Tag Archives: respect

When Trust Is Reciprocal, Great Things Happen

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“In my last visits to your classroom, I was not certain I was in a math class.  You and your students were talking about current events on three consecutive days”, her principal told her.

“It’s my classroom and I will determine what my students do there”, she told her principal.

“All of your students made good progress this year as we look at fall and spring assessments.  Your tier 2 attention to a handful who had some significant gaps last fall really paid off”, her principal said in the last weeks of the school year.

The tension between a principal’s supervision of teaching and student learning and a teacher’s freedom to teach is real.  Principals and teachers each have skin in the game of what is taught, how it is taught, and the outcomes of student instruction.  The tension is a positive force when both parties understand their roles and responsibilities.  Tension becomes negative when either party strays into the other’s role and responsibility.  At its best, the tension is shared, and each trusts the other as a professional.  At its worst, it is a drama and a showdown.

A principal’s role and responsibility.

Principals are the working interface between school board policies and approved curricula and the classrooms, theaters, libraries, and fields where teaching, directing, and coaching take place.  In theory and practice, principals are instructional leaders.  It is important for all faculty to know the why and wherefore of a principal’s role and responsibility.

Principals are legally authorized to supervise teachers regarding the teacher’s curriculum and instruction.  Wisconsin state statute 118.01 directs school boards to “provide curriculum, course requirements, and instruction consistent with the goals and expectations established” in the next section of that statute.  Further, statute 118.24 speaks to the employment of a district administrator and school principals to “supervise the professional work” of the school district.  And statute 120.12(2m) directs school boards, typically through school principals, to “evaluate the effectiveness of each teacher … using either the system established under (statute), or the equivalency process established by rule …”.

School boards use this authority to set the principal’s job description and responsibilities.  One of the universal duties of a school principal is to supervise/evaluate the professional work of the faculty and ensure fidelity of instruction with the school board’s approved curriculum.  This responsibility, as written, does not belong to anyone else in the school district, even districts with significant central office staffing.

“What” principals are to do is enunciated in policy and job description.  “How” they do it is not specified and the “how” contributes to the quality of the tension.  The best analogy is this – teachers instruct children in the classroom and principals instruct faculty and staff in the schoolhouse.  Using this analogy, a principal’s curriculum and instructional strategies are designed to cause high quality instruction in every classroom.  The “how” lies in the principal’s personal and consistent conversation and oversight of each teacher’s classroom work.  Oversight can be a talk over a cup of coffee, a focused conversation about children and their learning needs, provision and discussion of personalized coaching, and informal and formal classroom observations.  A principal’s “how” relates to her personality and ability to keep instructional leadership a top daily priority.  Too often the other principal responsibilities, like student discipline, campus supervision, filling in for absent faculty and staff, and responding to general school problems, erode a principal’s time for teacher talk and classroom visits. 

A teacher’s role and responsibility.

Teachers hold a license to teach specific subjects and grade levels of students.  Typically, school districts provide each teacher with specific students to teach and an annual curriculum to teach to those students.  These are the “who is to be instructed” and the “what is to be instructed”.  There is no language regarding “how they are to be instructed”, beyond the effective educator provisions of WI statute 120.12(2m).  Teachers have a broad reach in their choice of pedagogies to use in their teaching.  This choice is their “freedom to teach” in ways that best meet their contractual responsibilities.

Teachers are responsible for the “how” they teach.  A teacher’s instructional decisions in the units and lesson plans she designs are fully hers.  A teacher’s instructional “toolbox” will contain strategies for direct and explicit instruction, inquiry-based instruction, problem- and project-based instruction, outcome-based instruction.  Each of these strategies can be effective in causing children to learn a curriculum and one strategy may be most effective for the curricular unit being taught.  Teacher’s choice!

The concept of a teacher’s academic freedom is real.  It relates to the teacher’s decisions of how best to cause all children to be successful learners of the school curriculum.  All teachers have freedom in choosing their instructional tools.  Academic freedom, however, does not extend to decisions about what to teach.  The teacher’s contract designates the teaching position and curriculum related to the position.

Shared responsibility for learner outcomes.

At the end of the proverbial day achievements in student learning are the responsibility of both principal and teacher.  School boards and superintendents smile when student achievement demonstrates growth but look for faults and blame when achievement is not what they expect.  Then, principals are teachers share the hot seat. 

