LeaderTalk

You're Still Out Here?

I opened my blog-lines account this morning and read for the first time since maybe September. Two plus months without a thought for my RSS feeds. Why this morning? Probably because I'm exhausted. It's 8:15 am, I've got a 9:00 trip to the elementary school planned where I'll visit classrooms for a couple of hours. The projects I have on my desk are numerous and seem too big to tackle in the 45 minutes that I've got right now.

Not to complain, since many of us feel this way with two weeks until Christmas, but I'm worn out physically and mentally. Okay, so I am complaining. My fifteen year old is wrestling and playing hockey so at least four nights per week my butt is parked on a bleacher somewhere. While this is much more physically demanding for him, any parent who's spent that much time "riding the pine" knows that it can be tiring. I'm not ready for Christmas yet and that's making me a little crazy since I'm a planner and usually way ahead of the game. While my old job had a lot of evening events, my new job has just as many and often I'm presenting or facilitating, not just participating or observing.

Some may remember I've dropped out of my on-line life as I struggle with the transition from the principalship to the position of assistant superintendent. My responsibilities are vast, focusing on major change in a district where teachers have had an enormous amount of autonomy. I'm challenged in this position and see the real opportunity to make systematic and long lasting improvements for the children of our community. It's rewarding in new ways, and while I still miss my students, I can see the importance of this work on a broader scale than the rewards of my every day interactions with our kids.

But right now, as I said before, I'm just tired. And I opened my blog-lines account, including my Leader Talk feed, and I began to read. I scanned the titles and stopped to read a lot of the work that you've all been putting out here while I've been away.

And you know what happened? I feel nourished. I feel rejuvenated. I remember that I have friends and colleagues out here who are doing the same things that I'm doing. I remember that there are ideas to be gained here, challenging questions to be answered, friends to be consulted. Hopefully I'm finding my way back. Not necessarily to writing, but definitely to reading. I haven't been doing much to take care of myself these last six transitional months. Too much "output" and no "input". I'm eating poorly, not exercising and now I realize, not connecting. Looks like a list of resolutions in the making, doesn't it?

Who's in Charge of the Big Bad Web?

As far as education professionals go, I'm fairly liberal in my thoughts about the uses of technology in our schools, specifically access to the web. On more than one occasion, I've talked about opening access so that our students can explore, create and learn from sources other than us. I've believed that opening access should come with a lot of discussion and education about the appropriate uses of the incredible wealth of information available that comes with a wealth of nonsense as well. If we don't talk to our kids and teach them how to discern what is reputable and reliable, who will? If we don't talk about Internet safety with them and social networking, will their parents be knowledgeable enough to get the job done?

And then I land on a student website that so obviously invites a problem, I'm left seriously concerned about his health and safety. A website where student creativity and expression includes way too much personal (really personal) information, including the student's first and last name. A website with provocative pictures and details about the kid that leave little to the imagination. Information that's accessible to everyone, friends, family, and predators.

As a school administrator, my first concern is to work with the parents to communicate the problem and to offer whatever assistance we can give. I find myself communicating a problem that I'm not sure the parents understand, with implications that are far reaching. How do we do more to educate our parents and students about the danger of this sort of personal exploitation while encouraging teachers and students to utilize all that is good about the web? In my experience, the response is often that adults conclude the web is a bad thing all together, because if its misuse in a case like this one.

As an adult learner, I have no problem discriminating, considering the source, looking at the possible bias. I have no problem avoiding the million and one websites out there that focus on nonsense. I don't think blocking access to the web at school is going to teach our kids how to do those things. I'm certain that opening it up completely to students who are still developing their good sense and judgment isn't the answer either.

Good parents pay attention to what their kids are doing on-line, just like they pay attention to every other aspect of their lives. Good schools need to pay attention too and as far as I can see, the lines are getting blurrier and blurrier as to who holds the responsibility for teaching safe on-line behavior. Neither of us, the parents or the school, can assume the other is getting the job done.

Difficult Parents

It occurs to me that sometimes we (those of us in public schools) avoid difficult parents. This is absolutely the wrong approach. Difficult parents are tough for lots of reasons. Usually, the primary reason is a frustration with our school through a lack of understanding, their own bad memories from a personal experience, or our lack of good service.

The toughest parents are the parents I should be spending more time with in an effort to eliminate that lack of understanding or memory. They should see us as employees who are here to help them navigate a system that may be foreign to them, or worse, one in which they personally met with little or no success. Tough parents are often difficult because life is tough for them.

When I started in administration at Frontier Middle School, I worked with an incredible school social worker named Dottie Laettner. For many reasons, most of all her passion for families, I learned a lot from her in the year and a half we worked together. There was something Dottie said to me that's never left me.

