BHAG

In a few hours our faculty will embark on a journey that will never end, but hopefully reach it's destination fourteen months from now. Today we start the first of six hours of technology training over the next two days, the first sessions in a series designed to help our teachers use technology as an effective tool in instruction. That instruction will continue into the fall and throughout the next school year. It is a part of an overall strategy to integrate technology in an ubiquitous way. It is one leg of our BHAG.

Readers of Jim Collins's Good to Great are familiar with the term, but for those readers not familiar, BHAG stands for big, hairy audacious goal. Our BHAG is to be the leader of technology in education for the state of Nevada and for Lutheran schools throughout the world. While there are a lot of elements that make up that goal, perhaps the most impactful is our plan that every HS student at Faith will be provided a laptop at the start of the 2009-10 school year.

In order for us to make that commitment it is critical that our teachers have a good understanding of the power of technology to engage students and change instruction. The current crop of students we have is literally wired differently. There is at least some research that suggests that the multitasking, social networking digital kids of today have brains that function in different ways than those of a generation ago. We need to be aware of those changes and design classroom instruction that accounts for the differences.

I remember conversations as a young teacher about how Sesame Street was producing a generation of students with short attention spans and much less patience for the lecture and learn style of teaching pretty prevalent in the 70s. It sure seemed like kids had much less ability to focus. And today we can identify kids with attention deficit at earlier ages than ever. We make accommodations for those students in our classrooms. However, one of the lessons we should have learned from J.K. Rowling is that students are more than willing to devote time and attention to an activity if the content is engaging. Thanks Harry Potter.

Many of our students can text faster than I can type this blog. They can integrate video, audio, photography and other content in new and creative ways. They process information faster. We need to teach them to take all they information at there fingertips, judge its accuracy fairly, and think critically about what they information means and how it affects their lives and decision-making. It is an exciting time to be a teacher. But when hasn't it been?

The End of (School) Days

As we close the end of the 2007-08 school year we bring to an end some school and personal milestones. This was the tenth year our school has been located in Summerlin. That happens to coincide with the number of years I have been the head administrator here. The first is not much of the surprise; the 2nd is.

I am amazed and humbled at what God has accomplished in just ten years at this school. With the exception of the tennis courts and a dedicated soccer field, the original Master Plan is now complete and the buildings are much bigger than than what was originally envisioned. Even with that, we have had to keep and grow the portable classroom farm on the southwest side. Over the last ten years our student population and faculty have more than doubled. Faith has become a school of importance in our community.

Mary and I have been glad to ride along. After stops in Portland, OR; New York City; Cleveland, and Chicago, Las Vegas is now the longest place we have ever lived. My previous connections with the city were not remarkable. In the early 80s the school had contacted me about being a teacher but I had no interest in moving west again. In the mid-90s we took the longest of any of our family vacations, travelling from Chicago down to I-40 and across the southwest to LA and then back northeast up to I-90 and back to Chicago. One of our stops was a July day in Las Vegas. I remember it being 103 degrees at 10:00 am and declaring with great certainty that only crazy people lived in such a climate. My antipathy was lessened somewhat when Mary won $40 at a Caesar's Palace slot.

But man plans and God laughs. Not that much later I would consider and then accept the call to be Faith's principal. My 1st goal was simply to be the longest serving administrator in the school's brief history. Reached that milestone a while ago. We crossed the 1000 student plateau and kept going.

As we approach graduation it is hard not to be nostalgic. The last Moyer is graduating which ends a streak of more than a dozen years of having a student at Faith. Other families are bringing long associations with school to a close. Some will watch students cross the stage and know that it took an act of God to make it happen; others will wonder what will become of their son, daughter, niece, nephew, grandchild or friend who may have talents and abilities that surpass most of us regular folk. Is there a future Bill Gates, Mother Teresa, John McCain or Hilary Clinton among them? Are there teachers and preachers to inspire another generation?

The future for them and for us is in God's hands. My prayer for those who graduate is that they are happy and make a difference in the lives of people around them.

Take a look at the progress our building is making:

We have some sidewalks!

This is the support structure for seating below the mezzanine.

This monster pump supports the sprinkler sytem for the tallest building on campus.

This will be the drama classroom/green room. It is really big!