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Reflection

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Global Collaborator 7d: Local and Global Issues (ISTE Standards for Students)

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Innovative Designer 4c: Prototypes (ISTE Standards for Students)

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Digital Citizen 2d: Digital Privacy (ISTE Standards for Students)

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ISTE for Educators

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The ISTE Educator Standards challenge educators to deepen their practice, empower students and rethink traditional approaches to education.

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ISTE for Students

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The ISTE Student Standards guide educators toward student-driven learning practices that prepare students to thrive in an evolving technological landscape.

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Noble Ingram is an Editor with Educational Leadership magazine.Learn More

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How Leaders Create Safe Environments for Trauma-Affected Students

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School leaders aim to foster supportive learning communities for all of their students, but those who are experiencing trauma might have especially acute needs. The best way for leaders to create safe

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Vol. 79

No. 6

Abstract

Understanding Leadership Styles

Encountering Uncertain Conditions

Adjust to Road Conditions

In a crisis, the best response is often the most counterintuitive.

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Abstract

Understanding Leadership Styles

Encountering Uncertain Conditions

Adjust to Road Conditions

As schools everywhere were forced to navigate the sudden shift to remote learning in March 2020, superintendents shared with me that they were observing a peculiar phenomenon among principals: Many who had been star performers prior to the pandemic were now the ones struggling most mightily to lead their schools. Why should that be? How did so many formerly competent leaders suddenly become incompetent?

The answer likely reflects something we learned back in driver's education: When road conditions change, we need to apply different, and sometimes counterintuitive, driving skills, like laying off the brakes on an icy patch or steering into a skid. Similarly, when schools encounter changing conditions, leaders need to apply skills that may feel counterintuitive.

First, let's consider two distinct types of "road conditions" that organizations experience. Years ago, Heifetz and Laurie (2001) observed that organizations tend to encounter one of two types of change: (1) technical problems, which are readily diagnosed and solved with existing know-how, and (2) adaptive challenges, which are far more complex, with unclear causes and no playbook or toolkit to use to solve them.

In schools, finding a better way to track and report attendance data would be an example of a technical problem. Leaders can easily frame the problem: How can we simplify and automate these processes? Solutions are readily available-like purchasing attendance-tracking software-and a leader's response is straightforward: Review options, decide on a course of action, allocate resources, and ensure people use the software.

On the other hand, making a massive, abrupt transition to remote learning was an adaptive challenge -arguably the Mt. Everest of adaptive challenges. It required rapid rethinking of the entire enterprise of schooling with no playbook to follow. And it required leaders to take a different approach to leadership.

Understanding Leadership Styles

Research suggests leaders typically employ two (maybe three) different approaches to leadership (Hameiri, Nir, & Inbar, 2014; Lorinkova, Pearsall, & Sims, 2013). The first is top-down and directive (sometimes referred to as transactional): Leaders focus on clarifying demands, assigning roles and responsibilities, solving problems to avoid risks, or monitoring implementation and compliance. The second approach is bottom-up and empowering (sometimes referred to as transformational): Leaders focus on inspiring others with a compelling forward-looking vision, encourage risk taking, and support personal change. Arguably, there's a third style-what I'd call passive, laissez faire leadership, which amounts to leaders keeping their heads down and avoiding trouble. But that's hardly the stuff of journal articles, TED talks, or airport bookstore bestsellers.

Teams with directive leaders initially outperform those with empowering leaders. Yet over time, teams with empowering leaders continue to learn and improve. Eventually, their performance surpasses that of teams with directive leaders (Lorinkova et al., 2013). A study of 142 small businesses (Wallace et al., 2010) found that those with leaders who adopted a so-called promotion focus-encouraging innovation and new ideas to achieve ambitious goals-outperformed those with leaders who had a prevention focus-cautiously fixating on preventing errors. While prevention may work in stable environments, where doing business as usual is warranted, it's often ill-suited to dynamic and uncertain environments, where new ideas and rapid change are paramount.

Encountering Uncertain Conditions

Times of uncertainty and rapid change require leaders to adopt a more bottom-up and empowering leadership style. Yet that's not how most leaders respond to uncertainty and adaptive challenges, according to a study of nearly 200 school leaders and 1,000 teachers in Israel (a school system fairly similar to the U.S. in terms of structure and economic disparities) (Hameiri et al., 2014).

For the analysis, researchers divided schools into two groups: those outperforming expectations (i.e., high student academic performance with predominately low socioeconomic-status students) and those underperforming expectations (i.e., low achievement with predominately high SES students). They also surveyed principals on their perceived levels of uncertainty, including the amount of information (or lack thereof) they felt they had to do their jobs well and whether they could predict the consequences of their decisions.

Not surprisingly, most principals reported experiencing ambiguity in their roles-but to different degrees, which allowed researchers to explore a second question: How did leaders respond, in their leadership styles, to varying degrees of uncertainty?

Generally speaking, when confronted with uncertainty, most defaulted to one of two leadership styles-either passive, laissez-faire leadership, seeking to avoid risk, or a directive transactional style, meaning they used coercion, rewards, and positional authority to ensure compliance. Directive leaders often relied more on their own expertise and less on input from others. As it turns out, neither style was terribly effective.

However, leaders who responded to uncertainty with transformational leadership styles-using such "soft" leadership behaviors as showing appreciation and respect for others as well as sharing information and rationale for decision-making-demonstrated significantly greater effectiveness. Such leadership behaviors, in fact, accounted for fully 13 percent of the variance in school performance during times of uncertainty. To put this in perspective, results from a seminal meta-analysis of research on school leadership (Marzano, Waters, & McNulty, 2005) show that leaders account for, on average, 6 percent of the variance in school performance. This suggests that matching leadership style to school conditions can, in effect, more than double leadership effectiveness.

Adjust to Road Conditions

These findings suggest that it's essential for leaders not only to match their leadership style with current conditions, but also to recognize that their natural responses to uncertainty-to either clutch the wheel more tightly and engage in harsher, top-down leadership or to pull over and wait out the storm-are both exactly the wrong responses.

Instead, it's better to calmly keep your eyes on the road ahead and lean into a mix of top-down and bottom-up leadership behaviors. It's OK (and reassuring to staff) to draw upon your own expertise. Yet it's important to support "bottom-up" change that invites input, creative thinking, risk taking, and shared decision making. Admitting you don't have all the answers during times of crisis may feel counterintuitive. But asking the right questions can empower others to take risks and learn together to power through any obstacles you encounter on the path forward.

References

Hameiri, L., Nir, A., & Inbar, D. E. (2014). Confronting uncertainty and risk: The contribution of leadership to school outcomes. Planning and Changing, 45(1/2), 48.

Heifetz, R. A., & Laurie, D. L. (2001). The work of leadership. Harvard Business Review, 79(11).

Lorinkova, N., Pearsall, M., & Sims, H. (2013). Examining the differential longitudinal performance of directive versus empowering leadership in teams. Academy of Management, 56(2), 573-596.

Marzano, R. J., Waters, T., & McNulty, B. A. (2005). School leadership that works: From research to results. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Wallace, J. C., Little, L. M., Hill, A. D., & Ridge, J. W. (2010). CEO regulatory foci, environmental dynamism, and small firm performance. Journal of Small Business Management, 48(4), 580-604.

ASCD is a community dedicated to educators' professional growth and well-being.

Let us help you put your vision into action.

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Transformational Leadership in Uncertain Times

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In a crisis, the best response is often the most counterintuitive.

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Kid President Asks "What Makes an Awesome Leader?"

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New school leadership | Donte Quinine | TEDxWenatchee

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Admitting You Don't Know

A school leader is expected to know the way. During this pandemic, that paradigm has been greatly challenged as we navigate unknown territory. Leaders have had to show vulnerability and the desire to learn alongside teachers as we encountered constant hurdles. I have always believed that leadership does not mean standing in front telling others what to do, but that has really been pushed during the pandemic as teachers were in desperate need of direction and guidance. However, they often brought forward questions that I couldn't answer. This meant going to my teachers and saying, "I don't know yet, but I'll figure it out." This pandemic has forced us to face our own unknowns and learn faster than ever before to know which way to proceed.

- Laura Reina, vice principal and curriculum and assessment director, Edith Bowen Laboratory School, Logan, Utah

All About People

The pandemic has not so much changed my views on school leadership as it has reinforced and emphasized a few key essentials. Schools are about people-the students, the teachers, the parents. We need to focus on their needs, respond to challenges, and try to be proactive whenever possible. We need to allow people grace. We all do our best, and we all have bad days, and it is important to recognize that, make allowances for it, and provide support to our great teachers and our wonderful students. Never take for granted the daily effort of teaching or learning in a mask all day with exam-style seating and restrictions on group work. Celebrating has been key. Despite the challenges, our students and teachers have made tremendous strides. We need to make sure they are extra proud, recognized, and validated for their achievements. Finally, the pandemic has reinforced for me the value of a team. Teams can solve problems better and help you know that you are not alone, so everyone feels supported.

