# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
These attitudes are powerfully and subtly influenced by school culture, by the liturgies of practice that govern the school day: the rituals for welcoming members into the community; the way you decorate walls to display school values; the distribution of power across the community; the celebrations of accomplishment and the quality of trusting relationships.

Principals set the culture by their very behavior - the message is the person.

Research suggests that it takes five to seven years for a principal to have full impact on a school, but most principals burn out and leave in four years or less. Chicago has one of the highest principal retention rates of any large urban system, 85 percent. Principals are given support, training and independence. If you manage your school well for a couple of years in a row, you are freed from daily oversight from the central office.

But the big thing is transforming the role. Principals used to be administrators and middle managers, overseeing budgets, discipline, schedules. The goal was to be strong and decisive.

Today's successful principals are greeting parents and students outside the front door in the morning. That Minnesota-Toronto study found successful principals made 20 to 60 spontaneous classroom visits and observations per week.

In other words, they are high-energy types constantly circulating through the building, offering feedback, setting standards, applying social glue. In some schools, teachers see themselves as martyrs in a hopeless cause. Principals raise expectations and alter norms. At Independence Middle School in Cleveland, principal Kevin Jakub pushes a stand-up desk on wheels around the school all day.

Research also suggests a collaborative power structure is the key. A lot of teachers want to be left alone and a lot of principals don't want to give away power, but successful schools are truly collaborative.

The Wallace Foundation website recently described the exemplary activism of former Kentucky principal Dewey Hensley. In his first week he drew a picture of a school on a poster board and asked the faculty members to annotate it together. "Let's create a vision of a school that's perfect. When we get there, then we'll rest," he told them. School governance was led by a simple structure of three committees, populated and headed by teachers. Hensley also visited the homes of the 25 most disruptive students.

When you learn about successful principals, you keep coming back to the character traits they embody and spread: energy, trustworthiness, honesty, optimism, determination. We went through a period when we believed you could change institutions without first changing the character of the people in them. But we were wrong. Social transformation follows personal transformation.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Opinion | Good Leaders Make Good Schools

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
These attitudes are powerfully and subtly influenced by school culture, by the liturgies of practice that govern the school day: the rituals for welcoming members into the community; the way you decorate walls to display school values; the distribution of power across the community; the celebrations of accomplishment and the quality of trusting relationships.

# data[].attributes.body
I chose this article because I have worked with principals who stayed in their office and had no communication skills.  During those times, teacher and student morale were low and testing scores dropped.  When I have worked with principals who were energetic, great communicators, and approachable by school and community, morale was high and test scores were on the rise

# data[].attributes.headline
Great article! I agree principals assist in creating and maintaining the school culture and climate. Thank you for sharing.

# data[].attributes.subject
Great article! I agree principals assist in creating and maintaining the school culture and climate. Thank you for sharing.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
It did not take many days into Jason Terrell's teaching career for him to realize this job would be about more than the middle school English lessons he planned.

In 2012, Terrell, a fresh-out-of-college novice, came to James Martin Middle School in Charlotte through Teach For America. He became interested in teaching late in his time at Furman University. After an uncomfortable conversation with his parents, a few months later, he was instructing a classroom of eighth graders.

In addition to teaching, he helped with the football team and agreed to lead the baseball team. But far more of his coaching happened off the field, in conversations about bullying, suicide, and parents in prison.

We are sitting in a west Charlotte corner market, at a small table in the sun, on a warm fall afternoon. Music blares from overhead speakers, frenetically hopping genres: funk to grunge to the theme song from Goldfinger. People come and go with their sandwiches and six packs. Terrell has a notebook on the table in front of him, although he does not refer to it. I lean in to hear what he has to say-it is clear he has told this story before.

"I had students I didn't even know who would come to my classroom and stand outside my door to talk to me," Terrell recalls, "because they didn't see another male who looked like them in the school building."

Terrell, who is black, was a rare find.

Despite a rapidly diversifying student body, teachers in North Carolina schools are disproportionately white. In the 2016-17 school year, 80 percent of North Carolina's roughly 94,000 public school teachers were white. That proportion far outpaces the ratio of white students-just less than half of the 1.4 million-person student body.

