Community Organizing and School Leadership

Opening, establishing and running an urban school is as much about community organizing as it is educational leadership. We have to engage families and teach them how to be activists on our children's behalf. This is especially necessary given the mood of the country and the strong community organization and activism on the right. More on community organizing in the next post.

Coaching Champions

Teams that make it to the Final Four have one thing in common all season: Coaches train their players to focus on "The Next Game," not on getting to the championship game. During each game they focus on each play, not on winning the game. One play and one game at a time. Even with 7 seconds on the clock, that's how they get there. Moment to moment, play after play, game by game. That's what champions do. That's what we need to do with our Kids: Win every moment and the championship takes care of itself.

Stay engaged in and present to the process, and the outcome will take care of itself.

How to Keep Good Teachers
I recently had a rich conversation with Jon Saphier, author, educator and founder of Research for Better Teaching (RBT), as part of the Distinguished Educators series sponsored by the KIPP/NLU Masters in Educational Leadership program. I asked Jon how we can significantly diminish a 37% teacher turnover in our KIPP schools. The points he made that spoke clearly to me are that teachers need to know:

• Their professional development will be supported
• Their creativity will be nourished
• What is expected of them
• They will never be humiliated

The entire audio is posted at http://www.kipp.org/00/audio/. You will also find previous interviews with Gloria Ladson-Billings and Kim Marshall there.

Each interview is 55 minutes and takes a few minutes to load.

Shutter

Be still.
Look around you.
Expand your gaze.
Extend your panorama.
Embrace the image.
Freeze the frame, lock in this moment, memorize these faces, feel these hearts and minds radiate beneath your skin.
This moment
fleeting
ephemeral
elusive.
A brief catch in your breath
this time of your life.
Savor the feeling and hold this instant in your palm
gently
while it flutters
beating back against your tightening grip
threatening to escape.
Hold onto it while it tugs at you to release it into the breeze
soon a swirling wind
kicking up behind you
as you turn to take flight.

For Fisher Fellows closing dinner: Dallas, 2/15/2010
Linda Belans

Some Common Causes of Burnout
· The need for better organizational skills
· The need to learn how to delegate
· Communication issues and breakdowns
· The absence of the joy factor (performance management issues)
· Too much on the plate
· The lack of clear role definition
· The absence of supervision
· The absence of enjoying the company of your peers
· Lack of positive feedback (too much corrective feedback)
· Unclear or overly ambitious expectations (ie never feeling like you are meeting the goals)
· Lack of recognition for accomplishments
· No down time to recharge
· Overly harsh punishment for failure
· Supervising teachers whom you discover don’t really believe that all our kids can really learn: as Dr. Haberman calls it – the Pedagogy of Poverty. Then finding yourself in the position of having to fire the teacher and worry about finding a replacement.
· Not having performance management training/skills
· Being afraid to speak your truth.

Here is the link to listen to the interview I did with Kim Marshall as part of the Distinguished Educators Series sponsored by the KIPP/NLU Masters in Educational Leadership program. It runs 55 minutes and may take a few minutes to load.
http://www.kipp.org/00/audio