Strength Finders 2.0

My family spent a couple of nights at a hotel over Thanksgiving break.  As I flipped through a complimentary Wall Street Journal one morning, I noticed they had a special "best sellers" list of books focused on business.  And on the top of the list?  "Strength Finders 2.0" by Tom Rath. 

I was actually assigned to read this book a couple of months ago, but had no idea that it was such a popular book.  What it amounts to is a $25 personality inventory.  Each book comes with a sealed code that allows you to take a 30 minute questionnaire online.  What the questionnaire purports to reveal are your top five "talent themes" from among a list of 34. 

This isn't a recommendation necessarily.  But it's worth recording here what my top five talent themes appear to be (according to Strength Finders, and paraphrased by me): 

1. Context:  I analyze words and deeds through a historical perspective
2. Relator:  Others seek my advise, insights, and counsel
3. Harmony:  I follow procedures, get jobs done, and don't seek special treatment
4. Connectedness:  I pay close attention to what people think and do
5. Learner:  I am determined to broaden my knowledge and acquire new skills

I don't necessarily agree with the results entirely, especially after studying the other possible 29 talent themes.  But I think there's something insightful in the underlying philosophy of the book, that in any organization we should strive to develop people based off of the assets they bring to the table, as opposed to focusing so much on their deficits.  Strong teams are developed when members with complementing strengths are brought together. 

School Stamps of Approval

I was fascinated to learn last week that schools can buy-in to a variety of programs that result in something akin to a "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval" or "Better Business Bureau Award".  And just like these famous honors from the business world, these school certification programs cost a lot of money.

For starters, I learned of an organization called "International Baccalaureate".  A number of schools in my district are already certified "I.B."  I'd heard of the nomenclature before, and merely assumed that it was some (free) designation based on curriculum.  How naive of me!  For a school to earn the "I.B." tag, there is a $10,000 process involved!  Similarly, another school in our district has adopted the "Expeditionary Learning" model of schooling.  There is a fee associated with this as well.

Two thoughts come to mind:

• Having an explicit and comprehensive philosophical model to follow is an ingenious way to drive change in a school community (staff, students, parents).  People rally around sports teams' colors, logos, and mascots.  A certification is likewise something to rally around.  
• On the other hand, it's a shame that a fledgling industry is developing around school certifications.  Isn't it enough to strive for simple academic excellence?  The answer may apparently be "no".  Specialization is the by-product of societal affluence, because specialization cannot occur without the money to pay for it.  Are schools being pressured towards special certifications for their public relations value? 

Meg Whitman

Having once worked at eBay, I'm neither a believer or fan of Meg Whitman. And even though I have no credentials as a business or financial analyst, I felt the same disbelief as many other commentators in reaction to her selection as CEO of venerable Hewlett-Packard.

But I try to keep an open mind, and so I read this CBS MarketWatch opinion piece with great interest. Amazingly and admirably, Whitman is changing the minds of her doubters. How someone who goes into a leadership position with no well of respect and manages to turn the tide is a process that I want to learn more about.  The opening paragraph of the piece is key:

"As most readers know, I’m not necessarily a fan of Meg Whitman’s appointment as chief executive of Hewlett-Packard Co.  My complaint, in brief, is that she does not have the core competencies needed to guide a massive hardware company."

Exactly.  And some day when I become an administrator for the first time, this same criticism about a lack of "core competencies" will certainly be leveled at me.  With her decision-making acumen, Whitman has managed to convince a prominent critic to say, "I’m impressed with her decisions so far." I can certainly learn something from my former boss.

Responses to the Penn State Tragedy

I've been consumed for an entire week by news coverage of the horrific scandal at Penn State University.  Many commentators have correctly noted that this is another depressing example of how absolute power corrupts absolutely.  I have no words of my own to offer that haven't already been expressed by countless others.  On the other hand, I always respect the comments of people who are able to offer something unconventional, courageous, and thoughtful. 

I think Penn State alumnus and former NFL star Franco Harris makes a solid observation on the topic of hypocrisy. Said Harris regarding a police commissioner's suggestion that Paterno had a "moral obligation" to go directly to the police:

"When I heard that it blew my mind. Why would they bring the moral into the legal? Now, everyone gets to interpret in their own way. That's what really bothers me: Joe did what was right for him to do. He forwarded the information to his superiors. That's the legal procedure at Penn State.  If I had to choose today between the moral integrity and character of Joe Paterno and the politicians and commentators criticizing him, I would pick Joe Paterno, hands down, no contest every time."

While everyone else within the coaching fraternity refused to openly question the basic integrity of Paterno, former NCAA and NFL coach Barry Switzer offered this blistering opinion:

“Having been in this profession a long time and knowing how close coaching staffs are, I knew that this was a secret that was kept secret.  Everyone on that staff had to have known, the ones that had been around a long time."

