A Reader Writes... (Brown Wisdom)

In response to the comments relating to, “Brown’s Wisdom,” a reader writes:

“Let's not fool ourselves; most principals are NOT the main advocates for students even though they should be. In most cases they are caught up in political mumbo jumbo, employee issues, and district office garbage that consumes most of their advocacy time. I am sure glad Sean can say it like it is and refocus the leaders who really want to be advocates.”

SC Response
I do agree that most principals are not the main advocate for students, which is why the system is generally designed for adult comfort. If the person who occupies the advocate’s role does not engage, that is the logical result. However, I think the reasons for not embracing the role are varied. Here are just a couple (feel free to share others):

1. There are bad principals that shouldn’t have received their job. Just like there are bad teachers, bad superintendents and so on. Some people just aren’t cut out for the job, even though they interviewed well. These principals are the "Unwilling and Unable."

2. There are some principals have been beaten down to the point that all they know to do is hunker down and go with the flow. These principals are the "Injured."

3. There are some principals that just don’t know that they should put students in front of adults. These principals are the "Uninformed."

4. There are some principals that haven’t had the right mix of mentors to help them develop their ideas and professional character. These principals are the "Unlucky."

I may be the luckiest school leader ever, my personal list of mentors includes: Dr. Richard Hooker (the early godfather of Texas school finance); Bob Brezina (who LYS readers know); Wayne Schaper Sr. (the godfather of Spring Branch ISD, TASSP and UIL); Fred Richardson (TASSP president); Harlan Yetter (Principal); E. Don Brown (who LYS Readers know) and Dr. Shirley Neeley (Commissioner, Texas Education Agency). If I don’t do right, there is a long line of people who are still more than willing to remind me why we really do this job.

5. There are some principals who are working on a figurative island, who have no one to bounce ideas off of and shore themselves up with. These principals are the "Isolated."

Again, I can not be any luckier. The following are just a few of the active Principals that I get to have serious conversations with, more than once each month: John Montelongo (HS Principal); Justin Marchel (MS Principal); Leslie Thomas (ES Principal); Barbara Fine (ES Principal); Jerry Gibson (HS Principal); Mike Seabolt (HS Principal); and Lesa Cain (ES Principal). That’s a network of a lot of powerful brains that are linked for one purpose, their students outperforming your students.

I was taught early in my career (and didn’t understand until much later) that the two most important people in the system are the Superintendent and the building Principal. The organization focuses on the Superintendent (and central office) because he or she is the source of power. The organization overlooks the Principal (and the campus), even though he or she is the source of service.

My goal (or agenda) is to shift the focus of the organization from the Superintendent and central office to the Principal and the campus. This means that the Unwilling and Unable Principal will no longer have a place to hide. And that every other Principal and campus leader will have at least one external source of support as they fight the good fight. One person is a lonely voice, two people are the genesis of a team.

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...

Blog and E-mail: A Review of Functions

Some of you have seen a version of this post before, but since I wrote it, the number of Lead Your School readers has more than doubled. Therefore, I thought a refresher might be in order. The following is my attempt to explain the features that are embedded in the blog site and the e-mail updates.

Note: This section relates to the blog site (not the e-mail updates).

1. On the left side of the page: If you enter your e-mail address in the subscribe box, you will get a daily e-mail update of all the postings within the last 24 hours, after you respond to the confirmation e-mail (a spam preventative).

2. On the left side of the page, under the e-mail subscription area: Links to the Lead Your School campus support site and Cain Notes.

3. On the left side of the page, under the Lead Your School Resource area: Current School News. Click on any of the four key words and the most current news stories that relate to that key word will be displayed.

4. On the left side of the page, under Current School News: RSS Feeds. I don't have a clue. The tech guys just said it needed to be there. Can anyone out there explain it?

5. On the left side of the page, under RSS Feeds: Followers. Again, no clue (just following tech guy instructions). Some of you do this, care to explain it to the rest of us?

6. At the bottom of the blog page, under the last post of the week: Blog Archives. Click on a week, and all the posts from that week will be displayed.

Note: This section relates to the actual posts (on the blog site).

