I write this post with incredible enthusiasm.  Today, like many schools across the Commonwealth, we welcomed back our teachers and staff for a school year that will be among the best of our last decade.  I believe this for our district, and I hope it is true for those of you who believe that the collective effort put forth by educators will give our kids the best chance to maximize their potential – and truly make the world a better place.  This might read as artificial, but you'd know what I mean if you were with me today. 

Today, we celebrated over 1,000 years of service that our most veteran teachers have put forth, and I watched an auditorium packed with staff rise to their feet in applause for several of their colleagues.  Our engagement activity called upon the staff to reflect upon the best and worst teachers they experienced in their K – 12 education programs. At one point, one of our teachers told a story about three teachers he said changed his life.  All three were in the auditorium – one of these was his mother, a 36-year veteran teacher in our system. 

Today was the real deal.  In the end, we focused on three major goals that we have as a district: the achievements of our students, their safety and well-being, and the involvement of their families and community in the process of building a quality system.  We have the benefit of a renewed sense of purpose that has been delivered by real leadership at the school governance level.  Over the years, I have been subjected to horrifying leadership – the kind that results in the resignation of high-quality educators.  I mean, seriously, people running for the hills – taking jobs in other industries, lower positions, and making lateral moves to sleep at night.

Some leaders treat teachers like cogs in a machine, refer to them as Full Time Employees (FTEs), or act like they know more and can do more than the teachers.  I once met a Special Education Administrator who never spent a day as a full-time teacher in any school.  This cheaply and shoddily built supervisor berated a teacher in front of her colleagues in an online meeting to the point that the teacher cried and was directed to close her laptop by a well-respected veteran teacher with decades of experience.  The teacher left in tears was a 12-year veteran – who went on to file a Federal lawsuit against the Special Education Administrator for her ongoing harassment of her.

I’ve seen the opposite of this, too, and its impact on morale and the sense of purpose it reinforces for the people in the organization who are doing the actual work – in classrooms with our kids.  In Cornell University’s Therapeutic Crisis Intervention for Schools, this is called creating an ideological space for caring schools and classrooms.  Focusing on the ideological learning space is like putting high-octane fuel in the learning engine and high-quality oil, too. 

It is pretty simple…

Communicate a cohesive school philosophy of caring

Find and foster opportunities for students and staff to be successful

Encourage relationship-building activities

Talk about and encourage the belief in a REAL learning organization

Communicate, Communicate, Communicate

The word gets out about districts that do this well.  As we exude positivity, it will not be long before our district is there to give those seeking refuge from second-rate, inferior, and appalling governance a place to be respected in their work.  As it gets harder and harder to recruit the best and most qualified – the ecology of districts will be the thing if it is not already.