Although black children make up a quarter of all public school students in North Carolina, black teachers comprise just 14 percent of teachers. Latinos are underrepresented, too, even as North Carolina's Latinx population surges. The Department of Public Instruction reports just 4.9 percent of the state's teachers are a race other than white or black; Latinx students make up 17 percent of public school enrollment.

The lack of teachers of color in this state mirrors a national trend-the number of black teachers in the U.S. plunged after desegregation when all-black schools closed and predominantly white school districts refused to hire black teachers for their newly-integrated classrooms. In recent decades, those numbers have rebounded, but not on pace with the so-called browning of America. It is a problem that is complicated and difficult to triage, although the risks of leaving the imbalance as it is today are too great for policymakers and educators to ignore.

"A lot of my boys would come to me, especially the African-American students, almost like a father figure," Terrell says. "And I was 21 years old at the time.

"I almost needed my own father figure."

North Carolina is not the only state grappling with racial imbalance in the classroom.

Studies repeatedly point out the disparity between the proportion of students of color and their racial representation among teachers. "A gap persists between the percentage of minority students and the percentage of minority teachers in the United States school system," write the authors of a September 2017 Learning Policy Institute report.

"States have not been doing nearly enough to increase the diversity of their teaching ranks," the Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank, says in a 2014 analysis. Last fall, the group noted "marginal increases" in the percentages of teachers of color nationwide, from 12 percent of all teachers in 1987 to 17 percent in 2012.

CAP gave North Carolina a diversity index of 31-signifying the percentage point gap between the ratio of non-white students and teachers in the state.

The gap is of particular concern among Latinx educators, given the rapid growth in North Carolina's Latinx population. The state was home to 75,000 people who identified as Latinx in 1990-and roughly a million today. The Latinx population in North Carolina surged 16.5 percent between 2010 and 2016, according to the Census Bureau. And yet, as the NC Department of Public Instruction data show, Latinx teachers make up a very small percentage of the state's teaching workforce. "One of the challenges I see is that sometimes we may be seen as less professional," says America Moreno Jimenez, a Mexican immigrant who teaches ESL at a Raleigh high school. "Our actions and our choices are different based on our experiences and our cultures. That doesn't necessarily mean we are less professional. It just means we approach things in a different manner."

She says she is one of about four Latinx educators in her school, where student diversity outpaces educator diversity. "That is better than my own high school where we did not have any Latinx teachers," she says, referring to her public school education in Hendersonville.

Like many teachers of color, Jimenez often finds herself in less-than-comfortable situations as she translates culture for her white colleagues.

"Often times we are asked to step in as the 'Latinx teacher'" she says, to connect with specific students or offer an explanation to confused colleagues who do not understand a particular aspect of Latinx culture. "There's not enough of us to go around."

That sentiment is familiar to other teachers of color across the state.

"My greatest struggle as a teacher of color in North Carolina is simply finding other educators of color to connect with in meaningful ways," says Christina Cole Spears, a third-year special education teacher in Apex. "It's difficult to explain the feeling of walking into a school building where the vast majority of people of color are transportation or custodial staff."

That affects her every day, she says, especially as it relates to the way she interacts with students.

"I want my students to feel seen and loved, especially when the majority of their peers and teachers are white," she says. "Because of my personal experience, I understand the impact of witnessing a black woman lead a class.

"My black students see themselves reflected in me."

The benefits black students incur from exposure to just one black teacher are striking-and directly applicable to North Carolina.

A large study published in the spring of 2017 looked at 100,000 black North Carolina elementary school students. Having just one black teacher in third, fourth or fifth grades reduced the likelihood that black males from low-income households would drop out of school by 39 percent.

By high school, black male and female students-exposed to just one black teacher in elementary school-were more likely to go to college than their peers who had all white teachers.

"Our findings suggest that stubbornly persistent attainment gaps are not impervious to policy changes," the study's authors write. (Interestingly, however, they also note that the dosage effect of exposure to multiple black teachers had a "marginal" and "relatively small" effect on students' long-term outcomes.)

There are short-term benefits to exposure to same-race teachers, too, including lower suspension rates, less absenteeism, and improved standardized test scores.

A study published last year, which also focused on North Carolina students, found "consistent evidence that exposure to same-race teachers is associated with reduced rates of exclusionary discipline for black students." That finding held for male and female students, from all economic backgrounds and at all grade levels.

