Often in leadership, it is difficult to keep those important connections that once motivated us to work in education. Meetings, software, cloud platforms, and numerous other tasks can easily overwhelm a schedule and make it difficult to connect with students in a meaningful way.
Here are some ideas and strategies I use to keep student connections strong.
Walk and Engage
Every day I plan a route to walk through the campus. While I walk, I make it a point to engage with students. I like to approach them, and often surprise them, and ask them what they are doing, what they are working on, what is “ridiculous” in math class, etc.
If they are playing games I put away the adult hat and ask them about the game. I want to know if it is challenging, does it teach anything, is it just a distraction, do they think they are addicted to playing, and so on.
Occasionally there is a comment or revelation that allows me to interject an idea or opportunity into their field of view. This casual approach helps me spot trends in the student community, get new ideas, and find students who might be looking for some additional non-academic opportunities.
Join a Club
To be honest, I normally start clubs, but it is a better strategy to join a club. As an administrator, weekly club meetings can be tough to facilitate. As a member and mentor, club meetings are manageable.
Joining a club as a novice who knows nothing is great. Students get to instruct the adult and take a few cheap shots when you make a mistake. All in good fun, but it really helps build the relationship when the equal footing is found.
Build a Student Support Team for Everything
It does not matter if you are an administrator in IT, college counseling, the library, etc. You can build a student support team. Identify students who have free periods, free time, and an interest in what your department is doing. Train these students to work with you and your team, and give them some space to make suggests. Eventually, they will be managing projects.
I have started supported teams from US Grade Level 5 and seen growth and success. Children can do amazing things, even if they refuse to do their homework.
Maintaining a solid foundation in any profession is important. Many in education chose that path because of the benefits of working with children. If you lose that foundation, you will lose your joy, and when that happens cafeteria food will taste much worse than it is.
Not every problem has a solution. Maybe a better way to express that idea is not every problem has a solution within its current construct.
Sometimes, the rules, the structure, and/or the environment are opposed to the solution. Trying and trying again will be an endless cycle; and gains will be replaced by more and more losses.
If you cannot win the game, you need to change the game you are playing.
Finding the Correct Question(s) to Ask
Recently I was reading a comment thread about a housing situation. The situation was ridiculous. I could not think of a single country or job situation where this type of agreement would be acceptable. In fact, it seemed illegal, and more like a scam than a contractual housing issue.
The person in the situation was asking, “What can I do to manage my financial loss in this situation?”
That was the wrong question to ask. This person was focusing on the result of a bad contract. The question they should be asking is, “How can I get out of this contract?”
The contract is/was the issue. If you beat the financial loss with a loophole, another jab will come from another direction. How do I know this? Because the contract is a scam. The scammer needs the scam. The scammer will not take a loss.
In another recent situation, I had 100s of devices start to fail. The software just stopped working. Initially, I was trying to fix the devices. That seems normal, but my choice was wrong.
I only attempted to fix the problem for about 45 minutes. Then I took a step back and asked myself, “What causes 100s of stable devices to systematically fail?”
There was pressure to keep trying to fix each device. I resisted. I knew that if I fixed them, they would fail again. I knew this, because a system wide failure is not created by something on one device. It had to be external.
The problem was external. It took two weeks of paperwork and the support of a two external companies to correct the issue. There was no way for me to solve the problem. The problem was unsolvable within my environment. I had to change the process, and the entire workflow, to bring everything back online.
Avoid Being Locked Into the Past
Many people get locked into a process or workflow. They get so locked in, they never look-up, the never reflect, and they always want to carry their environment with them into the future.
When this happens they spend all their time trying to make their past work in the present.
Technology can be fascinating. It is one of the only areas of the human experience where older solutions are often actually better and more evolved than current solutions. People who are locked in on a process are not always wrong. Their older solution is better compared to the new solution.
The problem is, technology solutions are often abandoned. Developers stop developing. Companies stop supporting. Licensing stops being available. Eventually, the solution does not work unless you bring the entire version of the past into the present. The software. The hardware. Everything. Not only is this not practical, eventually everyone involved is alienated except the “time-traveler”.
I have seen a school running a version of PowerSchool too old to be viable outside of the school’s local network. It was so old, it could not be upgraded using new releases from PowerSchool. So old that PowerSchool would not provide support. And, so old that it eventually did not meet data security standards for any of the other partners the school was using.
