Not only is failure an option…it’s a great option

In world of leadership, sometimes you hear “failure is not an option.” I agree. When life and limb is on the line, when the safety and security of our children is in jeopardy, when the costs of failure are simply too high to endure, failure is not an option. However, in the world of learning, not only is failure an option, it’s the norm.  If we don’t try how will we know what is possible? Without failure, there really is limited opportunity for growth and reflection. At last night’s Digital Learner Series in Surrey, the room was full of teachers who are risk takers, pioneers, and trailblazers in creative ways to support learning through technology. I bet that for most if not all of teachers in the room, on any given day, they’ve had their moments of failure in the name of exploration in learning. Not every learning strategy works first time. Not every lesson runs like a well oiled machine. This post is to all those teachers who try, explore, fail, get back up and move forward.

The Wright brothers pioneered flight. They failed numerous times. They learned, they adjusted and eventually they made it happen. The pictures we see are them soaring over the beach at Kitty Hawk. But the images you rarely see are the ones with their crumpled plane on the ground once again as they head back to the drawing board. I heard once that they had well over 100 failed attempts, but we don’t count the failures in people, we see the successes and we celebrate with them.

There is a Chinese Proverb that states:

• Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up.

To all those who teach our children on a daily basis, take calculated risks in the name of adventures in learning, we admire the work you do and we know that your students are better for it. Yes it is true that failure is not an option in some circumstances but, in most cases, not only is it an option, it’s a great option as long as we learn and move forward. What better role models can we have other than teachers who show that they are human and are on this learning journey together with our students.

Why do we become educators?

At a recent workshop, George Couros (@gcouros) challenged participants to blog in response to the following questions:

• why did you become an educator; and
• what legacy do you wish to leave?

I have thought for a while about what to say in response as his questions and George inspired me to go back to my grandfather who was my first inspiration to teach. I reminisced about him and about days gone by. I also thought about how for many teachers, the roots of “why teach” run deep in the blood and in the generations who came before us in our families. I have decided to write a bit of a family story and so I hope not to bore people but it has a point. I am not sure of all the core facts, but what I write below is what I know of our family history. For me, what it is to be a teacher is deeply rooted in the social injustices of the past and in the hope for a better future. That is just one of the promises of public education that I believe we see unfold every day.

In his dying days, I visited my grandfather, William (Bill) Tinney in his care residence in Langley. Once, I asked him what it took to be a great teacher. I remember the morning well. He leaned toward me in the dim light. The cracks on his face and the lines on his hands holding the cane showed his age but the twinkle in his eye showed his unwavering energy to talk about schools and about being a teacher. “Just stay out of their light lad, just stay out of their light” was all he said.

When I probed more with my grandfather about being a teacher, he told me of his journey and what it meant to him and his family. He came from the prairies in the late 20′s and travelled to the Yukon to support the opening of a school. When he was ready to teach, Bill was offered a job at one of two new schools, St. Michael’s Residential School in Alert Bay, Northern Vancouver Island and Chooutla Residential School in Carcross, Yukon. Bill chose Carcross and began the journey to move his family of seven to be with him. What he discovered when he arrived and what he then did cast in stone the path for his children and ultimately, for his grandchildren to follow.

When Bill got to Carcross and began teaching in the school he quickly became very disillusioned with what he found in residential school. In one of the pictures we have, it shows his handwriting at the bottom stating his strong beliefs about the effects of residential schools, calling them ill equipped and a token effort. This undoubtedly was only part of his disillusionment that we have all come to understand as the legacy of residential schools.

Deeply troubled with what he saw, Bill left the residential school to begin a new school where he hoped to attract sufficient students to support a non-residential, publicly funded school. Our family story goes that the school was virtually in the home of my grandfather. The image here shows the school as a detached building but my father tells of lessons in the living room of the house. Perhaps the school and house were one and the same. Needless to say, the Tinney family of four boys and one girl had their lives consumed by the running of a school and attending to learning.

My grandfather was determined that education should be practical, relevant and to support the lives of students “where they were.” His pictures of classrooms showed his style of having students work on projects that not only taught them skills no doubt but also contributed to the construction of the school. In the image of the carpentry shop, he writes about making screens for the school and “more relevant” are the words he uses to describe this manual arts class.

Life in Carcross for the Tinney family must have been both inspiring and harsh. The cold winters merged with the unending sun of Yukon summers. My father, Art Tinney speaks so fondly of Carcross and the Yukon. His time there with his brothers Jim, Roy, Ron and sister Gwen was full of adventure and wonder. There is also no doubt that the entire time was an unending lesson in life, nature and practicality.

