Veteran Leadership
This week and next I will be reflecting on Veteran’s Day. During this reflection I am taken back to a day in 2004 that defined my view of our Veterans and leadership. This defining moment happened at the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. The memorial opened to the public on April 29, 2004 and was dedicated one month later on May 29. I was there in July of that year. It is located on 17th Street, between Constitution and Independence Avenues, and is flanked by the Washington Monument to the east and the Lincoln Memorial to the west. The World War II Memorial honors the 16 million who served in the armed forces of the United States, the more that 400,000 who died, and all who supported the war effort at home.
If you have not been to the memorial I have to tell you it is first of all very moving and each state has a pillar dedicated to all those who serve and died. My special moment happened in front of the Indiana pillar. I saw a gentleman standing in front of our pillar wearing his navy attire. I asked him if he served in World War II and he proudly exclaimed yes. I promptly thanked him for his service and keeping America and the rest of the world free.
I then asked him where he served. He said in the Navy and that he was involved in the invasion of Normandy Beach on D-Day. Having been to Normandy beach, I was very interested in hearing his story. He said, “son, I never saw the beach. My job was to blow the hell out of that beach to make it safe for our landing parties.” He went on to tell me that from there position he could not even see the beach. Then his eyes teared up and he went on to explained that he was sure his gunning had hurt or killed innocent people, but it was something that had to be done.
Then the comment that would change my view of Veterans and leadership forever. Barely controlling his emotions he said, “Son I was doing my job from a safe distance while thousands and thousands were dying. My regret is that I did not have the opportunity that day to lose my life for my country and a cause I believed in.” Here was a man who regretted not be able to perform the ultimate act of servant leadership.
We talk a lot about servant leadership, but we can sure learn a great deal from our veterans. Every day they put themselves in harms way with the possibility of having to conduct the ultimate servant leadership activity – dying for our safety and freedom.
Think about this next time you are having trouble being a true servant leader.
Action: Turning Dreams & Thoughts Into Reality
I heard the words on a song this morning, “Why do we dream, when our thoughts mean nothing?” I really got to thinking about this and it is so true. Think about it, if there is no action our dreams and thoughts really do mean nothing. This really hit home with the two books I read this week – It’s Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy by Captain D. Michael Abrashoff and What to Ask the Person in the Mirror: Critical Questions for Becoming a More Effective Leader and Reaching Your Potential by Robert Steven Kaplan. I learned so much about what both authors call actionable leadership. Captain Abrashoff’s ship the USS Benfold is pictured above.
When coaching and leading those we serve have dreams and we must give them the actionable feedback necessary to enable them to carry out the actions of making the dreams happen. As Kaplan stated, “Is your feedback specific, timely, and actionable?” This question is very important to me as a teacher and department head. As I coach younger teachers on effectiveness I must always remember that the feedback must be constant, not just when I have time and it must be actionable. If someone I am coaching can’t act on the goals, then my coaching has no value.
Another point Kaplan made that was of particular interest was when he said, “Excellent companies view being a great coach as a criterion for promotion to higher managerial levels, as well as an important determiniant of compensation.” I believe that with the implementation of Senate Bill One in Indiana under the leadership of State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tony Bennett and Governor Mitch Daniels dealing with teacher effectiveness we have also made this a criterion in education. We cannot look at teacher evaluations as a once a year punitive act, but a yearlong coaching opportunity to move all teachers into the category of highly effective.
When we think of using actions to turn dreams and thoughts into reality we must also do what Captain Abrashoff recommended, “Now more than ever, we must stop preparing for past battles and prepare for new ones.” So my final thought for this post is let’s keep dreaming ourselves and encouraging those we lead and c0ach to dream and let’s provide others and seek for ourselves the actionable feedback to make those dreams a reality.
Put Your Thumb Print on Someone
Winston Churchill once said that he had become a little bit of everyone he had ever come in contact with. How true this is. Today marks the last of our activities we are conducting for our FFA Chapter’s October Anti-Bullying Campaign. If you remember last week I wrote a post “What If We All Wore White T-Shirts.” This week everyone was to take their white t-shirt from last week and decorate it to show their own personality. Let me tell you it has been fun to see everyone’s shirt today.
