February 7, 2012: R-R-R-Rams!

Last November, I had the chance to take part in the International Center for Leadership in Education's (ICLE) Leadership Academy in Dallas TX with some of the most awesome educators that I have met. The entire experience was so positive and left me energized and motivated to continue to pursue my passion - Education Reform. Locally, nationally and globally, education needs to better serve our students and their respective communities. ICLE seems to really understand that, and they are doing something about it. Our district sent 8 people to The Leadership Academy. Each school in our district was represented. The funny thing that we later reflected on was that although we were sent by the same district, we might as well have come from different states... we did not even know what faces to look for, many of us had never met. We soon realized that we were not isolated individuals but pieces to a puzzle... that belonged together. We spent the next 2 1/2 days sharing stories of our district, assessing our current status and making plans for the future.
ICLE focuses on three main facets of quality education; Relationships, Relevance and Rigor. (Although, I should be honest and admit that they say them in the order of rigor, relevance and relationships... we believe the order should be switched). Our three days as a district team revealed that positive relationships is absolutely where we must start our growth from who we are to who we want to be. We used our own experience as a group as rationale for the need to focus on establishing relationships within our district.
Since returning from Dallas, we have established a similar group of teachers at the high school to focus on RRR specifically at the high school. This group ALSO, came to the same conclusion, that Relationships truly is our first R. With positive relationships among staff, students, parents, schools and community... everything else becomes possible!
(I should mention that I could literally write about this topic continuously to my 67th birthday... but I'll stop here for now.) I made this out of an Altoids can with the Rs in mind :)

As you can see (actually, maybe you can't - not the best picture) I stamped the words "First thing is first" in the metal lid on the left. On the right side you can see a sort-of R-pyramid, made out of old blocks and game pieces I had - oh - just lying around. (cough cough - my mother hoards game pieces!). The idea is that relevance and rigor, while enormously important to quality education, must be built on a foundation of positive relationships.

OK - wait - hold up! I just looked up the word rigor... and honestly... I'm not sure I like that word anywhere near education... check out the definition. I have been singing songs of RRR and have been thinking all the while that rigor was about stretching people to achieve great things... UMMM!??... I am soliciting your opinion on a replacement R word? Thoughts? It should mean "stretching to be better than you are" or "intense engagement" maybe "extremely high but reachable expectations"...something along those lines. I really do not like the fact that the definition of the word rigor kind of is the opposite of positive relationship? Maybe I am just not comprehending the connotation? More to come at at later date...