I’m always preaching the importance of vision.  It’s the backbone of leadership.  You are continually connecting people to the purpose of our shared endeavor.

To practice what I preach, I held a series of leadership development sessions with members of the departments that I supervise.  Together, we discussed both the work we do and the aspirations that drive us in that work.  Together, we developed a vision statement for our department.   Here it is.

“Our purpose is to create and support programs, experiences, and mindsets that dramatically deepen student engagement, and can be proven to accelerate student learning and post-secondary success.”

With that vision in mind, we set out to redesign our efforts to collect student feedback at the high school level as part of our Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP).  Last year, we designed student forums that brought together 300 students at each high school to vote on and then discuss issues that students felt were most essential to improving their learning experiences at our schools.  We held seven of these sessions over the course of 3 months.  Our design process was iterative and intensive, meeting on multiple occasions to discuss how we could quickly create a learning environment where students felt safe and respected – enough to speak their truths and challenge the status quo.

This year, we wanted to up the ante.  We were no longer satisfied with going out and listening ourselves to the perspectives and stories of our students.  We wanted to connect our students to the “shapers” – the policymakers, artists, and other public figures whose ideas, decisions, and actions influence the movement of our communities and institutions.

Our planning team met on numerous occasions.  Yes, there were tremendous logistical matters we had to attend to.  Arranging bus transportation.  The technical elements of live streaming the broadcast.  Communicating with participants and other stakeholders.  Securing participation of guest panelists.

That logistical work was hard, and essential.  But it wasn’t what we spent the most time discussing and, quite frankly, arguing about and deliberating over.  We wanted to design a deeply engaging, transformative experience.  We wanted to create a space where people could and would share their honest thoughts and feelings.  We wanted authenticity.  Our decisions focused on how to prime participants for a powerful learning moment.  We had to explain our purpose to our guest panelists multiple times.

“This isn’t going to be a typical panel discussion.”

“You’re here, primarily, to listen.”

Not only is this not the usual practice, but it’s so engrained that we were afraid we might not be able to hold the space in the way we wanted.

This isn’t to say that our guest panelists didn’t have important things to say to our kids.  They do.  But we wanted their contributions to take the shape of encouragement and affirmation of student thoughts and stories.

So, last Friday, we held our event.  Truth 2 Power.  As we got closer to the start time, my mind was exploding.  So many disparate systems would have to come together.  Busses of students rolled in as guest panelists donned their mics.  I would be facilitating the session and discussion with our Deputy Superintendent, Dr. David Haglund.  Ironically, all of my preparation, my review of participants’ bios, students issue topics, and the discussion protocols, was to allow me, in the moment, to clear my mind of the small details.  I needed to focus on creating the space.  Putting students at ease.  Encouraging authentic conversation.

I won’t speak on behalf of participants.  We too often fill the space with our own words rather than student voices.  What I can say is that I was moved by the stories of determination, perseverance, tragedy, and triumph.  We heard from Adrian, and Violet, and Stephanie.  Students whose voices have long been dormant spoke up and expressed their newfound determination.  Many participants were brought to tears.

There are lots of takeaways to reflect on.  The blessing of working with a passionate, talented team.  The challenges of clear communication to stakeholders.  But the thing on my mind this morning is just how much planning and work has to happen if you want to foster a learning environment where robust, rigorous, and provocative discussions can happen in a safe and genuine way.

And even though it’s hard to do – it’s the purpose of our work.

“Our purpose is to create and support programs, experiences, and mindsets that dramatically deepen student engagement, and can be proven to accelerate student learning and post-secondary success.”

It’s a vision worth pursuing.

Check out the archive of the live stream at http://sausdteam21c.org/truth2power/

The Learning Organization.  It’s a concept that best captures my vision for the work of a school district.  The district doesn’t exist primarily to balance budgets, or to maintain the physical plant, or even to develop and deliver a rigorous curriculum.  Those are important tasks.  If you mess up the budget, you end up in the newspaper and lose your job.  If the physical plant fails then lawsuits start showing up on your door.  If you fail to develop a high quality curriculum, then the potential for powerful learning is greatly diminished.  Fail to meaningfully address these critical managerial tasks at your peril.