Dottie said, "Kim, even bad parents love their kids."

They may lack the skills, the role models, or the emotional stability to get it right. But they love their kids. Honestly, it seldom bothers me when a parent comes at me in a tough way because I'm always thinking, "she's just fighting for her kid." Our parents may not always choose the most appropriate way, but heck, I'm glad to see them advocating for their child. That's the most important thing they can do, that and loving them, and if we're getting it right then they don't have to come in "guns a blazing". When it is our mistake, we need to own that too. Difficult parents understand that we all make mistakes, what they don't accept is when we try to avoid it.

Please Give Me Something to Learn About

When we ask the interview question of "what are your thoughts on the uses of technology in education?", I have a preconceived notion of what I want to hear that is never met. I'm happy if the candidate even talks about it from a general point of view on the uses in instruction or adding to the curriculum. I'm unhappy when they say they like technology, or power point, or palm pilots and that it's the wave of the future. Tell me what you're going to use, where and how, and let it be something new, maybe even something I've never heard of before. It's not the wave of the future, unless of course, I've regressed and it's actually 1985 again. It's today.

Which leads me to this post by Will Richardson about twitter. I don't get it, I'm trying to get it, and I doubt I'll actually go give it a try. I'm clueless about twitter, but NOT completely clueless because of Will's post and the other tidbits I've been reading through my RSS feeds. What I'm loving is that I can read about something entirely foreign and new to me and that I can begin to ponder the implications it may have for my own learning and for education. This is what I need my teachers to be doing--reading the ideas of others and challenging their own ideas--LEARNING.

Soft Skills/My First Generation Gap

I've been reading a lot about soft skills lately and must admit this is a relatively new term for me. I'm not sure if I'm just suddenly getting old, but I find myself responding to the idea of "soft skills" with thoughts of "well, in my day. . . or when I went to school. . ." and thinking about the role of our schools today.

Soft skills are defined in the June 12, 2007 edition of Education Week, pg. 8, as "professionalism and work ethic. . .demonstrating personal accountability and effective work habits, such as punctuality, working productively with others, time and workload management."

I have to say that these are skills that are extremely important in my administrative position and they're probably the skills that I'm most proficient at in my work. I also have to say that these are not skills that I learned in school. I learned them at home. Now I promise not to go down that road of "it's the parent's job", I get that it's our responsibility when parenting is lacking. But honestly, these are largely skills to which every person in my family held true.

I grew up in a blue collar town, a coal mining town, and every person I knew and looked up to worked in an office, the coal mine, the steel mills. My grandfather worked as a postman and later became postmaster and I thought that was akin to being the president of the United States.

Here's the thing about growing up in that atmosphere, everyone worked. That's what defined them, that's what was expected of me when I turned 15 years old and that's what defines me today.

Punctuality? Cripe, it never would have entered the mind of either of my parents to go to work late. And if someone was coming to pick me up, my mother had me standing at the door 15 minutes early so they wouldn't have to wait for me. I don't think my father ever missed work, except when he was hospitalized after a cave in at the coal mine. Time and workload management? Again, they did the job required, no matter what it took. My point is that I grew up knowing that everyone worked, they gave everything they had to the job, and that's just the way it was. I simply didn't question it.

I realize that there's a balance in life. But soft skills are something I've just taken for granted my entire life. I'll have to do some serious thinking about how to build those into our instruction. If I can only get students to show up to school on time. Even with our positive incentives and negative consequences, that remains a challenge. Now in my day, my parents never would have tolerated my tardiness. . .maybe I am getting old.

Should I Stay Or Should I Go?

The number of opportunities available to administrators right now is absolutely amazing to me. In this past year I have received four phone calls asking me to apply for positions that were available. The positions range from superintendent to director to assistant superintendent. All would have been working with excellent people in successful organizations. Each of the positions would have been a step up for me. Each would have been exciting and challenging and a great opportunity. Each causes me incredible stress.

I am up constructing this post at 6:00 in the morning on a Saturday, at my parents’ house in Pittsburgh, because my brain won't shut off. Each phone call about an opening causes me to think a great deal about the opportunity, granted some more than others, and about where I am now.

How do I ever decide to leave what I’m doing for another challenge? This is a tough question on several levels. Personally, I think about the time I have/would have available for my family and for me. I think about the challenge/reward pull of working in my own district. (Believe me there are equal rewards and difficulties with that issue alone.) And the biggest challenge is the huge sense of responsibility I feel to my current district. Who will lead if I choose to devote my efforts to a different district? It’s not a clear cut decision. We’re in the business of people, of relationships, of students and faculty and staff and friends. Our decisions affect them significantly.