- Liz Durkin, middle school principal, Stamford American International School, Singapore

Appreciation, Gratitude, Empathy

Administrators often reflexively state that every decision should be centered on their students. Sometimes, to support the long-term success of their students, however, school leaders must concentrate on the short-term wellness of their staff. Optimal outcomes for students can only occur when educators are physically, emotionally, and intellectually well. That takes more than infrequent tokens of appreciation; it takes active listening, empathetic decisions, and collaborative problem solving to create an infrastructure that recognizes and reinforces the greatness in every educator.

- Daman Harris, principal, Wheaton Woods Elementary School, Rockville, Maryland

Prioritizing Student Needs

I used to emphasize the importance of rigorous and relevant instruction and assessments, but now I clearly see the need for prioritizing other aspects of education. For example, we now have a multi-layered SEL model that supports students daily. We also analyzed the needs of our most marginalized students and made sweeping changes to admissions criteria. We'll never be done with our equity work, but we're in a much better position today than we were prior to the pandemic.

- Samuel Khoshaba, principal, Chesapeake Public Schools, Chesapeake, Virginia

For May 2022

Tell us about a change you or your school has made to better prepare students for life after high school.

Deadline: March 1, 2022.

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How has your perspective on leadership changed since the pandemic started?

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There are a multitude of school leadership podcasts streaming around the internet these days, but few are likely to be as passionate or informed as Robyn Jackson's "School Leadership Reimagined." An A

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These themes provide a framework to help new principals master their multiple roles.

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The Instructional Leader's Most Difficult Job

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The relationship between leadership and administration

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Leadership in Education: Michael Fullan Six Secrets

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Vol. 80

No. 2

Abstract

Understanding Design Through Subtraction

Getting Started with Subtraction

Want real change in schools? Start by subtracting things.

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Abstract

Understanding Design Through Subtraction

Getting Started with Subtraction

At the end of the 2021-22 school year, educators found themselves in a bind. In fundamental ways, schools were not working. Attendance was down. Conflicts, fights, and behavioral issues were on the rise. Despite additional attention, a surge of funding, and the browbeating of education pundits, academic learning still proceeded more slowly than in the typical, pre-pandemic scope and pace.

Students were feeling the effects of years of schooling defined by the COVID-19 pandemic: the challenges of rebuilding friendships and social norms, the interruptions from occasional quarantine and closure, the general malaise that so many of us feel from some bleak combination of masking, isolation, illness, and death against a backdrop of mass shootings, inflation, and extreme climate events. It's a lot for kids-it's a lot for all of us.

And yet, the response largely has been for school leaders to add and accelerate. Create new programs. Run longer school days. Run longer school years. Add summer school. Add tutoring, add more remediation, do more something, anything, to try to address these gaps in learning. The vaguest of these formulations sounds insulting to educators. Pundits call for "accelerating learning" as if teachers have been doing "unnecessarily slow" learning all these years, saving a box full of accelerated learning techniques behind a glass that says, "Break in case of emergency."

But here's the rub: When the system isn't working, and the people in the system are exhausted and overwhelmed, you can't fix those problems by adding more things to the system and making it more complicated.

Innovation, new ideas, pilot programs, prototypes-these efforts can be quite energizing when the system isn't overworked and overloaded. Schools are always busy places, but they usually operate with room to take up new initiatives. Not now.

What if we started not with addition, but with subtraction? Make school simpler. Give teachers and students room to breathe. Clear out the marginal and focus on the most important things. When people feel a little lighter, then figure out what your schools are missing and what to strategically add to make them stronger.

I've spent the last spring and summer talking to teachers, school leaders, students, and design experts about subtraction in action: What it really looks like when schools step back, find ways of doing less, and discover more time to do a better job with the essential work of schools. It has been an illuminating project.

Understanding Design Through Subtraction

If the system has to be fixed, and we can't fix the system by adding to it, then the logical place to start is with subtraction. We need to look closely at our schools and figure out everything that we don't need to be doing anymore. We need to find as many things as possible that we can take off the plates of overworked educators. At its heart, the art of subtraction is clearing away peripheral parts of a system so that we can put better focus on the most important things.

There is good science on the challenges of improving systems through subtraction. Leidy Klotz is a professor of engineering at the University of Virginia and the author of Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less (2021). One afternoon, while building a bridge out of LEGO with his young son, Klotz did some balancing by adding blocks to one side. His son noticed that it would have been easier to balance the bridge by removing pieces instead. Klotz wondered why he didn't think of that subtracting move. Over the next several years, he published a number of studies, culminating in a recent article in Nature titled, "People Systematically Overlook Subtractive Changes" (Adams et al., 2021). Over a series of eight experiments, Klotz and colleagues demonstrated that his son's moment of LEGO insight was unusual: Most people trying to make something better will look for things to add before they look for elements to subtract.

We need to look closely at our schools and figure out everything that we don't need to be doing anymore.

These individual psychological factors reinforce social dynamics that are common to political systems. Schools are complex systems that balance the competing needs of various actors and stakeholders. Many parts of the system are the result of strong advocacy from a small group-to add a rule, or requirement, or program, or system. The costs of new programs tend to be diffuse and the benefits concentrated, so more and more stuff piles up on schools. Trying to remove something from this accreted sediment can be fraught, because most of the elements in schools have some strong stakeholder who gets upset and defensive when their rule/program/standard/policy gets taken away. And the benefits of removing any one of these elements can be modest for most people in the school.

The cost of having overly complex systems weighs heavily on all of us, but each individual element imposes only modest costs of time, energy, and attention to lots of people in the system, while offering benefits to small, determined groups of stakeholders. Colloquially, you piss a few people off when you try to cut something, so they try to stop it, while the benefits of any specific effort to simplify the system are limited. Combine these kinds of social dynamics with the individual disinclination to solve through subtraction, and it's not hard to understand how schools become a hodge-podge of priorities and initiatives.

Given the challenges of subtraction, it is perhaps not surprising that research to find compelling examples of subtraction has been challenging. For months, my research team at the Teaching Systems Lab at MIT talked to as many school people as we could looking for good examples and cases to investigate, and few people had suggestions for us. When we did interview educators, they were often somewhat apologetic, saying, "I'm not sure I have anything," "I'm not sure this really counts," or "This is just a small thing, but ...."

Subtraction is hard. It can be small. Most subtractions don't immediately lead to bright rays of sunshine and hope pouring in through classroom windows. But each little subtraction can make people feel a little lighter, breathe a little easier. When we finally did get the stories out from educators for our TeachLab Podcast, here's what we heard.

Pundits call for 'accelerating learning' as if teachers have been doing 'unnecessarily slow' learning all those years.

Subtracting Communications

Consider every email you might send to your staff and colleagues. How might you not send it? We spoke with Nicole Allard, a district leader in Vista, California, who talked about a small change she made to simplify communications for her staff, which also helped her use time more efficiently. Following the mantra "days are for people and evenings are for paperwork," Allard would go home at the end of the day and write messages to her staff with key fires to be extinguished next day. Then, right before bed, she would close her laptop and NOT send them. As she explained:

And I got almost to the closing line, and I thought, "Number one, if I send this, they're all going to reply to me tonight when they should be with their families or doing some something fun. And number two, I would get better information if I just called them all on my way to work."

Then she'd wake up. Her thoughts were organized in her draft email folder, ready to be acted on during the day. Some of them, she realized, she could just not send. The information was processed in her mind, and the action items could be skipped for now. For others, she made calls on the way to work, with 30 seconds to address her issue and a few minutes to hear about whatever was on her colleagues' minds. She had a few extra minutes of personal connection with staff. She saved them the time of having to compose a response. The problem got solved efficiently, with a little relationship building to boot.

Subtracting Rules

When we asked Nat Vaughn, principal at the Blake Middle School in Medfield, Massachusetts, to talk about subtraction, his mind first went to a couple of rules. Like many middle schools, Blake historically has banned hats and hoodies. But when students were home during the pandemic, they wore whatever made them comfortable, including hats and hoodies. So they came back to school wearing them. And Blake decided to let them.

Each interaction with a kid wearing a hat or a hoodie takes a few minutes from a teacher's day. It's one more thing to police; it's one more thing for kids to submit to; it's one more point for conflict. Take the rule away, and you save teachers a few minutes of policing, you save kids a few minutes of stewing in anger, you save an assistant principal a few minutes dealing with the resulting transgressions. Nothing groundbreaking, but not hard either; just looking through the rules and asking which are about control and which are about learning, and letting go of the former while keeping the latter.

