Tag Archives: trust

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.

Now that you have elected new board members, make them be trustworthy

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Public trust is given to school board members and that trust must be repaid through the members’ informed and active governance of our schools.  Boardsmanship is an active not a passive trust.

It is spring election time, and two school board seats are on the local ballot.  There are no other school district issues to be decided.  If the past informs the future, less than 30% of the eligible voters will decide the two people who will be part of our seven-member school board.  As a generalization, this is the usual pattern of school board elections – 30% or fewer of eligible voters decide who governs our school district.  The generalization does not hold when there is a school referendum or money on the ballot.  Two years ago, almost 70% of eligible voters cast ballots on big money referendum questions and for the persons running for board election that spring.  Dollars and cents issues raise more voter interest than electing who governs our schools. 

Continuing in a predictive mode, fewer than 50 of the voters in the school board election will attend a school board meeting in the next year.  Some of the 50 may physically attend numerous meetings, but fewer than 50 names will appear in person.

That said, how does the public go about the work of trusting elected school board members?

Explicit and implicit trust.

Wisconsin statute 120.12 defines school board duties.  The first two duties set the expectations.  These are –

  • Management of the school district, and
  • General supervision.

Board members are responsible for the “… possession, care, control and management of the property and affairs of the school district…” and are authorized to “… visit and examine the schools of the district, advise the school teachers and administrative staff regarding the instruction, government and progress of the pupils and exercise general supervision over such schools…”.   Subsequent sub-sections of the statute define the scope of sub-duties.

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/120

In the care, control and management of the school district, there are three top order priorities.  These are –

  • Safe and secure schools.
  • Defined curricular instruction leading to quality student outcomes.
  • Inclusive extra-curricular programs, including athletics and fine arts.

These are non-negotiably explicit.  All issues of safety and security race to the school board agenda demanding immediate attention.  Everything from violence on the campus to drop off time on school bus routes to locks on bathroom stall doors is explicitly a board member’s concern.  Failure to resolve any of these issues invites public furor and assurance that someone else will be elected when member terms expire, if not petitions for recall elections.  The public at large explicitly trusts board members to ensure safe and secure schools.

Issues of curricular instruction and extra-curricular programming, though explicit, ignite very selective groups of the public and seldom the public at-large.  Offending the football boosters will not ignite boosters of phonic-based reading or the Art Club.  Yet almost every school activity, curricular and extra-curricular, has a support group that explicitly trusts the board to be positive in its actions affecting their interest.  The connections between moms and dads, alums, and community members wearing school colors are vital to ongoing school culture and future ballot initiatives.  No board member wants to be singled out for offending a support group to the point that the group becomes active in campaigning against school programs and initiatives.  Special interest groups throughout the school community explicitly trust board members to support their interests.

What about children?  Is there an explicit trust between board members and the children of the school district?  Yes but no.  The words “child” and “children” appear hundreds of times in state statures regarding school governance.  The education of children is at the center of the school board’s work.  Yet children are seldom vocal or present when the board does its’ work.  At best, children are explicitly referenced yet the bonds of trust are all implicit.  And children do not vote.

While no board member wants to actively and publicly deny a child or group of children their wants, board members do it all the time.  And they don’t know it when they do it.  A change in school lunch vendors and the foodstuffs they supply will be applauded by some children and despised by others.  Pizza, for example, a staple of school cafeterias changes when vendor contracts change.  Few children will speak about decisions to change brands of toilet paper, yet every child is affected. 

On a larger arena, decisions about grading scales, graduation requirements, prerequisites for course selections are discussed by the board in committee and board meetings, yet few children asked how they would vote, if they could.  Children implicitly trust board members to make positive policy decisions on their behalf.

Trust is as trust is perceived.

Trust is visible.  Board members need to be seen in the schoolhouse and at school events.  Their presence in school may seem mundane, yet their lack of presence infers no personal experience, observation, or first-hand information.  I always questioned a board member who took a strong position at a board meeting about the math curriculum yet had not observed teaching and learning.  Relying on data is okay but combining data about unacceptable student performance data combined with observations of real teaching and learning in the classroom makes a winning argument.  A board member greatly increases her perception of trustworthiness when she says, “I saw how frustrated our teachers and students are with how the publisher presents pre-Algebra.  Our current text materials are not clear and direct in scaffolding required pre-Algebra skills.”  Even though an administrator may say similar things, when a board member makes these statements, they enact their trustworthiness by not being reliant only on what they are told.

Some may say board members’ presence in the school is intrusive.  In fact, the Wisconsin Association of School Board handbook for board members downplays board member visits during the school day.  “Trust the school administration”, the WASB advises.  Board presence during the school day is not a distrust but partnership between the superintendent and the board.  A secure superintendent invites board members to visit school; an insecure administrator does not. 

Trust is vocalized.  When a person meets a board member in an aisle at the grocery store or at the gas pump, and asks a school-based question, board members are given a prime-time opportunity to display and build trust.  “I am open to listening to you.  And I am open to telling you what I think.”  The rules of confidentiality always apply, but outside of forbidden topics, talking with others when they want to talk with with a board member builds mutual trust.

Perception is reality.

Lastly, newly elected board members are expected to go through an acclimation phase.  However, from day one of their term to their last day, the public is always watching.  Board members are constantly measured by how others perceive their work.  While we expect new members to learn, the perception of how new members go about their learning, and how they become fully engaged builds the reality of how much they are trusted.

Be trustworthy to be trusted.

Expand Your First-Hand Knowledge To Grow Your Credibility

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First-hand, second-hand or third-hand:  how “handy” is your decision making?

When you make a decision based upon information, which of the following do you find most credible?

First-hand – information gathered by what you personally have heard, seen and experienced.