This particular implementation had amazing features. It was customized beyond normal limits. It was also something that no parent or student wanted to use anymore. The largest user groups wanted a change, and the only solution was a completely new information system. That also means the school had to hire a new department of people. Those who kept their system living well beyond its life were too entrenched to change.
Reflecting on decisions on a regular basis, and having critical input from others, will prevent these scenarios. And this type of complete rebuild scenario is common. It is far too common, and it is destructive.
A Bad Deal, is a Bad Deal
Education is often seen as an industry that does not follow common business strategy. In many cases, this is true and unavoidable. Schools do not get to choose perfect children. Schools work with students, and sometimes at great cost, to help them grow and develop.
However, the business processes, procurement planning, and infrastructural systems do not need to operate irresponsibly for educational goals to be achieved. Planning to be inefficient, and being content to lose, is not a benefit to any child.
I have seen many bad deals, bad contracts, and predatory vendor relationships. These situations create unsolvable problems. The game is rigged. The school is often getting a poor value with a low to zero return on investment.
I had the unfortunate luck of managing a bad printing contract for a school. The school had made a deal with a third-party for Xerox solutions. Xerox has their own sales force and service, so why would anyone need a third party?
The contractor not only could not manage the hardware, they had no idea how the software worked, they were not aware of all the requirements needed for an Apple Computer environment, and they did not understand the accounting system connected to the service.
What was my solution? Remove the contractor. Instead of trying to fix the printers, I spent every moment collecting evidence and documenting breaches of the contract. I eventually made a strong case, and the school switched to a direct partner relationship.
There was no win-win. The contract was bad. The situation was impossible.
No matter how much we want something to work, or be a solution, there is a point in the process where we need to step back. We need to ask, is this worth it? Is there a better way? Are we driving the process, or is it driving us?
I was speaking to a friend recently about an argument he had with a teacher. The teacher was adamant that if they could not use one particular app, their classes would come to a halt, and learning would immediately be suspended until further notice.
Obviously, I cannot think of a single application or subscription that is that critical to learning. I am not referring to a complete environment like Google Apps for Education. I am referring to people getting angry, and going into a panic, over a single application or service.
More and more I see these conflicts among teachers and schools (similar to the Curriculum in a Suitcase problem).
Schools and teachers need to be aware that being a fanboy or fangirl will not be rewarded. In fact, the odds are that being too connected to a particular solution will more than likely lead to a lack of resources and very real disappointment.
There are 43 services listed that have been cancelled, even though many were used by numerous people. Google Wave was hugely popular with schools, and then one day, Google closed it down with very little notice.
In 2017, the popular library service RefMe was bought by a competitor and shutdown. This service had a popular paid version, and customers still lost access to the product they wanted.
The fact is many of these companies are funded by venture capital. If they do not meet their required metrics, they lose their funding and are quickly shutdown or sold. Often when companies are sold, the services they provide are shutdown. The intellectual property and user data is more valuable than the actual application.
Where does all this leave a person who has built their entire practice around a single service or product? Desperate and angry.
A Basket of Solutions
A basket of currencies is an interesting model to reflect on when setting asset management policies. A basket of currencies helps set a value, so that if one currency happens to plummet in value, the value of the target currency is not impacted significantly.
Applying this to educational technology asset management, schools would:
Make a requirement that departments have a defined set of resources they are using
Complete a regular review of those resources
Develop a process to allow teachers to regularly propose and pilot new resources
The influx of a few new solutions will buffer the school against big changes made by products and services they are using. Thus, not allowing a single company’s decisions to shift the learning, purchasing, or culture of the school.
In addition, there must be an annual expectation that technology will change and training will happen. Having a culture where people expect stagnation is dangerous in a technology driven environment that is based on companies constantly cannibalizing one another.
Brands Do Not Care About Learning
I have been recommending Apple laptops for many years. However, after the recent round of Apple changes to their base laptops, I am no longer recommending Apple without a discussion about the current downside of the new designs; and a review of the briefly held negative status of the Macbook Pro published by Consumer Reports.
The truth is, there are many options now that are better for many types of schools and users. Apple changed. They changed to meet their market. They did not make decisions to improve learning at K-12 organizations. Apple chose to make more money.
