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July is a cherished month in the education world.  Most every educator has at least part of July off, free of most any school responsibility.  Alas, most every educator has now---or will soon---return to work for the upcoming academic year.  At this time in past years, when I was working in the trenches of school administration, frantic preparations were underway for staff training and opening of school responsibilities.  Unless you have done it, you may have a hard time conceiving of how much goes into these efforts.

One of the many responsibilities I had as an assistant principal at this time of the year was preparing for the distribution and return of opening of school forms.  I have seen this done in such a haphazard manner as to be an insult to administrative professionalism.  In the schools I worked in, no fewer than ten different forms were sent home with students the first day of school to be returned completed and signed by parents.  Typically teachers were tasked with collecting these and recording which had been returned and which remained outstanding.  It was a burdensome responsibility on top of all the other management tasks teachers have in the first couple of weeks of school.


To help, I developed a system of color coding the forms and a checklist for tallying returns.  Each of the ten forms were copied on a color-specific paper (at significant cost of money and time), counted out for each teacher, and placed in their boxes for distribution to students.  Because class counts were still changing and students would inevitably often "lose" their forms before delivering them to parents, extra copies had to be made.


Then, for several weeks, teachers had to collect what forms were returned, check them off, then hound those students who had not returned them.  We also asked them to alphabetize and collate all returned forms each day to turn into the office for reconciliation and filing.  You would be amazed how the forms would trickle in.  Besides those who turned in none whatsoever, incomplete sets or forms with missing signatures required students to be hounded to return only a few out of the entire set.  It was a huge burden of execution.

Once the forms were returned, certain ones had to be referenced throughout the year.  An example was the permission to publish student photographs.  This is an important permission form and records were often incomplete and not easily referenced when needed.  Inefficiency and out-dated processes risked unauthorized publication and a resulting headache.  The same could be said for other forms that had to be referenced or could be audited.  It was a 20th-century process operating in the 21st-century of advanced technology-assisted data management.


One of the projects I have been working with EdClick on this summer is professionalizing this process as well as so many similar data-collection and information disbursing tasks school administrators have traditionally done in costly, time-consuming, and difficult to query (search) ways.

Time and money are two incredibly pressed resources we have in education today.  Why should we still be doing so many of these tasks on paper?  Why not make these forms and other such communications/requirements available online for parents to review and sign electronically?  Doing so will save the school money, time, and mistakes in professionally managing these important communications.  Completed forms can then be easily queried for review and other tasks, such as assessing which are outstanding versus which have been accounted for.  Need to know if a student photograph can be published?  Within seconds a database query allows you to see that form or access the information in a list.  This database will serve the school in so many ways, throughout the school year.


Once the greater segment of your parent population saves the school money and time by using such a system, those who do not can be targeted in more traditional ways.  Over time, especially given an appropriate parent education campaign about the merits of participating online---or another means of compulsion---the paper tasks will shrink down to a much more manageable number of outliers.  The future is paperless.


Opening of school forms are but one of many such paper intensive tasks associated with school management EdClick has now automated and professionalized for efficient distribution, collection, and verification.  I will be highlighting others in posts over the coming weeks.

School is just about back in session.  My education-specific blog posts are too! 

Immediately upon riding off the ferry in Haines, AK, I headed out towards Haines Junction, Yukon, for the night.  I was accompanied by three couples riding Harley Davidsons who I had befriended during the ship passage.  We planned to ride together this first day, as well as the second day from Haines Junction into Tok, AK. 

I purchased my ferry passage in early-March through the "Alaska Marine Highway System" for departure on July 20th.  Several people told me it would be important to purchase early for passage during the summer months.  They were right.  Cabins were sold out by the time I booked in March, so I paid $914 round-trip for me and the Cycle of Education to ride on the deck.  The Cycle was strapped down below (something I had to do myself and was supposed to bring the straps for, unbeknownst to me), while I slept in a tent up on the deck below the dining room. 

After strapping down the Cycle it was a mad dash up to a higher deck to get the best spot I could for my tent.  I had heard that a few tents would enjoy partial cover under the dining hall overhang on deck 6.  This was especially important to me since I had stripped the flaking waterproofing of of my tent with the intent of re-waterproofing it, but didn't get it done before leaving Seattle because I had not accounted for the minimum 48 hour cure time.  Competition for spots was fierce.  Nonetheless, I did manage to get partial cover.  I still feared directional rain and ocean mist, but I was very lucky to meet Mr. Ron Giese from Sacramento who so kindly loaned me a tarp and straps.  We went down and dug it out from the very back of the truck he was transporting on the ferry.  Everything (and I mean everything) he was transporting had to be moved to get to this tarp.  Thanks so much Ron!


My first night of sleep was only a few hours.  That steel deck makes for a very firm mattress.  At 3:30am I wandered to the purser's desk and visited with the young lady working the night shift.  She suggested I rent pillows for $1 each to make a bed in my tent!  So, I rented six pillows and a blanket for $8.  That is perhaps the best $8 I have spent during Education Ride 365!


The ferry between Bellingham WA and Haines AK only runs once a week.  The "Columbia" makes port calls in Ketchikan, Wrangell, Petersburg, and Juneau along the way over a 3.5 day passage.  The Ketchikan stop was for a 1.5 hours, so I decided to get off and ended up splitting a cab ride with four other folks the ten minutes to "downtown" for some tourist shop hopping.  Really it was to get a real latte, as the coffee and latte machine on the ferry were rather sub-par...to speak generously of them!  We were allowed to split the cab fee of $10 between us, so for a $4 round-trip we were able to get away from the ferry for an hour of shop hopping around the huge cruise ships.  The other port calls were very short and the towns were tiny, with the exception of Juneau....but the stop there was at 3:30 in the morning.  So, I only got off in Ketchikan the entire passage.






Food on the ferry is best brought on board oneself!  The cafeteria is marginal and relatively expensive for what one gets.  The dining room is actually quite good, but pricy.  One fact that helps is tips are prohibited for employees of Alaska, which covers the entire crew.  So, were no tips on this ferry.  There is a lounge and a few other diversions, but all told the majority of time on boat is spent looking at the wonderful scenery, reading, visiting with other passengers, and sleeping.  For me, my sleeping was quite fragmented...mostly in 3-4 hour chunks.  Perhaps if I were in a cabin it would have helped.  The (rude) little drummer in the tent next to me didn't help, nor did the regular loudspeaker announcements from ship personnel.

I admit it, I probably did less discussing and thinking about education while in the Monterey Bay area than in any similar period during the prior six months.  The coast of California is intoxicating!  Rather than write much in this post, I'm going to share some pictures I took from the area just north of Santa Cruz on Highway 1.  Tomorrow I will share a set from Monterey south approximately 70 miles, including Big Sur.  Then, the following day, I will share the three spectacular routes where my photos in these two posts (and the one prior) were taken.

Once I get all of that out of my system---sober up, so to speak---I'll get back to a more balanced presentation of travel vs. education content!  It is summertime after all!

I really enjoyed the beaches around the city of Monterey.  The city itself is spectacular too.


While I was busy checking out the area, some of the local fauna were busy checking out the 'Cycle of Education!'


On land, by air...


...even from in the sea!



It is amazing how similar they look to the rocks they lounge on.  Notice the group below...including a greyish one to the left of the photo.


Can you pick out the elephant seal in the photo below?


My pics from this beach on the Monterey Peninsula weren't my best and certainly didn't capture the beauty of the place.  It was gray and cool outside, but the place really warmed my heart.


I hated to fly from this location as night fell on Day 183!  It was not, however, the last of my explorations of the area.  More in the next few posts.