Cold War

A lot of times, we avoid confrontation and say, "That isn't a battle worth fighting."

The thing is, if the disagreement is in your head and you choose not to address it, you are not actually in the battle.  You are in a state of Cold War.  Tensions build.  Relationships are frayed.  Other important efforts are avoided.  Doing nothing can last a long time.  Doing nothing is a choice.

Sometimes you end up in a battle that you had no intention of fighting.  Words were exchanged and emotions were heated.  There might even be tears.  A poorly-handled conversation does have an advantage.  The disagreement is on the table.  Even if a little storming takes place, as uncomfortable as it may be, it is better than a cold war.  Is anyone else picturing the Airing of Grievances during Festivus?

When there is tension between folks, effective communication diminishes.  Whether it is a cold war or an argument, don't let it drop!  Find a way to finish the conversation.  A popular twitter meme says, "If you have to choose between being right or being kind, choose to be kind."   If I choose to be kind rather than to be right, am I choosing to be wrong???

Ideally, you can choose to be kind and continue the important conversation until a win-win decision can be found.  Ideally, you can keep talking through your differences until a mutually agreeable answer comes to life.  Even if both parties must choose to table the conversation for another time, at least the talking started and the cold war was avoided.

A better idea?

Trying to come up with ideas to solve a problem?  A lot of times, one idea hits the table, then someone says, "Does anyone have a better idea?"

Usually, the one asking that question is simply looking for more ideas.  Unfortunately, asking for better ideas can limit other folks from giving potential solutions.  By asking for better ideas, it is implied that the first idea was a good one to start with.  It can also make folks try to decide if there idea is better than the first one or not.  When people worry about whether their idea is better or worse, they might just choose not to share it at all.

A better way to say it, "Thank you!  Does anyone have another idea?"  No judgment.  No comparison.  Simply an invitation to get more ideas on the table.  

Are our teachers ready for this?

I have invested the last two days with fellow district administrators learning and preparing for the upcoming school year.  Our district is currently experiencing a steep learning curve in many areas.  We are in the midst of implementing a new written curriculum, we have new attendance boundaries, and we are working to increase student engagement through better classroom instruction.

With each bold idea, someone asks, "Are our teachers ready for this?"

A rational question that must be considered.  However, a more important question is, "Do our students deserve this?"

Too often in education, we develop a vision for a specific facet of education.  Bringing that vision to life requires innovation and training.  It requires time and hard work.  It requires change.  Are the teachers ready for it?

Some are and some are not.  Some will love it and run ahead of the pack!  Some will drag their feet and undermine the efforts.  The mindful deliberation to determine if teachers are ready for a change initiative often causes school leaders to back away from fully implementing a worthwhile effort.  Instead, school leaders may choose to slow the change.  They may lower the expectations.  They may not do what they initially wanted to do because of the fears that the opposition from the staff will be too great.

Sometimes, these shifts in implementation make sense.  Sometimes, they do not.  When strategically planning for the implementation of something new, don't shift expectations based on the feet-draggers or the negative Nellies.  Instead, be sure to create your implementation plan for the teachers who will run with it.  Most importantly, continuously ask, "What do our kids deserve right now?"

Baby steps

So many new things are initiated with the idea that moving forward with baby steps is good!  Baby steps will eventually get us there.

The thing about babies is that they eventually grow up and take bigger steps.  They get where they are going because they have evolved into a fully-functioning adult human.  They take normal steps and have learned to leap when necessary.  In the early stages of development, baby steps can be a good start for some people to start moving forward.  If a person only ever takes baby steps, he will be left far behind and perhaps standing in a puddle.

Not interested

I was listening to The Tim Ferriss Show on the way to work this morning.  Great podcast!  His guest said, "I'm terrible at things I am not interested in."

Duh!!!  

A pretty obvious point of view that tends to escape a lot of folks in education.  When kids are not good at something, it just might be because they are not interested.  When they are good at something, there is a good chance they find it interesting!