1. If you click on a post title, it will pull up a comment box at the end of the post. Just type in your comment and click the "post comment" button.

2. At the bottom of each post, click "comment" and you can leave a comment or read comments others have left. However, the majority of the comments, I post under the heading, "A Reader Writes."

3. At the bottom of each post, click the envelope if you want to e-mail that post to another person.

4. At the bottom of each post, if you click a "Label" word, it will pull up all the other posts that have the same label words.

5. At the bottom of the post, there are reaction boxes. You get to rate the post.

Note: This section relates to the E-mail updates.

1. If you click on "Lead Your School", it will take you to the web site.

2. If you click on a post title, it will take you to the post and there will be a comment box at the bottom of the screen. Just type in your comment and click the "post comment" button.

Note: This section relates to Reader Comments.

This is how all comments are handled:

1. Your comments, opinions and question are welcomed and encouraged. Keep them coming.

2. All comments opinions and questions are reviewed by me before they are published.

3. With comments, opinions and questions, where it is asked that the information not be shared, receive a private response from me.

4. One liners and comments that do not require a response are just posted as a comment.

5. Comments opinions and questions of merit (99% of them) are posted as, “A Reader Writes…” They are posted in a first come, first serve fashion. So sometimes it takes a while to get to yours.

6. I don’t know if it is proper blog etiquette or not, but I spell and grammar check comments before I post them.

Post format:

1. Purple text is the comment of the reader.

2. Your turn… This is your invitation to weigh in and join the conversation.

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...

Cain Notes (As Named By Others)

Cain Notes were not named by me, it was an underground name that an AP said out loud one time and it stuck.

I read a lot. Not quite as much as I used to, but still much more than the typical educator. I can’t help myself, if it has words on it and I have 2 seconds, I’ll read it. When I was a teacher and an assistant principal, I assumed that everyone read at least as much as I did and I had no compelling reason to check to see if my assumption was correct.

When I became a Principal, I found out I was wrong. My first response was to suggest, beg, plead and chastise my staff into reading more. That worked a little (or at least they learned that if they nodded their heads “yes,” I would move on to the next topic). But, as I hired new staff I found out that waiting for them to catch up with the specific knowledge base of the existing staff took too long. So, I started typing up my book notes and commentary to use as a training tool. That way they would have an idea about what we were talking about until they had a chance to read the book.

ALWAYS READ THE BOOK.

As my staff got promoted and went to other schools, some of them would ask that I keep them in the Cain Note loop. Not a problem.

When I began working with struggling schools across the State of Texas, I dusted off the Cain Notes. When a particular book was a good fit for the problems that a campus was facing, I’d leave the notes, to prime the pump for a campus-wide book study. Some principals didn’t care, some found the notes useful.

Now I am posting the notes on the Lead Your School consulting website, just in case other school leaders might find the notes useful. I’ll put a 1 to 3 up each month. Here is all that I ask:

READ THE BOOK.

1. The notes are based on what I think is important from the book. They are not a replacement for the book.


2. Let me know what you think. Did you like the book? Were the notes helpful? Was I on the track or did I miss the boat?

Currently, I have notes for the following books posted:

• Corp Business, by David H. Freedman
• Made to Stick, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
• Environments for Learning, by Eric Jensen
• Who Moved My Cheese, by Spencer Johnson, M.D.

You can get to the notes by clicking on the following link, www.leadyourschool.com/Cain_Notes.html

Or, on the left side of this page, click on “Sean’s Book Notes.”

Did I mention, that you should read the book?

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...

A Reader Writes... (Brezina's Rule Commentary)

In response to the post, "Brezina's Rule Commentary," a reader writes:

“I have to agree that master scheduling is a tremendous challenge for administrators to whom the fickle finger of fate points to. Either it ends up being at the mercy of computerized programs that may not be able to facilitate the kind of differentiated groupings needed to focus instruction in a practical and successful manner or it falls to less data-driven decisions and a matter of how can we get through the next school year with the fewest possible complaints.

