Lessons in Ethical Leadership

 I just finished reading a book about ethics and leadership.  I am intentionally not naming the book or the author here because of our tendency to accept or reject a person's words, not based on their merit, but on whose side we are one.  (That said, it wouldn't be hard for you to Google quotes if you are really motivated to find out).  It is a well-told story of how a person's character is built from decisions made at a very young age and how that character then informs leadership decisions in adulthood.  There were a few things that stood out to me, and I wanted to mention them here and connect them to our role as teachers.

Ethical leaders are both tough and kind.  It is unethical to allow people to get away with whatever they want rather than hold them accountable for their actions.  It doesn't make you the nice boss or the easy teacher.  It means you have abdicated your moral authority, which is not okay.  What I have learned in 22 years of teaching, though, is that toughness doesn't exclude kindness.  In my younger days, I pulled kids into the hall and read them the riot act.  That hasn't happened in a long time.  In recent years, if I have had to pull a kid into the hall, I have started with, "What's going on?"  The conversation that follows can be kind and focused on problem-solving while still holding students to appropriate boundaries.  Often, in fact, that conversation ends with, "You know I have to write this up now, right?  You know I still love you, right?"  

Humility and confidence are not antonyms.   I knew that a person could be both confident and humble at the same time, but I don't think I had ever considered before reading this book that showing humility actually requires confidence.  Showing humility means putting yourself in a bit of a vulnerable position, and you cannot do that if you are insecure.  A good leader knows their strengths, but they know their weakness better and, as a result, they take steps to hear from people who are strong in those areas.  

Honesty matters more than loyalty.  The way we understand loyalty is deeply flawed.  We think a loyal friend will always tell us what we want to hear and take our side, no matter what.  That's wrong.  A loyal friend is one who tells you the truth.  They tell you what you need to hear.  If you are wrong, they love you enough to tell you, and they don't worry that you will stop being friends with them for doing so.  "Ethical leaders speak the truth and know that making wise decisions requires people to tell them the truth."

Ethical leaders care deeply about those they lead.  Because they care, a leader will be honest and share his heart with those he leads.  He will treat them with respect.  He will often sacrifice his time to listen, to care, and to help solve problems.  "They create an environment of high standards and deep consideration - love is not too strong a word - that builds lasting bonds and makes extraordinary achievement possible."  This cannot be done sitting behind a desk.  It is done by talking and listening to your people.

It is a weak leader who never laughs.  Laughter, real laughter, the kind that comes from enjoyment requires humility and vulnerability.  It requires listening to another person.  It requires enough of a bond to understand the intent of the speaker.  It requires acknowledgment of the other person's wit or cleverness.  You cannot laugh and be defensive at the same time.  Many leaders are serious, and they should obviously take their job seriously, but a joyless leader is hard to follow.  If a leader never laughs, you should be suspect of that person's character.

Small sins, left unaddressed, become your character.   The author of this book is very tall, and he got tired of answering the question about whether he played basketball (which I can relate to) and explaining why he did not.  So, he just starting saying, "Yes" because it was easier.  At some point, he realized that he was easily telling this lie and that the longer he did, the easier telling lies would become.  He wrote to the people he had told this lie (which most of us would consider a benign lie) and apologized to them.  He knew he did not want to continue moving the line of which lines were acceptable.  He also relates a story of a time when he acted as a bully in college and how haunted he was by that experience, even as a middle-aged man.  I think we have a tendency not to see individual actions as important, but these decisions are formative.  They make us who we are.  Your character is like a brick wall, and each action is like a brick in that wall.  One wonky brick might not impact the overall strength of a wall, but not addressing whatever caused that on the next level and the one after that will lead to a poorly built structure.  

As I read this book I was struck by how blessed I have been in those I have served.  With a small number of exceptions, I have worked for excellent leaders, who led well.  From the boss I had when I was an arena janitor to my current school administration, I have had the good fortune to be led well by men and women of character, who cared deeply about those under them and led with honesty, laughter, confidence, and humility.  For that, I am grateful.

Thanksgiving - The Small Things Matter

Most years, my Thanksgiving week post is about a teacher I had who was formative in my life as an educator.  One of the things I've noticed this year is that I have been more focused on gratitude for the smaller things.  Noticing what we can be thankful for every day has taken precedence during this time.  The thing I am thankful for in this post is this set of supply cabinets.

At least a few times a year, I open this cabinet and look at the blessings I have.  