Researchers who studied the effects of same-race teachers say the conclusions are striking. "Right now it's reasonable to say that white students have some sort of advantage because they are more likely to encounter teachers who look like them," says Brian Kisida, a professor at the University of Missouri who has written about this issue along with a colleague at N.C. State, Anna Egalite.

"We tried to get at what's driving the effect," Kisida said.

There are three ways in which researchers believe teachers of color positively influence students of color in the classroom. First, he says, the mere presence of a black male, for example, in a position of authority, presents a role model figure to black male students. Seeing that role model every day could change a student's outlook for his future.

Researchers have also looked at teachers of color and the Pygmalion effect-the correlation between a teacher's expectations of a student and that student's future academic outcomes. School districts across the country have spent hours and dollars in recent years on implicit bias training for their teachers, but a study published last fall suggests white teachers consistently have lower academic expectations for black students than they do for white ones. A 2016 study reached a similar conclusion.

Finally, Kisida says, teachers of color may be particularly better suited to communicate and confer with students of color, something he calls cultural translation, that makes it easier to connect the curriculum in a way that resonates with students.

Christina Spears, the Apex special education teacher, told me the rapport she develops with students happens quickly-black students call her "mama"-and because of a shared understanding. "I'm not old enough to be anybody's mama," she says, "but it happens because of the way we talk, the inside jokes and cultural references, and even more so the way we may view education.

"Yet again, it addresses the need for educators of color in classrooms with students."

Recruiting and retaining more teachers of color would not negatively affect white students, either, Kisida says. "We don't have to choose. We can have both."

Importantly, Kisida says researchers do not intend for black students, for example, to only be taught by teachers of their same race. The dosage effects highlighted in the North Carolina research indicate exposure to the first black teacher has a significant effect on the outcomes for black students.

"We're not trying to necessarily flip it the other direction," Kisida says. "It's not an argument for segregated schools. It's an argument for representation."

Within his school, Jason Terrell found himself playing a unique role.

"Men of color are often placed in situations where they have to manage bodies and not teach content," he says. "They're expected to be the disciplinarians in your school, they're expected to be the enforcers."

In his first year of teaching middle school, Terrell struggled. "There's no training about how to be an effective role model; there's no leadership development around that," he says. "It was challenging to be in a space where there weren't that many men-or people in general-that I could come to and talk to about my experience."

He turned to a veteran male teacher in his school, using the older colleague as a mentor. They met frequently, talked out problems, and strategized about ways to help their students. That relationship, Terrell says, made him realize there was a void-few male teachers of color, and even fewer resources to support them.

Starting in 2014, Terrell and his Teach For America colleague, Mario Shaw, started hosting casual dinners in their own apartments for other male teachers of color. The gatherings were small at first-three people at this one, five at the next. "We didn't have any intentions of doing a program," Terrell says. "We didn't have a name. It was just a group of us texting in a group chat."

Eventually, though, the dinners sparked an idea.

Terrell and Shaw decided to quit teaching and launch Profound Gentlemen, a Charlotte-based nonprofit that aims to create a network of male teachers of color who can have a positive effect on boys of color. The move was risky. "I'd never run a nonprofit. Never even worked at a nonprofit," Terrell says with a laugh.

But he knew, from his own experience attending Title I schools as a boy and then teaching boys of color in Charlotte, that a program such as Profound Gentlemen was long overdue.

The organization would use a peer-to-peer mentorship model, they decided, pairing teachers with what they call "impact leaders." Programming would focus on developing participants into effective teachers, coaching on how to be a role model and discussions about race and community justice.

Today, Profound Gentlemen serves about 200 teachers, about half of which live in North Carolina, including in Mecklenburg, Wake, Pitt, Halifax, and Nash counties. It hosts in-person quarterly trainings for its members in five cities: Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, Memphis and Washington, plus virtual sessions for teachers who live elsewhere. There is an annual conference in Charlotte. Each teacher who participates in Profound Gentlemen agrees to commit to 20 hours of one-on-one coaching each year with his impact leader.

All of that, Terrell emphasizes, points toward one goal: improving the outcomes for boys of color.

As with other issues in public education, at least part of the solution to improving teacher diversity is buried within the teacher pipeline. Policymakers nationwide have offered little in the way of wholesale solutions.