I believe this points to a lack of vision of "what is in the best interest of the student." I remember my mentor warning me about district policy on this matter, who said, "If it makes sense, we can't do it. If we have enough people who think it will work, it will cost too much."

What is the cost of not doing what is truly in the best interest of the student? If we have a shared vision and keep the data in front of us to best identify learning needs and not just graduation needs, then I believe the process becomes profitable in the eyes of the community who might just support a greater cost for a greater outcome.

As a farmer once told me, "If I plant a kernel of corn, I don't expect to get back only a kernel of corn; I am going to get several ears."

Let those with "ears to hear, hear!"

SC Response
I do not disagree with your points, but the key is to get out of the advisor mode and get into the “do’er” mode. Specifically, I refer to the comments of your mentor and the idea that the community will support greater costs.

When I am in the advisor mode, I come to you with a new idea. I present the idea to you. I hope that you will like it and I hope that you will pay for it. Unfortunately, new ideas are generally scary and expensive, so the easy answer is, “No.” As an advisor, I accept that answer and go on to find the next hurdle that fate throws in my path. Because after all, as an advisor, I am really just a smart, decently compensated, random victim of fate.

We all begin our careers in this manner. Does any first year teacher actually control anything? Did you? The problem is, the system does such a good job of training us to be sheep (who are the consummate victims of fate – “grass good, wolf bad, what’s that”), that when we have the opportunity to break out of that role, we don’t know how.

When I am in the “do’er” mode, I am looking for new ideas and I am looking for ways to implement those ideas that do not require a district patron. Self discovery and self reliance becomes my mantra. So you ask, “how do I do that?”

I won’t bore you with the self discovery aspect of the equation. If you read this blog it means that you are already asking questions and looking for answers in multiple venues. It is the self reliance aspect, which as educators, trips us up. I’ll give you four quick examples on how to become more self-reliant, there are many more.

1. Sweat equity. As a teacher, you have your own labor and the labor of your students. As a department chair, you have the labor of your department. As an AP, you have the labor of your team. As a Principal, you have the labor of your campus. With sweat equity, you can stretch out dollars (materials are generally cheaper than labor) and/or put the people in charge of the money in a position to want to help you (either through generosity of guilt).

2. Find a rich patron. I have a friend who was the principal at a tough urban high school. He had one person on his fund raising list. Fortunately, this person was the head of a very old, very famous and very rich family trust. You don’t need central office, when your patron calls you and asks, “How do you want to spend this semester’s $50,000?"

3. Work your PTA and community. Give them projects to fund and revenue targets to hit. Make sure your campus fundraising for all your teams and organizations are coordinated. New elf hats for the drill team may need to take a back seat to new computers in the library.

4. Know your budget and aggressively manage it. Shift money, stash dollars where you know they will be approved but where you can later move it to your pet project. Scream every time the bean counters tell you, “you can’t do something.” Here is the truth, 95% of budget rules are local policy. Policies that are designed to give central office control over campus dollars. In the long run, those policies can be changed. As a principal, I controlled my entire budget, every penny. And, I could move it to any function. The principal in the district next to me only controlled a $15,000 discretionary fund.

You get the idea. So this leads me to this final thought, I often have principals and superintendents quietly ask me the following question, “What do you really do?”

To which I respond, “I teach teachers how to win, in terms of student performance. And, I give school leaders permission to act, in terms of creating an organization that optimizes student opportunity.”

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...

A Reader Writes... (Brown Wisdom)

In response to the post the discussed E. Don Brown’s advice that from a system standpoint, “the Principal’s role is to be the pure advocate for students,” a reader writes:

“It makes sense that the principle of student advocacy should be led by the principal leader of students. It reminds me of a principle I have shared with colleagues, that our duty as instructional leaders seeking exemplary schools is to develop instruction leaders in exemplary classrooms. They, in turn, are developing instructional leaders in exemplary students who are then instructional leaders of students and learning. The most powerful learning happens in peer teaching, coaching and mentoring. Who says we can't have a school filled with powerful instruction leaders who are sold out to life-long learning for all constituents?”

