Interview Questions

Hello, I hope your Christmas holiday is going well.  A few have asked for some guidance on developing probing interview questions.   Since we did not have ample time to work on them in class, I thought I would give you some ideas.

First, select someone you with whom you have a good relationship to ask these questions:

How did the change you experienced affect your personal belief system?  (I shared in class that embracing the SOL test as the measure to further sort and select students was not something I agreed with philosophically when we changed our direction overnight)

How could the change process you encountered have been improved?

Secondly, let the person talk and you listen, do not try to write everything they say at the sitting.  Instead, listen well and summarize what they tell you.  The procedure of taking copious notes during the interview complicates the process; a few lines is all you need to jog your memory.  Develop those good listening skills, they will serve you well throughout your career.

The purpose is for you to learn how a real life change was handled by someone who lived it, not to inform me of a series of facts.   Make this assignment assist you in understanding how people deal with the changes they must face to improve student achievement.  Hopefully, the person will feel compelled to share what they have learned in their career about successfully managing change.  The only constant in life.

Hope this helps.

Write no more than two pages of your success in getting your person to share and what you have learned from the interview.

Sam

PS  if your Good to Great article is missing pages - Google it on the net, it is there.

14 words

Guys, I did not do a very good job of enunciating the 14 spelling words I dictated to you.  Below find the words the best I can spell them.

facism

dictator

appeasement

blitzkrieg

Franklin D. Roosevelt

holocaust

Hitler

Benito Mussolini

Tojo

Harry S. Truman

Winston Churchill

Stalin

boycott

anti-semitism

Sorry if I confused you by not writing them down and thinking everyone had had time to get used to my eastern North Carolina dialect.  I usually give a handout on this, but I took a shortcut with you.

Email or call me if you need me.

Sam

I am starting to get reflection papers emailed to me.  I will respond to you when I receive your work.

Reminder - read the Human Development Discourse and Academic Development Discourse for Saturday's class, we will divide into two groups to debate these points of view.

Don't forget to bring in one demographic fact (make it one that gets your attention) about the future of our nation or our educational system for class on Saturday too.  If we find the people doing the Demographics group have them covered, we will let them educate us to conserve time.

Most of you are out of school now, I went in today at 7:30 AM and managed to make it home, but kinda tired now.  I am having to retype a lot of this message.  

Our teams from my notes are as follows:

1)  Allan, George and Anthony Fullan Good to Great

2) Kris, Tonia and Tomica Spillane Brain Research

3) Bernadine, Sallie and Nicole Bennis Technology

4) Suwana, Alyce and Kathleen Deming Demographics

5) Travis, Kendra and Travis   Collins Closing the Gap

6) Nicole, Crystal and Judi Covey Poverty

7) Tarri, Linda and Cathy Elmore Challenges

8) Randall, John and Mike Brock Leadership

I hope I have these right.  If I don't it was not because Sallie did not do her best to keep me straight, thank you Sallie.  Remember the first four theorists will be presented Saturday PM, all other presentations will be on Sunday.

Looking forward to hearing from you.  Ask good, thought provoking interview questions of your subject, unless they can fire you, make them squirm in their seat.  Make them think.

All for now.  Sam

Thank you for posting.

To those you who had the energy to get on tonight, thank you.  I am really tired and need to conserve energy for tomorrow.  

I do not need an email from you to allow you to post.  I am not sure if some kind of access is necessary.  If it causes you to receive spam, please do not feel you have to participate at this time.

Randall, you asked a great question, because the current economic crunch will only make things more difficult for us who would like to see more changes away from the agrarian calendar and manufacturing model of sorting and selecting in schools.  Already monies for training in instructional strategies has been curtailed.

A good discussion topic and research question to pose to our theorists or an interviewee.

See all tomorrow.

Sam

Welcome Class

We have one week before we meet.  I am establishing this blog to serve as a vehicle for our class to communicate and explore this type of technology.  We will be using a technology with which the youth of our society are already very familiar.   To many of us, it will be novel and intimidating.  

I will invite you to participate on the first day of class.  I hope I remember the URL.

See you on Saturday.

Sam

Welcome to the School Renewal ECC 707 blog.  This blog is designed to act as a conduit for information between the facilitator and students enrolled in this class.  In time other features may be added.  Thank for checking here.  I hope we can use this means of 21st century communication to assist you in mastering the material to be learned in our class.