K-12 Congress is an INVITATION-ONLY conference for superintendents and higher from all over the US. How is it that I am here in the same program as people like Dr. Yong Zhao, Sir Ken Robinson and Dallas Dance.

This was an important conference for me. It is the first time that I felt like an expert, that my message was different than the mainstream 1:1, BYOD, tablet roll out trend and that I am making an impact. During my talk, one superintendent started texting quite loudly and frantically during my talk. After my talk, she came up to talk to me. First of all, she called me a ROCK STAR!! Flattery will get you everywhere, too bad I had nothing to give. Then she said that I really understood the pedagogy steps and the learning rather than the program or the technology. She said that my message and examples made so much sense and was somewhat against the blind current. The reason she was texting during my talk was because she was placing a hold on a $1M table purchase scheduled to be placed at any moment. She had to rethink everything. Later we spent sometime together talking about SMARTBoards. If nothing else, she got two free SMART Tables. I wonder if I can get commission? 😉

Dr. Zhao spoke on a panel with two other fine gentlemen. They talked about the pro’s and con’s of Common Core. While the other two gentlemen talk about this and that, Dr. Zhao got right to the point and was a level higher. One thing he said was that Common Core in and of itself is probably a good thing, but when you attach high stakes assessments, rankings and careers on some kind of standardized test, the whole thing will turn into something ugly. Dr. Zhao would be a proud supporter of “SHAD HIGH”. I found it funny that  one of the other panelists commented on how his home country was Communist and that it was therefore not quite as good. My thought is that if Communist country is being more innovative and careful of the individual students that the US is, perhaps the US is in serious trouble? Maybe Canada is the perfect middle??

It was funny that I sat 3 ft, back to back from Sir Ken. I wonder why he got so much press and attention and I got very little attention. It is like he wrote a book and had a Ted Talk or something. (Sarcasim?)

Sir Ken spoke about some of the same themes as he had before, with 2 different slants.

• He talked about how is daughter loved everything French. French food, geography, history, boys, music etc… Yet when Sir Ken went into parent-teacher interviews (how intimidating would that be?), the teacher comments about how his daughter might fail because of her attitude. Sir Ken was then curious as to what attitude was. Was she lazy? nasty? arrogant? Nope… none of those. The teacher said, “she acts like she is bored.” Those other attitudes, were they present, would be owned by the student. But boredom is owned by the teacher. So Ken finally says, “Perhaps she is bored.” and put the ball in the teacher’s court.
• He talked about civilizations, empires and society. He talked about how in the 1880’s the British Empire was the largest empire the world had ever seen, was world pervasive, and the sun never set on it. Liverpool was the busiest port in the world and London was the center of the universe. He wondered what would happen if a person were to walk into the Royal Court and say, your grandchildren will live in an impoverished, beaten, and devastated state and the empire would be in ruin. And true enough, by the end of World War 2, that is exactly what happened. He drew many parallels between the Roman, British and American Empires and tried to bring a sense of urgency and priority that this thing called Education will have on the economy of the US and the standard of living for our kids and grand kids.

There are many developing countries that have figured this out and are investing. How long will the US be able to hold onto their lead? China, India and Korea are all making sweeping changes and have momentum.

At the end, the President of SMART let me car pool with him to the airport and then to High Tech High. I really appreciated how welcoming he was and how down to earth he was. He asked me a couple of questions and I answered honestly as best I could. I hope I did not violate some kind of protocol. Car Pooling is awesome both for the environment and for conversations with a different flavor.

The rest of the SMART Team was their typical awesome selves. In the Words of David Lapides, “Never Surprised, Always Impressed”.   The new part for me was sitting in on the meeting, listening to the plan of where people would sit at supper and watching how business works…and meeting with the president.