Give Teachers the Gift of Presence

Christmas is around the corner and that means one thing, presents. This month I talked to principals about the importance of No Excuses in November which challenged everyone to push the envelope beyond their comfort zone. But after Thanksgiving, principals must be reminded that December is a leadership tool specifically designed to solidify the changes that have been made this year.  And to do that, we must make time to give thanks for all of the hard work that people are doing.  The reason for that is simple. January will be here before we know it, and we will begin to stretch ourselves again with a New Year's Resolution. December in many ways is the season for giving, not pushing.

What are you giving your teachers for Christmas?

When I ask this question of principals, I get lots of different responses. Most of the responses typically revolve around some sort of gift or an action of appreciation. (Check out my COBLOGGERATION page for ideas) While these things affirm people and their efforts, we must remember that the excitement from receiving a present wanes over time. In other words a tangible present's effect doesn't last for very long.

So what should we give our teachers for Christmas?

Well first off I think that teachers like and deserve presents as well as actions of appreciation. In fact I believe in this so much that I spent every December as a principal showering teachers with presents and appreciation (See The 12 days of Christmas for Teachers). But honestly I think teachers and staff members need something more than presents. 

They need Presence. 

There are 2 types of presence that leaders should give their teachers. 

Personal Presence

Teachers and students need to see a leader who is present in the moment and has a deep desire to connect with those that he or she leads.  When leaders spend time before break with their staff and students on a personal level, confidence swells and affirmation subconsciously grows.  Principals must make a conscious effort to be overly present with teachers and staff and use this presence to affirm effort and show sincere appreciation. 

Reflective Presence

Leaders mustn't stop with personal presence. They should spend the month reflecting with staff members to identify practices that are successfully contributing to student achievement and processes that are excessively laborious, redundant or monotonous. By being present at this level with the staff, leaders send staff members into the Christmas break with a sense of hope that the new year will be better than ever before. Principals should reflect with staff members about the work of the first semester and determine what they will do more efficiently and effectively in order  to move forward in January. 

A December to Remember

Using the month of December for organizational reflection is critical because the month of January will be here before you know it. In order to help people make their very best New Year's resolution for self-improvement, reflection is more than just necessary. It's critical. Additionally in order for a New Year's resolution to be effective, all staff members must be given the gift of presence from the leader so that staff members can honestly reflect on their current state of effectiveness and determine where they must grow next. 

I hope you make this month a December to remember for your school culture by celebrating your staff with more than the presents of now and give them the presence of mind. 

5 Leadership Lessons from the Mockingjay

The final chapter to the Hunger Games series came out this week, and it definitely didn't disappoint.  (Don't worry, I won't spoil the ending for you.) As I watched Katniss Everdeen lead the rebellion against the loyalists, I couldn't help but soak in all of the leadership lessons I gained from watching her tireless bravery and consistent courage.   Katniss continuously exposed herself to imminent danger because it was essential to reach her goal of liberating her country.  Mockingjay 2 illustrated 5 leadership qualities that every leader must master if they aspire to lead their organization to the pinnacle of excellence.

Source - Flickr

5 Leadership Lessons from the Mockingjay

Sacrifice

Leaders who are willing to sacrifice their own personal success for the betterment of the organization as a whole accomplish the most.

Loyalty 

When leaders visibly display their loyalty to both the success of their organization and to the people that compose the organization, they create a culture of trust and commitment.

Action

People don't follow titles, and they don't follow orders.  They follow action, courage, and example.

Compassion

A leader cannot truly value his organization unless he cares deeply for the people in the organization.

Finish

The best leaders finish what they started.  They set a goal and never give up until that goal is attained.

Are the Odds in your Favor?

Leadership is all about influence.  A leader can positively guide his organization into a new and better world or negatively drive it into toxic misery.  When leaders embrace the 5 lessons from the Mockingjay, the odds will not only be in their favor.  The odds will be transformed into inevitable victory.

