Knowing the story

This past Saturday my wife and I went to hear the Flint Symphony Orchestra (FSO) at the Whiting in Flint, MI.  I love live music of just about any genre, but I particularly enjoy going to FSO concerts as I find their conductor, Enrique Diemecke to be particularly entertaining.  Maestro Diemecke is incredibly passionate about music and this passion permeates his movements and his discussion of the pieces the FSO will play on any particular evening.

Maestro Enrique Diemecke

Prior to each concert Maestro Diemecke provides the audience with the background and context of the music for that particular evening, and I find this serves to allow the audience to better connect with the music.  On Saturday Maestro Diemecke was particularly descriptive when discussing Michael Daugherty’s Fire and Blood for Solo Violin and Orchestra.  This piece was inspired by Diego Rivera’s mural at the Detroit Institute of Art and you can click here for information on this work of art.  Maestro Diemecke went on to brilliantly contextualize Rivera's life and spoke passionately about his wife, Frida Kahlo, and her influence upon his work.  Needless to say, this introduction and explanation greatly enhanced my appreciation of this particular piece of music.

On the way home that evening my wife commented on the concert and she mentioned how much she appreciated Maestro Diemecke’s brief discussion prior to each concert.  As we are both educators, and as I cannot seem to stop thinking about work, we quickly began drawing parallels between that evening’s concert and the field of education.  Yes, in case you are wondering, I can always bring it back to the field of education!

Both my wife and I had a greater appreciation for the music we heard last Saturday because the music was placed in context for us; we understood the influences behind all the pieces played that evening thanks to Maestro Diemecke who chose to tell the audience the stories behind the music.  I think it stands to reason that educators would also have greater appreciation for the students and the families they serve were they aware of the various and diverse contexts that produce their students.  Academic achievements may carry more weight were we to know the various challenges facing our students.  Conversely, academic failures, or shortcomings, may not be viewed quite so harshly were we able to place them in their proper context. 

Many of us serve children who face challenges most of us cannot even begin to fathom.  What if we knew the stories behind our students?  What if we knew the struggles they faced just to get to school?  Would the way we view them change if we had a better understanding of the world they returned to each weekday afternoon?  I believe we would quickly gain a greater appreciation for our students and we would rapidly develop a reluctance to judge them for what they do and for what they leave undone.  This increased awareness would no doubt, in my humble opinion, lead to an increased appreciation of the children under our care.  Strengthening the bonds between those who teach and those who are being taught is instrumental in righting what is wrong in our field.  Knowing the stories behind the children we are fortunate to teach in an important step in this process.

What do you see?

What do you suppose the man in the picture above sees when he looks out the window?  Some possible responses immediately come to mind: clouds; buildings; the streets beneath him; perhaps people on those streets; and, perhaps, maybe a jet or two racing through the sky.  These are, of course, literal responses, but what happens if we stop for a moment to consider the possibility of the more abstract responses we may receive if we ask the gentleman himself what he sees.  Consider the possibility that he is a real estate developer, so he may look out this window and see untapped potential in the buildings below.  What if, for example, he is the city’s new police commissioner; would it stand to reason that looking out upon his city he may see all the challenges facing him in this new position?  How might he perceive this view if he is brand new to the city and possesses little to no experience with people of color and is largely influenced by the media’s portrayal of minority youth?  What if he, or someone close to him, were the victim of crime in a similar location; might that influence how he views that which he sees?  With this in mind, it stands to reason that he may see potential danger lurking in every alleyway, corner store, and may prove reluctant to venture far beyond the walls of this building.

                

The point is that what we see is largely determined by what we have seen; that is, our past experiences serve as our roadmap to guide us through the unknown.  We use previous experiences to make sense of new experiences This has become increasingly apparent to me over the course of the past three years as I have led a largely white staff serving a student population comprised largely of children of color.  Just the other day I met with a staff member and discussed how our view of one another is largely influenced by a number of variables.  For example, how we view others, and situations, is largely influenced by the following:

1.  Ethnicity
2. Gender
3. Sexual orientation
4. Socio-economic status
5. Education level
6. Religious identification
7. Family dynamics
8. Life experiences
9. Social circle
10. Personality preferences

Working together I have no doubt we could generate a much longer list, but I think the ten variables above will suffice for the present.  Imagine that you are standing directly across from another person with a sheet of glass between the two of you.  Ideally you should be able to view one another clearly, but let’s also suppose that the two of you share nothing in common when it comes to the variables listed above.  Furthermore, for each difference, imagine that each of you must dip your hand in grease and wipe it across the plate of glass.  Pretty soon your view of the person on the other side of the glass becomes distorted and you don’t quite see them as clearly as you did at the beginning of this exercise.  In fact, it quickly becomes apparent to you that in order to see them clearly, you now have to reposition yourself so that you have another vantage point or you must clean your side of the glass and hope they do the same on their side. 

As school leaders it is imperative that we influence our staff to change their perspective, or vantage point, and clean their side of the glass in order to get a better view.  Moreover, we must influence our adults to do so first because the kids need to see us making the move before they will consider doing the same.  Furthermore, in my opinion, it is important that we model the way for the students we serve, so going first makes perfect sense in this—and all—situations.  This is an initial step in building capacity in a staff by increasing the collective cultural competency of the people we lead.

