Iron Sharpens Iron

A couple of weeks ago, I was at a leadership gathering and one of my colleagues was describing a working relationship. She said that they challenged one another, pushed one another, and made one another better at their work. The phrase she used was "iron sharpens iron."

It really got me thinking about how we support one another as leaders and what we value in the other leadership around us. I need people around me who push me and challenge me - people who sharpen my iron. It can certainly be challenging to hear feedback or opposing points of view, but I have learned to reflect and consider it from multiple angles so that I can come back to a point where I can hear it. I have had to push myself to recognize that when I am uncomfortable in feedback or some kind of challenging thinking, that there is usually more truth than I am able to hear initially. By taking the time to reflect and look at it from different angles, I can often come back and find how I need to grow.

So, how do we learn to sharpen the iron of those around us without being abrasive or too cutting and how do we help our teams learn to appreciate and value the need for sharpening? It can be challenging to give feedback or share an opposing point of view without sounding argumentative or even rude. In Leadership and Self-Deception, by the Arbinger Institute, we observe leadership from "inside and outside the box." We learn about how we can give direct and even difficult feedback to others without devaluing others. For me, this book has had a significant impact in my own leadership development and it is a title I return to again and again.

It can be as difficult to share an opposing point of view as it is to hear one. In this talk by Margaret Hefferman, she talks about the importance of teaching the skills of defending a topic, usually saved for Ph.D. work, to students of every level in order to develop thinking classrooms and organizations. In order to engage in this act of challenge developing and encouraging thinking, we must let go of believing that we must always be right. It is not a matter of right or wrong when we are pushing thinking. We must allow for the discomfort that happens when we are challenged, or when we need to challenge the thinking of others. When we allow the voices of a few negative or outspoken persons to represent our thinking because we are not comfortable in defending our own beliefs, then we are all weakened. When we sharpen one another, as iron sharpens iron, we strengthen the entire system and become the best version of ourselves.

Slow Down

I am sure your schedule is much like mine - nearly impossible. This morning on my way to work, I heard this song called "Slow Down," and I really had to stop and listen to the message.

My oldest son had his junior prom last weekend and this weekend he turns seventeen. That alone is kind of messing with my head. Today, my mom had to go to the hospital after an episode that required further tests. I am struck by the juxtaposition of these two events. And forced to slow down and consider the impact of not only my son getting older, but also my mother getting older, and the fact that I am getting older. 

So what does this have to do with being a turnaround leader? Sometimes we are under such pressure to see gains in our school turnaround, we forget to stop and see the great progress that we have already made. I have missed out on countless afternoons of homework with my kids in order to ensure that my school is safe and that our instruction is on the path towards high achievement. I have had to cut phone calls with my mom short for a meeting or a phone call I had to take. But, today I talked with principals from another district for over an hour and during that time my school was calm and students were learning. As I shared with them about the gains we have made (I described where we started and where we are now and the difference is truly significant), I had to stop and really reflect on the ways we have grown as a school community. It is not perfect and certainly some days are better than other, but I can tell that it is a different place than when we started.

Being a Principal Mom is not easy (let's face it, being a Principal isn't easy and neither is being a Mom, so the two of them together are nuts!). But one thing I have to get better at is walking away at the end of the day and celebrating the time that I have with my own children. I don't know if we allow ourselves to do that enough (or is that just me?). I have several colleagues who have figured out how to leave the work at home and I want to know what they have done to help them manage and organize their time. When I think about my own growing edge, I know that having clearly articulated systems in place throughout the organization and managing my own time are two big rocks to turnaround that will stick and to slowing down in order to go faster and more efficiently. Sign me up!

#Bragging

Sometimes it is important to step back and recognize that the work you are doing is having an impact. We are in the process of implementing a Community School model in my elementary school. While it is an incredible amount of work to organize and implement, it is work that is very much needed in my school community. An article by Julie McMahon that was published in the Syracuse Post-Standard last week, highlights the work that we are doing as a school to support our school community (read the full article here). It has helped to raise awareness in the greater Syracuse community regarding the significant level of need - both in terms of basic needs and academic supports.

