Not the Smartest in the Room

It is an extraordinary feeling to be in a room with 1000 people and get the feeling that almost all of them know more than you about something very important. That is a rough approximation of my experience at the Building Learning Communities 08 conference I attended last week in Boston. The conference is an activity of November Learning and its namesake, Alan November, who has been a leading educator and technology advocate for as long as I can remember.

The most important lesson I relearned was that all of this technology is in service to enriching student learning. That is a mantra we will have to repeat often this year as we work with teachers to prepare them for a time when our high school students all come to class with laptops. Jon Orr, one of our schools most tech savvy teachers will be working with our faculty to provide them with the knowledge to use the tech tools we have or will be getting.

I often wonder if 19th century teachers went through all this angst when the lead pencil replaced chalk and slate and inkwells and quills. Were there pencils workshops? Could you get a Master's Degree in educational pencilship?

There is an enormously interesting world out there, a world with challenges that I know our students can tackle. In wrestling with those problems, they learn more useful material than reciting the Gettysburg Address or listing the elements of the periodic table. Technology can put the world at our fingertips, but that is only an advantage if we know how to interact with it.

I expect that students will be bemused at our efforts to use technology to learn. Some of the coolness of having a blog is dimished when every old guy (read administrator) has one. But if we do it right, the journey to using education to enhance student learning is a journey we can take together. I hope it works that way at Faith.

He's Baaaaack.....

I am back in town after a brief respite. Besides my parents and a few other relatives, our time was structured around visits with people who had crossed our path along our thirty years in Lutheran schools. In contrast to Mary and I who've moved around a bit, we enjoyed some time with Barb and Mark Korntheuer who have spent their entire careers at Walther Lutheran High School in Melrose Park, Illinois. A few days later we lunched with John and Ramona Ragland. John is at former athletic director at Faith and is now the Interim Executive Director of Rockford Lutheran High School (I am a proud alum, class of '74). Ramona teaches at Concordia Lutheran School in Machesney Park, IL (my 1st Lutheran School). The Lutheran world is really connected! We also spent time with Larry and Rhoda Baldwin, now living in Iowa (a relatively dry part). I miss Larry's excellence in teaching and our common frustration with the game of golf. Larry is serving on the Board of Valley Lutheran High School in Cedar Falls, Iowa.

Those Lutheran Schools in the Midwest reflect much earlier some of the challenges we may soon face. They are facing even worse economic conditions than we currently have in Las Vegas. It reminds me that the sacrifice parents make to provide Christian education for their students must be honored by those delivering that education. We will work to expand dollars available for financial aid and work with families facing short-term financial situations that make timely tuition payments difficult. We just ask that families stay in contact with us and let us know when a problems occurs, not when tuition is so far in arrears that a student's attendance is in doubt.

I am fearful that my vacation is so attached to my work, but our lives would be much poorer without these wonderful people from who I have learned much, laughed until it hurt and shared the joy of ministry.