Sometimes profound learning may be found in the simplest lesson. The context for the lesson I want to share with you now and shared with others earlier today is the School Turnaround Conference convened by the North Carolina Association of School Administrators at the Friday Institute on the NC State University Centennial Campus.
Beyond attending presentations by Dr. Carl Harris, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Education; Pat Ashley, Executive Director of District and School Transformation; and Dr. Bryan Hassel, Co-director of Public Impact, my role was to moderate a panel discussion with superintendents and principal practitioners. By the way, Dr. Treana Atkins-Bowling, Dr. Karla Lewis and The SERVE Center at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro staff is owed a debt of gratitude for sponsoring both Bryan's research presentation and the practitioner panel.
By way of setting the stage for the panel discussion, I shared with the audience a lesson that I call "Moving Parts." The idea was to underscore the challenge that lay before all who would transform low-achieving schools into high-performance learning organizations. Here's the lesson:
Imagine yourself in a room full of people, tables, and chairs not unlike those you might find in, for example, a conference room. A facilitator asks for eight or nine volunteers to stand up and be part of an experiment. Desiring to advance social science research, the requested number of volunteer-subjects arise.
Once standing, the facilitator asks that each subject, without telegraphing intentions, identify two other subjects from the standing group with whom they will complete a human triangle. He also tells them that they cannot talk. Before stepping aside, the facilitator clarifies subjects' questions and ensures commitment to the vision. He then says, "Go."
What do you think will happen? Can the subjects create the intersecting, interdependent triangles to which they have committed? If they can do it, how long will it take them?
Since seeing the experiment demonstrated at a National Staff Development Council Conference breakout session, I include it in my own teaching. Here's what happens: As if choreographed by unseen hands, subjects move and shift their bodies in a silent dance. Tables and chairs become obstacles not to be defeated but to be worked around.
Peoples' eyes begin to meet and smiles cross their face as they realize they are in another person's intended triangle. Soon there is laughter. Huge adjustments in the beginning become smaller and smaller over time. Every now and then, however, a final half-step tweak stirs a roomful of re-shifting.
In my mind, the experiment is a metaphor for what happens when people engage in school turnaround, district transformation, or any other change initiative that requires commitment and collaboration. Psychologists teach us that humans are essentially self-directed, self-organizing beings who, once they comprehend and commit to the task before them, can accomplish amazing feats, including making triangles with their bodies in a conference room.
Leading school turnaround is more bumble bee than bullet, more dance than footrace. It is a matter of mutual adaption and working within real-life contexts and communities. Like the silent dancers in a conference room, in the end large-scale change occurs one person at a time.
By the way, the answers to the above questions are "yes they can" and "not as long as you might imagine." DO try this at home.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Oh the Places You'll Go
I hope I'm not infringing on copyright by appropriating for this essay's title the name of one of my favorite Dr. Seuss books. If my recent comments on The Why of Work and immediate thank-you from the Ulrichs are any indication, I can soon expect an instant message from a Geisel Foundation attorney. The places you'll go, she'll tell me, may include the slammer.
But it's true. None of us ever really knows where we'll wind up. A conversation with my friend Paula Egelson yesterday vividly reminds me how valid the old saw is. We are all on a journey, especially leaders who follow their heart, and arguably leaders must follow their heart. It has been true for me and so it has been for Paula.
I met Paula in 1990 when we were both first-year students in the doctoral program at UNCG. Our first course in the Educational Leadership program was called "Problem-Finding Seminar." What a propitious name for a class! We're still finding problems, Paula and I. And as it turned out, one of the two professors teaching us, Dr. Roy Forbes, was later to become our SERVE boss.
Our friendship continued beyond graduation. In fact, Paula was instrumental in my return to the lab in 1997 from a principal job with Asheboro City Schools. We eventually rose to the level of program directors, and although rarely together, we traveled the nation from one end to the other, trying to do some good, and always sharing with each other what we were learning.
