In the Lead

A colleague and I lead a cohort of aspiring leaders in our district on a yearly basis. This year, our group is reading and discussing Todd Whitaker’s book, What Great Principals Do Differently: Fifteen Things That Matter Most. Dr. Whitaker’s book is great at sparking discussions among our aspiring leaders and forcing them to think about the impact they can make as leaders in whatever role they wish to play.

In re-reading the portion of the book we are going to discuss in our next session, I was brought back to the idea of making decisions based on your best people, not your worst ones. Whitaker states,

“Before making any decision or attempting to bring about any change, effective principals ask themselves one central question: ‘What will my best teachers think?’ This does not mean that effective principals do not consider views from anyone else, but they always consider what their best teachers will think.” (p. 68)

As an athlete, I translate this into playing offense, rather than defense. If I make decisions in order to keep the nay-sayers happy, I’m really not going to ever move forward. In essence, I’m stuck playing in defense of what they are saying/doing. In essence, I’m not actually leading at all. They are.

I never was able to get a good insight into how this plays out until I moved into leadership. Is there a political lens through which you look when you are making decisions? Absolutely. It gets magnified when you start looking at situations at a district level. It is sometimes difficult to play offense on certain issues…and I think that’s where leadership skills are truly tested.

So what do I admire? I admire those who are able to play offense with finesse. Over the course of the past semester, I have used the term finesse more times than I ever have in my career. Perhaps that’s my experience now guiding me to the realization that a great leader possesses the ability to finesse a situation in a way so the outcome is positive for as many involved as possible. Finesse means you don’t lose your cool. Finesse means you have a good poker face. Finesse means you can think on your feet and make decisions based on your best people, not your worst. In thinking about my leadership, I realize I have a long way to go when it comes to honing the skill of finesse, but it is something I believe is an important leadership skill—one I want to model for others.

Thanks, Dr. Whitaker, for the reminder.

I was working one evening when a tweet came across my screen from William King inviting administrators to join in an initiative called “No Office Day” the week of September 12, 2011. I immediately remember reading about this idea sometime last spring and decided it was time I took the challenge myself. I blocked off a day on my calendar that week and started thinking through where I wanted to visit.

Then a meeting I had no control to change was scheduled on that day.

…and another.

…and another.

Before I knew it, my no office day was filled with meetings in the office.

*Sigh*

I had to try again.

I won’t say that my no office day today was one that was purely spent in classrooms. I had some things that needed my immediate attention first thing in the morning. Once those were completed, though, it was smooth sailing the rest of the day. I decided the night before that I wanted to spend my day in our middle school classrooms. After taking care of a small amount of business first thing in the morning, I headed to a middle school, found the administrative team, and headed to classrooms.

Let me say first that this blog post would be too long if I included everything I saw in my adventures today. I’m just going to share some of the highlights of my time in our SJSD middle schools.

One social studies classroom had evidence on the wall of a problem based learning unit in the works:

I walked into a science classroom where the teacher had everyone engaged with a warm-up activity in which they were reviewing independent and dependent variables, controls, and constants. What was encouraging to see was a teacher using a relevant video game example to hook the students in the warm up. I also encountered this sign in the classroom that made me smile:

I spoke to a new staff member who had taken the information he had learned in professional development and immediately put it into action with his students, creating a rigorous and relevant task for students to introduce probability.

I encountered more than one teacher who was using data from a formative assessment to intervene with students. A few teachers used a form like this to keep track of student mastery of major competencies:

Another communication arts teacher had analyzed the formative assessments to identify the top 8 biggest problems and had the students chart themselves on those particular competencies. She then turned those 8 problem-areas into a “walk and talk” activity with her students so she could further diagnose why they had not yet mastered those targets.

I loved walking into once science classroom and seeing every student with a white board in hand participating in a lesson on reading scientific scales. Because the teacher was using this every pupil response strategy, she knew exactly who in the classroom mastered the concept and who was still struggling.

I could continue sharing experiences, but we’d be here a long time. Although I didn’t get the opportunity to spend the entire day in classrooms, I came extremely close. Having a no office day might make for more work for me in the evening as I sit here and respond to e-mails, but it won’t take away from the great things I saw in our middle school classrooms today. I’m going to block out my next no office day right now. I don’t do this enough.

About 2 years ago, I returned to the world of exercising after a hiatus during the years I had my children. Although running was never my favorite thing to do growing up, I have found that as an adult it is the quickest, cheapest, and simplest way to exercise.  I don’t need any fancy equipment. I don’t need a lot of time to burn calories. All I need is about 30 minutes most days and I feel good about myself.

One thing that I never realized was the power of the running community. I’ve been a part of many different sporting communities in my life, and I can say that there is not a nicer group of people than the running community. I have yet to encounter a fellow runner out on the road or trail and not been told, “hello,” or “good morning.” These people are just plain nice.

I ran a 10K this weekend in downtown Kansas City, and if you’ve ever run a race in downtown KC, you know you WILL encounter hills, usually more than one, and they are usually long ones. This race was no different. My race had over 500 runners, which means I was never running alone; there were always other people around me. I normally have my iPod and earbuds in while I run, but for some reason I didn’t bring them with me. I realized after I started running why I failed to bring them. I needed to hear what I was about to hear for the next hour.

