Quality in Education

Paul and Becky,

I look forward to your insights and future blog postings.

Thanks for carrying the ball!

Jay

Welcome aboard...you bring a combined 54 years of education experience, with a flavor that it can always be improved.

Thank you for carrying the torch and becoming a sounding board for this generation of quality!

Scott McGhee
Graham Middle School
Mountain View, CA

Dennis Arter (the Audit Guy) is a colleague through the American Society for Quality. He has pushed me to blogging. My explorations lead me to yours. Looks good.

Archie, a gopher here at my place out in the boonies of rural Central Washington, has established a blog.

http://archie-the-educator.blogspot.com/

Archie gives opinions as he sees it. No holding back!

These tools may help us educators collaborate at an even greater level.

Progress continues!

Jerry Brong
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Jay, Paul, and Becky,

I have read the posts on this blog since the very beginning, and now find myself compelled to comment as well. I would like to thank you for sharing information, ideas, and positive comments during the last two years that this blog has been available. I was first introduced to Quality in Education, continuous improvement, and the Baldrige philosophy almost eight years ago. After experiencing my first “ah-ha “ moment, I was fortunate to be trained in 2001 by Jim Shipley and his extremely qualified trainers in Tampa, Florida. Since that time, my path has often been filled with many roadblocks and alternative routes that I have allowed to detour me in my quest to offer my students the best education that I can deliver. Quality and continuous improvement often requires a lot of resources, but I know that it is possible at the classroom level, even if I must confess that I continue to struggle on a daily basis with how I can sustain the belief in continuous improvement and its rewards for my students.

Throughout the last couple of years, it has been this blog that has encouraged me to continually improve as a learner and a teacher, even when I worried that perhaps my students might never again see an affinity, a plus/delta, a lotus, etc., or be required to define goals for their personal action plan, beyond our classroom. But the opportunity to vicariously share through posts on this site, has forced me to realize that I can easily become the root cause of not continuing our journey toward performance excellence, if I allow myself to deny what I have come to learn about quality principles and how my belief in continuous improvement defines me as an educator.

Each year, my students write their mission statement, and I am confident that they live by it each day. It is now MY turn to write my own mission statement and my own personal action plan to help me stay focused on the journey, and ignore the roadblocks. I believe that I may have mistakenly believed in the past that I was the one who was supposed to be the role model for the adults around me. However, it is the students who are the beacons who truly have much more power than I do as they pave the road toward quality. I may be borrowing the phrase “No Excuses” as I plan for next year, but I know I have to live it as well, and I will. Continuous improvement CAN be accomplished even in one classroom, and it WILL be accomplished in ours. After all, I have the privilege of working with a classroom full of continuous improvement believers, who believe and are, the real quality experts!

Thank you so much for reassuring me that the pursuit of quality is well worth the effort.

CHANGE :
C = Conceptualise the objectives very well before taking forward the batton

H = Honor the commitments Jay proposed to the readers

A = Advance the Improvement impetus, which the contributors have participated in.

N = Newer Concepts, methodologies to be introduced as a part of Change

G = Goodness of thought, action,while maintaining Goodwill in the Gentle CHANGE of leadership (resposnsibility) from jay to Paul and Martin

E = Excellence in the process of educating and equipping the Teachers through this blog.

Priyavrat Thareja

Just out of curiousity, is this Becky Martin who was Becky Paulsen?

We had a good good time with Jay Marino and I hope to continue to enjoy with you folks too. So far you guys are going great. I loved the article on Action-Vision.

hi! our children are in high school.could you define what quality education is? as I think our school needs to know the meaning of these two words so that priorities may be set.thanks and god bless!