Promote the best, shoot the rest!!

There is a story that the great Baroque composer, George Frederic Handel, was displeased with a soprano soloist that was performing one of his works at a rehearsal. Handel became so incensed that he picked her up and threatened to throw her out of a window. I suppose this is the extreme example of the title of this blog: “promote the best, shoot the rest”.

The first 25 years of my career I was a music teacher, trained and disciplined in the performance and execution of music. My conservatory-style training was more of a humanistic experience since I was being trained to be a “music educator”. In this setting an aspiring music candidate is still expected to demonstrate discipline, diligence, and above all technique and mastery of the literature for one’s major instrument. This also meant auditioning, auditioning and more auditioning to climb that proverbial “pyramid of musical excellence” to become the best in your field.

There was a time in public education where this philosophy was quite prevalent. Music teachers seeking glory and pursuit of the consummate musical performance attempted to mimic the likes of Arturo Toscanini, William Revelli and others of dictatorial manner and style. They were labeled the greatest music educators of all time, when all they really were could be compressed in the likes of a dictator or unfeeling slave driver.

21st Century education does not have the luxury or the patience espoused by these types of teachers. I often wondered how these grand maestri of the glorious age of high music education could deal with differentiated instruction, a student on the spectrum that possessed amazing aural acuity, the disabled child that performed the instrument so well but in an uncoventional manner to accommodate his/her disability. I am not sure these "glory hound" music dictators can deal with differentiation. If it prevents the band from getting that “gold” medal performance than that child cannot be in the group. We have all heard this situation before.

There is no room in education for these dinosaurs anymore. Any administrator that hires this kind of a teacher, that has no understanding of differentiation, no patience with children that are classified or have an ESL background, or any child that wants to learn at another level of ability, deserves the problems they will have in this 21st Century of learning. Let me give you a hint...law suit, impartial hearing, lack of a free and appropriate education.

I know about this kind of teacher very well, because not only was I tormented by this kind of educator, and worked with many that exhibited this behavior regularly, I was also a teacher of this style, until I saw the light! On becoming a building principal I began to see an ugly reflection of myself in the behaviors of these teachers. 

I knew of two wonderful children that experienced this torment. Kevin and Michael, both children of special needs, but people that exhibited amazing musical acuity and rhythmic sense. Despite their needs, music was something they could do very well. I remember the fight I had with arrogant music teachers that did not want them in their rehearsals for fear their ensembles would have a diminished chance for the GOLD medal. I saw two kids that were amazingly gifted and talented in their own special way, and a unique opportunity to be a part of a wonderful musical experience. Sadly, the fight with these teachers was too much and I gave in to their egos. But, I taught these kids myself whenever I could. And I know in their way they appreciated the music making. Kevin completed his education at our district and whenever I see him in the community always has a big smile for me with recollection of the music we made together. Michael passed away a few weeks ago from complications due to his disability. He was a beautiful and gifted human being that taught me much about differentiation. Working with these two kids were the high point of my 25 years as a music teacher!
We need to teach children from where they are and bring them along in a welcoming and patient manner that protects and nurtures the child, not frightens and torments them from ever trying. Teachers can no longer be the center of attention, the bearer of learning. 21st Century learning requires a new and patient " facilitator of learning". Be that kind of educator for your students.

Dedicated to Kevin and Michael, my mentors!!

Why Do We Need School Administrators?

Whenever I meet up with old high school friends the first thing they remind me of is that I ended up as a school administrator. They seem to conclude from my regular visits to the principal’s office in those years, that I was not the ideal student nor the best behaved — despite what people may think. And still, I ended up becoming a principal and now a superintendent. (Maybe they just think I got what I deserved!)

Truth be told, I love doing the job of a school administrator. After being in the classroom as a teacher for 25 years, moving into a leadership role was logical and the next step in a career in which I wanted to focus on helping schools change.

Unfortunately, after 3 long years of continuing budget meetings due to the “great recession,” I am barraged by so many people that feel our schools are “top heavy” or “need to get rid of the administrators to fill the budget gap”. This was a constant plea at the recent facilities forum.

So, let’s start with some facts and information about school administrators.

New York State Education Law requires each school building have a principal, an individual in a managerial role to coordinate, supervise, and be accountable for the educational environment. each with an assigned building principal.

