Friday, November 10, 2023
Adele speaks to me. She might just speak to you.
I've been gone long enough that I am not sure about how to format this post. It is ok, though, as I always knew this process would happen—me not writing for a while and then returning from nowhere—and long ago gave myself permission to use it. I permit me to not be good at something. As I try it out
And I don’t mean to write—writing is fun, easy, give me a funny bad metaphor to write; yea! I mean sustaining writing, and a system of writing. I mean believing in yourself as a writer or caring about your own writing at all. That’s hard.
I am a conflicted writer. I can but don’t often want to. I would rather not write ever. but it is something I do at work all the time. By choice. My conflict isn’t that it’s hard, or not a lot of fun, it’s that it’s me.
I guess my conflict is me. And accepting me. At least enough to believe a blog could be shared. Maybe that’s it. I don’t mind writing. It’s fine, if no one is reading it.
When someone is reading it? Onlyl if I am in a community that I feel safe in. I think I've found one now, a community, where I may be safe to be in.
Writing can be such a public conflict.
Ultimately, all these blogs are about leadership and that’s what this post is ultimately about.
Leadership is communication, it is writer’s block, it is self acceptance FAR more than it is acceptance of others, and it is public.
People will watch you flop about and struggle. And that isn’t the problem with leadership. The problem is things like people thinking it is something else or people not being trained on how to flop and struggle on stage in front of everyone.
There is an art to flopping and struggling in public. And success to be had there.
Friday, December 12, 2014
Is It Worth It?
I don't transition well during the mornings and had no idea what was being asked. 'Is what worth what?'
'Is the raise in pay worth the stress of becoming an administrator and leaving the classroom?'
And I went on this really weird existential brain trip before I could provide an answer:
1. Few jobs are ever really worth the money we receive for them: the hours, the stress, the yelling. In examining my life and the few remaining minutes of it I have left after commuting, working and sleeping (sheesh I feel lousy now), I came across a happiness/money study from the Wall Street Journal:
In two years, so after six years of being in administration, I will finally make more money than I did as a teacher (also coaching a couple seasons yearly). For my first two years as an administrator, the teachers I supervised made significantly more money than I did (yes a tad bit confusing). So, even now the financial payoff is hard to see if not downright depressing some days.
2. The worth I am seeing is in my growth. Work is fascinating. I get to make decisions, take responsibility and find solutions. A major reason I left the classroom was to impact the institution, both the specific school but also education in general. I was tired of feeling powerless. I also left out of curiosity. I felt an urge to explore other areas of education. And again, every day in the last four years of administration has been very challenging AND interesting. I also left the classroom to investigate leadership, in particular helping develop leadership in adults. Changing a student's life will always be rewarding, but there's something magical in helping an adult change. They've had more disappointment, scars, proof that life will be what it is. When an adult begins to redefine life . . . well that's worth it.
People looking to leave the classroom to get away from it, to find better money, will most likely be disappointed. For each minute spent there is no more efficient salary toward happiness than teaching. I would suggest never leaving the classroom for the money. Leave it for the growth; leave it in order to re-enter it as a changed person. Leave in order to make it better for others.
SO, that whole stream of conscious passed with the two teachers waiting expectantly.
'No, then?'
'Um, I guess it is and isn't. Read my blog.' And I walked upstairs to see what the yelling was in the freshman hallway.
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
Thank You Dad: for dropping me on my head
And most of the things, although usually involving hard work and risk, could be categorized as play. Our play could have gotten us killed (we actually weren't reckless although the stakes were quite high). And we were giggling about some of the more hair-brained moments.
Is my father stupid? Well, here's the thing. I, and he since his dad did the same, aren't qualified to answer that. But fascinatingly, there is a professor who is. Dr. Stuart Brown relatively recently investigated the importance of play, and play he calls 'rough and tumble'. He's got a great TEDx that is nearly 30 minutes long. Absolutely worth the time:
The video in a nutshell: play is vital for healthy development as well as learning. He talks about various types of play--play for the sake of play, challenge base and complex play, and rough and tumble play. It's the rough and tumble that will give you pause. Researchers took a group of rats (guess they act and think a lot like humans!) and suppressed rough and tumble play in 1/2 of them. Being a normal part of their behavior, this wasn't easy. The other group was allowed to engage in it, bumps and all. After the behavior was suppressed in the one group, the researchers subjected the entire population to a cat scent. Turns out rats are hardwired to run from the scent of a cat. All rats did in fact run and hide.
Here's the crazy part. After some time, the rough and tumble rats poked their heads out and investigated their surroundings. At first tentatively and then more aggressively until they resumed 'normal' behavior. The suppressed rats?
