As soon as I saw the Facebook post, I knew I was in trouble.  My daughter’s 1st grade teacher was being promoted as a literacy specialist, and she was going to be replaced, mid-year, by a beginning teacher who had just finished her student teaching.

For some parents and educators, this might not be seen as a problem.  We live in a society that worships at the altar of youth, and this is perhaps no more apparent than in education, where new teachers are valued for their passion, energy, and cheap salaries.  Administrators often value new teachers  for their willingness to try new things, take on challenging assignments, and contribute to improvement projects without invoking the union contract.  Many education reform organizations base their entire theory of action for improving schools on the malleability and commitment of new teachers.

I have heard many school leaders and reformers say something to the effect of, “you can train for skills, but you can’t train for passion and commitment.”  Perhaps I’ll break that statement down in a future post.  As a parent, however, I want both skill and commitment, but mostly I want skill.

When I was in my third year of teaching high school Spanish, I received a surprising and perhaps unwarranted recognition.  Each year, the 150 teachers  at my school nominated and then selected the Teacher of the Year.  The list of past recipients read like an all-star list of educators whose impact on learning and dedication to students was both long and noteworthy.  Nobody with less than 10 years of experience at the school had ever been selected.  Certainly a third year, non-tenured teacher such as myself had never even been considered.

Here’s the problem.  I was neither the most dedicated nor the most skilled teacher at the school.  Not even in my own department.  I had passion in spades, and volunteered for just about everything.  I was the embodiment of youthful zeal and professional optimism.  Yet privately I was conflicted about the award.

Denice Morales, for example, was a long-time Spanish teacher in my department.  She was old school.  You didn’t mess around with Ms. Morales. She was even reported to have flushed a student cell phone down the toilet when the student made the mistake of pulling it out in class.  Not exactly tech-friendly.  She possessed that matriarchal steadiness and steeliness that gets results from kids, and she did it year after year.  Instructionally, she was very talented.

Now, I’m a futurist and believer in the power of technology to accelerate learning.  As a former principal myself, I recognize how zest and enthusiasm are key strategic elements for building a student-centered and creative learning environment.  Ms. Morales would probably agree that zest was not an adjective she used to describe her reaction to new initiatives.  Her default reaction was skepticism, although she could be convinced over time.

Ms. Morales’ skill, like that of all skilled teachers, was hard fought.  It took time to develop.  While I’m excited and hopeful that my daughter’s new teacher will bring new energy and innovation to the classroom, I also know that she’ll struggle.  It’s hard as a parent to swallow.

I love working with school principals.  Perhaps it’s just me, but I simply prefer grizzled optimism borne from real experience over idealism.  Most principals have buckets of this type of energy and perspective.  These are people who have been around the block more than a few times.  They love kids.  They respect teachers.  When things don’t go according to plan, or when they go completely sideways, they have the emotional fortitude to provide stability and direction – even if internally they are suffering.  Over time, they develop a strong leadership intuition informed by both research and experience.  Student learning is their North Star, and they know how to laugh at the same time they are pushing hard for results.

So you can imagine my delight at getting an hour with over 50 school leaders to mine their thoughts and design considerations for our XQ super school design.  While our session together was explicitly designed to gather data and insight into our new school design, we also hoped the learning would be reciprocal and provide impetus for building momentum in the redesign and transformation work our principals do at their own schools.  Indeed, the entire XQ theory of action for transforming education stems from a desire to disrupt the status quo for all 50 million high school students in the country, not just the students who enroll in the 5 schools that ultimately win the prize.

I started our session showing the XQ: Rethink video.  It’s provocative; a direct repudiation of how we’ve allowed our high schools to stay frozen in time.  It calls our schools “outmoded” and invites us to “throw out the blueprint” for traditional high school design.  Those could be considered fighting words when your livelihood and daily leadership struggle are situated directly in the institutions that are coming under fire.  I asked our principals to quickly journal about their reaction to the video, and then to stand and array themselves physically in the room in order of strongly agree to strongly disagree.  My initial assessment was that the activity did not work very well.  Almost everyone clustered around the strongly agree end of the spectrum.  I thought perhaps they associated too much danger in strongly disagreeing with a video just shown to them by a district official (me), despite my efforts to encourage honesty in their reactions.

