Important, Not Urgent!
Peter Drucker was the master of focusing his time on the important, not the urgent. He led a focused life doing what he felt he was called to do. Drucker knew how to work on the truly important issues and abandon all the rest (Maciariello, 2014). We have our own purpose in life that should include balance between work and pleasure. But there will always be a decision to make between the important and the urgent.
In advising leaders, Drucker believed in focusing on their processes of leadership, organization and management, including the development of people, building community, and planning for succession (Maciariello, 2014). A pretty good list of focal points if you ask me. Keeping this in mind it is important to remember: You are responsible for allocating your life.
In this week’s lesson I learned of Harry Hopkins, one of President Franklin Roosevelt’s top advisers during World War II. Because he was dying of stomach cancer toward the end of his service, he was forced learn how to do the important and not the urgent. He was able to cut out everything but truly important and vital matters. Churchill called him “Lord Heart of the Matter” and believed he accomplished more than anyone else in wartime Washington. I have added the book The Hopkins Touch: Harry Hopkins and the Forging of the Alliance to Defeat Hitler by David L. Roll to my bookshelf to read this year.
Drucker believed effective leaders do not start out with the question, “What do I want to accomplish?” They start out with the question, “What needs to be done?” He believed, “If there is any one secret of effectiveness, it is concentration.” We must learn in the midst of multiple demands, to give priority, and the necessary amount of time and focus, to the important rather than to the urgent (Maciariello, 2014).
Maciariello (2014) suggested forming a habit of pausing to distinguish the difference between the important and the urgent demands on your time. In order to determine the decisions and work that is important, you must answer the question, “What do I want to be remembered for?” The answer that you come up with will give your life focus and purpose.
I’ll leave you with a question to reflect on: How Have You Allocated Your Life?
Reference
Maciariello, J. A. (2014). A year with Peter Drucker: 52 weeks of coaching for leadership effectiveness. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.
Leadership At The Highest Level
During my A Year With Peter Drucker professional growth time this morning I learned that the two leaders that Peter Drucker was most influenced by were President Harry S. Truman and Cyrus the Great. Truman because of his immediate recognition of Israel after being granted statehood by the United Nations and Cyrus the Great for freeing and returning the Jews to Jerusalem. Cyrus and Truman were both men of integrity who had sympathy for the human condition. Drucker believed that integrity, and doing the right thing, is the essence of leadership (Maciariello, 2014).
Drucker did a lot of reading and studying outside the realm of management. He did this because he believed that leadership at the highest level is rooted in history, religion, sympathy, and human reality (Maciariello, 2014). This studying beyond one’s own discipline coupled with enough practical experience to know real challenges was very important to Drucker. He believed the ability to quantify is very important in management, but when leading there are unique events that can only be observed through human perception. “What we can perceive is shaped by what we know and that can be aided by broadly educating ourselves” (Marciarello, 2014, p. 38). Perception can be trained so we can identify unique events as they unfold.
Xenophon said, “Adversity is the test of leadership.” Because this is true we must develop a personal growth plan to broaden ourselves in all realms including the humanities and social sciences. We need to follow Peter Drucker’s example and read widely outside of our own disciplines. Will you pledge, along with me to do this? To this end I have added two books to my “to read” shelf this morning:
Reference
Maciariello, J. A. (2014). A year with Peter Drucker: 52 weeks of coaching for leadership effectiveness. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.
Education: Exploiting Knowledge
“Education will become the center of the knowledge society, and schooling its key institution.” This quote by Peter Drucker in May of 2004 has proven so true as we begin 2015. Week 4 of A Year With Peter Drucker: 52 Weeks of Coaching for Leadership Effectiveness by Joseph A. Maciariello (2014) deals with the idea that education is a key to economic development. As I was reading this week’s lesson I couldn’t help but remember what the late H. Dean Evans, former Indiana State Superintendent of Education, used to say about this related to taxes. I had the honor of working for Dr. Evans, and he would say: “The way to raise taxes is to provide great training and education and then everyone will have great jobs and be paying more taxes.” A pretty basic, but true concept. I realize, however, and he did too, that this is a very complex issue to solve.
The lesson this week started with a story about E-Veritas Trading Network in Manila, Philippines. Bottom line is this company trained knowledge workers to develop an entire electronic trading system to deliver quality and safe food to their people at a low cost they could afford (Maciariello, 2014). In other words, they created human capital within people at the bottom of the economic and social pyramid so they could develop rapidly and escape poverty. There is evidence all over the world that through education and management training, those at the lower levels of the social and economic pyramid can be lifted up. People globally can be helped to be sheltered from corruption from being involved in small-scale local economic activity.
