Have you ever been new to a school? Often there are awkward days trying to find new friends. You feel like there’s an opportunity to turn over a new leaf. Every school has its own culture that needs to be learned and navigated. Whatever succeeded at your previous school might not work here. The temptation to be something you are not is a serious pull.
I am joining a new school this fall, moving from Providence Classical Christian Academy in St. Louis to Clapham School in Wheaton, Illinois. Truth be told, it’s not exactly new to me. I will be returning to Clapham where I previously taught for five years. Although it’s not entirely new, five years have passed, and I return in a new administrative role. I have felt the new school feeling as a student, a teacher and an administrator.
Starting a new chapter is an excellent time to take stock of your core principles. Doing so helps to stay true to who you are as well as transition into the new environment with some semblance of equanimity. Perhaps these thoughts will help you at the start of a new school year, whether you’re new to a school or returning for another school year.
Principle #1: Maintain the Long-term View
Whenever beginning a new endeavor, it is important to take the long view. We want to contribute something meaningful and of lasting value in this world. To start and flame out in just a year would be a failure. So we must ask ourselves, what does it look like to succeed at this long term? What can I do now to establish a legacy? What can I work on now that will be of lasting value?
I am a huge Liverpool FC fan. For the uninitiated, the Reds are a British football team. They almost won the Premier League last year (coming in second place to Manchester City), but did win the Champions League (the biggest club competition in Europe). At the helm of this footballing juggernaut is Jürgen Klopp, a German manager who has transformed LFC from a team living off the fumes of its former glory to a team that is competing against the best teams in multiple competitions. In his first press conference after joining the Reds in October of 2015, Klopp provided a perspective on his tenure that I quickly jotted on a sticky note on my computer desktop.
“It’s not important what people think when you come in, but what they think when you leave.”
As I was closing out my time at Providence, this quote lived with me as I increased my effort during the waning months of my time there. I wanted to leave a legacy at Providence and close out strong. I’ve seen too many times people decrease their effort at the end, they are already halfway into their next position. This can harm relationships and tarnish the good work one has done for the organization. The lingering impression after walking it in is that the organization has finally gotten rid of dead weight. I remember my track coach telling me to race past the finish line, not to it. We relax right before the finish line when we race to the finish line, allowing a competitor to slip past. In this vein, I intentionally gave 110% not just to the last day, but even beyond; making myself available to support the administrators replacing me. If Providence continues to succeed, then it says something about the quality of work I did there, especially in mentoring those who remain.
Now that I am starting a new position at Clapham, Klopp’s quote takes on new insights. It will matter very little what I accomplish in the first few days, weeks and months of my tenure at Clapham, if I don’t finish well and build something of lasting value during my time at Clapham. Building something of lasting value takes time and never happens solely on the effort of the new guy. One must listen carefully to the people who have been there, building relationships of trust. Obviously coming in new means that changes will be introduced, but it has to be consistent with the mission and values of the organization as it currently stands. One of the most valuable things you can build at a new organization is a sense of teamwork. The new academic standards, or the updated handbooks, or the new program initiatives should stem from a sense of everyone working together as a team, not as something that is dictated from on high by the new guy.
As I join Clapham, I recognize that the organization has had a life without me before I got here, and the organization will be around after my time is done. As much as I might hope to contribute to raise the game at Clapham, I will only play a small part in Clapham’s story. This idea is a powerful check to my ego and positions me well to think in terms of the broader aims of the organization. It’s counterintuitive, but the best way to establish your legacy is to check your ego and pour yourself out for the benefit of the higher cause.
Principle #2: Build Relationships as Your Primary Purpose
Being new to school can feel lonely. You don’t have the background that others have and you are entering into an environment where everyone seems to know each other. It can be hard to break into a group where strong relationships have already been formed.
However, one of the primary purposes for joining a new organization is to build relationships. And the best way to build relationships is to go back to the basics. First, you must listen effectively. You’re listening not only to what people are saying, but you are also paying attention to important topics of conversation, you’re listening to how people talk with you and with others. By paying attention as a listener, you can learn how to speak the language of the new organization. It can feel a bit like learning a foreign language. The better you can speak that language, the more you can accomplish in the environment. Second, you must speak simply and clearly. Make your points succinctly and without too much flowery ornamentation. There will be time for your personality to come through over time, but be careful not to overwhelm others with showy speeches. Third, seek opportunities to help others on their projects. You might think it’s important to get started on your top priorities. But because building relationships is of primary importance, you can quickly build a sense of teamwork and common purpose by helping others. This also fast tracks your acquisition of institutional knowledge. You are also likely to see connections between their work and your work and how they both contribute to the mission of the organization.