Subtracting Bureaucracy

Another target for subtraction in districts is organizational complexity. Beth Rabbitt, the executive director of the education nonprofit The Learning Accelerator, shared stories from two districts she worked with in the past year-Austin, Texas, and Liberty, Missouri. In Austin, they had different teams for English language learners, for social-emotional learning, for the content areas, for MTSS support, and for other supports for learners. Rabbitt observed, "All of those teams were actually creating the opposite of coherence and were keeping people from taking a real integrated look at not only the curriculum and the resources they were creating, but also how they were supporting students and teachers." Those distinctions might have made sense in a time when each of those areas needed particular supports, but district leaders realized they needed simpler structures for the pandemic.

In Liberty, instructional coaches had operated at the district level and worked across schools, but during the pandemic, those staff got assigned to work with specific schools and build closer relationships with the teachers there. All the time that had been spent coordinating across sites could be spent tackling more issues out in schools. In both cases, simplifying the structures of how support staff work together made them more able to provide meaningful support to teachers and students.

Subtracting Curriculum

The biggest lifts-but also some of the biggest opportunities-for subtraction in action are in the curriculum. In the United States, we teach too many topics too shallowly. Our curriculum emerges from all the forces of accretion described earlier-someone is always making a case for new things to be added to curriculum; it's easier to add a new topic or standard than subtract; cutting standards runs into small, passionate groups who are fierce advocates of that standard. But a growing body of research suggests that the best national curricula are often the most parsimonious, and the best schools in the United States focus on teaching fewer subjects more deeply (Mehta & Fine, 2019).

Teachers have cut curriculum in all kinds of ways over the last two and a half years. When the system is swamped, you can't teach everything. But all too often, the cuts were made idiosyncratically by individual teachers in individual classrooms out of necessity or desperation. They don't feel lighter; they feel bad. They can feel like giving up.

A better approach is when groups get together to simplify curriculum together. A few states did a little bit of this during the early days of the pandemic by officially defining a set of "power standards" that schools could focus on (Reich et al., 2020). But since the spring of 2020, states have made little effort to help schools in the work of prioritizing and focusing, so the best efforts have been at the district or school level. (Prior to the pandemic, British Columbia stands out in North America as a place with a devoted effort to thinning standards at the province level to make more space for deeper work in their schools. For example, see " Curriculum Redesign. ")

Related Resource

For more stories of Subtraction in Action, listen to MIT's TeachLab podcast at TeachLabPodcast.com.

Prioritizing standards means asking about what's most important and how curricular themes connect from year to year. In elementary schools, adjacent grade level teams meet to discuss prioritization across years. In secondary schools, these meetings can mostly happen within departments. People propose candidates for prioritization, propose standards to be deemphasized and let go, and then teams navigate a path to something smaller.

Interestingly, during our research with teachers, we heard from several interviewees that these kinds of meetings happened with more frequency and urgency during the pandemic, and they were actually welcomed. This was surprising, in part, because teachers during this period were also advocating for most forms of professional development to be subtracted in favor of additional teacher planning, grading, and work time. (Sit-and-get PD workshops are indeed another potential subtraction target). But teachers valued the chance to talk with colleagues across grade levels, to identify priorities, and to leave with concrete plans for simplifying curriculum. When every day of class has uncertainties about illness, attendance, quarantine, and school closures, a narrower curriculum means more opportunities to go deeper on fewer things, with reduced fears that students who miss a few days will lose out on an entire section of class.

Getting Started with Subtraction

Let's not sugarcoat every aspect of subtraction. It can hurt. When you start cutting curriculum, you are going to deemphasize a standard that correlates exactly with someone's very favorite lesson ever, a lesson that they have honed and polished over many years. Someone on your staff really does earnestly believe that a school without hats is a more dignified place. School change is inevitably woven with loss. People need time and space to say goodbye. As the tidying expert Marie Kondo teaches us, when you clean out your closet, you need to offer a moment of thanks to each piece of clothing that you give away (Mehta & Peeples, 2020). But when we are exhausted, when we are ground-down, and when things aren't working, we need to bid farewell to some of the pieces on the margins to better see the important pieces in the core.

Gardens are a good metaphor for subtraction. You usually can't just plow over the whole thing mid-harvest and start over. Pull one weed, and things look about the same. But keep weeding long enough, and things start to look a little lighter. Sometimes you dig up some plants that might be viable, but you need to make space for more important things to keep growing. You toss them in the compost, and all the things you said goodbye to become the nutrients for the things that you want to grow deep and strong. Weed enough and clear enough and you can plant a new row; something different that gives the garden a new color or new flavor and makes the whole thing work a little better than before.

Subtraction in action isn't a forever focus. The hodge-podge of activities in schools is part of what makes them so beautiful-the math kids have a morning club, the band plays in assembly, the grizzled veteran gets to teach her special unit on forensics, the kids run outside on the first real spring day. But when people are tired, and schools aren't working, you can't race, and run, and hustle, and add your way out of the problem. You need a little more simplicity. A little more space. You need things to be a little lighter. Start by subtracting.

Reflect & Discuss

➛ In what ways is subtracting harder than adding new programs and initiatives?

➛ Start small-what's one program or process you could eliminate from your school or classroom that isn't an effective use of time?

➛ How do you think simplifying programs or curriculum in your school would affect staff morale and efficacy?

References

Adams, G. S., Converse, B. A., Hales, A. H., & Klotz, L. E. (2021). People systematically overlook subtractive changes. Nature, 592(7853), 258-261.

Klotz, L. (2021). Subtract: The untapped science of less. Flatiron Books.

Mehta, J., & Fine, S. (2019). In search of deeper learning: The quest to remake the American high school. Harvard University Press.

Mehta, J., & Peeples, S. (2020). Marie Kondo the curriculum. [Blog post]. Shanker Blog.

Reich, J., Buttimer, C. J., Fang, A., Hillaire, G., Hirsch, K., Larke, L. R., et al. (2020). Remote learning guidance from state education agencies during the COVID-19 pandemic: A first look. EdArXiv.

ASCD is a community dedicated to educators' professional growth and well-being.

Let us help you put your vision into action.

We create practical, timely, affordable professional learning to help educators and instructional leaders provide students with a modern, equitable, and quality education.

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Want real change in schools? Start by subtracting things.

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The ISTE Standards provide the competencies for learning, teaching and leading in the digital age, providing a comprehensive roadmap for the effective use of technology in schools worldwide. Grounded in learning science research and based on practitioner experience, the ISTE Standards ensure that using technology for learning can create high-impact, sustainable, scalable and equitable learning experiences for all learners.

For over 20 years the standards have been used, researched and updated to continuously reflect the latest research-based best practices that define success in using technology to learn, teach, lead and coach. The standards have been adopted in all 50 U.S. states and many countries throughout the world. Aligned to UNESCO's Sustainable Development Goals, the standards are available in eight languages.

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The ISTE Standards are a framework for students, educators, administrators, coaches and computer science educators to rethink education and create innovative learning environments. The standards are helping re-engineer schools and classrooms worldwide for digital age learning.

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In every good school, there are teachers whose vision extends beyond their own classrooms-even beyond their own teams or departments. Such teachers recognize that students' school experiences depend not only on interaction with individual teachers, but also on the complex systems in place throughout the school and district. This awareness prompts these teachers to want to influence change. They experience professional restlessness-what some have called the "leadership itch." Sometimes on their own initiative and sometimes within a more formal structure, these professionals find a variety of ways to exercise teacher leadership.

Today more than ever, a number of interconnected factors argue for the necessity of teacher leadership in schools.

Teaching is a flat profession. In most professions, as the practitioner gains experience, he or she has the opportunity to exercise greater responsibility and assume more significant challenges. This is not true of teaching. The 20-year veteran's responsibilities are essentially the same as those of the newly licensed novice. In many settings, the only way for a teacher to extend his or her influence is to become an administrator. Many teachers recognize that this is not the right avenue for them. The job of an administrator entails work that does not interest them, but they still have the urge to exercise wider influence in their schools and in the profession. This desire for greater responsibility, if left unfulfilled, can lead to frustration and even cynicism.

Teachers' tenure in schools is longer than that of administrators. In many settings, administrators remain in their positions for only three to four years, whereas teachers stay far longer. Teachers often hold the institutional memory; they are the custodians of the school culture. School districts that want to improve make a wise investment when they cultivate and encourage teacher leaders, because they are in a position to take the long view and carry out long-range projects.

The demands of the modern principalship are practically impossible to meet. Principals today are expected to be visionaries (instilling a sense of purpose in their staff) and competent managers (maintaining the physical plant, submitting budgets on time), as well as instructional leaders (coaching teachers in the nuances of classroom practice). In addition, the principal has become the point person for accountability requirements imposed by states and the federal government, and he or she must respond to multiple stakeholders (parents, staff members, the district central office, and the larger community). Under such pressure from a range of sources, many administrators simply cannot devote enough time and energy to school improvement.

