Effective Leadership: The Alternative to Tyranny
It is hard to believe we are already beginning week three of the new year. It seems like just yesterday we were toasting in the new year. As I was reading lesson three of my 52 lessons on Peter Drucker this morning I first thought it was going to be a pretty quick read and a quick reflection. Boy, was I wrong. I ended up reflecting through my educator lens and found myself reflecting deeply about what we need to do to truly accomplish my vision of providing a quality education for every student. As a believer that every child can learn, this is a very important mission to me.
This week’s lesson in Joseph A. Maciariello’s book, A Year with Peter Drucker: 52 Weeks of Coaching for Leadership Effectiveness, dealt with the three fundamental questions from a functioning society of organizations. I must remind you of Drucker’s belief that “management is a human activity (Maciariello, 2014).” Drucker’s three fundamental questions revolve around satisfying needs of human beings. It should also be noted that Drucker also recognized that we now need an enormous number of managers and leaders so we have to organize their development. “Effective leadership and management of society’s organizations is therefore the alternative to tyranny and the remedy for preserving responsible freedom and equality of opportunity (Maciariello, 2014, p. 20). Therefore we must lead responsible autonomy of our organizations so our team members are able to fulfill themselves.
Drucker’s First Question
“What is our business?” In other words, what are we trying to accomplish? What makes us distinct? When thinking about these questions I began to think about how our customers in education to answer these questions. We know that our customers (students) want to be college and career ready and we know that society wants them to be responsible citizens. But more importantly we need to look more closely at what makes our individual schools we lead distinct.
Our Indiana state constitution also recognizes the importance of this distinctness. In our most recent Education Kitchen Cabinet meeting, Speaker of the House Brian Bosma reminded us of the language referring to education. It is important to pay particular attention to the statement, “by all suitable means.” We have a constitutional obligation to make our delivery of knowledge and learning to our students distinct and effective. Here is a copy of what the state constitution says:
Indiana Constitution – Section 8 – Education
Section 1. Knowledge and learning, general diffused throughout a community, being essential to the preservation of a free government; it should be the duty of the General Assembly to encourage, by all suitable means, moral, intellectual scientific, and agricultural improvement; and provide, by law, for a general and uniform system of Common Schools, wherein tuition shall without charge, and equally open to all.
I know in my case what makes the school I lead distinct is the fact that I lead a school system where students are able to be fully online or have the option to go to our hybrid schools (face to face two days a week and online the other three). What also makes us distinct is that we have a 67% mobility rate. We have to embrace the fact that in many cases we are a short term solution to many of our students. This mobility may be because of health issues, bullying, learning needs, or students who have special circumstances such as being an Olympic gymnast. For many students we are the only available choice in a state that embraces school choice. I believe we are beginning to make progress because we have begun to answer the question of what our business is and what makes us distinct. This realization has only come about because of really asking and listening to our customers (students) about what they believe we should be trying to accomplish for them. We have a long way to go, but are making progress.
It should also be noted that when I was a principal of an urban state takeover/turnaround school that I had to realize that what we were trying to accomplish was to turn around a culture and facilitate the learning of our students to provide credit recovery and catchup academic growth (only 19% of our students were on grade level when taking over). I believe we were able to successfully take the school off the “F” list because we accepted that the students we served made us distinct and we embraced it. To be successful we must accept and embrace the population we serve.
Second Drucker Question
“What are results?” This is a much easier question for a business that sells a product. It is a much tougher, some would say impossible, question to answer in education. While I believe in accountability, I believe this accountability needs to look different based on the distinctness of the organization discussed earlier around the first Drucker question. Recently I have been reviewing Indiana House Bill 1009. This bill has been dubbed the Freedom to Teach Act. It allows a school entity to establish freedom to teach zones, schools, or districts. I am a believer and supporter of this bill, but I also wonder if we should not take one more step and deregulate the accountability (results) piece. Since the plan has to be approved, why not have the school develop, as a part of the plan, an accountability plan. This accountability plan could then be developed based on the distinct characteristics of the school. I must repeat what I said earlier. Every school has distinct populations of students they serve as well as distinct ways of serving their students.
Make no mistake, I believe there will need to be consistent pieces to accountability, but the percentage weightings may be different. Also, there would be different metrics that might be necessary to measure based on the distinct differences of the schools. I am not proposing a specific plan or answer in this post, just proposing that we need to think about this.
