Contributive Leadership: A Pearl of Wisdom

As part of my learning journey with the Principal’s Training Center (PTC) I was honored to give a brief pearl of wisdom last night for our course, Creating Effective Schools. I chose to focus my pearl on my vision – and biases – of leadership and about how we all can lean into our particular skillsets in order to be effective leaders.

Lead when it’s needed, where it’s needed and do it as a team. 

My pearl today is a story in two parts: my background and my current reality and how they influence my conception of leadership. 

I grew up in a household that straddled two different structures: matriarchal on my mother’s side and patriarchal on my father’s side. In a gross over-simplification, I’ll describe a brief vignette of our family reunions or get togethers: 

On Mom’s side the women were the dominant voices in the house: giving commands and advice, deciding on the order of events and the movement of people as they coordinated the day all while talking through the latest turn in politics or a mishap in a random cousin’s life. The men deferred to the women. Uncle Mike is known for saying, “Well, let’s see what the boss thinks.” Referring, of course, to my Aunt Margie. 

Dad’s side looked like the traditional roles: women cooked the food and men discussed the news events of the day or they talked about family history. Decisions needed to go through them – any actions taken had to be approved through the man. For example, my father’s mother didn’t (and couldn’t) learn to drive until well into her fifties. Her domain was the house. His was the outside world. To step outside of those boundaries was not something one did. 

Within my own household, my father was the one who had the answers to everything. I remember winning one discussion with him in my whole life. And mind you, it was a question of winning or losing discussions. If you needed the decision made or the answer to your concern, you went to my father. He knew everything and he commanded attention. He was, in a way, my hero. 

To switch stories, because this is not just about my family.

When I was first hired at my current school, I was the youngest person on the admin by a good 15 years; something which maybe I noticed quite a bit more than my colleagues. I was hired on and told that I was now a leader. And to go lead. 

Now, I’ve learned about imposter syndrome, deconstructed it with colleagues and friends. I’ve had mentorships and been mentored. I’ve gone to PD sessions where we discussed leadership and sat in on meetings where we evaluated and picked apart our skills as leaders. Heck, I’ve even run PD for our leaders on leadership! I’ve talked about pace-setting, coercion, affiliation leadership and democratic leadership.

And herein lies my cognitive dissonance: I know the variety of leadership styles. I’ve experienced a variety of styles. But in my heart of hearts, my gut instinct bias that I push back against each day, my first reaction when I hear of a leader is that they are someone like my father – the dominant, authoritative leader. When I think of myself as a leader, I instinctively push back against it because … I’m not like that. I don’t make sweeping declarations about what we’re going to! I’m not infallible!  And thankfully, I don’t look much like my father. 

Helen Caton-Hughes is a leadership coach and prolific researcher who studied distributive and contributive leadership especially with the military. She states that, “Traditional leadership came out of the military (…) Command. Control. Set the pace. Execute.” (Sounds a lot like my father.)

Now, this type of traditional leadership isn’t wrong or incorrect. And it doesn’t mean we need to scrap it; there might be times when we do need to rely on the authoritative figure to make a decision. To step up and be a “hero.” I know during the beginning of the pandemic, we all looked to our director of school to be that decisive figure for us. We needed it and it worked for us.

But traditional leadership isn’t always what our schools need. And it’s not the only paradigm we have to make sense of leadership.  Caton-Hughes says that this traditional style of leadership “supports the notion of hero leadership: the man (and it’s usually a man) tells the team what to do. If they’re successful, he’s the hero. If there’s failure, the team failed. He’s still a hero.”

Then we have another style of leadership, distributive leadership and, as the name implies, it’s leadership that is distributed throughout a team.  

The military calls it Point Leadership – leadership is needed at unknown points and distributed across the activity. As Helen Caton-Hughes says, “Leadership is needed right where it’s needed; right when it’s needed.”

Leadership might be bringing your technical expertise to the table. It might be your connections with others who have great solutions. It might be your ability to shift the emotional tone of the situation. 

I grew up in a household where traditional leadership was the norm. I was raised in a dichotomous structure of matriarchy and patriarchy. And I experience cognitive dissonance when I think of myself as a leader because of my internal biases of what is leadership. 

We have skills, strengths, experiences and abilities to contribute. These combined with our sense of responsibility to our school’s mission and vision, to the learners in our care. Combined with a sense of accountability and the feeling that now is the time. That makes us leaders. 

Here’s my pearl of wisdom: Lead when it’s needed, where it’s needed and do it as a team. 

So go forth and contribute for therein lies leadership. e

Making Sense of the Acronyms

A few months ago, I was afforded a great opportunity to attend and present at the Atlas Curriculum Summit in Seoul, South Korea. Take a minute or two to hop over and read our article, Making Sense of the Acromyns. And thank you everyone.

 

Q3: Language versus Learning Targets

As part of the framework of being a PLC@Work school, we explicitly focus on identifying what our team response will be if students haven’t demonstrated learning of the intended standards and learning targets. It’s Question 3 time today and I’d like to take a few moments to introduce and explain how we use Language and Learning Targets to pre-plan for potential interventions with all of our students.

As we plan our units, most teachers will plan for the learning targets of each student but might not as easily plan for the language targets which are necessary to access that learning. An especially important aspect of working within a multi-lingual school (and a school with an ever-increasing group of students who require English as an Additional Language) is to plan for these opportunities to further open learning for all.

Trust: Fierce Conversations and Feedback

 

Trust – exploring temples in Bagan. Photo courtesy Beesly.

This year I have felt the themes of trust, leadership and listening to be some of the core drivers of my continuing education and work. In a previous post, I explored the theme of listening and in this one I intend to think through trust. This by no means represents a full exploration but I hope it will help me to suss out my own thinking and feeling about this.