SC Response
Your distilling of the concepts parallels two conversations I have had that have stayed with me and impact my professional actions. The first conversation was when Dr. Jim Davis and I were struggling with the poor academic performance of very “street smart” students. The product of the conversation was an instructional format built on the belief that the only way a student could cheat, would be not to help his buddy. In other words, build a classroom that operated with a teacher and 20 full-time peer tutors. Two words: IT WORKS.

The second conversation was with Dr. Mike Laird, as we were discussing the effect of teachers implementing the Fundamental Five at high frequency has on students. What we have observed is that as students become more actively engaged in the learning, they begin to “own” their learning. As this sense of “ownership” matures, the intrinsic need to learn more, increases. The result - a classroom full willing volunteers, instead of a waiting room of bored clock watchers – the dream of every teacher and school leader.

Your last sentence is what drives the Lead Your School team and network. We must have schools filled with engaged leaders who will not rest until every constituent is a life-long learner.

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...

A Reader Writes... (The Recent Posts)

In response to the recent posts, a reader writes:

“Sean, I have been reading, enjoying, and learning from your blog a for few months now. I had the opportunity to hear you at the Rigor, Relevance and Relationship conference as well, and fortunately for me, I have a mentor that is philosophically in tune with the things that you write and say.

I have to humbly admit that I've never felt like jumping out of my seat before and yelling ‘YAH BABY,’ before today's posting. You hit the nail on the head with your points made, and it's that exact leadership philosophy that 'young' (in terms of years of leadership experience) leaders crave to lead them and the rapidly changing schools we serve.

In the everyday working school environment, the reality is that the principal HAS to step up to the plate and at least take a whole hearted swing. And when they don't; whether they can’t or won’t lead in the style that is necessary; the Superintendent needs to do his or her part in recognizing this underachievement and do ‘the right thing for kids.’ In other words, they have to make sure that their principals lead or leave.

This whole business about ‘finding the right fit,’ and ‘making the right match,’ for personalities of the adults on campuses is bogus when 100’s of days of instruction are at stake. Finding leaders who have the guts, courage, skills, and stamina to look the pitcher in the eye and say, ‘bring it on - all the heat- because I'm ready to swing and I'm pointed to center field,’ will be the pivotal point for our true success.”

SC Response
First of all, YAH BABY!!! The fact that there are educators like you out there who are fired up about school leadership and student success, makes hosting the Lead Your School network exciting and worth doing.

Second, you are spot on. If school leaders do not fully engage, then they are effectively limiting the success of the students, the staff and the school. When I was responsible for a team of principals, they knew that not fully engaging was the unforgivable sin. It was OK to aim too high and miss. But hedge your bet, or take the path of least resistance and diminished productivity and your position with the district was tenuous at best.

Third, I completely agree with your stance on "finding the right fit" for the school. This is district code for maintaining the status quo. Unless, the campus in question is significantly outperforming its peers, the status quo needs to be replaced, not maintained.

A quick aside:
High SES campuses, outperforming your peers means significantly outperforming similar high SES campuses. It does not mean outperforming the low SES campus on the other side of the district. And before you say that you do both of those things, double check your data. The interesting thing about high SES schools is that they all perform about the same. If necessity is the mother of invention, it seems that academically fragile students are the mother of pedagogy improvement.

Another somewhat related aside:
I was working with a mid-to-high SES district three years ago. The Superintendent (philosophically in tune with, and a friend of Brezina) had me assess his secondary campuses and address his principals. Here is the summary of my report and presentation:

Assessment
1. All six HS campuses were operating well below their potential, even though they were significantly outperforming the much poorer, surrounding schools.
2. Five of the campuses had the opportunity to be great.
3. One of the campuses had the opportunity to be World Class.

Presentation
1. The one campus, identify the best high schools in the country. Beat them soundly.
2. The other five campuses, catch the one campus.

The immediate response
1. Three of the six principals resigned within one week (one of them resigned five minutes after I finished speaking).

The on-going result
1. The one is making significant progress at becoming World Class.
2. The other five are giving chase at full speed.

All of this to say, if you are going to work, sweat, stress and bleed for the job, why not be great?

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn…