If you read my blog regularly, you’re probably a bit surprised by the subject header. But this was a rough week, with a mix of highs and lows. The low is easy to explain; I woke up on Wednesday with a hacking cough and an ominous feeling, which I wished away. By evening, things had gone from bad to worse. I planned to take it easy on Thursday, but with my husband on a business trip, I first drove my kids at school. On my way home, I realized that bed rest alone was not going to cure me. I went straight to the doctor, who told me I had a bad case of the flu and mild pneumonia and sent me home with expensive prescriptions and an admonition to lie still in bed for 48 hours. I don’t need to tell you how poorly I followed the "lie still in bed" part. Four hours later, I struggled to breath, and finally called my friend, who left work to drive me to the hospital. Happily, at that point, the highs of the week kicked in. My friend must have broken a speed record on the way to my house, as she arrived minutes after I called her and whisked me to the hospital. I was met by a remarkable team of doctors who stabilized me and set me firmly on a gradual path to recovery. My husband had taken an early flight home to meet me in the hospital and bring me home, and my mother drove two hours to care for me in the way that only a mother can. This time, I was more faithful to orders that I just lie in bed. Honestly, I only peeked at Twitter on my phone five times, and received the absolute high of the week when I learned my 17yo son Ryan was soliciting good wishes for me from my followers. These wishes worked, and I have all but fully recovered. As I struggled over several days to overcome my challenge, I mostly thought about the ambitious plans I have for 2013, and how hard it can be to change the world when the hard knocks of life keep dragging you down. As an advice junkie, as I lay in bed, I thought about all the inspiring material I’ve read about overcoming the low points on the road to success. Many times I’ve read that people who enjoy success rarely enjoy an obstacle-free ride to the top; they simply learn to overcome whatever challenges they came across. The most successful people are the ones who never believe that they have "won;" they follows Kipling’s admonition that if you "meet with Triumph or Disaster, treat these two impostors just the same." As I lay in bed, in between breathing treatments, I thought also the words of a friend who recently explained to me "The Stockdale Paradox." Admiral Jim Stockdale was the Vice Presidential running mate of Ross Perot in 1992. He famously and clumsily opened the Vice Presidential debate in 1992 by asking "Who am I and why am I here?"  His performance was badly misunderstood, and he faded from the public eye and died in 2005. Being misunderstood in his most public moment was hardly the biggest challenge of Stockdale’s career. He spent 7 years as one of the most senior ranking prisoners of war in Vietnam, and was tortured more than 20 times. His experience spawned a philosophy that is now well known in management circles as "The Stockdale Paradox": "You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end - which you can never afford to lose - with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be." Can you think of a better prescription for daily life? Anyone who has ever met me would testify that I have "unwavering faith that I will prevail in the end" - after all, I routinely invite near strangers to help me change the world. Yet, I will confess, that my faith in "prevailing in the end" is sorely tested in my lowest moments, such as when I lay still in bed on Thursday, hoping that my situation would stabilize. But this week I realized that often it’s the other part of the philosophy that I fail to abide by. From the moment my cough began, everyone who heard it urged me to get immediate medical care. Did I? No; I had too many other important things to do, and I allowed my faith that I would "prevail" to stop me from confronting the brutal facts of my current reality - that I was quite sick and needed medical care and rest. As I make plans for 2013, I have unwavering faith that I will prevail in the end. I will continue to help transform education one district, one leader, and one teacher at a time. Through the Choose2Matter movement, I will help people realize that they are geniuses, that the world needs their contribution, and that they can change the world, and I can’t wait to watch them do so. But the next time that life throws me a curve, whether it be as simple as a hacking cough or something far more complex, I will learn from my experience this week. I will have the discipline to confront that brutal reality, whatever it may be; treat that disaster as the impostor it is; and rest assured that my unwavering faith and commitment will lead me to a triumph waiting just around the bend.

