LEADING THROUGH LISTENING

 This week kicks off the start of Black History Month throughout our country. I personally believe that every year, more and more people are aware of the past and the need to set aside days, weeks, months, etc. to draw attention to a group or situation is becoming less and less necessary. However, this will never mean that people should forget the purpose of drawing attention to a particular cause. Clearly, at some point in our nation's history, there was a need to draw attention to this cause and spend time educating ourselves specifically on the history of black individuals in our country. The reality is, human beings have been terrible to each other almost since their existence on the planet. Most of the world's ancient cities were built by the labor of slaves. In the grand scheme of the world, slavery has been a part of world history for thousands of years, while our country has only lived without it for roughly 150 years. By comparison, we are all still in need of learning...

 On a weekly basis, the topic comes up as to how much more of a parenting role teachers and schools can be expected to undertake in today's society. Everywhere you turn, it feels like schools are expected to do more and more that is not related to educating a child. Sure, I can always make the argument that education is more than ABC's and 123's. It is in fact about growing the whole child from a social aspect and helping young adults become productive members of society. These things are in fact true, and our teachers/school staff (and people in education everywhere) absolutely do these things on a daily basis. In fact, visit a school and you'll probably find adults working to help kids become better people and mediate situations more than what many adults may expect in traditional academics. Schools understand that we have a role in helping all children grow in every way. However, the question becomes, are schools expected to do everything and be the only entity actin...

Once upon a time, when we all began our careers or started a new position/school, we had dreams. Dreams of what we wanted to accomplish, dreams of what we wanted to see our students accomplish, dreams of what we wanted to see our school communities achieve. Throughout my travels though, I have seen too many adults tell students they should lower their expectations and downsize their dreams, rather than work to make those dreams a reality. This issue is not isolated to schools either. It can come from many locations in a child's life, but the issue is that too many children are not feeling supported and are being told what their life will be without the opportunity to experience the world around them. Unfortunately, I would say that the ratio of adults encouraging students and adults discouraging students is close to 1:1 in my career. I ask, would you be where you are today without someone throughout your childhood encouraging you to pursue your dreams? As with many things in our sc...

Almost on a daily basis, I come across situations where I find myself wondering if the people involved in the situation truly can't understand more than one perspective. One of the hot topics in our world of education for the last several years has been the concept of bias and social justice. Taking social justice out of the conversation, for today, bias is simply put the viewpoints that one holds regarding others or other things. We all have them, whether you want to admit it or not, and some are worse than others. For instance, I am biased with regard to how I open a simple bag of chips . I am convinced that opening the bag from the bottom provides fewer broken chips and better flavor and no one can tell me differently. Okay, that example is a little absurd as we all know there is more than one way to open a bag of chips, but the example demonstrates a simple bias. In our schools, philosophy on homework, grades, discipline, and much more are all subject to our biases. The nice th...

 I hope you and your family have had a safe and happy holiday week. Over the course of this holiday season, I realized that so many of us look forward to the New Year with goals and agendas that make the previous year seem like a virtual waste of time. The traditional New Year's change is a diet or exercise for most and we all know the running joke for that, they rarely last. People make resolutions and statements of grandeur about the upcoming year being better than the previous year. Yes, we all have had tough times and negative situations in the past year. It would be tough to find a human being that had the "perfect year", but is that really cause to dismiss the events of a previous year and act as if just because it's a New Year, you can be a different person. Those that can magically change due to the calendar changing should market their ability by writing a book or finding a mini-series. The truth is, it's hard to change habits and it takes work. And most ...