Tips by Tony

It’s been a while since I’ve done a roundup, and this one will be shorter than most. Here are just a few of the articles I found interesting over the past few weeks.

• NJ Principal Asks Parents To Ban Social Networking

  A New Jersey middle school principal sends a letter to parents asking them to ban text messaging, facebook, and other social media tools. Typical short-sighted overreaction. Sigh.

  Let me repeat that – there is absolutely, positively no reason for any middle school student to be a part of a social networking site! None.

  Sorry Mr. Orsini, but you are wrong.

• Confusing Parents

  Excellent response by Jeff Utecht to the previous article about a NJ principal asking parents to ban social networking.

  So basically I take two things away from this video:

  1. Parents are the problem and need to be told by the school how to raise their children.
  2. That because “2% of kids are going to say something” we want you to ban all social-networking sites.

  That’s funny because I’m sure that:

  2% of kids have bullied on the playground yet we’ve never banned recess.
  2% of kids have bullied on the bus….yet we haven’t banned buses.
  2% of kids have bullied at the bus stop….yet we haven’t banned bus stops.

  Do I need to continue?

• Ten Big Ideas Of School Leadership

  Excellent article by Mike McCarthy, a principal who’s been an educator for over 30 years. Pass this along to every school administrator you – Mike hits the nail on the head.

  1) Your School Must Be For All Kids 100 Percent of the Time

  If you start making decisions based on avoiding conflict, the students lose.

  All too often, school leaders make decisions based on avoiding conflict rather than making decisions based on what is the right thing to do. This needs to stop.

  8) Have a Bias for Yes

  The only progress you will ever make involves risk: Ideas that teachers have may seem a little unsafe and crazy. Try to think, “How can I make this request into a yes?”

  Since going to work in education almost 9 years ago, I’ve noticed the overwhelming reaction to new ideas is “no”. Often, someone within the organization will notice a problem or inefficiency, and propose a solution. Instead of looking at the possible solution and deciding if it will work, the initial reaction is to think up every possible reason why the solution won’t work, no matter how far-fetched. Wouldn’t it be more productive to find ways to implement a solution so that it will be successful?

9) Consensus is Overrated

Twenty percent of people will be against anything. When you realize this, you avoid compromising what really should be done because you stop watering things down. If you always try to reach consensus, you are being led by the 20 percent.

This is my favorite part of the article. I’ve seen it time and time again – good ideas sunk because the organization doesn’t want to move forward without 100% consensus. Education today seems to be more about the lowest common denominator than doing what’s best for the largest majority of students and dealing with the edge cases separately.

Related posts:

1. Monday Morning Roundup (7/19/2010)
2. Monday Morning Roundup (9/14/09)
3. Monday Morning Roundup (10/19/2009)
4. Monday Morning Roundup (8/24/2009)
5. Monday Morning Roundup (11/8/2010)
6. Monday Morning Roundup (5/11/2009)
7. Monday Morning Roundup (5/18/2009)
8. Monday Morning Roundup (6/8/2009)
9. Monday Morning Roundup (8/31/2009)
10. Monday Morning Roundup (5/4/2009)