teachers. also an encouraging message.