The 5 W’s? Refocusing on the one that REALLY matters.

Not once in over four years. Sure, I thought about it, considered it, even started to plan it—many times, but despite my best intentions, it never happened.

Perhaps I have been ashamed to admit it? Maybe I used time as an excuse? Or perhaps the landscape of education truly has prevented it? The reality is, like so much else, it is probably a combination of many factors that has prevented from me from planning any, not one minute, professional learning revolving around WHO we teach.

I would try to do the math, but it is too overwhelming; however, a conservative estimate is that in four plus years of being the department chair for 23 teachers, I have probably planned around 40 hours of department meetings, 50 hours of institute days, 100 hours of workshop time, and overseen 80 hours of PLC work, and not one time in all of that did I push our focus to the kids.

Let me explain.

I took over this job right as this little-known movement was sweeping the country. You might have heard of it…Common Core State Standards. Always seeing myself as a curricular leader, I dove head first into that work, helping co-lead within my district a complete transformation to a school-wide implementation of the CCSS literacy skills. This work took three full years, and it was well worth it because we now had a very clear picture of WHAT to teach.

Overlapping at some point, about a year into this work, another movement starting taking over the nation and working its way into my district…1:1 Learning. Having a passion for technology and being an early adopter, I saw this as a great way to supplement the work we were doing with CCSS. So, we devoted significant time as a department and district to playing with technology: learning, sharing, failing, and improving. This work took two or so years, but we now also had a clear picture of HOW to teach (not that every lesson was now tech-infused, but we had a very nice framework for the how).

However, roughly 270 hours of professional learning later, I realized that I had completely failed to address the single most important factor in our work…the WHO.

Not once did we have learning sessions in which we talked about teaching kids with emotional challenges, those with rough home lives, kids from diverse backgrounds, students who are homeless, and/or so many other factors that make the WHO the essential foundation to success with the WHAT and HOW.

It is obviously too late for me to go back in time to fix this “mistake”, and truth be told, some amazing, multiple-time nationally-recognized work came out of the department’s and district’s efforts with the WHAT and HOW; however, as I think about the missed opportunities to focus on kids, I am saddened.

While many of you reading this are probably saying to yourself, “ya, duh, you idiot; you sure did miss out”, and I would own that criticism as it is justified and self-constructed, too. So, I want to urge educational leaders new and old to take some time as individuals and, perhaps more importantly, as district-level teams to reflect upon how you’re spending your professional learning time.

Because the reality of our work is starkly simple yet painfully challenging and can be narrowly reduced to one basic thought: unless we fully understand WHO we are teaching, the WHAT and HOW we teach will never truly empower the youth of today to change the future of tomorrow.

If you are interested in more conversation about helping make sure we understand the WHO, check out #edubelong and/or www.sevenzo.org