When time came to leave the Yukon, my dad’s family came to Vancouver. The walls of Kitsilano Secondary hold the graduating photos of my father’s family. Then for the boys, it was off to UBC for careers in, what else, teaching. My father’s early teaching career took him to Squamish near Pemberton. There his brother Jim was principal at a school my dad calls Moshiter Elementary although I don’t know if the school still exists. His other brother, Ron, went off to be a principal in Port Alberni. My father was offered a job as principal at the location of one of the first schools his father was offered, Alert Bay. After accepting the offer, my dad Art moved his wife and family to Alert Bay to work in the public school where his job, as he describes it, was to entice students out of St. Michael’s and into a public non-residential school. This is where my first memories as a child began, in Alert Bay with the specter of St. Michael’s always loomed in the far end of the island’s harbour.

My father’s education career was characterized by a deep and unyielding love of learning. His passion for knowledge was insatiable and he had a unique gift to pass it to students. Art, Music, Math, French, English, Carpentry, Science, whatever the subject, he seemed to be fluent in it all. I spent many years in his classes in a variety of settings and he was loved by students. He was a free spirit, challenged the “system” and did what he believed was right for students.

My dad’s brother, Ron, went on to work at UVic in teacher education. His passion was special education and he was a psychologist. Countless times I have met teachers who have been inspired by Ron and his work at UVic. They always shared that he made a difference for them.

Jim, unfortunately, died very young as did his brother Roy. Jim, as I said above was principal in Pemberton when he passed away and Roy went on to be a professor at Washington State University where he was head of the R. L. Albrooks Hydraulics laboratory among other major portfolios in his all too short career.

I began this post with George Couros’ question about why did we become a teacher. To me, I could not answer George’s question without explain that, to me, being a teacher is simply part of who I am. It is in the blood and my brother Paul and sister Leslie, both now retired, have continued the teaching legacy that my father and his father began. Their children also now are teachers in Kentucky and in Australia so the family trend seems to be continuing. I believe that our family story is not unique as I know many teachers today who come from families where careers in education run deep.

The thing that has also come along with our family legacy is the notion that teaching is about social justice and democracy. We believe that teaching strengthens the very roots of democracy and the fabric of society can only be healthy with a strong and vibrant public education system. Family debates were numerous and passionate about politics, democracy and fighting for those less fortunate. We believe education is the great equalizer.

I am a teacher because I believe I can make a difference. I believe that teachers everywhere make a difference. Schools are fundamentally built on the relationships between teachers and students and everything flows from there. I have often quoted Ursula Franklin that schools are organisms not mechanisms. For me, that points to George’s second question which was “what legacy do you wish to leave”?

I consider myself very fortunate to have worked in large and small systems. Surrey is huge by BC education standards hosting about 12.5% of the entire province’s student population. We are a large system and my hope is that we continue to respond to our community and the pubic in a way that shows we do indeed care about every child. Our district is an amazingly diverse place with so much incredible stuff happening. With well over 9000 employees and 70,000 students, I am sure that the “system” must seem daunting to any individual with a concern or question. My personal hope is to leave a legacy here that has the system seem small, human and responsive to any individual’s concern. I am but one person in a large system, but single steps forward together is the way we climb mountains. We are fortunate to have so many strong leaders in Surrey and I consider myself lucky to be part of the team.

My grandfather’s journey began with wanting to make a difference for children in a land and school that was so small. He had a belief that children were gifted and the role of the teacher was to give them guidance and to let them shine. These beliefs were at the heart of his early words to me. I became a teacher for similar reasons. I love working with children of all ages and I continue to marvel at their gifts, their contributions, and their future prospects.

I spent today in a workshop for secondary department heads. In a room of about 60 from one area of the district, what I see is caring teachers working together to support students. The vision that my grandfather held for public education is alive and well in Surrey. I feel fortunate to be along for the ride and I’m sure I share a similar family story to many other teachers whose parents and perhaps grandparents came before them on this journey that we all know so well.

Is email killing productivity and reducing your IQ?

The ping of a new email catches my attention as I sit in a meeting with a colleague. The two of us are in his office and we’re talking about an issue that needs resolution. As we talk, behind and over his right shoulder, I can see on his monitor that the ping means that he has a new email.  In the familiar Outlook window, I can see that his highlighted cursor has dropped down one notch and while he was up to date on his email, our conversation and this recent ping has him one down. It is the start of a familiar pattern.

Throughout our chat, I continue to hear that familiar “you’ve got email” ping and I notice his cursor falling lower and lower on his screen as the email piles up. By the end of our talk, he has a completely new page of unread emails – the cost of taking time to speak to someone rather than attending to the non- stop onslaught of email that we face every day. I leave his office wondering about email – is it really “helping” us in our daily work? Does it actually improve communication? Does it actually increase productivity or is the daily tsunami of electronic communications leaving us drowning in a river of information while gasping for the breath of true personal connections in the workplace and quality time with our colleagues on issues that matter and need our undivided attention?