Much of the attention has focused on recruitment, particularly of teachers of color to high-poverty, urban schools that tend to serve students of color at higher rates than suburban ones. "Efforts over recent years to recruit more minority teachers and place them in schools serving disadvantaged and minority student populations have been very successful," the Learning Policy Institute report says. "This has been somewhat of an unheralded victory."

Those efforts, teachers of color agree, should continue. Spears suggests a focus on non-traditional pathways such as a lateral entry and Teach For America, coupled with teacher cadet programs in high school that could awaken students of color to possibilities in teaching.

The typical teacher pipeline solutions often come up, too: More scholarship initiatives such as the North Carolina Teaching Fellows program, more intentional pathways to professional growth, and incentivized pay for teaching in hard-to-staff subjects and schools.

Two decades ago, Florida's legislature created the Florida Fund for Minority Teachers, which uses tuition grants of up to $4,000 annually to support diverse education majors at the state's public and private universities. New York City launched NYC Men Teach, which is on track to add 1,000 male educators of color over the next three years. In North Carolina, individual school districts pursue their own teacher diversity hiring strategies. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, for example, targeted career fairs in Florida to increase its ranks of Latinx educators.

Hiring more teachers of color is not the sole solution. In a report released last year by the Learning Policy Institute, researchers argue the U.S. education system has focused on the wrong part of the pipeline.

"Underlying most of the commentary and policy on this issue has been the assumption, largely untested, that minority teacher staffing problems are rooted in the front end of the teacher supply pipeline," the authors write. There has been far less attention paid to the back end of the pipeline: retention.

Between 1987 and 2012, the number of teachers of color in the United States doubled. (The number of white teachers increased, too, so the proportions as related to the student body did not grow at the same rate.) But over the same period of time, turnover rates among teachers of color were "significantly higher" than those among white teachers, the LPI report says. Surveys of teachers who quit indicated a strong correlation between their departures and "organizational and working conditions." In 2012-13, nationwide, turnover among teachers of color was 25 percent higher than that of white teachers.

In Illinois, lawmakers created the Grow Your Own Teachers initiative, which combines a recruitment strategy with two years of mentoring support. Boston Public Schools came up with a teaching fellowship that includes mentoring and has received praise for its effectiveness.

But in North Carolina, teachers of color are often left to their own devices. Some turn to Twitter, where they collaborate with peers-from the state and elsewhere-to solve common challenges.

Terrell says that reality is part of what makes Profound Gentlemen's programming so vital to its members. "Recruitment is sexy," he says. "But it's gotta be more than that. Everyone wants teachers in, but there aren't initiatives to keep them in."

Even when school systems successfully recruit and retain teachers of color, those educators often meet institutional racism and implicit bias.

Spears recalls participating in a school equity team meeting "where some marginalized groups, and thus their voices, are missing from the conversation." She is working to change those attitudes-by mentoring students, advising the step team, and pushing her institutions (and their leaders) to change. "Although it's not my sole responsibility or the responsibility of teachers in color in general, I feel it's necessary to use our pedagogy to focus on social justice issues," she says. "It may be difficult for white educators to engage in these types of conversations with colleagues and peers, but it should be the heart of our everyday work."

Similarly, Profound Gentlemen's founders want to see more institutional change. They met with school systems about their hiring practices, encouraging schools to think of male educators-and particularly men of color-as more than disciplinarians but, as Terrell puts it, "someone kids can come to for nurturing and to learn from." In a session with hiring managers in Charlotte, he says, heads nodded as attendees realized they had not considered their implicit biases in this way.

As we talk, in the west Charlotte deli, Terrell reflects on the basic goal of education in the 21st century, the idea that we are trying to set kids up to have a better future. He acknowledges the public policy side of teacher diversity is somewhat of an enigma-no silver bullet, the most obvious solutions often the most expensive and politically challenging. Regardless, he says, Profound Gentlemen's work matters. It is making a difference, one teacher, one classroom at a time. He looks up, wants to make sure I get this point.

"Kids need to see different images of success," he says, "that reflect our communities."
This story was written and reported by Adam Rhew for EducationNC. View the original article here.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
North Carolina's Teachers Fail To Match Student Demographics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
It did not take many days into Jason Terrell's teaching career for him to realize this job would be about more than the middle school English lessons he planned. In 2012, Terrell, a fresh-out-of-college novice, came to James Martin Middle School in Charlotte through Teach For America.

