When it comes right down to it, though, these are rituals that are deeply ingrained in the culture of our school. Most schools have a similar situation.

Long, low-energy meetings tend to distract and mute the day. – Martin Fowler

The trouble with throwing out meetings completely is that they do have some value. According to a few papers summarized here, meetings can help achieve the following:

• Shared commitment
• Communicate daily status, progress, and plans to the team and any observers
• Identify obstacles so that the team can take steps to remove them
• Set direction and focus
• Build a team

Being a new leader and getting to know my staff, I’m not willing to cut out all meetings. But what I am committed to doing is making sure that every minute we spend in some kind of meeting serves to move forward the school’s mission and agenda.

Zero-Based Meeting Budgeting
We’re going to get back to basics. At the first regular, monthly meeting of our leadership team, we will remove every meeting from our calendars and begin adding back in those meetings that make sense and will move us toward our goals. We will no longer meet four times per month if we can accomplish the same objective in two highly-productive, focused meetings.

Less meeting time focused on dissemination of information
Since my first day on the job, I’ve made some changes that I hope will whittle down the sheer volume of meeting time. Depending on the sensitivity, items that are “information only” in nature go into an email to team leaders or onto our school blog or wiki. Weening people off email has gone well so far, in no small part thanks to my very flexible group of teacher leaders who have been willing to jump into some new ways of doing business.

Two things I’ve learned in trying to bring this level of change to the day-to-day business of an organization are (1) stop trying to use the “inducement” approach to improving processes and systems (see letter B of Scott’s post on RSS for PD), and (2) stop asking questions like “Do you use Google Docs?” in favor of questions like, “To which email address should I send the invite for this document we’re working on?” It’s all about positive presuppositions. Of course we’re using Google Docs! I mean, who isn’t?

I’ll let you know how it goes, but it’s a start! Look for an upcoming post with more detail on the process of paper-reduction in a 40-year-old middle school.

Interesting reads I plan to share with the team:

• The 22-Minute Meeting
• It’s Not Just Standing Up: Patterns of Daily Stand-Up Meetings

Don’t be afraid to show your flaws. Imperfections are real and people respond to real. It’s why we like real flowers that wilt, not perfect plastic ones that never change. Don’t worry about how you’re supposed to sound and how you’re supposed to act. Show the world what you’re really like, warts and all.

So talk like you really talk. Reveal things that others are unwilling to discuss. Be upfront about your shortcomings. Show the latest version of what you’re working on, even if you’re not done yet. It’s OK if it’s not perfect. You might not seem as professional, but you will seem a lot more genuine.

Like some other schools with diverse student populations, our students need a variety of supports – both academic and personal – to achieve “proficiency” on state tests. While I’m not a fan of this kind of assessment of our kids or our schools, as a new principal I believe that arguing about the merits of said tests is best left to the policy wonks. It’s the hand we’re dealt for now, and as a new principal I’m focusing first on those things within my control.

So my main objective in the near-term is to support my teachers in wrapping their heads around the idea that student success as measured on our state standardized tests and student success as measured by their ability to communicate, collaborate, and produce content in an interconnected, global community are not mutually exclusive.

When I first landed in the Big Chair, I ramped up my scouring of the blogs of other school leaders. What I found was an abundance of ideas, lists of tools and apps, advice on being a good Tweeter, and the like. I’m certainly guilty of posts like this…

What I’ve become increasingly focused on is moving from ideas and feel-good blog posts to action. One of my goals is to renew my use of this space and to spend time writing and reflecting about my actions in this first year as principal. I want to look at things that I actually do as a new principal that might improve systems, culture, and learning in my school with the goal of cultivating an environment that empowers students to learn and develop their identities as global citizens and world-class learners.

I’ll probably fall on my face. I might do that more than once. But at least I’ll try to maintain a good record of my thoughts and actions and how they play out in this organization. Maybe they’ll even help someone else who is entrusted with the exciting but very real responsibility of being a principal.