This holds true for all the big players in educational technology. Their decisions are focused on growth and profit. They want to take as much of the market as possible. Sometimes that means creating innovative new features, and sometimes it means making a cheaper product to increase margins.
Hardware is normally purchased in cycles of 3-5 years. That means, every year 2 or year 4, a platform review should occur. The practice of always buying the same brand without a critical analysis of that brand is the equivalent of letting the brand dictate the options available for teachers and students.
Schools should make good choices and be able to adjust to the market. Teachers should be aware that change is always on the horizon, and using technology is an agnostic endeavor.
Buy into the school. Buy into the curriculum. Buy into people and ideas. Do not sellout to software, services, and nicely branded machines.
Satish Man Pati makes me feel like a thimble of a man. Not because he’s full of great quotes like the title of this essay. Not because he climbed Mt. Everest like I decide to canoe across a lake. Not because he just looks like more of a man than I do. It’s because I watched him sitting with a tin cup filled with hot tea, smiling at 4000 meters as a fading sunset settled behind him on the Annapurna Range (Nepal) and he took the time to ask how I was doing. He watched with calm competence as his team methodically set up camp, assembled cooking stations, and prepared all that was needed to support myself and twenty six people during a trek in his native country. He was the captain of the ship, his love of the mountains surrounding him with good karma, a gentle smile creasing grizzled, unshaven cheeks even as countless details likely ran through his head. This guy who was responsible for so many people at the top of a mountain sipped his tea and asked how I was doing.
I am constantly trying to learn from people that I think are great leaders. And what I loved about Satish was that I knew he had a million things going on, but had that humble majesty of being able to focus on the happiness and safety of the people around him. He was really tuned in to everything, but never seemed to show it. He knew I was nervous about the safety of the students that had never been in the mountains but he took the time to check in to see if I was okay. He was on an emotional intelligence scale that was off the charts.
I took him aside as he sipped his tea, looking contentedly out onto the distant horizon. “Satish,” I asked. “What makes you such a great leader?” He laughed and of course said he was not such a great leader. I disagreed and told him that his team worshipped the ground he walked on. “I’m willing to do any job,” he said. “And I have. They see what I’ve done to get here and I treat them fairly. And I know each of them as people and they treat me the same. We are like family,” he added. “It’s more than a job.” Then what I observed from him that was absolute genius was that he knew his team so well he knew exactly what to expect from them and to put them in a position to be successful. He knew the guys that were the best left to be behind the scenes and the ones that could deal with my students. He knew the ones that could take on the leadership roles and the ones that needed to be told what to do. Not only did he have everyone on the bus, he had them in the right seats. They knew his expectations too. One of the members of the team left a new tin coffee pot that he had purchased at one of the tea houses at the top of the mountain that we had left the day before. It was a five hour climb back. Rather than tell him that it was okay and that they’d buy a new one, he made the guide go back and fetch it. And he did. Satish laughed at my amazement. “The details matter in the mountains,” he laughed. “He’ll remember that.”
When I asked about his relationship to the mountains, he looked past me into the distance and gave me an explanation of the ranges behind us and their connections to the local people. When he was finished, he looked right at me and said, “You have to take what the mountain gives you. You cannot fight that. If it rains, snows, fog, sunshine, whatever. You have to understand it and take it. You cannot fight that.” It sounded so simple, but I thought of how it went against just about everything you heard from adventurers. They fought, resisted what came at them and battled to overcome the obstacles in their way. Satish was not defeatist. Of course, his acceptance was similar to what you hear from great sea captains and those that listen to what their circumstances are telling them.
When you start this new school year, especially if you are going to a new school, take what the mountains give you. When there is chaos all around and you’re responsible for 30 people at a metaphorical 4000 meters, sip some tea from a tin cup, smile with grizzled cheeks, look out onto a setting sun, and realize that by the grace you show towards others and the gratitude you have for what you do in the majestic surroundings of wherever you are, that you got this.
Best of luck this year. The kids need you more than ever.
Aging has taken on a special significance with me in recent weeks as I witnessed the passing of two giants of my generation in David Bowie and Glen Frey. Unreal and surreal.
When I looked over the images and read the stories, I thought about the special qualities that it must have taken for the two of them to transcend their generations and resonate with subsequent years, no easy feat.
I was listening to The Eagles Greatest Hits, reminiscing and poring over a large job data bank looking for, you guessed it, Millenials. I was looking through a number of applicants through the lens of a Gen Xer but knew that their needs, abilities, and ambitions were quite different from mine.