3 Exemplars of the Most Excellent People

What is excellence?  How do you know it when you see it?  What does it feel like when it has been accomplished?  See, I think that people mistakenly define excellence as a singular event, a destination, or an unbelievable success, but I don't think that excellence as a place or an event.  I think it is an never-ending dream.  The video below by Mateusz M  instantly hooked my mind to this idea about excellence.  After you watch the video, you will see why.

Excellence is unique, as very few attain it.  It is an addiction that only a few people are crazy enough to crave.  To discover excellence, you must be willing to separate yourself from your comfort zone.  You must go beyond the stability of the status quo and risk everything to find this euphoria called continuous improvement.  In other words, to find excellence, you must embody the Exemplars of Excellence.

The 3 Exemplars of Excellence

Unstoppable
If you want to live a life for excellence, you must never accept the false finality in failure, but you must also never find comfort in the stability of success-ifaction (satisfaction with your success).  Unstoppable people pause to reflect on their succession of progress, but they avoid the temptation of basking in complacency because they are driven to continue down their path OF excellence.  After all for unstoppable people, there is no path TO excellence.

Unreasonable
Excellence doesn't settle for the subpar standards of 'good enough' or the positive praise when short term goals are accomplished.  Likewise, people in search for excellence don't settle, and they don't lower the bar to give themselves a false sense of security. In fact, they continuously raise the bar.  Now don't mistake unreasonableness for being unwilling to compromise with others, because compromise and consensus are tools that excellent leaders employ to stretch their colleagues and their organization.  After all, stretching yourself relentlessly requires to be just a tad bit unreasonable.

Uncommon
People of excellence are abnormal.  They have unique quirks, and they exhibit uncommon behaviors and habits that most others wouldn't dare.  They believe so deeply in their passion, that they don't care if their actions fail to fit the mold of society, because these folks know that society is full of commonness where true excellence cannot be found.  Society, however, is the starting point where excellence begins and the act of striving for excellence is in taking all the commonness that society has to offer and making it uncommonly better than it ever was.  Furthermore, being uncommon demands an unwavering commitment that automatically forces excellence seekers to avoid looking to others for approval. The core of being uncommon is this tiny inner belief that drives their moral purpose which is all that they need to push them into uncharted territory.

Everybody wants what Few are Willing to Pursue

Excellence is a word that everyone uses to describe their goals, accomplishments, and what they aspire to be, yet few truly attain the purest form of excellence. The reason for that is simple. Excellence requires hard work. Excellence demands tenacity. It requires failure after failure after failure, and most people simply don't have the intestinal fortitude to fall 7 times and get up 8. The essence of excellence comes from within. It is in the heart of every person, but only the truly excellent have the mental courage to master their fears of inadequacy and failure.   They see beyond what they currently are, and visualize what they could become when they commit to accept the risk of what might be. 

3 Tips to Shift your Focus from Teaching to Learning

The bell rings, and that means one of two things. It's time to get to work or its time to move to the next class. But what happens between the bell that starts class and the bell that ends the same class? Even if you don't have bells, you have a definite time when each class begins and when it ends.

Think about the phrase, "Teaching Bell to Bell".  If you have said it or heard it, you know that the focus can only be on one thing, the work done by the teacher. Here's the problem with that phrase.  It is in direct conflict with the whole purpose of education, student learning.  If the focus is mostly on what the teacher does, I can assure you that the variable will always be what students are learning.  Sure, teaching impacts learning, but teaching from bell to bell prevents both teachers and leaders from focusing on learning.  To keep the focus on learning, we must shift our primary and traditional focus from teaching to learning.

3 Tips to Shift your Focus from Teaching to Learning

1.  Less Talk = More Action

The longer that we talk, the less likely kids will listen.  With every minute that we speak, student engagement fades into oblivion because it is much more difficult for kids to actively and cognitively engage in learning; therefore, it is critical to remember that if we truly want the focus to be on learning, then we must always be cognizant of how much our talking or lecturing prevents kids from getting to real work of making meaning of their learning instead of our teaching.