Third Question of Core Competencies
“What are your core competencies?” or “What do you have to do with excellence?” To me core competencies are the foundational skills, behaviors, knowledge, and expertise required to be an effective leader in the industry. These competencies assist in providing a common understanding of your organization’s leadership and team member’s roles, responsibilities, and expectations. The core competencies of all organizations need to be integrated into all aspects of the organization, or school in my case.
As a school or organization we need to make a significant contribution to the perceived student/customer benefits of our product and/or service. We must complete this statement: Our students/customers are choosing us because _____________. We need to strive to be difficult for competitors to imitate (if they can or will be able to at all). Our core competencies have to be something our competitors wish they had within their own business or could offer to their students/customers.
Final Thoughts
Our organizations are organs of society. We must integrate the interests of our organizations with the public interest. In education we must find a way to accurately answer the question of what results should our organization be delivering? And, more importantly, is it doing so? These questions are much tougher for social sector institutions than for business organizations. We must continue to strive to find the most accurate indicators of progress for schools and the students they serve.
Reference
Maciariello, J. A. (2014). A year with Peter Drucker: 52 weeks of coaching for leadership effectiveness. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.
Indiana’s State of the State from the ‘Tweet Seats’
The 2015 ‘Tweet Seats’ with Speaker of the House Brian Bosma
In keeping with my 2015 goal to reread one book of prior great influence each month, I started this month by rereading Lion of Liberty: Patrick Henry and the Call to a New Nation by Harlow Giles Unger. This was so fitting because he was such a believer in state’s rights. This past week I was reminded of how precious these rights are to states after being invited to attend Governor Mike Pence’s State of the State Address by Speaker of the House Brian Bosma and the Indiana House Republicans. Actually, I was invited with responsibilities. I was to be a member of the ‘Tweet Seats.’ In other words, I was responsible, along with four others, to do tweets during the State of the State Address. So, think about all of the things that happened in our Indiana State House on Tuesday, January 13, 2015 that would not have been possible without Patrick Henry’s original call to arms and then all of his work to make sure we had a Bill of Rights in place. Because of our Freedom of Speech I was able to tweet 49 tweets during the State of the State Address to my 70,000 plus followers. I continue to be amazed at the power of social media today. I was also amazed at how many people were following the speech using twitter. Twitter is one of the most powerful tools available right now for receiving news. Twitter is also an important modem for personal professional growth.
My ‘Tweet Seat’
I am including PDFs of the press release and Twitter handles/hashtags here:
TweetSeat_HandlesHashtags_final
Press Release_Tweet Seats_2015
Patrick Henry’s famous words “Give me liberty or give me death!”—shouted during a speech to the House of Burgesses in 1775—put into clear terms how the colonies should respond to an encroaching British military force. This call to arms has since been immortalized, much like the man himself. A leader through and through, Henry’s life motto might as well have been “no compromise,” making him a great study in leadership.
It was 1787, long after the war had ended. Patrick Henry, seeing the possibility of tyranny as the result of a newly proposed United States Constitution, he rose in opposition to fellow founder, James Madison. Henry would not be satisfied until a Bill of Rights was adopted as part of the constitution, making him the primary historical force behind the liberties Americans have today. He also believed very strongly in state’s rights. He believed that states should govern themselves. Interestingly, he spoke about states being in a better position to govern themselves because they had governors who lived among the people and knew the people. Though strongly anti-Federalist, Henry later changed mind after learning of the radicalism of the French Revolution. He did not want America to suffer the same fate. This showed that while he was certainly a leader of principle, he could be convinced of another course if the evidence was overwhelming enough—an important quality to have in a leader. Henry joined up with George Washington and John Adams to support Federalist policies, and later on was even elected to the Virginia House of Delegates as a Federalist. I could not help but think about what Patrick Henry would be tweeting had there been a colonial iPad for him to use.
Ronald Reagan in the Indiana House of Representatives Chamber
During his speech, Governor Pence quoted President Ronald Reagan. Reagan, speaking a little more than thirty years ago from the very podium that Pence was speaking from, said the federal government was “still operating on the outdated and arrogant assumption that the states can’t manage their own affairs.” “That day,” Pence said, “he predicted it would be states like ours [Indiana] that would come to America’s rescue.” In that speech Reagan when on to say that states like ours would “offer the most creative solutions and most promising hopes for our nation.” Reagan believed, as Patrick Henry did, in the ability of states to govern themselves. We are so blessed that Governor Pence believes this as well. Pence went on to say: “Well, Reagan was right.”
Governor Pence then said: “At a time when public confidence in our federal government is at an all-time low, states have emerged as a source of inspiration on fiscal policy, economic growth, education and health care reform. And Indiana is leading the way, proving every day that we can balance our budgets, run our schools, choose our health care and serve our people far better than ‘a little intellectual elite in a far distant capitol’ (quote from Ronald Reagan) ever could.”