In most of the meetings I now attend or chair, almost everyone will be using an electronic device during the meeting. It would be naive to think that they are all taking copious notes, no, they are time splicing their attention between the topic of conversation,  their email, and sometimes twitter or other social media channels. Perhaps this is effective use of time but we are educators and we know the research on multitasking which is…it cannot be done. It’s true, you can chew gum and walk at the same time but you cannot do a multiplication problem and write a poem simultaneously. The myth of multitasking has long been revealed. I much prefer the term time splicing where we devote thin slices of our attention between multiple tasks hoping that we can weave the threads together. The end result, as you might imagine and as supported by research, is that when our attention is divided our productivity drops and each of the tasks we juggle gets shortchanged beyond the simple loss of time.

Multitaskers have long been thought of as gifted organizers of time. We marvel at their ability to juggle multiple inputs. However, when researchers delve into these gifts, they discover the gift is empty. Ophir, one of the lead researchers at Stanford’s Communications between Humans and Interactive Media Lab stated about multitaskers “We kept looking for what they’re better at, and we didn’t find it.” Research not only shows that multitasking doesn’t work, it actually shows that it may impair brain functioning. So this is not something you want to be proud of or wish to see in children.

How much do people split their attention and time? A recent infographic that I found suggests that 67% of people emailed during a date, 45% while in a movie and 33% while at church. Researchers at Kings College in London suggest that “constant exposure to e-mail and other multitasking-friendly technology temporarily lowers IQ by 10 points–or about as much as skipping a night’s sleep.”

On more than one occasion, I have asked everyone at a meeting to go tech-less. Blackberries and iPhones/iPads down. If you ever want a strong reaction from a group, just try it. People are not only lost without their devices which have become more like appendages than accessories, they are deeply offended by the thought of someone who would dare to cut them off even for 15 minutes.

I do not believe for a minute that this time-spliced multitasking phenomena may change but I think it is worthy of a workplace conversation. For one example, if everyone is on technology most of the day why are we asking them to “come in to the office”? With environmental sustainability an issue and looking for cost savings around every corner, why would we not consider working from home as a serious workplace option? Avoid the commute, stay home to be available for family if needed, save the environment, sleep longer without having to prepare for what is likely 1-2 hours a day on the road.

As we are rethinking education we need to also start rethinking the workplace in general. As educators we criticize the industrial model of learning with students proceeding through strict rotations of blocks in discreet subject areas yet, in office structures, people still come to work, fit into their cubicle, and begin their 8 hour day connected to a computer. Given that we are more connected to each other than ever before do we really need to be sitting next to each other all day long too? Perhaps as we think about 21st Century Learning, we can also think about 21st Century workplaces. Places where work happens when you want, where you want and in a time suitable to your needs. Of course this couldn’t work for all jobs, but perhaps it could for many.

For many executives and managers, we spend time meeting to resolve issues, plan and organize. If we recognize that today’s structures of meetings have become largely ineffective, then why would we continue to meet in the same way we have for a century? The only difference is that people have devices and since we know meetings are typically largely ineffective, perhaps it should come as no surprise that people are opting out more than ever and spending a lot of meeting time checking email and working remotely.

In more than one blog article I have commented on the effectiveness of meetings. Given the lack of attention by participants, we either need to design and develop better meeting structures, use the technology itself in different ways, or abandon structures that we know are ineffective. However, one of the main reasons that people check email during meetings is simply to help deal with the volume of daily mail. If  most of your day is travelling or in meetings, working face to face with students or parents, then email piles up and awaits your attention.

What about ways to handle the never ending email barrage? Recently, I was lucky enough to have someone spend time with me on Outlook and its functionality to handle email and here were some tips handed to me:

• use the “follow up function” – a very quick calendar reminder for those emails that needed to have action by a specific date;
• use File – to put emails with agenda items for meetings, important things to do or reminders about issues
• establish quick rules for specific routine tasks – this makes organization easy.

However, the more I think about the pressures of email, perhaps the pressure to answer emails and the sheer volume is leaving people with what they feel is little choice other than to spend meeting time answering emails. If you do not manage to get to your emails during a day of meetings and travel, then you are left with at least an hour homework to catch up on email. So the pressure is to somehow find time during the day, in any way you can, to answer your emails. It is small wonder we see people emailing at intersections, at dinner tables, while waiting in lines and, yes, during meetings.

In any organization I have ever worked, when you ask employees for one area of improvement, communications is always on the list. Love it or hate it, email is a major part of any organizations communications framework. So if this is the case, how often do we take the time to discuss our etiquette, our strategy, our skills and our goals with using email? Here are some simple questions for you to consider within your organization:

• what email groups do you have and are all members updated and necessary?
• what etiquette have you discussed on simple things like reply all or replying when cc’d?
• when are people cc’d and what does it mean to be cc’d?
• do you ever approve of using bcc? If so under what conditions?
• how are you using your email signature features to identify/celebrate/promote your organization and its values?
• have you discussed the passing of jokes over email?
• what is your employee awareness of FOI legislation and emails?
• who has security levels to read all emails?
• what policies exist for those with high level security access to email?
• have you trained all employees on the features of email systems to support productivity (e.g. flagging, setting reminders and follow up times, writing rules for sorting)?