If kids are not good at something, perhaps we need to stop trying to provide interventions and remediation until we have found a way to make it interesting.  There are many ways to do it!  There are also two popular strategies that simply do not work.

1.  A teacher cannot simply convince a kid that an assignment is interesting.  You can't talk them into it.

2.  You will not garner their interest by telling them it will affect the job they get some day.  I don't know too many fifth graders who give credit to their future job aspirations for their interest in an assignment.  I know tons of high school kids who believe whole-heartedly that they will never use algebra.  Most of them are correct


When your students say, "This is boring," they are telling you it is not interesting.
When your students say, "This is cool!" they are telling you that it is interesting.  Ask why and I bet they explain how it connects to something they find important.

Make the connections and make it interesting!

Success breeds success... or not...

For years and years, I have believed that success breeds success.  Lately, I have been thinking about this statement more deeply.  How much success is necessary?  Is a tiny amount of success enough?  Can continuous success be a detriment to growth and effort?  What happens when there is no success for an extended period of time?

The answers to these questions can be seen in every school.  The kid who makes straight A's all the time and finds school to be easy may not understand that less-than-perfect is still pretty good.  This student may also suffer when that first B shows up on the report card.  I have witnessed an interesting connection over the years.  The later in a school a child receives his first B on a report card, the bigger the reaction.  Seeing a six foot tall 8th grade boy cry like a baby because of that first B is not a pretty sight.  That did not mean that all of his grades throughout his years did not accurately reflect his learning.  They may have!  But did we do this kid a disservice by providing him an easy avenue of all A's long the way?

Likewise, we all know the kids who barely scrape by.  Or, they don't scrape by at all.  They simply muddle through their day with very limited exposure to success.  We work our tails off in an attempt to catch them up.  Hopefully, we design learning experiences for these kids that provide some small glimpses of success so they will yearn for more success!  Lots of these kids don't see their personal little successes because they are too focused on the fact that they cannot succeed like the rest of the kids in the class.  They want nothing more than to succeed like the rest of the class.  But they don't so they become completely disenchanted.  With no light at the end of their little tunnels, they give up.  With no comparable success, why try?  We all know kids like this.

How much success is necessary to facilitate future success?  The answer is different for everyone.  How do we create learning scenarios for every kid that will provide the correct amount of challenge and the correct amount of success?

Micromanagement

I don't like the idea that every decision and action must be funneled through me.  As a public school principal, I want the folks around me to use their talent, expertise, and passion in ways that make school better and better for kids every day!  I want to be able to clear paths for folks so that their own improvement efforts shine.

However, there are some things that I micromanage.  We all have the little things that we want to control.  As an assistant principal, I was really picky about checking the textbooks in and out.  I wanted it done my way.  I didn't care which books you wanted.  I didn't care whether you wanted a class set, one book for each kid, or none at all!  I didn't care if you used them one bit!  But I was very specific about how to turn those suckers back in to the book room!  They had to be stacked on the counter, by the door, face down, spine away from the wall, in stacks of five or ten.  This made scanning each book easy for me!

Looking backwards, I can see that I micromanaged a few things during my first gig as principal.  I can also see that the amount of micromanagement decreased each year for five years.  After finishing my first year at my new school, I can see a few things that I will micromanage for a little while.

For example, I want to see kids writing across the curriculum.  Students will be writing at least once per day in each subject.  They will also be sharing their writing with each other.  I want to see it!   I will also be asking teachers to design math lessons so that students are talking about math.  I want to see collaborative problem-solving!  I want students finding creative ways to answer math problems and talking about it!  I want to see it!

These are two of the things I care deeply about and I believe will help move our school forward!  So I will micromanage them. These two things are only a small part of the excellent teaching and learning that already happen, nevertheless, they will definitely increase learning.

There will be other things that I micromanage.  I know what some of them will be.  I'm sure there are some things that I don't even know I will want to micromanage.

The title of micromanager is not one that most folks want to have.  Most folks do not want to be known as one.  But we all do a little bit of micromanagement.  We all have those things that we want done a certain way.  I don't want to be a micromanager but I do micromanage some things.