Embracing My Inner Heretic

  Whew! Finally finished Tribes by Seth Godin. It is not a difficult read. As a matter of fact, it is written for people like me who maybe only have a few minutes here or there to read a few paragraphs. Between this book and Lead With Purpose, I have a better idea of which direction to head in.
  Are you tired of the status quo? So am I. Every business I have worked for has held to the status quo. I was never happy. I always felt like we could do more but was met with so much resistance, I did not change. I just carried on. I should have followed my gut instinct. Shoulda, coulda, woulda. I'm not doing it anymore.
  As a leader, my job is not only to remove obstacles but it is to let my colleagues use their brain. I want to learn from them and discuss, create, and drive. I surround myself with smart people, not just because I am in a college setting, but for their creativity and vitality. I like people who get excited about solving problems and showcasing their talents. So I have decided to let whomever is on my team go to it. I am only giving them a few seeds to think about so that they can have the freedom to do what they do best.
  My mom worked for a very small private school in New England for about ten years. Her experience was invaluable to me. It gave me an idea of what a real school should look like. The school was full of recitals, plays, science fairs, haunted houses, math-a-thons, and Harry Potter weeks. When they celebrated the holidays, every religion that attended the school was learned about, talked about, and celebrated. The school was designed to celebrate differences, not the status quo. My ultimate goal is to replicate something similar to this in Southwest Virginia. It represents true freedom to learn and the encouragement to color outside the lines.
  So far, the national education system is embracing Common Core Standards. I want my business to move beyond "standards." Standardization is just a long word for "status quo." We have been held to standards and endless testing since the inception of Every Child Left Behind and Race to Mediocrity. Oops, I meant No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. Here it is, I want to leave every system behind, in the dust. We can do better. We owe it to our children. We owe it to our community to leave better people behind to grow. How will I do this? Do you want to sit there and find out? Or would you rather we meet over coffee and have an honest discussion of how we can improve? I know you, my readers, wish you could change this and that. Some of you are working your rears off. To the rest of you, what are you waiting for?
  The Common Core is a lot more difficult than other standards from our educational past. However, the definition of each individual learner in the public school system is being compared to test scores. STILL. I would like to see more digital portfolios used for students. Quite a few high schools are using digital portfolios to showcase their students. I am sure many colleges are no longer just looking at grades and test results. They want to know the students. They want to know the capability of the learner. Every student is capable of learning and it is our responsibility to develop and deepen their understanding of the world around them.
  We need more project-based learning in urban school systems. Many students are entering community colleges under-prepared and overwhelmed. From what I have been hearing along the grapevine is that these students graduate from community college ill-prepared for four year universities. Some community colleges do a really good job in preparation, overshoot the intended goal, and send students to four year institutions better prepared than the students who spent their first two years on the larger campus.
  I don't like the words systems and institutions. It signifies conformity. Hence why my first goal is to develop an education resource center. When I think of a center, I think of collaborative work groups. I think of activity, a buzzing of ordered chaos. I see students, tutors, parents, and teachers interacting, proactively, with one another. I see a tribe. This scene is playing in my head and I want to dive right in and get to work!

Creating Vision that Your Tribe Believes In

  I have been reading several books lately. A few education-based and a few business-based. I have completely finished Lead With Purpose and I am in the middle of Tribes by Seth Godin. Then it hit me. I need to stop thinking about it and just do. Now what do I mean by that? Where does my vision lie? What is my movement? 

• Idealistic but tangible. The whole point behind my business is not to just be an educational resource center but to create a movement within the system of education. This is based on personal experience of volunteering and being my mom's cheerleader for twenty years. It is also based on my own personal experience in the public and private school systems, whether they were in urban cities or suburbia. We are selling out our children to the lowest educational bidder only to pay through the roof in terms of quality of life for our future.

We need to change the way we teach and learn. We need to lead a new paradigm shift that says no to the usual "standardized testing" and yes to the ability to develop free thinkers, problem solvers, and creative geniuses. We need an Educational Renaissance. I am leading this revolution. Will you join me? 

• There are no mistakes, only learning experiences. This statement alone should free us from the fear of the unknown. Very little is known. We cannot predict the future yet we can absolutely direct it!

My intent is to empower students, parents, and teachers with knowledge and self-confidence to overcome standardized testing and mediocre public education policies around the world. We will challenge the status quo and demand better from our local and federal governments. We will let our teachers use the training that they received in college to educate our children. We will advocate the understanding that it takes a village to raise a child within every community. 

• Active community engagement in the process has to happen. I am finding a lot of push back with every organization wanting to be in absolute control and wanting to do their own thing. The fact is, that is only managing, it has nothing to do with leading. Organizations are just managing but are not providing the leadership and vision that the community is craving.

 Are you craving something better from your community? So am I and I cannot and will not do it alone. I need you. I need your creativity and your drive and your vision to aid in this venture out of mediocrity. If you are as tired of it as I am, let's talk and figure out ways we can benefit each other!

