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Ethosing Through The Pandemic

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Walk into any school.  Read the signs on the door and the protocols for entering the school.  Look around, especially at the walls for signs of school life.  Listen to the sounds; pay attention to whose voices you hear.  Check the housekeeping of the hallways and stairways and restrooms.  Consider who greets you and understand the meaning of the first words spoken.  Smell the air.  The air, you wonder?  Check for the telltale smells of integrity or mendacity.  Tennessee Williams wrote that they have an odor we can detect.  These are all signs of the ethos of the school; those distinguishing signs of the character of a school.  All schools have it – ethos.

Then comes the reality; the pandemic has changed schooling in countless ways.  Each pandemic challenge has pinged against the school ethos bouncing off, leaving dents, and some gashes.  There is nothing in public education that has been easy during the pandemic.  Arguments about in-school versus at-home learning, protecting teachers and school staff from infection, effects on student learning, effects on student social and emotional well-being, stress of schooling at home on families, effects of closed campuses on local economics – all are made in the context of school ethos.  How have a school’s values and standards stood in the pandemic when critical issues arise?  “What are we to do?”, is the constant bell ringing question.  The school’s ethos tells us.  Your ethos should be telling you, “Pay attention to me”.

The nifty thing about a school ethos is that it is a resolute clearinghouse for sorting what is important.  A clear ethos – think of school vision, mission, values, goals, standards, and traditions wrapped up in a statement of “we stand for …” – helps to define a school’s pandemic plan.  It is impossible to have a clear ethos and waffle on questions like continuing education for all children, health and safety for everyone in the school, inclusion of students, communications with all school constituents, and fiscal responsibility and resource management.  It also is possible lose connection to your ethos and make decisions that drift you away from core beliefs.

That said, what part of your school ethos still stands?  What parts have been compromised?  What parts have been reshaped?  As we enter a second year of pandemic education, what does your ethos value?

How this plays out in real time is fairly easy to observe in local schools.  For example, a campus that was opened to in-person teaching and learning reflects a different set of value statements than a campus that remains closed to in-person school life.  No matter the explanation or rationale, there are real and unarguable differences between an open and a closed campus; why they are open or closed.  For example, a school where teachers taught and adhered to their school board approved curriculum reflects a different set of value statements that a school that substituted commercial curriculum and units of instruction.  For example, a school in which teachers made constant, daily personal connections with every at-home learner displayed a value statement different from a school that taught to students as at-home screens.

Daily practices and routines in the pandemic are based upon school policies that are based upon school values.  These values are reflected in the

  • stories the school tells about its provision of continuing education in the pandemic.  Is there connection between the ethos and the stories being created?  Is the ethos driving the pandemic plan and its stories or are the stories of a time apart from the ethos?
  • data the school collects to illustrate student achievement and growth.  Is ethos the foundation for data collection or is the data being collected without consideration of the ethos?  Is this usual school data that illustrates the ethos over time or stand-alone data? 
  • relationships between the school and its families that are evolving as a result of a school’s  pandemic education.  Is a pandemic plan based on the school ethos binding school families to the pandemic plan?  To what extent have self-interests separated from the ethos presented themselves?  Is the school family still intact?
  • perspectives of students about their current education and educational future.  Students are at the heart to the ethos; are they at the heart of the pandemic plan?  How do the success of their educational experience during the pandemic?  To what extent has the ethos helped to make their education pandemic-proof?
  • breadth of goodwill expressed by the community toward the school as a result of pandemic programming.  A community that supported a pre-pandemic ethos should be able to identify how the ethos shaped the school’s pandemic plan.  What do the community’s stories say about this?

There will be a post-pandemic time.  The ethos will be the compass that helps school leaders assure the post-pandemic school is on the school’s “right” educational track.  A strong school ethos will have been the anchor keeping a school connected to “what it stands for” during times of extreme crisis. 

When Not If I Have Your Back

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There was a shift in school leadership conversation during the last decade.  I missed it.  This must have been one of my Rip Van Winkle events.  After an apparent doze, I found conversations with school leaders loaded with references to “…having my back”.  The phrase is used most often retroactively and unconditionally, though now and again it precedes the statement of a new idea, as in “I will … if you…”.   I heard flat statements by Board members to each other, “We need to have our administrator’s backs”. And, flat statements by administrators, “They have my back” and “We have each other’s back”.  “Having your back” became a something and I had missed its meaning.

Visions of fighter pilots came to mind.  As planes go into action, a wingman defends the lead plane’s rear, the place the leader is not watching closely in the heat of action.  Having someone’s back is to defend them from attack; it is to protect and safeguard.  I was hearing that school leaders needed similar protection from attack. 