How do you plan for instruction?

Standards. Learning Goals. Targets. Reporting strands. Approaches to learning. Dispositions. Trans-disciplinary skills. Content.

Where do we start?

I think most of us agree that understanding by design is a viable and valuable method for planning instruction, but even then, where does one start to pull from when constructing a unit?

Standards can be a crap-shot if not chosen by the school system in a systematic and ethically-consistent manner. Learning goals might be student-facing (I have thoughts about that) but how do we ensure that they are longitudinally viable if created in-house? Why, then, re-create the wheel? Or, rather, why not rely more on the talented experts we have chosen to work with us than externally derived standards and frameworks?

Perhaps we start with what we’re reporting to. In this case, we’re reporting to a strand. One of three, four or five alongside dispositional reports in order to separate the academic from the behavioral. That then determines our priorities. I concern myself with fulfilling reporting to that strand but how do I get to that strand? I hope that we have clear understandings about how our standards are explicitly linked to reporting strands by way of learning goals, but even I have a hard time wrapping my head around this and many have let one or the other go because of the redundancies which they cause.

So. Step one. Are these the standards which encapsulate a system that we can get behind, that we believe in and that push for the philosophy of teaching with which we agree? Yes, okay let’s move to the next step. Learning goals/targets/however you’d like to define them – there are some good books out there on this. I argue against these in my particular context because I think kids can figure out the complex language. It clues them into what the teacher is doing, how they are doing it. And we can explore the deconstruction of the standard together. What a great way to learn about where we’re going, you get to figure out together and make sense of the goals together! Talk about meta-cognition and putting students in the driver’s seat!

I stop there because I’m still fuzzy on whether or not I agree with reporting strands. If we’re going to use them, let’s use the ones as define by the creators of the standards. However, when leveraging in-house expertise and contextual indicators, the argument turns back in on itself  and I’m left questioning whether it’s not better to re-invent that wheel.

It all comes back to this: do we need to have a system whereby all teachers are drawing their planning from the same system (be it standards or learning goals or reporting strands) or do I worry as long as teachers are reaching the same content goals … because shouldn’t they be teaching the skills and those are what are emphasized? Or no?

Listening as stillness

It’s been difficult for me to keep my mouth shut. I’m one of those people who, if I see something not working up to my standard, I want to rush in and fix it. I want to work in a place that exemplifies my own expectations of awesomeness. So, it’s been difficult these last few months. I’ve needed to keep my mouth shut when maybe, in other situations, I would have spoken out. I’ve needed to learn how to listen, contemplate and take note of ideas. I’ve learned how to be still.

It’s an incredibly valuable skill – stillness. Action without acting. The more I reflect on how I approach my life, my career, my relationships, the more I see that action without thought has driven many of my choices. I think I see that light at the end and I devise a system to get us there then Bam! I pop it into action and wonder why it falters and, ultimately, fails. I now find myself wondering if this is why I prefer to work with female heads of school – the generalized and acculturated push to listen first, act second or the disincentive to act rashly. By taking out the need to act, it puts you in a more active role as a listener and one who is seeking to understand. I don’t need to prove my understanding by acting, but rather through my words and actions – do I actually understand the position of those with whom I am working as well as the system within which we are operating? I work to understand. And I stop before I act because actions now might be rash and will certainly be uninformed.

My first three months in this position have taught me much but, most importantly, they have helped me to learn how to listen without the intent to act. Listen with stillness and a sincere drive to understand.

Setting up the office

Today was spent in a fairly ordinary way – setting up my office and thinking about the coming school year. It is the calm before the storm.

 

While looking at this space that I will occupy for the coming years, I am especially considering one aspect of my education at Vanderbilt University – classroom design and functional spaces. Given large spaces, how do we work to create spaces that create inclusion and safety as well as allow for the dynamism that we so often lack in group meeting spaces? There are whole swatches of area in this office which I will probably not use. How can I make the best use of that space to help foster the emotions that are necessary to effective group work?

 

I need an interior decorator.

First Day of School

American International School of Guangzhou

Today, I take a new step in my professional career. Today, I move from my feet firmly planted in the classroom to taking a step back and thinking through the roadmap of our educational system. I have been offered the incredible opportunity to serve as the Director of Curriculum and Instruction at AISGZ and I am looking forward to trying to "drink water from a firehose" for the next year as I learn my new role.

This year I have many incredible opportunities to travel to different countries and work with experts in various fields of education. I plan to use this space as a reflection area and as a place of thought about our academic systems, our professional development, professional learning communities at work and many more exciting things as well as the more mundane attractions of my life: how does one transition from a teacher to an administrator? how does one make new friends in a new country in a new setting in which one does not speak the local language? how does one live life to its fullest?

I look forward to exploring all of this with you and with myself in the months to come. Thank you in advance for your patience with my navel gazing.

Lima, Peru

 

This past week, I was given the opportunity to travel to Lima, Peru to listen to an awesome group of people discuss education. Additionally, I was able to present my own workshop about the creation of formative assessments for mindfulness education. Using the new Learning Lab format, I was able to get together with a bunch of (now) critical friends to think through assessment techniques for mindfulness in every class within a school. We workshopped a few different lesson plans ranging in age grade from 3-12 and subjects from ELA-Physics and TOK.

We walked away from the experience with a list of interesting questions we can integrate into each class as well as a new understanding for what the purpose of these questions is – that is, it serves to aid us in assessing our own and our students’ self-awareness. Lovely stuff.

 

Also. There was a park just for cats. For real, Lima – how fantastic are you!

 

Puerto Escondido

Walking away from the surf in the sunset