Last week, soon after Steve Jobs died, a friend forwarded me an email that was a long list of Jobs’ most notable quotes. It included the following that struck me as pertinent to our improvement efforts at KPBSD. “That’s been one of my mantras — focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”– BusinessWeek interview, May 1998
As we strive to improve our students’ learning experience, it is very easy to be distracted by all the tugs that come from the myriad of stakeholders who want to have a say in what goes on in our schools. While we must be receptive to our schools being more than places to learn academics, it is critical that we do not let the external forces compromise this primary purpose. As Jobs said, we need to keep it simple so that the students can truly master what is most important. This can be done by protecting the time that our teachers give to instruction. We all expect our teachers to be creative and innovative. Let’s ensure that we do not let that which depresses these two skills get in the way.
Keep It Simple
Last week, soon after Steve Jobs died, a friend forwarded me an email that was a long list of Jobs’ most notable quotes. It included the following that struck me as pertinent to our improvement efforts at KPBSD. “That’s been one of my mantras — focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”– BusinessWeek interview, May 1998
As we strive to improve our students’ learning experience, it is very easy to be distracted by all the tugs that come from the myriad of stakeholders who want to have a say in what goes on in our schools. While we must be receptive to our schools being more than places to learn academics, it is critical that we do not let the external forces compromise this primary purpose. As Jobs said, we need to keep it simple so that the students can truly master what is most important. This can be done by protecting the time that our teachers give to instruction. We all expect our teachers to be creative and innovative. Let’s ensure that we do not let that which depresses these two skills get in the way.