So, if it’s a position I’m really interested in, like that of a superintendent, I construct my list of pros and cons. This list includes everything from the practical, like salary and benefits, to the emotional, like the people I serve. My daughter points out that my system is flawed, that I need some kind of weighting system because some factors are more important than others, but that’s a bit detailed for me. I lie awake at night, I talk to those I trust most because talking it out helps me to process the decision, I think extensively about where I’m meant to be. I wonder, I dream, I worry.

And I can’t post about it on my blog because while it may cause joy for some, the thought that I might leave may cause anxiety for others. So I post about it here, for my administrative friends to consider. I know this is one of those topics that we can’t really talk about. But heck, I figure that’s part of what I do in this blogging conversation, put out there what we generally hold close to the vest.

There’s so much opportunity knocking for us, and some of it looks great to me, but what about my loyalty to this current mission? If we move every couple of years, how does the organization survive those frequent changes in leadership? How do we balance the right thing for the organization with the right thing for us?

The Personal Side of the Graduation Rate

What if there isn't a darned thing I can do to prevent some of our high school students from dropping out? What if there really isn't any way to leave no child behind?

Here are some of my statistics of our G-Town drop-outs from September 2004 through January 2007.

• 40% signed out, 60% just stopped showing up
• 45% are white, 53% Native American, 2% Hispanic
• 49% are male, 51% are female
• 58% of the white students are male, 65% of the Native American students are female
• 40% are aged 17, 30% are aged 18, 31% are in grade 10, 25% in grade 11, and 25% in grade 12
• 33% are passing and on track when they drop out, 53% have major attendance issues
• 77% were retained, 52% once, 43% twice, 5% three times
• 56% live in poverty

What does the data tell me that will truly help me change the course of those students' lives and get them to graduation?

You can see that 53% of my drop outs are Native American while only 30% of my population is Native American. A significant problem. We have a tri-district "Native Voices" initiative, in which we study our Native American students by meeting with our kids one on one and in small groups, face to face, to talk about their learning. Our mission is to learn more about our Native American students so that we can make our schools the best possible places they can be, working together to understand what works and what doesn't work.

We've worked together as a team, three neighboring districts who all share the students of the Cattaraugus Territory. We are administrators, counselors, psychologists, Title VII support personnel, and parents. It's been an incredible experience, one ripe with opportunity to improve culture, climate, and pedagogy.

We've realized lots of things that we can do better and our next meetings will focus on implementing change. I think we've already made great gains in climate and culture. Our discipline reports and daily attendance support this premise.

But what about those students who remain unaffected by all of the positive changes, who despite us and our endeavors, will choose to leave?

We need another alternative for them. And not typical alternative education that's just sending our kids who won't play by the rules to another location, same time, same days, same BAT channel. We need real options for kids who won't/can't succeed as we are today. We need a different time, a different delivery mode, a new approach, a real solution, a different system.

So we enter year two of Native Voices, knowing that we've figured out some ways to make our schools better for the students we keep. Knowing that we've got to find a solution for those who walk.

Here's my problem. I'm a change agent. If you've read this blog or worked with me, you know this. I'm constantly thinking about what we can do better and I work hard to make meaningful change for our students, faculty, and community. I want our students to succeed and I aim to climb the "rankings". I'm a member of this community, a parent, the person responsible for every student, grades 9-12--I want Gowanda to be a better school that others can look to and say "WOW, how did they improve learning and success for their kids?"

But it's so darned slow. Our results on the State measures are changing only incrementally. We're a school in good standing making adequate yearly progress, with a 73% graduation rate for all students while the state standard is 55%.  But my personal standard as the administrator most responsible is 95-100% and no "progress is adequate" for the students who are still dropping out.

How long does it take to see significant results? How long does it take until every kid sticks with me until the diploma?

Wait A Minute Please

Largely because it's the last week of school before spring break which can be a bit crazy, I signed on to bloglines for the first time in days and found 20 posts to LeaderTalk that I haven't read. Consequently, I missed the whole April Fool's Day joke on Chris' post. This turned out to be an advantage, because I got to see the answer right along with the problem.

One of the things I've learned as an administrator is that waiting can be a very good thing. Not when it comes to returning parent phone calls. And not when a student or a teacher requests a meeting with me. Those are things better attended to immediately.

But "wait time" can be just as effective as an administrator as it is in the classroom. When it comes to problem solving, sometimes waiting can be the best solution of all. Just like with Chris' post, the answer presents itself along with the question.

If our school community comes to know us as efficient problem solvers, they may not take the time and the initiative to solve a problem on their own. And sometimes, their solutions turn out to be better than ours. In a practical way, this "wait time" can help too. Earlier this year I became so excited that we were finally getting new desks for our classrooms that I conducted a walk through to estimate the number, told everyone the news, then found later that the funding wasn't going to be available after all.