If you are not a teacher, you may not know what a rare thing it is to have a fully stocked supply cabinet in your teacher work room.  If you are a public school teacher, you are likely jealous of what you see in this picture.  When I need post-it notes, I come to grab a pack.  When I need whiteboard markers, I come grab a red and a black one out of these bins.  (When I need a whiteboard eraser, I order some from Amazon because I am really picky about my erasers and don't want to ask the school to order special ones for me.)  Staples, tape, paperclips.  Here they are.  When I worked in public school, I counted the number of sheets of paper I used every month, but here I have this amazing cabinet.

If you want to be further jealous of what I have at GRACE, note what you see in this photo.

If, by chance, there is something we do not have in the magical supply cabinet (usually less consumable things like staplers), we can write it on this whiteboard, and our office will order it for us.  

One of my favorite silly memories comes from this board.  I don't know if it will translate in writing, but here goes.  Someone had written "small binder clips" on the board.  At that time we had a Jim Halpert-esque faculty member.  He wrote, "even smaller binder clips."  Wanting to keep up with him, I wrote, "even smaller binder clips than that."  A week later, the cabinet was full of three different sizes of tiny binder clips, and I would imagine we haven't had to buy any more since then.

As you look around this year and think of those things for which you are thankful, go past the obvious and think of the small things in your daily life, those things that just make life easier.  Be thankful for those as I am this cabinet. 

Classroom Mission Statement

If you were an education major, you wrote a philosophy of education.  It was likely a very long examination of your beliefs about the purpose of education; but if your was like mine, it was likely not very practical.  I found mine a few years ago and laughed a lot about how idealistic I was.  I don't disagree now with anything I said in it.  I am just aware of the reality of dealing with students now than I was in college.

Your school has a mission statement, and you should be on board with it, but how you execute your school's mission will look different in your classroom than it does in the room next door.  It will look different in my 7th-grade science class than it does in a senior calculus class.  Even with teachers who teach the same grade and subject, it will look different because teachers are individuals with different personalities and philosophies.  After reading Dave Stuart, Jr.'s book These Six Things, in which he advocates having a "Mt. Everest statement," I decided to write a classroom mission statement for myself.  I've had mine on the wall for a few years now, and I thought that perhaps telling you about mine would help you think about yours.

I began with the mission statement of my school.  It says, "GRACE Christian School is a loving community that academically and spiritually equips, challenges, and inspires students to impact their world for Christ."  Since there are three verbs there, I started with them.

Equip - Make you the informed thinker you need to be to make good decisions.  

We make decisions all day every day.  Some of them require little thought. (Do I prefer to use a purple pen?  Would I like chicken or tacos for lunch?)  Some require a lot of thought.  (How do I plan to cover the remaining material by the end of this semester?  Who do I vote for?  Which insurance plan do I choose?)  Some decisions require the input of an expert who is more informed in their thinking than you are.  (Should I social distance?  If I decide to become vegan, what are the issues I need to think about?)  Being educated does not mean you know everything, but it means you have been taught to think and who to listen to.

I was reminded of the importance of this yesterday.  I was scrolling through Twitter and found an argument between an American man and an Australian man about mask-wearing.  The American man said, "I've done my own research and . . ."  Now, I'm wise enough not to have jumped into this argument, but I what I wanted to say was, "Where did you get your epidemiology degree?"  It means nothing to "do your own research" if you have little to no knowledge of the thing you are researching.  That's why people get medical degrees rather than reading WebMD.  You can look at a graph and attempt to draw conclusions, but a person with knowledge can interpret it more accurately.  Statisticians can show you data and give you three different interpretations depending on how the data was collected and which tools you use to interpret it.  The sheer volume of information available to us has led some to believe that education is irrelevant.  I think it makes it more critical than ever because Google doesn't have wisdom or judgment.

Challenge - Ask you to perform better than you think you can at things you don’t think you are good at.

Students are capable of more than they think.  By middle school, many have decided that they are bad at math or that they don't like art or that they are "visual" learners.  To that, I say, "We'll see."  We are demonstrably terrible at judging our own abilities.  There's a move among educators right now to base all their decisions on feedback from students.  I want my students to have a voice, but the idea that I should do everything they want is silly because they don't know what they need.  As a student, I didn't know I loved physics; and I certainly didn't know what the best way for my teacher to teach it to me was.  Mr. Barbara knew physics, and what he did made me love and made me want to work hard at it.  The value of the teacher is undermined if we lead by survey.  In almost every survey of study strategies, students rate the highest those things that research shows to be the least effective (re-reading and highlighting).  One of the top strategies, retrieval practice, is low on those student lists.  They don't want to do it because it takes more effort, but I don't expect a middle schooler to know current brain research, which is why the professional development of the teacher matters so much.