In the post-pandemic the relationship between principals and teachers has been stressed.  Some students readily re-engaged with school.  However, other students returning from remote instruction and those who fully disengaged from school instruction demonstrate a wide range of patterns in daily attendance, lost or forgotten learning, and socio-emotional problems.  Finding solutions has not been easy.  Schools with positive principal/teacher relationships sorted issues, tried solutions, and adjusted solutions together.  In other schools, disconnected students only added to the tension.

One of the indicators of relationships is teacher attrition in schools.  The patterns of principals and teachers who are leaving public education or seeking different school districts are closely related to their feeling of partnership and collaboration. 

Trust is earned.

In the decades of my experience as a teacher, principal, superintendent, and school board member, I found that trust is a reciprocal relationship.  To be trusted, one must trust.  The quickest way to create mutual trust is to recognize and honor the interfaces of roles and responsibilities of others, personally engage in consistent and constant professional conversation with every employee and celebrate not just enjoy the synergy of the environment.  When teachers trusted my leadership, they relied on me to trust them to form positive relationships with students and to use all their instructional tools to cause all children to learn.  Also, we trusted each other to always work for the best interests of our students.  Trust does not need to be complicated.

Synergy in a school is not openly discussed as much as it should be.  Call it a special place in time, synergy or the good times, happens when everyone from the superintendent to teacher to custodian to bus driver is in synch with each other.  It is when all the stars of the school universe congregate together and shine.  I observed good times that lasted from months to years.  “Lasted” is the operative word.  Schools that are recognized for excellence enjoy the synergy that creates excellence for a period but then those stars of the universe begin to drift.  People retire or move on to other positions.  Teaming that coalesced for effective work becomes individuals left to carry on.  The new personnel, as good as they may be, just don’t jive as well.  Schools still can be successful in their programs, but that special aura of camaraderie does not last.

When everyone in the schoolhouse seems happy, trust is never discussed.  When there are troubles, lack of trust is the first word spoken.  Troubles quickly divide personnel by roles and mutuality and reciprocity are abandoned.  Distrust becomes the byword.

So, what are we to do?

At their core, teaching and principaling share this similarity – they are callings.  Those who are called have an innate motivation to work with children and to help in shaping children’s lives through learning.  When we discard all the other issues of public education and recognize our mutual calling, understand the roles and relationships of a school’s organization, and place ourselves in our role with a commitment to contribute to the school’s commonwealth, it is relatively easy to synthesize a successful school.  It is when we add back all the other issues that the work becomes difficult.  So, keep it simple.  Know and build trust in each other.

Lessons learned at recess

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We learned a lot in elementary school.  Mrs. Wogen and Miss White taught us to read and to add and subtract.  Mrs. Wendlendt taught us to love good stories and Miss Blaine taught us to write complete sentences.  Miss Lubbock taught some of us to stand tall and smile and try to blend in because we could not carry a tune.  And Miss Phillips taught us that respect is earned.  We were taught well, and we learned many academic lessons in the early grades, but our elementary schooling was more than what our teachers taught.  It also was what we learned from each other.

Grade school for kids is time in the classroom and time on the playground.  Ask any third-grade boy about his day at school and you are more likely to hear a story from recess than what happened in his reading group.  The classroom and playground are essential for a childhood; they create a balance in a kid’s life, if we let them.  That balance is achieved because teachers make up and enforce rules in their classrooms while on the playground, kids make up and enforce the rules for recess.  With unspoken agreement, kids set the standards of how to play and how not to play, who wins and who loses, and how to treat each other.  In hindsight, recess rules ruled us when we were young, and they became unwritten, indelible rules for our entire life.

These are ten recess rules I learned and have practiced for more than half a century.  They applied to me and my friends when we were running and playing across the playground, and they applied to me in my career and in raising a family.  You may have rules from your youth that have served you well.  Consider these and remember your own.

