Working At The Edge

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My #oneword2016 – #DO

By Randy Ziegenfuss

#doDo. A small but mighty word with the potential for lots of nuance around it. It’s one of the things that makes being a practitioner so incredible – we get to do the work. There are a lot of people who want to tell us what to do. They are thinkers who can often have great ideas and may even be good resources to help us learn during the creative process. But they don’t necessarily do the work. We practitioners get to think and do the work. As I’ve said before, we have a unique insider perspective, and we shouldn’t lose sight of that.

So I will continue to do the work as a superintendent. I have some new goals for the year around teaching/learning, communication and community that I’ll be sharing out in future posts.

The word do implies action. It means going beyond just talking about something and this includes moments when that talking verges on complaining. How much complaining do we do when we could have taken action to address the situation we were complaining about? Let’s turn the complaining into action by doing something about it. This part of doing is going to be in the forefront as I navigate through this year.

Finally, I think do also means choosing to not do. One thing I’ve learned in the first year as superintendent is that I want to do too much (an issue outside of work life as well). I have to learn to not do. So as I go through the year, I’ll be carefully scrutinizing and filtering the things that cross my path and choosing to not do some things I’ve done in the past so that I can better do the things I want and need to do.

Looking forward to working with the Salisbury team to continue to do good in 2016!

Connect with Randy on Twitter and on the TLTalkRadio podcast!

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Randy Ziegenfuss
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Randy Ziegenfuss
I've retired from public education after 34 years, most recently as Superintendent. In addition to blogging at WorkingAtTheEdge.org, I co-host two podcasts at TLTalkRadio.org and ShiftYourParadigm.org. Learn more at https://workingattheedge.org/about/.
Randy Ziegenfuss
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About Working At The Edge:

My name is Randy Ziegenfuss, and I'm a retired public school superintendent and a life-long educator with over 34 years experience developing a passion for teaching, learning, leadership and technology. <read more...>

I first came across the phrase working at the edge while learning about the work of Marzano, et al. School Leadership That Works: From Research to Results. In this work, the researchers define 21 responsibilities of the school leader, one being change agent. A change agent is defined as one who is, "...willing to challenge school practices that have been in place for a long time and promoting the value of working at the edge of one's competence."

Randy Ziegenfuss, Ed.D.

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