Month: August 2013


Aug
2013

Week 4 – The Importance of Trust #SAVMP

categories: Weekly Updates

“Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships.”
― Stephen R. Covey

“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”
― Ernest Hemingway

Trust is the single most important thing that you can build as a teacher or administrator, and it is imperative that we look at how we develop trusting relationships within our organizations before we look to move forward.  I am a big fan of Stephen Covey’s work and he talks about the importance of “character and credibility”.  We will look at the notion of “credibility” later, but basically if you do not have the “character” that people trust, then it does not matter how smart or knowledgeable your staff finds you.  You will lose them.

So based on those notions, here are a few ideas of things that you can blog about for this week (always optional):

  1. How do you work to build trust starting in a new place?
  2. When you lose trust, what do you do to try to regain what you do?
  3. In a world with social media so evident, how do you use that technology to create a transparent culture within your community?

Hope you are having a great week!  Most Canadian educators will be back within a week if they are not already so mostly everyone in the program will be in full swing at school.


Aug
2013

Week 3 – Starting Off Right #SAVMP

categories: Weekly Updates

Instead of asking people to share in a blog post this week, I am hoping we can use this blog to start a comment thread to share some ideas in one space.

As a new principal, it was imperative that I started off right with my school or I could easily lose them right from the beginning.  It takes a long time to build trust, but you can lose it an instant.  With that being said, I spent time just observing the culture and listening to the ideas of others and trying to build on strengths.  In my first year as an assistant principal, I got into a small argument on one of the first days with a strong teacher on our staff.  I was actually very upset and looked poorly upon the person, but later when I reflected, I was much too pushy for coming into a new environment and didn’t listen as much as I needed to at that point.  Two years later when I was promoted to principal at another school, I chose that very same teacher as my assistant principal.

There were lots of mistakes and learning along the way, but my focus as a principal was on learning the culture of the school as a whole, while also understanding individuals.

So I ask you, to share what are some important thoughts that you have on either starting at a new school, or starting a new year?  What has been successful and what didn’t work?  Please share your comments below.

Have a great week!

George


Aug
2013

Week 2 – Your Vision For School #SAVMP

categories: Weekly Updates

I wanted to personally thank so many people for sharing so many inspirational posts and stories this week through their blogs and the #SAVMP hashtag.  I have really enjoyed seeing this program start off strong due to your passion for making a difference.  Thank you.

In my own belief, as leaders, we must know ourselves before we can lead our schools.  Many of you had the chance to look at your own “why” and why you lead.  The next thing that I believe is helpful is to have a clear focus on what we would like our school or organization to become.  If you are asked “what is your vision for school?”, it is important that are able to answer this.  We are unable to lead our schools if we do not know where are we headed.

As suggested viewing, I encourage you to watch the following Simon Sinek Ted Talk on what makes an organization great.

For a prompt this week, I encourage you to develop your “philosophy of education’ to try and articulate your view for leadership and what schools should look like.

As a sample, I have written the following post to give you an idea of what this could look like.  Also, if you have written something like this before, I encourage you to either share what you have or revamp it and share.

Here is also a great Ted Talk from Seth Godin regarding his beliefs for school:

As you write your post, I encourage you (as I do for all posts) to use the #savmp hashtag in your title so that it is more likely to be shared to the hashtag.

None of these are mandatory posts, but just suggestions to help you get to know yourself, while also helping to build connections between mentors and mentees.

To anyone who is not officially in the program, you are more than welcome to take part in the activities and share with others.

Please feel free to use the comment section to share your thoughts on anything that I have shared above or any ideas that you have before.

Have a great week!

George

 


Aug
2013

Welcome and Introductions (Week 1) #SAVMP

categories: Weekly Updates

I want to thank everyone for signing up and participating in the #SAVMP program and I am looking forward to seeing how this program unfolds.  There are definitely going to be some bumps during the year but the most important part of this is the connection that you make with one another over the upcoming year.  To anyone that is reading this post that signed up and has not been contacted, you probably missed out on the deadline (July 22) and unfortunately will not be paired up with a mentor at this stage due to the high number of people that have already signed up.

Just to clarify, this is NOT about leaders using social media.  It is however the vehicle that we will use to connect and share our learning which will hopefully influence some of the things that are happening in schools that are connected during this process.

As the year progresses, we are going to have some Google Hangouts with people on various topics to spark conversation.  I will also be sending out emails to participants to hopefully help out with some ideas as the year goes.  The focus is on your conversations and connections that you create in your pairings.  The other element is openly sharing what we learn with others so that many people can benefit from this program.

As we go into the first week, here are some things that are suggested you do (#3 is a MUST)

  1. Make sure you have a Twitter account with an updated profile.

  2. Start a blog if you haven’t. (To make it a “blog/portfolio”, watch this video).  I suggest reading this article from Dean Shareski on blogging and the impact it has on teaching.

  3. Mentors…please send an introductory email to your “mentees”.  Share a little bit about yourself and connect with them.

  4. Mentors and mentees please share your blogs with one another.

  5. I encourage you in the next two weeks to write a blog post on the topic of, “Why do I lead?”, or “Why I am an educator?”.  The focus here is that you look at yourself as a leader before you look at who you are leading.  In the title of your blog post, I encourage you to throw the hashtag #SAVMP at the end of your title so that when others share it on Twitter they will see the hashtag.

  6. Mentors…I encourage you to comment on your “mentee” blogs.

Obviously none of this is mandatory, but the more you put into the process, the more you will get out of it.

I hope that you all enjoy connecting with one another and that you learn a great deal for this process.  I will not be sending emails out once a week but will share from time to time.  This is meant to be an informal process and the real work will be done between the mentors and mentees.

Thanks again for taking part in this program 🙂

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