Principals have limited expertise. Like all educators, most principals have their own areas of instructional expertise. A principal who was formerly a mathematics teacher may know a lot about research-based instructional practices in math, but not much about instruction in world languages. The school administrator cannot be an expert in everything. Individual teachers, of course, have their own particular areas of knowledge, but a group of teacher leaders can supply the variety of professional knowledge needed for sustained school improvement.

Given these factors, school improvement depends more than ever on the active involvement of teacher leaders. School administrators can't do it all.

Teacher leaders serve in two fundamental types of roles: formal and informal. Formal teacher leaders fill such roles as department chair, master teacher, or instructional coach. These individuals typically apply for their positions and are chosen through a selection process. Ideally, they also receive training for their new responsibilities. Formal teacher leaders play vital roles in most schools. In many cases, these teacher leaders manage curriculum projects, facilitate teacher study groups, provide workshops, and order materials. They may also evaluate other teachers, in which case their colleagues are likely to regard them as pseudoadministrators.

Informal teacher leaders, in contrast, emerge spontaneously and organically from the teacher ranks. Instead of being selected, they take the initiative to address a problem or institute a new program. They have no positional authority; their influence stems from the respect they command from their colleagues through their expertise and practice.

Whether they are selected for a formal leadership role or spontaneously assume an informal role, effective teacher leaders exhibit important skills, values, and dispositions. Teacher leaders call others to action and energize them with the aim of improving teaching and learning. As Michael Fullan writes,The litmus test of all leadership is whether it mobilizes people's commitment to putting their energy into actions designed to improve things. It is individual commitment, but above all it is collective mobilization.

A hallmark of leadership, therefore, is the ability to collaborate with others. Teacher leaders must enlist colleagues to support their vision, build consensus among diverse groups of educators, and convince others of the importance of what they are proposing and the feasibility of their general plan for improvement. They must be respected for their own instructional skills. They also must understand evidence and information and recognize the need to focus on those aspects of the school's program that will yield important gains in student learning.

A number of values and dispositions make certain individuals ideally suited for teacher leadership. Effective teacher leaders are open-minded and respectful of others' views. They display optimism and enthusiasm, confidence and decisiveness. They persevere and do not permit setbacks to derail an important initiative they are pursuing. On the other hand, they are flexible and willing to try a different approach if the first effort runs into roadblocks.

Many attributes of good teacher leaders are fundamentally the same as the attributes of good teachers: persuasiveness, open-mindedness, flexibility, confidence, and expertise in their fields. Despite these similarities, however, working with colleagues is profoundly different from working with students, and the skills that teachers learn in their preparation programs do not necessarily prepare them to extend their leadership beyond their own classrooms. To assume a leadership role, they may need expertise in curriculum planning, assessment design, data analysis, and the like. They may also need to develop the abilities to listen actively, facilitate meetings, keep a group discussion on track, decide on a course of action, and monitor progress. These skills are not typically taught in teacher preparation programs.

Three main areas of school life benefit from the involvement of teacher leaders (see "Where Teacher Leaders Extend Their Reach"). In each area, this involvement may take place within the teacher leader's own department or team, across the school, or beyond the school. No setting is more "advanced" than another; each has its own requirements and calls on its own particular skills and inclinations.

Leading change within one's own department or team may require considerable interpersonal skill and tact. The success of such an effort also depends on the teacher leader's having established credibility and trust with his or her colleagues.

Leadership at this level can take many forms. Teacher leaders may coordinate a program in which students in the 6th grade read to kindergarten students during their lunch period. Or they may invite their colleagues to examine the reasons for student underperformance in writing. In many different ways, teacher leaders mobilize the efforts of their closest colleagues to enhance the school's program for the benefit of students.

For example, William, a middle school math teacher, brought a situation to his 6th grade teaching team, asking for their thoughts. He had noticed that many of the girls in his class were not participating in group activities as enthusiastically as he expected.

One of William's colleagues offered to visit his class and see whether she could help him understand the situation better. She observed several classes and took notes on what she saw and heard: the nature of the activities students were asked to do, types of questions the teacher and students asked, interactions among the students, and so on.

What she observed was stunning: William, unknown to himself, was not challenging the girls in the class as much as the boys: When a girl encountered difficulty, he supplied the answer or a significant "hint"; he called on the boys more frequently than the girls to answer challenging questions; and he was more likely to encourage the boys to challenge one another's thinking about the math problems.

William was astonished at his colleague's findings and set about changing his behavior. His approach to this situation revealed extraordinary openness and courage. He and his colleague reported their findings and William's plan for action to the rest of the team. Soon, other teachers on the 6th grade team set about systematically assisting one another with similar questions and situations, as well as bringing the results back to the team for discussion.

Some of the most powerful opportunities for teacher leadership relate to areas that have enormous influence on the daily lives of students across the school, such as the master schedule, grading policy, or student programs. For example, many students experience the most memorable activities of their school careers through participating in the school play, being on the debate team, or taking an advanced class that enables them to engage deeply with academic content. Ensuring that students have full access to such opportunities involves a collective effort, requiring discussion and consideration of alternatives. This is the work of leadership. And although administrators play an important facilitative role, teachers-who are closer to the action-frequently put forward important ideas and can assume a leadership role.

Grading policies also have a profound effect on how students experience their learning activities. Jennifer, a high school history teacher, found herself troubled by her students' responses to tests and papers. She read their work carefully and provided thoughtful feedback. But when she returned their papers, the students seemed interested only in the grade; some never even read her careful comments. Also, she noticed that some students would decline to turn in work altogether if they knew it was going to be late, believing that it was not "worth it" to complete it.

Jennifer invited interested teachers from across the school to join her in exploring alternate approaches to grading. The teachers met for an entire school year, and each of them conducted systematic discussions with their students. Toward the end of the year, the group made a recommendation to the entire faculty; as a result, the school piloted a different grading system the following year that incorporated formative assessment and student self-assessment. At the end of three years, the school's approach to grading was considerably different; the teachers were convinced that the new system resulted in greater student buy-in and commitment to high-quality work.

Teacher leaders contribute beyond their own school when they participate in a districtwide teacher evaluation committee or curriculum team, make a presentation at a state or national conference, serve on a state standards board, or speak at a school board meeting as the voice of teachers in the community. Again, these teachers are doing more than teaching their own students (as brilliant as they may be in that work); they are influencing the larger education environment in their communities and perhaps their states.

For example, Maria, a high school Spanish teacher, noticed that there weren't good opportunities for her to meet with and learn from other Spanish teachers in the area. The state organization of language teachers had not recruited many members in her school or in neighboring schools.

Maria decided to begin a chapter of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese in her area. She sent e-mail notices to teachers in other schools and scheduled an organizational meeting. Although response was slow at first, over the course of several years the chapter became vibrant. Before long, members were scheduling visits to one another's schools and preparing presentations for the state conference.

Not every school is hospitable to the emergence of teacher leaders, particularly informal teacher leaders. The school administrator plays a crucial role in fostering the conditions that facilitate teacher leadership, including the following:

A safe environment for risk taking. Teachers must be confident that administrators and other teachers will not criticize them for expressing ideas that might seem unusual at first. Some of the most effective approaches to solving difficult issues in schools may not be intuitively obvious but may require that educators think creatively, which can only happen in a safe environment. School administrators should make it clear that teachers are safe to express ideas and take professional risks.

For example, a principal could raise discussion questions at a staff meeting: What would make the professional environment safe in our school? How would it be similar to the climate you create in your own classrooms? Following the establishment of these professional norms, the principal could schedule a brief, but regular, time at staff meetings for "wacko ideas," during which any teacher could propose doing something different.

Administrators who encourage teacher leaders. Administrators' commitment to cultivating teacher leaders plays an essential role in their development. Administrators must be proactive in helping teachers acquire the skills they need to take advantage of opportunities for leadership (data analysis, meeting facilitation, and so on). Unfortunately, some administrators jealously guard their turf, apparently fearing that ambitious teacher leaders will somehow undermine their own authority. In fact, one of the enduring paradoxes of leadership is that the more an administrator shares power, the more authority he or she gains.

Absence of the "tall poppy syndrome." It's not only administrators who, on occasion, stand in the way of teacher leaders. Sometimes the teachers themselves resist taking on leadership roles, or make it difficult for their colleagues to do so. In Australia, this is called the tall poppy syndrome -those who stick their heads up risk being cut down to size. This phenomenon might take the form of teachers' reluctance to announce to their colleagues that they have been recognized by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. To counteract this syndrome, the school administrator needs to create a culture that honors teachers who step outside their traditional roles and take on leadership projects.