As many parents of adolescent children can attest to, high school and middle school can be busy and trying times in students’ lives. They have a lot on their minds at any given moment: the pressures of academic and extracurricular concerns, including grades and scheduling; athletics, peer pressure, drugs and alcohol, fighting and bullying, the college process; jobs and volunteer and internship opportunities — and these are just the things that the adults know about. This means all of these issues are on the minds — and the desks — of school administrators.

The role of schools in meeting the social and emotional needs of students has grown immensely over the years. This is a fact. We gladly do everything we can to support students, but the community should understand that we need the right people in the right positions to do this work. I believe we have them at BC.

Still, the budget cuts last year have required reducing staffing in all areas, including administration. We eliminated one Middle School House leader last year, and are proposing to eliminate the remaining House Leader for next year. That will leave a student to administrator ratio at the Middle School of 594 to 1.

Principals move quickly from tasks such as helping a student with a problem; coordinating a program or an activity in a building; assisting a teacher or staff member with a challenging issue; and speaking with a parent about something that their student is struggling with. At the Middle School next year, they’ll be moving even quicker.

So, I don’t believe we’re “top heavy,” and neither, I suspect, do the the students and staff who rely on administrative assistance daily to deal with the myriad issues I listed above.

So, one might take issue with the comment at the recent forum that employees who do not have “direct student contact,” such as “administrators,” be targeted for elimination to cope with our budget challenges. I like to think of the district, and each of its schools, as teams. Principals lead a team of teachers, office staff, custodians and others to ensure student safety, well-being and academic excellence.

As we grapple with year three of this continuing fiscal crisis, let’s remember that schools did not create this recession. Our community cares deeply about its schools. Everyone has a direct role in providing students with a quality education and a sense of belonging.

Building leaders are vital to this effort every day.

Open Season on Public Schools

A major responsibility of a school leader is to face the fiscal issues that can underlie the needs of your school district, and manage things in a responsible and accountable manner. The challenge of leading a school program amidst the recession we are in has tasked many school administrators. With unsupportive remarks from Governors in Wisconsin, New Jersey and New York it is no wonder there is an uproar against public education in general. There is part of me that cannot help feel that this is a planned strategy among politicians in general to shift the focus off of the crooks and greedy individuals that created this "great recession" and blame it on public employees. This is all some big diversionary ruse that provides cover to the Wall Street bankers and incompetent legislators that allowed them to rob the American people of their savings and their futures. Blame the public schools for this crisis and everyone guilty gets off free. Sounds like it would make a great movie. Isn't there one out there called the Adjustment Bureau? Maybe we are all in this movie looking out on our distorted reality.

Well, let's face some reality issues we can deal with. Blaming the incompetent elected officials at all levels will not solve the problems. As school administrators we have to deal in the reality of providing a sound education to every child that walks into our school each day. In some cases that means being able to provide all kinds of services, such as health, nutrition, social work, counseling, as well as ELA, math, and other key areas for a complete education. Many of our states also mandate that the people to provide these services and programs need to be certified/licensed and possessing a comprehensive educational program summarized in degree programs such as Bachelors and Masters degrees. This is approximately 8 years of education beyond high school and some of us even possess National Board Certification and Doctoral degrees, capping off the time spent being trained in our vocation around 10-12 years of study. The financial commitment made by anyone that enters this career in 2011 money is well into the six figure area, with huge loans covering a massive debt in order to teach and work with our country's most important resource, our children. And still, we are accused of being paid too much?

There was a great article in Education Week recently that articulates this issue very well.

"Why do we think less of teachers? Teaching is no less portable a profession than medicine, and if teachers don't like what they're getting in one place, they can take their talents elsewhere. This should be the core argument of educators in Wisconsin, Indiana, and elsewhere: If we underpay teachers, they will leave, and they'll be replaced by subpar people who have fewer options. The quality of our education system will suffer, and we'll have to either pay much more to attract talent in the future, or we'll have to pay the consequences of an inferior education system in the long run, such as higher rates of incarceration and unemployment. I believe that educators should be paid well and treated well. But it's critical to frame this as a human capital issue, not a workers' rights issue. The public is not sympathetic to workers' rights, because everyone is a worker, and most people do not have nearly the level of "rights" that teachers and other unionized public-sector employees enjoy." (.Baeder, J. (February 27, 2011). Pay Cuts for Professionals: On Human Capital, Not Workers' Rights. EDUCATION WEEK retrieved February 27, 2011 at http://bit.ly/dVeFq9).

