Educational Discourse

Basketball season has started and I’m at a weekend tournament 2 hours from home with 12 teenage girls, and a chaperone, sleeping in another school. And I do this because …..

I’ve been negligent with my blog this week. It was first week back from the break, which is always busy. It was a busy week with all the activities starting up. But, really, Dean Shareski noted my blog in his:

He’s already amassed some powerful writing and great reflections questioning both his own practice and struggling with the hard questions.

How do I live up to that? For the whole week I’ve been hesitant to blog in case it wasn’t “powerful” or a “great reflection” and was just, like mediocre. I avoided even going to my blog unless I needed to moderate a comment. As the week rolled on, however, I began to reflect on what was making me so anxious. What was it that was throwing me off. So, I read more blogs. There were so many of interest with interesting ideas and insights. Were mine really in this calibre? Do I really have anything to say? I know that I my own learning has been greatly enhanced over the past few weeks by the great blogs that I’ve been reading. I’ve been reflecting on what I can do as an administrator to help the students and teachers as we move toward the integration of new technologies. How can I lead them in this new direction.

Well, tonight, as my team was walking off the court after winning their first game this season, a parent from the other team came over to me and announced that “I was a poor example of a leader for how I acted on the bench. The way I slapped the floor when that girl missed the shot. There is no way I would allow my daughter to play for you.” Wow. I thanked her for her insight and walked away. Crushed. All the wonder of our first win gone.
All night I’ve been thinking, reviewing what I had done that would make her say such a thing. I asked my assitant coach – had she noticed anything. No. In fact, she commented that I had done nothing offensive at all. That it was a comment from a parent of the losing team. Forget it.

Well I can’t! I have worked very hard to become a good leader. A leader of students. A leader of teachers. Eventually, a leader within a school division. So, here I sit wondering why that one negative comment from someone who knows nothing about me, a perfect stranger, can impact me so much? Why haven’t all those positive and helpful comments done the same?

As educators, it’s hard for us to accept a compliment, mostly because so much of what we do is behind the scenes. Even when colleagues give us one, we deflect or bashfully thank them and change the subject. It makes us uncomfortable. Why is it that we don’t sit back and reflect as deeply when someone points out a strength? Reflect how we were able to get to that particular point? How we might be able to use that knowledge in other areas so that our growth is positive-based with a face toward getting better. Not that negative comments can’t make us better but I would prefer constructive criticism.

As an administrator, I began to reflect on how this made me feel in front of a whole lobby full of people. Whether they heard or not didn’t matter. It was done in such a demeaning fashion. It led to a strengthening in my belief that, as an administrator, it is my role not to destroy the fragile egos of those students in my care but to help grow them, mold them and make them bloom. To help teachers to see that these young people are more than the assignments, books, games and processes that they engage in each day. They are, first and foremost, caring and feeling people, no matter how much they might try to convince us they don’t feel. And the ones that appear void of feeling are the ones we need to reach to the most as they have been dealt with too many times in front of a lobby full of people. They are the ones that resist our early attempts and we need to reach past those initial rebuffs to find something that will draw them out and allow the building to begin. We have to make connections with students, finding out where they are and urging them to consider things from new and different perspectives – constructing knowledge along the way without telling them they are wrong or don’t know any better or are wrong or are poor leaders. No one wants to hear that! I certainly didn’t like it!

So, having been brought back down to earth, I am reminded that, as an administrator, I must be aware that what I do and how I interact with each student is extremely important – especially considering that the lobby is always full as far as this is concerned. Learning is hard sometimes!! So back I go to my earlier dilemma. Do I really have anything to add to this conversation? I really don’t know, but as I take a look at what is happening around me, I know that we must begin to change the way we do school because we spend too much time worrying about the grades, tests and the “Improvement Quotient” instead of what is going on in the lobby and halls of the school – where most of the action is really taking place (unless your students have to check their igear!) We have the opportunity to engage more students in more ways than ever before from more locations than we can imagine. The lobby, although it leads to the inside of the school, also leads us to the outside world and maybe we need to step out of our classes and offices and move into the lobby and take a look out our doors to see what is going on in the beyon. It really isn’t that scary  with the students there – unless we overlook their small victories and point out, in full view of others, their deficiencies. After tonight, I think I’ll start looking out and see how I might bring that view into the school. Hopefully, someday, we won’t need the lobby because we won’t need that transition from outside to inside – it will be seamless – or a lot less scary than it was tonight!!

….. lobby. But what a spectacular impression it has made upon me. We truly have the greatest jobs on earth.

Kelly