I had the privilege of attending the Future Ready Summit with Superintendent Corey, Tim Goree, Roxane Liu, and Melissa Farrar on Monday and Tuesday of this week. We collaborated with other districts and worked on building our district plan that will support all of our schools in becoming #FutureReady. What is a #FutureReady school? A school that has robust, rigorous resources, engaged students with equitable access, active parents for deeper engagement, dedicated educators, and a "yes culture" of leadership.

After attending the summit and speaking with other educators, I couldn't help but focus on the idea of modeling what we want to see in the classroom. As I was speaking with a teacher from St. Helena he said to me, "Every time I leave a conference like this I tell myself I need to do it differently in the classroom with my students. I can't forget how hard it is to sit for so long with no breaks. I go back and I start out strong and then fall back to my old ways." This stuck with me and is a CRITICAL reflection for all of us. If I as a leader of a school continue to run meetings in a traditional fasion, how can I ever expect the teachers to transform their classrooms? If we want educators to "disrupt" education we need to do the "disruption" in all the facets. To that end I had a staff meeting the day I returned to work. There were a few "nuts and bolts" pieces of information that were shared for the first 20 minutes. Then, it was time to truly mix it up. I utilized an app called GooseChase that I was introduced to at the summit. I told the staff that for the remainder of the meeting they were going to engage in a form of a digital scavenger hunt. I further stated that they would not need to return to the library to end our meeting, that the time was flexible. I wanted them to engage in conversation and collaboration with their departments. I wanted it to be organic but directed by the "missions" that I had prepared for them to complete. This was an effort to model a tool that could be used in their classroom with the students and additionally show the importance of changing our delivery of information.

What took place was exactly what I had hoped for. The teams took off on their missions and another benefit; hearing teachers talk about ways of incorporating GooseChase into their classroom. One teacher saw a way of using the application as a form of "choice" for his students. FHS understands and embraces the fundamental structure of being a #FutureReady school. We need to continue with this focus and connect all of our students with not only devices for school and home, but also work to ensure connectivity at home.