2. Student Work Exceeds Teacher Work
If the focus is on Teaching Bell to Bell, the teacher will always work harder than the students, but if the focus shifts to Learning Bell to Bell, the role of the teacher will transition into more of a facilitator.  When teachers structure time so that students work every minute of the period, it will provide a great opportunity for students to work more and hopefully harder than the teacher.


3. The Responsibility for Learning must be Mutual.
In a Teaching Bell to Bell class, the teacher must always be responsible for leading the learning.  Conversely, in a class with a focus on Learning Bell to Bell, both the teacher and the students share the responsibility for learning and the kids own the responsibility for becoming more proficient in their mastery of the content being taught.


For Whom the Bell Tolls
If your focus has been more on teaching than learning, it can be hard to make the shift, but when our focus successfully and consistently zeroes in on learning, we will eventually see the improvements in learning that we desire.  Initially, it can be a challenge because our natural need for control will force us to believe that rigorous learning can't occur unless we're teaching each student. But if we can create meaningful learning opportunities that kids will gravitate toward, there will be a natural transition from students serving as followers of teaching to leaders of their own learning. If we can shift our talk to action, create relevant learning environments that require meaningful student work and require the responsibility for learning to become a collective responsibility, there will be no reason why teaching would be anyone's focal point.  That would be because teaching would successfully transform itself into the primary purpose, facilitation of learning. 

No Excuse November!

For most of my life, November has been an excuse for me to grow out my beard. No matter the demands from my wife to shave it off, November has been and will always be No Shave November.  Now December...  That's another story for another day. 

Well, I'd like to add a new tradition to No Shave November and I'd like to call it this:

Let's be honest.  We make excuses when the going gets tough, but for the month of November, let's fight the urge to make excuses when things aren't going our way. Let's respond with courage when we would normally rationalize why something can't do accomplished. Below are a list of typical excuses that we could stop making during No Excuse November. 

• We've never done that.
• He can't learn.
• He can't behave.
• She won't do what we say.
• They won't help us.
• He won't listen to us.
• We can't do that because (insert your excuse). 
• We've always done it that way. 
• We don't have enough (money, time, personnel, resources)
• It's too much work.
• It'll never work.

Let's Put the NO in November

There are 3 ways that we typically respond to excuses.  

1. Agree - We verbally agree with the excuse and chime in to make it even more valid.  We do that when we're really fed up.  
2. No Response - We validate someone else's excuse by saying nothing at all.  When we neither affirm nor confront an excuse, we silently validate that excuse and thus no reply is essentially agreeing that the excuse has merit and acceptable to the organization.
3. Confront - The third and most courageous response to an excuse is to confront the excuse maker.  

Sure, it can be and is difficult to put someone in their place when they make an excuse.  So here are a few suggestions to courageously yet kindly embrace the No Excuse mindset.

• Say, "Do you really mean that?"
• Say, "Tell me why you feel that it couldn't be done."
• Say, "Let's talk about that some more.  There may be another solution?"
• Come up with reasons to argue against the excuse.
• Show them how their excuse of "It'll never work" is false and can work.

Excuses are the defenders of the status quo.  They kill change, and they eviscerate visions.  The only way that excuses will ever be defeated is when more people develop a "No Excuse" mindset, and that starts when we collectively take a stance against making excuses every time something gets hard.  And what better month than November to say No More Excuses.

From Greek to Great: 7 Steps to Eliminate the Ambiguous Organizational Language

Language is the foundation of any culture, and within each educational organization, it has its own unique language. Some words evoke action while others stir up anger. Some words serve as symbols of pride while other symbolize scars of pain and anguish. If you know the words, you know exactly how to act, when to act and in which manner to act.  If you don't know the words, you'll spend most of your time lost not knowing what anything means.  What leaders must remember is that for many new members to a school, the organizaton's language at times can seem more like Greek than anything else.