The purpose of this blog is to hopefully stimulate some conversation about email within your organization. If research tells us that some of our practices are actually hurting us and in our gut we all know it, then perhaps it’s time to step back, don’t hit send for a moment and simply take a half an hour at some point to put down your devices, take a breath and have a good old fashioned face to face chat about how email is, or is not, working for the organization and for enhancing communications. It could be a refreshing break to improve the likely thousands or tens of thousands of messages flying through the bitsphere in any given moment. Perhaps it is a chance to actually chart a new communications course through your organization. A course that you can share with others, maybe even over email.

On a final hypocritical note, I checked my own email 3 times during the first draft of this blog. Pavlov would be proud.

The Passion and Caring of Today’s Youth

I had the privilege this week to emcee the Wayne Houston Memorial Speech Meet in Surrey. On stage with thirteen teenagers, I got to listen to their short and powerful speeches. So often we hear about teens but to rarely do we pause to hear from them. What I heard on stage was person after person sending messages that they care about the earth, their community, each other, and the future. They are deeply connected through social media, they are proud of their diverse heritage. They are smart, articulate and they don’t pull any punches when they tell adults just what they see. In honour of their speeches, I asked one young man if I may share his speech to  give people a taste of what today’s youth think and feel. It’s just one example, but it was typical of the types of things we heard on that night. The post below is from one of the junior competitors, Amolak Singh from Semiahmoo Secondary. I thank Amolak and his family for allowing me to share his story.

Hello, my name is Amolak Singh.  I am 15 years old, and yet I feel much older.  This summer, my parents let me have a facebook account and I just completely lost my innocence.   Life was so simple before – With my iphone 3GS  I used to spend long hours texting my friends about the latest episodes of Prison Break or download movies onto my IPAD, or better yet play online games with kids around the world, killing hundreds of bad guys with deadly explosive weapons in 3d.

But this summer my happy innocence came to an end when my Dad sent me a friend request and I accepted.    And so just as I was uploading vacation pictures of myself bodysurfing, I got the request.  My Dad was inviting me to join a facebook group on helping child beggars in India.   I ignored the requests for several days, after all I was very busy – I had just upgraded my cell phone to the new iphone 4 and I had apps I needed to download, but finally, I joined. 

I read my first post because the picture intrigued me – it was of a small, really skinny child, with an amputated leg.  I thought the child was doing the posting, but it was a post by a teacher travelling in Mumbai, India, telling about the group of beggar children that sleep on the streets behind her hotel and constantly follow tourists with their pleas for money. 
She was talking about how she had been there for five days and each day had resisted giving any money to them, despite the helpless little children following her everywhere, despite seeing their mutilated bodies and the hunger in their eyes, despite seeing them curled tight into little balls, hugging the alley walls at night as flys and mosquitoes feasted on their scrawny frames. 
 
You see she knew that the children never got to keep any of the money, that the children were owned by organised gangs who had first either bought or stolen the children while very young, then mutilated them to make them appear even more pathetic and now preyed on their earnings from begging.  Giving the beggars money did not help them at all. Everyday, just to keep her sanity, she was posting a new picture every hour of a new child beggar on the group wall for the duration of her 2 week vacation.  Well, I was instantly trapped – I read all her posts from the start of her vacation – I stared into the eyes of each haunting picture, and my heart sank so low, at the magnitude of it all.  

 
Another post linked to a video of children not barely 12 years old working in a sweat shop embroidering clothes with their tiny nimble fingers, pulling needle and thread in and out of the silk material bound for happier, luckier people to dress themselves. 
And yet another post brought before my eyes the gruesome fate of starving children, just skin and bones, dying daily of starvation in the Horn of Africa.  Just one post from one facebook friend led me to countless others, interconnecting me to people around the world – people with information to share about the world we live and the plight of the billions who will never be as lucky as I am, here in Canada.

Now there was no going back to my happy innocence  – to that state of blissful ignorance when I knew nothing of starving millions.  Once informed, it haunts you and you can not become un-informed, no matter how much you may want to.
So I have come to question everything -  how can millions be starving to death while we waste  so much food and spend billions of dollars on useless trivial material nick nacks that we later just throw out . 

I have realized that social media is a powerful tool that in some countries has helped revolutions to happen.  As the children of the information age where the tiniest detail of suffering anywhere is  just a mouse click away, we do not have the luxury of pleading ignorance or innocence. We should not just sit back and use this technology for trivial fun, like I used to but instead become active.

American author, James Baldwin, said it perfectly.
People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.

Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast – Even in Downton Abbey

I worked in a school that had a rule: No Hats. It was just “the way things are done around here“. In my time in the school, no issue was more hotly debated and more emotional than the discussion about whether or not students should be permitted to wear hats at any time. It was about respect, it was about tradition. The power of this cultural norm was never more apparent to me when, one day, a new staff member arrived to the pro-d day, waltzed in, grabbed his coffee and sat down proudly wearing his red tattered baseball cap proudly backwards on his head. You could have cut the air with a knife.