With direction changing at the US Department of Education in 2005, and maybe a feeling that we had done at SERVE all the good we could do, we altered course. I came to the North Carolina Triangle to help in founding the regional leadership academy. Paula went to South Carolina College of Charleston where she directed a school-community partnership with the School of Education.
Paula called me yesterday as part of a new job she had taken with SREB, an internationally-renown education research and policy organization based in Atlanta. She wanted to pick my brain about the state of leaders and leadership preparation and development in North Carolina. We had a great conversation about that, and of course, about our friends now far and wide. Paula told me she never imagined living and working in Atlanta. I said the same about Raleigh.
I am happy for Paula. It's a new beginning for her. And I could tell from the sound of her voice, her heart is in it. She will do a lot of good. Whatever bloomed for the partnership at the College of Charleston in the summer of 2005 is five years later all but gone. I am as saddened by that as I am heartened to learn that my friend is well.
Wherever you, dear reader, wind up years from now, I will also declare my happiness for you. Someone once wrote that with a birth begins a death. It's the circle of life. And in between, oh, the places you'll go!
But it's true. None of us ever really knows where we'll wind up. A conversation with my friend Paula Egelson yesterday vividly reminds me how valid the old saw is. We are all on a journey, especially leaders who follow their heart, and arguably leaders must follow their heart. It has been true for me and so it has been for Paula.
I met Paula in 1990 when we were both first-year students in the doctoral program at UNCG. Our first course in the Educational Leadership program was called "Problem-Finding Seminar." What a propitious name for a class! We're still finding problems, Paula and I. And as it turned out, one of the two professors teaching us, Dr. Roy Forbes, was later to become our SERVE boss.
Our friendship continued beyond graduation. In fact, Paula was instrumental in my return to the lab in 1997 from a principal job with Asheboro City Schools. We eventually rose to the level of program directors, and although rarely together, we traveled the nation from one end to the other, trying to do some good, and always sharing with each other what we were learning.
With direction changing at the US Department of Education in 2005, and maybe a feeling that we had done at SERVE all the good we could do, we altered course. I came to the North Carolina Triangle to help in founding the regional leadership academy. Paula went to South Carolina College of Charleston where she directed a school-community partnership with the School of Education.
Paula called me yesterday as part of a new job she had taken with SREB, an internationally-renown education research and policy organization based in Atlanta. She wanted to pick my brain about the state of leaders and leadership preparation and development in North Carolina. We had a great conversation about that, and of course, about our friends now far and wide. Paula told me she never imagined living and working in Atlanta. I said the same about Raleigh.
I am happy for Paula. It's a new beginning for her. And I could tell from the sound of her voice, her heart is in it. She will do a lot of good. Whatever bloomed for the partnership at the College of Charleston in the summer of 2005 is five years later all but gone. I am as saddened by that as I am heartened to learn that my friend is well.
Wherever you, dear reader, wind up years from now, I will also declare my happiness for you. Someone once wrote that with a birth begins a death. It's the circle of life. And in between, oh, the places you'll go!
Friday, October 15, 2010
Doing Our Part
I know. You are just one person. Today, however, I want to suggest how each of us, wherever we are, can be the change agent that we need to be for public education. A confluence of two occurrences over the last few days serve as provocation for my thoughts today.
Occurrence One. Thursday morning I attended the Wake Education Partnership Annual Breakfast. My friends at the Partnership tell me that they spend most their time each year either preparing for or following up on the Breakfast. It is that important.
Thursday's event was especially remarkable because of the presentation by someone whose work I have long admired--Tony Wagner of Harvard University. Wagner began his remarks by asserting that the alliance of educators, business people, and elected officials, such as the present audience, uniquely has the capacity to address the approaching catastrophe posed by public education's position between a "rock and a hard place."
The rock, explained Wagner, is the need for new career, college, and citizenship competencies involving the application of knowledge across disciplines. Public education has a habit of neither teaching nor testing students in applying knowledge, much less doing it across disciplines. The hard place, he said, is the "net generation" whose occupants are "on" 24-7, driven by social connection and self-expression, and fearless in the face of authority.