My Van Winkle mind immediately wanted to know “why is this thus and what should I know about this thusness”, a great line from the movie Lincoln.  Why is this thus?

In the 80s and 90s fellow school leaders did not speak of their “back” and the need for that kind of professional protection.  Maybe we did not talk of it because of our naïveté of educational politics or there were underlying assumptions that leaders enjoyed covering protection, but I don’t remember it that way.  My colleagues’ careers rode on the wings of their acts; some flew high and some went down in flames.  Professionalism was collaborative and collegial and defended when in the right.

Public complaining is commonplace.  In 1976 Albert Finch screamed “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more” in the movie Network and gave permission to the dissatisfied to scream and now stream their personal complaints on any and every issue.  Protest, rightful or wrongful, gains attention and attention can cause response.

We should know that our society is more litigious today.  24-hour news shares anguished cries of foul against alleged wrong-doers and equal proclamations of disclaiming.  Any and everything is a potential for “I will see you in court”.  People lawyer up.  Educators and schools have not been immune.  Many suits are filed and even more appear to be threatened with the belief that the threat of going to court will make an undesired decision go away. 

If not a lawsuit, demonstrations can work just as effectively for anyone disagreeing with a school decision.  A group of citizens or parents or students, or all three together, with petitions and banners in hand can make scenes that cause a school leader to flinch.  The flinch becomes more pronounced when television crews show up and cameras roll or reporters call at any time of the day.  And, even more flinch worthy when the School Board is looking on.

School Boards flinch just like school administrators.

We should know that “having a person’s back” meant the person with a protected back literally had a “Kings X”, a truce, or “get out of jail free” card that would free them of personal ownership of the consequences of their decision in question.  Absolution, kind of.

We should know that the idea of institutional protection brought on a circling of wagons, a fortifying of barriers between individuals and complaints.  One can see the circle of wagons at a meeting in the way people arranged the table.  It is apparent in body language and spoken words.  Meetings presumed opposition not agreement or interest in middle grounds.  In fact, “I’m mad as hell…” and circled wagons do not invite middle grounding.

School Boards do more than flinch at the threat of a meeting room full of irate parents, students, and news reporters demanding redress from a school decision.  Instead of moving parties to conciliation, these circling wagons stiffens necks and positions.  It makes the pre-disposition for “having backs” more resolute and “having backs” may make decisions less inclusive in the get-go.  We should know that once circled, it is hard to uncircle the wagons.

What should I know about this thusness?

There is a large difference between protection and support.  Consider protection as an immunity from accountability for the consequences of a decision.  With immunity, no defense of a contested decision is necessary.  The protector of the back insinuates that little in the controversial decision will change and no consequences for poor decisions will be enforced. 

Consider support as not an immunity but as a pre-conditional understanding applied after the fact.  Protection is warranted when protection is warranted.  Support is warranted when support is warranted.  And, no protection or support is warranted when no protection or support is warranted.  This sounds easy and correct, but it falls apart if wagons are allowed to circle.  The key is to circle the facts not the personnel.

Emerging late into the “got your back era”, I found the need to understand these caveats.  Call them the conditions as in “I will have your back when…”.  These are not my caveats, but caveats required for public service.  Support is yours, when

  • You are faithful to the trust that has been given to you as a school leader.
  • You acted with integrity, honesty, and sincerity in making a “best high ground” decision.
  • Your decisions are founded in the school mission and goals.
  • You are child-centered and not self-centered.
  • You are not afraid to make a necessary decision.
  • You are as transparent as the conditions will allow you to be.
  • You are humble when wrong; wrong is a problem that can be fixed if admitted, confronted, and addressed.
  • You balance your wisdom and skills to make good decisions with your wisdom and skills to fix your poor decisions.
  • You support others as you wish to be supported – the Golden Rule of Having Backs.

It is not a long list but it serves to place a leader and her superordinates in the proper relationship.

As caveats, they also play well in creating the proper relationship of the public with School Boards.

Thus, we know that we are not alone.  What we do individually has consequences to others.  We are not perfect and in our imperfections we need to be responsible, accountable, and proactive to be better.  Someone is likely to yell “I’m angry as hell ..” at us sometime.  A quick review that we have been faithful to our caveats sustains us and those who support us. 

And, we also know that some days there are people who are just plain angry as hell and that is their problem.