Some topics I will be addressing in upcoming posts:

• Re-imagining a culture of meetings
• Developing a manageable system of academic interventions that address students’ individual needs
• Moving a 40-year-old school into the 21st century
• Paring back “initiative bloat”
• Doing my best not to reinforce the status quo
• Quite frankly, anything else that comes to mind…

So stick around. This could get interesting.

She spent some time asking me about my vision for my school, but also asked for input on a few things. For instance, she wanted to know what I thought would be the best use of our monthly “levels meetings.” During these times, all the elementary principals, middle school principals, and high school principals get together with their colleagues. As a new principal, this time is going to be invaluable for me to learn from my colleagues at the other middle schools. My suggestion was that as much of the levels meeting time as possible be spent on sharing best practices, collaborating, and learning from each other. Administrivia, or the unidirectional flow of information items that could be handled via email or a memo should not eat into this valuable time that we will have out of our buildings once per month.

I was also very flattered that she asked me about blogging, and about how the Director of Secondary Education might make use of a blog. Like others I have worked with, she is an “article sender.” I’m certain most educational organizations have a person or persons who will send an email or two a week with some “suggested reading” attached or linked. I shared with her that with the high volume of email that I and other principals receive, it’s not unusual for something that isn’t an “emergency” to get overlooked for a day or two. Further, I don’t really care for email attachments as I think they’re an extremely inefficient way to pass along information.

One other assumption in the article-emailing model is that the information is getting to all of the people who need or are interested in it. This involves managing multiple email lists: one for high school principals, one for middle school principals, one for assistant principals… The list goes on. No matter how carefully you curate the lists, someone who wanted the information will be left out, and someone who doesn’t want it will have to either file it away forever because they think they might be asked about it someday, or (gasp!) delete it.

Even if the sole purpose for creating a Director of Secondary Education blog was to share articles and links, this would be a significant benefit to the folks at the buildings. My preferred way of receiving news is via Reeder on my iPad or Google Reader on my MacBook Pro. From there, I’ll often route longer readings to Instapaper so I can focus on them when I have the time.

Further, a blog would bring leaders and prospective leaders in as opposed to an email that is pushed out. I usually have one or two administrative interns who work with me and, despite my best intentions, I don’t always remember to pass along the articles and links that come my way. A blog would be a great forum to bring these up-and-coming leaders into the “fold” and increase their awareness of what is being discussed at the District and principal level.

Finally, with the ability to comment on blog posts, I could see a blog becoming a better place for discussion than the endless CC loops that email encourages and that, for better or worse, eventually get ignored or archived so I can come back later which I rarely remember to do.

It will definitely take some re-norming with principals, but I think given the success of June’s Leadership Bootcamp we are in a great position to start leveraging some more of these one-to-many means of communicating.

Overall, we had what I think was a very productive meeting and I’m excited to work with my new Director in the coming year. Plus, anyone who shows up in my office bearing breakfast burritos and Loveland Coffee knows how to set the tone for a great year!

1. Relationships with faculty and staff
2. Relationships with community
3. Learning the school

Being appointed as principal (as opposed to going through a lengthy interview process) presents a unique situation. Being appointed as principal in the summer when the teachers are already on break presents still more uniqueness. It’s a challenge to begin building relationships when no one is physically present.

To start things off on a positive note, one of the first things I did after the official announcement was made was to send an introductory email to the staff. I’ve seen some graduate programs in ed leadership that make prospective principals write “introductory memos,” but I didn’t want to be so formal. I kept it light, shared how excited I was to be joining the staff, gave a little bit of my professional and personal background, and then wished them a great summer.

Finally, I invited them to call or email me and set up a time to talk in a semi-structured setting. When we chat, I am looking for three things: what they are most proud of at the school, what they think needs work, and what they expect from their new principal. I’ve already met with a few staff members and hope to meet with many more before we officially get together in August.

Beyond the school, relationship-building with the parents and community will begin with a redesign and modernization of our school’s webpage. Once “live,” the web page will include a “Principal’s Message” in which I will share much of the same information I shared with the staff about who I am and how I got here. Among other things, I am striving to soothe any anxiety about the change in leadership at the school and communicate that I am kid-focused and committed to maintaining the school as a source of pride for students, parents, and the neighborhood.

