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Kimo Morris is a parent of a student at Blandford Elementary School; he is also a guest lecturer in science and history there.

My most memorable moment came during the strategic planning process – but let me first describe the situation and where I was coming from.

I was part of the strategic planning group for strategy two, which was one of the most challenging strategies. Most of the people in this group were administrators, principals, or teachers. I was one of the very few parents. Boy, it was tough because we were tasked with coming up with a statement that really defined a new direction for the district. The second strategy states, “We will transform teaching and learning to ensure the actualization of each student’s unique potential.” We had to make it learner-based to accommodate the unique potentials of all students. I didn’t come to the table with any real knowledge of the current state of education. Instead, I was coming to it from a parent’s perspective, and, actually, from a very defensive perspective initially.

Ever since my daughter was in kindergarten (she’s in 3^rd grade now), I approached elementary education with skepticism. My view of the American education system had been shaped by what I was hearing in the media:  “It’s only news if it’s bad news.” In addition to that, when I was in school, I was seen as one of those problem children because I couldn’t concentrate on what was going on around me for two reasons: 1) there were other things that I thought were absolutely fascinating and interesting that were not on the agenda for the day, and 2) I was seen as an underperformer because I was not conforming to what was happening all around me. Today, educators might look at a student like that and say, “What’s going on here? Family life seems to be perfectly fine. I wonder if maybe this child just needs to be stimulated in a different way.” That didn’t happen when I was in school in the mid 70s through the mid 80s. I was disciplined instead of encouraged for being interested in other things.

So, when I came to the strategic planning process, I really had a bitter taste for primary education, not knowing that things were different now. My perspective was, “I’m going to step in as a watchdog to make sure that this process is actually going to help things, and not just some fluffy, useless exercise.”

The entire time I was thinking about my daughter and her well-being, and thought that I was going to be the guy who actually shapes this and makes it useful. I quickly realized that not only was that not necessary, but that Rowland Unified School District has some of the most innovative and creative educators on earth. I was humbled and totally impressed, and changed my way of thinking very quickly during this process. This partnership with Ball, it’s revolutionary. I didn’t realize that education could be this good in America.

So, having said that, I was no longer the parent policeman in there. Instead, I began to contribute to the strategic planning group, and started opening up to everyone – exposing these teachers and administrators to my own personal feelings and perspective. It actually took me until closer to the end of the process to convey to these teachers and administrators the story that I have just told about my own educational experience – about how I was one of those students who fell through the cracks because it was not recognized early on that I had other talents that could be molded and nurtured.

So, the transformational moment for me as far as how I perceive Ball happened on one of the group’s Saturday get-togethers. Bob Hill came with Michael Palmisano, and I remember listening to them speak and thinking to myself, “It should be like that, like what they’re doing.” I was really impressed with their perspective on education.

One of the things we talked about was Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences concept with which I wasn’t familiar. It really clarified a few things for me as far as my relationship with my daughter. My daughter, it turns out, does not learn in the same way that I do. Where I would have been very frustrated trying to explain something to her in a way that made sense to me, I now had a much greater appreciation for why it was that she didn’t get it that way. I’m very analytical and she’s very musical. By teaching something to her through music, she was able to totally get it much more quickly. So understanding this revealed a really interesting difference between my daughter and me, and how we learn. That was neat. It was like one of those “aha” moments where it just turned it on for me, and I totally got it.

What I learned during the strategic planning process also changed my own teaching at the community college and university levels. I am a very visual learner, and so it was normal for my PowerPoint presentations to be very visual. But when I realized that the vast majority of human beings learn in a visual environment, I used less and less words on my presentations. Now I basically give a PowerPoint slideshow with 32 images and 30 words in the entire thing. I’m also going to use a lot more links to videos because it seems to be how the current generation of elementary through community college students are comfortable learning.

Overall, it comes back to me starting off with the paradigm of the policeman parent. I had this idea that teaching was a profession you went into when you didn’t have anything else to do. Boy, I’ve done a 180 on that, and now I really believe teachers are so underpaid for what they do. I can be inspirational with second graders for 45 minutes when I come in to do a special presentation, but if I had to be inspirational to kids six hours a day for the entire school year, I’d be pulling my hair out. I have a new found respect for how teachers think and how they do their craft, and my whole view of the potential of education in this country has been transformed for the better.

Word cloud created at wordle.net.