This is a blog about my life, education, challenging discussions and what I learn. The mission and goal of this blog is to promote the sharing of ideas and resources to improve student performance.
As I was sitting last night in my doctoral cohort we were discussing the necessary evil of Riffing teachers and making cuts. I began to wonder if there is a better way to handle these situations. Everywhere I've worked I have seen staffing changes made through "bottom line thinking." Are these thinking models best for kids? No, not any time! Is it a necessary part of our job as educational leaders? Yes, and not a fun one at that! I think the art behind this is understanding how to make a cut in staff or in budget that has the least impact on student learning and achievement.
When we see professional athletes talk about the business side of playing football or any other sport, I often think of the business side of education. We don't spend much time in conferences and professional development finding new ways to keep teachers and creating creative budgeting because these topics aren't sexy and don't sell books. Where I am in my career I certainly don't have all the answers, but I'd love to be a part of the conversation.
The Fun Section: About an UnFun Topic:
Thinking about that I have some book ideas if anyone wants to write about these topics:
School Budgets that work, The Art and Science of Keeping Teachers, Budgeting by Design, Too Wong Foo - the Budget and You, Bottom Line thinking: Is you crazy? (that topic still in development :-)), 50 ways to improve administrative behavior, The ultimate school leader, How to budget for learning.....and so on...
A video from funnyordie.com about California's budget cuts.
After attending many conferences recently and presenting in class myself I'm noticing a trend in powerpoints and presentations that are a little scary to me. Presenters and lecturers are getting boring....
Reading up on power point I have come across some REALLY funny thoughts on this topic and adapted some rules that I'm publishing simply for my own benefit. I want to publish these so that I can be better at presenting information to a group. SO hold me to these, make sure I don't do them and have some fun with the rules. Comment away, add more rules for me to follow:
1 Powerpoint as lecture notes Make it interesting don’t use the power point and stare at your power point while you talk. If you don’t know what yu are going to say, maybe you shouldn’t be the one saying it…
2 Visual assault “Pictures, flashes, whizzy entrances, funny faces. It can all get far far too much. I’ll need to re-evaluate what I do with pictures and animation.”
3 Aural assault “Thwack! Zing! Bzzzz! Kerpow! Wow. Is it too much?”
4 Bullet points “If I never see another bullet point again I will be • Happy • Relieved • Surprised They’re everywhere in Microsoft’s Powerpoint template and they screw up the hierarchy of information. And they’re boring.”
5 Powerpoint backgrounds Don’t use the ones given to you, find some of your own. Or better yet, use black or white and use the imags on the screen as the excitement. Think about an Art Museum, what colors are the walls? WHITE! Why? TO NOT TAKE AWAY FORM THE ART!
6 Early closing “Leave the last screen up there until people have left the room. It’s good manners.”
7 Lecturers who stand in front of the projector Just don’t do it..
8 Lecturers who are stuck to the computer Get out, walk around be yourself. Unless you are boring then be someone else…
9 Technology experts
“fitting the technology to the child, not the child to the technology as the British academic Susan Greenfield said in the House of Lords (Britain’s second legislative chamber) the other day.”
Basically don’t make this overcomplicated or try to WOW the crowd unless you are giving a presentation on WOWing. Keep t simple and not distracting.
10 Technology failure Prepare for it and have a back up plan in case your powerpoint doexn’t work.
My Final thoughts...
If you are like me….be creative with your presentation, and censor those around you (namely me) to not be too creative. Don’t limit yourself to power point there are a lot of great resources out there that will get your point across too. In fact some of the best presentations I’ve seen was someone simply flipping through their Flickr images. Think about it!