Learning the school is far more personal. It begins in the conversations with staff, but also includes a review of relevant documents, including accountability reports, test data, parent/teacher/student climate and culture survey data, and any written history I can find. I have been very fortunate that my “ethnography” has yielded a wealth of information on the school’s namesake, Conrad Ball, and the history of the building since its construction was approved by the Board in 1969.

A visual ethnography of the campus can yield data about the hidden or unspoken culture of the school. What messages are the walls and classrooms communicating that the adults may not even be aware of? There’s a small window of time, during which I am still a newcomer to this culture, where I can observe it as an outsider before becoming part of the fabric.

It’s hard to believe that some of us are back to work already, but I am doing my part to ensure a smooth start to 2010-2011 at my new school.

There was a lot of great learning going on, and I hope a lot of it leads to improvements in the way we teach our kids. But first, being an ISTE first-timer, I wanted to share a couple of peculiar observations I made over the last few days.

1. ISTE Royalty? I’m not talking about the über-edubloggers and their enamored Twitter followers, I’m thinking about the good people I saw walking around the convention center with scores of ribbons dangling from their ISTE nametags. At first, it was 3 or 4. “Presenter,” “EduBlogger,” “Twitter…” But by Wednesday, what started as a mildly amusing trend became a downright puzzling obsession. People were literally walking around with ribbons dangling down to their knees. Between the excessive number of ribbons and the swag bags overloaded with free pens, stress balls, and other sundry vendor freebies, they looked like some overtired, sunburned elves helping Santa stage a June comeback tour.
2. The PLN Workshop. Fresh from Saturday’s EduBloggerCon session in which we debated the very existence of PLNs, there were probably a hundred people or more lined up outside the “How to Start a PLN” session on Wednesday. The incredible irony was that most were staring at their iPhones or Droids Tweeting about where they were. I wanted to suggest to them that, quite possibly, the best way to start a personal network would be to put the phone away, turn to the person next to them in line, and introduce themselves.
3. The Cupcakes. The only line in the convention center that was even close in length to the PLN line was the line for cupcakes.
4. Backchannel Blunders. Twitter and the like are a double-edged sword. They’re great for making connections with colleagues whom you’re not likely to meet any other way. On the flip-side, though, they enable otherwise kind, regular people to put things out into the universe that (a) they would never say to someone in person, and (b) they’d never tolerate from their own students. During a couple of keynote speeches this week, we saw the best and worst that Twitter has to offer. Before any of us pop off with some scathing criticism of the person with the microphone, we should ask ourselves what we would be talking about if we were keynoting. We should ask ourselves how many sessions we presented in which our audience was busily ripping on us while we spoke. Consider – just for a second – that every thought does not have to be Tweeted.

All in all, it was a great event for me. Most of that is due to the people with whom I interacted in person over the last few days. I’m looking forward to putting into action some of the things I’ve learned and I hope you’ll share your Big Ideas from ISTE 2010 as well.

I am happy to be blogging today and sharing the news that I have been appointed as the interim principal at Conrad Ball Middle School here in the Thompson School District. The current principal has been asked to serve as the interim Director of Secondary Education and I have been asked to assume her role for the 2010-2011 school year.

Of course, there are no guarantees beyond next year, but as a trusted mentor told me last week as I was weighing this decision, sometimes you have to just jump off the cliff without looking down and without checking your parachute. I’m extremely excited to get to know the faculty and staff at CBMS as well as to roll up my sleeves and get to work implementing some of the new and innovative initiatives that they have worked hard to bring to fruition this coming year.

I know I’ll be blogging more about my experience moving into this role, but I wanted to share this news with my virtual colleagues as soon as it was official!

Inspired by the work of Bud and Michelle in the district to my south, I will be facilitating what amounts to a year-long, embedded PD experience for leaders who are motivated to stop simply talking about making change and actually start doing it.