For my shirt (see picture), I chose to have all of my students (161 to be exact) put their thumb print and signature on my nice white button-down shirt. I wanted this to represent, and for them to understand, that I believe, as did Winston Churchill, that we all become a little bit of everyone we associate with. We can choose for that influence to be negative or positive. By placing their thumb print on my shirt I wanted them to realize what influence each of them has on me and anyone else they come in contact with is as personal as their thumb print.
So please remember that you are putting your thumb print on everyone you come in contact with, teach, mentor, lead, or coach. Make sure that thumb print is one that is helping to lift that individual to a higher level.
What if We all Wore White T-Shirts?
Last week I wrote about our Anti-Bullying theme of “Accepting and Appreciating Differences” for our month’s campaign to make bullying extinct. Well this week my students had another great idea. Today, all students were asked to wear a plain white t-shirt and jeans to school. We also had many of our staff who wore white shirts and blue dress pants/skirts today in honor of this endeavor. This was to represent how vanilla the world would be if we were all exactly the same.
I am calling the event a success. I do not know official data on the entire school, but my classes had 76.8% participation and I had one class that had 100% participation. Let me tell you it was very interesting to look at the class and have them all look exactly the same. Actually, a little boring. In fact we got into a discussion about how great it is that we are all different.
With his passing, Steve Jobs has been on our minds a lot this week. He certainly was different. In fact there were those who called him one of the crazy one’s. Think back, however, to his advertising slogan for Apple back in 1997 – “Think Different.” In fact in the commercial they showed pictures of Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King, Jr., Richard Branson, John Lennon, Buckminster Fuller, Thomas Edison, Muhammad Ali, Ted Turner, Maria Callas, Mahatma Gandhi, Amelia Earhart, Alfred Hitchcock, Martha Graham, Jim Henson, Frank Lloyd Wright and Pablo Picasso.
I don’t know about you all but when I look at that list of names I am sure glad they were exactly what the first three stanzas of the voice-over said, “Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The one’s who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for status quo.” You can see the whole commercial here.
I am proud we are “Accepting and Appreciating Differences” and I for one want to facilitate learning in such a way that all of our students “think differently.”
Lesson of a Pin Oak
Last year my son, Heath, received a small Pin Oak tree to plant at home as part of a fourth grade project. We planted the little 18″ sprig and it is now a little over five feet tall (see attached picture). Heath is proud of his Pin Oak tree and and has watered it every day, has kept it staked and even put in tree fertilizer stakes for it. Needless to say, it might be the healthiest tree in Indiana.
I know there have been lots of writing using trees as the analogy, but I couldn’t help sharing my son’s reflection. This weekend he was standing next to his tree and he said, “Dad this tree and I are about the same size. I guess I have done a good job of taking care of it. You told me if I did everything right that it would put down good roots, grow fast, and be strong enough to last for my kids to see someday.” Then he made the profound connection. He said, “I guess that is really what you’ve been doing with me, huh?”
This became one of those “Touchpoints” for learning as Douglas Conant and Mette Norgaard called them in their book Touchpoints: Creating Powerful Leadership Connections in the Smallest of Moments. As Conant and Norgaard (2011) pointed out, these interruptions (or little conversations) can be both planned and unplanned, but give us the opportunity to lead. For these touchpoints to be effective Conant and Norgaard (2011) posited that leaders must “listen, frame, and advance.”
I did the listening, and Heath had framed the learning perfectly. All that was left was to advance. So we talked about how this nurturing did not just apply to father son, but to any time we are able to help someone, whether it be a classmate, teacher, or anyone who needs our expertise to be lifted up. We discussed how he has the chance to be a role-model and how others can learn from his example.
Finally, I learned from Heath that, “the action truly is in the interaction,” as pointed out by Conant and Norgaard (2011). So let’s all make sure we take time to listen so we can make something of our interactions.
Different As Dilly Bars
So here’s the deal, October is our FFA Chapter’s Anti-Bullying Month to lead anti-bullying activities in our school and National Anti-Bullying Month. Here’s what we did today:
Our FFA Officers got our local Dairy Queen (thanks Jeff & Carol Whitaker) to donate 900 Dilly Bars in a selection of all five flavors (chocolate, butterscotch, cherry, mint, and Heath). Our theme for our month is “Accepting & Appreciating Differences.” Appreciating that everyone has different tastes, makes different choices, and we are all different.