Proud to be part of this great group!
It was such an incredible experience to be a part of the State of the State Address. Those of us in the ‘Tweet Seats’ were given a copy of the speech just prior to the address so we could get our thoughts together for our tweets. Then Speaker Bosma met with us to go over parts of the speech and legislative agenda he thought were important for us to know to do a quality job of tweeting out the State of the State message. I continue to be so impressed with how passionate Speaker Bosma is for doing what is right for Indiana. I would now like to share my thoughts from the State of the State by listing a “Baker’s Dozen” of my top retweeted and favorited tweets during the speech. Here they are:
1. You get more good teachers by paying good teachers more! #education #INLegis
2. The key to unlocking all potential in #Indiana is #education! @GovPenceIN calls for this to be an #edreform session. #INSOTS #INLegis
3. Every #Hoosier child deserves to start school ready to #learn. #education #INSOTS #INLegis
4. 100,000 more students enrolled in high performing #schools by 2020. #edreform #education #INSOTS #INLegis
5. We need more great #teachers! @GovPenceIN #INSOTS #INLegis
6. Career and Technical #Education needs to be a priority in every #school in the state of #Indiana. #INLegis #INSOTS
7. @GovPenceIN calling for a required balanced #inbudget! Add a balanced budget amendment. #INLegis #INSOTS
8. Graduation rates are up. Test scores are up, the doors of our pre-K programs are open to disadvantaged kids. @GovPenceIN #INSOTS #edreform
9. We have the largest #education voucher system in the country! #edreform @GovPenceIN @INHouseGOP
10. @GovPenceIN calls for more #schoolchoice through innovative #CharterSchools! #edreform #education #INLegis #INSOTS
11. Adjust funding for our #charterschools to provide opportunities for all our children! @GovPenceIN @INHouseGOP #edreform #education #INSOTS
12. We must lift the cap on dollar amount that #choiceschools receive for students. @GovPenceIN @INHouseGOP #INSOTS #INLegis #edreform #inedchat
13. Raise the cap on the #schoolchoice scholarship tax credit. #schoolchoice #CharterSchools #edreform #education
Here is a PDF text transcript of the entire State of the State Address:
2015StateoftheState
As you can see, Governor Pence has laid out a very aggressive plan for Indiana. After spending time reading and listening to his speech, I have no doubt we will be successful. Governor Pence closed out his speech saying, “If we will act with resolve & are bold, we will fulfill Indiana’s promise for this generation and next.” I closed out the evening with this tweet: Great State of the State @GovPenceIN! Lots to do for #Indiana. Loved your final words of #INSOTS: “Let’s get to work!” @Brian_Bosma will help!
In closing I want to thank Speaker of the House Brian Bosma, and the Indiana House Republicans for giving me the honor of being a part of the Indiana State of the State Address “Tweet Seats.” I believe that Patrick Henry would be proud of Indiana and would agree with Governor Pence when he said, “we will fulfill the promise, not just of our time, but we will fulfill the promise first forged beneath that constitution elm in Corydon in 1816—the promise of a state built on freedom that would become a beacon of hope and an example to the nation.” The Governor’s agenda is living out both Patrick Henry’s and Ronald Reagan’s vision for the states of our great nation!
Learning from Speaker of the House Bosma
My new best friends – The Chicks on the Right!
I love to Tweet!
Dedication Attracts People
I must say that I looked forward to my dedicated study time this morning for reading the second week’s lesson in A Year With Peter Drucker: 52 Weeks of Coaching for Leadership Effectiveness. As you know from my first week’s post I dedicated myself to spending personal professional development time each week in doing a personal book study and then writing a post to this blog each week. Click here to read the first week’s post.
This week’s coaching lesson was very appropriate. The title of Week 2 is: “Questions to Ask Before Committing a Portion of Your Life to the Service of an Organization.” This was obviously important because I have had to do this in my life several times. But more importantly, it caused we to reflect on the importance of making sure the school corporation I lead can answer those questions correctly and is able to ensure everyone has a chance to achieve and make a meaningful contribution. These are two of the most important tasks an organization has to perform, according to Drucker (Maciariello, 2014). Interestingly, John C. Maxwell’s Minute With Maxwell word today was “Dedication.” Click here to watch the one minute video. Even though the teaching of Drucker this week was not on dedication, this spoke to me because I believe that our organizations must be dedicated to our team members’ achievement and ability to make meaningful contributions. The school system I lead right now needs to do a much better job of this and we are working very hard at this. I believe we need a leadership progression and training program. We should working side by side with those we lead to answer the questions: What should I contribute?; Where and how can I have results that make difference?; and, What should my contribution be? In Drucker’s view, these were questions that the person looking for a position should answer, but I believe we must help them answer these at all phases; from interviewing to job placement, to competency/leadership building.