Peter Drucker’s famous quote about the power of culture is simple, clear and correct. Recently when someone used it at a meeting I attended, it also struck me that if someone has a strategy that doesn’t include dealing with culture, then they are seriously misunderstanding what leadership is and how essential it is to always have culture as the core part of your strategy.

For about a year I worked at the district level asking the question to our senior managers “how can the district do the best job of serving schools?” In the end, the overall themes that emerged have proven to me to be timeless in any organizatation. The themes were:

Communication – communicate effectively, in a timely manner, give background information, and don’t have multiple people in the Board Office send the same or similar URGENT memo to schools and expect them to all jump. The often used quote “a lack of organization on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part” comes to mind. Nothing lands worse than the bullet from upon high saying I need this and I need it now. Communication requires planning and communication requires consciously thinking about how things land in the field.

Collaboration – people need time to connect, to get to know each other, and to be part of the process. Consider the above common email issue that happens when urgent messages come from the district to schools. Simple planning, giving the schools a heads up and rationale can go a long way to soften urgent time sensitive messages. Use the structures you have to collaborate so people know that you care and that they are part of the plan. Think of how one or two simple phone calls to key leaders in the field can help soften such an urgent email. A few moments to give a rationale and talk about the need allows the word to spread a little more effectively when talk starts in the field about why things are done.

Obstacles – those higher up in the hierarchy of things should constantly be thinking of what you can do to remove obstacles to work getting done. Sometimes when you’re looking for the enemy you only need to hold up a mirror. Often districts set up routines and rules that not only don’t make sense, they actually halt processes rather than support them. Policies created a decade ago that don’t reflect current reality but simply have become “the way we do things around here” can often be part of the problem. You need to constantly review practices, policies and procedures and ask your self if they really help. Good policy is essential, and conversly, bad policy is useless and will only end up in people doing work-arounds to actually get anything done.

These three themes could emerge in the culture of any large operation when it looks at how to work more effectively together. Classroom teachers may say we just want effective, timely and respectful communication, time to collaborate, and the autonomy to do good work. Does this sound familiar to anyone? It’s the same themes in a different context.

I spend most of my time considering and working at culture. I found a blog  by John Bernard which had the following acronym to describe culture – STAR. This acronym described culture as the Stories, Taboos, Artifacts and Rituals of an organization and it really made sense to me. I also found a good description in this paper which added ceremonies and I agree that they form an important part.

Whatever your strategy for moving an organization forward, I agree with Drucker and it isn’t as much culture eats strategy but that if your strategy doessn’t include culture you aren’t going far. In fact, you may actually go backwards as just another leadership initiative that went nowhere.

The room quietened as the young staff member arrived (slightly late) to the session for all staff, grabbed his coffee and took his seat with his red ball cap on backwards. I was standing at the front presenting at the time, just doing welcomes. What was most interesting to me was that for all our conversations about hats in our school and what an important part of the culture it was for staff, for all the passionate stand and deliver speeches I heard about tradition, integrity and the importance of our no hat rule, not one single staff member asked him to remove his hat. Instead…everyone kind of looked up at me as if to say “Well, Jordan – what are you going to do about that?” I could see that those on both sides of the argument were watching with great interest.

As I normally try to do, in some kind of light, joking way I managed to ask him to remove his cap. He did so most willingly. But this episode reminds me of the power of culture, traditions and norms in a building. In its own way, that small red cap would have been the artifact to dominate the day if it wasn’t dealt with in the moment. Writing about it makes it sound so trivial but I can tell you that in the moment and 100 people looking on – our norms, beliefs, traditions and values were all being challenged and everyone knew it. Not only that, his reputation and relationship with many staff members was being shaken just by the act and, to this day, I don’t know if it was a simple oversight or a purposeful shot at some of his collegues. My careful strategy for the pro-d day was indeed being eaten for breakfast by a simple red cap.

Everything you do unfolds as part of the culture. Every person in the building plays a role in the culture of a building as culture is all about how we relate to each other on a daily basis. What you do today may become part of tradition tomorrow.

The wonderful series Downton Abbey is rife with great material for leadership, culture and traditions. Mr. Carson is among my most favourite characters as he staunchly clings to tradition and standards while watching the world change around him. As a study in tradition and cultural norms, the series is a gem. For the Crawleys and the Granthams, culture and tradition not only are their way of being, they are the actual strategy to secure their future. We’ll all watch with great interest how the future unfolds for Downton because one of the central struggles is, of course, that their personal strategy to maintain their own traditions are being eaten for breakfast by the changes in culture around them. As this great exchange between Shirley MacLaine and Maggie Smith shows:

Dowager Countess (Smith): “You Americans never understand the importance of Tradition.”

Martha Levinson (MacLaine): “Yes we do, we just don’t give it power over us. Maybe you should think about letting go of its hand.”

If Shirley MacLaine was watching closely, she may have seen that Maggie Smith was indeed right, but the outcome is certainly one she won’t expect and it will challenge Downton to its core. We’ll all watch with interest.