I am overcome with appreciation for the many people who have shown interest in the work we are doing at my school. How humbling it is to realize that other people recognize the value of the work you are doing! I also continue to be in awe of the people who are on my team. They take the idea of relentless commitment to serving our school community to the next level. When we think about what is necessary in school turnaround, having the right people on your team is absolutely number one in changing the trajectory of a school.

The next steps for us in implementing a community school model are exciting and there is much for us to learn. I am proud to be surrounded by so many talented and dedicated educators and to be supported by a community that can envision how schools can make a difference in the lives of our students and their families.

The Purpose of Practice

I am currently reading Doug LeMov's book, Practice Perfect. I love it when you are reading something and the whole time you are thinking, "This makes so much sense. Why didn't I think about it this way before?" In Practice Perfect, LeMov goes deeper into reflecting on how effective instructional practices become a part of our practice - it's not that we either have it or we don't, it's that we can develop it with purposeful practice.

I am a pianist. My parents insisted on getting piano lessons for me beginning at age 5. I understand practice and both it's value and purpose. But as I read this book, I am seeing that I have not often in my career truly practiced, or rehearsed, for an "in-classroom performance" - like I would if I were putting on a recital. This is where LeMov distinguishes between practice and preparation. As teachers, we spend a lot of time preparing. But preparation is actually dramatically different from practice. When I am preparing, I am thinking about what I will do when I have children in front of me, but I am not actually rehearsing what I will say, what I think they will say or do, and how I will respond next.

When I was preparing for my recitals in college, I wasn't practicing until I got it right - I was practicing until I couldn't get it wrong. What a difference that is. Think about that in terms of your instruction. What if we practiced our instructional delivery? What if we practiced our questioning and our re-directions? What if we practiced our pacing and our flow of our read aloud?

Does practicing my instructional delivery make me a robot? I know that practicing for a recital did not make me play like a robot. I know that when I see a play or a musical that I don't believe I am watching robots on stage. I know that mastery requires practice. The musical analogy to putting all of our time into preparation and not into practice is sightreading. When I sightread music, my time is invested in gathering the music and looking it over. But the first time I play it, I am sightreading the music, which means I might leave out notes, miss things, and make mistakes, but I would always keep on going. That's what we do in teaching. We gather our materials, we look things over, but then we are basically sightreading in front of a classroom of students who are counting on us to get it right. Then we reflect on the lesson and try to fix it tomorrow.

We all have had lessons where we walked away and said "that didn't work." We have all had times where we had to re-teach because we realized that we didn't hit it out of the park. Ultimately, our effectiveness is gauged by student actions - our teacher actions must lead students toward productive struggle, engagement, and ultimately, mastery of the skills and material. What if purposeful practice allowed us to have fewer "misses" and more "home-runs?" Wouldn't that be worth it?

Do the Most Good

I originally wrote this blog post about a year ago. This seems to be the time of year when teachers and leaders wonder if the grass is greener in some other district. I think it is important for us to reflect on our level of commitment to the students we serve and the vision of our organization. As with any marriage or long-term relationship, commitment is a choice. We could always choose another way, but staying committed...that takes patience, communication, and work.

Why did you get into education? What made you decide to be a teacher in the first place? I think it is important to revisit this connection at this time of year because it is a time of the school year when there is a lot of contemplation about how things could be easier or better or more convenient in another school or in another district.

I don't think I thought about the impact I could have on other people's lives or on the greater community when I got into education - I was 23 and I was so excited to have a job - my focus wasn't on my role in changing the lives of children or families. Soon after I got a handle on my new position, I became aware of how my role extended past my classroom and into the greater community. As I grew as a teacher, I reflected on my role as a teacher and I knew that I had to admit that I knew that there was places where I could have a greater impact. That was my draw to urban education.

I believe that we need to "do the most good" - that if we are capable that we have a responsibility to help others.