In every organization that I have ever worked with, not only did I need to learn every new buzzword but I had to also to learn the etymology behind them. The sad thing is that many times, I learned more by bumbling and stumbling through my failures and misconceptions.  Yes, every organization has its own Greek that it speaks, and if you're a new immigrant to a new culture, there's a pretty good chance that you'll be lost every time you hear an unfamiliar word or acronym.

So what? 

Here's the problem.  Failure to accurately speak and understand the organizational lingo leaves people behind. It also causes them to be less equipped to serve students, and that is a huge problem. If the language and buzzwords create high levels of staff stress, that will ultimately be transferred over to the kids. Becoming fluent in a new organziaton's language can take months or even years to develop if supports aren't provided, but even worse, it isolates newcomers and relegates them to a lower class, and that is an even bigger dilemma.

"To not understand the local language is to demonstrate a lower level of usefulness to the culture. (Gruenart, Whitaker. School Culture Rewired. 2015)

Newcomers who are not provided supports to assimilate to the culture and the Greek that it speaks will be unintentionally ostracized. Essentially, not knowing the school's dialect of "Educationese" forces many to talk less, not more.  So the question has to be this. 

Source:  Google Images

How Important is Your Greek?

Well most organizational languages were developed a reason, to help people better communicate, right?  If that's true, then how important is it that all staff members not only know the language but the hidden meanings within the each word?  If it's critical that every person know the language to help move the entire organization forward, then it's important enough for leaders to provide a platform to not only help new staff members to learn the language, but develop an understanding of what those words look like and sound like in practice. 

Now What?   

Below are seven steps that school leaders can take to ensure that new staff learn to speak your Greek fluently. 

1.  Identify your organization's important buzzwords

2.  Define your buzzwords in written, and verbal form. 

3.  For words that represent a process, provide visual examples of that process. 

4.  Provide a platform for staff members to seek translation services if they don't know what a word or concept means. 

5.  Don't assume everyone has the same definition of a common word. Every word has a different meaning depending on the organization that taught them the word. 

6. Don't assume everyone who has been in your organization has the same meaning of he buzzword. Each person's experience also makes a variation of each word's meaning. 

7. Take time to align your language. Tier 1 instruction does not mean the same thing to everyone even if they've worked together for 10 years. 

From Greek to Great

If everyone is confused by the words you use, there's a strong chance your culture is paralyzed. Words are powerful. They invoke action; they inspire excellence. But they also stall progress and instill fear and uncertainty. Leaders must be careful that their organization's language is clear and specific, so that all members know exactly what the goal is and the action steps that they're expected to take to reach the goal. If leaders can speak in a way that limits confusion and creates consistency, the Greek that we speak will become the great that we lead. 

Boo your School

It's October, and that means one thing. Everyone is exhausted. What? Did you think it was Halloween or something? Yes, everyone has been working very hard since the start of the school year.  Now, we're about a fourth of the way through it, and your teachers and staff need something from you. They need you to:

Boo your School

That's right!  You need to boo your people for all of their hard work. After all they're not expecting you to boo them.  Now before you freak out about this suggestion.  There's a right way and a wrong way to boo your school.  

Wrong way -  Criticize them for not doing their job hard, or continue telling them what they need to do better.

Right Way - Celebrate them with a surprise. See pictures below that my wife used to boo our neighbors.  You can use them if you want to create a tidal wave of people booing one another, or you can modify the card to boo each person yourself with a card and candy directly from you.

Getting booed means someone appreciates you. It means that you are a valued member of the organization.  Booing your people in the right way builds confidence. It affirms their hard work, and it adds value to your people. Halloween is a fun time of year, and school should be fun for the kids as well as for the teachers.  Take time next week to boo your school. Your people will never forget it and they'll definitely thank you for it.