The questions Drucker suggested a potential employee should ask of the organization are worth noting. I would also argue that these are questions that the organization, school, or business should be asking of itself as to whether they are providing (Maciariello, 2014). Here are the questions:
– Are you learning enough?
– Are you challenged enough?
– Does the organization make use of your strengths or what you can do?
– Does the organization make use of your strengths or what you can do?
– Does the organization constantly challenge and make you more ambitious in terms of contribution?
– Are you actually suffering from creative discontent?
Interestingly, Drucker talked about positive contentment and negative contentment. He argued that contentment was for six year olds. Thirty year olds should not be content because achieving great results should be hard to achieve and will be uncomfortable. At the same time, however, we must provide the environment where the results are meaningful. I love a quote in the book from Drucker because it is a school example where he says a team member should be saying: “We have that enormous job here in the new school… and we are recruiting faculty and so I spend all my weekends with prospective faculty people (Maciariello, 2014, p. 10).” This person is certainly challenged positively because they have responsibility to mobilize, challenge, and grow human resources. Let me tell you, from personal experience, taking over and turning around a school is anything but comfortable and is very hard work. But, it is extremely rewarding and, I believe, very fun work. It was very rewarding when a couple of people, one of them an Indiana State Board of Education member, said to me, “You should be very proud of providing the leadership for Emmerich Manual High School to be removed from the “F” list.” Let me tell you, I am, but I also always want to recognize the accomplishment took dedication from many more team members than me. There were many more who did much more heavy lifting than me and they were dedicated to the opportunity for achievement and making a meaningful contribution.
Another piece to this is very important. “Knowledge workers must take responsibility for managing themselves (Maciariello, 2014, p. 11).” Our team members, as well as ourselves, must take responsibility for developing ourselves. We need to seek feedback and feedback analysis. Concentration should be on areas of high skill and competence. It takes far more energy and farm more work to improve from mediocrity to first rate performance than it takes to improve from first rate performance to excellence.
Take a little time and reflect on where you are as an individual and where the organization you are a member of is in terms of dedication to every person having the opportunity to achieve and make a meaningful contribution. I know we have some work to do in this area. We have extremely talented individuals, but we need to make sure we are developing our bench strength, to use an athletic analogy, to have our future leaders ready to lead from within. REMEMBER: Opportunities do not come according to your schedule. Your job is to be prepared to recognize and seize opportunities as they come.
Reference
Maciariello, J. A. (2014). A year with Peter Drucker: 52 weeks of coaching for leadership effectiveness. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.
Idea Bee
We have all seen honey bees flitting from plant to plant spreading pollen and gaining much needed nectar for producing honey. As you read this post I also want you to imagine yourself as the leader going from person to person pollinating ideas – being an “Idea Bee.” One mouthful in three of the foods you eat directly or indirectly depends on pollination by honey bees. The value of honey bee pollination to U.S. agriculture is more than $14 billion annually, according to a Cornell University study. Crops from nuts to vegetables and as diverse as alfalfa, apple, cantaloupe, cranberry, pumpkin, and sunflower all require pollinating by honey bees. But the bees’ importance goes far beyond agriculture. They also pollinate more than 16 percent of the flowering plant species, ensuring that we’ll have blooms in our gardens. Of course, there is also the honey. More than $100 million worth of raw honey is produced each year in the United States.
The honey bees interdependence with plants makes them an excellent example of the type of symbiosis known as mutualism, an association between unlike organisms that is beneficial to both parties. We must develop this same type of symbiosis between our customers (in my case students), our different departments, our suppliers, or those we supply. The honey bee is very much like those of us in education; They are imbued with true creative intelligence because their purpose is to produce work that is noble and useful. No matter what organization we lead, should that not be our greater purpose?