Size and Complexity – Challenges in Each Setting

Big schools, small schools, big districts, small districts, urban settings and rural settings – what are the challenges of scale and what leadership skills does it take to be successful in any setting?

People often discuss the challenges and complexity of leadership no matter how big or small the context. My best lesson on the issue of “scale” was given to me by the principal of a small elementary school years ago. Louise Jovanovic, now retired was a wonderful colleague. At the time we spoke, she was principal at Durrance Elementary which, if I recall had about 6 staff.  I was also a principal of a school which had about 120 staff and we were talking about the similarities and differences that principals face no matter what the size of their school. Her point of view forever changed my thoughts about the challenges that those in small schools face and over time I have seen those challenges also reflected in small and rural districts compared to those large and urban.

At the time of our conversation, Louise and I were talking about the ability to influence staff and have a school move along in pursuit of a particular direction. We talked of the difference between large and small staffs and how resistance to change unfolds in places with different scale. For her, the impact of having only one staff member in opposition to a particular initiative was simply monumental compared to what I may face with even a dozen staff members who also may not be in support. She talked of the absolutely critical network of close relationships that exist in small schools and it seemed like those who lead in such places would have to be so careful, inclusive and encouraging in their directions and to always tap into the particular needs and beliefs of all staff. In a larger school with over 100 staff, being in touch with every single person’s needs and beliefs is far more difficult to do but, with a bulk of staff moving forward, the momentum of such a large group of people often created such an initiative, that it was difficult to stop. Those who were not on-side or unsure often were caught up in the initiative or, at the very least, content to let their colleagues move on. The leadership task was to pay attention to those less satisfied, to listen to their concerns, adjust where able and always to include, but having a couple of staff members in opposition to a particular direction was not a show-stopper by any regard. For Louise, having one or two staff members in opposition represented a significant part of her staff.

The other day, I was fortunate to have a chance to talk to superintendents from around the province. Once again, the issue of the differences that leaders face regardless of size and scale of organization came to mind.  Just as when I was with Louise, I was reminded just how the challenges in small and rural districts are in many ways so extremely challenging compared to the things we tackle in large urban districts. Urban districts may take some things for granted like transportation, proximity to services, reasonable weather, access to staff, resources and relative ease of contact and communications. These are challenges that rural and remote areas face every day in such a different way than we do in a metropolitan area. In addition, those in rural settings are often “living in the fish bowl” and not only do people watch what you do in public life, they watch in private life as well as some towns are only so big. The local school principal is well known by almost everyone. In BC, we have some schools on small islands and for those who live and work on these island schools the spotlight can be always on regardless of where you are.

I am not suggesting that anyone can do any job, any time regardless of context and scale. What I am suggesting is that we should pay more attention to the complexity of issues that rural and small schools face and the intricate leadership that it takes to be successful in such a setting. That does not mean that I would take the principal of a highly successful elementary school of 50 students and plunk them down in a struggling secondary school of 2000 students. I do believe that would just set someone up for failure. But…when the principal of 50 speaks, I am just saying that what they bring to the leadership table should not be discounted.

As I’ve often quoted Ursula Franklin, schools are more like organisms than they are mechanisms. Schools live and breathe based on the network of relationships and interactions that emerge within. Whether big or small, urban or rural, the ability to navigate, communicate, listen and respond in settings is about the human condition, it is not about how big a place is. In my district, we have over 9000 staff. There is no doubt that communication with that size is a huge issue compared to communication with 500. We cannot easily pull all teachers together for a talk, it just doesn’t work that way. However, in smaller places, not only is it possible to meet with all teaching staff, it is routinely done. The ability to establish personal connections and relationships in larger places is much more difficult and your communication has to be so clear, concise and consistent because you don’t get many opportunities to speak to everyone. In smaller places, you can revisit, connect, clarify, meet and discuss. These are advantages that big places just can’t realize.

While leadership differences in dealing with scale are obvious, the similarities remain. The leadership journey is about influence and influence is realized by connecting and communicating. So the next time you consider a team to pull together or there are voices in the room around a particular issue, pay attention to what everyone brings to the table. Whether from small, large, rural or urban, everyone has something unique to offer. Sometimes in education we get inside our own bubble and don’t listen to what those who are outside our sector have to say or we don’t fully appreciate the perspective brought by those in completely different educational contexts. Even better, suggest that your principal of your largest secondary school spend a day in a tiny elementary and vice-versa. These learning exchanges can be a great learning experience both ways.

One of my favourite anecdotes is about a secondary principal who, in a time of need, was placed in an elementary school on virtually no notice. The need was urgent and this was the best solution at hand. On the principal’s first day, the school’s kindergarten teacher was ill and, as happens in rural areas, no replacement was available. With no prep at all and thrown into teaching kindergarten for a full day with zero experience at that level, that secondary leader learned more about valuing kindergarten in an hour than a whole graduate course could have taught. The irony, of course, is the real teachers and mentors that day were just 5 years old. As we know so well, we all are on the learning journey any given day and no matter how small some people may seem, the leadership advice they bring can be large indeed.

