Brian M. Stack's School Leadership Blog

Recently I had the opportunity to listen to Justin Reich , Executive Director of the Woodrow Wilson Teaching Systems Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, speak to a group of teachers about the changing landscape of the workplace and the need for more technology education. Justin made an observation that has stuck with me to today regarding the overwhelming role that technology plays in our world. He showed teachers a picture of an airline ticket counter from the 1970’s, with 20 ticket agents working behind a counter assisting travelers. He then showed a modern day version of that picture where the ticket agents had been replaced with a series of kiosk stations that allow passengers to check themselves into the airport. Seated at the far right was one lonely ticket agent. As Justin explained, today’s computer systems are really, really good at completing repetitive and routine tasks, but they are still not great at thinking through unexpected or unpredicted problems

As a high school principal, one of the things I dislike to hear from parents is when they tell me that they don’t know what their child is doing in the classroom. While we have a very sophisticated communication plan for school-wide news and announcements, we fall short as a school in a systematic common approach to how we handle classroom-level communication between teachers and parents. In the new year, it is a personal goal of mine to work with my staff to improve in this area. As a parent myself, I look forward to getting an email from my son Liam’s first grade teacher every Friday afternoon with an update on what Liam and his classmates have been working on all week. Despite the continued efforts of my wife Erica and I to extract this information from Liam over dinner each night, the email serves as a way to supplement and enhance our connection with Liam, so we can support his learning at home and play an active role in his education all year long. My task is to try to promo