# data[].attributes.body
In studying this week about the demographics at my current school, I found this article. I posted it under decision making because it made me wonder. It is summer and the hiring process is in full swing. When interviewing and having candidates of different races apply do leaders put enough thought and attention into hiring individuals that meet the ethnic breakdown of their schools? My current school has a high Hispanic population but only 2 Hispanic teachers. Would hiring more help with the problems we are currently facing with attendance, drop out rates, and test scores?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by visualpanic

(change agents) - People who act as catalysts for change...

In my work through school and organization visits, I have been fascinated to see the correlation between the speed of change and an individual who is "leading" the charge. The schools that have someone (or a group of people) helping to push the boundaries of what can be done in schools seem to move a lot quicker with a larger amount of "buy-in" through the process.

As Malcom Gladwell describes in his book, " The Tipping Point ", he states:

The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts.

Although Gladwell talks about the "Law of the Few" ( connectors, mavens, salesman), I do not believe change is solely dependent upon their skills, but also the culture in which they exist. You cannot be a connector if

you are in an environment where people do not want to come together. So although a change agent can trigger growth in an organization, the culture in which they exist or are brought into has

a huge bearing on their success. If a school embodies itself as a true learning organization, change will happen much quicker.

With that being said, I have noticed that the individuals that are really successful in helping to be a catalyst for change certainly embody some similar characteristics. Below is a list of what I have seen consistently.

1. Clear Vision - As mentioned

above, a "change agent" does not have to be the person in authority, but they do however have to have a clear vision and be able to communicate that clearly with others. Where people can be frustrated is if they feel that someone is all over the place on what they see as important and tend to change their vision often. This will scare away others as they are not sure when they are on a sinking ship and start to looking for ways out. It is essential to note that a clear vision does not mean that there is one way to do things; in fact, it is essential to tap into the strengths of the people you work with and help them see that there are many ways to work toward a common purpose.

2. Patient yet persistent - Change does not happen overnight and most people know that. To have sustainable change that is meaningful to people, it is something that they will have to embrace and see importance. Most people need to experience something before they really understand that, and that is especially true in schools. With that being said, many can get frustrated that change does not happen fast enough and they tend to push people further away from the vision, then closer. The persistence comes in that you will take opportunities to help people get a step closer often when they are ready, not just giving up on them after the first try. I have said continuously that schools have to move people from their point 'A' to their point 'B', not have everyone move at the same pace. Every step forward is a step closer to a goal; change agents just help to make sure that people are moving ahead.

3. Asks tough questions - It would be easy for someone to come in and tell you how things should be, but again that is someone else's solution. When that solution is someone else's, there is no accountability to see it through. It is when people feel an emotional connection to something is when they will truly move ahead. Asking questions focusing on, "What is best for kids?", and helping people come to their own conclusions based on their experience is when you will see people have ownership in what they are doing. Keep asking questions to help people think, don't alleviate that by telling them what to do.

4. Knowledgeable and leads by example - Stephen Covey talked about the notion that leaders have " character and credibility"; they are not just seen as good people but that they are also knowledgeable in what they are speaking about. Too many times, educators feel like their administrators have "lost touch" with what is happening in the classroom, and many times they are right. Someone who stays active in not necessarily teaching, but active in learning and working with learners and can show by example what learning can look like now will have much more credibility with others. If you want to create "change", you have to not only be able to articulate what that looks like, but show it to others. I have sat frustrated often listening to many talk about "how kids learn today" but upon closer look, the same speakers do not put themselves in the situation where they are actually immersing themselves in that type of learning. How can you really know how "kids learn" or if something works if you have never experienced it?

5. Strong relationships built on trust - All of the above, means nothing if you do not have solid relationships with the people that you serve. People will not want to grow if they do not trust the person that is pushing the change. The change agents I have seen are extremely approachable and reliable. You should never be afraid to approach that individual based on their "authority" and usually they will go out of their way to connect with you.

That doesn't mean that they aren't willing to have tough conversations though; that also builds trust. Trust is also built when you know someone will deal with things and not be afraid to do what is right, even if it is uncomfortable. Sometimes trust is built when you choose to do what is right for your community or organization, as long as it is always done in a respectful way.

