JMoore

Page 77 through end

People change.  Suddenly Rhonda's daughter dies.  Nurse Scappell takes charge of arrangements.  Her true character emerges.  Death leads others into taking an acccount of their lives and their priorities.  Naturally, the death tested commitment because Rhonda could no longer devote 100% of her time and energy in leading the 6th floor.  Others stepped up to the plate.  They began to implement FIND IT, LIVE IT, and COACH IT by dividing into teams and addressing each of the three elements.  They returned to Takara Too to learn the real secret to building and keeping an effective organization.  That is, they learned to blaze their own trail.  Using their own creativity and imagination each team came up with activities and actions to lead newcomers as well as reenergize oldtimers in the vision.  They put their ideas to test and learned that rituals and symbols indeed helped to keep the vision alive.  Actually, conversations took place as the result of rituals and symbols.  The theme of the success is certainly revolving around conversations among fellow workers.

This book interested me into thinking of ways to do our best as teachers.  Our mission statement has been directed upon us:  NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND.  We face the task to make these words come alive in our daily activities.  Each teacher is to FIND IT, individual vision statements of the meaning of NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND.  Talk with others about the vision statement.  Then LIVE IT through walking out the vision.  Finally, COACH IT to newcomers.  Once everyone has read this book, we could meet to discuss the meanings of individual visions.  Form teams and converse.....

1/18/06, pages 38-77

Takara Too becomes the point of interest for Rhonda.  She soon recognizes the insightfulness of this very popular sushi restaurant as a route to follow in inserting continuity into the 6th floor at Good Samaritan Hospital.  She learns ways that management create experiences that customers value.  Ishy, the owner of the restaurant, tell of her personal vision of IT--defined as the way she sees her restaurant going in the future.  Ishy converses with Rhonda.  Conversation becomes a necessary tool in moving forward.  (More on that later.)

Rhonda returns to the hospital and "converses" with Ping, a nurse.  In turn, Ping does the same with other nurses.  I see conversation as a way of getting others to "buy in" into the vision (mission statement).  Thus, new comers feel part of the team. 

Nurse Scallpell comes from corporate headquarters as new hospital head nurse.  She is a page out of the old book.  Immediately, she faults the staff with their silly trinkets and orders them removed. Rhonda worries about the progress her floor has made.  Destroyed, she thinks, but she talks positively with other nurses.  Rhonda tells others that Nurse Scappell as an opportunity to move their outward ideas, which may be only temporary, inwardly.  Nurses came up with their own ideas--example of bottom-up management.

Enter the thrust of Fish Sticks:  Find IT, Live IT, and Coach IT.  Personalize the organization's vision statement--Find IT.  Experience vision moments--Live IT.  Everyone participatges in teaching others--Coach IT

I'm seeing this book as helpful in individualizing our school's vision statement.  Putting it in my own words.  Showing how it pertains to me and my fellow teachers in our quest to teach 6 grade students.  As the book continues, I expect to learn ways to adapt to East Central.

1/9, pages 1-37. 

The main character, Rhonda Bullock, is a nurse-supervisor on her ward.  She has replaced an innovator of many new programs that changed the ward into a highly efficient one.  Rhonda fears and senses a decline in efficiency and attributes it to her management and leadership skills.  She meets an old friend and dines at Takara Too, a quaint sushi restaurant in New York City.  It is here that she meets the owner of the restaurant who describes the restaurant's 4-year run.  Ishy has a keen sense of customer knowledge that she has imparted to her employees.  Customers feel wanted and are individualized rather than just a number.  Recognizing similarities in the nursing field, Rhonda listens intently to Ishy.  Thus ends the first reading.

I recall an initiative that we in the Air Force adopted.  After reading The Pursuit of Excellence we studied ways to improve productivity and efficiency by embracing a philoshopy where the customer is always right.  Yes, even in the Air Force there are customers.  So  Fish Sticks seems to be taking the reader into the field of knowing, really knowing the customer, the patient, the other nurses (employees), and in education--the student. 

Saying this means to me the following:  We teachers have a product--education--that we must deliver to our customer--student--in a manner that the student can absorb.  At the same time, the environment--other teachers--must remain motivated and willing to carry on with the initial wave of energy--GPS for example--in a way that sustains the wave for a long period of time. 

If I and my fellow teachers can adhere to the following scripture:  John 4: 37 (Jesus says)  "One sows and another reaps.  I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored, and you have entered into their labors."