This week superintendent candidates are visiting our school system. In the evening, their interviews with the school committee can be watched live via the computer.
I've been watching the interviews and have found them to be a terrific source of professional learning. What makes this good professional learning is that the candidates have extensive knowledge from their many years of experience in a large number of education positions.
Ideas that have struck me so far is the value of job-alike groups. The notion is not new to me, but when I heard a candidate describe her desire to be in such a group, I realized that I would also profit from such a group. Also, another candidate spoke about the value tech integration brings to personalized education. While again, the notion of personalized learning and how to do it is not new, when I heard this candidate discuss it, I realized the great benefit this kind of tech integration brings to coaching individual students forward at their personal level of need or interest.
There were many other points the candidates made that I found intriguing and thought provoking, and there were others where I found myself wanting to tell them what we're already doing in the areas discussed. I'll continue to watch the interviews this week and learn. Overall it just shows that we can learn a lot from one another and we need to reach beyond our own school systems to learn how others are tackling the job at hand in order to broaden and deepen the good work possible.