While we can do good in any district, not everyone has the competencies for urban education. And urban education is where we have the greatest need. The children in urban classrooms need the absolute best teachers. They need committed teachers who have deep content knowledge, extensive strategies for managing classrooms, and who appreciate the diversity of our urban classrooms. While the grass may appear a brighter color of green in suburban districts, the reality is that the same grass grows everywhere. Urban, suburban, and rural districts all face challenges. However, the challenges in urban education cannot be solved without the best teachers working to overcome the disadvantages our children may have and strengthen the future of our urban communities. 

Urban teachers have to have strong classroom management skills and have a deep commitment to educating our future. Those are the teachers that we need in urban classrooms. And we need those teachers to stay committed to solving the challenges of urban education. Too often in urban education, we invest in developing a teacher with potential and then after a couple of years they think teaching will be easier somewhere else. Suburban schools are smart - they know that successful urban teachers can be successful anywhere. However, the inverse is definitely not true. It takes grit to be an urban teacher. Anything that is worth doing in life will have challenges. There are classrooms everywhere - but really making a difference means teaching where you can do the most good. Even when it is tough. They say that teachers aren't "in it for the income - they are in it for the outcome." Being the one who can help to shape the future is the best perk that we can have as a teacher - better than summers off or great health insurance or snow days. We are opening doors to the future. 

Parents Are Our First Teachers

This past week, we had an amazing College and Career Day at my school. We had visitors come in and share their career stories and career paths with our students. So many people from our community came to share their stories with our students and (hopefully) inspire them to see their potential and their future. Students were chosen to have a career for the day - shadowing staff members to learn what skills they would need in those careers.

My father came to speak with the 4th graders at Dr. Weeks. I was extremely proud to introduce him to my staff and students. He talked with the students about his career path and shared his story of perseverance and determination with the students at my school.

My father is driven and purposeful. He always pushed us to be the best we could be and encouraged us that we could do anything as long as we did it well. Making him proud has always been important to me, so sharing my school with him last week was a very powerful experience.

In 1928, my grandfather opened a storefront for used auto parts and appliance repairs with his brother-in-law. The used parts business grew during the depression and my grandfather expanded into replacement parts and providing parts to automotive repair shops throughout the Finger Lakes area. My father returned from the Viet Nam War in 1969 and joined my grandfather in the business in 1970 - not because he was drawn to the automotive aftermarket, but because my grandfather was sick and needed help and my father felt like it was the least he could do.

The philosophy of "if you are going to do something, do it well" describes my father and his commitment to taking over my grandfather's business. Auto parts wasn't his dream, but he certainly found his voice in leading the business. He used that voice to develop a successful business, to raise a family of strong voices who also became strong leaders, and to influence the growth and development of a community. I have continued to live by and teach by the same motto - making sure that if I was doing anything that I would do it well.

Parents are our first teachers. I was fortunate to have parents who encouraged my leadership and supported me in what I was working toward. So many of our children need us to be the voice of encouragement and support. If something is worth doing, it is worth doing well. Parenting. Teaching. Leadership. They all take that same kind of commitment. They are all extremely hard work - but they are all worth it.

Encouraging Influence

It's March. You would think that students would have all the skills that they need to be successful in school, right? You would think that if we were really embedding the pro-social skills that students needed to learn into our every day lessons, morning meetings, restorative circles, and restorative conferences that they would have mastered it and be appreciative of the news skills that we have taught them, right? 

Well, yes and no. Probably more no than yes. 

I was very fortunate to be trained as a trainer for Tribes, a community building philosophy by Jeanne Gibbs (http://tribes.com/). On our path to building community in our classrooms, we experience "influence," a period where individual needs are expressed, there is push-back against the norm, or individual differences are brought to the fore-front. 