Ultimately, you are building bridges of trust. Trust takes time to build. And like a bridge, trust must carry freight in two directions. People want to know that you can be trusted, just as you want to know that you can trust your new colleagues. Every replied email, congenial conversation, completed project and positive social encounter lays down another plank on the bridge of trust. Working as a team requires multiple layers of trust between several people. A great way to destroy trust (and trust bridges are easily broken), is to talk behind the backs of others. Hopefully conflicts won’t arise in the early days at a new organization, but they are bound to come up. Instead of letting conflicts break down trust, use conflicts to reinforce trust. By being proactive to resolve conflict, people will learn that you are a team player who fights to maintain good rapport with everyone.
Whether you are coming in as the new boss or in an entry level position, it is helpful to remember that we are all under authority. There is always some else up the chain of command you answer to. In order to accomplish whatever goals you might have in your new position, it is essential to form good relationships up and down the hierarchy. A boss who doesn’t trust you won’t assign the exciting new initiative to you. But if you start by building trust, more and more responsibilities will be thrown your way. It’s not only your boss, but your peers, those who report to you, and even those who are further down on the org chart. Every person in the organization plays an important role and deserves your full commitment to building relationships of trust.
Principle #3: Contribute to Something Greater than Yourself
The great thing about working in a school is you are immediately connected to a project greater than yourself. How inspiring is it to influence a new generation through the daily work of training and mentoring students whom parents have entrusted to your care?
Simon Sinek, in his book Start with Why, calls us to begin thinking not about what it is we do, or how it is we do it, but why do we do it in the first place (this is my very poor summation of an excellent book, but see Jason’s later article “Marketing, Manipulations and True Classroom Leadership” for more development of this idea). More recently in his podcasting and YouTube videos, he has begun referring to a “just cause” that your company, or in our case your school, takes on as its fundamental reason for existing in the first place (here’s a video of him talking about “just cause”, complete with bed head). This idea replaces the overused and somewhat mundane expression of the mission statement. There’s a reason this school exists – its just cause. The “why” is something we need to reconnect to consistently and regularly (dare I say daily, even hourly). Our just cause is to make a deep and lasting impact in the lives of students. I don’t know of an industry that has a much higher calling outside the church itself.
Charlotte Mason has been a source of inspiration for me as a teacher. The model I was raised in centered around the teacher in what I call the lecture-and-test method. The student is largely a passive listener until the testing time comes, and must snap into action to regurgitate the previously disseminated information. As a student I found this tedious and ineffective. As a teacher I found this exhausting. What joy it was when I was introduced to Charlotte Mason! She taught that children as whole persons had the capacity to interact with ideas and knowledge. It is not the teacher’s duty to spoon feed children this knowledge as though our students were baby birdies needing prechewed worms. (See Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education, 8-20).
Instead, as teachers we guide our students to ideas and knowledge through great books that inspire them. I am not the focus of the students’ attention, but the book is. I am merely the guide. Teaching became something like taking a child on an adventure through all kinds of wonderful vistas of literature, poetry, history, music and artwork. I could set them loose in these fields and then bask in their wonderment, correct their errors, celebrate their breakthroughs and interact with their understandings through discussion. Instead of students who hated school because it was boring, I encountered students who were excited to learn despite the fact they were the ones putting in the greater part of the effort to learn.
When we are connected to the higher values of our learning environment, not only are we inspired, but our students catch that spark of inspiration too. We all get that sense that we are working on something that is both meaningful and fraught with purpose. This kind of work transcends the individual. When you are caught up in something greater than yourself, you begin to lose yourself in your work. And yet at the same time find that you as an individual are being made better. The meaning and purpose of higher value work adds value to our own lives. Unlike the downward spiral of menial work that takes from the individual his best energy, so that he needs to spend his non-work time recovering, the upward spiral of inspirational work feeds the soul of the worker.
Principle #4: Work Smart, Not Just Hard
Teaching and leading in a school is hard work and requires energy . . . significant energy. It’s a challenge to maintain work-life balance. Even if you finish lesson planning and grading during the school day (and few are able to accomplish that), we still bring home our concerns about certain students or are trying to solve classroom management problems. There’s often a school event to attend or a student who wants you to attend their recital or game. It isn’t any one task that makes teaching hard work, but all together it can be a job that is physically and mentally demanding.
If we’re connected to our inspiring motivation, our mindset should be to get after it with an aggressive attitude. However, it can be helpful to think through our top priorities, whether as a teacher or a leader. What is the most important work to be done each day, each hour, each moment? There are many tasks to be done in the day: from mentoring a new teacher to checking emails, from writing lesson plans to teaching today’s lessons, from grading math homework to making copies for tomorrow. The task list can be long. So what should be chosen? Often times we choose the tasks that require time and effort without thinking about long-term strategy or high level values.