Articles for further interest:

• Sustainable Leadership in Small Rural Schools: Selected Australian Vignettes
• Rural School Leadership for Collaborative Community Development
• The Small Rural School Principalship: Key Challenges and Cross-School Responses

Leadership, Management and Ambiguity

When the topic of leadership versus management comes up, it is always with a bit of disdain for the tasks of management reflected against the more lofty aspirations of leadership. School administrators, when asked, will normally state that they wish they spent more time on leadership and less on management. In a recent workshop, there was again a chance to think about the leadership/management paradigm and the topic of leading in times of ambiguity came into the fray. It was upon further reflection that it occurred to me of a new way to think about leadership and management and it was through the lens of how we tackle times of ambiguity as opposed to times of clarity. Is management what you do when you are faced with a certain task and goal as opposed to leadership which is what is needed when you are less certain of the path and the outcome?

In the past, when thinking of leadership and management, I have always been of the belief that being a good manager is absolutely essential. Management is complicated work that requires excellent organizational and communications skills. Taking care of the myriad of routine tasks required to operate a school is part of the daily task of administration. Handling the management of a school is the very basics of school-based administration. The way in which one generates trust, respect and confidence in leadership in the early days of school-based admin is through how the routine tasks of management are completed. As people within the organization watch how management is undertaken, these tasks develop relationships and inspire confidence in the leadership skills for more difficult and complex tasks that require deep collaboration and skilled navigation. The very way in which these management tasks are undertaken demonstrates leadership capabilities. Co-workers and colleagues need to have confidence that the basics can be done before they are likely to follow you down the path of a difficult process of organizational change. Management is important, complex work but on the spectrum of skills, it doesn’t require the broader skills of challenging leadership.

Ronald Heifetz and Martin Linsky’s work on adaptive leadership describes adaptive leadership as what needs to occur when an existing skillset will not be sufficient to tackle a task at hand. In the blurry line between management and leadership, adaptive leadership is at the extreme of complexity. Not only may the task be unclear, but it is acknowledged that those who will tackle the task do so knowing that they have yet to develop an adequate skillset to address the issue at hand. When trying to discuss what adaptive leadership was to someone, I suggested that putting in place full day kindergarten in British Columbia was largely a management task. We know what kindergarten looks like, many people had experiences with full day programs and so it was a complicated but doable management task. Leadership of change at the school level played a key role, but we were well able to implement this initiative. If we were to expand now to implementing a full day program for 4 year olds, or 3 year olds, then, in my humble opinion, that moves to an adaptive leadership task. Our educators and schools while skilled people in all regards, lack the experience and skillset to simply launch into implementing such a set of programs. This does not mean that it can’t be done, nor does it mean that the skillsets can’t be gained, it simply means that in our current structures and mindsets, we have never tackled such a task. New learning would have to occur and mindsets would have to shift in the very way in which we envision elementary school if we were to expand to providing programs to 4 and 3 year olds.

This blog entry has simply been to suggest another way to think of the management/leadership paradigm. Perhaps management is what we do when we have complex and multifaceted tasks but largely we know what to do and the outcomes are fairly certain. When faced with complexity that includes ambiguous direction, uncertain outcomes and multiple variables, then the tasks may shift to the leadership paradigm when clearly collaboration, critical thinking, problem solving, and effective communication are the only paths through the murky forest of possibilities.

Finally, keeping with the overall philosophy of the blog and the avatar of praxis, leadership and management are Yin-Yang. Every significant management task requires a bit of leadership and every complex leadership task has to be well managed. While there never will be a complete separation, hopefully throwing in the topic of ambiguity and uncertainty has helped to shed a bit of light on the ongoing debate of where management ends and leadership begins.

Women on Leadership – Quotes

I am learning to use Adobe’s After Effects as I prepare for a presentation on leadership. I decided to have a portion of the project focus on quotes by women. I hope that you enjoy this first attempt at using this tool.

Leadership of Groups and the Importance of Going Last

Have you ever sat back in meetings or times of collaboration and watched unintended silencing unfold? Sometimes without any intent, the very sequence of talking and the roles/positions people hold can have powerful effect on how a conversation unfolds around a table. This blog urges those in positions of power to think carefully about the impact of silencing and about where and when to place your voice in times of collaboration.

I took part in a great activity this week. We pulled in a group of administrators and teachers for two days trying to get clarity between and among our district practices of Collaborative Inquiry, Assessment, Social and Emotional Learning and Differentiated Instruction. It was a great session and in the end reaffirmed how strongly we all felt about the importance of empowering teachers through time to collaborate with the overarching purpose of improving student learning. In our culminating activity, we were forced to choose one proposition for action. At our table, we had two finalists from our sorted list. Everyone tossed their pen onto the pile that they were voting for. As I threw my pen into the minority pile, people laughed about where I voted and joked about moving their votes to align with mine. It was a joke. I was amongst colleagues and peers. I wanted to be viewed an equal but I am acutely aware in the hierarchy of order, my voice is not equal.