Stop Teaching and Breathe

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Continuous teaching and learning reached a new status in the pandemic.  Teaching and learning now are a constant stream.  Synchronous and asynchronous online delivery means that a child may be engaged in school instruction without interruption – 24/7, five days a week, 52 weeks a year.  Barring an electrical outage, schooling need not stop.  That is, schooling need not stop unless we stop it and we really should stop the constant stream of instruction now and again.

Online delivery platforms allow us to synchronously deliver instruction in real time to students.  We can simulate in-person classrooms on screen.  We can easily create unit and lesson designs that allow a child at-home to be taught as if she were in the classroom.  That means that every day we schedule in-school teaching, all children regardless of location can be engaged in schooling.  The same platform allows us to asynchronously prepare instruction for engagement outside regular school hours.  A child who is not able to attend during the day can attend to schooling after hours.  A child who needs more instruction can receive it without contradicting her usual day time schooling.  A child who wants more can receive it.  Our growth in delivery systems during the pandemic means we can make schooling constant and continuous across the calendar and clock.

Asynchronous streaming does not require a teacher to teach in real time.  Lessons prepared and recorded can be streamed at any time.  Teachers can teach on a regular clock and children can learn on a virtual clock.  This moves the needle of instructional design miles from where it sat pre-pandemic.

The possibility of an unlimited stream of instruction raises an interesting question.  Because we can, should we?  Because we can provide a constant stream of instruction for every child, should we expect a child to engage in a constant stream of learning? Because we can operate a school 5, 6, or 7 days each week, should we expect children to attend on that schedule? Because we can mesh synchronous and asynchronous teaching into a constant delivery stream, should we believe that such a constancy is best for children?

Nope, is the right answer. 

We need to take a breath.  Children need to take a breath.  We need to make these breaths planned and purposeful.

A breath is a conscious break from constant engagement in teaching and learning.  Why take a breath?  These are a few of the cogent reasons.

  • The whole child needs time for schooling and time away from schooling.  Consider all the interests and needs a growing child displays.  Time is the vehicle for these interests and needs to be addressed.  If schooling consumes a child’s time, then the whole child cannot grow properly.
  • Learning requires time for conscious intellectual digestion and skill exploration.  That time is a recess from the constant spigot of instruction and the opportunity for conscious and unconscious thinking about and mulling over what has been learned.  Short term memory requires 7-10 repetitions of a fact or a concept before it sticks.  Long-term memory requires 17-20 reps.  Many of these repetitions do not take place in class time, but in a child’s reflective thinking.  Children don’t stop thinking about and trying out the things they learn.  They need time away from teaching to learn what they have been taught.
  • Learning fatigue is a reality.  Being consciously engaged in on-screen learning is hard work.  Focusing on a screen or screens for a length of time, although it is not physical movement, is tiring because of its rigidity and lack of movement.  Fatigued children do not learn efficiently.
  • Attending school is a child’s conscious decision in remote education.  And, not attending also is a conscious decision. With a click, a child can turn off the screen and be absent.  Work with a child to make time off the right time off.

Stop the teaching and breathe.  It is a healthy thing to do.

A breath taking looks like this.

Create a school day without any new instruction.  Stop the teaching and catch up.  Why is that when a line of cars travels in a caravan, the last car drives at a higher speed than the lead car?  Every hesitation in the speed of each car in the caravan is exaggerated for the last car in line.  The gaps grow and more speed is required to catch up.  Consider a constant stream of instruction as a caravan.  We need to stop teaching and attend to the last children in the learning line.  Is each of these children confident enough in their learning to continue the journey forward?  It takes time to catch up.  Catching up is highly individualized and it takes time to measure what each individual requires to get caught up.  Catching  up requires the right teacher questions to establish how a child will catch up.  Catching up takes time to unlearn and learn correctly.  Catching up results in a confident and solid learning for all children.  Effective teaching works best when all children are ready to learn and why wouldn’t we take a breath to ensure their readiness?

A time of the school day with no new instruction.  Take a break every day from the constant streaming.  It could be the proverbial one-hour lunch break.  Shut off the screens and enjoy a time away for eating.  In school, lunch is a finite number of minutes pinched by the time it takes to get to the cafeteria, get a lunch, and get back to class.  For elementary children, lunch is a compromise with noontime recess.  These pinches are not at play for at-home children, so eliminate them also for in-school children.  Lunch and free time!  What an idea. 

It could be a real recess for standing up, walking away, and moving. Tell at-home children to go outdoors and take a safe walk.  Take in-school children for a walk around the school campus or several laps of the school hallways.  Get the blood stirring.  This is not a PE class, but relaxing recreation, a social walk, a time away.