It was difficult during my first few years as an administrator to prioritize the most important things. Everyone else’s fires would dominate my day, and most of my high value tasks went undone. There were many authors (Stephen Covey, David Allen and Tim Ferris to name a few) who taught about prioritizing your tasks and literally scheduling them like a meeting. One of my highest values was investing in the teachers. I began to schedule items on my calendar like, “Observe math teacher” and “give feedback to teacher.” By investing in the teaching staff you immediately solve other issues like student discipline, student retention, parent satisfaction, test scores, teacher retention, etc., etc. I could solve some of my long-term strategies (hire, train and retain the best faculty I can) by prioritizing time to observe and mentor my teachers. This is what it means to work smarter, to rise up out of the mentality to just get the work done in order to make sure the work you are doing is synchronized with your highest values.
It is not always obvious which task is the highest value. Here’s where the 80/20 principle, or Pareto’s principle, comes into play. For most of the work we do, usually only 20% accomplishes 80% of what needs to be done. Leveraging this concept helps us to see that some tasks are more obviously attached to, say, teaching a class, whereas several tasks have no obvious connection to teaching a class. So if my goal is to be about the business of teaching a class, why would I attempt the tasks that have little to do with teaching? If I applied my best energy to the 20% most associated with teaching, I could have a more productive and more satisfying day. This kind of thinking helps divert energy away from making copies, arranging the classroom, and checking email first thing in the morning. Instead, my 20% might include strategizing about a struggling student, finalizing the plan for an upcoming field trip or reworking a classroom system. Save some of those lower priority tasks for later when you have less energy and creativity, and perhaps they can be delegated to students (arranging the classroom at the end of each day) or to a parent offering to help after school (making copies).
Sometimes it’s difficult to see which tasks are the highest priority when we are immersed in all of the various areas of work. As an administrator, this was an area where I loved helping teachers out. Some would admit, “I’m stuck!” and offer several tasks that needed to be done. I would simply asks questions based on value and long-term strategy, and they would often be able to see for themselves what needed to be done. I was able to do this because I myself wasn’t immersed in their task list, so I had separation to be able to examine value. I enjoyed helping teachers in this way, but they often didn’t even need me. Separation can be created through sleeping on a decision or stepping out of the classroom for a moment. My advice to administrators is to constantly preach the highest values of the school, which will ultimately help the teacher remain connected to those values when they are making decisions about what to do each day.
Principle #5: Lean into Difficulties and Problems
Despite the planning and efforts to maintain focus on our highest values, fires do need to be put out. Problems and difficulties show up all the time. If you’ve ever watched downhill skiers, you’ll notice as they approach the gates – the obstacles on their course – they lean into them. We can do the same thing, aggressively tackling the difficulties that come our way.
There is a temptation to avoid problems or somehow plan them away. However, it’s almost impossible to root out difficulties and problems altogether. We know they will arise, so the best approach is to plan for your plans to go awry. Embracing this concept can help alleviate the stress-inducing aspect of the fires that come our way. We know they are coming, so why fret about them? By being prepared for problems, we actually open ourselves up to a problem-solving mindset.
One of the ironies of life is that the pathway to joy passes through patches of challenge. If there were no challenges, difficulties or issues, there would be less opportunity to encounter joy. Teaching is a vocation full of meaning and purpose, but it comes at a cost. We suffer for our art by dealing with the messiness of life. Teaching students brings us into contact with the child’s capabilities and limitations. It involves us in the family’s life, albeit tangentially. The school brings together families with vastly different perspectives, interests and standards. Problems are bound to arise in such an environment. But as we work with our peers, our students and our families, we can cultivate profound joy through our engagement in the problems that come our way.
The benefits of taking on our most challenging problems is that they provide a context for creativity and the exchange of ideas. Trying to figure out a class dynamic (every class is different and what worked last year likely won’t work this year) forces me to be creative and opens me up to listen to ideas generated by my peers, my boss and even the students themselves. We might fear exposing an area of personal weakness or ignorance, but the fastest way to acquire new growth is through humble admission that I am a person in need of growing. We can cultivate a growth mindset in our classrooms through our own commitment to growing our skills.
Resources
There are many great books and articles out there on leadership, although very few on educational leadership. The following are a few books that have been foundational in my thinking.
Covey, Steven, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
Hughes, Kent. Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome.
Sinek, Simon, Start with Why.
__________. Leaders Eat Last.
Willink, Jocko, Extreme Ownership.