After All These Years!: Lee Sattelmeyer’s Blog

Professional Development is a part of me. It is what I like to do.

As I’ve been thinking what could or should be done for the next year, the opening scene of Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man echoes through my head. The music salesmen are singing about an interloper, Professor Harold Hill, who has managed to make their job difficult by selling uniforms and instruments and then skipping town before following through on his promise to create a town band. There is one character whose line is to say, “But he doesn’t know the territory…”

I had to think awhile before I could figure out what my brain was trying to tell me. I really can’t plan anything without knowing what my staff wants to know. I’d be like Professor Hill promising a “band” when I didn’t know anything about music.

My problem is I really don’t know what my staff wants to know. I’ve asked. I’ve put out e-mails. I tried to entice. And I’ve tried to bribe, to no avail. I’ve been left with the odd sense that my staff either is smarter than me, don’t want to know about any new things, or they don’t know what they want to know.

Since I manage a number of district technology resources in my building, I know how little use is being made of resources being made available by our district and paid for out of my community’s taxes. So, “smarter” can’t be it, otherwise the resources would be utilized more successfully.

I could certainly make a case for the “don’t want to”. I know how often people in the building look at my name on an e-mail and defer opening the e-mail until later, sometimes really too much later. My last building walk-through for the summer, showed me that most of the staff in the building didn’t follow through completely on the summer tech shut down procedure e-mail. Only three people in the whole building had everything shut down, document cameras covered, amplifiers turned off, and microphones and remotes stowed away safely.

However, I’m a “born in the wool”, honest-to-goodness liberal, optimist. So, I chose to believe that my staff really doesn’t know what they want to know or learn when it comes to technology integration in the classroom. I got absolutely no response from anyone in the building about their interest in some one hour professional development sessions in our building prior to the beginning of school, not even a “no thanks, I’m busy that week.”

This coincides with an almost total lack of interest in our district for a 1-2 technology mini-conference in our district. I was getting really excited about the topics. The goal was going to be to show staff what they could do with our existing technology not present some ivory tower version of what education could be if we had the money, if we invested in new technology, or if we subscribed to some additional services. Practical and doable now were to be the theme. We got six inquiries from the whole district.

I keep hearing the music waft through my head. Before I go deep into planning technology professional development this summer, I need to find a way to stop thinking like the music salesmen on the train. I need to be more like Professor Harold Hill and help our staff dream that now that they have the instruments, they can become a “band”.

I love Delicious! I don’t know how I ever got along without it. It simplifies my work by being only a URL away from my bookmarks. No longer do I worry about what I saved and on which computer it got saved on. Sure, Yahoo! will keep my bookmarks for me, but I can’t log into my Yahoo! account at work. So, Delicious really works for me.

What I can’t figure out is why I can’t seem to excite others about the site. I know in professional development sessions that others have been impressed that I can quickly and easily pull up a Web site to reinforce some concept. But the amazement stops there. In about six months of proselytizing, I’ve only inspired one convert!

Does this say something about me? Am I singing along with John Hancock in 1776 “if I’m the one to do it, they’ll run their pen quill through it…”?

Or does this speak to nature of human beings that we have a comfort zone and tend to stick to it? Or that you can “lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink”? Or that we all have too much on our plate?

I don’t know the answer to this, but know that it isn’t isolated to just my building in the district. We tried to put together a mini-tech conference in August showcasing the existing technologies and resources we have in the district. We got just six responses back from the whole district indicating that the person was interested in attending the one-day conference.

Meanwhile, I keep adding to my Delicious account. Ask me to come up with resources for our IB Planners. Within a few keystrokes, I have a number of them ready to share. I don’t know how I ever lived without it.

Yours,

Lee

I recently sent an e-mail to Porter Palmer on the DE Learning Council introducing myself. I frequently stop and assess myself as to who I am and what my belief system is. I know, to some of you (if I even have a reader) that may sound kind of silly. But I find I need to reaffirm why I do the things I do, where I came from and where I’m headed, and who am I doing it for. As long as this self-check keeps coming up with “for my students and the students of Lomond Elementary School”, I know that I’m on the right track and really not ready to retire yet.

Since it is highly unlikely that you and I have ever met, I thought it might be appropriate to copy part of what I sent Porter. So, if you’d like to know who this “knucklehead” is, read on.

“I’m the building tech coordinator for Lomond Elementary School in Shaker Heights (OH), as well as a regular education teacher for second grade. I’m now the oldest surviving member of the original district tech team, having watched all the other founding members retire or look for less headaches.

I go way back to the Radio Shack TSR-80s and still remember when the first Apple II entered the doorway of each school building. It was then that I decided that this “new” technology was going to have an impact on my teaching and student learning.

I made behind the door “deals” with the other building coordinators to get each of our K-4 buildings three Macintosh LC575s, and then had to bid my time for several years while I supported the middle and high school tech coordinators in getting technology for their buildings. That was back in the days when there was no line item in the district budget for technology.

I’ve pushed for the creation of the first K-4 computer lab when the emphasis in the district was on technology for secondary students as there wasn’t a vision of technology being useful to the younger student. That original lab went from a 12-computer lab in a borrowed library space to a 25-computer lab in its own air conditioned space. This year we are moving the lab to new and much larger location in the building so that the lab will coincide with our professional development space.

I’ve had a part in bringing computers into the regular classrooms. We’ve gone from only a couple of rooms having a computer to every classroom having at least three. We have brought SMARTboards and projected learning into the classrooms in the last several years.

So, I’ve been around. The hair is thinner. The body much rounder. The eyes need additional support. And, my patience has probably gotten a little thinner.

As I am about four years away for retirement, I’ve been nurturing a young man to eventually replace me. That in itself is kind of an exciting task to take on.

What hasn’t changed is my commitment to technology helping K-4 students become active learners and in helping teachers step into the 21st Century by finding ways for technology to enhance what they are already doing.

A truly seminal event in my younger years was finding and reading Seymour Papert’s The Children’s Machine. His description of an immunological response to change in an organization made sense to me and still does. From the individual classroom teacher to central administrator, the challenge is to always nudge them a little bit farther along and avoid complacency. It is way too easy with technology for many teachers to get into a comfort zone and not explore what else can be done to enhance student learning.

I don’t worry so much about the children as they seem to see the whole picture without being encumbered with a lot of doubts about technology. They are always eager to try new things and to push the boundaries of what they can do with technology. They embrace where, many of us sit back and ponder before making a move.

This year for the first time, I’ve consistently made the use of technology a part of any lesson plan when I’m out of the classroom. I’ve had a group of second grade students who eagerly support this and provide assistance to the substitutes in getting lessons up and running on the SMARTboard. Several of the subs that go way back historically with me have indicated their appreciation to being exposed to new ways of doing things. The children’s enthusiasm and innocence about technology making the difference for the substitutes.

That gets back to “technology” truly being the children’s machine. It is the children, I believe, that will eventually support those of us who are older, who didn’t grow up with technology, to make that leap of faith and change or adjust our teaching habits and methods.

It is the children I always come back to when I’m overwhelmed with my responsibilities or grumpy when some insensitive staff member forgets his/her manners. It is their “Ah, ha!”, their fearlessness to tackle big ideas, to embrace change.They are the ones that make what I do worthwhile.”

Yours,

Lee