So How is it going, sir?

How is it going, sir?

You are torn. I know you are.

You are torn between the school and the discipleship track.

You still think they are two different things. The fact is, they are. In many different ways, they are.

The school pushes you to deliver high impacts in students performances in academics and the arts. You know this can only be done once the units in the system are in place. Talk about:
a. Horizontal and vertical articulation of curriculum
b. Technology integration and differentiated instruction in instruction
c. Holistic assessment
d. Social and emotional learning
e. Teachers’ upgrade

All these requires heavy loads of documents and documentarists.

Your task is to move from traditional to 21st century approaches in education, from supplantive curriculum to generative one, from old to new.

The discipleship track pushes you to take care of people. Not that you don’t take care of people in the school. Fact of the matter is, you become stressed right now with the idea that 650 lives should be kept safe every single day.

You also liked this very much. But you don’t know where and how to start considering, sir, that your personality isn’t for a big crowd. You can only take care of a limited few.

And these past days, it became more real to you—- God does want you to take care of the flock.

So how is it going sir?

Skimming and Scanning

Today, we had in our class skimming vs scanning Workshop

First, SCANNING and SKIMMING mindmaps are drawn on the whiteboard. Students are to make similar mindmap or info graphics on their bond papers using their own creative and personalized styles.

Second, after familiarizing themselves with the concepts, Fortune magazines were distributed among all of them to practice these skills.

For skimming — Skim the whole news magazine and observe the following: text features, typographical features, and visual features. Write their observation on their papers.

For scanning — Choose one article. Form a question to be scanned. Scan the article to answer the questions. Do not read thoroughly.
1. My question:
2. Did I find the answer? ___ yes ___no
3. Answer to my question:

Room for Improvements:
1. Share their observations
2. Make this as a team activity
3. More exercises on this

Next skill targeted:
#prediction #inference

Beating myself up, reading several books at the same time

This August, I want to beat myself and I want to model reading books. So I have this strange idea to read several books simultaneously and this is my list:

Fiction
1. Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games
2. Suzanne Collins
3. Suzanne Collins

Non-Fiction
1. Lee Kuan Yew’s From Third World to First The Singapore Story 1965-2000
2. Tamara Erickson’s What’s Next Gen X
3. Kerman and Slovic, eds. The Irrational Economist Making Decisions in a Dangerous World
4. Harvard Business Review, Classic DRUCKER

It takes a reader to be a leader.

Teachers Are Poor Consumers of Learning

This we have to contend with and fight against—the “natural” proclivity to stop learning when we got out of the formal education system. We stop learning. Our students just get what we learned.

My Island View

There are only a few explanations that many educators offer up as reasons not to learn and use any technology as tools for learning. One of the most popular excuses, frequently cited by educators, is that there is not enough time to learn all of the stuff that is out there. It certainly is true that there are a huge number of things to learn out there that are linked to technology. When thought about as a complete package, it most definitely can be overwhelming, and I wholeheartedly agree with that. Where I disagree however, is in thinking about all of this technology stuff as a complete unit that must be learned all at once. There are logical and necessary ways to break things down to learn smaller snippets of things on a need-to-know basis in order to build into a larger framework of information.

In sales people are taught…

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The tasks ahead

Being a young executive in education, all I have are dreams and visions where to go—unadulterated, raw, and organic.

How I’d wish I have this small amount of wisdom I’ve gained, several years back. I could have implemented them right away. I could have been earning the fruits of those seeds of innovation sown.

But that couldn’t be the case. Even the Scriptures says, we grow not in a day but daily.

Daily it is to

1. Practice brain switching and not just multi tasking. Less is more, and less is digestible. With so many things going on around, I need to see what needs to be done first, who do to do it, and until when are they going to do it.

2. Empower through delegating tasks to appropriate people. ours has a different setup because we have different calling. Each day, our vision grows stronger so the pressure to accomplish things, even in sizable amount, tremendously increases too. More people are needed, more task must be filled in, in lesser amount of time.

3. Think about so many things all at the same time and manage crisis and dead ends. The questions I have to face each day are become real more than ever:
a. How do you ensure that the 700 lives inside the classroom is safe every single day?
b. How do you ensure that they learn while having fun and have fun while learning?
c. How do you ensure that they understand the rules more than following them? People who lacks knowledge of where to go, cast off restraints.
d. How do you ensure that the teachers are always in a lifelong learning mode?
e. How do you ensure that we are instruments for nation-building and that we contribute to the larger sum of forming a collective Filipino consciousness?

4. Build relationships through all possible media. I am impersonal. And I need to learn more to become a people person. But amidst these, I have to show that my lines, Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn and all are available as much as everyone can talk to me.

5. Create networks and utilize these networks to deepen knowledge, skills, and attitude transfers. Our playing field will be asia. We are producing, preparing, and prepping up our students to take in roles into the ASEAN sphere. I need to know people more. Communicate with people I haven’t met yet. Pool all resources available and be always above what I have previously accomplished.

6. Supervise macro details and scrutinize micro details. I admire my President/CEO for juggling so many things at the same time, I always tell myself, he could preach at least 3 services on Sundays, do management and visioning all at the same time.

7. Prepare the “toppings” and “icing” while ensuring that the cake’s texture is consistent and it tastes well. We are scrutinizing our curriculum content. We are making sure that or assessment and instruction are embedded to a level-appropriate and age-appropriatecore curriculum.

The tasks that lie ahead does not call for one man to accomplish bit for a group of people who have the passion to go beyond themselves and push for reforms today so that the future may gain.