Entitlement:Stewardship as Oil:Water

The main reason I chose the twitter account name “Greenmen Steward” is because I wanted to convey a sense of servant leadership in the title.  Being a steward is basically being a servant to others by taking care of something that is not yours.  In my opinion, public service and especially leadership should be looked at as a form of stewardship because it is not about “me” or “mine”, but rather “us” and “ours”.  This has been a focus of mine since reading Thomas Sergiovani’s “Moral Leadership: Getting to the Heart of School Improvement” over a decade ago.  

Another book that address servant leadership is Simon Sinek’s “ Leaders Eat Last”.  In this book he points out that administrators who utilize a shared leadership philosophy promote a culture which leads to leadership opportunities that are more dispositional in nature.  There is a biological connection to this idea that Sinek eloquently points out in his book, which is a great quick read, but if you want the shortened version you can check it out in his video Why Leaders Eat Last.  Similarly, this past fall, our administrative team read Urban Meyer’s  book titled “Above the Line” as a “fun” leadership read.  In the book, Meyer explained how sports psychologist  Tim Kight worked with the OSU players and coaches to stay “above the line” by utilizing the “R-factor”.  The “R-factor” is your  “Response” to a situation which is the only thing you can control after an “Event” takes place.  How you respond to an event will determine the “Outcome” and Kight demonstrates the relationship between these three in a simple graphic:  E + R = O.  He goes on to say that when an “event” takes place you should first determine what you want as the “outcome” and then “respond” to the event accordingly.  In short, making decisions that are “intentional” are responses categorized as “above the line” and making decisions that are “impulsive” are categorized as “below the line”.  It is a simple yet impactful way to view how you can respond to any event.  I bring this up because April/May seems to bring out a lot of “entitlement” in schools, which I would categorize as “below the line”.  

As an assistant principal, I used to joke that teenagers have a “false sense of entitlement” that negatively impacted their judgement, but I am finding we can all fall into a sense of entitlement if we are not careful and using Kight’s E +R = O can help us to stay above the line.  I recently came across an article title “16 Signs You Have a Sense of Entitlement Complex”.  The article is a look into human psychology, but does hit home on a few occasions that I see taking place in schools throughout the year and especially in April/May.  Here are the 16 symptoms of entitlement:
1.  You impose unrealistic demands onto your family, children, friends, acquaintances, lovers, employees, and/or employers.

2.  You tend to feel sorry for yourself if things don’t work out the way you wanted (self-pity), and openly advertise this in melodramatic, attention-seeking ways.

3.  People have called you a “bully”, “manipulative”, “ruthless”, “egotistical”, “vain”, or a “liar”.

4.  You believe that you deserve happiness and go to great, sometimes extreme lengths to ensure that happens, often at the expense of others.

5.  You punish people when they don’t do what you want either passively (e.g. silent treatment, gossiping, spreading rumors) or aggressively (e.g. shouting, verbally/physically abusing).

6.  In order to “succeed” in life, you believe in going to any lengths.

7.  You constantly see other people as competition or “threats”.

8.  You tend to exhibit many double-standards in the way you behave/interact with other people, e.g. I can be late and forget my duties and commitments, but YOU can’t; I can treat myself, but YOU can’t; I can abuse or disrespect you, but YOU can’t to ME.

9.  You tend to take more than give in friendships and relationships.

10.  You tend to look out for yourself, your needs and desires more than anyone else almost 100% of the time.

11.  You have a hard time negotiating or compromising.

12.  You have a deep-seated conviction that you have priority and should always come first, even at the expense of stepping on others.

13.  People always seem to be offended or upset by what you do or say.

14.  You generally think that you are better, or more important, than other people and other people should see this and unquestioningly respect you.

15.  You crave admiration and adoration.

16.  You like to assert your dominance or superiority over other people, finding it second nature.

    All in all, these are symptoms that are evidence of actions “below the line” and are results of a poor choice for the  “R-factor” in Kight’s E + R = O, because they more than often don’t lead to the “outcome” you want...especially if you are a steward of the schools.  In short entitlement and stewardship don’t go together, they are like oil and water.  As teachers and instructional leaders we are all stewards of the school.  If this is the case, then entitlement has no place in schools on any level and we have to do our best to be sure we are making “above the line” responses to the events taking place around us everyday...even in April and May.

The Value of Cognitive Candy: from our Ancestors to our Posterity

I just got back from a 38 mile bike ride this morning and am still feeling the euphoric high from the endorphins coursing through my veins.  This is the time of year I start getting out on the bike more and I can feel my mood changing.  While some people say they do their “best thinking” in the shower, often my “best thinking” takes place as I am traveling down an empty road on the bike.  As it turns out, there is a biological explanation behind this and it is something that we, as educators, should consider when thinking about balance with our students.