Just as the value of the activity of honey bees is important to our agriculture industry and food supply there is also another important leadership lesson that can be taken from the bees. This is the thought that we, as leaders, should imitate the honey bees and go from team or team member to team or team member and pollinate ideas that will go toward the vision and mission of the organization. I call this being an “Idea Bee.” Then we must back away and just as the plant is then responsible for creating the seed, our teams must be responsible for taking the idea through to action. It is not enough just to plant the idea though. As the “Idea Bee” we must also make sure that all of the other team members understand their role in carrying out that part of the vision, mission, or strategy. We must also make sure that our team members have the resources necessary and the technical knowledge to carry out the ideas. Many leaders forget the very import capacity building act of making sure there is the technical knowledge necessary to do the job. It is a very important part of our leadership duties. Without competency there is chaos.
Experiments at Cornell University in the 1990s showed honey bee colonies had striking group-level adaptations that improved foraging efficiency of colonies, including special systems of communication, and feedback control. This research revealed that evolution of honey bees has produced adaptively organized entities at the group level. Think about it. This could could not have happened without there being “Idea Bees” in the hive to make this happen.
We must as leaders be the “Idea Bee” and make sure we are giving the support for the ideas to grow into flourishing organizational structure, processes, and products. We must also encourage all on our teams to become “Idea Bees” as well. Think about what your organization might look like if idea evolution were to produce adaptively organized entities at the group level.
Gummi Bear University
Yesterday, on my way to northwest Indiana to deliver some Christmas gifts to some of our school families that had extra needs for the holidays I stopped at one of my favorite places to pick up some candy baskets to add to the gifts. Nothing says you care like a basket of chocolate and Gummi Bears from Albanese Candy Company in Merrillville, Indiana.
Of course I had to have a bag of Gummi Bears for me to munch on for the drive as well. As I was driving I got to thinking about how Gummi Bears are made. Actually, I got to thinking about how I did not how Gummi Bears are made. So, of course, my personal tutor, Google, helped out. Gummi Bears start as a liquidy solution of flavored gelatin and water. As you cool the solution and draw more water out of the Gummi Bears, they harden into the chewy texture you’re used to. Albanese Candy gets this mixture better than anyone because they have the best Gummi Bears in the world, no lie! Gelatin, is a chain-like molecule that can intertwine and form a solid-like matrix — that’s how Gummi Bears start as liquid, but solidify as water is removed. Can you tell I taught Food Science?
So, by now I’m a little disappointed that as a lifetime lover of Gummi Bears that I had never used them as a relevant connection to a chemistry lesson. Therefore, how about we take a look at how teachers might use the relevant context of Gummi Bears for a lab students can make a real world connection to?
One of the first labs you could do is to make two solutions: a gelatin solution and salt water. Both Gummi Bears and salt water are a mixture of things dissolved in water. When one material is dissolved in another, such as salt in water, the salt is known as the “solute” and the water is known as the “solvent”. With salt water, the solute is salt and the solvent is water. With Gummi Bears, the solute is gelatin, and the solvent is also water. Like Gummi Bears, salt water is a solution of water, but there is a lot less solute (by mass). Salt also cannot form interlocking chains like gelatin. That’s partially why salt water stays a liquid and the gelatin solution solidifies. However, because gelatin molecules are so much larger than salt ions, there may be many fewer (by number) gelatin molecules dissolved in the water. This size of molecules thus sets us up for some great lessons that students can see and experience in a real world context.
The reason numbers and size of molecules are important is because it turns out numbers of molecules play a big role in determining if your Gummi Bear will absorb water or not. This fact sets us up perfectly for a lab and a few great chemistry lessons. And, let’s face it, what student is not going to love doing labs where they get to work with Gummi Bears! So here is the scientific problem to start with: Why do Gummi Bears get bigger when placed in water, but not when placed in salt water?
If you put two solutions of water in contact with each other, water will tend to move from the solution with fewer molecules dissolved in it to the solution with more molecules in it. This is known as ‘osmosis.’ The force that pushes the water is called ‘osmotic pressure.’ With the Gummi Bear, if you put the Gummi Bear in a solution with very few molecules dissolved in it (like distilled water), the water will move into the Gummi Bear causing it to expand. If you put the Gummi Bear into a solution of water with many molecules of solute dissolved in it (more solute molecules than are in the Gummi Bear), then water will leave the Gummi Bear and move into the water. When water moves into the Gummi Bear, you can see the bear expand. However, since the Gummi Bear doesn’t shrink much when water leaves it, it appears the Gummi Bear stays the same.
Just to validate what I am telling you is true. I just did the lab. What is the old saying? “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Check out the picture of two of my blue raspberry Gummi Bears I experimented with (Note: No Gummi Bear was hurt during this experiment; but, many were eaten). Clearly, the Gummi Bear on the right is larger than the one on the left. This was after 30 minutes in distilled water.
