Shaping Educational Outcomes

This weekend, my family and I visited the Oregon Coast. As I stared at the ocean, I thought: Ocean waves are one of the most powerful phenomena on Earth - they shape the Earth's coastlines. Similarly, educational systems are powerful forces that prepare students to grow up and shape the future of our economy and society. 

This got me pondering how ocean waves are made and how they crash against the shore 24/7. From a scientific perspective, waves are imparted from a combination of wind blowing over the surface of water and currents running under the water. I'm always amazed that when I simply look at the ocean, I don't see the system of wind and currents - I see their byproduct as the ocean waves crest and fall.


Just as nature puts a lot of energy into shaping waves all day every day, a multitude leaders at every level strategically create & cultivate systems that shape high quality educational outcomes on a daily basis. The educational systems that yield the highest outcomes and maintain sustainability result from a collective approach to shared responsibility and leadership that's cultivated by lead learners.

I invite you to join me in personalizing this idea by contemplating: What are the strategic approaches that lay the foundation for your educational system to generate high quality educational outcomes? How do you articulate these educational outcomes to different stakeholders? What is your role within this system?

Cross-Posted: http://edge.ascd.org/_Shaping-Ed-Outcomes/blog/6564441/127586.html 

WILL #18

What I Learned Lately (WILL 13/14 #18) by  Dr. Josh Garcia

4/16/2014
@Garciaj9Josh


“Are you OK, Am I OK?”

How do I ensure that today I am wiser, calmer, and more relentless than yesterday? As I continue to learn, I find that leadership in its easy silence of my thoughts, is truly as simple and complex as – “to be or not to be”. I have found that in this time of year, we are both tired and excited. It is an interesting time for educators, communities and most importantly our students. During the spring many would like to rest. Some lose their urgency and others may never have had it. Yet, I see others that thrive during this time. I am left to wonder if urgency is lost or mistaken for crisis when we are tired. How do we continue to be urgent until the very last minute? As an organization, can we handle relentless urgency?

For our students, this time of year is filled with the realities of time running out and excitement of the unknown. What will I do this summer? What will next year be like? What will my next school be like? What will it be like after graduation? Will I make it this year? Will I make it today? Additionally, there is a sense of running out of time. I heard one student recently say, “It is isn’t because they (staff) haven’t been telling us too, we just haven’t done it.”

As a leader how do you “check yourself”? How do you know if your vision is just? How do you know if those who you are trying to serve value your service? We are in the final stretch of the school year, we will blink and we will be headed into summer. As we relentlessly drive forward, we must be clear. For those who put their own interest ahead of the students that we serve, we must have no time. Amid the doubt and unknown, we must relentlessly put our trust in our students’ abilities and in our staffs’ commitment to serve each of them. Am I Ok? Are we Ok? Our pain and our struggle is our everyday life. I pray that we never become numb to them, for I know that we will have given up. The time is now to become urgent, one last push, our best effort, and I am confident that we will ensure student success.

Finally from, “Edmund Vance Cooke”
Did you tackle that trouble that came your way?
With a resolute heart and cheerful?
Or hide your face from light of day
With a craven soul and fearful?
Oh, a trouble’s a ton, or a trouble’s an ounce,
Or a trouble is what you make it.
And it isn’t the fact you’re hurt that counts,
But only how did you take it?

Cross-Posted: http://edge.ascd.org/_What-I-Learned-Lately-WILL-1314-18/blog/6564283/127586.html

Ghost Busting

While schools seem like historical institutions that anchor a community with continuity, they are always changing. While one school can provide a connection through generations in a neighborhood, the school that existed for the baby boomers is not what exists for the millennials. I went to a high school that just celebrated its centennial and while the name over the door remained the same, almost everything else has changed.

Every year the students, staff, and community change. New educational policies and reforms are instituted and old ones are forgotten. New events become traditions and new initiatives become protocols. One of the reasons that schools are so hard to change is that they come with history that was created through the efforts of the many people that were part of moving a school from a building to a monument to community accomplishment. While some traditions provide connections within a neighborhood, others hang on long
past their usefulness.

As we have moved forward to change things in my school, there has been continuous discussion around how we got to where we are today. My school is less than fifteen years old, but there have been many changes since its inception. Many of the policies where put in place in order to solve problems that we are still facing, but others have lost their relevance. As we push forward to make the necessary changes to address our current student, staff and community needs, we are often stopped by these irrelevant policies, procedures and traditions. Last year, I began to call these policies ghosts because they continue to haunt us long after they are no longer relevant.

These ghosts haunt us for many reasons: we have failed to reassess their ability to meet the needs that we currently have, we lack an understanding of why they were put in place, and or we simply are still doing them because we have always done it that way. Most of the time, they do not cause problems. We have adjusted them to meet our needs each year, but in adjusting past practice, we find it difficult to develop new practices that better meet our needs. They continue to hang around and distract us from the work ahead, clouding the next steps in the process, and make us a less flexible school. Instead of developing something new, we are consumed with making something we have always done survive for another year.

Over the past year, a few teachers have engaged in a ghost busting process. We started getting together to discuss where we want the school to go and what ghosts haunt us from getting there. Throughout these meetings, I have seen that three steps are needed to bust ghosts.