GUEST POST - BRETT CLARK This past December I ran a series on Education Dreamer called The 12 Days of Dreaming. Over a course of three weeks I posted twelve different blogs by guest blogger/educators who wrote about their dreams for education. I wanted to take this idea to the next level. So, I talked to Zak Malamed of #StuVoice and Angela Maiers of #Choose2Matter about an idea where we give our students a platform to share their dreams for education. I have always want to help my students have two things: voice and choice. This is an opportunity to provide students with a chance to share their vision! That’s why Education Dreamer, StuVoice, and Choose2Matter are putting on The 12 Days of Dreaming: Student Edition. We are looking for at least 12 guest student bloggers to share their voice with the world. These ideas can be submitted by filling out this FORM by February 8. The posts will run on Education Dreamer at the end of February. I also believe nothing is worth doing if it doesn’t benefit those around us. In that thought, at the end of the #12DOD: Student Edition we will publish an iBook. The proceeds of the iBook will be donated to the Sandy Hook Scholarship Fund! Educators and parents, please share this idea with your students. Students, please take the time to share your dreams with us. Your dreams are worth sharing and they are worth pursuing! Together we will change the world! #YouMatter Brett Clark (@Mr_Brett_Clark) is director of technology in Jeffersonville, Ind. His interests include the flipped classroom, creating a student-centered classroom, technology integration and professional development. He is a conference presenter and recently presented at the Flipped Conference in Chicago. Learn more about Brett at his website.

I recently had the honor of meeting with Michael Cooper, the new Superintendent of the North Cedar, Iowa School District. Open enrollment has created stout competition for students in the Northeastern part of Iowa, and Michael is steadfastly determined to transform North Cedar into a magnet district into which students will want to transfer. After spending a day with Michael, his leadership team, and most importantly, the teachers of the district, I know they will succeed. Soon, students will be leaving nearby districts in droves to attend North Cedar. Michael was reflecting on what he had learned in a half-year in the Superintendent’s role. He was frustrated that perhaps the district was trying to do too many things at once. One of his leaders said, "We need to become great at something, because we know we can’t be great at everything." This is true of every school district, everywhere. If you try five initiatives at once, you are buying a ticket on an express train to mediocrity. In this short video, Michael analogized the situation to his days of coaching football, and why he began each year focusing on "one play." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsuFeC9tDKg What’s your "one play?" What will your school become great at?  

    I’ve recently begun blogging for The Huffington Post. On a regular basis, I’ll be publishing posts there that are appropriate for that broader audience. I’ve also begun to appear in segments on HuffPostLive, the organization’s online TV show. Of course, I’ll be alerting you to my posts and appearances through Twitter, Facebook and other social media accounts, and likely mentioning them here. My first post sought to change the conversation around STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) in school by changing the words we use to describe it. The second post focused in on two words that I believe are particularly powerful, when shared with young women making important decisions about their education and career: You Matter. My future posts will cover a broad range of topics. I will still be blogging here on a regular basis.

Regular readers of this blog know that, to me, words matter. I’ve long encouraged teachers to choose their words wisely, because the words we choose have a powerful effect on learning. Yesterday, I came across a stellar example of this principle in the workplace. 72andSunny is a communications company that was recently named  AdAge Agency of the Year. It has a stellar lineup of cutting-edge clients, including Target and Samsung, which is "taking a big bite out of Apple," and displacing it as the coolest company on earth. Yet for all the agency’s success, there is one word that 72andSunny CEO John Boiler tries not to use: "Client." If you’re an ardent fan of "Mad Men," you may have just fallen off your chair. But in "5 Reasons You Should Quit Using the Word ‘Client,’" Boiler explains that when his agency was created, all it had was a few good friends for whom it did work, and whom it referred to on a first-name basis. This culture of treating clients as friends has continued as the agency has grown. Boiler goes on to explain: By referring to people by their names, you "tend to think of them more as the people that they are as opposed to cogs in some machine." When dealing with complaints, by removing the label, the agency has "found it easier to empathize with our partners and their situations." The old approach of listening to a client’s needs and going into isolation to develop an idea is over. Instead, agencies and clients work together in a manner that is "fluid and collaborative." By "putting ego aside and trying stuff together, things get better. It’s like improv." Avoiding the "client" label and the artificial divide it creates, 72andSunny promotes "a culture of respect, understanding and open-mindedness. This affects the way we treat each other as well. People rise to a higher standard of human interaction." In sum, "we can all benefit from this simple mental switch. It may seem an insignificant thing, but considering the importance of relationships in advertising, it can make all the difference." Now it’s your turn. What "simple mental switches" can we make in the classroom that might "make all the difference"?