For another example we can look to South Korea. Within 25 years after the Korean War, Korea became a highly developed country. They did this by using the universities and colleges of the United States for management education of their people. Then when their students returned home all of that knowledge was shared and assimilated into their businesses and economy (Maciariello, 2014). Maciariello argued it is much more effective and efficient to provide resources for educating present and future leaders of a developing country than providing financial aid (Maciariello, 2014).
This concept is equally true domestically in our own country. It is no secret and is widely accepted that the practice of investing in employee development is the most beneficial practice an organization can partake in. This is why the habit of continuous learning is so important. We must be teaching our students how to learn, because the practice of continual learning will be very important to their generation. It is interesting to me how education and knowledge acquisition has really jumped to the forefront of American politics. This jump has even surpassed over the importance of property and capital acquisition that dominated the Age of Capitalism.
Two questions that need to be answered for learners of all ages, whether P-16 or adult professional, are: What mix of knowledge is required for everybody? and What is “quality” in learning and teaching? Can you imagine if we could come up with these answers in a way that everyone can agree on? Interesting, many businesses and organizations have. Maybe at the P-16 level there needs to be more autonomy to evaluate what quality looks like for the students served.
I was moved by this 1993 quote from Peter Drucker: “No country, industry, or company has any ‘natural’ advantage or disadvantage. The only advantage it can possess is the ability to exploit universally available knowledge (Maciariello, 2014, p. 32). Think about how much more universally available that knowledge is today than when Drucker wrote that. Have you and your organization made learning a lifelong habit? It is never too late to start. Don’t forget the two questions that must be answered for all learners in the previous paragraph and I would add a third: How do the individuals in your organization and you yourself learn? We all learn differently so make sure to differentiate for those differences. Have a great week!
Reference
Maciariello, J. A. (2014). A year with Peter Drucker: 52 weeks of coaching for leadership effectiveness. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.
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.
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.
Be Consistent, Not Clever!
I am very excited about a new book I started reading this morning. It will actually take me all year to read it. The book is A Year With Peter Drucker: 52 Weeks of Coaching for Leadership Effectiveness by Joseph A. Maciariello. From the title I am sure you understand why I said it was going to take me a year to read the book. It is set up to take the year with 52 lessons, one for each week. I am dedicating time each Sunday in 2015 to study the lesson for the week. Each week I am also going to do a reflection post in this blog – I will post the picture of the book so you will know it is the reflection on my year-long book read.
Actually, I found this book because of the inspiration of one of my 2015 reread books. You will remember I have committed to rereading 12 books (one each month) that I have already read. My first reread book for 2015 was Turn The Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers Into Leaders by L. David Marquet. I have written and tweeted a great deal about this book and believe lessons learned have had some of the greatest impact on my latest successes as a leader as any professional growth exercise I have done. I will be doing a post about my fourth reread of this book later in the month. However, in the book Marquet references learning from the teachings of Peter Drucker. I have read some of Drucker’s work and because of my affiliation with the American Society for Quality and the American Society for Quality Education Division I have been exposed to a great deal of his work. So, I decided I was going to find a Drucker book to read and gain more insight. Off to Barnes and Noble I went to get a Starbucks and look through the books. Right away I found the book that I believe Maciariello wrote just for me (even though I have never met him I am sure he wrote it just for me!). Amazingly, in doing the first week’s reading I found some correlation between Marquet and Drucker. It turns out leaders are readers! Who’d of thought?
The connection I found between Marquet and Drucker right away was the idea of empowerment. Marquet talks about empowerment just being a word and you can’t just tell those you lead they are empowered. We must, as leaders, develop everyone in our organizations to be effective based on competence and trust. Without this competence and trust all we really have are what Drucker referred to as “functionaries” (Maciariello, 2014, p. 4). In other words just going through the motions and doing what they are told to do. Empowerment is really a delegation of authority. Marquet described, however, that delegation alone is not the answer. We must also be committed to increasing the technical knowledge of those on the team. As Marquet said, “When authority is delegated, technical knowledge takes on greater importance at all levels” (Marquet, 2013). He went on to say, “Control without competency is chaos” (Marquet, 2013). I love this quote because it drives home the point that leaders must consistently provide an environment of professional growth that builds the competency of all in our organizations. This means that leaders cannot be self serving.
Another point in this week’s reading was the idea that to be a leader you must have followers. This is much easier said than done. For this to happen you must get things done and you must have the trust of those you lead. Again, sounds easy but in reality is very tough to achieve. “Trust is built on communication and mutual understanding.” “To achieve mutual understanding you must understand what information your colleagues need from you to perform their function, and they must understand what you need from them” (Maciariello, 2014, p.6). This is where the consistency comes in. In other words what I say and what I do must be congruent. This is an area we must all continually work on.
