When the network works, nobody notices. No one emails the superintendent to say the Wi-Fi held during state testing. No teacher posts a thank-you because rosters synced overnight. The bell rang, the Chromebooks opened, the doors unlocked on schedule. A normal day. The Silence After the Classroom When I moved from the classroom into the…
I still think like a French teacher. It’s a strange thing to carry into a career in technology leadership, but the translation skill never left. Every job since the classroom has really been the same job: take something dense like a funding cycle, a device lifecycle plan, or a risk assessment, and find the version…
Right now, somewhere in a school district, a welcome letter is being drafted. A transportation update is queued for next Tuesday. A device reminder is sitting in a folder labeled “send week 1.” I know because I lived enough Augusts around that cabinet table to know how much trust gets packed into messages nobody in…
Everyone keeps asking the same question: “What AI tool should we use?” I think that’s the wrong question. The better question is: Do our people trust us enough to learn alongside us? Because the tool does not fail first. The trust does. I learned that lesson during COVID. The Lesson We Learned During COVID Like…
Summer has a way of revealing the connection between school communication and family trust. During the school year, most families are trying to keep up. They are managing schedules, homework, sports, transportation, emails, apps, forms, lunch accounts, and the general chaos of raising children while trying to keep life moving. But summer creates a different…
I have been quiet here for almost a month. Three conferences in five weeks will do that to you. So will watching something you helped build finally stand on its own. That’s what happened at the Indiana CTO Clinic earlier this month, and I’ve been sitting with it long enough now to write about it….
Every conference sends you home with two suitcases. One holds what you’re taking forward. The other holds what you’re finally willing to set down. After this year’s Future of Educational Technology Conference, I’m reflecting less on what inspired me and more on what earned its way back into my leadership practice. Because inspiration is easy…
Was I resting… or just managing another system? That question caught me off guard last week, somewhere between coordinating Christmas traditions, managing holiday logistics, and making sure everyone else experienced ease. The week of Christmas is supposed to feel like a break. The calendar clears. The inbox quiets. The pace slows (at least on paper)….
I didn’t set out to write a book about marketing. I set out to write a book about survival. Long before I sat in cabinet meetings or analyzed enrollment reports, I learned a lesson no teacher prep program ever mentions: when you teach an elective, your job security is directly tied to enrollment. No butts…