Last week I was honored to participate in Dell’s Innovation in Education Think Tank at the Texas Association of School Administrators 2013 Conference. It was a great day of learning.   CLICK HERE to see a clip in which I discuss why innovation is not a one-time project. CLICK HERE for a second clip in which I discuss what children want from teachers.   In the clip below, all of the panelists share their takeaways. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ok_pYfUm2sI

Photo credits: positiveimperative.com "Nothing great in the World has been accomplished without passion." — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, German philosopher, 1832 I recently spoke at the Dell Innovation in Education Panel at the Texas Association of School Administrators 2013 Conference in Austin. When we were invited to sum up at the end, I realized that one guest had not been invited to the table: Passion. I was the first to interject this word, saying that "passion should not be the number one thing on the agenda, it IS the agenda." The #TASA13 hashtag on Twitter, which had been moving moderately, exploded, with several dozen tweets supporting my statement. At any other conference in any other industry, passion is on the lips of nearly every participant, but at some education conferences, you are far more likely to hear the words "assessment," "standardize," "common core" and "pedagogy" than you are to hear the word "passion." There is a passion gap in education, and students are falling through it and drowning in ennui. This is not to say that students are never passionate at school. As a teacher at the K-2 level for 14 years, I had the privilege of spending each day with children eager to learn and explore. Yet this begins to change somewhere around the fourth grade. Why does passion matter? What are the real-world implications of an education system that discourages passion? In a recent column in The New York Times, Thomas Friedman explained that "we need everyone to be innovating new products and services to employ the people who are being liberated from routine work by automation and software. The winners won’t just be those with more I.Q. It will also be those with more P.Q. (passion quotient) and C.Q. (curiosity quotient) to leverage all the new digital tools to not just find a job, but to invent one or reinvent one, and to not just learn but to relearn for a lifetime." When Bill Gates appeared on "The Colbert Report," Colbert asked Gates whether data or passion was more important to him in pursuing his foundation’s aims. Gates response? "I think passion is probably the most important…backing scientists who have great ideas." So if passion is so essential in the work world, how do we invite passion to stay in school past fourth grade? How do we bridge the passion gap between school and the rest of life? Schools mistake passion for an emotion, as something kids like to do in their spare time. Those are hobbies. Passion is what you must do, even if you have to suffer to do it. Passion is the genius of all geniuses. It’s discipline at a level we can’t comprehend. To release a passion, a student may need above all else a role model. It may be a parent, an aunt, a neighbor, a coach, but as often as any of these, it is a teacher. To lay the groundwork for students to develop passion, teachers must do two things - greet students — by name — when they walk in and hug them (either physically or metaphorically) when they leave. Whatever happens in between, students will remember that you notice them and they mean something to you. Teachers must let students know that they expect that students will accomplish great things. All of this may sound trite, but it is derived from the responses we received when we asked 500,000 students last year, "What would make you run to school?" These responses are not confined to the young; they mirror the results when a similar question was asked of 7,000 adults. Sir Ken Robinson writes, "Passion is a deep attraction. It can be for someone else or for a process: music, maths, cooking, sport, entrepreneurship, teaching… whatever fires your imagination and stokes your energy. We all have different aptitudes and we have unique passions. The challenge is to find them because it’s in the fusion of both that we live our best lives." When will your school declare that its mission is to help students find the fusion of their aptitudes and passions to live their best lives? This post was originally posted on SmartBlogs.

Every so often we get stuck. It is easy to loose perspective when we meet an obstacle. The daily grind can put limitations on our ability to make the connections necessary to make a leap forward toward success. Instead of getting frustrated, bored or irritated you can use the skills you already obtain, and a little confidence, to develop thoughts into brilliant and practical innovations for everyday living. Ideas can be built from scratch. In this video Debra Kaye the author of Red Thread Thinking and the Red Thread can show us how just by solving an everyday problem, we can innovate. The things we don’t like, and things that bug us are a great place to start, because chances are if it bothers us, than other people may find it irritating too. These unhappy people are our market and the red thread can begin to show us a solution that is an innovation waiting to be carried out. The book, Red Thread Thinking:  Weaving Together Connections for Brilliant Ideas and Profitable Innovation by Debra Kaye, shows us that we all are born with what it takes to innovate in our own lives. It gives us the guidelines we need to take the tools or "threads" we already have and weave them together to make connections that lead to brilliant insights that will inspire innovations. Defining what it is that bugs you and using the Red Thread Thinking process you can take an idea and turn it into a profitable innovation. In the video, Debra Kaye and the red thread demonstrate that it bugs her that hybrid cars are so expensive, and the vital role they play in a cleaner environment and reducing our dependence on foreign oil.  She illustrates that technology advances will inevitably bring the cost down but has developed an idea to make them more affordable so that we can get them on the road now. If a partnership was made between a car manufacturer and utility company they could provide a loan as an up front incentive. She explains that to make the initial price more affordable to the consumer the lender would calculate the gas money an average driver would save and putting that saving into the car upfront. In this short video you will see that the red thread is a very playful, and clever tool. It would seem it has a mind of its own.  Like the red thread with a little confidence and practice we will be able to innovate more freely in our daily lives. We are smart, and research shows if we think we are smart than it will be so. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1bAJeyrJOY