Bottom line: If the United States is to regain a competitive standing among the world's nations, said Wagner, we must teach students to think beyond the fact-based system in which both they and their teachers are imprisoned. Wagner's ideas are advanced in his new book, The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don't Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need--and What We Can Do About It.
Occurrence Two. Last week, I finished reading Diane Ravitch's The Death and Life of Public Education: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Our Schools. As a graduate student and part-time SERVE employee in the early 1990s, I met Dr. Ravitch, then Assistant Secretary of Education in the George H. W. Bush administration. From her professional home at the Office of Educational Research and Improvement in Washington, Ravitch flew to our University of North Carolina at Greensboro education R&D laboratory to check up on us.
We did our best to curry favor with our federal boss by preparing a home-cooked barbeque dinner with all the fixings. We may as well have taken her to the campus cafeteria. At one point in the evening, Ravitch sniffed to our executive director as he attempted explain to her the high standards of professional transparency to which SERVE strove, "Roy, in Washington you get no points for honesty." It might be said of Ravitch that, neither then nor presumably now, is she one who suffers fools lightly.
Imagine my surprise then when I read a book review suggesting that quite simply Ravitch, now in her 70s, was blowing up everything she had stood for to that point. The reviewer was right. The old Ravitch: Vouchers--not a bad idea. Charter schools--bring 'em. Accountability--slack teachers need it. The new Ravitch: Market-based education is tantamount to market-based law enforcement--an untenable idea that will result in a nation of have and have-not schools where have-not students grow up to be economic albatrosses, moral implications of failing to "keep your brother" aside.
And testing? She could have been reading a page from Wagner's book. Perfectly well-intended people, she says, have created a fill-in-the-bubble testing system that demands nothing of what 21st century citizens and workers require.
And teacher merit pay? Don't get her started. Have we learned nothing from the recent mortgage melt-down debacle whose Wall Street architects were rewarded for bringing down the house? Systems built on extrinsic rewards, Ravitch reminds us, invariably get gamed.
Bottom line: I'm thinking that if a smart, sassy, self-assured old bird like Professor Ravitch can change her mind, then there is hope for the rest of us.
To conclude, what can you do? First, acquire and devour Wagner and Ravitch's books. Their concluding chapters are themselves recommendations for action. Two, listen critically to what elected officials say about public education. In a nation of 55 million school-aged children, the private sector will never be able to serve even half of them. The numbers just don't add up. Third, when experts talk about school reform, think re-invention. I agree with even the most ardent free-market critics of public education that the system is broken and needs rebuilding. It's just their solutions with which I disagree. Fourth, turn down the volume and listen to those whose opinions you do not share. Attending to them is not the same as agreeing with them. My last suggestion is easy. Let's act like the grownups we want our children to become.
Occurrence One. Thursday morning I attended the Wake Education Partnership Annual Breakfast. My friends at the Partnership tell me that they spend most their time each year either preparing for or following up on the Breakfast. It is that important.
Thursday's event was especially remarkable because of the presentation by someone whose work I have long admired--Tony Wagner of Harvard University. Wagner began his remarks by asserting that the alliance of educators, business people, and elected officials, such as the present audience, uniquely has the capacity to address the approaching catastrophe posed by public education's position between a "rock and a hard place."
The rock, explained Wagner, is the need for new career, college, and citizenship competencies involving the application of knowledge across disciplines. Public education has a habit of neither teaching nor testing students in applying knowledge, much less doing it across disciplines. The hard place, he said, is the "net generation" whose occupants are "on" 24-7, driven by social connection and self-expression, and fearless in the face of authority.
Bottom line: If the United States is to regain a competitive standing among the world's nations, said Wagner, we must teach students to think beyond the fact-based system in which both they and their teachers are imprisoned. Wagner's ideas are advanced in his new book, The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don't Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need--and What We Can Do About It.
