Have a Good Life

Bob Dillon Twitter Web Site is the Director of Technology and Innovation for Afton School District. He has been a middle school principal for 15 years in three different places and currently helps many other principals improve their practices.

• Join the PrincipalPLN Voxer group
• 1st order change - simple, fixit types of problems, typically exciting that help people feel good about things, but don’t really move the needle in improving a school.
• 2nd order change - moving from management to leadership. Changes that will last after you are gone. People start to feel like they are part of a special organization. Sometimes it is messy, people don’t know how things will play out.
• Doug Timm Principal in Delaware.
• Need to focus on what matters in the long term.
• 1st order change - painting over water stain on a house you just bought.
• 2nd order change - taking off the drywall and cleaning (or replacing) studs and insulation.
• Playing the short and the long game.
• Higher-level conversations
• Difficulty of dealing with minor problems.
• If you are working hard daily, people will be more likely to give you a break.
• Build up key communicators in the building.
• Trust your teachers to say things in a way that you know will be beneficial.
• People need to hear the same in multiple ways.
• How to help teachers be comfortable taking risks.
• Need to scaffold to the higher level of risk-taking.

Part 2

• Director of Innovation. My role is to keep the system lubricated.
• Keep technology systems moving at a fast rate. Jump technology ahead.
• Looking for other places that slow growth and inhibit innovation.
• Empower the teachers that are moving forward and working hard.
• Most of the rest of my career I will have jobs that don’t exist yet.
• Important to change mental model of where and how kids learn.
• Our teachers get better when they tell our story.
• If it is not your strength to share, allow it to be the power of your students and allow them to share.
• Give kids a voice.
• Authentic audience raises the quality of work.
• Book Ethic of Excellence
• How are you contributing to Education beyond this school?
• It is about being humble, and knowing you don’t have all the answers. If I want other people to help me, I need to help other people.
• What prevents teachers from contributing?
• Powerful connecting to other schools. Bettendorf High School and their partner school learning from each other. Doc Seacrist St. Joseph in Missouri(LINK)
• Why Jimmy Casas continues to be a principal.
• Leadership
• K–1–2 Makerspace about the philosophy of allowing kids to grow creativity and problem solving.
• Create, make, design for empowerment, engagement.
• Helping kids become solution makers.
• How you can be a transformative principal: Go read something that doesn’t have to do with education with your principal hat on. Lateral capacity building. Brendan Hufford
• Entreleadership Podcast
• Chris Locurto Show

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