But they don’t represent the most important leadership task at hand.

The role of leadership is to elevate learning to its highest priority.  And I’m not just talking about student learning.  A learning organization recognizes that deepening the skill and capacity of its employees is a fundamental strategy for any enterprise trying to dramatically improve outcomes.

Today I’ve had the pleasure of engaging in a conversation about building capacity for systems transformation.  In other words, fostering a learning organization.  The lesson was led by Peter Senge, who is a bit of an organizational theory guru who teaches at MIT.  I’ve led plenty of leadership learning sessions that draw heavily on Senge’s work, and it was a lot of fun to finally learn from him in person.

Of course, while it’s easy to say that developing the capacity of staff should be the highest priority of the system if it is serious about dramatic improvement, it can be very hard to accomplish in practice.  Especially in schools.  Our discussions today got me thinking about those professional responsibilities that strengthened my own capacity to lead systems-level change.

Punching Above My Pay Grade

I owe a lot of my professional growth to a small group of mentors who have taken an outsize interest in my leadership development.  For people like Dr. Gregg Good, Dr. Alex Molnar, and Gia Truong, I wasn’t just another employee doing a job.  They all saw in me the potential to learn and contribute in powerful ways that went far beyond my job description. While I was still a classroom teacher, Dr. Good asked me to lead a team of administrators to visit an out-of-state district to learn more about implementation of the International Baccalaureate program and how we might develop a strong language policy at a school with various language communities.  Dr. Molnar put me in charge of a major research project and publication.  As my direct supervisor, superintendent Truong encouraged me over and over again to come to my own conclusions, and act out of a sincere sense of what was right and effective versus simply doing what I was told to do.

In all cases, these mentors offered me one of the most valuable assets a leader can extend.  Trust.  They trusted me to take on projects and initiatives that, on paper, I probably wasn’t entirely qualified to take on.  I made mistakes, sure, but on the whole I delivered when given the opportunity.  Perhaps even more importantly, I deepened my capacity to lead meaningful change on a broader scale.

Reflection Time 

The central importance of taking time to reflect on our leadership work was reinforced yet again today in my learning session at the Carnegie Summit.  You have to take time to stop and reflect.  Take stock of where you are, what you’ve accomplished, and where you need to go next.  For Senge, who has conducted research into organizational improvement for decades, this need for reflection time has emerged as one of the three most vital leadership capacities.

In practice, reflection time takes many shapes.  It takes shape as a blog site, where I occasionally stop to try to make sense of what I am experiencing.  By committing my thoughts and challenges to paper, I’m forced to work out the jumble of thoughts happening in my head.  Sometimes it takes the shape of a retreat.  I openly encourage principals and teachers alike to find time to get away from their schools and classrooms.  Yes, this can be controversial because the structure of schools demands our physical presence every day.  But it is nonetheless essential.  We have to get away to have space and time to reflect on the organizational architecture of the institutions we lead.  We have to regularly flex our strategic muscles by taking a step back and considering the systems in which we are embedded.

Get Personal

This is closely related to the time we set aside for reflection.  Leading change is not technical work.  It is adaptive in nature.  When done in any meaningful way, leadership moves people.  It moves them off of entrenched positions and perspectives.  It forces people to confront uncomfortable scenarios and corrosive relationships.  It is emotional work.  It is sometimes lonely and uncertain work.  As Hefeitz and Linsky suggest, it is dangerous work.

It is dangerous precisely because it is so personal.  We don’t like to acknowledge how we contribute to the mess.  As Senge called it today, we are uncomfortable seeing our own handprint on the dysfunction of the system.  Much of our work today was spent doing a “left column analysis,” designed to highlight the gap between what we really observe, think, and believe and what we are willing to say.