My 8th-graders are shocked at what they can accomplish.  I'm not.  They need to be pushed and given strategies, but if they employ those strategies, they can improve at anything.  Growth mindset doesn't have to mean that we believe everyone is equally skilled naturally.  Talent does exist, so you are going to have some students who are naturally better at some things.  Growth mindset means believing that I can be better at anything than I currently am if I strengthen my brain the same way I would strengthen a muscle.

Inspire - Ask you to look beyond the grade, the curriculum, and the tests to see what you can do with your education.

I believe in assessment and grades, but education isn't, at its core, about the grade.  I love my curriculum, but I care more that students build skills than that they remember every detail of my curriculum.  I want them to learn perseverance, following directions, communication, teamwork, individual responsibility, reading comprehension, social awareness, kindness to the person sitting next to them, and problem-solving.  

I have often written about conversations I had with my own teachers that still influence me today.  I am conscious of many of those moments, and I am certain that there are moments of which I am unaware that influence me today as well.  I know that each class I took changed me in some way, which is why I bristle at those who say nonsense like "I never use Algebra in life."  Setting aside that you do, what else did you learn in that class besides the math?  What you learned in that class does impact you today, whether you are aware of it or not.  I want my students to think about what education is building in them and how they will use it to "impact their world for Christ."

Teachers Just Keep Going

This has been a tough week.  For everyone.  

Voters on both sides have been refreshing the electoral map online over and over.  Vote counters have been doing their job round the clock with more scrutiny than ever before.  Reporters have spoken hundreds of thousands of words every night for four nights, knowing that if they misspeak even one of them, they will be raked over the coals by half of the public.  Stephen Colbert broke down for a few seconds during his monologue Thursday night because the President's assertions of fraud, which predictable, were unexpectedly heartbreaking. No matter which side you are on, this is exhausting.

You know what I did this week?  I taught 8th-grade students about the evidence for chemical reactions and how to interpret their equations.   I reviewed for and gave a physics test to juniors and seniors.  On Friday, my physics students gathered outside while my teacher friend and I threw egg drop projects from a 26-foot lift.  I reminded my yearbook staffers of the deadline we have coming and guided them through the things that needed to be done.  I took photos of elementary school students and electives.  I graded papers and helped students with homework questions and had exactly the week I would have had if it had not been election week.

This isn't the first difficult week I or any other teacher has had.  I have taught through a shooting threat.  I was teaching on 9/11.  I have taught through heartbreak.  I have taught through the illnesses and deaths of colleagues and students.  And, oh yeah, I have taught through a global pandemic.  Teachers keep going through hard weeks because the work must be done.  Education trainer Todd Whitaker says, "The best part of teaching is that it matters. The hardest part of teaching is that it matters everyday."  

Of course, teaching is not the only profession in which people must keep going no matter what.  Doctors and nurses have had a long year.  Police officers can't decide not to respond to a call when they've had a tough week.  The one thing that is different about teachers is that EVERY thing we do EVERY day is being observed by young eyes.  They look to us when there are tough weeks to see how we are dealing with it.  When they see us keep going, I hope that they become adults who persevere.  

Now, for my own sanity, I'm going to take a one week social media break.  I'll see you next Sunday.  

Communication is EVERYTHING

Everything my school issues, from coffee cups to tote bags and even our email signatures, has the tagline "Equipping Students For Life."  This is because we recognize that education is about more than academic material.  In some ways, the academic content I teach is a vehicle for the skills a student will one day need, including organization skills, teamwork, perseverance, stress management, and scheduling.  For me, the top life skill I could impart to my students is communication.  The rest of the list matters, but communication is everything because, without it, we do not know about what is happening with the rest of the list.

Sometimes, work is turned in late.  I get it.  Life happens.  Our policy involves some grace for that.  Here's the thing.  You can save your teacher a lot of stress and yourself a lot of emails.  All you have to do is communicate to your teacher that your work will be late with a reason why.  A quick email to your teacher that says, "I know the project is due on Friday.  I have been sick for the past three days, so I couldn't complete it.  I will work on it over the weekend and get it to you on Monday." communicates that you are aware that you aren't meeting a deadline, gives a reason, and offers a plan.  I'm not saying this will result in a teacher delightfully offering you full credit, but it will earn you far more respect from the teacher than waiting for the teacher to email you the day after the deadline, not responding to that email, and then offering your reason only after the teacher has put in the zero for work not turned in.   

