snl
October 4, 2015
The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.
--Lao Tzu
Growth mindset
Using Twitter with staff (from Edutopia)
Conduct a Twitter Chat for Staff to Participate
Twitter chats can get your staff to collaborate in real-time around specific topics. Establish a specific day and time for each week, and let your staff have input for the weekly topic. For helpful information on creating a school-wide chat go to http://www.edutopia.org/blog/school-wide-twitter-chats-stephen-baker
Upcoming Events
Oct. 4-6, MASSP conference, Columbia
Oct. 6, 4:30-8, BOE retreat
Fundamental Attribution Error is our inclination to interpret other people’s behavior as a manifestation of their personalities rather than the influence and power of their situations.
As leaders we can tweak the environment to make desired behaviors easier to elicit. In essence, you want to create a downhill slope and reduce the friction that might slow progress. The complement to this is to shape the path to discourage or eliminate undesirable behaviors, like having everyone put their phones away in meetings so they stay focused on the work at hand.
A prime example of tweaking the earning environment is Bart Miller’s history class. Miller had two students who were chronically late, and disruptive when they finally arrived. Instead of trying to mold these students into model students, he “rallied the herd” by letting the other students express how the behavior disrupted their class, and therefore wasn’t cool. He then tweaked the environment by adding seating that students hurried to class to procure. (Fred Jones offers several seating configurations that enhance learning).
The path also can be shaped be removing behaviors that encourage “bad” behaviors. The vast majority of aircraft accidents occur during takeoffs and landings. Because of this, airlines dictate that while the aircraft is below 11,000 feet the only conversations in the cockpit should relate directly to the flying the plane.
It might be worth a few minutes in each faculty meeting to discuss ways to tweak the environment to enhance our work.