Engagement

In Building Engaged Schools — an excellent educational book — Gary Gordon, vice president and practice leader of The Gallup Organization's education division, attempts to explain why he thinks we've been focusing on the wrong things.

He says that if we want to improve schools, we should forget about perfect curricula, or testing more, or toughening accountability sanctions. We should be paying closer attention to the talent and the engagement levels of the people within an individual school.

I watched him speak and am going to share just a few pieces of thought. I will expand my selections soon.

• Reading scores are FLAT and have been since the 1980s.

• Ford tried to keep up with the companies who attempted to eliminate DEFECTS (e.g. HP printers, Dell or Apple Computers, iPod, Honda, Toyota, et. al.) by coming up with a SLOGAN: Quality is job one. Slogans don't work. Six Sigma is a system for eliminating defects and one doesn't need a fancy, meaningless slogan.

• The process for American education is a curricular process with little focus on people. We should recognize and value the importance of people in learning. When you involve people you can EFFECT change.

• Begin to take talent seriously, discover and embrace those talents, and engage students, teachers, and everyone in TEACHING and LEARNING.

• The WHAT of teacher; the HOW of a teacher; the WHO of a teacher are KEY.

• What = Knowledge; How = Skills; Who = Talent.

I bet you know a talented teacher or two!