T&L Advisor Guest post — Carl Hooker, Director of Instructional Technology, Eanes Independent School District:
Tom Whitby's post on Connectedness and Transparency in Leadership is a very timely post considering many of our teachers are making their way back to school in the coming weeks. We are in the midst of a revolution (or in some cases, simply a turnover) in the administrative realm of education. As Tom says in his post, our leadership model has been based much like the classroom model we have tried to banish these past many years. The almighty "Sage on the Stage," a saying actually cited from a book on college teaching in 1993, has been bagged on repeatedly by those of us in educational administration. However, we don't practice what we preach. We continue to consider ourselves the lone bearer of greater knowledge that must be passed on to our staff (usually in paper form, or worse yet...the dreaded binder). When we do present, we will prepare our PowerPoint slides and stand reading our bullets for hours on end, modeling the exact thing we are trying to get classroom teachers to change. This Marvelous Teacher Musings post about teachers planning in-services caught fire over the past week via social media. Why? Because it is drenched in truth. Both Tom's post and the Marvelous Musings post point to a tidal wave of change approaching carried on the very medium in which they presented their opinions. Fellow administrators, we are no longer the sole source of expert knowledge. Social media has flattened that and it’s time we administrators take note. Or better yet, let me give you my printed PowerPoint saying the same thing....in a binder.
