Think about the school leadership training you received. Maybe you were taught to write a vision statement, create a strategic plan, and craft SMART goals. Maybe the training said you needed to get in the classroom more? Look at more data. Or give better feedback to teachers with that perfect script of hard conversations. This […]
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A few years ago, I had just started working with a new school. On my first day in the building, I asked the principal Mr. Dawes to take me on a walkthrough so that I could see the range of teaching happening in the building. Mr. Dawes took me to several classrooms and then I […]
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Are there some people you tend to click with while others just get on your nerves? Do you find it easier to motivate some people while others resist you…every…step…of…the…way? You may chalk it up to personality conflicts but there is something much more basic going on. It has to do with something I call Will Drivers. You […]
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Don’t you hate it when you are giving a teacher feedback and . . . Crickets. No response. Nothing. And what’s worse, you just know that the teacher will ignore your feedback and not make any changes in the classroom. Total. Waste. Of. Time.Well what you might not realize is that there is a reason for that reaction and it’s not what you […]
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Leadership is dead. Or at least it is no longer enough to help address the pressing challenges in education today. We need something more.I call that something more Buildership and over the last few posts, I’ve talked about what it is and why it is so important. Now, I want to talk about what it actually takes to […]
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Every time someone says that they are doing something “like a boss,” I cringe. Being a boss is the most ineffective form of leadership. It focuses on exercising power and control to get those underneath you to do what you ask them to do. As a boss, you’re constantly pushing folks forward towards your goals. […]
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One of my favorite definitions of a discipline problem is “whenever a behavior interferes with the teaching act, interferes with the rights of others to learn, is psychologically or physically unsafe, or destroys property” (Levin and Nolan, 1996). That means, not only can students be discipline problems, but we can sometimes be inadvertent discipline problems as […]
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One of the biggest battles any teacher or school leader must face is how to serve people without judging them.It’s tough. You see a student refusing to do his work in spite of all of your best efforts to help him and almost without thinking, you label him lazy. You see a teacher openly reading Facebook […]
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