As my wife will attest, my work stories typically have me at the center – the protagonist.  It would be better to more regularly cast myself as the villain.  How am I undermining the highest purposes of the organization and what steps can I take to mitigate my own weaknesses?  Asking those type of questions of ourselves can be deeply unnerving, yet is an essential exercise for one aspiring to develop a genuine learning organization.

When you’re teaching in a classroom, you never have to ask yourself whether your work is essential to the purpose of a school.  Yes, you wonder whether your instructional practice is effective.  Yes, you have days when you know, deep down, that students really didn’t learn much.  And while being in a classroom does not guarantee you’re having positive impact on student learning outcomes, it’s not very hard to draw a direct line between your daily work and the raison d’etre of the school.   

I felt much the same way as a high school principal.  I could see a clear relationship between my actions and the learning environment of the entire school. I had power to set the professional learning agenda, plus the benefit of engaging in daily interactions and cultivating supportive relationships with my students and their families.  What I missed from the daily interaction with students in the classroom, I made up for with a broader set of relationships and interactions across the entire school.  I cultivated a community of students, parents, and teachers – all with the goal of accelerating learning opportunities and outcomes for my kids.  Being a principal, while intensely demanding, was deeply satisfying.

And then I came to the district office.

I have to clarify.  I love my job, truly.  And I believe that my work is essential, and that I am having an impact on student learning.  But it is not the same work as being at a school.

There are no bells ringing once an hour.  You aren’t surrounded by hundreds of students engaged in endless exchanges of “good morning” and “great game last night.”  You don’t feel the crisis unfold in real time.  Typically, you’re not in the room when the tears come – whether it be from students, parents, or your staff members.  And just like you miss the minute by minute and hour by hour challenges, you only get glimpses of the triumphs.  You’re a step removed from the dailyness of school.

Often, teachers, and even site administrators, can come to the conclusion that anything outside of direct support to meet the daily exigencies of the school qualifies as non-essential dressing.  Indeed, when I’m rhetorically over here drowning in my classroom, I might not see how a district employee is essential to the success of my students.

I’m the first to admit that the work of a district office can be problematic.  I’m surprised every day at just how much compliance work goes on.  Most of it is tedious.  Some of it strikes me as necessary.  And even less of it feels essential to transforming learning outcomes for kids.  And while I agree completely with Michael Fullan, who suggests we move as much of the compliance to the side of the plate as possible, I guess we still have to eat our veggies.

Over the past 20 years, there has been a shift in how many district administrators think about their work.  The rise of the district effectiveness movement introduced the belief that the district could be the source of support for school level transformation.  In other words, teachers and site administrators mired in the dailyness of running school could benefit greatly from the focused support of district staff.  This movement flipped the compliance mandate, suggesting that the district’s primary role was to encourage instructional innovation and develop leadership capacity within the system.  In other words, the district exists to serve the needs of the schools, and not the other way around.

Which brings us to our current context in a district where a budget downturn is imminent, and hundreds of employees have already received notices that they might not have a job next year.  Embedded in the conversation of who will be laid off or downsized is a conversation about where the cuts should be aimed.  How deep do you go at the district office?  How much trimming can a school withstand before the reduction in services bleeds into a corresponding deterioration of learning environments and outcomes?

These are not easy decisions.

Sometimes we hear platitudes like “keep cuts away from the kids” or “focus on saving jobs” without really defining what is essential.  Basic services at the site level are critical, but so are the enrichment programs that give life and meaning to the student experience.  Safety is another paramount priority, but so is developing a welcoming and inviting learning environment where we can be attentive to the personalized needs of students and families.

As for what is essential at a district office, it seems clear that in the context of reduced budgets and staffing the only chance of navigating to a better place is through the development of a smarter and more skilled workforce.  Difficult financial times are precisely the times for focusing on building transformative leadership capacity and improved instructional practice across the system.

I don’t know exactly what the future holds.  There are a lot of dedicated teachers and staff who have similar uncertainties.  Regardless, it’s an opportunity for all of us to ask the hard questions about what is essential to ensure the best possible experiences and outcomes for our students.