  • There are my guys and there is everybody else.  The law of magnetism says likes repel and opposites attract but those rules do not apply on the playground where likes attract other likes.  We were 300 children spilling out the school doors for recess when we grouped ourselves in “likes”.  Generally, boys grouped with boys and girls with girls and the dozen or so boys I found myself with were those who loved any game with a ball that required movement, throwing, and catching.  Also, we all lived within a radius of several blocks from each other, so games on the playground became games after school and then Cub Scouts and summer swimming classes.  Other kids on the playground found their “guys”.   Guys back then was not a gender thing.  We referred to other boys and girls as “you guys”.  There were more than 100 children at my grade level and I knew everyone by name and face and considered them all to be my friends.  The guys, my special friends, were spread across the three classrooms in our grade level.  When the bell sounded recess time, we rushed down the stairs from our separate classrooms and gathered at the place where asphalt became a field of grass.  That is where the recess games began.  A real game for guys back then was football or softball or keep away.  The games that mattered were my guys against any other group of guys.
  • Things happen with, for, and against.  Even then, I could categorize what happened at recess in three ways.  I played with the guys.  I did all I could for the guys.  Together, the guys and I played hard against the other guys.  Those prepositions were involved in every story we told about recess.  Later, the same words applied to our junior and high school sports.  I played with my teammates.  I did all I could for my teammates.  Together, we competed against other teams.  And, later still, with and for applied to how I approached my work life. 
  • Be on time and be ready.  When recess started, the games began.  If you dawdled in the hallways or restroom, no one waited.  In fact, the guys sized up who was ready to play and started almost before the ringing bell stopped echoing.  Joining a game in progress was not easy.  If you were not on time and ready, you were a spectator until the next recess.  When you were late or not ready, you knew who to blame – yourself. 
  • Don’t knock down a girl.  It was easier then; boys wore pants and girls wore dresses.  You never ran into, threw a ball at, or knocked down someone in a dress.  This is not to say that guys didn’t get carried away and sometimes a game crossed into where girls played.  It happened and there was hell to pay if you were the one who knocked down a girl.  There were phone calls that night between parents and when parents got into talking about recess, that was a bad thing.  You could get sidelined for nothing more than mud on a dress.
  • Fast is fast; you can’t get faster, but you can get better.  Among our guys, I was not the fastest runner.  It used to pain me that, try as I might, I could not pick up and lay down my feet any faster than I did.  I was not slow; just not fast.  Early on it was clear that if I could not improve my foot speed, I needed to find things I could improve.  I worked on three ways to be better than faster: catch the ball and keep the ball, look for the smart next move, and, if someone runs into you, make that person feel the pain.  Learning how to improve upon what genetics provided proved a good lesson for recess and good for high school sports and life in general, even the idea of physical collisions.
  • Know your role.  Somedays you lead and somedays you follow.  Every recess you have a place and role in what is happening.  The games gave each of the guys chances to step up and step aside.  Of course, being young boys, we sometimes did not do either gracefully or needed one of the guys to tell us.  Knowing when and how to lead and how to follow was part of being with the guys and we had plenty of opportunities to learn to be a role-player.
  • Leave it on the playground.  Because you win some and you lose some, it was important to leave the games of recess on the playground.  Miss Blaine did not care which guys won a softball game during the lunch recess when she called on kids to talk about the plot of a story in afternoon language arts class.  By the same token, the kid who put the hurt in your bruised shoulder sat two rows to your right and neither you nor he wanted anyone in class to know why he smiled, and you frowned.  It was best for everyone when what happened on the playground did not enter the classroom.  And there will be a recess tomorrow, Bruce!
  • Competition breeds respect and respect builds new friendships.  Some of the other guys lived in distant neighborhoods.  We did not see each other except at school.  Some lived in bigger and some in smaller houses than mine; that was a way of knowing something about a guy.  Bigger house guys had newer Chuck Taylor Converse shoes with good tread and the gym shoe tread for guys from smaller houses usually was worn off.  Tread mattered back then.  Recess, though, gave every group of guys an equal chance to shine.  While I wasn’t fast, I admired guys in other groups who were.  Some had better hands or better throwing arms.  After a while, I knew which of the other guys hit the ball harder or ran faster.  I also knew what I had to do to beat them, if I could, and when we each tried to do our best, I wanted to know them better.  They weren’t one of my guys, but they became some of my good friends. 
  • Games are games not life; know the difference.  Miss Phillips, our principal, watched us at play.  Although she looked like someone’s grandmother, she had a quick eye that twinkled when she talked with me.  “Nice catch”, she would say.  Nothing more; just enough to let me know that she was watching.  More importantly, she also said, “I saw your ITBS scores, and you did very well” and “Miss Knapp told me you held the door open for her when she had her hands full.  Being a good student and well-mannered won’t score runs but they win the games that matter”. 

  • Memories of the playground live forever.  It is not surprising that the first people I look for at our high school class reunions are the guys.  After elementary school, we went to the same junior high and high school.  After high school, we split and went separate ways.  Some to college, others into the military, and some into adult life.  Years passed and life happened.  Yet, when the Class of XXXX gets together, that old oppositional magnetism works again.  We find each other and talk always wanders back to the playground.  “Do you remember ….?, starts our first and last conversation. 