Occurrence Two. Last week, I finished reading Diane Ravitch's The Death and Life of Public Education: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Our Schools. As a graduate student and part-time SERVE employee in the early 1990s, I met Dr. Ravitch, then Assistant Secretary of Education in the George H. W. Bush administration. From her professional home at the Office of Educational Research and Improvement in Washington, Ravitch flew to our University of North Carolina at Greensboro education R&D laboratory to check up on us.
We did our best to curry favor with our federal boss by preparing a home-cooked barbeque dinner with all the fixings. We may as well have taken her to the campus cafeteria. At one point in the evening, Ravitch sniffed to our executive director as he attempted explain to her the high standards of professional transparency to which SERVE strove, "Roy, in Washington you get no points for honesty." It might be said of Ravitch that, neither then nor presumably now, is she one who suffers fools lightly.
Imagine my surprise then when I read a book review suggesting that quite simply Ravitch, now in her 70s, was blowing up everything she had stood for to that point. The reviewer was right. The old Ravitch: Vouchers--not a bad idea. Charter schools--bring 'em. Accountability--slack teachers need it. The new Ravitch: Market-based education is tantamount to market-based law enforcement--an untenable idea that will result in a nation of have and have-not schools where have-not students grow up to be economic albatrosses, moral implications of failing to "keep your brother" aside.
And testing? She could have been reading a page from Wagner's book. Perfectly well-intended people, she says, have created a fill-in-the-bubble testing system that demands nothing of what 21st century citizens and workers require.
And teacher merit pay? Don't get her started. Have we learned nothing from the recent mortgage melt-down debacle whose Wall Street architects were rewarded for bringing down the house? Systems built on extrinsic rewards, Ravitch reminds us, invariably get gamed.
Bottom line: I'm thinking that if a smart, sassy, self-assured old bird like Professor Ravitch can change her mind, then there is hope for the rest of us.
To conclude, what can you do? First, acquire and devour Wagner and Ravitch's books. Their concluding chapters are themselves recommendations for action. Two, listen critically to what elected officials say about public education. In a nation of 55 million school-aged children, the private sector will never be able to serve even half of them. The numbers just don't add up. Third, when experts talk about school reform, think re-invention. I agree with even the most ardent free-market critics of public education that the system is broken and needs rebuilding. It's just their solutions with which I disagree. Fourth, turn down the volume and listen to those whose opinions you do not share. Attending to them is not the same as agreeing with them. My last suggestion is easy. Let's act like the grownups we want our children to become.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
And the Winner is . . .
I've just returned from one of my favorite events of the year. Every school district has them, but I can speak authoritatively on only one.
Since becoming an employee of Wake County Public School System five years ago and predating the creation of the regional leadership academy, I have had the privilege of attending the WCPSS Principal and Assistant Principal of the Year Celebration. In fact, I am honored to work on the Award Committee as an Assistant Principal of the Year Site-Visit Team Member.
Tonight's venue was, as it has been for the last several years, Kids Marbles Museum in downtown Raleigh. And a fitting place it was. Door prizes too numerous to mention, winner awards generous to a fault, and Cafe Luna hors d'oeuvres delicious beyond belief made the evening memorable.
What made it most special, of course, was the gathering of the tribe--building administrators who daily do the heavy lifting of seeing that children are being taught as well as humanly possible. I know from experience that the job is tough and sometimes thankless.
This Principal and Assistant Principal of the Year Celebration, however, was a not-so-subtle reminder that there is a huge network of support available and that, although sometimes not stated, the public's gratitude for their work is immense. Vice Chair of the WCPSS Board of Education, Debra Goldman, was very clear on that account.
And the thanks was reciprocated. As I listened to Assistant Superintendent Gainey's prepared remarks about the five principal and assistant principal finalists, I knew in an instant that these individuals had arrived at where they were because of a support network and a sense of gratitude.
In fact, when Robert Grant, assistant principal winner, and Dana King, principal winner, addressed their peers, board of education members, county commissioners, central service staff, and retiring principals and assistant principals, each one stated that the award was being received on behalf of people in the audience, professionals with whom they work on a daily basis, professionals who have contributed to their leadership journey, and loved ones at home who support them.