• Figure Out the Ghost Story - Do Research - Find someone that was there when it was created. As the years go by, schools change. People responsible for policies are no longer with us and we are left with an incomplete understanding of why we do things the way that we do. Ideas that were created for one set of circumstances, may no longer exist. The policies then still hang around, bent for a new purpose, when a brand new policy is needed. By finding someone who was there when it was created, we can better understand the development of the policy, procedure or tradition, why it was created, and why it was changed or maintained throughout the years.

• Determine if it is Ghost - Re-examine the Circumstances - once we know where the ghost came from, we have to decide if it is a friendly ghost, or one that we need to bust. We need to see if the original circumstances still exist and if the policy, procedure or tradition is still relevant or valuable. If it is still valuable, it is not a ghost. Many great ideas are lost through the years and would be great to bring back. They are ghosts due to neglect and not due to their irrelevance. These policies should not haunt us but rather guide us forward. In conversations with colleagues, we came up with many of these that we felt should be brought back to life. The critical step is then the reflection on the relevance. If it is no longer relevant, then it is a ghost and we must bust it.

• Ghost Busting - Eliminating the Irrelevant - Busting ghosts all comes back to open dialogue and honest discussion. We need to discuss the old policy, why it was there, and why it needs to be brought back or eliminated. This has to be done out in the open, with all parties involved. Staff, students and families need to be part of the discussion. As with any policy, procedure or tradition, there will be detractors and defenders. By allowing all parties to come in and advocate for their position, a ghost can be busted and a new, more relevant policy can be put in place. If people are not privy to the discussion, they will continue to be haunted by the ghost. Only by bringing the ghost to light through discussion will they be changed and stay busted.

This process is long and we have had real challenges at my school with making it happen. One person’s ghost is another person’s sacred cow and worth defending. We have taken steps forward and steps backwards, but we are working together. Schools are buildings with long institutional memory full of ghosts, but also the great work of generations committed to making it a great place. By ghost busting we hope to only to continue building that monument to community accomplishment.

Cross-posted at http://edge.ascd.org/_Ghost-Busting/blog/6564149/127586.html

What was that quote again?

I love finding inspirational quotes about leadership.  I am often inspired by the words of others, these great pearls of wisdom that help you reflect and hopefully refine you.  The only problem is there are very few I remember.  “Oh, that’s a great quote. I need to remember that one.”  Then, within a few hours (Who am I kidding, it’s usually only a few minutes.), it’s lost – forgotten. 

One of very few that I remember is the following:

“Work for a cause, not for applause.
Live life to express, not to impress.
Don’t strive to make your presence noticed, make your absence felt.”

I probably had heard it before, but found it again in a gas station in eastern Washington on my way to our family cabin in Montana.  I made my wife take a picture of it with her iPhone so I could refer to it later, just in case I forgot it.  Knowing me all too well, my wife printed the quote and framed it for me for Christmas last year. 

While I certainly agree with the quote and I think it’s a good reminder for all leaders, I can’t help but question some of the underlying messages.  Of course, every leader has a cause. For us educators, our cause is a great one – make the world a better place, inspire the youth of our schools/districts, bring hope to the disadvantaged – all valiant purposes!  However, leadership can be a thankless job.  We often have to take appreciation in indirect, less tangible forms because we are supposed to be on some pedestal where direct appreciation for our work, time, and dedication is unwarranted, undesired, and unnecessary.  While this appreciation is not the reason for our drive in leadership, we have to stop and appreciate it when it comes our direction.  We should be giving applause to our teams regularly, but we shouldn’t be above receiving it, relishing it, and being motivated by it.

Leadership in the realm of education is, of course, about doing what’s best for our students – no matter what.  It’s about inspiring a common mission/vision for education within a community.  It’s about expressing yourself as a leader in ways that build individuals, teams, colleagues, and the larger community.  Yet, I feel a good leader should also impress those with whom he/she interacts.  I feel leaders should impress others with their knowledge, dedication, humility, desire to learn, and relentless pursuit to make a difference.  Effective leaders impress others not through an intentional focus on being perceived as great, but as an unintentional byproduct of being great.

Finally, good leaders build capacity and try to work themselves out of a job.  As effective leaders transition, they ensure that the work continues in their absence.  They strive to make their departure not impact the great work happening within the school community.    During my experience as a principal, I’ve transitioned to several different schools.  Each time, I’ve wondered and secretly hoped that the teachers, students, and administration would miss me when I left – that my absence would be felt.  If I’m doing my job well, the school will continue to flourish with students and teachers continuing to learn and improve, teams will work collaboratively around improved student learning, the community will keep a focus on the future – despite my departure.  Moreover, they’ll have the tools and capacity to do this independently.

I still love the quote and will hang it in my new office next year - it’s still one of my favorites.  The ebb and flow of leadership is a crazy, but awesome thing.  We have to seek inspiration, motivation, and wisdom from whatever sources we have available.  Sometimes, this means understanding that we can get multiple perspectives from the same thing, based on what challenges this wonderful opportunity called “leadership” brings us.