My elementary school has closed.  Across the city, school enrollments decreased over the years and the economics of public education regrouped fewer children into fewer school buildings.  My elementary school stands empty, windows dark and doors locked, but the four acres of playground are filled every good weather day with youth football, soccer, and softball.  Younger children climb the jungle gyms and gather for rope jumping on the asphalt.  A playground calls children to play and children will always answer that call.

As I watch, I see children still are learning some of life’s essential rules on the playgrounds and I wish them well.

Unheralded Educators

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A friend of mine drove a local school bus.  Driving was a second or third job for him as the two hour early morning and mid- to late afternoon runs created time for mid-day and evening work.  Driving, however, is what drove him.

“Never had a ticket.  Never had an accident.  Never had a lost child.  Never got lost myself”, he would humbly say about his time in the driver’s seat.  At Halloween and Christmas he put masks on the front of his yellow bus.  He had a perpetual gleam in eyes even when he needed to look up into the large rear view mirror to tell a young boy, “Sit down, Mark”.  I don’t believe he ever turned in a discipline referral to the school principals, because he talked with the children on their bus, not his bus. 

Every fall there would be a moment resembling Forrest Gump’s first greeting with his school bus driver.  Forrest introduced himself and she introduced herself and they began a morning and afternoon routine that lasted for years.  Some years there were as few as thirty-some children on his bus, but most years there were 40-plus riders.  He knew of them before their first day on a school bus and he knew about them years after they graduated.  He knew their parents and their parents knew him on a first name basis.  He never left a dropped off young child until he saw a wave from a parent at the door or in a waiting car.  He was a parent in absentia for dozens of children twice each school day.

Like all veteran school bus drivers, he had his share of criers and pukers, kids whose forgotten lunch on the morning bus he delivered to the school offices, and kids who stood at their morning stop without a hat or mittens/gloves.  He carried a box of spares.

One of the most meaningful moments of every school year occurred in the first week of June.  On the last days of the school year, he would say with what some might call teary eyes, “I remember when she started Kindergarten.  They are all so small and she was a brave one.  She rode every day; seldom got a ride to school, until she got her driver’s license.  For the last year or so, she drove to school with friends.  I watched her grow up from a five year old to a fine young woman.  This week, she rode every day and today she brought me a ‘Thank you’ card of being her driver and friend.  She’s one of mine.”

He and our team of school bus drivers are unheralded educators of children.  We are a rural district where most children ride our yellow buses to school.  Let’s do the math.  With approximately 170 days of school each year and an average route time in our district of 25 minutes, bus riding children spend more than 140 hours each school year on a school bus.  That is equal to the amount of time a student spends in a secondary classroom for math or ELA or science.  If a child rides every day of their Kindergarten year through tenth grade, the year a child can get a driver’s license, a child really grows up on a school bus with more than 1,500 hours of riding time or had a class each day with the same teacher for 11 years. 

That is a lot of driver-rider contact time in which there is one driver and dozens of children on a school bus traveling back and forth between homes and school.  We trust children to the safe driving care of our drivers.  We trust their well-being and that a driver who knows them watches out over them every morning and every afternoon.  Across the decades, our driving unheralded educators deliver every day.

Your Personal Pantheon of Teachers

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Miss Blaine knew.  She knew I liked stories and histories and language.  If I could read about it and begin to imagine it, I could know it and the more I read and imagined the more I wanted to learn.  And, she knew I was a quiet student seldom raising my hand but could give illustrated answers when called upon.  Miss Blaine knew me.  She was my teacher for two years – 4th and 5th grade, back-to-back with Miss Blaine – in the late 1950s.

Miss Blaine knew Carol and Richard and Mike W and Bruce.  They topped all the weekly charts for the 32 students in our classroom; those were early Boomer years when all classrooms were bulging.  Spelling, arithmetic quizzes, science check tests and annual ITBS assessments – these were our straight A’s champs week in and week out.   She fed them more assignments than the rest of us, and more comments on their projects, and more difficult books to read.  The more she gave, the better they did.  Miss Blaine knew Dick and Donnie and Steve Y struggled to read and do their math and she gave them more of her one-on-one time.  She knew when a child needed the boost of leading the class from her room to Miss Snyder’s art room, the little self-esteem boost of being picked by Miss Blaine to lead.