Roll the rug: Changing what we do

Earlier this week I, along with many other staff members, was assisting in preparing our gymnasium for lunch periods.  This is a task that quite frankly stinks as it involves moving approximately 24 tables from a room across the hallway to our gymnasium.  It is more difficult than it sounds as it calls for navigation of tight spaces and multiple turns, all while navigating a busy hallway.

Even though I flat out hate this process, I do try to help as often as I can because I know the rest of our staff detest it at least as much as I do.  As I walked through the gymnasium to grab the next batch of tables I noticed that someone had rolled up one of the rugs in the hallway as this serves to make the transfer of tables from one place to the next much, much easier.  Now, generally many folks will simply attempt to roll the tables over this rug and inevitably it bunches up, slows the process down considerably, and typically results in a back-up of tables in the hallway until one of us rectifies the situation by getting the tables off the rug and then rolling it up and moving it out the way.

As I walked from the gymnasium to the hallway I asked, loudly, “Who rolled the rug?”  I asked twice before our music teacher, Joel Wiseman, replied hesitantly, “I did, Chris.”  Joel most likely thought less of my intellect when I then proceeded to ask him why.  He began, in best educator fashion, to explain to me the benefits of rolling the rug, summarizing by stating “It works better this way.”  I asked Joel to remember our conversation as I was going to ask him about it in our staff meeting that afternoon. 

That afternoon our entire staff gathered in a classroom for a quick staff meeting.  After acknowledging some staff members for their contributions to our success and their efforts toward establishing a positive school culture, I then reminded Joel about our earlier conversation.  I began by asking him why he rolled the rug and, just as I hoped, he replied that he did so because it made the job of moving the tables easier.  I then posed the following question to my staff: what rugs do we need to start rolling?  You see, each of us falls into habits of behavior that serve to make our daily tasks more difficult.  In my school I have a very small number of staff members possessing habits that make their respective duties much more difficult.  For example, I have a staff member with a habit of consistently arguing with students when redirecting behavior.  This staff member very quickly becomes angry, personalizes the interaction, and subsequently exacerbates the situation.  Moreover, this negative interaction leads to more negative interactions, and they all work together to build an unhealthy and unproductive relationship between this staff member and the many of the students we serve.  This staff member needs to ‘roll the rug’ and eliminate the behaviors increasing the difficulty of the job at hand.

Each of us, myself first and foremost, often fall into patterns of behavior that need to be questioned, examined, and subsequently changed or eliminated in order to make our respective lives easier.  The job we are called to do as educators is difficult enough; we certainly do not need to make it any harder by refusing to change negative behaviors simply because that is the way we have always done it.  As unpleasant as it may prove to be, occasionally we need to ‘roll the rug’ because it simply works better that way.

A lesson for educators from the NFL

If you are an American football fan you are sure to have seen images like this numerous times over the past season:

Players on offense or defense hustle to the sideline after a change in possession and are immediately greeted by a coach, or coaches, with tablets, photos, and information about what just took place.  They communicate what went well, what went poorly, and the changes that need to be made to increase the probability of future success.  Generally there is a flurry of activity as coaches and players communicate, plan, and adjust in an effort to be better the next time they step on the field.  This is repeated on each change of possession throughout the game and often even the most casual of fans can notice the subtle, and not so subtle, changes that take place as a result of this action.

Last night I was talking to a good friend about this and how it could apply to the field of education.  He believes we should apply the same concept to teaching.  He believes that we would see significant improvement if we had classroom-based coaches able to provide ongoing coaching to beginning teachers.  Coaches able to provide ongoing feedback to teachers throughout the day: pointing out what is good, identifying that which falls short of expectations, and offering suggestions for improvement.  Imagine if this relationship was able to drive improvement from one day to the next, if not from one period to the next—I have no doubt we would observe increased academic outcomes, but also increased job satisfaction, less teacher turnover, and increased student and staff morale.

One of the primary questions facing educational leaders is how to consistently build capacity in the people they lead.  The problems facing educators are not going away and, in fact, seem to grow increasingly worse as time passes: we are asked to do more with less; increasingly children begin school with more challenges and less preparation for what lies ahead; legislators consistently change the target in ill-guided attempts to do what is right for children; and society continues to point at teachers as the problem when they fail to fix all that is wrong.  There is no silver bullet that will provide an answer to all the challenges we face, but I believe my friend is on the right track when he suggests that we begin by building capacity in the folks on the front line—our teachers—and begin treating them like the professionals they are.

Do we need to think smaller?

Reading this interview with Kyle Smitley

of Detroit Achievement Academy really made me think: maybe we are on the wrong track with education.  Over and over again I have heard the following question asked when discussing a great school or a great educational initiative: Is it scalable?  The point being can we do it on a larger—perhaps much larger—scale?  Maybe we are on the wrong track with always questioning whether we can take something and scale it to suit a larger group, but what if the key is to stay small and have a more targeted, specific approach.  Malcolm Gladwell suggests that groups become impersonal when they grow larger than 150 members and we also know that as schools become more impersonal—larger—we lose that sense of connectedness and it is easier for students to disengage from the learning process.  Gladwell, of course, also suggests that class size is not quite as important as many would believe, but there are plenty of folks who disagree with him and believe strongly that class size is particularly important to students of color and students from the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum.  What if the key is to keep schools small in order to create. and maintain. that sense of community?