I love the friends I have gathered together on this thin raft (The Doors)

I'm currently reading a nifty book called Everything Is Obvious (once you know the answer) and it has made some good sense to me even though the subtitle of the book is How Common sense Fails.

I will return to the book a few times over the next couple of posts but I had to include this extract because it immediately made me think of one of the Cognition Education leaders who addressed a meeting in Al Ain last September.

Publishers, producers, and marketers - experienced and motivated professionals in business with plenty of skin in the game - have just as much difficulty predicting which books, movies, and products will become the next big hit as political experts have in predicting the next revolution.

The highlighted phrase is the bit in question. When Terry Bates used it at that meeting, my colleagues and I all looked at each other with a - what the hell does that mean? - expression on our faces. It was certainly new to us and we certainly wondered where Terry had picked it up from. It was clearly business jargon from somewhere.

A Google search reveals that we can blame Warren Buffett. It's a term referring to a situation in which high-ranking insiders use their own money to buy stock in the company they are running.

I think we should ban it! Even though Terry's number one acolyte, Colin Donald, has adopted it. No more skin in the game please!

In the year 2525 (Zager and Evans)

I was asked recently for my thoughts on the challenges facing education in New Zealand in the next ten years.

This is a tough question and I thought about it long and hard.

This is what I eventually came up with.

·         Schools will continue to have to work with a lack of adequate funding. The Christchurch earthquake has had a deep effect on the nations coffers. It will take some time before education is again at the forefront of politicians' minds I fear.

·         Closing the achievement gap between Maori and non-Maori students. This has been a focus for the last ten years and will continue to be a focus during the next ten, I have no doubt.

·         Attracting the most talented and best motivated people to become teachers and making it attractive for the best to remain in New Zealand. Australia is a drain but so too is the rest of the world. It's a global market now. I have chosen to return to NZ but I am in a minority compared to my NZ colleagues in the UAE. They are considering Singapore, China, Europe, America...anywhere but here. What a shame that we can't attract them back at this point.

·         Extending new pedagogical approaches that focus on differentiated/student centred classrooms and disseminating emerging innovatory good practice. NZ is at times zenopobic about things that haven't originated at home. We have to get over that.

·         Utilising new technologies as aids to learning. Often new technologies are seen as a panacea and not what they are - tools.

·         Learning from John Hattie's meta-analysis (visible learning). There is so much to be distilled from Hattie's research and it will take ten years to make progress on his findings.

That lot should keep everyone busy and focused for the next decade at least.

It's a Tenth Avenue freeze out (The Boss)

Please excuse the temporary absence of posts this week. I am in transit back to New Zealand. Normal transmission should resume shortly!

Gotta make it through the tunnel, got a meeting with the man on the other side (Bruce Springsteen)

A colleague sent me a link to an article on the CNN site recently. I read it, liked it and then began reading another one on knowing your leadership superpower. I'm a sucker for this kind of pop culture reference.

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/25/business/rttt-superpower/

I love the central idea about identifying working with your core strengths rather than your weaknesses. They are of course standard interview questions - what are your strengths (leadership powers)? What are your weaknesses (kryptonite factors)? But this article suggests turning that second question around and saying - forget about your weaknesses and play to your core strengths.

Got me to thinking about my own leadership power.

It's difficult for us to focus on strengths but this week I've been farewelled in a variety of ways and my friends and colleagues have focused on a common superpower - my ability to build relationships.

It seems I have hit on the the right balance, where I can play to my own strengths and let my team play to theirs.

Perhaps that's why, when I was growing up, my favourite comic book superheros were The Fantastic Four.

It's a story of husband and wife, brother and sister and brother-in-law, and friendship. The team play to their individual strengths but only win against the evil doers when they combine their powers.

Eddie waited till he finished high school; he went to Hollywood, got a tattoo. He met a girl out there with a tattoo too; the future was wide open (Tom Petty)

An American reader from OnlineEducation.net sent me this graphic to critique, which I did.


Via: OnlineEducation.net

The most striking thing about it, apart from the grammatical error ('one out of four...don't graduate') was the alarming statistic about 7,000 students dropping out of school every day.

EVERY DAY!!

So, say American high schools work for 180 days a year (as do schools in the UAE and NZ), that's a whopping 1,269,000 students a year that leave school before they graduate.

Where do they go? What do they do? What is the cost to the nation?

But I guess the question that the American education system needs to ask is WHY?

An excellent fact sheet on American school drop outs is available at http://www.all4ed.org/files/GraduationRates_FactSheet.pdf . According to them there is no single identifiable reason.

The next biggie is - What can be done to stop this tragedy?

Yawm 'asal wa yawm basal (one day honey, one day onions)

Only one week to go before the end of the Trimester and my return to New Zealand.

Putting a lid on the Middle Eastern experience is difficult because the relationships that have been established are deep ones.

I guess it's natural that I have bitter/sweet feelings at this juncture. It's a time for looking back with a lot of satisfaction, and a time to look forward to the next phase of my life back in NZ. At the moment I'm not exactly sure what that will be apart from settling into our new Hawke's Bay farmlet.

The present is what occupies my thoughts more than those things though. I'm now moving through lame duck status by moving rapidly towards the end of the trimester, even though a successor has not been found for me yet.

The lame duck stages I'm following are as follows:

                                                                      REFLECTION 

ACCEPTANCE

SELF-CRITICISM

RESIGNATION

WITHDRAWAL

The reflection/acceptance stages were a few posts back. They come pretty quickly after the phone call to the boss and he doesn't say we'll double your salary if you stay!

Self criticism is mandatory for teachers. The guilt is never far below the surface for us educationalist types but then I became resigned to the fact that these were my last weeks as an educational consultant in the gulf and that's where you find me now. That and waiting for the final farewells next week and the withdrawal from Al Ain and the UAE soon after that.

Oh I knowww, I knowwww (Sybil Fawlty)

The McKinsey Quarterly had a guide to better listening recently. This is an area of interest to me because I am often annoyed by people who don’t listen well.

You know the poor listener types:

The pseudo listener nods the head a lot, and adds insincere comments like ‘How interesting’ and ‘I see’ because they are too busy thinking about their own opinions and what they want to say instead of listening to you.
The continual talker/ non listener never shuts up. Continually interrupts conversations. Loves the sound of their own voice.
The critic misses clues to your underlying feelings because they are too busy looking for facts.
The ‘I’m in a hurry’ listener never slows down long enough to look you in the eyes and find conversation. Talks and listens while doing other jobs.
The bored listener also doesn’t look you in the eyes. Other body language stresses that he/she refuses to give their full attention. They would rather talk to someone else as their eyes scan the room behind you.
The aggressive listener has contempt for others’ ideas. In meetings and conversations this person is usually waiting to interrupt/jump in over you and point out mistakes- usually interrupting conversations and making the speaker feel inferior.

The guide made three simple suggestions for people that, if followed, would reduce the number of poor listeners.

1 SHOW RESPECT
2 KEEP QUIET
3 CHALLENGE ASSUMPTIONS

All three are crucial cornerstones of good listening. The first two are succinct and self explanatory. The third needs a little further comment.

To listen well we have to be prepared to challenge long-held and cherished assumptions. Then there is a miraculous world of new possibilities.

This takes real effort because it flies against human nature. We need to force ourselves to shelve prejudices and assumptions and shake up our thinking…and become better listeners.