Miss Blaine knew how to hook each child in her classroom to cause each of us to learn.  She never looked at us sitting in our rows of desks with a solitary gaze but flitted her eyes from child to child as she spoke so that we knew she was talking to each of us intentionally.  She was short in stature and did not need to kneel or bend very far when she stood by my desk to comment on my work or ask a guiding question to keep me on track.  With eyes shut I can still summon her presence and my want to be a better student, to get more problems right on my nemesis math assignments, because she thought I could.

I would like to think that every student in every school experiences their own Miss Blaine.  Across the fourteen years of 4K-12 education, a random draw of Miss Blaine’s in elementary, middle, and high school, in grade level classes and in subject classes, is enough to make school and learning meaningful.  It is enough hooking by master teachers to keep children self-invested in their learning.

Consider your own history as a student.  Can you name your Miss Blaines?  Can you remember how specific teachers made a difference in your school life?  In your heart of hearts you know them as they knew you.

Miss Blaine, Mrs. Wendlent, Mr. Marshall, Mrs. McArthur, Mr. Cummings, Mr. Chute, Mr. Mixdorf, Mr. Hubacek – I am eternally grateful that you taught me. 

My listing these names does not mean I did not learn from each of the 80+ teachers who were mine in my kindergarten through senior year experience.  I indeed learned from all.  But, there really is a difference in a child’s connections with their teachers.  Some connections are as routine and pedestrian as the spending of common time and the management of 180 days’ of school work.  Other connections mark you for your lifetime.

My Miss Blaine is long gone, as are almost all my teachers.  So are many of my classmates.  We know that the effects of a person’s lifetime are short-lived, but while we live and remember the effects of the teachers who knew us and hooked us as learning children, the glory of their good teaching prevails.

Carpe the First Day

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The first day of a new school year is a singular event.  After the first day, all days are school days.  The first day is different; it is show time for children and adults.  Carpe the first day.  Show time is a magical and essential moment.  Make the most of it.

All eyes are big on day one.  For some, the first big eye is when a child gets on the school bus.  For all others, the first big eye is walking in the schoolhouse doors.  On day one, children cross a threshold of bus and/or school and become students.  This labeling matters.  During the summer, they are their parents’ children and the community’s kids.  In school, they are your students.

For teachers, the big eye is when students walk into the classroom.  A teacher without students is a professional educator awaiting the moment to teach.  The instant students enter a classroom teachable time starts.  The same is true for all instructional support staff.  The moment they engage with students, summer is over, and the school year is afoot.  Carpe that first moment with genuine positivity toward each student and a voracious learning about them as a class.

For custodians, food service, secretaries, transportation personnel who have prepared for weeks and days for day one, the first day of school shifts all work from preparing to serving the school.  Floors are polished, snack and lunch menus are planned and published, school materials are ordered, delivered, sorted, and distributed, class lists are printed all in anticipation of day one.  When children become students, all of these and hundreds more tasks become actions repeated and maintained for a school year’s time.  Day one matters to everyone in the school.

Carpe the day, don’t squander it.  A smile and calling a student by name (pronounced correctly) as they cross thresholds tell a child “I see you.  Your success as a student in our school is important to me.  I am prepared for you.  We start right now!”  When we begin day one with the message “I see you and you are important”, we initiate a respecting of each other that pays dividends for months to come. 

The swell of a summer’s planning and preparation for principals does not peak on day one, but continues to a crescendo somewhere into September when the benefits of planning and preparation are observable facts in the work of the school.  Day one exemplifies the historic role of the school principal as the school’s principal teacher.  Carpe the day.  As a teacher greets students to a classroom, principals greet students to a school.  As teachers carpe day one to build respect for all in the classroom, the principal carpes day one to build a respectful schoolhouse.  When parents delivering their children to school see the principal “out front”, a principal reinforces the parent’s perception that this school is a good place for their children.

We know from recent polling that more than 80% of students look forward to the first day of school for social reasons – they will be with their old friends and will make new friends.  Carpe that by observing these very visible networks.  On day two you will know better about student grouping – who wants to be with whom and who needs to be integrated into the web of students.

We know from polling that more than 35% of students prize school for its athletics and activities.  On day one we assist student/athletes and student/actors and student/leaders and student/musicians to optimize immediate motivation opportunities to facilitate new learning.  The area of school that less than 25% of students look forward to is deskwork.  Carpe that low anticipation with highly engaging moments, glimpses, and previews of what they will learn in the next weeks.  Carpe all that you can learn about your students on day one and sew what you learn for reaping during the school year.

The first day of school comes but once a year.  It is a significant day for everyone in the school community.  Carpe the day and reap the benefits of your seizing all that day one is.  Day one is gone on day two.