Then the principals started talking.  One by one they articulated their aspirations for meaningful, authentic learning.  They voiced their disdain for the structural impediments that keep us collectively from unlocking the full potential for student engagement and learning . They were eager to engage in the design process, and insightful in their contributions to it. Frankly put, school leaders are deeply, if not painfully, aware of the struggles in their schools, and their desire to bring about meaningful improvement is tangible and persistent.  Even those in the middle of the spectrum shared a strong desire to disrupt the status quo, although with major concerns over the policies and institutional disincentives that mitigate change.

In the end, we enjoyed a productive conversation focusing on critical elements of our school design.  As we’ve done in previous design engagements, principals individually brainstormed design elements, and then engaged in an interview protocol in an attempt to truly understand the primary design considerations of their colleagues.  Then we transferred those ideas to post-it notes and organized them according to the six development categories outlined in the XQ proposal materials.  It’s just another step as we journey together towards a school design that reflects our best thinking around what it means to completely rethink the high school experience.

A few years ago, I sat in a principal leadership team meeting just prior to the start of a new school year.  As often happens during a good welcome back meeting, we started off with some team building activities.  Some of you may be familiar with the River of Life protocol.  Basically, you take some time individually to reflect on your life memories and experiences that have shaped you personally and professionally, and you create a visual map that represents your journey through life.  Then you share.

It’s a fun and often poignant activity.  It’s also one I have done probably half a dozen times in different settings with different groups.  Back to the principals’ meeting, I decided that this time around I would chronicle my journey through the mentors who have taken an active interest in my professional development.  While I have always known I’ve had advocates and supporters on my journey, taking time to actually map out the names and unique influence each mentor had in my life filled me with a tremendous sense of gratitude.

I thought about Dr. Alex Molnar, director of the Education Policy Studies Lab at Arizona State University, who gave me a job as a research intern while I was still an undergraduate.  My first project was to go through a soon-to-be published research report that needed serious revision.  I spent countless hours reworking citations, rewriting sections, and bringing uniformity to the report format.  When the report went for publication, Dr. Molnar added me to the author list.  I had my first taste of real academic publishing, and over the next three years, he would give me opportunity after opportunity to contribute and learn.  Dr. Molnar’s mentorship led to university recognitions, a Fulbright scholarship, and most importantly, the development of an academic skill set that I rely on every day.

I thought about Dr. Gregg Good, the International Baccalaureate coordinator at Westwood high school where I was employed as a Spanish teacher.  Dr. Good recruited me to teach IB Spanish, and to co-sponsor a Model United Nations program.  Those opportunities brought access to tremendous professional development, ongoing collaboration with many of the strongest classroom teachers at the school, and chaperoning student trips to Paris, Dublin, Athens, and London.  Our office chats yielded some pieces of advice I took to heart – never be afraid to ask for money if it’s for kids, don’t ever be an assistant principal (it’s how the system beats out all of your creativity), and surround yourself with doers who refuse to accept that things cannot change.

I thought about Gia Truong, superintendent and now CEO of Envision Schools who mentored and supervised me during my initial years as a high school principal.  She was a champion for equity who constantly challenged me (and everyone around her) to raise expectations for student learning.  She would rarely tell me what to do, but used thoughtful questions to help me work through my decisions.  Her leadership advice challenged me in deep, personal ways.  Her invitations to embrace difficult conversations and continually interrupt the use of language that isolates or demeans continue to ring in my ears.  She was and is a powerful woman whose urgency for the work continues to inspire me.

I am greatly indebted to these and other professional mentors who have sharpened my skills and shaped my perspectives on the difficult and deeply meaningful work of educating young people.  When the urgency of the work could draw them to other, productive uses of their time, these mentors chose to focus on me.  Perhaps that personal investment in others is the true hallmark of great leadership.