Should every school/district administrator have these qualities? Probably. But with that being said, positive change is not reserved to be the responsibility of any position. The best leaders may have all of these qualities but also empower others to be those "change agents" as well to build a culture of leadership and learning. I can think of many people that I have encountered who have helped pushed their organizations ahead that have no formal "authority" over any individual. That being said, some of them do it in spite of their principal or superintendent and often feel that they are in constant conflict. Things would obviously move a lot quicker if they had the support of their leader. With that support, change can happen in an organization quickly, but if the leader does not "clear the path", improvement will take a lot longer than it should.

What is important to note is that being a "charismatic leader" is not something that is essential. Often, charismatic leaders lack many of these qualities that I have listed above and although they can seemingly lead change, it is not sustainable and does not permeate throughout the school or organization; it becomes too dependent upon one person. For example, was

Steve Jobs a change agent, or a charismatic leader? Apple is not doing as well since he has passed away and their innovation has seem to slow down. Steve Jobs was known for being notoriously tough to deal with and the trust that is essential to building a strong culture was probably lacking to some degree. I believe that c hange agents will help to create more leaders, not more followers.

What qualities from this list did I miss? Do you think that there has to be at least one person or group to help permeate change and growth in an organization?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by visualpanic (change agents) - People who act as catalysts for change... In my work through school and organization visits, I have been fascinated to see the correlation between the speed of change and an individual who is "leading" the charge.

# data[].attributes.body
Change can be hard for many individuals, this plan can help.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
1. The Monday Memo

An endless barrage of emails, texts, handouts, and announcements can lead to a communication overdose. The message, scattered about, gets lost when there are too many outlets. The easiest remedy is to consolidate these communications in a single, consistent package. We called ours the Monday Memo. It contained operational nuts and bolts, calendar events and deadlines, observations and insights from the school leader and others, weekly goals (which were shared with students as well), and at least one professional article aligned with the school's mission and vision. The Monday Memo was like a Napoleonic bulletin-it kept the troops well-informed and on the path to victory.

Note: Whenever possible, add a little levity. A cartoon or humorous story usually does the trick. A Monday morning smile can often carry a teacher all the way over to hump day.

2. The Huddle

At big schools with lots of grades, teachers often work themselves into silos. Freeing them from these silos is a scheduling challenge, but one well worth taking up. A teacher of ours came up with a simple solution: The Huddle. (We actually called ours "The Herd" because our mascot was a yak.) Once a week for just 15 minutes, we would all gather (with refreshments, of course) to share team plans and to look for opportunities for collaboration across grade levels.

And just like a football huddle, we would break with a unified clap.

Note: This can be accomplished electronically, but being eyeball to eyeball makes a world of difference.

3. Tea With Teachers

Once a month, I would meet with parents in the morning to discuss anything and everything having to do with the school. I called it Donuts With Dunbar. (We served lots and lots of coffee as well.) One day a teacher came up to me and asked, "Why don't you ever have donuts with us?"

"Y'all are always too busy in the morning," I said.

"Then let's do refreshments in the afternoon," she said. And thus Tea With Teachers, or TWT, was born. Unlike most faculty meetings, TWT was voluntary and the agenda was set by the participants. There were no time limits nor goals-only open, honest, real discussion.

4. Shout-Outs

There are a number of ways to acknowledge and celebrate best practices and excellence in schools. One of the best and easiest is the humble shout-out. Throughout the week, faculty and staff would submit nominations for academic, artistic, and cultural achievement. Every Friday, we would recognize those students, teachers, and community members who had gone above and beyond the call of duty. We would also note progress toward weekly and annual goals. It was a way of keeping all eyes firmly on the prize.

5. Art Jams

During the school day, it's almost impossible to think creatively. Grading papers and juggling deadlines doesn't exactly foster creative thinking. Yet such thinking is more important today than ever. So how and when do you generate new, innovative ideas? For us, it took place after school and off campus, surrounded by art and with plenty of adult beverages. Being an arts-integrated school, we called it an Art Jam. It was a time to brainstorm crazy ideas-ideas that might just lead to improved teaching and learning.

6. Social Media

A board member once asked me why I managed the school's Facebook page. "Don't you have more important things to do?" she asked.

"Believe it or not," I said, "Facebook is one of the most important things I do."