Isn't that what the bigger issue is? We have seen our career as educators devalued in the eyes of those people that need our expertise most. How swiftly the tides change!

The best advice I can offer as an educator that is approaching the end of my career is that administrators have to support their teachers and encourage them to get through this criticism by doing what they do so well, each day. Make the education of their students special and the most important thing in that child's day. Maybe there might be a future governor in that class that will remember the importance of that wonderful teacher, and that great school experience, and maybe her or his actions will speak from the positive experiences they had in school, and not the bitterness engendered from the current elected officials of our society.

Internet vs. Textbooks

"The Internet doesn’t steal our humanity, it reflects it. The Internet doesn’t get inside us, it shows what’s inside us." (Rose, J. How social media is having a positive impact on our culture. Retrieved February 25, 2010 at

http://mashable.com/2011/02/23/social-media-culture/).

I love the Internet. It is exciting, impressive, and my own oracle of Delphi (so to speak). This morning I was watching the the 1962 version of Mutiny on the Bounty. I had my iPad with me as I watched it, and I searched the Internet learning as much as I could about the story, the real information about the crew, where they settled, what became of the descendants of the mutineers, and whatever happened to Captain Bligh! (I believe Heidi Hayes Jacobs would call this processing the essential questions of personal curriculum map!)

I find myself multi-tasking with the Internet to enhance my understanding of a movie plot or information about the actors and actresses in the story. It adds an incredible third dimension to my appreciation of the movie, or a show, or the news.

I remember hearing noted futurist and technologist Alan November tell my doctoral class at Seton Hall, that technology is about information. How to use it, find it, and learn from it.

Isn't that what our students in school should be doing?

Maybe they are, to some extent, in their own way, but when I observe a teacher lecturing a blackboard or an overhead projector, using a pointless PowerPoint, or "controlling" a self-opinionated perspective on some issue, all to prepare his/her students for the TEST, I wonder how useless our 21st Century Schools have become. In fact, I would refrain from describing them as 21st Century, and more a throwback to a 19th Century schoolmaster image.

Diane Lewis, Director of Technology in Seminole County Schools, states that if you can Google it, why teach it? Instead, we should be showing students how to use the technology to research and use information. (Mellon, E. (2011 February). Virtually Possible. District Administration. Retrieved February 26, 2011 at http://www.districtadministration.com/viewarticle.aspx?articleid=2688&p=2#0).

Active engagement with resources now available on the Internet can open a world of resources for our students. Why we still rely on useless textbooks that are static and never evolving with up-to-date information is beyond my comprehension. Is it fear that keeps us from pushing our students further to the point where they might know more than our teachers?

Schools of the future need to harness the energy of the Internet and begin facilitating the next level of learning for our students.

Angel in the Marble vs. Best Practices

Whoever created the phrase “best practice”? Is it the kind of comment that justifies all things? Was it created in the spirit of Shakespeare’s “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” (Loves Labour Lost, 1588)?

Is it possible that “best practice” is in the eye of the beholder?

According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_practice)

“A best practice is a technique, method, process, activity, incentive, or reward which conventional wisdom regards as more effective at delivering a particular outcome than any other technique, method, process, etc. when applied to a particular condition or circumstance. The idea is that with proper processes, checks, and testing, a desired outcome can be delivered with fewer problems and unforeseen complications. Best practices can also be defined as the most efficient (least amount of effort) and effective (best results) way of accomplishing a task, based on repeatable procedures that have proven themselves over time for large numbers of people.”

This definition implies there is a specific benchmark or standard that is desired. Well, who established the standard? A governing board of directors, such as the NYS Regents, or others?

At times we have heard from the non-research types, such as professional developer consultants that feel the need to justify their position, sometimes without any basis for doing so, that what they are selling our schools is a “best practice”. Well, I would challenge “according to whom? Where is the citation? Where is the research that evaluates and proves that a technique is truly best practice.

Well, instead of allowing others to decide the standards or the principles by which “best practice” should exist, allow us to consider how Michelangelo Buonaroti (1475-1564) established a benchmark for his work. It is said before he began to work on a block of marble for a sculptural depiction he would comment that he must release the “angel in the marble”. And, through hard work, effort and many chisel strokes, he created some of the most enduring works of art.

