Growing and Learning Through Change

Reading and reflecting on the quote "Change is an opportunity to do something amazing." I can't help but think about what has happened in my life the last couple of months, and the number of changes that have occurred. When I consider the quote, I think about how these changes are providing opportunities for some amazing things.  Most of these changes have been professional in nature, but their impact has be very personal. 

• Graduating in May with my Ed.D. has brought about a number of changes. My dissertation on principal practices that impact teacher collaboration led to opportunities to provide professional development for teachers and administrators on this topic. Finishing my doctorate has also  provided me with the opportunity to spend more time with my family. One of the best parts of my summer was discovering that both of my daughters have a love for thrill rides. So we spent many summer days at Six Flags Great America riding roller coasters. 

• This school year I started my twentieth year in education. Each year brings a new chapter and changes. While this is my fifth year as a principal, it is my first year as the principal of Alice Gustafson Elementary School and Early Childhood Center. Being charged to lead another building in the district has already provided me with  many opportunities to do some amazing things. Before the year stated I intentionally read books on leadership and made the decision to implement what I learned.  My focus is on building meaningful relationships with staff and students. We have embarked on exploring Twitter as a staff through our Twitter Bingo Challenge, trying out Voxer as a new way to connect, and we have launched a whole staff  Kids Deserve It book study. 

• The last two changes were two things that I recently pursued. After years of lurking on Twitter and mostly following sports and other interests, I made the decision to connect with other educators by participating in a number of different Twitter chats. I have been amazed at how much I have learned, as well as the connections that I have made. In addition to becoming engaged on Twitter, I decided to be vulnerable and share my story through blogging. Blogging has allowed me to reflect and think about my practices and beliefs. This exercise  has given me the opportunity to share my story with educators from all over the country. I have also benefited greatly from the stories of other educators.  Sharing stories and experiences has provided me with new ideas to consider and wonderful ways to grow and innovate.  

The most important thing about all of these changes is that it has made me really think about how to provide amazing opportunities for our students. 

Belonging - why it is so important for our students

What does it mean to belong? To feel like you are connected with other individuals? To make those deep meaningful connections? To be a part of something that is larger than yourself? These are deep and profound questions that everyone wrestles with and seeks answers to during their lifetime.  Our students that walk into our schools and into our classrooms are asking the same questions. They are wondering if they will fit in with their classmates. They hope their teacher will be able to relate to them. They desire to have teachers that believe in them and push them to be better.

Some of what I remember most as a young student, is the unfortunate times where I felt like I didn’t quite belong. When I was in kindergarten I really struggled with school readiness. I was constantly behind, confused, and at times overwhelmed with following the directions. I don’t ever remember my teacher connecting with me, letting me know it was going to be okay, or even recognizing any of my strengths. I also remember having a challenging time in third grade. My teacher wasn’t very warm or welcoming. Her classroom management consisted of berating students when they made a mistake or didn’t follow a direction. I will always remember being scared going into her class. One time when I was a fourth grade student, I was told to go to her class and ask for some supplies. As I crossed the hall to go into her class I felt an anxiousness come over me. As I inquired about the supplies, I was immediately confused by her direction.  All of those feelings of intimidation and fear came rushing back, as she loudly and aggressively repeated her direction.  These two stories are simple examples of educators not creating safe and caring classroom cultures.  I think these examples highlight how damaging it can be for our students if we don’t create schools and classrooms where students feel like they belong.  

I am blessed to have entered into my twenty first year in education. I started my career as a classroom teacher in Tempe, Arizona. I will always remember my first class. I took over for a third grade teacher who retired early. It was late February and I was all of twenty two years old, and ready to take on the world! This particular class was housed in a portable classroom and was the farthest class from the office. I had heard rumors of about how out of control this class was and they had no or little respect for teachers. My first day with the students was a blur. Even as a brand new teacher, I immediately identified that there was no evidence of classroom routines;  students either sprinted back to class from our time in the computer lab or stayed behind and hid under the tables. For the remainder of that school year I spent time trying to figure out how to create positive relationships with the students in order to gain their trust. I learned very quickly that many of these students lived in an impoverished housing project in Phoenix.  They had parents who were incarcerated or addicted to drugs. These students were often left alone to fend for themselves. In fact this particular housing project was cut off from the rest of south Phoenix by an expressway on one side and a busy street on another. Many of these kids didn’t have that sense of belonging in their families and being cut off physically from the rest of the city didn’t create a sense of belonging to the community. My job for the rest of that year  was to build a class community, and perhaps the one place, where students felt like they belonged. In order to do that I played with the students at recess, I celebrated their learning of academics and behaviors, we played music in class, and we created a class t-shirt that each student was proud to wear.

I often wonder what happened to my students as I moved to back to Illinois a few years later. I learned more in the few months that I had that class than my four years at pre service teacher at ASU. I learned what it meant to build up a student's confidence, to believe in a student, to find out the awesomeness that each student possess. Most of all I learned how important it is for our students to feel like they belong. To feel like they matter. To have a place they can call home.

Your Words Matter

As teachers what we say and do matters. It matters greatly for the students that sit in our classes, walk our halls, eat in our cafeterias, have fun on our playgrounds, play on our teams, and participate in our clubs. Each student matters. Angela Maiers spoke about this idea a few years ago. 

No one can really argue with Angela's powerful message of making sure our students matter. We demonstrate our care for students and ensuring that they know they matter through our actions and our words. 

Our school is on a journey to increase feedback to students about their learning through goal setting. In addition, we are teaching our students to develop a growth mindset when they encounter something that is challenging. These approaches require us to think about how we are talking with our students and the message we are sending through our words. Do we really believe they can learn? Do we think they will make their goals? 

