NameSake

Here are some of the names of students I have served over the last 35 years:

William             Lynda              London            Shaniqua 

                  Jennifer           Stetson            Randi               Randy

   Riggin              Isabella            Denzel             Yashi

                     Scout               Jesus              Kehinde           Winston          

Bronc              Amanda           Amaad             Nina

           Charli               Charlie             Chase              Chastity

                         Niels                Li                     Lee                  Leigh

Not surprisingly, these students had varying ancestries, differing body shapes, many skin colors.  Some lived in the country, others in the city.  They represent a wide range of religious beliefs, diverse interests, unique abilities, and disparate cognitive capabilities.

However, they all shared some commonalities:

>They didn’t make mistakes on purpose.

>They all wanted to do well, in school and in life.

>Their parents (or loved ones) had the highest hopes for them.

Good schools, the very best schools, accept students (like the ones named above) just as they are.

Good schools, the very best schools, understand that the compact between home and school is a sacred bond, a sharing of responsibility for achieving the highest aspirations for each child.

Good schools, the very best schools, deliberately pursue the development of each child along dimensions that go beyond academic learning – like the teaching of courtesy, respectfulness, service-mindedness, work ethic, collaboration skills, ethical behavior…

Good schools, the very best schools, insist on providing a safe and nurturing environment (both physically and emotionally) for learning.

Good schools, the very best schools, seek to provide opportunities for students to meld their interests and aptitudes in meaningful ways with the academic curricula.

Good schools, the very best schools, refuse to reduce children to a set of data points.

Good schools, the very best schools, treat students as….....................………well, just what they are - INDIVIDUAL LEARNERS.

Good schools, the very best schools, make each child better.  In return, each child makes the school better.

ANY school can be like the good schools described above.  We don’t have to wait for permission to create such a school, nor do we need mandates from some distant regulatory entity to make it happen. 

The critical catalyst needed is a team of professional educators who are committed to making that school a good school, the very best school possible - a World Class school. 

We can pursue that goal, today!

Perspective

Here is a picture of our ranch in western Texas.

                                          Another picture of the same ranch.

Finally, one more picture of our ranch.

I could have shown you a million more pictures of the ranch, and each one would have been just as different as the three above.  Yet, they would all be of the very same ranch.

Had I taken several pictures of a particular town, a church, a school, or even YOU, each of the perspectives would similarly provide a completely different view.

A single view of a particular entity (whether it be a person, a place, or thing) never tells the whole story.  And, making judgements about an entity based on one particular view (or even just a few) is sure to prove erroneous.

Seeking to know and understand as many perspectives as possible informs us greatly as we ponder decisions and choices, both about our personal lives as well as those related to the organizations/communities in which we live and work.  The very best decisions are those premised on such an understanding of  multiple perspectives.

This rendition of “From a Distance” by Bette Midler makes the point that perspectives color our judgements, yet they do not exempt us from the fact that we are part of a bigger picture. Our decisions and choices impact others.  That reality should always be at the forefront of our thinking.

Seeking to understand fully as many perspectives as possible, and acting in the interest of the greater harmony, is the stuff of wisdom.

HotHeart,CoolHead

Back when I was a rookie athletic coach I was blessed to have gotten to work with a very wise and very successful head coach (I’ll call him Jed).  Jed taught me a lot of things about organization, strategy, the importance of fundamentals, and psychology.  One of the most important things I learned from him was to deliberately teach the athletes we coached to understand the connection between rational function, emotion, and performance.  Jed regularly admonished our football players to “play hot in your heart and cool in your head.”  In fact, that phrase was somewhat of a mantra with the teams he coached. 

Jed was, in a very simplistic way, helping our athletes understand that the likelihood of having success as a team was enhanced greatly when we are fully aware of and were actively managing the interplay between the emotional and rational states.  

On the one hand, successful execution is the product of deliberate, intentional, even monotonous practice/drill; that’s the rational component.  It is constant repetition and attention to fundamentals that allow us to do certain things automatically (good or bad, depending on the discipline with which we practice).  It is, in fact, the intentional formation of habit (both physical and mental).  That’s the “cool in the head” part. 