Talk about establishing “best practice”!

As 21st Century School leaders we need to stop using inhuman rationalizations such as “best practice” and begin individualizing learning for each and every child that truly releases the “angel in the marble”, and not blindly accept the notion that benchmark standards and esoteric data points and assessments will educate a human being. We need to encourage our teachers to meet the students where they are and tap the potential of their interest and motivation in order to provide a lifeline of creativity and innovation for that “angel in the marble”, and truly establish a new expectation for what best practice is.

Communication is key

To communicate or not to communicate, that is the question.

Anthony Robbins, motivational guru once commented:

"To effectively communicate, we must all realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and the way we perceive and use this understanding in how we communicate with others."

Anyone aspiring to become a school leader of the future, should learn that the key to success and acceptance by a community is to communicate. This is something I learned working as a superintendent in the most real experiences of my career.

Barack Obama popularized the idea of "transparency" as a concept that I tried to emulate. Building trust between the community and the district meant that they have a right to see all of the nitty gritty of the district, such as employment contracts, budget detail, and anything else, with the exception of personnel issues.

Another great communication tool is to get out ahead of things by using the world wide web. Get your school district to have a presence on Facebook and Twitter, or use a school notifier network that employs emails, texting and other contact media to get information to parent. Advertise and advocate through social media to build the trust of the world wide community, and transparency and trust will thrive.

I have been blessed working with two outstanding communications specialists, affiliated with the Capital Region BOCES of upstate New York. Their names were Jessica and Matt, both talented and unabashedly the best sounding boards I could have worked with in my central office position. Not only did they meet with me to discuss my programs and directions about the district, they also framed all of these ideas in how they would be received by the community.

Communication is key to being a successful school leader. It goes beyond sending a letter home when things go awry. School leaders communicate the excitement and pulse of the school.

Find ways to share the real enthusiasm of a school district.

Dealing With School Change

Dealing with Change

In 1842 William A. Alcott, a now forgotten member of that legendary American family of letters, wrote a series of articles for the Connecticut Common School Journal, asking teachers across America to make use of the newest educational technology : He wrote: [and I quote] "A black board, in every school house, is as indispensably necessary as a stove or fireplace; and in large schools several of them might be useful."

He continues:

"Slates are as necessary as black boards, and even more so. But they are liable to be broken, it will be said, as to render it expensive to parents to keep their children supplied with them."

"[Why] are books necessary at all, when the pupils are furnished with slates? “

"Change" is a bitter pill to swallow.

As we all continue our work of leading dynamic 21st Century schools, how often does the preceding comment come back to haunt us? Anyone committed to innovating their schools will feel this twinge of regret when the first comments of resistance start coming in from teachers who are scared of doing things differently.

In Jennifer Miller's February 23, 2011 blog Leading Change, Change Management and the Law of Diminishing Returns, the following lines open the post:

"People HATE change.

They loathe and despise it. They see it, abhor it and team up to fight it.

Mind you, not all people, all the time. But certainly most people, much of the time."

This past school year, I decided it was time to move our school district towards a 1:1 learning initiative using personal technology devices and replacing the rarely used textbooks that our students haul around. The access to the Internet and exploiting the interest our students have for technology and researching their interests would have opened a new world of educational opportunities.

The plan was researched and developed by our administrators and teachers working collaboratively in planning every step of the transition. When it was announced, the naysayers came forward and began standing in the way. When we engaged these few teachers that were resistant and critical of the change effort in a collaborative forum, designed to discuss their concerns, the key themes coming from their comments were:

Teachers lack of classroom control.

Teachers inability to be the center of learning.

Teachers scared they will be unable to direct the learning.

Teachers scared they will not be able to be as tech smart as the students..

The greatest impediment to leading change in schools are teachers that lack the motivation to think out of the box. Teachers who will not let go of absolute control. They restrain children with emotional strings of fear keeping their students from pursuing learning on their own terms.

Have you ever observed a high school math teacher lecture a blackboard while explaining a problem?

The challenge of 21st Century schools will be to inspire and motivate teachers to truly be mentors of learning and not controller of absolute learning. As Heidi Hayes Jacobs reminds us, we need to risk doing new things if we wish to motivate children to become all they are capable of becoming.