Opportunities to learn leadership skills. As noted earlier, the skills required for teacher leadership are not part of the preparation program for most teachers. If teacher leaders are to emerge and make their full contribution, they need opportunities to learn the necessary skills of curriculum planning, instructional improvement, assessment design, collaboration, and facilitation. Teachers can learn these skills through school-level professional development, of course, but they may also build these skills through districtwide or university-based courses and seminars. Whatever the source, the opportunities must be available and sufficiently convenient for teachers to take advantage of them.

Teacher leadership is an idea whose time has come. The unprecedented demands being placed on schools today require leadership at every level. Yet many schools are still organized as though all the important decisions are made by administrators and carried out by teachers.

In the most successful schools, teachers supported by administrators take initiative to improve schoolwide policies and programs, teaching and learning, and communication. By understanding the phenomenon of teacher leadership and helping teachers develop the skills required to act as leaders, we will improve schools and help teachers realize their full potential.

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In every good school, there are teachers whose vision extends beyond their own classrooms-even beyond their own teams or departments. Such teachers recognize that students' school experiences depend not only on interaction with individual teachers, but also on the complex systems in place throughout the school and district.

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The ISTE Standards provide the competencies for learning, teaching and leading in the digital age, providing a comprehensive roadmap for the effective use of technology in schools worldwide. Grounded in learning science research and based on practitioner experience, the ISTE Standards ensure that using technology for learning can create high-impact, sustainable, scalable and equitable learning experiences for all learners.

For over 20 years the standards have been used, researched and updated to continuously reflect the latest research-based best practices that define success in using technology to learn, teach, lead and coach. The standards have been adopted in all 50 U.S. states and many countries throughout the world. Aligned to UNESCO's Sustainable Development Goals, the standards are available in eight languages.

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The ISTE Standards are a framework for students, educators, administrators, coaches and computer science educators to rethink education and create innovative learning environments. The standards are helping re-engineer schools and classrooms worldwide for digital age learning.

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Digitally Speaking / How to Become a Digital Leader

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I’ve never made more enemies than I did while sitting on a panel of teacher leaders at a conference for principals. Our task was to help a room full of administrators understand the role teachers could play in driving change in schools.

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The Context of Administrative Leadership

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Tools and Resources
A voice over is one of the most effective ways to improve a PowerPoint presentation. Narration helps users understand the context of each slide and improves engagement during a presentation.

If you want to learn how to add a voice over to your next PowerPoint presentation, we're here to help. Below, we've included step-by-step instructions on how to record a voice over for PowerPoint.

Why You Should Add a Voice Over for Your Presentation

If you've ever had to sit through a dry or less than exciting presentation, you'll understand why a good voice over is vital to a successful production.

A voice over increases engagement with the viewers of your presentation.

Voice overs let you add context and give detailed explanations of each slide.

Voice overs improve the accessibility of your presentation for individuals with visual impairments.

Narration lets you tell a story.

Recorded or Live Voice Over

A live narration can add flavor and energy to a presentation. It helps viewers understand concepts and adds detail to each slide. But, there are many benefits of using a recorded voice over for a presentation:

A recorded version lets you replay the presentation at later dates.

Recorded presentations let the viewer advance at their own pace through the slides.

Replay the narration if you missed something while watching the presentation.

Presenters can take reshoots, edit, and improve the quality of the performance.

Shy narrators don't have to worry about performing in front of an audience.

How To Prepare for Recording a Voice Over for PowerPoint

Recording a voice over for PowerPoint is straightforward. Most computers have a built-in microphone that lets your record audio voice over. If your computer does not have a microphone, you can use AirPods or any headphones that include a microphone.

If you record voice overs often, we suggest using a professional microphone for your computer. Modern microphones are affordable, offer excellent audio quality, and are easy to use with most computers.

You'll also want to find a quiet location to record with minimal distractions. You might not realize how loud your home is until you start recording. Microphones can pick up everything from passing cars to your dog barking. These sounds can ruin your narration and become a nuisance for anyone listening to the presentation.

You should also prepare a script for the voice over. While the script doesn't have to be word for word, it's a good idea to have an outline that you can follow. This way you won't leave any important details out of the narration. It also helps you stay on track and not add unnecessary information.

How To Record a PowerPoint Voice Over

Are you ready to record your first voice over for a presentation? You can record voice over for individual slides in PowerPoint or for the entire presentation. Recording instructions for both methods are below.

Add a Voice Over to Each Slide

Recording voice for each slide is one of the easiest methods to add a voice over to a PowerPoint presentation:

Navigate to the slide that needs narration.

From the menu, choose Insert > Audio > Record Audio.

Choose a name for the recording.

Start recording by clicking the red recording dot.

Begin narrating the voice over for the slide.

Hit Stop when you complete the recording.

Once the recording is complete, you can review the voice over by selecting the 'Play' icon on the slide. If you are satisfied with the recording, click outside the recording controls to confirm the recording.

If you want to record more content for other slides, simply repeat the above process for each slide.

Record a Voice Over for an Entire Presentation

You can also add a voiceover to an entire presentation instead of one slide at a time. This method makes it easy to add one audio file to your PowerPoint presentation.

From View select Normal.

Choose the slide that you want to record.

Choose Slide Show > Record Slide Show > Record from Current Slide.

When the recording window opens, click Record to begin your voice over.

PowerPoint records the audio along with your slide timings, ink and laser pointer movements.

You can pause during recording if you need a break.

You can edit the current audio slide by using Clear > Clear Recording on Current Slide.

Once a slide is complete, select Advance to go to the next slide.

Select Stop to finalize the recording of your presentation.

Import a Recording to PowerPoint

This method is great for users who recorded the first time performing a presentation. If you recorded an audio file of the performance, add the entire audio to the PowerPoint presentation in a few steps.

Choose Insert > Audio from the menu.

Choose Audio on My PC.

Locate the audio file you wish to add to the presentation and choose Insert Audio.

Choose Insert to place the audio on the slide.

How to Play the Narration Voice Over in PowerPoint

You'll want to test your voice over before sharing it with others. Here's how to play the narrated voice over in PowerPoint.

Find the Speaker or Video Screenshot icon.

Hover over the icon and hit Play to listen to the narration.

Deleting a Voice Over

You can also delete individual slide voice overs or the entire voice over for a slideshow.

For single slides, select Delete from the recording menu on the individual slide.

For the entire show, select Slide Show > Record Slide Show > Clear Narration on All Slides.

What Audio Formats Does PowerPoint Support?

PowerPoint supports most modern audio file formats including .aiff, .au, .midi, .mp3, .m4a, .mp4, .wav, and .wma.

You can also use audio from video formats including .asf, .avi, .mp4, .m4v, .mov, .mpg, .mpeg, and .wmv.

PowerPoint Voice Over, Final Thoughts

We hope you're ready to impress everyone with your new voice over skills. Recorded narration is one of the best ways to improve a PowerPoint presentation. Whether you need to impress your boss or your professor, the above PowerPoint tips are sure to improve the quality of your presentation.

Wanting to add voice over to YouTube? Read this article to learn how.

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How To Do a Voice Over on PowerPoint | Voices

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If you want to learn how to add a voice over to your next PowerPoint presentation, we're here to help. Follow this blog's 7 easy steps.

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Discussion Part 1

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Discussion Part 2

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My Bio

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When a boy from an affluent Georgia suburb shot six fellow students in spring 1999, a reporter labeled his actions "a desperate cry for attention" (Pilcher, 1999c). As high-profile school shootings became a seemingly regular feature of life, public discussion of school violence broadened to include expressions of compassion. Press accounts sympathetically portrayed students who, because of race, sexual orientation, appearance, or simply the awkwardness of adolescence, were tormented and excluded from the mainstream of school life.

Commentators charged that schools such as Colorado's Columbine High School ignored or encouraged "casual cruelty . . . small slights and public humiliations"-means by which favored students harassed classmates and "reinforced the rigid high school caste system" (Kogan, 1999). Calls for retribution were joined by pleas for schools to better reach out to alienated and troubled youth.

In practice, however, the policies inspired by school shootings owe little to compassion. Policymakers across the United States have earmarked hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade school security. Schools have hired armed guards, redesigned entryways, and installed motion-sensitive cameras. Some schools have mandated that backpacks be made of clear plastic; others have banned dark clothing. Columbine High School announced a policy of "zero tolerance" for "cruelty, harassment, excessive teasing, discrimination, violence, [and] intimidation" (Kenworthy, 1999). Meanwhile, in Georgia, legislators passed a measure that would expel students for bullying (Bixler &amp; Bennett, 1999). "We have zero tolerance on other things," said the bill's sponsor. "Why not zero tolerance on violent behavior?"

Officials at Columbine and other schools needed to reassure students that they were safe, and factors beyond their control, including the ready availability of guns and the threat of lawsuits, complicate administrators' work. Still, one cannot promote tolerance through a policy of zero tolerance. Any effort to draw in advance a firm line around the ambiguities of human interaction invites only arbitrariness and exclusion. Such a policy abandons the educational mission of the schools.

