October 25

Squid Eye and Fierce Conversations

I am currently working on a leadership course within my school division and we have been reading the book Fierce Leadership by Susan Scott. Here is what I have added to our discussion on Squid Eye and Fierce Conversations.

Ok, I need to have a fierce conversation with everyone, because I think we are missing the point on squid eye a bit here. These everyday activities that we are discussing as using and exercising our squid eye are really the things we do to be “good teachers”. Is this squid eye? I don’t think so. Detecting when one of my students is misbehaving or not acting truthfully does not get to the point of squid eye for me. Squid eye is about the bigger things; the things that exist without our even thinking about them or questioning them. These are things that are so ingrained in our lives that we take them for granted. They surround us in the culture of the workplace, the home, and the society without us noticing them. They are the walls that hold us in our boxes without us realizing they are there. (Wow, this is getting existential!)

Let me give you an example of using squid eye on our own profession. How do you teach someone to read? Some time ago we used basal readers. With this method about 70% of people learned how to read and 30% did not. As teachers we thought that wasn’t good enough and we came up with another way; phonics. Guess what happened. About 70% of people learned how to read and 30% did not. Ok then what to try next…. how about whole language. This time only about 60% of people learned how to read and 40% did not. So what did we do then as a profession? Did we do some scientific studies to determine how best to teach children (or adults) to read? No we did not. We sort of mashed up the three less than successful methods we have been using for the last 50 years and said to individual teachers, hey you figure it out.

Meanwhile in another profession, namely Linguistics, linguists were studying how people actually learned how to read. They punctured the myths of reading as set out by the teaching profession and proceeded to develop a system of instruction that works for between 85% to 95% of learners depending on the published scientific studies! They call the system Phonemic Awareness and it not only can teach more people to read than we ever could, it can also teach them to spell more accurately. Why is it  we don’t teach our reading teachers how to used this method?

That is Squid Eye. We say we want Kids to learn to read and yet we do not use the only scientifically studied method developed to do the job. Instead we stick with the old and familiar. Identifying this contradiction is Squid Eye. Talking about it is a Fierce Conversation.

Dealing with the everyday issues that confront us when dealing with administrators, parents, students, and colleagues may indeed be using some level of Squid Eye but I think of these things as setting off my B.S. detector. Many people notice these things as they happen around us, Squid Eye is for those things that most people don’t notice. Once you have detected the “Big Thing” with Squid Eye, then you have to have the Fierce Conversation because most others won’t agree with you. You will have to convince them that there is a “Big Thing” that needs to be addressed.

Thanks, I feel better having gotten that off my chest. I hope I haven’t confronted anyone too strongly and feel free to push back. This is, after all, a Fierce Conversation.


Posted October 25, 2010 by mrdale in category Uncategorized

About the Author

I am a teacher and Team leader in cetral Alberta. I am interested in educational technology and how social networking can, and is going to change education.

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