“Thank you.”

It didn’t matter if she encountered a Police Officer managing traffic or a volunteer at a water station, it didn’t matter if she was right next to these people or was on the opposite side of the street, the runner next to me made sure each and every person giving up their time to work this race was thanked. Running for such a long period of time gives you ample opportunity to think, so I couldn’t help but think about what was happening around me. She was right. These people gave up their Sunday morning to make sure I was safe and hydrated. The least I could do was tell them thank you. Before I knew it, I found myself doing the same thing.

I continued to run and think about how busy I get and fail to tell folks how thankful I am for the things they do for me. It takes no extra time, it is a simple phrase, and yet how often to I stop and say it? Good grief, I know I can do better.

For that reason, I want to take this opportunity to pledge that I am going to do better with thanking folks around me for the work they do. I work with a great group of people who care so much for kids. For the way they allow me to lead, the phone calls they deescalate, the funny text messages they send, the You Tube videos that land in my inbox at just the right time, the listening ear they give me when I’m frustrated, the modeling they do for me, and the list can go on and on…you know who you are, and to you I say THANKS!

Now, I challenge you to find someone today and tell them, “thank you,” for what they do for you. Let’s pay it forward.

My daughter loves to read. She reminds me of myself at her age, where I could get lost in a good book with the greatest of ease. Her grandparents spoil her by giving her a new book just about every time she sees them. Last Thursday was no different. Her grandfather picked her up from school and had a fresh new book ready in the back seat for her to read while they traveled home. She was in heaven…that is until the book started falling apart.

Apparently the glue used to bind this book together was a little too warm from sitting in Grandpa’s truck all day and that made for the pages to come loose. By the time I got home from work, she had fixed her problem with a few pieces of tape. However, as the evening wore on, there wasn’t enough tape to fix the number of pages that were falling out of this book. The more the pages fell out, the more frustrated my 7-year-old became. Soon, she was VERY frustrated with the entire situation; all she could do was cry. She was so exasperated, she couldn’t even think of what to do next. It was time for me to help her think through this problem, but not before she was calm.

It took several deep breaths before she was thinking clearly again. It wasn’t too long before she realized all she needed to do was put the pages back in order in her book and she could still read the story. She was just a little too emotional…a little too worked up…a little too angry…to think clearly.

This thinking kind of sums up the beginning of the school year for me. There are so many things happening, so many questions, so many meetings, the temperature is hot, and everything is uncertain. I have noticed that I’ve had many conversations with folks over the past month that have centered around the same theme as the conversation with my daughter—sometimes we have to stop and calm down before we rush to make decisions.

I’ve always been a proponent of the adage, “cooler heads prevail,” but I haven’t used that phrase as much in the past 5 years as I have in the last 30 days. That’s not to say my life is chaotic, rather to say that I recognize we are in a tumultuous time in our country, in the world, and in public education. To overlook the fact that public educators are under heavy scrutiny would be a massive oversight. In my opinion, I could choose to do 2 things…

1. Wallow in self-pity, getting so frustrated that I work myself into such a frenzy I can’t think, or
2. Hold my head up high, keep a calm attitude, and believe that at the end of the day, I made choices that were of benefit to the students in my district.

If I let my emotions get the best of me, or refrain from keeping calm, I know I will make a mistake. The students and staff in my district depend on me to have a level head and make smart choices that will benefit them in the long run. No matter how crazy the world is, I have to stay committed to doing what is best for these important people.

Images:

EdWeekSJSD turned out better than I expected.

What was EdWeekSJSD? Check out this post by my colleague, Sean Nash, in which he explains the philosophy behind why we started EdWeekSJSD. Go ahead…click there and read it…and then return back here to read what happened as a result of the week.

In order to wrap your brain around all that happened during the week that flew by extremely quickly, you can go here and visit our wiki. On the wiki, you will find archived UStream Videos of each session, pictures captured each day, and resources shared by our super smart facilitators. Looking back on it now, creating this wiki was a really smart way to archive everything we did over the course of the week. I am lucky I work with smart people who think of these things.

Oh yes, the facilitators. What a sharp group of people. We were lucky to have Karl Fisch, Sylvia Tolisano, and Dean Shareski join us each for a full day’s worth of learning. Each one of them brought our staff a different lens through which they challenged folks to look. Our staff members read lots of material, had rich group discussions, explored the possibilities of blogging and Skyping in their classrooms (and even met students in 2 elementary school classrooms across the country), and challenged themselves to incorporate media and more visuals into what they do in their classrooms. What a challenge…yet our people were up for it and have so much to show for their time and effort.

We also explored our first Unconference within the district, and although the group was a bit smaller than the other sessions, they were a focused bunch of learners. I watched as our own teachers, principals, and instructional coaches started out the day by determining what they wanted to learn, then who would facilitate the discussion, and ultimately convene as small groups to get smarter. It was an experiment that I believe was successful and the feedback we received was positive enough we will likely include this in next year’s week.

Here’s ultimately why I’m so happy to share our EdWeekSJSD experience…it didn’t matter if you were a teacher, instructional coach, principal, or technology director. It didn’t matter what you taught, how long you taught, or what grade level you represented. EdWeekSJSD flattened the professional development in our organization.

…and I believe that was a good thing.