I spent today with about 150 administrators from the Winston-Salem, NC school district. It was a really wonderful day, as we spent six hours looking at what innovation can look like and how administrators can look at the systems and structures of their schools. (The slideshare is at the bottom of the post.)

And what struck me was how quickly the conversation is evolving. Yes, people still are nervous about using the tools and still want to know about how they are going to make this all work, but days like today, when a superintendent sits with his administrators for six hours and does the work right along with them, when Moodle comes up as part of the conversation, and over half the room has heard of it, a significant number has used it as part of a pilot project with the district, and when I demo it for ten minutes, several principals start imagining what’s possible, and a district technology administrator calls two members of her team, and suddenly, there’s an impromptu meeting about how to get schools up and running on Moodle if they want it, and ways we trained folks, etc…

I’ve been feeling this for a while, lately… that the conversation at the local level is moving in the right direction in a lot of places. The tools are new anymore, and many places have pockets of innovation and now many folks are asking how to do it systemically. And more and more administrators are looking at school change beyond just the test scores. We’re not ignoring them, but I’m hearing principals and superintendents say things like, “Yes, we need to do well on the test, but we also need to do what’s right for kids.”

There are days when I am greatly pessimistic about the growing education-industrial complex and the “monitization” of education. But then there are days when I get to work with teachers and administrators who work hard and believe in their schools and their teachers, and who see a need to innovate in their buildings and their districts and who have been listening for the past several years, and who (I believe) will be engaged in some truly innovative practice as we move forward.

And to that end, I’m now in Maine, spending the next three days at MaineLearns as Maine extends its state-wide 1:1 initiative to the high school level. I can’t wait to talk to the folks here and see what lessons we can learn from one of the most truly innovative state-wide initiatives we’ve got going. (Does a state-wide middle- and high-school 1:1 initiative count toward “Race to the Top” funding? And if it doesn’t what does that say about the Race to the Top? But I digress. Today is for feeling hopeful.)