I have to confess, the iLead name is not original. But I like it. (Or, iLike it…) It’s catchy. And “I lead” really speaks to what I hope participants will get out of this. We will work to build leadership capacity around robust, 21st century learning by supporting the cohort members as they build their own professional and personal learning networks. Reflection and data collection will be key components of this project, and with a little luck we’ll have this year’s cohort mentoring next year’s participants.

I hope to get a lot of interest from district leaders who want to play in our sandbox.

Over a year ago, I pitched an idea to one of our district-level tech folks to do a hands-on, immersive day (or series of days) where school and district leaders could just… play. We spend a lot of time debating the theory of this or the data supporting that, but too many leaders lack the fundamental knowledge and skills to move forward with using technology to facilitate communication and collaboration in their schools and departments. And unfortunately a few are afraid of looking “dumb” and therefore not comfortable in their ability to support their staff in jumping into this stuff.

They really want to know. They’re hungry to know. But some just don’t know where to start.

It’s taken me a while to bring this to reality (huge thanks to our Director of C&I for actually thinking I was onto something with this idea…), but tomorrow I will be hosting our district’s first ever Leadership Technology Bootcamp. The format for the day was inspired by the bootcamps that Scott McLeod and his posse at CASTLE present to leaders in Iowa. The agenda is very aggressive for the time we’ll have (I doubt we’ll get past podcasting), but I’d rather keep it that way and leave folks wanting more.

My biggest concern going in is the diversity of proficiency in the group. I plan to do a little show & tell, followed by some hands-on time. I’ve also dragged a couple of my fellow TSD Twitterati along to help facilitate small groups.

My greatest hope for the day is that my colleagues see a lot of different tools and, through some experimentation, find one or two that they can see themselves using in the 2010-2011 school year. I also hope that by exposure to some of these tools, they will be in a position to better support their teachers — not necessarily because they know everything about Google Reader or WordPress or Etherpad, but because they know enough to steer a teacher in the right direction when they think something might be a good fit.

And it would also be nice for all of us to continue working together to improve our skills. A true community of practice. A Twitter colleague said it better than I ever could.

As it stands, I have close to 50 school and district leaders signed up to spend the day learning and collaborating. Quite a nice start, I think.

Wish me luck!

What follows is the rough crib notes that I spoke from at Commencement on May 30, 2009.

Good afternoon Dr. Cabrera, Dr. Dreier, distinguished faculty, proud parents and families, and soon-to-be graduates of Loveland High School. I am so humbled to have been asked to speak to you today on one of the most important days of your lives. In so many ways, I feel — maybe not so much like a proud father — but maybe more like a proud uncle to all of you. After all, this is the first group of graduating seniors I’ve sponsored at Loveland High.

Graduates, look around. These are the people who have not only come here to share this day with you, but who have supported you in all that you’ve done to get here. I’d like all of you to look around and give these people a round of applause.

Once the incredible honor of being asked to deliver this address started to wear off, however, I started to get a little bit nervous about what to actually talk to you about. What would the class of 2009 want to hear?

We had a commencement speaker at my graduation, too, and though I don’t remember who he was or what he said, I remember he talked a long time. But I didn’t hear him. As it turns out, the whole time he was talking I was thinking to myself, “What in the world am I going to do now?”

Here you are, about to walk through this metaphorical door, and you have no idea what’s on the other side. It’s almost never what you expect it to be, though. It’s a balance between things you try to make happen and things that happen to you. What I can tell you, though, is that the more crooked and winding the way, the more interesting your life will turn out to be.

With all that in mind, deciding on a message for this momentous day wasn’t easy. After pleading with Rachel, Peter, and Owen not to give the “same old graduation speech,” how could I have lesser expectations for myself? So I set about on an inquisition of sorts. I did what everyone else does these days: I posted about it on Facebook.

One of my students informed me that no commencement speech is complete without a reference to “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost… So we’ll talk more about that in a bit.

But before we begin, I’d like to clear the air. I’d like to share with you some of the things that you won’t be hearing from me this afternoon.

First, I won’t be suggesting that any of you “spread your wings.” You won’t be hearing anything about “seizing the day,” or how you have “so much more to learn.” And, sadly, we will not be discussing how the hallways at Loveland High – the ones that seemed so large and foreboding only four short years ago – seem much, much smaller today.