Speaking of teachers sending emails, we don't do it because we love it.  We do it because we are attempting to communicate with and elicit communication from you.  For the love of everything good, reply!  You don't have to reply to a mass email that was simply meant to inform.  I don't need a hundred responses with the word "thanks."  But, if the teacher has asked you a question, it is incredibly rude to not reply.  Imagine having a conversation with a teacher in real life in which they ask you a question.  Would you turn around and face away from the teacher?  Of course not, so don't do it digitally.  The teacher asked the question because they needed the answer, and when you don't reply, they still need the answer.  

I know that it is sometimes difficult to deal with a problem, and that makes communication about that thing frightening.  But nothing good ever comes from lying low and hoping it will go away if you ignore it.

Parents, as you partner with your child's school in preparing your children for adult life, let me make this humble request, teach your children to communicate.  It will help them in school, in work, in their relationships, and in life more than any other skill.

What We CAN Do

 My school has been engaged in its annual fundraising campaign for the last week and a half.  Because we could not have some of our normal in-person events, we have had to ramp up social media efforts.  As a result, we have had a number of videos that describe our school.  The final one focused on our mission statement's opening line.  GRACE Christian School is a loving community.  One of our elementary school teachers describes her experience as a prospective parent coming into GRACE for the first time and, of course, our return to school.  

In the video, she reflects on what her concerns had been on returning to school.  She said, "I was so concerned about wearing masks and plexiglass.  My daughter doesn't talk about that when she gets home.  She talks about the things she did with her teacher.  She talks about Egyptian Day and being able to play soccer on the playground.  Her world is not centered around what she CAN'T do.  Her world is centered around what she CAN do."

We've spent a lot of time and energy in the last eight months talking about what we can't do.  What if our focus shifted?  What if, like this first-grade student, our world was centered on the good things we did during the day?  There are things I didn't know I was capable of before March of last year, so here are a few of the things I've learned that I CAN do during 2020.

1.  I CAN deliver instruction from home and from classroom to kids at home.  Prior to March 2020, I had used Google Hangout for a few meetings with our technology coach when she was living in a different state.  Each time I used it, I had to have someone explain how to set up the call.  During the final quarter of last year, I taught every class from it.  Now, I log in six times every day on both a laptop and an iPad, mute and unmute, share my screen, take the iPad outside, or into the lab, for demonstrations.  I'm not saying it is the same as teaching face to face because it is not, but I CAN still teach.

2.  I CAN teach with a mask on.  There was a lot of concern about masked teaching, especially with some of my students learning from home.  As it turns out, it's not the issue I thought it would be.  I'm already fairly loud, but I have learned to speak even louder (I'm a little hoarse at the end of each week) and with better diction.  In the 10 weeks we have been back at school and masked, I have only had students say, "I didn't understand what you said.  Can you repeat it?" two times.  Don't get me wrong, I am happily anticipating the day when I can teach with my whole face again, it is possible to teach with it covered.

3.  I CAN have some hands-on learning.  I'll admit that this is more difficult with kids at home, but it can be done with some pre-planning.  Our AP Chemistry teacher made kits of supplies and sent them to the kids who learn from home.  She obviously cannot safely send every chemical, but for the ones that she could, she did.  I send a weekly email to my students with a rundown of the coming week and, in it, inform them of any supplies they could use if they have them at home.  I've always taught most of my classes with everyday materials (salt, aluminum foil, 9-V batteries, pennies, balloons) because I've always wanted them to see science as part of their lives, not just things people with fancy equipment do.  This has been helpful because a lot of what I use in class are things that students have in their homes.  If they don't, it isn't a problem because they can be part of a group from the iPad and then use that group's data, but some of them are still getting hands-on experiences.  During last week's conferences, the mom of one of my physics students said, "I saw her going outside with an egg and asked her what she was doing.  She said, 'Physics is doing an egg toss.  I'm going outside and tossing it to myself.'"  Is it ideal?  No.  Is it still possible to have some experimental learning?  Yes.

4.  I CAN laugh with my students.  My kids are funny.  Sometimes, they are even funny on purpose.  They make me laugh every day, in spite of the stress of living during a pandemic.  I have noticed that it is harder to make them laugh because it turns out that a lot of my classroom humor comes from facial expressions, but that just makes me work harder to earn the laugh.  We CAN still enjoy each other.

5.  I CAN model hope, growth, and perseverance.  I know that at least half of what I have learned in my life was not intentionally laid out in a lesson plan.  It was from the way the adults around me lived their lives.  I saw and heard adults talk about the economy, politics, job woes and joys, religious practices, community service, musical tastes, reading for pleasure, etc. from my parents and grandparents, from my friends' parents, from the adults in my church, and from teachers.  My students have seen their teachers keep teaching rather than curl up in a corner.  They have seen us cry, but they have seen us dry out tears and keep going.  They have seen us embrace our mistakes and learn from them.  They have heard us talk about the future.  