They stayed hidden until they died. Absent rough and tumble play, rats couldn't negotiate dangerous situations. They just shut down.
Then, there's this Huffington Post article I just found (thanks Karen): 'Are We Raising a Generation of Helpless Kids?' (click on the image for the link)
This article in a nutshell: today's youth (American) is showing more anxiety, depression than any group and less success and determination. Quite frankly, they just don't seem to have a realistic grasp on the difficulties of life. During hardship--MANY JUST SHUT DOWN. Honestly scary connection there with the rats. When pressed for a reason, the article suggests:
"[There has been] an obsession with their children's safety in every aspect of their lives.
Instead of letting them go outside to play, parents filled their kid's
spare time with organized activities, did their homework for them,
resolved their conflicts at school with both friends and teachers, and
handed out trophies for just showing up." 1
The line about being obsessed with safety sticks with me. Life is inherently unsafe. It most certainly will end in death for all of us. And yet, we humans are such amazing, resilient creatures. If we never revel in our limits, play with abandon and take some risks, can we really know what we are capable of? The science of play so far says no. Avoiding risk is certain death.
So, dad, thanks for taking me out playing on rocks, and when I fell and you tried to catch me but missed? It's ok. Turns out the knock to my head was good for me.
1.Goodman, Mickey. "Are We Raising a Generation of Helpless Kids?" The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 13 Feb. 2012. Web. 02 Dec. 2014.
Monday, November 24, 2014
An Injury to Ourselves: no formal system for training our leaders
Compared to the system for teachers (which everyone loves to attack despite how thorough it is), there is no cohesive, comprehensive training system for educational leaders. Even more problematically, a significant number of administrators have significantly less experience in education than the teachers they are leading. So there also isn't really a systemic way for leaders to arise. Most dream, stumble or are pushed into leadership roles.
And then are abandoned. A supervisor of mine monologued recently about the perils of admin--leaders get more sick, overweight and have higher divorce than their staff. Um, no wonder!
Let's fix this folks; leadership is too important to leave to luck and/or perseverance:
1. Identify experienced teachers for their leadership characteristics:
Building roles and participation
Ability to influence
Instructional leadership
Ability to vision
Passion for adult mentoring
Ability to influence
Instructional leadership
Ability to vision
Passion for adult mentoring
2. Then let's make an initiative to give leaders experiences and mentoring while they are still in the classroom:
Shadow administrators
Lead committees
Run PD
Lead student discipline cases
Lead committees
Run PD
Lead student discipline cases
Receive direct instruction on how to: communicate, give instructional feedback, have an administrative mindset
3. Have coursework and practicums built around difficult conversations and managing stress. The job of an administrator is CONFLICT. There is no equivalent for it in the classroom experience and so conflict training and resolution must be taught. My Eds didn't even whisper about this.
4. Have practicing administrators communicate directly with colleges like mentor teachers do.
Ultimately, the student teacher model is hard to fault when it is done well--a mentor teaches, guides and then transitions the mentee into the role with significant feedback. Let's do the same for our leaders.
Ultimately, the student teacher model is hard to fault when it is done well--a mentor teaches, guides and then transitions the mentee into the role with significant feedback. Let's do the same for our leaders.
Tuesday, September 9, 2014
This Job is Killing Me
I spent all last year and this summer denying that I felt death's raspy breath in the quiet, alone moments I spent finishing the paperwork (forms, grades, emails) all the daily crises wouldn't allow me to finish within the work day. Until reality reared up and smacked me silly with impossibility. It didn't matter how hard I worked, how efficient I was. No matter what I did, there would always be more work than I could finish.
So, what does a person do with that? Ignore it! Ignorance was the key. I needed to embrace ignorance.
Check out this link: http://t.co/rL8QNIHqlq
The basic premise: no matter how hard leaders work, how efficiently, how much they delegate, there will always be more work than can be done within a 24 hour period. Those of us guilty that we took a 4 hour nap from 1 am to 5 am? Never sleep again, and it won't matter. THERE'S NOTHING WE CAN DO! The answer is in what we choose NOT TO DO!
Great article. Anyone in leadership, I know you have challenged yourself to be more efficient, organized and focused. You never eat lunch. You have long forgotten the taste of sleep. Enough pointless masochism: read the article! There are things in our work we just need to ignore.
Secondly, I needed to RETHINK stress. Previously I thought stress was killing me. But I recently came across a video that postulated it was how I thought about stress that was killing me. My thoughts and not stress were killing me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcGyVTAoXEU
The YouTube title says it all: How to Make Stress Your Friend
It's really a great video, life changing in fact. The basic premise?
Stress is good; stress is necessary. The fact we have learned that stress is bad, causes the common cold, heart attacks and alcoholism (etc.etc.etc.) is actually a LIE.