So the last question to answer is if salt water has more solute molecules in it than the Gummi Bear (you know by your experiment that it does, but we can prove it with some math too). You can dissolve roughly 400g of salt (NaCl) in 1kg water at room temperature. That’s roughly 2/3 of a mole of salt molecules. Because a single molecule of gelatin weighs 10,000 times more than one of table salt, if you had the same mass of Gummi Bears as the salt solution (1 kg + 0.4 kg), or 1.4kg total, you would have only 1/25th of a mole. So the salt solution has around 10-20 times the number of molecules as the Gummi Bear. Because there are more solute molecules in the salt water, the water moves out of the Gummi Bear, and hence the Gummi Bear does not expand in salt water.
Isn’t science fun when we make it relevant and use a context we can relate to, like Gummi Bears? Think about this as you prepare lessons for second semester.
Hopefully, if you are a teacher you have found something here you can use, or it has helped you to think through how to make your lessons more real for your students. Finding ways to connect, extend, and challenge our students is the most exciting part of teaching in my opinion. The moe we can make the relevant contextual connections of school work to real life for our students, the greater the learning they will achieve.
Values In Action: Viva VIA!
Yesterday at Harvard University I had the opportunity to learn from and work with Jerry Murphy, former Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is doing exciting work around the idea of ‘Dancing In The Rain.’ His idea is he wants us to flourish as a leader. The ‘Dancing In The Rain’ metaphor comes from wanting us, as leaders, to have an upbeat and realistic way of living in stressful times. I have actually played in the rain and I can tell you it is an upbeat experience. Jerry is currently writing a book on this and I cannot wait till it is published. Trust me, it will be a must read!
Jerry Murphy has developed a framework called ‘MY DANCE.’ Without going into much detail in this post, I would like to just share the framework.
MY DANCE FRAMEWORK:
Step 1: M – Do what MATTERS
Step 2: Y – Say YES to here and now
Step 3: D – DISENTANGLE from upsets
Step 4: A – ALLOW the pain life brings
Step 5: N – NOURISH myself
Step 6: C – Practice Self-COMPASSION
Step 7: E – EXPRESS feelings wisely
This post is really about Step 1: M – Do what MATTERS. It is the idea that what really matters are your core values. We cannot let our circumstances or discomforts that are thrown our way hijack us from what is important to us. During our time with Jerry Murphy he had us do an exercise called, ‘The Retirement Party.’ For this exercise you first imagine yourself retiring and you are attending your retirement party. Secondly, you spend a few minutes writing down four or five things that you like for people to say about your values as a trustworthy leader.
As you can imagine this exercise caused a great deal of reflection for me. I would like to share my points that I would want people to be able to say about me. Here are the four I cam up with:
1. Byron is just the kind of guy you are glad he is your friend and he has added value to your life because he has helped you grow.
2. Byron pulled me and enabled me to get to the places in my life I wanted to be. He has helped me be all I can be.
3. Byron certainly ‘Walked the Talk.’
4. Byron was able to bend in the breeze and navigate difficulties.
5. Byron was a lifelong learner.
This is not an easy exercise because sometimes you have to discover your values instead of just pulling them out of the air.
Then came the most powerful part of the exercise. He had us pick one of the statements that we wrote and think about if we were really doing and acting on that value. Then, we were to develop and action plan to truly carry out that value for everyone I serve as a leader and translate the value into action. Jerry call this Viva VIA! VIA – Values In Action. In fact he created buttons that he gave each of us. I have included a picture of the button here in this post.
My action step was for value number two: Make sure I do all I can for every staff member I serve according to their goals and professional growth plan. Sometimes it is easy to work with just a few, particularly those who are most aggressive with their own personal professional growth plans. I need to make sure and collaboratively identify those areas where the faculty I serve need to be pulled up to reach the goals they desire. This exercise really reminded me to lead my life shaped by what matters most to me. In other words what make me come alive and inspires me to lift those up which I serve.
We must remember that our values give meaning, purpose, and resolve to everything we do. As leaders, we must have a commitment to take action, even when it hurts. No matter how big the storm, the sky is big enough to handle it. Much like our storms as a leader, we must be big enough to handle them.