Tomorrow, I can teach in person and online and plan for the following week and grade tests and perform labs and attend virtual meetings and eat lunch with colleagues and work on the yearbook and laugh with friends in the hallway and . . . and . . . and.

Let's center our thoughts on what we CAN do, not what we CAN'T do.

It Gets Better (Because That's How The Brain Works)

 Last week, I had a strange conversation on Twitter.  A teacher had said that she was worried about starting back to school soon because they would be in a hybrid situation where half the kids would be at school and half at home.  While the numbers were different, her situation sounded similar to mine, so I said, "I've been doing this for 8 weeks.  It's really hard at first, but you find your rhythm, and it gets much easier as you go."  Anywhere but Twitter, this would be considered an encouraging statement from an empathetic person, but Twitter's weird, so I got replies telling me that they were sick of false positivity and tired of being expected to keep a smile while pulling rabbits out of hats.  One said I didn't understand how hard it was to be an elementary school teacher.  I held back from saying, "Sure, physics is super easy to teach online" and instead replied that each context had its own challenges, but that it would get easier with practice.  This led to the most disturbing reply.

"Respectfully disagree.  This will not get easier."

I don't know where this conversation is now because I have a personal rule to mute online conversations after having replied twice.  (Trust me when I tell that is a rule that will keep you sane.  You don't owe your time to strangers, and they are going to make massive assumptions about you when they don't know anything about you.)

First, let's address the idea of false positivity.  I've never been accused of being excessively positive at all.  I'm not a glass half empty person exactly, but I am for sure not a glass half full person.  In fact, I've often used science to say the glass is completely full because air is also matter or used calculus limits to say that it is half empty if you are drinking out of it but half full if you are putting water in it.  This person who has never met me not only thinks I am too positive, but that an obvious statement like, "this will get easier as you do it" is false positivity.

My real issue in this conversation, however, is the assertion that this will not get easier.  This person is an educator who doesn't seem to understand learning.  All new things are difficult and get easier with practice.  He should have seen this every day in his work.  He should be teaching this to his students when they are having difficulty with what they are learning.  I do not understand how anyone spends their life in a classroom could ever say, "this will not get easier."

In case you don't want to go back and read all of my Learning and the Brain posts from last November, here's a quick tutorial.

1.  You walk around the world in mental balance until you encounter a new skill.  
2.  You experience mental disequilibrium (we call it confusion) as the new skill isn't yet incoporated into your long term memory.
3.  As you start practicing the new skill, it occupies a lot of space in your working memory, requiring a lot of energy and your full attention.
4.  You continue practicing, see how to chunk parts of the skill, after which it takes up less space in your working memory.
5.  After enough practice, the skill is transferred to long term memory.  From then on, you know how to do it, and it takes less energy to do it than it did in the beginning.  You return to mental equilibrium with the new skill on board.  This means you have learned. 

When we returned to school in August, it did feel nearly impossible.  Every day was exhausting, and I slept hard every night.  Remembering how to share my screen with the kids at home in a way that the kids in front of me could also see required multiple steps in a specific sequence.  Now, I can do it in a second, but during the first days of school, I had to say the steps out loud each time I did them.  Remembering to end class a minute early to give kids a chance to wipe down their desks with wipes but not so early that they would congregate by the door was difficult, especially because for some reason, despite its being set by satellite, my computer clock is three minutes slow, but I bought a new watch and set it to the school bell, so it's easier now.  In the beginning, I was emailing each of my at-home students daily to see if they had questions, but I soon learned that they were better at communicating with me than I thought (better than those in the room, actually) and that this was not needed.  I now send them a week at a glance page at the beginning of the week to let them know if there are any supplies they will need besides regular school supplies.  That's easier for me and for them.  Lunch duty is easier than it was because my partner and I have our routine figured out.  Students are more familiar with routines, so I don't have to remind them quite as much.  This Friday was the end of first quarter, and it is much less draining than it was nine weeks ago.  

I left out one part of this teacher's reply.  He ended with, "Teachers and students deserve better."  To that, I say, "Well, duh."  Sadly, we are in the middle of a pandemic and not able to live in the ideal world this man wants.  So now, I'm going to do the Twitter thing and assume something about him even though I know nothing about him.  He's a man who believes there is only perfect or garbage with nothing in between.  That's not the world with or without a pandemic.  We teach our students in an imperfect world and prepare them for one as well, but there are things we can do to make it just a little better.  Sometimes, the breakdown of garbage is just the fertilizer a flower needs to grow.

This isn't negativity.  It's isn't positivity (genuine or false).  It's real, and it's our calling.