Why do I know that waiting can be effective? Because I've learned it the hard way time and time again. In planning and problem solving for the next school year. In addressing student concerns. In working out a problem between two staff members. In responding to a complaint. And the riskiest area of all? When I'm asked what I think on an issue or a concern before I've spent the proper time thinking about my response or asking questions or gathering details. I have learned the lesson well over the last seven years--to wait before answering. I'm still working on it though, trying to remember to answer carefully, buy time, exercise caution, and to be prudent with my response.

Because our jobs so often entail problem solving, big and small, I often rush to answer the question or to solve the problem. I do this because I realize the next problem to be solved is probably standing on line right outside my office, just waiting to be told to me. If I don't attend to everything right now, when will I be able to? What I've learned is that few things require my immediate response and most are better off "settling for a bit" before I rush in to "settle them".

Student Apathy = Teacher Apathy

Update: this post was featured in the 110th Carnival of Education [March 14, 2007]

How do we eliminate student apathy in our schools? I have had the same conversation about lack of student motivation in four different districts, including one as a teacher. It usually happens in February or March and it's often with some of our best teachers. I had that conversation again this week and it’s led me to write about student apathy for this debut post on LeaderTalk.

What happens when the teachers sense that they care more about student success than many of their students? We work on school culture. Building climate. We implement positive schoolwide behavior management programs, pay attention to discipline, and look at instructional strategies.

"This is dumb" is highly contagious. As a student, it's pretty hard to get excited about a lesson when your classmates are proclaiming that it's stupid. Teachers have to continue to maintain a positive attitude. The truth is that negative comments about the learning don’t bother the apathetic teacher; they bother the best teachers, the teachers who get it right in the classroom every day.  The apathetic teacher is often oblivious to the needs of the students and couldn’t care less about the learning.

This is where I come in as the principal and I'm learning something this time around. As I am organizing my thoughts and reflecting while writing this post about student apathy, I’m thinking more about teacher apathy than ever before and about my responsibilities.

We can't eliminate student apathy. But we can do a lot to lessen it. I don't think we can give someone else the motivation to succeed, as "motivating" as we are. We can do the best work that we know how, with a positive attitude while caring about our kids. All day, every day. We can model positive, motivated behavior and hope it catches on. We can't make someone else, adult or student, care. We can only show them that we care so much, it doesn't matter to us that they don't care, because we still do. And here's where I realize I’ve been falling down in my leadership. I haven’t been doing the very things for every teacher that make me successful with students.

Why would I miss this? Because as the high school principal in a school where our results aren’t good enough on New York state assessments and graduation rate, I'm so focused on problem solving and improvement and students, that I think I convey the wrong message to my faculty. As I'm looking for ways to improve, I'm always talking about what we can do better. Like a literacy initiative--if our kids can't read, we'll teach them, and our plans to significantly change our schedule for next year, and the addition of summer school. I don't stop to consider that some may find my constant approach to "problem solve and to improve" as condemning or even frightening. As disheartening. In other words, perhaps I'm conveying the idea that nothing we do is any good, certainly not good enough.

It's precisely because I have a wonderful, supportive faculty who are willing to work toward improvement and who care deeply about our students that I can problem solve and lead change. My mistake is in taking teachers for granted.

I'm forgetting to use the very skills that made me successful as a teacher. I could often get a student to work for me who would do little elsewhere. Why? Because of the relationship I built with him. Because I expressed an interest in her life. Because I gave genuine praise when it was due. Because I showed students how much I cared about them. I've worked hard to do that with some on my staff, but not all. And here is an opportunity for me to improve as a school leader. I never neglected a student and I shouldn't neglect a single teacher either. I've maintained a distance with many on my staff that I never found necessary as a teacher with students. I've done it deliberately to maintain "professionalism". Now I'm guessing the same qualities that worked with students in the classroom would serve me well with my entire faculty.

I realize now that I need to pay better attention to my teachers, to each of them as individuals. What are their needs? Where can I offer genuine praise? How can I support and value them? I’ve taken them for granted long enough. I’m like the spouse who suddenly wakes up and realizes my significant other is leaving because I didn’t make sure he knew I loved and appreciated him as much as I did. If I want great teachers, who work to the limits of their abilities (sound like the same thing teachers want from students?), then I’d better make sure they know that it’s noticed and appreciated when they deliver.

It took me about seven days to figure that out in the classroom and seven years to figure it out as an administrator. But then, my scope was much narrower in the classroom. At least I've got thirteen+ more years to start getting it right. I may not be able to eliminate student apathy, but I better do more to make sure that student apathy doesn’t result in teacher apathy.