I was humbled to hear two citations of TLA by the finalists and especially by Bob Grant's personal thank you to me and former TLA executive director, Joe Peel. And Dana, well, she and I go back nearly 10 years when as a SERVE consultant, I came once a month to Wake County to deliver a day-long session of Natural Forces, a year-long leadership-development program for practicing principals and assistant principals in which she was a student. Even then, she was a standout.
Wake County is proud of its building leaders as I am certain that you, where-ever you live, are proud of yours. I am fond of reminding my NC State University Master of School Administration students, "principal" was at one time an adjective that modified the noun "teacher." That is, he or she was understood to be the school's main teacher. So here's to the teacher in all of us. And the winner is . . . you!
Since becoming an employee of Wake County Public School System five years ago and predating the creation of the regional leadership academy, I have had the privilege of attending the WCPSS Principal and Assistant Principal of the Year Celebration. In fact, I am honored to work on the Award Committee as an Assistant Principal of the Year Site-Visit Team Member.
Tonight's venue was, as it has been for the last several years, Kids Marbles Museum in downtown Raleigh. And a fitting place it was. Door prizes too numerous to mention, winner awards generous to a fault, and Cafe Luna hors d'oeuvres delicious beyond belief made the evening memorable.
What made it most special, of course, was the gathering of the tribe--building administrators who daily do the heavy lifting of seeing that children are being taught as well as humanly possible. I know from experience that the job is tough and sometimes thankless.
This Principal and Assistant Principal of the Year Celebration, however, was a not-so-subtle reminder that there is a huge network of support available and that, although sometimes not stated, the public's gratitude for their work is immense. Vice Chair of the WCPSS Board of Education, Debra Goldman, was very clear on that account.
And the thanks was reciprocated. As I listened to Assistant Superintendent Gainey's prepared remarks about the five principal and assistant principal finalists, I knew in an instant that these individuals had arrived at where they were because of a support network and a sense of gratitude.
In fact, when Robert Grant, assistant principal winner, and Dana King, principal winner, addressed their peers, board of education members, county commissioners, central service staff, and retiring principals and assistant principals, each one stated that the award was being received on behalf of people in the audience, professionals with whom they work on a daily basis, professionals who have contributed to their leadership journey, and loved ones at home who support them.
I was humbled to hear two citations of TLA by the finalists and especially by Bob Grant's personal thank you to me and former TLA executive director, Joe Peel. And Dana, well, she and I go back nearly 10 years when as a SERVE consultant, I came once a month to Wake County to deliver a day-long session of Natural Forces, a year-long leadership-development program for practicing principals and assistant principals in which she was a student. Even then, she was a standout.
Wake County is proud of its building leaders as I am certain that you, where-ever you live, are proud of yours. I am fond of reminding my NC State University Master of School Administration students, "principal" was at one time an adjective that modified the noun "teacher." That is, he or she was understood to be the school's main teacher. So here's to the teacher in all of us. And the winner is . . . you!
Friday, October 1, 2010
Get Curious
My friend and first executive director of Triangle Leadership Academy, Joe Peel, often speaks of the important role of curiosity. Besides leading to lots of learning, Joe explains, getting curious keeps the mind too busy to let unhealthy emotions, like anger or fear, incite behavior one may later regret.
Joe's beliefs about curiosity are supported by the teaching in a TLA training program produced by VitalSmarts and vended in North Carolina by The Learning Consortium, co-founded by Howard and Lynda Schultz of Chapel Hill about whom I have written earlier. Here's the idea:
When faced with what seems rude, selfish, or just plain asinine behavior, students of Crucial Conversation are taught to stop and ask themselves a question: Why would a reasonable, rationale, decent person do what they did? In other words, don't get mad--get curious. It's a learner's stance.
Beyond adopting a cooler mode of processing others' momentary behavior, I have found merit in using the "get curious" attitude in appreciating entire worldviews that differ from my own. For example, my brother John and I could not be more politically opposite. Assuming the best of my brother and taking a learner's stance, however, has made me understand how he has arrived at the conclusions he has. It's been a very long time since we've argued. But let's turn to something a little closer to this audience.
