NewTech High--It is Personal!

Bob Wedl Interview / Webinar I apologize for the little delay in communication, but I'll keep getting things out to you via this channel. My wife and I have been homeless for a month and are just nearing the opportunity to move into a new house, maybe in a day or three. I work on these ideas daily, but you never know. Feel free to call me anytime...reiterate anytime. I do think about you just like I would as a student or a school building.  I chose to interview Robert Wedl, ("Bob") as my first guest, as he has been one of my closest colleagues over the past five years, in this journey towards school change. As Bob shares in this episode, he is now 82 years old. I was invited to a group that Bob had been hosting during the pandemic (ex-Supts, MDE Personnel, thought leaders, etc) and ended up being closely knit to a few of them, including Wedl. I have high respect for him. It sometimes feels strange that Bob may care what we are doing, but he truly does.  This interview too...

 E3 - Investment Leads to Engagement Over the past year or so, my second focus in life--along with retiring as a Superintendent, and moving on to NewTech, and selling a home--has been the incredible workload of building a new home. Last fall, my wife and I had our cabin torn down (with help). This past 12 months has been filled with non-regular tasks associated with getting this done. We did sell our old home in Belgrade without a lot of pomp and circumstance, so that was a great outcome. However, in the meantime, moving to a new home has been incredibly engaging, yet anything but smooth.  We had a non-conforming lot, meaning it was smallish compared to others that may want to build on an existing property. We sought variances and appeared before the county committee, and interacted with leadership to get the process started. We took on the general contracting aspect, primarily to save money, but that role was certainly expanded beyond expectation.  Needless to say, we ar...

  The power structures of schools are well-established. Changing those power structures are essential to any change initiative you undergo, but that doesn’t mean changing these structures is easy. The work required to change is anything but that. But, you can always start with step one – doing something!  We have national standards and expectations for things like testing, certain components of our curriculum like Title I, special education and civil rights aspects. We get less than 10% of our funding from the federal government, and in the future, probably a lot less, but this funding aspect has many strings that guide what we do.  Then, we have the MDE, our leader and guide in Minnesota. The influence of MDE has actually varied during my time, but they are responsible for working with our legislators to follow the direction that our legislative leaders have come up with.  These two entities alone represent an obtrusive force against change. Many of the mandates and...

  Think Big, Act Small One of the first things I would tell anyone who builds schools or organizations is to always think of your larger plan, and review that plan as to how you are getting there.  How will this plan affect the macrostages that you exist in – long-term, district-wide, regional, state or national as examples of larger stages – if conditions support it and given enough time and energy to realize that benefit? If it’s a good plan, and you stick with it for a longer while, you’d be surprised at the progress you will make.  To accomplish anything robust with change, you will have to learn to start with small, bite-size tasks that support your mission and then replicate these micro-acts successfully, in enough places, with enough time, to allow them to create large macro changes. This is quite likely the reason that big change doesn’t happen in complex organizations and for a myriad of reasons:  Our schedule doesn’t support change [Structure] Competition f...