As a teacher, I would provide opportunities early on that encouraged influence in my classroom. I felt like I would rather get all of the cards on the table so I could effectively plan for what I was dealing with. My colleagues often had a very different approach - they were often intimidated by what influence brought forth from our students. But think about what we are giving up on if we don't teach through influence - we are missing the opportunity to teach students that they can trust us with deeper sharing; we miss the opportunity to teach debate or appropriate confrontation; we miss the opportunity to deal with the problems that happen in our classroom community and be the ultimate go-to person for all of those children. 

I get it - our students do not choose the most appropriate times during our day to have moments of push-back or struggle. But I would challenge us to think about the way that we have been using our morning meetings and restorative circles in engaging our students on a deeper level. We mastered greetings as a social skill early on - so morning meeting should shift as well. Embed questions that allow for more individual responses. Allow students to role-play situations that they have to deal with every day like peer pressure, differences between home and school expectations, trying to be academic successful when that is not the norm, or using other skills than fighting back. Are your morning meetings and restorative circles predominantly teacher led and teacher talk? We cannot get our students to master skills related to emotional regulation by doing all of the processing and all of the talking. 

What are some ways that you can address issues of influence in your classroom? 

• Embed social expectations into every learning experience. Just as you would include expectations for academic proficiency during independent or group work, include expectations for being respectful, being safe, or fulfilling roles within a group. These things have to be modeled, rehearsed, and taught in order for the expectations to be enough.
• Allow opportunities for reflection on academic and social expectations. If students are not able to see what you see in terms of their social interactions, they cannot be a part of the solution. By reflecting on how we worked as a group or how well we listened to our partner, students are able to be a part of the problem solving for how we might do that better.
• Problem solve with, not for, students. When I taught middle school, I had a first block class with 90 students for 90 minutes (7/8 Chorus). I needed them to be able to work together and there was no way that I could get that through my leadership alone. One of the best strategies I used with that large group was called "Fly on the Ceiling." I would ask students to write on an index card "If I were a fly on the ceiling in today's class, I would have seen..." Then I would read the cards back to the class (anonymously) and ask them for reflections on how that made them feel, how we were or were not able to meet our objectives, and what solutions they could propose for making it different. As the classroom leader, this meant I had to be open to their suggestions - I was, after all, trying to empower leadership in my students.
• Be real with and for your students. Our kids are dealing with some hard stuff. Are you open to what they might share in your circle? Are you prepared for the level of trust that will be needed of you when a child shares their true self? Do you provide opportunities to share on the tough realities that our kids are living with? There is a huge difference in having a morning meeting that is a greeting and sharing how you feel on a fist to five scale and having a question in circle that allows everyone to share something that they might be struggling with right now. If you can build the kind of trust with your students that allows them to share their true self with you, then you can really plan for how you will proceed in the classroom.
• Role-play, practice, rehearse, and allow for students to give feedback. As the teacher, you set the stage, but students should be doing the real work. When you give students the tools and allow them to practice those tools, they can grow and help others grow as well. Using role-play and rehearsal in the classroom is a valuable tool - especially if you give scenarios that are similar to what is happening in the classroom but are safe enough for all students to participate without judgement. 
• Appreciate the growth and development that you see every day in your children. Even when we are not quite perfect, we are growing. Appreciate the willingness to share, the willingness to try, and the courage it takes to be true to yourself in front of your peers. 

If you are a school leader, substitute "staff" or "teachers" for "children" or "class." As a school leader, we are charged with the same mission - to develop the skill set of our learning community. That work takes the same path - you must work through influence and gain the skills necessary to function as a community. We are stronger when we recognize that we are not looking for conformity, but really for a vibrant learning community that supports and engages with the unique differences of each and every one of us. 

Here are some thoughts from Jeanne Gibbs, author of Tribes, on how and why we must think of growth and development differently in our schools and in our classrooms. As you reflect on your practice this week, whether you are a classroom leader or an school building leader, think about the ways that you can promote that growth and development in your students or in your staff. Consider the ways that you can build on what you may have seen as negative skill sets and shift them to under-developed skill sets that you can use to move your classroom or school forward on your path toward achievement.