Learning at the Heart

100 Posts in 100 Days

In the last several months during the course of some coaching conversations, I’ve had “coachees” ask me some questions that have pushed me to be the person reflecting and to be explicit about some of my approaches, decision-making, and strategies.  One of them even said, “Are you going to write about that in your 100 Posts in 100 Days?” 😊

I hadn’t planned to write about the questions I had been asked, but I reconsidered.  I suspect that if these questions are on the minds of the people I am working with and respect, they just might be on the minds of other people also.  

Here is one of them:  

Q:  When you started in your new position (referring to when I began as an Associate Principal),
how did you know what to do and where to begin?

Context:  This question came from a teacher I’ve worked with the last several years who will be moving to a school next year.  Not only will she be changing schools, but she will be entering her new school in a teacher-leader position.  

Answer:  

Her question made me pause at first, in a “hmmm, what did I do?” sort of way.

Two things came to mind.  In practice, these 2 things occurred simultaneously, not in the sequential way they will read here.

One thing I did was observe and listen.  I watched and listened to teachers and students to understand their needs.  I talked with them about things that were going well and asked them about challenges they were facing.  I believe one of the most important roles of a school leader is to create conditions for teachers to be successful so that, in turn, students can be successful.  In instances where something could be addressed quickly and easily, I made an effort to do so.  Over time, I began to learn of some patterns and consistent refrains that needed a bit more attention and focus.  Those are the things I began to work toward and prioritize.

At the same time as I was observing and listening to teachers and students, I was taking note of my own experiences.  I was paying attention to the parts of my job that were routine or easy and the parts of my job that required greater effort.  Just like I wanted to remove barriers and create systems for teachers and students to be successful, I wanted to try to do the same for myself.

A challenge that I had heard from teachers and experienced myself was that our faculty was not calibrated on student behavior expectations.  What was acceptable to one teacher was not always acceptable to another teacher.  This was particularly noticeable in common spaces like hallways, the playground, and the cafeteria.  With differing expectations, it was sometimes challenging for any faculty member, myself included, to have a conversation with a student about his/her choices.  When a student would say, “That’s not how my classroom does it”, they were right.  In essence, the teachers and I were having an overlapping challenge, which helped to prioritize the work as something to address early on in my tenure.    

Ultimately, the result was a collaborative effort by many members of our faculty that became known as “The Eagle Way”, a set of common expectations for how to behave as a member of our school community.  A representative team of teachers and counselors worked together to propose common behavior expectations.  We then “tested” them in full-faculty conversations where we presented case studies of student behavior and discussed how we would respond.  Over time, we were able to calibrate and reach group agreements about what was acceptable and what kinds of behaviors would need to be addressed by an adult.