I got fired.
I have NEVER been fired. Well, actually it was a whole room of us fired at once. I am not sure if I felt better or worse about that. I mean, this would surely not be good if I needed to put my resume "out there" competing with my amazing co-workers, who were also sans jobs. Luckily, our higher-ups were quick to explain what this meant. We were not fired from Lightspeed, but rather fired from our current labeling system.
Fired from our restrictions.
Fired from our constraints.
Fired from perceived boundaries derived from our titles.
I thought about this for a bit. When people asked what I did as a Senior Coach, it took a while to answer- and even then, I really never felt I explained it quite right.
Before Lightspeed, I spent fifteen years as a public educator. I was very used to answering the "What do you do?" inquiry in a four word sentence. "I am a teacher." "I am a coach." "I am an administrator." And then the reaction was predictable. I would hear, "Wow! That's wonderful." "You are so under-appreciated." "You are so under-paid." Or in the case of when I was an assistant principal, people would just pat my shoulder. I loved beaming back and assuring them it was never about the money, prestige, or even summers off. It was all about the learning, the students, and the future. I wore those titles like badges of honor.
When I joined Lightspeed and became "Senior Coach" there was quite a different reaction to the job inquiry question- more of a one-eyebrow-raised expression that urged me to say more. So I went on to explain that I taught teachers how to implement the learning management system, My Big Campus, to engage students in a safe, collaborative, educational-social media environment. I normally had to explain for a while- and even then I felt I kept leaving things out. I would preach about digital citizenship, endorse mobile learning devices, champion for empowering teachers, and attest to the power of technology for differentiation and preparing students for a 21st Century world. I am also pretty sure that most of the people I talked to were ready for me to stop explaining, yet I had to go on... e-portfolios, blended classrooms, project based learning, etc.
It seems that "Senior Coach" really was an obsolete title, not unlike many of the other titles of the people in the room with me. I mean, weren't we all working on the same goals? Didn't we all want to improve student engagement and achievement while facilitating the instructional technology and teacher roles? The answer was simple. Yes!
And that is why we were all fired.
Then we were re-deployed.
We were unleashed on Lightspeed as a new, cohesive, robust team known all as Mobile Learning Experts. No more delineation or micro-titles. As MLEs, our job is to be the experts in every facet of mobile learning from the filtering to mobile-device-management to My Big Campus and everything in-between/surrounding the concept of "mobile learning." We exited the room as a unified force that endorses the vision of Lightspeed Systems by answering the question of how to transform education by the technology revolution:
"By engaging students in meaningful projects, by creating learning communities, by extending learning beyond the class walls and school bells, and by making sure that schools are empowered to safely and easily use transformative technologies." (taken from http://www.lightspeedsystems.com/company/)
Lightspeed Systems is not about a filter or a learning management system or a mobile device manager. Lightspeed Systems is about revolutionizing YOUR classroom. This can't be done with isolated equipment and ideas. The whole approach is to use the filter, LMS and MDM in tandem with teacher innovation to create a 21st Century learning culture of collaborative, cutting-egde, content-rich learning.
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