Stop the teaching – for a moment.  Breathe.  Allow the whole child to breathe.  Assure that all children are caught up and ready for their next learning.  Now, everyone, breathe deeply.  And, again.

A Principal Teacher

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There was a time when schools did not have principals.  Teachers were the only adults in the school house.  Successful principal leadership today should be founded inthe reasons schools required a principal in the first place.  Good principaling has not changed with time; there always is a need for the principal teacher.

A brief history lesson is necessary for our background knowledge.  The establishment of public schools followed the creation of territorial and state governments.  A provision for public education was at the top of each new constitution and authorized local communities to form a school district as a legal entity.  By statute, a district required election of a school board and the board was authorized to employ a superintendent and teachers.  Voila!  A school with teachers.  No principal.

The concept of principal began when a county or district superintendent worked the circuit of county or district schools, often in widespread and distanced communities.  The circuit schedule meant that teachers in a school supervised themselves, for weeks if not months, between superintendent visits.  Teaching practices and curricula evolved and governmental mandates piled up in those early years.   The question arose in the community and at the school – who at the school was the superintendent’s contact or the person who helped all teachers do the work the superintendent charged them to do between circuit visits?  If everyone in the school was a teacher, who?  Hence, the creation of a principal teacher.  The first principal was a lead or head or principal teacher.  Voila, again!  A teacher became a principal. 

This is where we need to stop the story and focus on what the principal is.  The principal is a teacher first and foremost.  Read it again – the principal is a teacher.  The expanded concept is that the teacher as principal no longer has a classroom of children to teach but a school as a teaching responsibility.  The school is the principal’s classroom and the principal teacher’s responsibility is to teach and assist all teachers in the school to be effective teachers for all children.   There are key words here – school as a classroom and to teach and assist.  Not to tell or expect without teaching and assistance.  The qualities of an effective teacher are demanded in the qualities of an effective principal.  Effective principaling has not changed since its inception.  The principal is the principal teacher.

Back to the story.  Principaling is the same work in a school of 4,000 children as it is in a school of 200 children.  Enter the concept of classroom size or scope of effectiveness.  While we understand there is a reasonable number of children a teacher can effectively and efficiently teach each day, there is a reasonable number of teachers for whom a principal can act as a principal teacher.  Once again, Voila!  Assistant or vice principal-teachers.  The additional number of school assistant principal teachers does not change the function – principals are principal teachers assigned to teach and assist teachers.

How does a principal teach teachers, one may ask?  The need for a teacher’s continuing education begins the first day of their hire.  Completion of a baccalaureate and teaching license says the teacher is trained in how to teach as a beginning teacher – again, a beginning teacher.  The degree does not prepare a teacher for the specifics of a job assignment – district curriculum, school policies and procedures, and student policies.  These specifics differ school to school.  The principal is responsible for each teacher’s new and continuing education to assure that all children benefit from quality classroom instruction.  Once hired, curriculum review cycles present new curriculum on an annual cycle.  Professional understanding of child psychology and learning theories present new teaching strategies.  The advancement of school technologies alone is a constant challenge.  Teachers are constantly engaged in professional learning.  A principal teacher needs to be side-by-side, either teaching teachers or learning along with teachers.  Principals as teachers are constantly engaged in professional learning. 

We too often think of the principal as the supervisor and evaluator of teachers.  In fact, the statutes assign principals to this role or to Effective Educator evaluation in Wisconsin.  This gets too much attention, partly because it can be contentious.  Supervision and evaluation is important but it is like a stripe on a highway that only gives the traffic a direction now and again.  The highway of heavy traffic in a school is daily teaching and this should be the interface between every teacher and a principal constantly.

It sounds like this. 

Principal: “How’d it go today?” 

Teacher: “Pretty good, I think.” 

Principal: “I watched a little bit from the doorway.  Tell me about what went pretty good, please.”  Teacher: Describes the lesson, what she did, and what children did.

Principal: “What clues tell you that the lesson worked for your children?”

Teacher: Describes her observations, handed in student work, and formative conclusions.

Principal: “What did you learn from this lesson?  Anything that helps in what comes next?”

Teacher:  Picks out one or two aspects she might adjust to improve or polish or will be sure to repeat.

Principal: “I enjoy watching you work.  Your children are learning.”

Five minutes, maybe less, is all it takes for a frequent conversation that can take place every week.  The result of a principal looking in, a teacher acknowledging that the principal is looking but not evaluating, and the personal, professional conversation builds relationship.  And, relationship between principal teacher and teacher is what advances teaching and learning in every school. 

