The Creation of Settings

Birth is difficult. Of course I have no experience with human birth except as husband to a wife who bore him three children. To be only present during the births was difficult enough. I have nightmares still about the arm nearly torn from its socket by the wild woman occupying my wife's body who, in the throes of birthing, cursed the ground upon which I walked. A nearby sailor actually blushed.

No, what occupies my mind this evening is milder stuff, but not by much. The short of it is that I am midwife to what educational leadership consultants like me call, "Developing Your School's Organizational Identity," fashioned after a monograph of the same name written by Joe Peel.

The client is Brentwood Elementary Magnet School of Engineering, one of four "Renaissance Schools" in Wake County receiving Race-to-the-Top funds. Its staff has been hired from all over the United States. One teacher-couple I met today moved from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to cast their lot with Brentwood. Jennifer and her husband may be distal examples but are far from unusual in their willingness to invest in something extraordinary. Every teacher I met was cut from the same cloth.

Specifically, my task is to help leadership and staff create mission, vision, values, and belief statements, public agreements that both will guide their work and inspire the school community. What we embarked upon today was nothing short of the creation of a setting.

As I worked with principal Ken Branch, assistant principal Eric Fitts, and administrative intern Rob Epler, I was reminded of a school where I was once principal that also embarked upon a curricular innovation and particularly of my doctoral studies some 20 years in the rear view mirror.

Graduate students fortunate enough to study with Dale Brubaker, Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, will recognize in the title of this blog partial citation of a book by Seymour Sarason of Yale University. The Creation of Settings and the Future Societies. In an especially instructive chapter titled, "The Socialization of Leaders," Sarason writes:

"It is highly unusual for a new principal to leave his school in February or March, but in my experience it is not that unusual for a principal to want to leave. . . . Once this becomes recognized and the creation of new settings begins to receive the systematic study and clinical attention that the consulting industry (in and out of the university) gives to chronologically mature, malfunctioning settings, readers will not have to be convinced that creating a setting is and has to be an obstacle course true of the beginning as it is of any subsequent period (p. 204)."

In a later passage, Sarason writes about the wisdom required of the leader of a new setting, "wisdom that acknowledges reality without sacrificing dreaming." Together, and for me, these passages encapsulate everything that Ken and the principal of every reconstituted school is facing. A beginning is a delicate thing, a thirsty seedling in a scorching sun. Ken and his team are those practical dreamers of whom Sarason writes, but without adequate nurturing, no one can predict success for the school.

My experience suggest that here is what can be predicted: If Ken, Eric, and Rob will want to be at Brentwood in March, they will need the abiding assistance of central-service staff to support the learning agenda of the school. Similarly, leaders both administrative and teaching will need trust from the school community, including parents and business partners.

Looking from the outside in, I firmly believe that the necessary foundation for trust is now being laid, demonstrated in no small part by the way the faculty conducted itself during my session. I am looking forward to future work with the Brentwood Elementary Magnet School of Engineering and to witnessing the successful creation of a setting. Godspeed, friends.