Being Precedes the Doing

I often get asked what I think about technology in education and the impact it has in this increasingly small planet. While many very contemporary concepts come to mind like globalization, digital natives, and disruptive pedagogy, my disposition always falls back to a simple and powerful quote that drives all that I do:

"The being must always precede the doing." John Fuller, Senior Pastor at Prairie Lakes Church.

When the doing precedes the being, there is always a lack of vision. The normal pitfall is for the school and organization to be swayed by things that at best are novel and sexy or at worst a reflexive and reactive response to something challenging. To make this point visible, think about the proliferation of 1-1 student technology across Iowa schools. Many districts took on this initiative as a "doing". There was little thought about who they were, their core values, or their objectives and targets. Rather, 1-1 technology was infused to help drive the school into a vague preconceived notion of where they felt they should be. Often you could hear quotes from excited educators in these districts about 1-1 technology as it was launched:

"This will make us a true 21st century school!"
"This will really drive our enrollment up!"
"This will ensure best-practice pedagogy in our classrooms!"

What is interesting about these quotes is that they were often heard from people in the same district. This demonstrated the lack of a clear or cohesive vision. What was missing was a clarity of the "being" and answers to fundamental questions: Who are we? What do we stand for? None of the previous quotes from the educators in 1-1 districts are necessarily negative, but they are far from anything that could be considered visionary. They could be characteristics of visionary schools, but in isolation these concepts are not going to create a visionary organization. A few years removed, I heard exasperated comments from the same educators that none of these goals were realized when in fact, they were too vague and detached to ever be achievable.

This is a prime example of organizations adhering to the doing precedes the being. There is always the hope that what we do will help us become who we want to be. This is a paradoxical task; if you don't know who you want to be, how do you know the right thing to do?

What is the alternative? At Hoover Middle School, leadership is a choice, which means we have the power to choose who we want to be. This in turn drives what we do. So how did we become a 1-1 student device school?

First of all, our vision, mission, and core values are extremely clear and over-communicated. At Hoover, our vision is influence the world, serve others, and save lives. Our mission is equally clear as we want all of our students to graduate high school. Our core values are leadership, growth, family, excellence, and best for kids. This is who we are, it is non-negotiable, and it drives everything we do from the biggest priorities like hiring and instruction to little detail oriented tasks like how we decorate the office and classrooms.

After discussion with the leadership, we knew that in our vision of saving lives and mission of high school graduation, the literacy and math staff needed to demonstrate greater growth mindset by exploring options of how the content was being delivered. They realized that our reform based math model could benefit with more access to resources online and give students the opportunity to manipulate and interact with a variety of unique and rigorous strategies. Our balanced literacy approach needed additional access to leveled texts so students could build upon their knowledge of main standards such as idea, voice, theme, and citing evidence. This led to a discussion on how students could continue to be more collaborative and do additional peer review of work with our focus on non-fiction writing.

A common strategy among our staff was to employ technology as a tool to achieve all of the strategies listed above. They had experienced positive student outcomes with cloud computing, online texts, and project based research through Chromebooks and other personal devices. After much discussion and debate, 1-1 technology was a reasonable next step in helping us become a better version of who we are striving to be.

The being precedes the doing drove what decisions were made about our technology implementation. Michael Fullen published an article a few years ago called, "Choosing the Wrong Drivers for Whole System Reform". In the article he described how technology, accountability, fragmentation, and individual improvement will not drive positive student outcomes in schools. As I read this article, his thinking continued to affirm the concept of the being precedes the doing.  Each example Fullen provided as the wrong drivers always circled back to a basic flaw of leaders not following this simple philosophy.

A long answer to a simple question that is posed to me often about my thoughts on technology in education. Technology can be a wonderful tool that can make all aspects of education more effective, efficient, rigorous, and relevant. However, without a clear vision and understanding how the being precedes the doing it can also just become a very expensive replacement for chalk and dry erase markers.

"You can’t talk your way out of what you’ve behaved yourself into." - Michael Fullen