  There you have it. I have a vision of an Educational Renaissance beginning in every community. This kind of Renaissance touches all areas in a community. It helps create cultural plans that further deepen the connections people have within the community and the surrounding area. Quality education drives business and allows it to thrive, even in the harshest conditions. Instead of playing armchair internet commando, we need to get out there and get it done!  

 

Social Media Pet Peeves II: Pics

  Yep, people are at it again! After a post by Interconnectivity Marketing, a marketing consulting firm, and I had an online chat and a face-to-face chat. She does great work in teaching small businesses how to market themselves and how to create a team player atmosphere with each other, something that I have been learning about recently. She notes that you have to have a clear direction in the way you market, not only yourself but for others! Being paid for a service can be tricky and you have to make sure that you can deliver, especially if you are taking on multiple businesses as clients. If any of the below applies to you, do not take it personally, but please adjust as quickly as possible because I believe it will hurt your business' integrity in the long run.

• Let's talk pics.
• No time/date stamp please! It looks like you don't understand how to use your equipment and if it is a picture of a product and the picture is shared, it will date the product. You want the product to be shown as classic as possible. Fashion trends have dates, not pictures. 
• Make sure it is absolutely the best picture possible. I often take 10-20 pictures of one item until I am happy with the quality. Sure, sometimes things are off the cuff, but if it is for a paying client make sure the public can see what the camera is focusing on!
• When taking pictures of people, make sure that it is their best side and that they are smiling! Customers want to see happy owners and workers!

Don't date your work!

What is this? Keep focused!

Business Leadership: Lead With Purpose

  I am just hitting what is probably the most important chapter in this book, Making Ambiguity Comfortable by Leading with Purpose. So far, I have been highly impressed with this book for a few reasons.

·         I agree with the author and have been able to reference past experience with a deeper understanding of his points.

o   I have been out of the retail industry for almost four years and did my bosses really screw things up at various times. My managers were not that much different than Steve Carrell’s character from “The Office.” I could see sparks or indicators that my managers had the capability to lead with purpose but had many excuses as to why they could not. Most of them pointing back to the District Manager who was so far removed from the regular employee that many ran to the dark corners of the store to avoid him. I did not. However, I remember the day the district manager came into the store and I had not been allowed to go to lunch. I had been there since 5 AM. It was now 1 PM. In the state of Virginia, not being allowed to have a break after 6 hours of work is a violation of state regulations. I am also hypoglycemic, which means that I became nauseous and the situation perpetuated a migraine that sent me to bed at 5 PM that night. Within a week, I went and picked up a note from my doctor reinforcing regular breaks to deal with my blood sugar levels. Pretty extreme, huh?

o   The same district manager has volunteered to be part of an experimental program. They gave two options to full-time employees; severance package or part-time hours with no guarantee of pay or hours. This particular district has no more full-time employees except salaried managers. What a blow to morale! To know that you are not valued by upper management! This is the way retail has been heading for the past thirty years, reduction of benefits paid to employees. There is no such thing as a career in retail anymore. I can’t wait until they try part-time leadership.

·         I can see how the principles in this book should be used in education.

o   Standardized testing has created poor leaders who, with training, could be highly successful. We know that merit pay does not work, Lead with Purpose points this out. The book also points out that the role of the leader is to provide resources and remove obstacles. Many school leaders do not remove obstacles and they provide mandatory resources. I have heard a teacher friend complain recently that she was forced to attend a workshop on using Pinterest in the elementary classroom. Pinterest is so easy to use, that I thought it was a waste. Why not teach teachers how to use Pinterest to show off their work? Or some other form of social media that can be used in conjunction with their portfolio? Why not teach them how to use Google+ hangouts to reach high risk students? Wouldn’t that be more important? By the way, I love Pinterest. My only problem with it is that it lacks middle school and high school resources. Leaders in school systems need to focus on creating simplicity for teachers.

·         I am learning to deal with ambiguity.

o   This is a tough one for many people. Why? Because we like to see the whole journey ahead of us. We like to know where we are going. That our purpose is being carried out. However, we don’t see the cracks that trip us or the potholes we can fall into. Then there are the occasional dead ends, forks, and construction work that we run into. It’s like a game of Candyland. We can see the end, we know how to get there, but the next card we turn over may not be how we thought it would work. It’s alright to lose, to fail, to learn. I don’t remember any successes that I have ever had that did not incorporate the ability to fail first. Failing is part of life. Get up, dust yourself off, and get back in there! What has helped is understanding my purpose and falling back to my purpose to review and renew my commitment. I may use a different tactic but it always has my original goal attached to it. For example, I came to the realization a few weeks ago that I cannot remain local as a company. My blogs reach several different countries and I am realizing that I have an audience outside my locality. Because of this, I have decided to create online resources that can be purchased and downloaded so that I can remain relevant to my followers while building local reputation.

  

  The book is due back at the library by Saturday. It is not a difficult read and is broken up with the intent that the person reading it may only have 15 minutes of free time here and there. I have already created a PowerPoint to illustrate my purpose and goals for a project that I would like to have completed well before back-to-school season. Now, I am off to do more research! Have a wonderfully driven day!