Staying the Course

Leading an urban school for historically underserved kids is the hardest work with the highest consequences. And it's lonely work. School Leaders set and live the vision and values that guide our teachers every day to make it possible for all of our kids to have equal opportunities.Educators deserve and need expert witnesses to their lives who can help them stay the course at their highest level.

Kindness
Social scientists build case for 'survival of the kindest'
ScienceDaily (Dec. 9, 2009) Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, are challenging long-held beliefs that human beings are wired to be selfish. In a wide range of studies, social scientists ...

Put poetically, here is one of my favorite poets and poems.

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Naomi Shihab Nye, Words Under the Words

Carefully Taught

Carefully Taught, from the 1950s musical South Pacific, has been playing in my head a lot recently as I track the news in Arizona, Texas and in the Middle East, as well as consider my own history. One of my sheroes, Melissa Harris-Lacewell places the song in context to the reactionary times we are experiencing. http://www.thenation.com/article/youve-got-be-carefully-taught

Conversations with Distinguished Educators:
I've had the great privilege of engaging in conversations with Dr. Carol Tomlinson, Dr. Rick Stiggins, Dr. Jon Saphier, Kim Marshall and Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings. You can listen to the complete audio of each 55 minute interview at http://www.kipp.org/00/audio/

I want to express gratitude to Drs. Dick Streedain and Dick Best, co-directors of the KIPP/ NLU(National Louis University) Masters in Educational Leadership Program, for their vision for these conversations.

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.