The “hot in the heart" part had to do with understanding the power of emotion in human performance.   Leveraging the reality that, in the midst of typical human vs human, team vs team, army vs army, organization vs organization types of struggle, the emotional component is the one that causes the chemical reactions in the brain and body that produce extraordinary stamina, endurance, bursts of strength, powers of intense concentration, etc. These are the things that, according to Mihaly Csikszeentmihalyi  cause "flow."  

Without the cool habits of consistent execution, these emotional manifestations are virtually worthless.  But, coupled with near flawless execution of well-practiced fundamentals (whether they be physical movements like shooting free throws, or relational processes like service-orientation), these emotional “injections” can be purposefully activated.

I am immensely thankful to Jed for teaching me these lessons early on in my career, lessons that have served me well both on and off the athletic fields.  RIP, Jed.

PithyAssertions

Several years ago I was fortunate to have gotten to hear Dr. Pedro Noguera speak; not just once, but twice within the same year.  Dr. Noguera is professor of education at New York University, Steinhardt.  His research centers mostly around the challenges of urban education.

While Dr. Noguera bumped my thinking along several fronts, he provoked me mightily to consider and reconsider my position on the teaching-learning process by offering these assertions:

“Teaching and learning are the same process, not two different ones.  If there is no evidence of learning, then there is no evidence of teaching.”

Wow!

As an educator and a school administrator I had for many years advocated vociferously about the need for a broadened array of instructional strategies, improved teaching methods, reflective practice, pedagogical deployments and the like, all aimed at increasing the level of student learning. 

But Dr. Noguera’s assertion catapulted me way beyond my previous level of thinking. His pithy provocation forced me to rethink my fundamental view of teaching and learning.  By cutting to the very core of my beliefs, his assertions reinforced in a fundamental way that LEARNING is the ONLY desired outcome in that singular process, and that teaching is no more than the vehicle that moves us toward that outcome.  

Moreover, his declarations have caused me to understand that teaching can never stand apart from learning.  Never again can I comfortably say, “I taught it, they just didn’t learn it.”  Nope, if I am to charade as a teacher, then the learning MUST follow.  If it doesn’t, then I must reflect deeply about how I should adapt as a teacher and take the necessary steps to try again (and again and again – until the learning happens).  At whatever point I choose to give up, or begin blaming the learner for lack of learning, then I have ceased being a teacher.

Ouch! (Growing is sometimes painful...)

Perturburances

I have been blessed over the last 40 years to work with/for/around some amazingly talented people. One trend I’ve noticed (this is not a scientific observation, mind you) is that many extremely talented people are what we sometimes describe as “high-maintenance.”  While they may be masterful organizers, musicians, thinkers, gitter-doners, etc., many also possess some interesting quirks (often closely akin to passionate obsessions).  I have come to think of these folks as “perturberances” (yep, I made that word up). 

As an organizational leader, I’ve frequently found myself supervising said perturberances.  And, as an old guy, I find myself mentoring quite a few young organizational leaders, who find themselves supervising said perturberances.  I've seen a fair number organizational leaders get distracted by those highly talented, but disturbance-causing people (i.e., the perturberances) on their teams.  Some share those frustrations with me, seeking a solution to the heartburn that the perturberances cause.  And they think they want to control or manage those disturbance creators.  I used to suffer from the same illusions. The all too often end result is that the talent “walks.”

Our teams NEED talent.  No team can have too much talent.  However, the fact is that talent can work just about anywhere talent wants to.  Understanding that tolerating a bit of perturberance on a team is worth it to salvage the talent, and your performance and your innovativeness, is an important step in our growth as leaders.  Admittedly, care must be taken to monitor team chemistry closely.  There can (and sometimes does) come a point at which the team can no longer handle the perturberances, and becomes dysfunctional.  At that point, some parting of ways may need to occur.  However, that is not the typical circumstance.

I have come to believe (rather firmly) that organizational environments that foster a culture of mastery, purpose, and autonomy (see Dan Pink on this topic), are the ones that best accommodate the  perturberance types.   What happens too often is that cultural norms that insist on consistency, compliance, think-alike-ness, talk-alike-ness, look-alike-ness also have the tendency to manifest mediocre kinds of perform-alike-ness.  Not the kind of team I want to be on, or lead.

Over the years I’ve learned to enjoy working with the perturberances, despite the heartburn.  What they add to the organization, generally, far outweighs any dissonance they cause.  You can send your perturbances my way if you get tired of them.