Let me reiterate what has been said countless times. Leadership matters. This is especially true in schools and school districts where so much is at stake and where nearly everyone has an opinion about how schools should be run. Let me also reiterate my continued support for the dedicated and kindred spirits who each day stare down the awesome challenges of leadership in today’s public schools. They are heroes all.
Still, despite our best efforts, academic progress in our schools is slow and we must own that. Blaming our shortcomings on politicians or public policy is not bold and is not leadership. Blaming teachers is cowardly, blaming parents naïve. What did Gandhi tell us? “We must be the change we wish to see in the world.” If schools and school districts are going to evolve into student-centered, learning-centered communities of innovation, where all children learn and thrive, then we must own the change we seek as educational leaders in our schools and ensure that our actions each and every day match those grand expectations.
Instructional Leadership: Principals Must Be Learning Centered
Since the beginnings of this blog, I have tried to challenge each of us to revisit our basic assumptions about how schools are designed and how learning is conceived. I have promised all along that that would require us to be bold in our actions, resolute in our convictions, and devout in our studies around instruction. For purposes of this blog, I am referring to core instructional convictions and the leadership decisions that follow as having an instructional soul. That is not to say that this blog will be religious, as I am not a preacher and (like most, I assume) I have more questions about my faith than answers. Still, we will use the word soul in combining some of the tenets of spirituality, philosophy, and science in helping us develop a deeper appreciation for problems and solutions that we might apply to education.
An example to start comes from a recent lecture I attended on pietism, which by one definition goes something like this: The sincerity of our faith is more than important than the object of our faith. This is not a good thing, mind you, as sincerity (though laudable) rarely equals action. Let me put it another way. While being sincere in one’s faith is great, what is the point of all that sincerity if it doesn’t stir your heart to action? In the worst way, being pious is akin to being a hypocrite. We say the words and we might even believe the words we say, but we don’t live by those words nor do we act upon them. All talk, no action. Or as they say in Texas: All hat, no cattle.
Engagement and Rigor: The Sin of Not Learning
This is a great place for us to consider our critical roles as instructional leaders, for those with true instructional souls put learning above all else. They know what great instruction is and their actions reflect that. To them, instructional leadership is not a book study. It is more spiritual than that. It’s in their DNA. It’s the God particle. In turn, those who lead with this deep understanding of instruction are deft and creative in connecting each and every decision they make to student learning. We have a great deal to learn from them.
In nearly every school and district meeting, we talk a lot about ensuring that all of our kids are learning. Still, when we leave those meetings, we focus on a great number of things that are only loosely connected to that promise. We focus instead on project after project and deadline after deadline that are not immediate nor intentional drivers of student learning. We are either too busy or too distracted, or maybe both. In keeping with the religious theme of this post, we know that all churches are looking to grow their membership by filling the pews. So, the questions is this: Does that make one church or denomination the competitor (or enemy even) of the other? Sadly, and all too often, the answer is yes. This is where pietism sneaks in. You see, if church leaders were properly focused, they would find that the other church is not their enemy, nor is attendance, nor the offering plate, nor other religions or even unbelievers. Because the church has only one true enemy, sin (or the devil if you prefer). Still, we all know of a church that is all too fixated on outdoing the church down the street or winning the day in attendance or offerings, and so begins the slippery slope of pietism, losing sight of real enemy at hand.
So why the spiritual lesson? Because we make the same mistakes in schools. We focus our sights on defeating those things that are not the root causes of our downfall. You see, our true enemy is not our teachers, nor our parents, nor testing, nor policy, nor process. Our only common enemy is “not learning.” If we are going to walk-the-walk of instructional leadership, then we must battle each day against “not learning.” We must act on our sincere understanding of what good instruction is and what learning for all children actually looks like. That will require us to know these solutions deeply and ensure that they are carried out daily, even hourly, through our actions as school and district leaders and do so without complaint or excuse.
We will continue via this blog to discuss how to do that, with examples (and some non-examples) of schools that are headstrong and laser-like in their focus on learning. I promise you that these school leaders know what great instruction is and what rigorous, engaging learning looks like for all children. These leaders do not blame the school down the street for their own failures. They do not blame the district or the state. They are not distracted by the noise and they will not lose. They are no more dedicated nor practiced than others. They are simply more deliberate and intentional in recognizing the common enemy, taking it on and winning the day.
The truth be told, there is no evidence that Gandhi ever spoke the quote that is attributed to him about being “the change we wish to see.” A confirmed account of his speech provides a fuller context of his words: “If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him.” You see, there is no good way to change our schools and school systems without first changing ourselves, by developing our own deep understanding of who we are and what we believe in as instructional leaders. Only then will the world change with us.