The principal is the vision keeper for a school. That vision has to be shared with all stakeholders. Social media-Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.-is one of the best ways to accomplish this. Use it to promote instructional best practices, to celebrate excellence, and to recognize all of the things that make your school unique.

7. Professional Culture Surveys

So with all of this improved communication, how do you know if it's working? As with student achievement, there has to be an end goal or measure for success. At our school, we developed a professional culture survey and gave it out three times a year. It was anonymous, and the perception data was shared with the entire faculty and staff. We used the results to, among other things, further improve communication.

When it comes to communication in schools, less is not more, and more is not necessarily better. It needs to be systematic, intentional, and transparent.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
7 Easy Ways to Improve School-Wide Communication

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
An endless barrage of emails, texts, handouts, and announcements can lead to a communication overdose. The message, scattered about, gets lost when there are too many outlets. The easiest remedy is to consolidate these communications in a single, consistent package. We called ours the Monday Memo.

# data[].attributes.body
Communication is key!!

# data[].attributes.body
Kathy, Great article! I found it not only insightful but also it hit close to home for me as well. I currently work at a school that is about 50/50 Hispanics and African-Americans, but our teacher population does not mirror that. We currently have 4 Hispanic teachers and 4 African- American teachers, and the rest of our school is made up of Caucasian teachers. I do feel it is important for students to see themselves in their teachers, to know that they are alike in some way. It gives students a sense of belonging and a want to be present with others that are like them. I do think that it is difficult for administrators to take into account race and cultural background when hiring staff because of time. If an administrator only has a week to hire a person for the position, and they meet all of the qualifications except they are Caucasian, it would be hard for an administrator to pass up the opportunity to fill the position. I think there is a lot of red tape as far as discrimination and how things might look to others on the outside of education that make the powers that be hesitate when it comes to having staff mirror the student population. It is definitely something to seriously think about for our future.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
I received appreciative feedback from my recent short article about timeliness and responsiveness. The message hit home with many leaders, to some a reminder, to others a realization that they need to better manage their time and attention so they may be more helpful to their people.

Just this week, in facilitating a 360 leadership assessment for a fine leader, it was offered that she has a wonderful attitude, always wants to be helpful, yet at times is not as quick as we would like. She has so much on her mind, and if she were more organized her willingness to help and her responses would likely be more timely.

Her team members believe that being better organized would take her mind off so many things and enable her attention to focus on what is truly important.

Being organized sends a positive image, which is so important as leaders are signal senders. We want to send an image that we have it all together, that we can and will focus on what is most important, not things that keep us busy and may not have the most beneficial impact.

Fact is, being organized enables us to be more productive, set an example for our team members and impress our external clients - to more efficiently manage our time.

This will take work, and is well worth it. There are resources to help us, e.g., useful articles and books, as well as coaches.

While still on the subject of timeliness, we should all realize the incredible value of being early. Being the first to a meeting demonstrates our desire. It worked for me numerous times when clients and prospective clients told me that my arriving early impressed them and they sensed my strong desire to serve them well.

There is a principle which I borrowed from a great leader years ago and wrote on a card which I keep in my wallet, " The key to my success is that I always try to be 15 minutes early."

These are goals which will help us be a highly effective and admired leader, to be:

Timely in responding to emails, phone message and all other requests

Well organized so we are most efficient and productive, giving our attention to what is truly important

We hope this short essay and its messages are helpful. Let's remember,
When leadership improves, everyone wins

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
I received appreciative feedback from my recent short article about timeliness and responsiveness. The message hit home with many leaders, to some a reminder, to others a realization that they need to better manage their time and attention so they may be more helpful to their people.

# data[].attributes.headline
Organization shows you know what you are doing.

# data[].attributes.subject
Organization shows you know what you are doing.

# data[].attributes.body
Move on....

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Commentary

Two female, African-American former deans reflect on leadership

What pictures come to mind when you imagine the face of leadership? Do they include a myriad of people of varying backgrounds and leadership styles-or are they limited by an imagined model of familiar backgrounds? This is a question to which we, as two African-American women and former deans, have given a great deal of thought as we considered the challenges posed by leadership.

When you are the only face of color as part of institutional leadership, you become the elephant in the room representing issues of diversity and inclusion. Many are loath to address these concerns with serious and intentional institutional introspection. For example, we found that discussions of diversity in STEM education too often ended in discussion of how to increase the number of women in STEM, while not addressing the issue of participants of color.