Oh – and I also won’t be welcoming you to some scary-sounding “real world.” What I would like to talk to you about, though, is YOUR real world and how important it is for you not to just stand by passively watching what’s happening, but to be engaged in it.

You’ve got a very unique challenge ahead of you. You are going to have to figure out how to be authentic human beings in a world that is changing more rapidly than at any other time in our history. The good news is that the deck is stacked in your favor. The biggest advantage you have, Class of 2009, is that this is the world you grew up in.

The rest of us? Try as we might to fit in, we’re still outsiders.

I don’t want to disappoint the language arts department, but think about it — in your four years of high school, you’ve read more email and more Facebook profiles than you have textbooks or novels. You’ve typed more words with your thumbs than you’ve written in essays.

In fact, one of the most dangerous jobs I have as an administrator at Loveland High is standing at the 200/300 intersection between classes… No one’s looking where they’re going. …

There is a lot of information out there. There were 31 billion Google searches last month alone. And the best part is, everyone has access. The playing field has been leveled. Anyone who wants information can have it.

It’s no longer what or how much you know that will make you truly stand out. What will really set you apart from the crowd is that you get all of this stuff.

Unlike the rest of us in this building today, you’re already there. Think about it — lots of you are heading out to graduation parties this weekend. Odds are, you text messaged everyone you know to decide on a date and time, sent out a few dozen “evites,” and started taking RSVPs — all while the adults in the room were still trying to decide on flowers or balloons.

More so than ever before, you have the tools and the skills to connect with the world. A much bigger world than any other generation that has come before you. Your thoughts and ideas have the ability to extend beyond your neighborhood or your college campus. You have a chance to reach out, to connect, to share ideas. I say, “chance,” because it’s up to you. You don’t have to take it.

The tools that empower us to connect with the world can, ironically, allow us to disconnect from each other as well.

Unlike in your Civics class at Loveland High, there is no community service requirement for life. No one will force you to care or to engage with the world. You can walk across this stage, grab your diploma, and go chasing after the nice house and new car. And no one will blame you.

Of course, I hope you don’t do that. On your way to continued success, I hope that you’ll take the time to be grateful to those who continue to support you every day. Your family and friends — the people packing this event center to be here for you.

I’ve talked a little about Google already, but I really like their corporate motto: “Don’t be evil.” As you leave here today and get busy living your life, I hope that you will take time to believe in something that’s bigger than yourself. Find your cause and pursue it passionately. Be real.

Book smarts will take you so far. But if your goal is to experience true happiness and satisfaction, you need to find your passion. Then you need to use what you already know about networking and creativity to unleash your passion on the world. I believe that your passion is what will eventually solve the problems facing the world today. Act without passion and you’re just making noise. Or, to paraphrase William Shakespeare, it’s a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

A few weeks ago, on a stage much like this in Arizona, our nation’s president challenged the graduates of Arizona State to follow their passions, regardless of whether they lead to fortune and fame. He challenged the graduates to do more, to build more, to achieve more, and today I’d like you to consider this advice as well.

How will you use what you’ve learned and what you’re passionate about to make your mark on the world?

As any good Aerosmith fan knows, Steven Tyler said, “Life’s a journey, not a destination.” Now this is where I think speeches about journeys and paths and two roads diverging can get cliché. We tend to assume we’re trying to get somewhere.

But consider the alternative. T.S. Eliot wrote, “In my end is my beginning.” In another poem in the same book he said, “And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.” So maybe the journey isn’t about getting somewhere so much as it’s about trying to find out who we are and how we fit in a world that is both bigger than it’s ever been, but smaller at the same time.

So, Class of 2009, you have the book knowledge that you picked up along the way, but you also have an understanding of the world that the rest of us will never fully grasp. What you’ve learned in school is important, but it’s not the most important. What you need to do now, graduates, is unleash your passion on the world. Use what you know to do good, not evil.

Congratulations, Class of 2009. And thank you for choosing me to speak to you this afternoon.