I have often shown this FedEx commercial in presentations both as a joke but also one with an important point. When you are the person who has power of authority, you have to be so cautious about where and when you place your voice in a conversation. Leadership is needed. People want a summary, they want a clear direction out of collaboration but speaking early, speaking decisively can do more to kill a conversation than it can to continue it.

Daniel Wilson was at the BCSSA conference recently speaking of powerful collaboration. He showed research that spoke to how strong teams and weak teams perform in times of stress and uncertainty. I very much liked his summary framework of information, meaning-making, and action and thought it a good framework for how any person in a position of authority enters a conversation which is intended to be collaborative. If you are in a position of authority, whether that be principal or district staff and you find yourself in a conversation that you wish to be collaborative, then construct any input you offer in a way to build upon the conversation rather than draw it to a close. Wilson found that “the use of connected and cognitively open language” was a key determinant of high performing teams. He also found that in a truly collaborative conversation, leadership flowed within the group.

To go back to the beginning, I very often watch people who are good leaders. They are knowledgeable and supportive people. Sometimes when meetings begin or group conversations start, people look to those in authority to “kick it off.” The very manner in which things are initiated, whether the tone is set to be open or closed has almost everything to do with the language you use. Wilson reminds us of the importance of keeping questions open and to be cautious of being declarative which can quickly close a collaborative session thus making it less effective.

Those in authority play critical roles. They are ultimately responsible for decisions that are made. If you want to truly collaborate and to make your decisions the most effective, then rely on your skilled collaborative efforts in getting the most out of group time. Keep questions open, ask for clarification, create space for people to contribute, watch for those who may silence others and re-open the conversation. Then, when the time is right, allow for summary and action for next steps. So the next time you are either in a meeting or are the one ultimately responsible for the outcome of a meeting, try talking a little less, carefully choose you spots and consider yourself a facilitator of strong process rather than a key contributor to the outcome.

If you really want collaboration and group input, you may learn way more about an organization’s structures by going last in a conversation rather than first and in the end, it gives you an opportunity to reaffirm and support the important role that all those in an organization play.

Guest Post – Grade 9 student on Take Our Kids to Work

Each year, school districts and employers across Canada support an event called Take Our Kids to Work Day. Initiated by The Learning Partnership, this event falls on the first Wednesday of November.

The event is an opportunity for grade 9 students to spend a day in the workplace of parents, friends or relatives. It is an opportunity for students to develop an appreciation of their parents’ career roles, to understand the skills necessary to work in a variety of occupations and to consider the wide range of careers possible as they visit worksites.

In Surrey we hosted a group of students at the District Education Centre. When I first heard that they were coming,  I put myself on the list to spend lunch with the students and also made an offer to one student to do a guest writeup for my blog so others could hear about the students’ day and experiences. I was thrilled to get the time with the students and welcomed the blog opportunity as a way to share the stories.

It was a great day, I enjoyed it very much and here is the writeup done by one of our students, Ethan Carlson.

          Today I spent the day at my mother’s workplace, SD36 Board Office for Grade 9 “Take Your Kids To Work Day”. I was shocked to discover that my mother is not the Superintendent of Schools like she told me. I also learned my mother has a secret stash of junk food she has never told us about. I took a tour with six other grade nines around the school district building which is so large it holds a college, Surrey College and a school, Surrey Connect, for students from kindergarten to grade twelve. I even had an opportunity to get a free haircut by some student hairdressers but unfortunately my mother had just massacred my hair on Monday. Talk about timing!

          Surrey School District is the largest school district in British Columbia with 70 000 students;  however, I was disappointed to find out each student is only worth $8 200. I thought we were worth more than that! The School District is also the largest employer in Surrey with about 9 300 employees. Surrey Schools has over 1,000 Teachers On Call; on the day we visited, 410 TOCs were out on the job. We had lunch with the Deputy Superintendent, Dr. Tinney, who knows a lot. Obviously, that must be a requirement for being a Deputy Superintendent in Surrey!

          We as students usually only see school board employees like teachers, principals, secretaries, custodians and childcare workers; however, at the Surrey School Board Office there’s a whole army of individuals working behind the school scenes. I highly recommend going to Surrey School District Board Office for “Take Your Kid To Work Day” because there are so many career opportunities all in one building and furthermore, the district did a fantastic job in hosting us.

I want to thank Ethan for his straight from the heart post. It certainly gives the flavour of what was a whirlwind day thanks to great organzation by staff and the many hosts. The students had a very full day and saw everything from Human Resources to Finance, Planning, Student Services and Curriculum. For my time, I enjoyed talking with them  about the impact of social media and technology on the classroom. I know we’ll certanly look forward to next year when I think at lunch we’ll ask the students to help us build a school!