The Right Concepts
“It is virtually impossible to make things relevant for, or expect personal excellence from, a student you don’t know.” ~Carol Ann Tomlinson
You have probably seen this quote from Carol Ann Tomlinson before, but it is so true it bears repeating frequently. I was reminded of this again this morning during my morning personal study time (yes, even on Thanksgiving day) when I was reading an article in one of my favorite periodicals, The Chronicle of Higher Education. An article entitled, “Colleges’ Prestige Doesn’t Guarantee a Top-Flight Learning Experience.” The article was about the National Survey of Student Engagement, which was released last week. This survey is known as Nessie, and was done to to identify educational quality at the institutional level. The data was collected last spring from 355,000 freshmen from 622 institutions. The research used two indicators for quality: student-faculty interaction and effective teaching practices. This research really caught my eye because of my belief in the three Rs of education: rigor, relevance, and relationships. The most important of which I believe is relationships. In fact I have blogged about this in the past. Click here to read my post entitled, “You Want Me To Do What? Teach.” Needless to say, my long and storied career in education would never have happened without the great relationship forged by Dr. Hobe Jones and myself. Obviously, this relationship has affected my feelings, attitude, and allegiance to Purdue University. I have been very blessed to have been very involved with Purdue in many ways since graduating with three different degrees.
Interestingly, this research involved asking students questions that included how often they talked with faculty members outside class about career plans, course topics, or other ideas. Wow, that is exactly what Dr. Jones did! We talked daily. Yes, you heard that right even on a campus on a university the size of Purdue with over 34,000 students. The College of Agriculture has mastered the art of making a big university small. It is really about understanding emotional intelligence. The days are gone when the preeminence of IQ as the standard of excellence in life was unquestioned; a debate raged over whether it was set in our genes or due to experience. But here, suddenly, was a new way of thinking about the ingredients of life success. Emotional intelligenc involves using emotions to promote thinking and cognitive activity. Emotions help prioritize what we pay attention and react to; we respond emotionally to things that garner our attention. Dr. Jones, through our relationship, was making sure I was paying attention to important decisions that would affect my life forever.
The other measure, which involved effective teaching practices, qualitatively analyzed the perceptions of how often their instructors clearly explained course goals and requirements, taught in an organized way, used examples to illustrate difficult points, and improve feedback. Amazingly, this list would be the same for what we would call highly effective teaching at the k-12 level. This is why the relevance part of the three Rs is so important. As we look at college and career readiness it is important we have our students ready for the teaching environment of post-secondary education. It was also no surprise that students perceived time spent improving teaching means less lecturing. Students participating in the study stated that instructors who were bettering their teaching used discussions, small group activities, student performances and presentations, and experiential-learning opportunities. It seems to me this research data allows for many partnerships between secondary and post-secondary education.
A Gallup-Purdue Index survey released earlier this year found that graduates were three times as likely to report thriving in their sense of well-being if they had connected with a professor during college. I am certainly proof of this. I believe this is true of k-12 students as well. Therefore, all of us in education have an obligation to be forming positive relationships and using effective teaching practice. After all, these are the right concepts!
Water The Bamboo
I had the incredible privilege of meeting Greg Bell, author of Water The Bamboo this morning at the NWEA Fusion East conference. He was the keynote speaker and having read his book I was very pumped to hear him speak. I use the principles in his book and was excited to have him autograph it for me. He and I have also had great fun tweeting back and forth.
Let me tell you his keynote was just as inspiring as his book! He is awesome. During his keynote he had us all take the Water the Bamboo Oath. Needless to say, I and everyone else in attendance was inspired. I would like to share some of the thoughts with you from his speech.
Here are the highlights:
– Sunrise or sunset…it’s all in your perspective
-Change your perspective; leave the either/or and reintroduce the “and”
-Instead of pushing, how can we stand side by side to address an issue?
-A person pushed against their will has the same opinion still
-Water the right intent
-How we talk to ourselves impacts our reality
-When you change the language you change everything
-Mindset of a Bamboo farmer: Patience, persistence, self-discipline, courage, and belief
-What are you holding on to? Bamboo sheds! Get rid of the things you no longer need. Focus on the right 20%
-Let go of your bad stories
-Don’t keep staring at the closed door. Turn around and look for the open one.
-Individuals and organizations who understand the relationship age will flourish
-Bamboo grows 90 feet in 60 days. Prior to that is shows no growth above ground for 220 days. Symbolic of many of our learners in our schools
-Start your day with this question: What’s going well?
-Don’t be a negaholic! Optimism always wins!
-We need to encourage our students to dream!
-Language matters in your organization’s culture
-Sweat the small stuff and the big stuff will take care of itself
-Catch reverse paranoia. Optimism always wins
-The word “student” in Latin means “eager to learn.” Are you cultivating this?
-Three things that will get you out of poverty: 1. education 2. education 3. education
-Are you a negaholic? Do you only see the negative? QUIT THAT! Instead, ask yourself what is going well.