Retribution: An Ill-Advised Reaction

Plans to intensify the policing of students come despite the fact that (1) youth violence is declining, (2) school shootings remain exceedingly rare-far less common than gun violence in children's own homes, and (3) police methods failed to protect children in the very schools where attacks generated national concern. A police officer on duty at Columbine, for instance, had no impact on the crisis there. Video surveillance cameras, police dogs, and an armed sheriff's deputy could not protect students at Georgia's Heritage High School. Rather, assistant principal Cecil Brinkley convinced T. J. Solomon to put down his gun and then embraced the youth.

One hundred years ago, reformers created the juvenile court to divert troubled children from the criminal justice system into a more nurturing institution. Decades of research confirmed the effectiveness of rehabilitative approaches in preventing crime. Nevertheless, juvenile justice increasingly took on the punitive qualities of the adult prison system (Polier, 1989). Over the last decade, more and more juveniles have been tried as adults, and thousands are being sent to adult prisons, many for nonviolent offenses. The recent school shootings have merely accentuated federal, state, and local lawmaking aimed at imposing increasingly harsh punishments on young offenders.

Obstacles to structuring compassion into the fabric of the schools are not new. Throughout the 20th century, periodic panics arising out of social and political conflicts in the United States have fed images of juvenile disorder and discouraged progressive educational practices (Perlstein, in press). Meanwhile, the long-standing division of U.S. high school students into "in" groups and outsiders-hierarchically ordered cliques through which youth rehearse the social inequalities of the adult world-has discouraged a school culture of inclusiveness.

A Misdiagnosis of Cause

Unlike urban youth violence, which popular accounts portray as the reflection of inner-city norms, violence perpetrated by suburban youth is attributed to what has been called an environment that "may leave too many young people in a vacuum, cut off from both parents and other members of the community" (Scherer &amp; Coeyman, 1999). And yet, the places where high-profile school shootings have occurred are not places where youth are cut off from "traditional" or "mainstream" values. Rather, suburban violence has occurred in communities that are defined as much by their churches as by generic fast-food outlets, huge Wal-Marts, and multiplex movie theaters showing much the same fare as those in Los Angeles or New York.

Mass school shootings have occurred in places where the tensions of U.S. life express themselves with particular force and where the young are given inadequate support in finding their own way in a difficult world. Like the clichéd question that has echoed after each suburban shooting-"How could it have happened here?"-responses that ignore the social fissures of U.S. life not only deny compassion to urban youth but also misdiagnose the nature of suburban school violence.

When police and reporters interviewed students at Georgia's Heritage High School about the young man who shot six classmates, the exchanges repeated a formula set in a number of earlier shootings, in which a young man's professions of affection turned deadly when a young woman sought her freedom (Perlstein, 1998). "I heard you had broken up with your girlfriend," a friend remarked to 15-year-old T. J. Solomon right before he opened fire on his schoolmates. "Yeah, I'm real mad about it," came the reply (Schneider, 1999).

A young man reacting to a failed relationship not with sadness but with rage is so normal that authorities were unable to "suggest a motive" for the shooting, and reporters turned to the same set of clichés that had trivialized the role of misogynistic possessiveness in earlier school shootings. Solomon was "upset over a broken romance," "a Boy Scout with a broken heart," a "typical teen who grew sullen after his girlfriend recently dumped him" (Preston, 1999; Pilcher, 1999a, b, c).

Underlying Social Issues

Echoing once-popular rationales for treating domestic violence as a private matter and a crime of passion, reporters' sentimental invocations of romance obscure and trivialize the tense, asymmetrical gender relations of youth and the centrality of these relations in school life. Moreover, revelations that perpetrators of school violence were frequently baited mercilessly with accusations of being gay have exposed the pervasiveness of sexual harassment in U.S. schools-for both girls and boys. The stigmatization of girls and the imposition of narrow standards of behavior on all boys serve as a model for other forms of bias and discrimination in school.

By expressing revulsion against degraded females and males identified with them, homophobia, Margaret Smith Crocco remarks, is integral to the "system of sexualized male supremacy" perpetuated in schools (Crocco, in press). Frequently overlooked by teachers and administrators, bullying, sexual harassment, and other such activities that students use to assert power and maintain their place in the pecking order are simultaneously pervasive and invisible. Together, they constitute the normal, systematic form of student violence in schools.

Ironically, at the same time that girls are victimized at school, boys are poorly served by their privilege. They achieve far less than girls in school and get into far more trouble. As obstacles to girls' educational opportunities have diminished, U.S. ideals of masculinity-the valorization of isolation and aggression, and taboos against displaying emotions other than anger-have accentuated boys' academic and behavioral difficulties (Pollack, 1998).

The chances of creating a more just gender order in schools are promising in part because this is one case in which even the privileged would benefit from equity. Zero-tolerance policies and the preoccupation with sensational shootings poorly protect even affluent white boys from rapidly rising rates of suicide and other forms of self-inflicted violence.

Other boys are even more at risk. Whereas affluent white boys can often call on a nexus of supportive institutions if they get into trouble, the burdens of boyhood fall particularly hard on poor and minority youth, who are more likely to face punishment than nurturance. Indeed, poor and minority youth often turn to acts of violence because they have come to believe that school authorities will not protect them (Prothrow-Stith, 1991).

Preoccupation with gun violence in schools diverts attention from far more common forms of violence, such as bullying, sexual harassment, suicide, and unequal treatment.

Punishment is invariably applied inequitably.

Punishment presupposes that students understand what types of actions are not permitted, a level of understanding that many elementary and secondary students do not possess.

The sources of school violence lie in complicated, ambiguous arenas of social life, matters requiring study if students are to develop alternative behaviors and attitudes.

The Challenge for Educators

Educators can do better than the currently popular punitive approaches to school violence. To do so, they need to challenge the hierarchical division of students by curricular track, extracurricular activities, and school culture. For example, educators must acknowledge that when some students are labeled "gifted," the others are marked as "giftless"-roles having more to do with social status than with native talent or the provision of appropriate, individualized instruction.

Reconfiguring schools to diminish institutional obstacles to school safety is no easy task but has the potential to enrich the education of all. An effective school safety policy acknowledges that just as dilemmas pervade the task of creating a good society, dilemmas pervade the task of creating safe schools. In a society pulling students simultaneously in multiple directions, youth, both victims and victimizers, are necessarily conflicted. Instead of trivializing the pains and conflicts of youth or responding to difficult questions with embarrassed silence, educators should treat the issues of gender within the curriculum with the same attentiveness they bring to issues of civic duty or career. Students' effort to make sense of their own lives will necessarily illuminate fundamental aspects of the wider society. They know from their lives, if not from their studies, that they can sometimes cross social boundaries and at other moments find the same boundaries impermeable. Such efforts should not be consigned to the margins of the curriculum.

Once educators conceptualize school safety as a curricular issue rather than a disciplinary one, they can bring a plethora of well-established approaches to dealing with it. Investigations of family life and history can counter-balance lessons celebrating military history. The stories and literature of those at the margins can infuse the curriculum. Classes can study not only different voices but also the interplay of differences and commonalities. Students can wrestle with real dilemmas of human rights as they apply to children, rather than parrot "contracts" with which teachers seek to legitimize their rules of classroom behavior.

inculcating a critique of misogyny, homophobia, and other forms of bias while fostering free-wheeling inquiry;

helping students understand the world from different perspectives-male and female, heterosexual and homosexual-while also understanding that there is no one "female" or "heterosexual" way of seeing the world;

using their authority to protect the disenfranchised from hateful speech while fostering the intellectual and moral agency of each student; and

The public expressions of compassion catalyzed by the recent school shootings, together with educators' compassionate impulses, have created a rare opportunity to move school policies and practices away from retribution. Such an effort by educators will require educators to win public support. Still, educators cannot create safe schools by ignoring the tensions that characterize contemporary life in the United States. They cannot treat school safety as a technical problem of administration. They can only create an environment and an opportunity that encourage students to think critically and compassionately about the society in which they live and about their individual and collective places in it. Such an effort does far more to protect schoolchildren than do ill-conceived, counterproductive campaigns to police youth.

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Failing at Kindness: Why Fear of Violence Endangers Children

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When a boy from an affluent Georgia suburb shot six fellow students in spring 1999, a reporter labeled his actions "a desperate cry for attention" (Pilcher, 1999c). As high-profile school shootings became a seemingly regular feature of life, public discussion of school violence broadened to include expressions of compassion.