“Seven Bridges Road” had just started when one walked in. “Sorry to interrupt you,” she said, confidently. “But can I talk to you about such and such. I’ve thought the direction of it and I’m not sure that it’s where it needs to be, etc. etc.” I put my glasses down, minimized the postings on my computer, and gave her my full attention for nine minutes. I had to. She’s a Millenial.
(Disclaimer: The definition of millenials is filled with sweeping generalizations about the cohort of people born between 1980 and 2000 such as being entitled, precocious, digitally adept, trophy kids awarded for participation, and the offspring of the first generation of helicopter parents).
My point is that a lot of them are international teachers.
Like the young teacher who came to see me, a lot of Millenials are mobile, well-travelled, social media savvy, curious, tolerant, passionate about what they do, and hungry to be involved. They were the first real “net generation,” encouraged by sometimes over-involved parents to “follow their dreams,” and didn’t seem to respect authority as much as their angst ridden Generation X counterparts (like me). They seem to have a much more optimistic “can do” outlook than me and my somewhat more sober GenXers, and their questioning authority (they’d say ‘confidence’) keeps administrators like myself on our toes.
All of which makes these people fantastic international educators.
Yes, it’s difficult to manage folks who look at us like they could do our jobs in their sleep. Yes, it’s difficult to accept that their disregard for the way things have been done can be hard to take. Yes, it’s difficult to be democratic and inclusive in the decision making process when we were all weaned on the “my way or the highway” generation of administrators. (Those would be the baby boomers).
But it’s worth it. Even though I could do a much better job of delegating and involving Millenials in the hard and complex structures of managing an international school division, it’s their ability to make the complex simple with their time tested confidence and acceptance of diversity both in style and opinion that I find very compelling. Bowie and Frey transcended their generation and their industries because they understood this. They made the necessary adjustments to stay relevant, and weren’t focused on convention as much as resonance. That type of thinking motivates me.
I’ve written about it before and I’ll write it again that it’s not so much the alignment of what’s happening inside the classroom that has to change dramatically (and there’s plenty written on that topic) so much as the structures and frameworks outside of the class to enable these changes to happen that is critical.
I cannot think of a generation better equipped to handle this than the Millenials.
They’re not an easy group to manage. They have high expectations, demand results from us, have little patience for bureaucracy, and seem at times irreverent when it comes to ‘paying their dues.’ But, like the generations of kids behind them who cannot wait, their impatience and energy are critical for the innovation that we need to change the way we do business.
That doesn’t mean they can’t learn from us. There’s plenty to learn; about politics, managing people, consequence of action, expressing opinions, taking responsibility, and so on.
When the Millenial was done with her question, I opened my laptop again and said, “Now I have a question for you,” to which she was receptive. I asked how I could attract and retain more teachers like herself so that I could build a school around the future instead of the past.
“Ask us what we think and let us act on it,” she said…confidently.
Good luck GenX admin. And don’t worry, just because there’s a new kid in town doesn’t mean that you’re not relevant. You just need a little adapting to the times. It’s what made Frey and Bowie timeless.
As I travel to dozens of international schools each year, I am always struck by the earnestness of everyone – the teachers, the leaders, the kids, the parents. EVERYONE is positively earnest and passionate – wanting to do the right thing, willing to put in hours and hours of thought and planning and attention to whatever are perceived to be the current RIGHT goals. So A+ on the EARNEST scale.
But I am UNSTRUCK by the plodding pace, that nothing is terribly urgent, that the PROCESS seems always to be as important – sometimes MORE important – than the actual outcome on student learning.
This is in part driven by two pervasive leadership myths that seem to permeate our international schools – and can cause serious learning damage or at least missed opportunities on the part of the school, to influence student learning.
Myth one: In your first year in your headship or principalship, don’t DO anything – just try and understand the culture of the school, the way things operate, get to know people. Just ‘gather data’, build relationships and perhaps by the second year you can actually begin to do your job.
While leadership gurus may come back at me and argue that this approach does work – my practical experience in international schools is that it is a major contributor to our often being ‘behind the curve’ rather than leading the way. When the typical leader is in a school for 4-5 years, one year is a significant loss.
