Timeout for Leadership-your one-minute leadership idea

The dark side-What might Yoda say? (#7)

People on the dark side do not learn from their mistakes. (part 2)

Always the same the dark side must be, never admitting mistakes.  Always right it must be.  To stay that way, lies must be told, blame assigned, anger stoked.  But always defeated in the same way it can be.  Learn from your errors, give credit to others, raise up those around you; that is the path to the light side.

Last week I wrote about the Game of School.  I hope that will always resonate with you.  Today, I want to write about something that is right there in front of us, something that we can control.  Yet it is something that I bet you deny.

Hiding in plain sight

This is an easy one.  It is right in front of our faces, yet we continue to ignore and yes, never learn from it.   We are just boring everyone to death. 

Principals bore the teachers and in turn the teachers bore the students.  Collectively, we continue to waste each other’s time.  School does not tend to be either engaging or mentally stimulating.  And when this occurs, it becomes easier for teachers to seek the excitement of the dark side.  Let’s face it, everyone needs to be mentally stimulated.  If not, our minds will go on some sort of “factory shutdown.”  That’s right, we will stop producing.

I can recall one day deciding to follow my valedictorian’s class schedule.  (And this was before this activity was ever written about.)  By mid-day she found it a bit creepy and we joked about it.  However, this one morning opened my eyes to a student’s daily life in my school.  It was flat out boring.  I felt as though as I walked up to the third floor that I wanted to jump out of the window.  I just muttered to myself while shaking my head in amazement that this is what this young lady had to endure every single day.  Thank God, she was intrinsically motivated. 

I watched both teachers and students going through the motions.  I was watching the “game of school” and the “contract of mediocrity” play out right in front of my eyes.

I saw a perfect example of this disengagement, as I watched students do their homework in other teachers’ classes, file their nails and sleep.  The adult in the room continued to lecture on.  That seemed to be a faculty motto, lecture, lecture and more lecture.  The most glaring example of this disengagement was seen when a student opened her notebook on her desk and while holding it in an upright fashion opened a novel behind the notebook and read for the entire period.  It seemed like a good book.  At least it had her interest.  Thank the Lord, these students were not disruptive.

Most of my teachers spoke reading off of notes in a monotone fashion.  My eyes became weary.  I had to internally applaud those teachers that at least showed a little energy and animation in their voices.  It made the lecture easier to swallow.

But this is not an article about best teaching practices.  I like to believe that over the last several years, teachers have developed a more comprehensive best teaching practice toolkit.  However cynical that I may be, I hope that is the case.  I pray that we are doing a better job with more student-centered instructional practice.

Watching this boredom at the principal and administrative level, I saw firsthand how we allowed this happen.  Yes, I too was guilty.   Without knowing it, I allowed my staff to regularly disengage.   I never realized it.   Shame on me.  I allowed it to become enculturated in our system.

I can recall early in my principal career, when I held a faculty meeting (which for the most part was pure administrative minutia), I watched everyone file into our auditorium which seated over 1000 people.  I watched as people went to their unassigned, assigned seats.  That statement may sound crazy but that is what happened.  As a new principal, I operated with the assumption that everyone would choose a seat closest to me in the front of the room.  Most times, I would not use the stage because I felt I wanted to be closer to the group. 

So, I watched our association president headed to the back, surrounded by his cronies.  I watched as others separated themselves so they could sleep or grade papers. I watched as other cliques sat themselves, away from me.  Before I would start the meeting, I would have to ask people to move closer to me.  Some did so reluctantly, wearing angry faces as others just sat there.  I chose not to confront those in public, although looking back retrospectively, perhaps I should have made a scene.  I would speak to these folks privately and they would all assure me that they “got it” and would be more compliant at the next meeting.  Then when the next meeting time arrived, we did the same dance again.

I finally corrected this by having the Head Custodian, before my meeting, rope off and block off the seating which would force my staff to sit closer.  This was all well and good until a lightbulb went off in my head, no, it was more like I was hit on the head with a hammer, and realized, I was to blame because I was just boring everyone to death.  I could have sent out a memo or an email and covered the exact same material.  I was as guilty as my teachers.  I fell right back to the lecture, lecture, lecture credo. I was wasting everyone’s time. When I changed the way that I built my agenda and focused on instructional issues and professional development, my meetings became much better.  I was on the right road to take some of the boredom out of my meetings. 

I also believe that we structure meetings in a manner that our predecessor structured meetings.  Hence, the notion that we do not learn from our mistakes.  I would bet that each new principal constructs his or her meetings exactly like the person that he or she has worked for in the past.  When one is asked why the meetings are structured in this fashion, the answer comes from the dark side.  The answer is simple; because we have always done it that way. We continue to repeat the same mistakes. 

This was true until one fateful day where I attempted to present our testing data for the school.  I was hopeful that we as a team could drill down on this data and come up with some meaningful action plans.  When I say meaningful action plans, I mean the ones that have a chance of doing something, not just a group of words we put on a piece of paper to sound good with an attempt to baffle the county or state evaluators.  You know, the ones we create just to say we created something.

For this meeting, I prepared like it was the Super Bowl.  I was ready and wore my best suit in for the day and even shined my shoes.  On that day, I would be on the stage for what I had hoped would be a winning performance.  I won’t keep you in suspense any longer.  I lost that presentation right from the opening kickoff.  I lost everyone, I realized this as I was about mid-way through my analysis that was broadcast on the front screen.  It turned out to be a Power Point from hell.  The faces in the crowd told me early on in my presentation, even my usually friendly faces, told me that I lost them.   Many were sleeping with their eyes open.  Although the meeting was awful, many gave me high marks for trying.  Trying was not good enough. We had to revisit Yoda’s words. He said, “Do or do not.  There is no try.”

I made up some witticism that I shared with the group and dismissed them.  My inner circle told me what I already knew.  I bored everyone right to sleep.  I went back to the drawing board, shared the data with the staff, broke them up into small teams for the next meeting and let them work where they wanted to work without me guiding or breathing down their necks.  They did some fine work when I let them engage in the process.  Yes, as a principal you must live and learn and just like the teacher in front of the classroom you have to (using Madeline Hunter’s words) be able to monitor and adjust.

As an aside, after my day with the Valedictorian, I put into place a rule in the school that if a student put their head down on the desk, that indicated that they were ill and that student should be sent to the nurse.  Yes, I implemented a school wide no sleeping rule.  And get this.  A group of teachers came to me in opposition claiming that the student had a choice and if they wanted to sleep, so be it, as long as they did not disrupt those that wanted to learn. 

I listened but only for a short time before I announced to that group that it is our job to engage the students. There was to be no excuses.  I challenged them to become better teachers.  Some did and others counted the days to retirement. Engagement is not an option.  Period.  End of statement.  

For those teachers that fought me on this, the dark side captured them long ago.  For those that accepted my challenge, there was still hope for them to stay on the light side of the Force.  It is a constant battle with the dark side. 

Get used to it.