There are four questions in the “Practicum-Prompts” section of the weekly lesson that really jumped out at me. I will close by sharing them with you and telling you that I am going to print these out and post them at my desk and use them as a barometer for my leadership in the coming weeks and months. These questions are on page 8 (Maciariello, 2014):
Is the authority of the leadership group in your organization grounded in responsibility, integrity, and service?
Does it bring out whatever strength is present in each person?
Does it foster a sense of community and citizenship?
What can you do enhance the legitimacy of the leadership group in your area?
I know right now I need to really work on bringing out the strengths and building the technical knowledge of all I serve. I find that this is very easy to do with some and extremely tough with others. Have you noticed there are many individuals (I include myself in this category) that are “sponges?” They want to learn everything. These individuals are easy to work with. The individuals I need to spend more time with are the ones that believe they have arrived and know everything already. After my study this morning, I believe the answer to working with these individuals is to truly developing the sense of community and citizenship. This will in turn bring legitimacy to their leadership.
Remember, it’s about being consistent. You do not need to be clever!
References
Maciariello, J. A. (2014). A year with Peter Drucker: 52 weeks of coaching for leadership effectiveness. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.
Marquet, L. D. (2013). Turn the ship around!: A true story of turning followers into leaders. New York, NY: Penguin Group.
Group Intelligence
My first book read of 2015 has been a great one. I am reading Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success by Phil Jackson. During his storied career as head coach of the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers, Phil Jackson won more championships than any coach in the history of professional sports. I have taken a great deal of notes during the reading of this book. One thing that has really jumped out at me though is the idea of what Jackson calls, “group intelligence.” Many also call this collective intelligence. When we form teams we commit to work together for a common goal.
“The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.” –Phil Jackson
Jackson stated: “Basketball is a sport that involves the subtle interweaving of players at full speed to the point where they are thinking and moving as one… a powerful group intelligence emerges that is greater than the coach’s ideas or those of any individual on the team.” Really, coach and leader are interchangeable terms in this quote. One thing I’ve learned is that the only way to lead any school or organization with great success and scale is to build a great team. No matter how smart, talented, driven, or passionate you are, your success as a leader depends on your ability to build and inspire a team. A successful leader is one who can inspire his or her team members to work better together toward a common vision and goals.
“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.” –Michael Jordan
What we know as an individual is actually a dynamic collection of a lifetime interactions and knowledge sharing with all those we have collaborated with. Collective intelligence strongly contributes to the shift of knowledge and power from the individual to the collective. In education we have been modeling this with professional learning communities and the way educators are learning to participate in knowledge cultures outside formal learning settings. To be successful we must continue to embrace and find ways to make a a culture of group intelligence common place.
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.
Distress Patterns
“Unfortunately, you don’t just have people on your staff; you also have distress patterns. The art of managing people includes the challenge of managing their distress patterns; people are very different from their distress patterns.” This statement by Dorothy Stoneman, President, YouthBuild USA is so true. Leading a school staff or any other group involves managing irrational distress patterns in other people, stress in yourself, and attacks on you. Being mindful of these distress patterns will enable you, as a leader, to navigate your organization.
I am a major believer in the power of context. With distress patterns, context certainly matters. Everyone experiences negative and positive feelings. The tendency to respond to a certain type of situation with a specific emotion, the intensity of our emotional responses, the ways in which we express our feelings, the balance between positive and negative feelings, and the duration of a particular emotion are all characteristic of each person as an individual. People differ, then, in regard to the inner experience (feeling) and in the outward experience (behavior) of emotions. I am learning how important understanding these distress patterns is. We all have behavior patterns and attitudes rooted in painful past experiences.
Sometimes these distress patterns undermine our ability to lead or function as a team. You can tell a distress pattern when you see one because it is behavior that is repetitive, that occurs whether or not it is appropriate for the situation, whether or not it achieves positive goals, whether or not it hurts other people or oneself. It is not flexible; it almost always occurs under certain circumstances. What we have to realize as leaders is that behind every distress pattern is a past experience that causes a repetitive or unproductive behavior develop. What I learned from Dorothy Stoneman is, “it is always useful to separate people from patterns, never blaming people for patterns they happen to have, always relating to the people rather than the patterns.” Remember, these patterns come from their past personal and professional experiences.
As turnaround school leader I have experienced these distress patterns related to the culture of the organizations. Lack of trust, self serving leadership patterns, divisiveness. personal attacks or other negative behavioral patterns can be major detriments to developing a positive environment. Sometimes leaders are criticized not based on the decisions made, but on the distress patterns experienced in the past. Fair and unfair criticism, including attacks, will come to anyone who takes the visible leadership in any situation. It’s part of the territory. We need to stand up for anyone willing to take, in good faith, for good purposes, the stress of being in charge.
Byron's Babbles 
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