Myth two: Once you DO begin to act, don’t do too much too fast. After all people can only handle so much change….we would not want to overwhelm the paid professionals whose one and only job is to get the kids in their charge to learn. Well that’s just perfect. So we have 20% of kids in grade 6 who cannot write to standard (or worse yet we don’t even KNOW what they can do)…but that’s ok, we’ll go at the pace of the teachers or at least the leaders’ perception of that pace. We’ll just tell those kids parents that next year, grade six will be great – too bad your kid will be in grade 7. Great strategy.
And by the way, what qualifies as ‘change’ that we must carefully plan for is just about anything that is even minimally different than the way we did it last year. So remarkable that we sit around in curriculum sessions discussing how important it is to teach kids that they will need to be adaptable and flexible if they are going to make it as productive adults, yet we have to make a two year plan to get to the notion of something as obvious as differentiated homework into routine practice. I’m guessing there is maybe a double standard somewhere in there?
‘Urgent’ is not the opposite of earnest- but they do seem to be in a less than productive competition. I vote for at least TRYING urgent wherever learning might be the loser.
Being in the people business, good communication seems so obvious, yet we rarely talk about what makes good communication. Raise your hand if you wish that Google had a pop up screen that said, “Are you sure you want to send this email? (It seems angry).” Note to self, send an email to Google.
Is the way in which you communicate as a teacher to your students the same way that you communicate with a parent, your Principal or Director, or a colleague? Of course not, yet it is these complex interactions that cause us the most stress and angst during the day. It’s what we talk about with our spouses over dinner, and it’s the root of what we do as educators. So, let’s communicate about whether or not you have the skills to be a good communicator.
1) You choose the right medium for the situation: Tweet, phone call, text, hand written note, personal conversation, email, snapchat, etc. etc. As I write this, I think how much the impact of a hand-written note has changed over the past decade. Imagine the power of getting one of those today? And I heard recently that teenagers think that calling is rude as opposed to texting which is less interruptive. Unreal.
2) “Can I think about that?” In this era of instant communication, we all know that instant does not equate to effective. How many times have you been trapped in a hallway conversation that you wish you never entered into? (For me it’s at least a hundred). Or quickly responded to a text that caused a firestorm? Believe it or not, you can hit ‘pause’ and respectfully tell the person you’d like an hour or a day to mull it over. And refer to #1 on how to respond!
3) “Got a minute?”: FYI, it’s never a minute and FYI2 your supervisors rarely enjoy these conversations. They don’t know what’s going to hit them, they have a million other things on their minds, and there’s a high likelihood they’re going to tell you something you don’t want to hear just to get the issue off their plate without really thinking about it. Why not send a message (refer to #1 again), and frame the issue before entering the communication? I know it takes more time out of your busy day, but it gives the other party a chance to think. (And for those of you who like the ambush technique, shame!)
4) “Email Boomerang”: If you email back and forth more than once (or if your response is over a paragraph) it’s time to talk. Oh, the power of email. How has it made our lives worse? It has set us back on communication at least fifteen years. This is especially a nightmare for the international educator dealing with parents. Throw in language and cultural differences, and your Principal will be involved faster than you can say, “Why did I hit send on Sunday night?”
5) “Action through inaction”: How many of you have those annoying notification reminders popping up on your smartphones demanding action or attention? (usually from games your kids installed). Just because you get a text or an email, even a message, doesn’t mean you MUST respond. Let it chill. Sometimes the person on the other end will let it go (possibly out of their own guilt for hitting send), or maybe they’ll even approach you and say “Did you get my email? (At which point you can say, “Yes, I did, can we talk?”). The point is, it is not your station in life to bounce back answers to everything just because something pings you.
Good luck. And before I go, please spread the gospel about talking about good communication. We spend ten times the amount talking about accreditation, but that’s not what makes our lives miserable (well, not entirely). It’s bad communication. There’s nothing as cathartic as a meeting of hard-working adults in a school talking about what is working and what is not when it comes to good communication. It can alleviate a lot of sleepless nights. Believe me.
Of course, there’s only one apt way to play this one out: The ‘Til Tuesday classic: Voices Carry
Sharing stories, expertise, and experiences from international educators around the world. In the spirit of amplifying diverse voices. TIE's blog space is not subject to editorial oversight. TIE bloggers have a long history in various aspects of international education and share their thoughts and insights based on personal experiences.