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Sustaining the Pipeline of School Administrators (1)

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As students enter the I Promise School in Akron, Ohio, they're greeted not with a gauntlet of metal detectors and security guards, but with cheers, hugs, and breakfast. Most are from low-income families, and prior to enrolling in the school, they were scoring so low on achievement tests (in the 1st and 2nd percentile) that former teachers wrote them off as lost causes. The unorthodox greeting is part of a comprehensive effort to create a loving environment for these students in grades 1-8-an approach that, as it turns out, reflects emerging research on school safety and supporting the needs of today's learners.

Studies show that today's learners bring many psychological and emotional burdens to school. An analysis of data for nearly 100,000 U.S. children found that 48 percent under age 17 have endured at least one adverse childhood experience (exposure to violence; emotional, physical, or sexual abuse; deprivation, neglect, or social discrimination; or family discord or divorce) (Bethell et al., 2014). Such experiences can create post-traumatic stress disorder, similar to what combat soldiers often experience, and leave children less trusting, less able to focus on learning, and more prone to aggressive or violent behavior.

In addition, today's youth feel more anxious, more depressed, more detached, and less hopeful about the future than previous generations. Researcher Jean Twenge (2018) notes, for example, that individuals born after 1995 are witnessing a growing chasm between the haves and have nots in modern society and are thus feeling more anxious about the future. At the same time, today's teens spend an average of 9 hours per day in front of screens (phones, computers, and TVs); yet many studies, including Twenge's own, have found a causal link between teens' screen time and mental health issues, including increasing depression and anxiety after just one hour of screen time per day. All of this adds up to a generation of students that is, in general, more fragile, detached, and depressed than previous generations.

These same students often find themselves in schools that, as one researcher put it, have become "hardened" (Hoover, 2019), equipped with sealed doors, cameras, metal detectors, and school resource officers. Studies suggest, though, that while such measures may remove immediate threats, they do little to change students' behavior or feelings of safety.

For example, a study of a North Carolina program that added school resource officers in 471 middle schools to reduce disciplinary referrals found the officers' presence in these schools did not reduce such infractions (Anderson, 2018). Similarly, a study of random metal detector searches for weapons and drugs in two Florida districts found that it led to fewer students bringing weapons to school or selling drugs, but didn't reduce fights on campus or make students less likely to skip school out of concern for their safety (Bhatt & Davis, 2018).

In the aftermath of school shootings, shoring up the physical safety of schools makes sense-as does consistent enforcement of disciplinary codes. Yet studies suggest the most effective approaches to school safety also address students' emotional and psychological safety.

One such whole-school intervention, the Friendly Schools program, seeks to improve school climate and reduce bullying by showing students how to engage in positive social interactions, training school personnel to manage bullying behaviors effectively, and engaging families in support of the effort with take-home activities and newsletters. A rigorous study found this intervention reduced bullying behaviors as well as student depression, anxiety, and loneliness, while increasing students' positive perceptions of school safety (Cross et al., 2018).

The best approaches, therefore, appear to be multifaceted responses that focus on creating positive school cultures to support students' well-being, providing power under kids rather than asserting power over them. Creating school environments where students feel emotionally safe and valued as individuals not only helps with mental health issues and preventing violence and bullying, but also supports better student achievement. A study of New York City high schools (Davis & Warner, 2018), for example, found that students' perception of school climate affects academic achievement more than socioeconomic characteristics.

Such is the case with the I Promise School, where students, who are called the "Chosen Ones," are making significant strides in learning-4th graders moved from the second percentile in mathematics achievement last year to the 30th this year.

Yes, the school (a regular public school) has an important benefactor, basketball star LeBron James (Green, 2019). Its walls are bedecked with his posters and inspirational quotes from James, and he has funded a fully stocked food pantry. Yet its principal, Brandi Davis, notes that the sense of safety, security, and support her school provides students is something money can't buy. "It doesn't take money to build relationships," she notes. "It doesn't take money for you to teach students how to love."

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Research Matters / Beyond Locks and Drills

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As students enter the I Promise School in Akron, Ohio, they're greeted not with a gauntlet of metal detectors and security guards, but with cheers, hugs, and breakfast. Most are from low-income families, and prior to enrolling in the school, they were scoring so low on achievement tests (in the 1st and 2nd percentile) that former teachers wrote them off as lost causes.

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Over the past few months, the McCormick Center has been discussing the concept of whole leadership . While I encourage you to read through the whole series, one article in the series stuck out to me in particular, Administrative Leadership: What Is It? Why Is It Important? by Teri Talan.

This article was really interesting to me-especially when I dusted off my old center director hat and thought about how much CLASS would have benefited me when I managed a large hospital-based center, or multiple sites for a private, for-profit center. I started thinking about how CLASS could relate to administrative leadership, and the parallels formed in my mind.

Many of us find ourselves in a leadership position with little preparation or experience that can build and sustain a program. I was a teacher and found myself promoted to the director position, and when I got there I had a lot to learn! How could CLASS have helped me all those years ago? The tool would have given me a way to provide real feedback to my staff-feedback that was relevant, realistic, and measurable. It reminds me of the importance of an emotionally supportive relationship, organized structure, and thoughtful and intentional conversations with my staff-to truly build their practice.

Additionally, I could have used the data from observations to see where my staff was the strongest during the day and planned my staffing patterns-and other supports-around this information. Would things go smoother if I had an extra staff person help with meals and routines so the teachers had less stress and more opportunity to interact positively? Would providing some resources around open-ended play build my staff's regard for the children's perspective?

I could have used CLASS data to show my funders that using the power of CLASS actually can change the outcomes for children, while helping teachers find ways to enhance their interactions and find the joy in teaching again. That investment in high quality care can benefit us all!

Both types of leadership, operational and strategic, really do fit together, and they also speak to the CLASS construct and the data-driven opportunities for growth

I'd be really interested in hearing your thoughts on Teri's insightful post below!

Administrative Leadership: What Is It? Why Is It Important?
by Teri Talan READ MORE FROM THE WHOLE LEADERSHIP BLOG SERIES
APRIL 4, 2016

Reading over the series of blog posts and comments on Whole Leadership , I am struck by the level of engagement the discussion has evoked. Clearly, deconstructing program leadership and exploring leadership essentials are topics that resonate. However, I am taking the discussion in a new direction-a consideration of administrative leadership. My hope is that this aspect or domain of Whole Leadership can be equally thought-provoking.
Administrative leadership is about orchestrating tasks (and often includes mobilizing people) to develop and sustain an early childhood organization. Successful administrative leaders are able to establish systems that protect and sustain essential operational functions to meet the needs of children and families. There are at least two important aspects of administrative leadership-operational leadership and strategic leadership. Operational leadership is accomplished through activities like hiring and supporting staff, overseeing budgets, and maintaining a positive workplace climate. Strategic leadership involves guiding the direction of an early childhood organization with the future in mind. Strategic leaders clarify purpose, inspire individuals to pursue a shared vision, and ensure that goals and outcomes are attained.
My colleague, Mike Abel offered this description of administrative leadership in an earlier post :

I really like this description for a couple of reasons. First, it makes it clear that orchestrating the work of teaching and learning, mobilizing staff to achieve child and program outcomes, and establishing systems to effectively run a healthy, thriving organization are indeed leadership functions. In our field of early care and education, these responsibilities are typically characterized as management functions and are less valued than leadership functions. Instead of thinking of this important work as management (and therefore less important than leadership), let's claim it for what it really is-administrative leadership.

Second, the above description of administrative leadership includes both operational and strategic leadership dimensions. One of the responders to an earlier post asked about advocacy and where it fits in the Whole Leadership framework. I believe that advocacy is a part of strategic leadership. In my experience, effective administrative leaders engage in advocacy because they are future oriented; they want to have influence on external conditions that impact their programs, not just react to them.
Dr. Teri Talan is the Michael W. Louis Chair and Interim Executive Director of the McCormick Center at National Louis University. She promotes action by state and national policymakers on early childhood workforce, leadership development, and program administration issues.
Finally, I believe that pedagogical and administrative leadership are like the double strands that form the DNA helix. They are in a constant relationship to each other, separate but connected. The most qualified teachers cannot be effective in their work with children and families if their work environments (including supervisor support, opportunities for professional growth, decision making, collegiality, rewards and recognition, role clarity, task orientation, innovativeness, and physical environment) do not adequately support them. Administrative leadership is important because without it, pedagogical leadership cannot be sustained and children and families will be poorly-served.

Let us know your thoughts on administrative leadership. Do you agree that this is the right term? Is there a critical connection that needs further exploration between administrative leadership and instructional or pedagogical leadership? I am hoping you are provoked!

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Administrative Leadership: What Is It? Why Is It Important? And How Does It Connect to CLASS?

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Over the past few months, the McCormick Center has been discussing the concept of whole leadership . While I encourage you to read through the whole series, one article in the series stuck out to me in particular, Administrative Leadership: What Is It? Why Is It Important? by Teri Talan.