John Medina, in his book titled “Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School”explained that we humans evolved to be able to think on the move because if we didn’t we weren’t surviving and naturally, our brains evolved/changed to help facilitate our survival.  Studies have shown that “exercisers outperform couch potatoes in tests that measure long-term memory, reasoning, attention and problem-solving skill” (Medina, 2014, p.24).  Although there have not been as much research on this topic completed on children, many of whom seem to be moving constantly, but the trends basically show that kids pay better attention to their subjects in school when they have been active.  As mentioned earlier, there is a biological explanation for that.

While your brain only makes up about 2% of your total body weight, it consumes close to 20% of your body’s energy.  That energy comes in the form of glucose which is the basic currency of energy the body uses and it is a product of your food being digested.  Glucose circulates throughout your body via your blood and, when combined with oxygen in your blood, the glucose helps to fuel your cells.  By exercising, your body increases the circulation of the blood which results in getting your glucose and oxygen (contained in the blood) to your brain cells faster.  The more you exercise the more efficient your body becomes at getting these two vital molecules to your brain cells and, by the way, the more efficiently the blood carries away the bi-products of energy production (carbon dioxide as one example) from your brain cells.  The result is a relative  increase of cognitive function of your brain leading to better performance (thinking & learning).  Interestingly, “exercise also aids in the development of healthy tissue by stimulating one of the brain’s most powerful growth factors” (Medina, 2014, p.31) called BDNF (Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factors). These growth factors are especially impactful in the hippocampus part of your brain which is deeply involved in human cognition (Medina, 2014).  In short, Medina explains, physical activity is cognitive candy for your brain.

So let’s take these findings and extrapolate to our students in school.  We find ourselves pushing hard to raise the academic rigor of our schools, so we can set our students up for success.  It is under this rationale that many schools have cut back on the number of recess periods for their elementary students and offered physical education waivers at the high school level if students are involved in various activities, some of which have high physical demands while others not so much.  We have also assigned large amounts of homework to our students in the name of raising rigor which basically sends our students home to work a second shift of school rather than getting outside to play (K-5) or work/participate in activities (6-12).  The homework, by the way, also leads to a lack of sleep if students are involved in activities as many stay up late to complete it and get up earlier the next morning for school.  Medina addresses the impact of sleep on the brain (Brain Rule #3: Sleep Well, Think Well) in his book as well.  There are many other examples, but the point I think I am trying to make is to urge all of us to help our students to find balance in their school lives, so it can carry over to their lives outside of school.

Helping our students, and our own children for that matter,  to find balance between the demands of a rigorous academic curriculum and a healthy lifestyle which includes exercise can actually lead to greater cognitive growth (learning) for our kids and, more importantly, help them to find a healthy balance in their lives.  It is a “stop and sharpen the saw” sort of thing that acts to positively impact the brain.  I haven’t even mentioned the value of  including the “Arts” in that balance, between “Academics” and “Athletics”, because it is a topic for another day and I think those endorphins in my body I mentioned earlier  are starting subside anyway.  Ultimately, I guess the challenge for all of us, especially educators, is to find the best ways to incorporate exercise, or physical activity in some form, as a sort of cognitive candy in our schools.  I believe, like the positive impact “movement” had on our ancestors, this movement will have the same positive effects on our posterity.  

Guilty As Charged!

Guilty as charged.  I spent the first fifteen years of my career as a Science teacher, who was passionate about the topics covered and loved working with young adults at the high school level.  I think the kids bought into that passion and really seemed to enjoy learning about the various topics covered in each of the classes I taught.  Students came back to visit on college break or would stop by to say, “hello” if they were still in the building but not in my class.  If you asked me at that time, I thought I was doing a pretty good job of teaching and if you asked me what I taught I would, without hesitation, answer Biology or Chemistry or Environmental Science or whatever the subject was at the time.  I don’t ever remember saying, “I teach kids.”  That is why I am guilty as charged.  

It is not that I didn’t care about the kids,  because I did very much, and I think they did pick that up from me (they are very good at that).  I also understood the importance of the students to grow in their ability to critically think and communicate what they were learning.   However, I have to admit, I was in the mindset of what Larry Geni would call a “curriculum transfer model” of teaching.  I thought that it was my job to be sure the students were given the information they needed in order to have the opportunity to be successful students and it was their job to take it all in.  In his FREE on-line book titled “A Teacher’s Handbook”, Geni describes the purpose of a curriculum transfer model of school  is to “transfer a broad and rigorous curriculum into the minds of students”.  I believe that is a common view on teaching  that most educators share. Of course there are many of those  teachers who work very hard to help students understand the material and spend countless hours, much like I did, helping students before, after, and during school, making “quality” assessments, and trying to learn to become the best teacher possible, but there still is that focus on the curriculum transfer aspect.  Geni argues that we educators should make the shift to a “preparing for life model”.