Did you know great innovators formulate new ideas by making connections between observations, experiences, facts, history and feelings that on the surface do not seem related—but are—to uncover fresh, brilliant insights? You can do the same. A new book, RED THREAD THINKING: Weaving Together Connections for Brilliant Ideas and Profitable Innovation by Debra Kaye reveals how to activate your own knowledge and resources - what you already have at your fingertips - to make connections for big insights and smart, innovative ideas.  Here are just a few examples from this simple, common-sense approach that is as almost easy as tying a red string around your finger: Look for new ideas within those that already exist.  Most "original" ideas aren’t completely original.  For example, the Gutenberg Press, which forever changed the world of communication, was based on ancient Chinese moveable type, the wine press from the vintners in Rhineland and Gutenberg’s own metallurgy experience.  Old ideas put together in a new way to change the world. Ask unexpected questions.  How you frame a question is often the biggest path to new ideas.  Jay Walker, the creator of Priceline.com, could have created another aggregator traveler site that offers the best prices and schedules.  Instead he turned the tables.  He asked hotels and airlines what they might accept.  Consumers are now in a position to set prices, and as a result he opened a whole new way of doing business. Look what can play into people’s existing behavior.  Many innovators make the mistake of thinking a new product must change people’s behavior. That’s hard to do.  It is much easier to look at their habits and just create a new fit. Returning from a family vacation and lugging baggage around the airport, Bernard Sadow saw a customs agent effortlessly roll a heavy machine with the help of a skid with wheels.  A little jerry rigging and the first wheeled luggage was born. Sleep on it.  Sleep not only provides rest and restoration but it is essential to our ability to create and innovate.  Research shows that your brain is very active when you sleep and information transfers from one part of the brain to another, so that new associations and connections can be made more freely without being from some sort of experience in your life. Think that you are a genius.  Attitude and belief in your own abilities makes you more curious and open-minded and more willing to take professional and intellectual risks.  The more you believe you can stretch yourself, the more you will think of your capacity to be smarter and you may just be so. Red Thread Thinking is a process you can use to develop ideas from scratch and innovate in any situation - from coming up with new business ideas to coming up with ways to solve a sticky situation in the office.  It helps you achieve and succeed even in a weak economy.  With practice, you can become as naturally good at developing successful ideas as many well-known innovators.

We continue to develop the infrastructure for Choose2Matter, busily preparing a re-launch this spring. This week, we’ll launch a fund-raising campaign to support the Quest to Matter, a five-week program that will launch on April 15, in which K-12 students from around the world will be encouraged to declare that they matter and then take action to change our world. Ian Coon, an Iowa student with a brilliant future, produced one of the signature videos of the movement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWMC3S8BT_A The Quest will accelerate Choose2Matter, but it is not the end of it. As with all great revolutions, students will lead it, but they will not be alone in it. Choose2Matter will become a broad, sweeping revolution in which people of all ages and all walks of life, and organizations of all sizes, all around the globe, choose to matter and change our world. How can we make an audacious statement? Everyone needs to matter. Even Oscar winners need to matter. As we wait to see who brings home the gold statuettes tonight, we’re reminded of the closing words of Reese Witherspoon when she accepted the 2006 Oscar for Best Actress for her performance as June Carter in Walk the Line: "People used to ask June how she was doing, and she used to say - ‘I’m just trying to matter’. And I know what she means. You know, I’m just trying to matter, and live a good life and make work that means something to somebody." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P0smMYhLsg