Leading Learning

WHY: everything matters but some things just matter more

What is often overlooked in our work is the lift needed to shift the work of leadership from management and accountability to capacity and motivation. Fullan explains it this way: "Capacity building is to accountability what finance is to accounting. Finance is about how people organize and invest their assets; if you have only accounting, you are merely keeping careful records while you go out of business! In the same way, there is more to accountability than measuring results. We must focus our best efforts to develop people's capacity to achieve the results. Extreme pressure without capacity results in dysfunctional behavior."  

If we are going to make great gains in education on the behalf of students and families then we must begin to provide leadership that recognizes the power of collective buy-in, shared beliefs and our core values must be the driving force behind our work.  What matters most aren't the outputs, but rather the inputs. Let me share a simple example.  During dinner time at our house we have plenty of outputs and expectations. My three fun and rudy children, ages 2, 5 and 8 know these rules quite well: No throwing food, no getting out of your seat until you are excused, always say please and thank you, no screaming, no complaining, and always, always eat your vegetables.  What I have found over many failed attempts to enforce these rules is that no matter how clear the expectations are, it's actually not the expectations that make the difference during dinner; what makes the most difference are the delicate conditions my wife and I create to ensure our kids have every chance to have a successful dining experience!  I can equate this to our work because for the past 15 years in education we have put too much emphasis on our collective expectations rather than on our collective inputs, and values. I would argue that the expectations are the simplest part of the equation, and it's really the inputs and conditions we create that allow for the greatest chances for every student's success. 

WHAT: creating conditions of creativity and innovation

What is motivating to our teachers, students and parents? How can we create energy and momentum to build a culture for learning that is tangible within our schools? Just recently Education Week published a body of research against the question that was posed: "How should the public determine if schools are doing their jobs?" The Gallop poll revealed what we would have predicted; parents ranked student engagement as the top priority, followed by students being hopeful about their future. Coming in last place was achievement on state assessments. This is not news to us as educational leaders, as many of us would have guessed that state assessments would rank lowest in the poll. However, the new challenge for us is to shift from a predominantly accountability focused institution to one that prioritizes innovation, creativity, student engagement, hope and well being. It's clear that with the infusion of technology and the free access of information, parents will increasingly, and rightfully demand something different from schools. We must begin to ask ourselves a more complex question: "How do we motivate our staff and students to engage in a new set of realities?" 

Our work in education is to tackle this challenge by first leading with a genuine eye on the reality that we must create conditions of innovation, creativity and engagement within our schools. When students are engaged, hopeful and connected results will follow naturally. 

HOW: the work was never meant to be done alone, learning is accelerated by the group

To do this work we cannot act alone. As a team we've identified that we must work together to create cultures of high functioning and motivated teams to carry forth a vision for improvement; this work, at times, will require thoughtful attention to the role of the teacher, student and the complexity of the content, which cannot be done by one motivated principal and one or two confident support staff. Rather, we must build the larger culture, which is no small task. It involves developing a compelling vision, values and goals...going slow, celebrating small wins, and leaning into each other as we seek advice, give feedback and look to each other for support and guidance. 

CONCLUSION: creative leadership is our work

As school leaders it is our difficult job to continue to lead in the context and reality that public education is still struggling with how to address the growing gap between what the future demands of our students and what our educational system is actually preparing them for.  We are responsible to prepare students for their future and not our past. General Eric Shinseki succinctly states, "If you don't like change, you'll like irrelevance even less." In the middle of this context we find ourselves leading forward, purposefully accounting for the specific needs of our schools and focusing on developing a vision for improvement that involves a more robust view of education than the few simplified measures under No Child Left Behind.  In fact, we must lead boldly to create the conditions for innovation by casting a vision for what lies ahead instead of what worked in the past. If we truly are going to prepare our students for their future then we must be the type of leaders that can engage our schools in thoughtful visioning, collective buy in and actionable steps to ensure our students have every chance to be successful as they face their future. As we bring teams around a vision we must inspire educators in the reality that we don't just want students who are prepared to take and pass high stakes exams, but more importantly we want students who are ready for their future, students who are ready to serve our community and world with not only the academic excellence, but the 21st Century skills to apply it  and the social emotional skills necessary to achieve it.