In a “preparing for life model”, the purpose of school is to help prepare students to lead productive, engaged, and satisfying lives”.  As I read his description, I said, “well...yeah...that is what I was trying to do”. [Honestly...please see “Schools as a Greenhouse” or No Child Left in my Basement if you doubt me.  :)]  However, Geni does a great job of describing this purpose and boiling it down to a focus on the students as learners.  Once that mindshift is made, everything you do is impacted and changes how you approach teaching.  By the way, changing how you teach doesn’t make what you did as a teacher prior to that realization wrong, it makes what you are going to do as a teacher after that realization better ( Red Queen Effect).  This shift changes how we: plan, assess, assign or don’t assign homework, ask questions, listen to the kids, collaborate with others, and challenge ourselves to grow as educators.  What that looks like and how that gets done is going to look differently K-12 as well as from class to class within a grade level or even year to year within a class, because the focus will be on helping THIS group of learners to be more prepared to lead productive, engaged, and satisfying lives.  

If you were like me and hadn’t heard of this guy before, I would encourage you to check out his website titled  “The Field Guide to Student Directed Learning” where he states he is sharing “two books, a blog, and a whole lot of tools”.  I haven’t looked through it all yet, but have enjoyed getting lost in the reading and reflecting on how it could apply to our learners.  It could help your school to make that shift from a curriculum transfer model to one that helps learners to lead productive, engaged, and satisfying lives and that is hard to argue against.   Enjoy!

Instructional Leader = Questioner not Expert

I hate the term administrator, as it applies to schools, because in my mind it connotes “manager”.  As a principal, I understood managing the building was a part of my job, but I didn’t feel that the term administrator expressed the most important part of a principal’s job which is one of instructional leadership.  However, instructional leadership does not mean “expert” as well because the teachers of any particular grade level K-12 should be the true experts on the staff.  They are the ones that have specific training in a particular topic and who have first hand knowledge of what works and what doesn’t in the classroom.   The role of the instructional leader should instead be one of nurturing a common vision and overall support of that vision across the curriculum by having a deep enough understanding of the curriculum to ask the right questions to the right experts.  Hence, they are a leader of instruction in each of these areas because they understand and communicate the direction the school should be moving, but not necessarily the details of how that will look on a daily basis in the classroom.

As you might guess, in order to be an effective  instructional leader, you have to have a vision to constantly refer to which basically acts as a compass for all decisions or actions.  I would encourage all instructional leaders to adopt a greenhouse philosophy for schools.  Schools run as a greenhouse focus on nurturing students as learners, rather than test takers, by focusing on the skills that will allow them to be successful (the “roots” in this example) beyond the classroom (i.e. beyond test scores).   Instructional Leaders that look at schools as a greenhouse communicate a vision or message of the importance of “nurturing the students’ roots” and as a result, should communicate that simple message as often as possible to all stakeholders (students, parents, staff, and community members).    However, it is more than just communicating the vision, but rather asking the questions in relation to the vision that is the key.

Instructional leaders should be asking themselves how does any particular decision or action they support impact: student learning, teacher growth, or school improvement as it pertains to running a school as a greenhouse (the vision).   I mentioned that instructional leaders will not be, nor should be, the experts in the room.  The expectations should be for the teachers to be the experts based on their educational background, classroom experience, and professional drive.  However, that does not mean that questions are not asked of the experts As an example,

• If a group of teachers are looking for the school to purchase a computer program to help students better understand a topic (student learning) the instructional leader or better yet the other teachers need to ask the question(s) that basically lead back to “How does this nurture our students’ roots?” (the vision).  
• If a proposal from a PLC team to attend a professional development workshop (teacher growth) comes across the instructional leader’s desk than the question “How does this nurture our students’ roots?” (the vision) must be asked.
• If a team of teachers has done research and is looking to change the schedule of the building to lead to a better school environment (school improvement) it begs the question, “If we do that, how does this nurture our students’ roots?”.  

The point being that whatever the “vision” of the school is, it must be revisited on a daily and sometimes hourly basis by everyone within the school.  So the main purpose of the instructional leader is not to be the expert, but rather remind the experts and support them on working toward that vision.  Now, to be clear, the actual question should not always be “How does this nurture our students’ roots?”, but that should be the underlying meaning.  The actual questions could sound more like:

• “How will using a computer program help our students to become more fluent in their math as compared to using manipulatives in class?” or
• “What are the goals of this professional development that you hope to bring back to the classroom to improve student learning?” or
• “If the schedule were to change, how will this positively and negatively impact the student’s ability to grow as learners?”  

This line of questioning, with a focus on student learning by the instructional leader, should be the non-negotiable expectations for everyone in the school if we expect our students to “leave school ready to positively contribute to the environment”.

In his book titled “Creating Innovators”, Tony Wagner (@DrTonyWagner) emphasizes the importance of educators having a sense of urgency to develop innovators (i.e.nurture students roots) over that of a sense of complacency of maintaining the status quo. Instructional leaders can help to support teachers to have that sense of urgency, no matter what the subject area, by keeping the vision of the school in mind with each decision both in and out of the classroom.   In my mind, the vision is the non-negotiable piece of all this for the instructional leader to relay as the expectations.  Clearly, instructional leaders have to have enough understanding to ask the right questions to the experts/teachers in the moment as it relates to the vision, but in the end they should not be THE experts.