And finally, I was impressed by the honesty of former NFL player Jon Ritchie (who absolutely idolized Jerry Sandusky from the time he was a teenager).  His courageous comments, viewable in the video below, stood in singular contrast to the sanctimony of seemingly everyone else, who claimed with 100% certainty they could have easily defied Penn State's culture of silence to bring an end to the abuse:

Article: "The Fragile Success of School Reform in the Bronx"

Jonathan Mahler authors a gut-punching profile of struggling, yet successful South Bronx middle school.  It's a lengthy article, but one worth reading, just to remind myself of the relative comfort I enjoy working in a largely prosperous suburban school district.  A salient excerpt:

And yet even as school reform made it possible for González to succeed, as the movement rolls inexorably forward, it also seems in many ways set up to make him fail. The grading system imposed by Klein that has bestowed three consecutive A’s on González is based in part on how well 223 does on state tests. But the school's relative success on these tests and other measures also disqualifies him from additional state resources earmarked for failing schools. The ever-growing number of charter schools, often privately subsidized and rarely bound by union rules, that Klein unleashed on the city skims off the neighborhood’s more ambitious, motivated families. And every year, as failing schools are shut down around González, a steady stream of children with poor intellectual habits and little family support continues to arrive at 223. González wouldn’t want it any other way — he takes pride in his school’s duty to educate all comers — but the endless flow of underperforming students drags down test scores, demoralizes teachers and makes the already daunting challenge of transforming 223 into a successful school, not just a relatively successful one, that much more difficult.

Fellow NY Times columnist Joe Nocera also wrote a thoughtful response ("The Limits of School Reform") that I believe is spot-on.  My favorite passage:

The point is obvious, or at least it should be: Good teaching alone can’t overcome the many obstacles Saquan faces when he is not in school... Going back to the famous Coleman report in the 1960s, social scientists have contended — and unquestionably proved — that students’ socioeconomic backgrounds vastly outweigh what goes on in the school as factors in determining how much they learn. Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute lists dozens of reasons why this is so, from the more frequent illness and stress poor students suffer, to the fact that they don’t hear the large vocabularies that middle-class children hear at home. Yet the reformers act as if a student’s home life is irrelevant.

Article: "How Not to Talk to Your Kids"

An insightful article on the impact of incessant praise on a child, "How Not to Talk to Your Kids," in the New York Magazine.  I've also seen it entitled "The Praise Paradox" in other publications.  The most pertinent passage from the article:

“Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control,” she explains. “They come to see themselves as in control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child’s control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure.”

Sprinters and marathon runners

Principals who visit classrooms to observe teachers are analogous to a well-rested sprinter running side-by-side with a runner who is in the middle of running a marathon.  There is a different level of energy, mental clarity, and strength between the two runners in that situation, just as there is between a principal and a classroom teacher.  I believe there would be a far greater probability of feedback from principals resulting in positive action by teachers if this analogy was openly acknowledged and embraced.

A theory of diminishing returns in teaching

Last week, I attended a SIOP facilitators meeting at our school.  No wonder that there's so much resistance and cynicism in my school about implementing SIOP.  The philosophy of SIOP demands faithful implementation by at least 75% of a school staff before promising any results.  There are eight SIOP components to lesson planning: 

1. Lesson Preparation
2. Building Background
3. Comprehensible Input
4. Strategies
5. Interaction
6. Practice/Application
7. Lesson Delivery
8. Review/Assessment

But here's the thing:  at some point, aren't we drilling down to such an excruciating level of detail in our demands of teachers, that we are making the act of teaching appear needlessly complex?  Granted, teaching is not "simple", but even simple actions can be made to appear complex through over-analysis.

If you wanted to, you could break down the act of catching a ball into a sequence of 100 steps supplemented with formulas from physics and calculus.  You could similarly break down the secrets to a healthy marriage down to the level of the timing and frequency of foot massages.  But would the benefits of internalizing such advice be worth the effort?  Isn't their a point of diminishing returns?

How should we view teachers?

There's an extremely fine line between viewing teachers as a problem, and viewing them as a solution.  The unstated assumption of so many texts on educational leadership is to view teachers (within a context of the need for change) as a problem.  I would hope that I am able to adopt a viewpoint of teachers as the solution to achieving excellence in schools.

Building Trust (Part 2)

When texts on educational leadership speak of "building trust," they are invariably referring to the ideal of staff trusting administrators.  But what about the other way around?  Isn't there room to discuss whether administrators are able to trust their staffs?

Building Trust

"Building trust" with staff is a central concern in the educational literature for school principals.  This worry is so prevalent that it almost exists as a convenience to explain away the failure to realize the gains in achievement promised by whatever trendy teacher-centered reforms are being pushed by educational researchers at the time.  (Heavens forbid, after all, that these researchers ever admit that their precious, meticulously "researched" ideas were either impractical, ineffective, or just plain out-of-touch.) 

The preoccupation with "building trust" has a flip side that I have yet to see be explored.  There exists in every school district veteran principals who are respected, trusted, and even loved by their staff.  I can think of many in my own school district.  In schools like these, what remains as a barrier to the enactment of any good idea?  Gains in school-wide achievement should be automatic, no? 

The fact that an achievement gap persists, in schools with both high and low trust among staff and administration, shows that the industry of educational research and publishing produces little that is of practical value for schools.  Instead of a relentless focus on how to make teachers better, a wider lens needs to be applied to the perceived underperformance of children in our public schools.  Our scope should also include the underlying systems and structures of schools and the cultural values of our communities and families.