Perhaps this gets added to the conversation.

Principal: “I saw that you were using (something from the last PD session).  How is that working?”

Or, more personally “Is there anything I can help you with?”

There are many other events and tasks that build relationship.  Too often we consider the assistant principal or principal to be the school disciplinarian.  Actually, the principal only supports every teacher as the disciplinarian of last resort.  The most important aspect of every classroom rule takes place between a teacher and students; the work of the principal teacher assists when help is needed.

As we think of teachers in a classroom, we think of the principal in the school office.  A principal should be aware of everything that happens in a school, hence there is a ton of information and data and schedules and communications that a principals handles regularly.  And, that chain of communication  between the school and the superintendent or district office requires time and effort.  That work load needs to be balanced against the first responsibility – the school is the principal’s classroom – and most of a principal teacher’s time is spent in classrooms, hallways, libraries, studios, shops, gyms, and around the campus. 

Teaching and assisting teachers to teach is not same as teaching children.  There are other skill sets and dispositions that help a principal to do a quality job as principal teacher.  But, teaching is always foremost.  It also is the common lynchpin that builds teacher and principal professional respect.  It does not always follow that a high quality teacher should be a principal teacher.  Classroom teaching is professionally and personally very highly rewarding.  Just as we want teachers who are “called” to be teachers by inner wants and needs, we want principals also who answer a “call” to be principal teachers.

You can take the principal out of classroom teaching, but teaching remains the organizational focus of the principal teacher now and ever more.

Why Is My Teacher Memorable?

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Grandmother was a school teacher in the proverbial rural school of two classrooms and one outhouse.  Two teachers were the faculty and the county superintendent made a circuit visit now and again.  A high school boy swept out the classrooms every afternoon and tended to the oil furnace in the winter.  My memories are almost 70 years old, but I clearly see this 4’ 11” teacher in front of a classroom of students in grades 7 – 12, all 37 of them. 

A fraying scrapbook holds class pictures of my elementary school days and I can name every teacher from memory, as if the 1950s were not long ago.  Women, only the PE teacher was male, were the mainstay of our elementary school of more than 800 K – 6 children.  I see their faces, hear their voices, and feel their presence.  Miss Blaine.  Mrs. Wendlendt.  Miss Lamb.  Miss Phillips serves as a benchmark for my concept of an elementary principal these 60 years later.  I know nothing of her teacher leadership but am rock solid in remembering her care for children.  Each has left this world, but their presence has not.

I can add similar commentary about my secondary teachers and university instructors and professors.  They shaped me and continue to do so in ways I cannot always fathom but know nonetheless.

These comments are to say that teachers and principals are memorable.  They play large roles in our developmental years and often shape our thinking long afterwards.  I am not alone in saying this, as any reunion of my classmates or gathering of graduates from the schools I served always begins and ends with stories about teachers and children.  Teachers matter in our lives.

Who are they that they matter in this way?  What is there about a teacher that causes them to linger in our memory so long after the last class? 

When in high school and talking with my wrestling coach, also a PE teacher, I embarrassed myself by referring to him as Dad when we were talking.  It was a casual after practice moment with other wrestlers cooling off and sitting around the training room.  In this very relaxed but real time, our coach’s relationship was recognized.  No one commented.  No one asked, “Did you mean to say that?”.  Coach did not say anything.  We just kept on talking.  I don’t think anyone but me thought twice about the reference, because in the context, in the moment, this teacher/coach was providing us with parental care.  We knew it for what it was.  While he taught and coached us as a team, he knew each of us a unique person and more than a wrestler.  Later, I wondered how much of a slip of the tongue I had made.  I told my father of my referring to Coach as Dad and my father smiled.  He told me it was an appreciation of his fatherhood that I would measure another person against his role modeling. 

Over decades of school work, I have watched this same relationship develop, work its magic, and live on in the lives of hundreds of teachers and thousands of children.  Teachers and children form mystical bonds.  In truth and sadness, these bonds are not present for all children and all teachers.  To say it nicely, teachers with a capital T have the capacity for this.  There are so many more teachers with a lower case t who are causing children to learn everyday without this special relationship and I appreciate their work.  However, when it is present, children know.  They may not be able to express it in the moment, but they will know it over time.

Want to test this?  Perch somewhere in a school hallway and watch the bees around the flowers.  Children are the bees and teachers are the flowers.  The bees do not flock to every flower before school or after school or when walking in the hallways.  They do not look twice at lesser flowers when they pass.  The bees know who not only who teaches them but who really cares about them.  The bees will tell you this is true.