When your leadership style is to pursue positive change that moves beyond "the way we have always done things," you might find yourself suddenly invisible and locked out of critical discussions at the institutional level that affect your unit. We, too, often found that major financial decisions about our own units were made without consulting us. When you reject convenient "unwritten agreements" in favor of accountability, you may find your own capability questioned instead.

Yet, if the new face of leadership simply replicates the existing model, one must ask: What is lost in terms of potential? Given the current social and political climate and the obstacles it presents to individuals based on gender, race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, and disability, it is imperative that we take a discerning look at how leaders are chosen and asked to operate.

It is time to break the stereotypes surrounding leadership and those typically seen as leaders. That's what prompted us to look back and unpack the realities we have experienced in our own lived experiences as deans. In doing so, we did not find simple formulas for success, but instead reflected on what occurs when the "face" of leadership does not match the expected image of a leader.

For us, however, looking back enabled us to provide lessons that guided our strategy of "leading from behind"-that is, encouraging members at all levels of the organization to collaborate in envisioning future goals. As black female leaders, we were dedicated to serving those in our units by relying on inherited strengths rooted in our shared African-American tradition.

Altering the face of leadership calls for altering the narrative surrounding the role of leaders. Just as organizations must beware of selecting the usual faces of leadership, leaders also must avoid relying on usual formulas for "quick fixes," which have their own sets of pitfalls and shortcomings. All too often, leaders want to make quick decisions and fixes to demonstrate decisiveness. But quick wins can be just that: fleeting. This short-sightedness often leaves no foundation upon which to build toward student, faculty, and staff inclusivity and empowerment. To what extent, then, do these quick fixes ignore long-term implications by "hacking our way to a vision"-that is, using poorly improvised strategies and workarounds-at the expense of organizational quality and sustainability?

The hierarchical structure of the educational profession, including K-12, higher education, and education-aligned business organizations, not only narrows the vision for the face of leadership, but the internal politics also shield leaders from the very accountability they tout as sacred. Unless organizations pay attention to situations in which leaders' self-interest causes them to sacrifice their principles, any real hope of organizational change and sustainability is lost.

Too often, so-called "visionary leaders" ignore established principles and procedures, forsake accountability, or, most damaging, abandon integrity in favor of expedience. For a new narrative to emerge, education organizations must heighten the role of accountability at every level-including for leaders.

Leaders must demonstrate transparent, unwavering commitment to ethical principles and to their stated organizational mission. That does not mean leaders will never have to make sacrifices to achieve a greater return, but they can do it in such a way as to sustain the institution's goals and vision. In other words, one can compromise without being compromised. This also can mean being willing to begin each day with the understanding that you might not be asked to return.

Imagine if there were no preconceived notions of what potential and possibility looked like. Imagine if the face of leadership could be found in the most unlikely places. For us, that is what leading from behind would look like-not as the opportunity to promote oneself but as the opportunity to imagine or even begin building a better future. In our rapidly changing world where demographics, technology, and priorities change faster than we can grasp them, educational institutions and business organizations cannot afford to retain a face of leadership that remains where it is.

Published in Print: May 30, 2018, as The Face of Leadership

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.
Back to Top

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why Don't We Challenge the Narrow Vision of Ed. Leadership?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Commentary What pictures come to mind when you imagine the face of leadership? Do they include a myriad of people of varying backgrounds and leadership styles-or are they limited by an imagined model of familiar backgrounds?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The world is full of leadership programs, but the best way to learn how to lead might be right under your nose. In this clear, candid talk, Roselinde Torres describes 25 years observing truly great leaders at work, and shares the three simple but crucial questions would-be company chiefs need to ask to thrive in the future.

# data[].attributes.headline
The title of the website sets the tone doesn't it?  "Common Sense Leadership".

# data[].attributes.subject
The title of the website sets the tone doesn't it?  "Common Sense Leadership".

# data[].attributes.body
Sometimes we can get so caught up in the latest strategy, app, or program, we can forget about the basics like keeping ourselves organized.  Thank you for posting this.
Ernie Aguilar (John Aguilar)

# data[].attributes.body
The title of the website sets the tone doesn't it?  "Common Sense Leadership".