Then during lunch all students got their choice of Dilly Bar. How cool is that?
What was really appropriate was this morning’s reading in John Maxwell’s The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You. The title was “Accepting the Fact that People are Different.” How appropriate for today!
John Maxwell summed it up best. He said, “you cannot win with people if you secretly harbor the belief that everyone ought to be more like you. Accept that people are different, and celebrate that God made us that way.” If we all practiced this wouldn’t bullying become extinct? Let’s try!
Change Creation is Proactive
In doing some research this morning I came across the work of Lick and Kaufman (2000) and it was too good not to share. Lick and Kaufman (2000) asserted that,
Change creation is the process whereby an organization and its people:
- Invite, accept and welcome change as a vital component in defining and achieving future success.
- Define the future they want to design and deliver.
- Create the designed future and continuously make improvements while moving ever closer to the desired future. (Chapter 2)
When organizations enact change creation, they intentionally move from being victims of change to becoming masters of change. I don’t know about you, but I want myself and my school to be masters of change.
Reference
Lick, D., & Kaufman, R. (2000). Change creation: The rest of the planning story. In J. Boettcher, M. Doyle, & R. Jensen (Eds.), Technology-driven planning: Principals to practice. Ann Arbor, MI: Society for College and University Planning.
Attitude is Like a Cold
You’ve heard of “Soccer Moms,” now your going to hear from a “Soccer Teacher.” I’ve always recognized that I learn from my students every day and am proud to have formed the positive relationships with my students to have that learning. Last night was no exception. Nine out of the eleven starters on the Lebanon High School Men’s Soccer Team are students of mine and 4 of the other players are also students, so I love to attend our soccer games and believe it is important to support them. Last night was sectional and unfortunately we lost to Westfield 4-0, but that’s not the point of this post.
The point of this post is “Attitude.” During my morning personal leadership/devotion time I read the October 6th entry – “Your Attitude Influences Others” in John Maxwell’s The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You.“ The part that stuck out to me was when Maxwell said, “Leadership is influence. People catch our attitudes just like they catch our colds.”
One of my students, Garrett Breedlove (pictured above with Trey Hendrix), passed his attitude on to his teammates last evening just like a cold. With about two minutes left, down 4-0, Garrett ran across the field with the passion and energy of a beginning of the game play. The crowd was enthused and so were Garrett’s teammates. This took tremendous attitude and character to still be playing as hard down 4-0 with only 2 minutes left as at the beginning of the game. I can only imagine how tough it would be to still play with attitude and passion in a game situation like that.
As a pro-youth athletics person I believe that Garrett and his teammates are learning a tremendous lesson in passing on a contagious attitude. No matter what our circumstance, we must work to have a great attitude – realizing we are passing that attitude – good or bad – on to others with the contagiousness of a cold.
Thanks for the lesson Garrett!
Putting Learning Organization Theory into Practice
Even though there is still much work to be done in promoting, developing, and sustaining a learning organization process; I believe in my own school’s situation we have made much progress toward developing a culture and process of a learning organization. It is important to note that through my research of both educational resources and those outside the educational field it is clear that the learning organization cannot be viewed as a “thing” or “fix” and must be internalized as a “process,” “strategy,” or “behavior”. Even as early as 1996, Robert Evans realized this when he wrote the following in The Human Side of School Change:
Most see change largely as a rational redesign of the school’s
goals, roles, and rules. They treat it as a product and, concentrating
on its structural frame, overlook its human dimensions (Evans, 1996, p. xii).
As Department Head of our Agriculture Department and member our Tiger Leadership Team (TLT – a team put together to lead our school toward becoming a learning organization), I have seen first hand the benefits of this process.
How Educational and Business Models and Literature Complement Each Other
Realizing, that my research has landed on both business and education references and models, it must be noted that the work in both entities compliment each other. There are many parallels, most important of which are the collaborative efforts to devise innovative ways of doing things and best practices. In Learning in Action: A Guide to Putting the Learning Organization to Work (2000), David Garvin describes how the process needs to happen both in education and business: “if an entity does not purposefully modify its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights, it does not qualify as a learning organization” (Garvin, 2000, p. 26).
Additionally, what might appear to be differences between the business and educational world turn out to be similarities. For example, one of the industry worker’s resistances to the learning organization is that of the question of “Will it make us money”? This compares to educational opponents to the learning organization asking, “Will it improve test scores”?
