Epiphanies

1.) Being on sabbatical and designing this fellowship work is like a smashing together of adult project-based learning, personalized learning plans, and proficiency-based learning all in one. If I could get my head above the engagement in and development of rich content, a million emails, ongoing to-do lists, conferences, and meetings, I would take a look around more metacognitively to better understand how my process might shed light on the supporting and structuring similar experiences for students. I guess noting it here to revisit is a good first step.

2.) In a meeting last Monday, Bill (our superintendent) said something to the effect of, "change at U-32 can only happen with a grassroots approach." It's taken me a week to fully feel myself exhale. In all of my study of organizational dynamics and systems thinking, change leadership and school transformation, there are huge gaps in my belief and action, in my experience and current approach. I personally believe and have experienced that statement as truth in this and other contexts (I mean, come on, when I worked at WHBW I went to a weekend-long training on "Grassroots Organizing for Social Change"). Yet my actions--and therefore much of my frustrations--are coming from a very hierarchical direction. There is always the danger of becoming institutionalized--of being the system rather than being the change. I seem to be looking for engagement at and from the top-down. I find myself looking for some blessing from the "higher ups" to give further and repeated permission to gather the groundswell. I find myself relying on too formal or too rigid means of gathering people/work/momentum: meetings with tight agendas, action plans, smart goals, logic models. Many of those tools and leverage points are helpful. Don't get me wrong. But they're not the source. They're not the fuel. They're not the match. They are not the change.

3.) I really wish I could start my own school. The folks who started High Tech High talk about how it was simply easier to start a school with the culture they were seeking to create rather than revamp an existing school. I'm trying my darnedest to seek that change at my school any way and I know we will have positive results. However, I find myself often dreaming of the school I would create, with whom, how, and why....

4.) Oh, and I want to start a Vermont educational leadership conference.