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Most Excited about this course

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Refining School Threat Assessments - ASCD

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Max, a 13-year-old growing up in a single-parent family, often loses his temper and has a history of impulsivity, as well as a past psychiatric hospitalization for threatening to harm his sister. He has frequent outbursts when he’s redirected at school, such as from one activity to another. The assi

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While it is often cited that home-based factors are, on average, the most significant influence on student achievement (Hanushek, 2016), research also confirms that high-quality teaching can supersede the adverse effects associated with lower parent education, less reading material in the home, and limited access to medical care, especially for students living with economic instability (Wenglinsky, 2002). We should allow nothing to get in the way of providing students with the high-quality teaching they need to succeed.

To be sure, teaching quality may vary within a school. But when teachers have time and support to collaborate on instructional topics-such as examining assessment data and student work or planning instruction with specific students in mind-they tend to make stronger instructional decisions and improve their practice faster (Ronfeldt, 2007). Further, effective collaboration among teachers makes it possible for each of their students to benefit from the expertise, experience, and diverse perspectives within the teaching team.

In schools that serve students living with economic instability, however, teachers' collaborative instructional planning time is too often hijacked by urgent problems related to students' basic needs. This ultimately does these students a disservice. Students living in poverty already experience enough forms of systemic inequity, as they are more likely to attend schools with inadequate per-pupil spending, outdated instructional resources, or a lack of highly qualified and experienced teachers. School leaders committed to equity must identify family support personnel and foster their partnerships with teachers so that students' nonacademic needs can be met without diverting teachers' attention from instruction.

High-quality teaching and learning begin with the relationships that teachers build with students. The information about students and their families that teachers strategically gather in informal and formal ways throughout the school year allows them to design instruction that makes learning relevant to students' lives and helps them get ready for rigor.

In the process of building their knowledge of students, however, teachers may learn about adverse conditions in their students' home lives-such as food insecurity, housing instability, and health concerns-that work against the students' readiness to learn. Kids can't learn when they are concerned about whether they have somewhere safe to sleep that night, and teachers can't teach while concerned about their students' well-being. It's excruciating to see these conditions and not address them. But when teachers take on challenging responsibilities that lie beyond their professional purview, they deplete the time and attention needed for the work that is uniquely theirs: Putting their specialized knowledge to work to help students become more powerful learners. This is where the inequity lies: Students who have the greatest need for teachers' attention to be focused on teaching and learning often have teachers who are taking on tasks beyond their sphere of primary professional influence.

As the pandemic has waxed and waned over the past few years, it has provided an up-close look at the conditions students must manage at home. Many schools have responded by hiring family liaisons, home-school coordinators, or social workers, or by assigning family support responsibilities to existing noninstructional personnel.

These individuals often do have the time, training, and information about community resources required to support families, but they do not always have the relevant information and family relationships that teachers have. School leaders need to foster partnership routines that ensure the family concerns uncovered by teachers can be met with support from these colleagues, without diverting teachers' instructional attention.

To make sure family support personnel form partnerships with teachers that keep instruction at the center, school leaders must address three common challenges.

When teachers have been trusted with sensitive information about families' economic instability, they may feel reluctant to share this information. Family members, likewise, may feel hesitant, or even betrayed, if information they've shared in confidence reaches new ears.

However, if family support personnel can spend time in classrooms; join in team meetings where students and student work are discussed; or collaborate with teachers in planning for family-engagement activities like classroom open houses or family recipe swaps, this can help facilitate stronger school-family partnerships. It can help close any gaps families may feel between their primary point of contact-the teacher-and the support personnel prepared to offer resources that can help their home lives.

Time is also a factor with facilitating partnerships. In the time it takes for teachers to track down the right person to adequately address a family's needs, it's often easier to do it themselves. Further, the needs of families living in poverty are often urgent, which creates increased pressure to secure a timely response. Going through a third person can feel like an inefficient game of telephone.

School and district leaders can help establish communication routines that support efficient connections with the right personnel and effective exchanges with timely feedback loops so teachers know someone is working on a solution and can check for status updates when necessary.

Teachers are in a service position. When they have a child who is suffering in front of them every day, the stakes feel high. If they do not have confidence that family support providers can meet their student's needs, they may feel a need to take the supporting role on themselves.

This tendency can be diminished when school leaders elevate the services and success stories of family support personnel. They might make time in staff meetings or space in newsletters for family support personnel to shine. Educating the faculty about the resources at their disposal or sharing success stories of families who are in a better place because of these supports will help build trust between teachers and these support staff.

In schools where students arrive ready to learn each day, teachers can focus their time on the types of instructional activities that make them and their students smarter. Kids can't learn when their stomachs ache with hunger, and teachers can't teach when their hearts ache for their students. Schools need family support personnel to help with students' non-instructional needs. While many school leaders invested in this type of support during the pandemic, they should bolster that investment and safeguard instructional equity by supporting teachers and support personnel to play complementary roles, ensuring every student is healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged.

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While it is often cited that home-based factors are, on average, the most significant influence on student achievement (Hanushek, 2016), research also confirms that high-quality teaching can supersede the adverse effects associated with lower parent education, less reading material in the home, and limited access to medical care, especially for students living with economic instability (Wenglinsky, 2002).

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Anthony Rebora is the editor in chief of Educational Leadership. Learn More

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Reader’s Guide / What Do We Mean by Safe Schools?

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One of the more troubling recent news stories in education surfaced early last spring, when it was reported that teachers at an elementary school in Monticello, Indiana, had been shot with pellet guns during an active-shooter drill. If you’re in education, you almost certainly remember the story: Du…

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This post is excerpted from the March 2018 issue of English Journal. For this issue, editors Julie Gorlewski and David Gorlewski invited three current leaders-Jocelyn Chadwick, Leigh Patel, and Ken Lindblom-to respond to a series of questions in order to offer a broader perspective on the concept of leadership in education.
EJ: What does "leadership in education" mean to you?
Jocelyn A. Chadwick: As Carol Gilligan asserts, leadership at times requires a negotiative discourse. At other times, it is linear, objective, and singular with leaders needing to stand alone, if necessary, for ethical reasons. Effective leadership is always understanding and probing the audience to inform oneself. Leadership is tapping into human resources to provide the highest level of service.

Leadership is not believing your own press; and leadership is never forgetting the why and the ethics of the mission and all those individuals-teachers and students-who have placed their trust in you.

Leigh Patel: First and foremost, leadership in education must marshal a humble stewardship of learning. At this moment, we are flush with well-paid leaders in education who have much to say about innovation but precious little to say about learning, and even less to say about the population-level patterns of denied access to education.

Leadership in education must be able to reckon with the legacies and the shortcomings of Eurocentric frames of human development that are individualistic and exist for the purpose of achievement and domination.

In kind, it must also know of epistemologies that aren't simply counter to Eurocentric empire, but are grounded in what came before, . . . and what is possible when we prioritize relation and connectivity over achievement and certificates.

If an educational leader does not know what kind of learning took place in Noir Marron communities, then I believe they, minimally, have much to learn about learning and its steady relationship to freedom. I think it is difficult to be an education leader who has only learned about one narrow form of being on this planet.

Ken Lindblom: Leadership in education means always keeping the learning of the students as the only goal. Keeping that front and center will always keep an education leader focused on the right things.

Of course, that means doing everything necessary to support students and teachers. It means ensuring that teachers have everything they need to do their jobs well.

It means keeping up on the latest knowledge in teaching, content, and organizational theory. It means motivating and educating. It means keeping unproductive, even hostile, external forces at bay, and it means supporting societal change that will increase all students' learning. It means advocating externally and internally for student learning.

It means doing everything necessary to ensure all students have all they need (e.g., food, quiet space, safety) to be able to learn at their best. It means providing a professional context that allows-and obligates-teachers to do what they know is best for their students' learning, allowing them to ignore, if needed, anything that could impede student learning.

We have a "bottom line" in education: it is student learning-and standardized exams don't reflect student learning well enough to be reliable measures on their own.

Jocelyn A. Chadwick is president of the National Council of Teachers of English and author of The Jim Dilemma: Reading Race in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Leigh Patel is an interdisciplinary researcher, educator, and writer. Ken Lindblom is an associate professor of English and dean of the School of Professional Development at Stony Brook University on Long Island, New York.

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What Does Leadership in Education Mean to You? - NCTE

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This post is excerpted from the March 2018 issue of English Journal. For this issue, editors Julie Gorlewski and David Gorlewski invited three current leaders-Jocelyn Chadwick, Leigh Patel, and Ken Lindblom-to respond to a series of questions in order to offer a broader perspective on the concept of leadership in education.

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Edmonton Regional Learning Consortium - ERLC

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What makes great teachers and great school leaders?

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HOW TO BE A LEADER  - Motivational Speech By Simon Sinek

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Every kid needs a champion | Rita Pierson

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Venn Diagram with References