Second-hand – information told to you based upon the personal observations and experiences of others.

Third-hand – information regarding the observations and experiences of people gathered and retold by others.

Elected members of school boards face this question frequently when confronted with a school problem or an issue requiring board action.  This is a dilemma of positional relationships.  How many “hands removed’ can a board member be and still render just decisions that portray a thoughtful consideration of all information sources?  As every information teller has built in biases, how can a board member sift information and bias to reach a credible understanding, and, as distance grows between first-hand involvement and resulting information sharing, how can a board member filter the levels of functionality that can color the information the board hears?

School boards employ school faculty, staff and administrators.  Faculty and staff work directly with students and the parents of students as week as community members who come to school.  Many meaty questions and issues are created at this level of the school district as this is where the greatest number of employees work and personal interactions arise that can result in a conflict of interests.  Whereas, we tend to focus of teacher-student interactions in and around the classroom, adult-child interactions on the school bus, on the playground, in the cafeteria, in the hallways, in the school offices, on the playing fields and in the locker rooms, on the stage, and at night and weekend activities account for a greater number of interactions than teacher-student.  Each and every one of these interactions creates first hand experiences that shape the school experiences of persons involved.  It is difficult to know which interactions will generate an issue that must be resolved, although when a hot issue rises everyone involved knows it for what it is.

One level of functionality away, administrators supervise and evaluate school faculty and staff.  Administrative functions mean that most interactions are with faculty and staff and some are with students, parents, and community members.  Often, student and parent interactions are referred to the administrator by faculty and staff.  Their span of responsibility places administrators at the second-hand of most faculty and staff interactions with students and parents.  Others tell administrators of their first-hand experiences or submit a report about their experience.

Administrators, of course, are first-hand in their interactions with those they supervise.  A majority of administrative first-hand experiences are casual and informed by “walking about” or “being present” around the school.  Administrators who take a holistic approach to their function look at classrooms as representing teachers, children, instruction, learning, curriculum, orderliness, furniture, technology, climate, lighting, air temperature and quality, cleanliness and, at the end, the administrator understands a satisfaction or dissatisfaction with what has been seen and heard and felt.  Extend this holistic approach to the school campus and every room of the school and you approach the first-hand experiences of an administrator.

The board supervises and evaluates administrators and this places the board at a third-hand relationship to faculty and staff interactions with students and parents and second-hand to interactions between administrators and faculty and staff.  Everything that is first-hand to a “holistic experiencing” administrator is second-hand to the board.  Everything that is first-hand to children and teachers and staff and is told or reported to an administrator who reports stories of these experiences to the school board is third-hand to the board.

Confusing?  Perhaps.  Consequential?  You bet.  Board members have an exceptionally small amount of first-hand experiences in the school environment.  School board meeting agendas are chock full of presentations and reports based upon second- and third-hand interactions with information and experiences.  All data is filtered.  All stories are filtered.  And, every second- and third-hand reporting of information and explaining of conclusions drawn from data and school experiences calls credibility and trust into question.  When the data and stories are objective and all persons are in agreement with the reporting, credibility and trust are assumed and not an issue.  And, most board agenda items are in this category.

However, when stories do not jive, when the “handedness” of information gathering, interpretation, and storytelling creates different versions of the same interaction, the board is placed in a “Which version is more credible and who do you trust more?” dilemma.  When disputations arise – on a school bus between driver and children, on the baseball team between coach and players, regarding student achievement on state assessments, between administrators and students and parents regarding a disciplinary issue, and between employee groups on “turf issues” – the board must moderate, arbitrate, or adjudicate a resolution.

Often, this is a “no win” dilemma.  In the immediacy, the board faces an either/or proposition.  There may well be middle ground, but disputing persons view these as win-lose situations.  Overtime, the either/or can become a we/they issue and if the board tends to believe we more than they, they lose confidence in the justness of the board and the system.

Consequential?  Unbelievably.

Arbitrarily, board members have been held or hold themselves in distanced relationships with students, parents, faculty and staff.  Board members have been “schooled” into believing that the handling of issues at the first-hand is the responsibility of their administrators.  Board members are told not to communicate directly with teachers and staff and principals, but with the superintendent who communicates down the chain of command with all employees.  Board members, by design, have been relegated to second- and third-hand information.  Hence, board members are constantly in the chair of “do we support the information filtering and storytelling of our administration or not?”

Balderdash.  There is no statute or rule that precludes school board members from commingling in the life of the schools so as to be first- or second-hand to the information that is the lifeblood of the system.  Being first-hand never places the board member into a faculty or a staff or an administrative function.  When in the first-hand mode, that is, a board member observing in the classrooms, hallways, media centers, cafeterias, auditoriums and athletic areas of the schools, board members are in an oversight function.  They are not supervising children.  They are not evaluating employees.  They are witnessing the manner in which the programs and policies approved by the board are playing out for the education of all children and for the professional work of all employees.

Board members cannot be first-hand to everything in a school.  That is neither possible nor desired.  However, when members have enough first-hand information against which they can weigh the second- and third-hand information they are provided, then board decisions are seen by all stakeholders as being better informed of a complete picture and more just to the realities of all concerned.  Trust is not blindly given, it is earned.  A board member observing employees at their daily work – administrators, teachers and all staff – with frequency and objectivity sees credible work first hand and can trust that credibility.  Employees observing board members observing their work with frequency can credibly know that the board member is creating a base of first-hand knowledge.  Trust flows both ways when people work to establish credibility.

I encourage fellow board members to invest in first-hand experiences in their schools.  Remember your level of function and gain a balance to your informed understanding of the life and times of your school district.  If you keep to your function, that is board oversight, you are in a great position to support every person in your school community by being credible and balanced in your understanding of first-, second-, and third-hand stories.