When I was in middle school  I received one of those weight lifting benches they sold at Service Merchandise for my birthday. The bench came with a barbell, weights, and at the end of the bench you could set it up to do leg extensions. I was so excited about this gift and being the smallest kid in school I imagined myself getting bigger and stronger. It wasn't long after I received this gift that someone told me that I could continue to lift weights but I wouldn't gain any muscle.  This was someone I trusted so I believed them. I stopped lifting weights and that gift collected dust in the garage. 

I believed this falsehood for a very long time. Those words from someone I trusted led me to believe that no matter how hard I tried I wouldn't gain any muscle from working out. Even though I read research to the contrary, the words this person spoke to me shaped my beliefs. Words matter. I started to work out regularly in my late 30s and I realized that I could gain muscle and get stronger. I finally let go of the comment that was made to me so many years prior.  I am guessing that my story is similar to yours in that you may believe something about yourself that isn't true because of what someone has said to you. Words matter, they shape our thoughts and beliefs. 

We all remember the saying sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me. The truth is words cut deep and wound us. The words others say to us can influence our thinking and what we believe about ourselves. The spoken words from others can build us up or tear us down. We can be the worst culprits in words that tear us down through negative self talk. We tell ourselves we can't, were not smart enough, we don't have the strength, or it is too hard. If we are saying those negative words to ourselves, than what are our students saying to themselves? What do they think? Do they believe they have shortcomings? Do they think they are not smart enough? Not creative enough?

The work being done by Carol Dweck about growth mindset, and Angela Duckworth on grit, is exciting and gives hope to the fact that we can change those beliefs  and thoughts that come from comments from others or from that negative self talk. When I walk into classrooms I get encouraged to see teachers talking with students about these concepts. 

Let's remember the power we have with our words. Let's use our words to build up our students so that they believe in themselves. This is one of the greatest things we can do for our students!

Lead from the heart

In the spring I learned that I would be leading another school in the district during the 16-17 school year. I had some mixed emotions about the change. I loved my time at HCS and I had the privilege of working with so many great teachers. It is the place where I learned about being a leader. After being appointed as the principal of AGS I began to reflect on my beliefs about leadership. I thought about my experiences, some great some not. Through my reflection I came to the realization that the times I connected best with teachers was when I was leading from the heart. It also occurred to me that leading from the heart and showing vulnerability created an environment for teachers to take risks and to innovate. 

Over the summer I continued to pursue more wisdom about leadership through books on this topic. I read books by John Maxwell, John Gordon, Andy Andrews, and Todd Whitaker. After each book I read I became convinced that leading from the heart is not only the best choice in developing others it is the only choice. 

Here are a few excerpts from books that have shaped my view on leadership:

“Great leaders are great because people trust and respect them, not because they have power.” - Jon Gordon, The Carpenter: A Story About the Greatest Success Strategies of All


“[Good leaders] have more than an open-door policy—they know the door swings both ways. They go through it and get out among their people to connect.” - John Maxwell, 5 Levels of Leadership: Proven Steps to Maximize Your Potential

"Every single thing you do matters. You have been created as one of a kind. You have been created in order to make a difference. You have within you the power to change the world." -Andy Andrews, The Noticer: Sometimes, All a Person Needs is a Little Perspective

"Great principals never forget that it is the people, not programs, who determine the quality of the school." - Todd Whitaker What Great Principals Do Differently: 18 Things That Matter Most 

The last three years were spent working on my Ed.D. in Leadership. The title of my dissertation was At the Heart of Professional Learning Communities: How Principal Leadership Practices Influence Teacher Collaboration. I was interested in investigating how leaders impact the way teachers work together. Doing the study allowed me to talk with teachers, specialists, and principals. My findings from the study echoed previous research about principal leadership practices. 

• Teacher participants mentioned the following leadership characteristics/practices that demonstrate being a caring leader: transparency, openness, frequent communication, patience, willingness to truly listen, and demonstrating vulnerability. 

• Shirley Hord describes a second set of supportive conditions, in her attributes of PLCs,  as friendly interactions and relational trust. A participant in the study summed this idea of relational trust best - "I think from my experience, it’s just having conversations with her, just feeling comfortable. I feel that I can say anything to her and I’m not going to get like backlash because I said something she doesn’t agree with, positive or negative. I think that trust has built up over years, it wasn’t there right away, when we first met, when she first came into the building. But just seeing that she’s one of us, she doesn’t over power us and she’s not that micromanager"

• Leaders need to model how to extend trust in others. Covey (2006) describes the extending of trust as empowering others and comes from a fundamental belief that most people are capable of being trusted and will run with that trust. Principals who extend the trust to their teachers to do the right work to build powerful PLC teams. They give their teams the autonomy to do their work which leads to teams being more creative in solving problems and meeting the needs of their students.

As a leader I must continue to lead from the heart in order to connect with teachers and to build that relational trust, so I can bring out the best in others. As you lead your districts, buildings, or classrooms how will you lead from the heart? How will you bring out the best in others? These are questions we should constantly think about as we walk our halls, talk with our students, and listen to our teachers. 

I recently discovered Audible and have been listening to books while at they gym or on my ride in to work. The book I am currently listening to now is Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't by Simon Sinek. I came across this audio clip that demonstrates the importance that we have as leaders in creating a positive culture. A negative work environment actually impacts the health and well being of employees.

Leading from the heart means we care about the people we serve. We care about who they are, who they are striving to be, their health, their well being, and their personal lives. When I read books, listen to podcasts, and participate in Twitter chats it is to continue to learn and grow as a leader. I use these learning opportunities to reflect on my own practices. I want to make sure that I am leading from the heart, that I am connecting with teachers and students, and that I am creating a positive school culture where teachers feel comfortable to take risks and be innovative for their students.