This is discussed in Steady Work: Policy, Practice, and the Reform of American Education. In this work Elmore and McLaughlin discuss how teacher’s openness to changes in practice turns heavily on service to students or the transmission of knowledge within a discipline (Elmore and McLaughlin, 1988, p. 43). Again, I go back to my earlier criticism of looking at “plans” or “things” for bringing about a true learning organization. True student achievement does not happen because “the reform consists of pressuring teachers to change by modifying requirements or incentives” (Evans, 1996, p. 81).
Because of requirements and incentives, teachers tend not to look introspectively at themselves, but to “seek external changes (that is, changes external to themselves) that will help them to do better what they have traditionally been trying to do” (Evans, 1996, p. 81). Traditionally these external changes have included, but are certainly not limited to, things like smaller teacher/student ratios, bigger classroom budgets, more planning time, and more parental involvement. Then, because these external changes do not work; school administrators, state agencies, and even federal agencies come up with new “things” to “make” educators better. These “things” (requirements and incentives) have included recertification programs, certificate credits, standardized assessment testing, and the list goes on, and on.
Both education and business/industry have been run in a command and control environment for so long it is tough to switch to an environment of trust, openness, collaboration, inquiry, or dissent (learning organization). Lebanon High School has instilled learning organization behaviors to develop an environment of high student achievement.
References
Elmore, R.F., and McLaughlin, M. (1988) Steady Work: Policy, Practice, and the Reform of American Education. Santa Monica: RAND Corp.
Evans, R. (1996). The Human Side of School Change: Reform, Resistance, and the Real-Life Problems of Innovation. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Garvin, D. A. (2000). Learning in Action: A Guide to Putting the Learning Organization to Work. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Impact of STEM and Academic Core Standards Integration in Career and Technical Education
The achievement of U.S. students is becoming increasingly important for our nation’s ability to compete successfully in the world economy (Braun, Coley, Jia, & Trapani, 2009). As the Department Head of an Indiana Agriculture Science program who is successfully achieving academic integration I am continually investigating the problem of low student performance and achievement in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) and English and the impact of real-world and relevant application of Career and Technical Education courses on student achievement and performance in these core subjects.
Education has become competitive and my school is striving to meet this environment head on and with success. Simons (2010) wrote, “Today our economic well-being, not just military defense or advantage, is dependent on math and science. All of the world’s major countries are our competitors. So far we are not exactly winning” (p. G-1). The latest global rankings using high school test scores show China significantly beating us on science and math scores (USA Today, 2010). These rankings show the United States at number 15, and Shanghai at number one (USA Today, 2010). It is important for us to study those areas where the STEMs can be taught in a relevant context.
To that end it is very important that academics be fully integrated both vertically and horizontally into all course work. There is no research or evidence to support that non-core, non-academic elective courses, including Career and Technical Education courses, contribute to improve student achievement or performance. There is evidence (Reeves, 2008), however, that emphasis on the core academic subjects promotes student learning. Therefore integration of the STEMs and English is very important for Indiana students. Reeves (2008) said, “This does not make a brief for a curriculum based only on the ‘three R’s,’ but rather insists that every class, regardless of its label, owe a duty to the student and community to reinforce academic standards in math, language arts, social studies, and science” (p. 10-11). The consistent integration of the academic cores into Indiana’s Career and Technical Education disciplines is paramount to student learning. We cannot afford for these courses to be “soft” (Reeves, 2008, p. 11) in terms of including reinforcement of the academic cores.
References
Braun, H., Coley, R., Jia, Y., Trapani, C. (2009). Exploring what works in science
instruction: A look at the eighth-grade science classroom. Princeton, NJ:
Educational Testing Service.
Reeves, D. (2008). Making standards work: How to implement standards-based
assessments in the classroom, school, and district. Englewood, CO: Lead + Learn
Press.
USA Today (2010). “Our view on education: ‘We’re no. 15!’ doesn’t cut it in today’s
global economy. Retrieved on February, 26, 2011 from: http://usat.me?41746426.
Simons, J. (2010). “Education imbalance: U.S. needs top-notch math, science teachers
to compete in new economy. The Buffalo News (261) 35. Buffalo, NY: OBH, Inc.
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