As you can tell, there was a lot of great information packed into our time with Greg Bell. Can you imagine how awesome all of our lives would be if we followed every bullet point above. Remember, we have an obligation to those we lead, particularly in our schools to be doing this. Also remember, every day with your students could be THE day!
Driven By Data
This morning I was so honored to have the opportunity to present at the Fusion East NWEA Education Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina. The conference theme was “Tomorrow Starts Here” and my topic was How High-Performing Schools Develop a Culture Driven By Data. It was exciting to have a standing room only crowd and I hope I lived up to their expectations.
Here is the powerpoint I used for the presentation: Ernest_NWEA_FusionEast
Here are the handouts from the presentation: Ernest_NWEA_HOOSIER HYBRID 7-12 DATA MEETING PROTOCOL Ernest_NWEA_k-8_Data Meeting Protocol Ernest_NWEA_Data Meeting Rubric final
I learned a lot from this group and have shared a list of reasons why we need to create a culture driven by data as a picture in this post. This list was the guide for a very lively discussion. We also had some outstanding tweeting going on during the program using the hashtag #FusionDDI. I am proud to say that we had 66 tweets during the program from 34 different individuals. This was outstanding and further proof of the power of twitter as a professional development tool. In fact I awarded the top five tweeters during the session with copies of the two books I referenced during the session.
The books I referenced were Driven By Data by Paul Bambrick-Santoyo and Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck. Both of these books offer so much toward developing a culture driven by data.
Finally, I want to give you some bullets of top tweets from the program:
-“If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over.” ~ John Wooten
-Data chats must be a regular part of your school culture.
-Data chats should be a safe place for teachers
-If your teachers change their teaching, can your students describe how it changed their learning?
-For a data driven culture to really work – there has to be coaching, observation, and feedback.
-Action plans developed after data analysis can be more effective if they are shared with your students.
-You have to describe the data without judgement
-If you don’t see it, it doesn’t exist.
-Assessments are about growth, not gotcha!
-Effective analysis – dive deep! What happened and WHY?
-Effective interim assessments should revisit material from earlier in the year, not just graded unit tests.
-Assessments must be cumulative
-We tend to assess what we taught best
-Data driven instruction gives proof that what we are doing is working, or not.
-Just because you’re teaching…it does not mean they are learning
-I wanna be a Sherpa! Let’s get good at using data! Not just me…but the culture of our schools.
As you can see this was a pretty thoughtful group this morning. I hope I had a small part in helping them be Sherpas of their students’ learning.
Eliminating Hoops & Hype in Education
I have had an absolutely incredible first day at the 2014 National Quality Education Conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin put on by the American Society for Quality and the ASQ Education Division. I was excited to speak on my research of connecting school work to real life, but was more excited to hear the other speakers. Additionally, as always, I learned a great deal from visiting with the other program participants. This post is a compilation of my learning from the first half of the day. You can also check out my tweets from the day by using the hashtag #ASQEd or following my tweets at @ByronErnest.
The day started with Lee Jenkins as the keynote speaker. Lee is education’s expert in continuous improvement. He started by talking about removing the hoops and hype from education. Hoops were described as waste in a school’s time, money, and enthusiasm (staff and students). Hype is a change with no way of know if we’ve improved. The secret to removing hype, according to Jenkins, is to have baseline data to know if an intervention is working or not. Much of Jenkins thoughts on this come from the book: The Toyota Way To Continuous Improvement by Jeffrey Liker.
It is very important that we take an attitude of wanting to be superior to our former selves. If you think about this from a school improvement standpoint it makes perfect sense. We have a starting point and just need to keep getting better from there. Our goal here needs to be to outperform the year before. The secret to this improvement is root cause analysis. When you dig into root causes you find things you never expected to find. When we know the root causes we are able to remove what Jenkins calls “Blamestorming.”
Think about that term “Blamestorming.” We have all done it. We can blame the legislature, political leaders, school leaders, lack of time, too many standards, standardized tests, lack of money, too much money, too many programs, et cetera. But, these are not really root causes. We must dig down deep and find the root causes. Think about this question: Was it the reading program we purchased that improved reading, or the fact that the program required that we triple the amount of time spent reading every day? Think about that. If the root cause was needing to triple the amount of time reading we could have done that without any new program cost, professional development cost, or all the other woes that come with implementing a new program. It is why programs and initiatives don’t work – teachers do! That’s me talking there; not Jenkins.
Remember, if we eliminate the hoops and hype we can optimize our systems for our students and employees and optimize the delivery of our curriculum.
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