I look around at the state of public education, and perhaps like some of you, I worry a little bit. Judging from our diminished international ranking, some people have concluded that "the system" has failed our children. Some people say that what we have is no longer acceptable. Why do reasonable, rationale, decent people say such things? I cite two illustrations from my own experience this week and offer them as a way for me to model what I teach.
Illustration One. Thursday morning, Wake County principals and central service administrators hosted international education speaker, William Daggett, at the Webster Center in Cary. With every listener in the room, my Durham Public School guest, Tonya Williams, Eno River School principal, and I asked ourselves: Is it true what Dr. Daggett said, that in three years, without swift and dramatic change, the public school system as we know it will no longer exist? Get curious.
Illustration Two. Wednesday night, I accepted Howard and Lynda Schultz's invitation to attend a Heritage Foundation Education Panel Discussion at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh. There I heard Heritage policy analyst, Lindsey Burke, characterize President Obama's embrace of public charter schools, viewed by many progressives as advancing a right-wing agenda, as itself left of center. Say what!? Is a voucher system that potentially uses public dollars to support private schools the only acceptable option? Get real curious.
So by now, you see how you too may apply Joe's principle. In my opinion, the learner's stance is always appropriate, whatever the issue, whoever the actor. Here's what I know: We are all Americans and we all want our children to have a bright future in a thriving society where no one suffers discrimination because of the color of her skin or the language of her parents. If we can begin with that as our common educational purpose, I think we have a fighting chance at E Pluribus Unum and smarter kids.
Joe's beliefs about curiosity are supported by the teaching in a TLA training program produced by VitalSmarts and vended in North Carolina by The Learning Consortium, co-founded by Howard and Lynda Schultz of Chapel Hill about whom I have written earlier. Here's the idea:
When faced with what seems rude, selfish, or just plain asinine behavior, students of Crucial Conversation are taught to stop and ask themselves a question: Why would a reasonable, rationale, decent person do what they did? In other words, don't get mad--get curious. It's a learner's stance.
Beyond adopting a cooler mode of processing others' momentary behavior, I have found merit in using the "get curious" attitude in appreciating entire worldviews that differ from my own. For example, my brother John and I could not be more politically opposite. Assuming the best of my brother and taking a learner's stance, however, has made me understand how he has arrived at the conclusions he has. It's been a very long time since we've argued. But let's turn to something a little closer to this audience.
I look around at the state of public education, and perhaps like some of you, I worry a little bit. Judging from our diminished international ranking, some people have concluded that "the system" has failed our children. Some people say that what we have is no longer acceptable. Why do reasonable, rationale, decent people say such things? I cite two illustrations from my own experience this week and offer them as a way for me to model what I teach.
Illustration One. Thursday morning, Wake County principals and central service administrators hosted international education speaker, William Daggett, at the Webster Center in Cary. With every listener in the room, my Durham Public School guest, Tonya Williams, Eno River School principal, and I asked ourselves: Is it true what Dr. Daggett said, that in three years, without swift and dramatic change, the public school system as we know it will no longer exist? Get curious.
Illustration Two. Wednesday night, I accepted Howard and Lynda Schultz's invitation to attend a Heritage Foundation Education Panel Discussion at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh. There I heard Heritage policy analyst, Lindsey Burke, characterize President Obama's embrace of public charter schools, viewed by many progressives as advancing a right-wing agenda, as itself left of center. Say what!? Is a voucher system that potentially uses public dollars to support private schools the only acceptable option? Get real curious.
So by now, you see how you too may apply Joe's principle. In my opinion, the learner's stance is always appropriate, whatever the issue, whoever the actor. Here's what I know: We are all Americans and we all want our children to have a bright future in a thriving society where no one suffers discrimination because of the color of her skin or the language of her parents. If we can begin with that as our common educational purpose, I think we have a fighting chance at E Pluribus Unum and smarter kids.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