It isn't stress. It is what we think of stress. If we can learn to appreciate stress, well, this is the mind-blow of the video, if we can learn to appreciate stress, all the medical harm DISAPPEARS!
Conclusion
You're busy people; you're leaders trying to be more efficient, effective and competent. If all you do is read the highlighted portions of this blog you will know all you need to know: ignore what needs to be ignored AND appreciate stress as a good and necessary part of your job.
And please, go to sleep. This job isn't killing you. It is saving you, just as you have promised your profession toward saving others.
Thank you leaders for every thing every day you do to make this world a better place. We all appreciate you!
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
Authentic Happiness
I can't fully explain why I put this image here, except that it made me laugh. I like to see it. For someone with my sense of (or lack of) humor, I would like to see this every day. And I would probably laugh at it every day. Which reminds me of something a mentor of mine share with me a little while ago.
Dan Hickey (The Hickey Group) was listening to me gripe about my day in leadership until he really couldn't take anymore. "Authentic happiness," he said to me, abruptly interrupting my monologue. We were sitting at the last known Caribou Coffee in existence.
"What?" The barista was steaming some milk to death and distracting me.
"Go to authentic happiness."
I looked around. "Is that a place?"
"It's a website. Do a Google search. The basic problem with leadership is the job controls you. It will throw crisis after crisis your way, most of which isn't 'fun'. You need to know what makes you happy." He took a sip of his coffee and leaned back from the table.
"But I do . . . "
"Dan cut me off. "You think you know, but go to the site. It's pretty interesting. Basically it will ask you a series of questions and it will tell you your top strengths, in rank order. Try the 'Brief Strengths Test'. Those strengths are places you need to spend more time 'in'. For instance, humor. What if one of your top strengths is humor? You need to daily schedule in something about humor. Or what if your strength is 1:1 conversations. Have any today or was it all group presentations?"
"All group presentation. I ran professional development all day." Just thinking of it made me cringe.
He could tell I didn't consider is a strength. "With leadership there will always be tasks outside of your comfort range. Each day will be an experience pinballing from one crisis to another. You might be able to plan for that, but you can't control that. What you can do is control what you're doing BETWEEN the crises. Schedule some happiness time every day. You need it."
He took another sip of his coffee. "So, what makes you happy?"
Click on the image to the right, go to the website, create a free account and see:
Fine, don't think my panda riding a plastic, yellow horse is funny? Try this:
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
Praise Worthy Praise
I do tend to obsess about this conundrum. As a coach, my players seemed to need negativity in order to change behaviors; in other words, they never seemed to respond to positive feedback. Unless I was roaring epithets from the sideline like a lunatic they made the same mistakes one (long) game after another. To get positive results I felt like I needed to be a monster. I mean, it seems like too many of the people who learn and achieve the most have AWFUL upbringings. Einstein, Oprah, Hemingway. I got pretty good at a sport, for instance, and I attribute it to a horrible coach. He pulled me in front of the whole team and roasted me. I vowed to never let that happen again! (Shoot, just re-lived the pre-teen moment a little there.)
No matter how many times being nice seemed useless, I can't believe that being evil to children is the way to produce great learning.
Which should explain my delight when I came across a Carol Dweck video (thank you Kate Murray!). The basic premise? How we, the educator, interact with our learners matters greatly. Carol quickly explained why my players didn't grow. But it wasn't because I was giving 'positive' praise. Actually, they weren't growing because my praise was, well, BAD. (Again, perhaps they grew when I scared the hormones out of them, but I hated myself.) Going nutshell here, according to Carol Dweck, good praise focuses on effort and process. Ineffective praise focuses on right vs. wrong, whether I'm being nice or screaming.
Carol's findings are staggering. When students are praised for correctness, they get worse over time and avoid taking risks: they become pleasers. Even more significantly, they become LESS correct over time. Conversely, when students are praised for effort and perseverance, they tend to take more risks, try harder tasks and ultimately are MORE accurate, more correct. Well, color me a praiser!
(Ok, odds are you skipped past the video. DON'T. Watch the video. It does a far better job than I do.)
I watched this video and felt immediately changed. Learning takes time; students grows subtly. As I hugged my daughter and for the first time praised how hard she worked in the swimming pool versus how proper her form was, I didn't care if I was right or wrong. I am not sure if there were visible results in her performance. I loved how big her smile was.
And the next day? She crushed her 100 meter lap time . . . for 50 meters. Then she mistimed her breath and swallowed 1/2 the pool. As she came up to me coughing and hacking, I didn't mention once how silly it was to breath water. Nope, 'great effort kid. Great effort.'
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