Embrace the Contemporary, Push Innovation

After twenty years in the world of independent schools, I find myself breaking the shackles of the traditional and embracing the contemporary not only in curriculum, professional development, faculty evaluation and tuition pricing systems but in marketing as well. Gone are the days when a suburban independent school can rest on its laurels and depend upon a reputation built on several generations of academic excellence. Schools today must be innovative in order to consistently and effectively define their value proposition to the increasingly skeptical public. Branding and marketing become critical in order for a school to continue to further its mission and, let's face it, fill the seats.

The most recent project Harbor Country Day School embraced was remarkable, and it needed to be remarkable. Pantanjali, often referred to as the father of Yoga and the author of The Yoga Sutra of Pantanjali, wrote, "When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds." This is what happened to us when we began discussing the opportunity to develop a T.V. commercial. While, at first, I was apprehensive, the more we discussed the potential exposure and the ability to bring the public into our school via their own living rooms, the project took off. After the initial shooting, we were so inspired to make the best commercial we could, we became more creative, more innovative and more engaged in the process of marketing our school.

The commercial project itself is not what I want you to take away from this blog post. I will ask you to look deeper. Look within. Sometimes we need to venture outside of our comfort zone, our box, to find inspiration and innovation. You will find that once you are outside of your comfort zone, taking responsible risks, attempting to innovate, you will become inspired on a whole new level. New ideas will become exciting and your feelings about how you question yourself and what others say about you tends to dissipate. Find inspiration in innovation. Your business and your sanity may just depend on it.

Thank you, Sharon Reed, who reminded me of the above quote by Pantanjali, and who further inspired me to write this post. You can follow her on twitter by clicking here: Sharon Reed. I follow her because she makes me think.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-kuEwAqT14]

Leading From the Heart

Graduate School teaches us about the many different styles of leadership: authoritative, participative and charismatic. These are but only a few styles of which we learn and practice often. It is concerning that between the many leadership classes we take in school and the numerous books we read on the subject of leadership that the most effective leadership style is rarely showcased: leading from the heart. Leading from the heart demands more courage, more participation and more outward confidence than any other leadership style. It is the most personal, the most powerful and the most introspective form as well. It demands presence in the moment. It demands self-worth. And it demands knowing oneself well enough that we are confident in ourselves. Perhaps that is why we so rarely discuss it, because it is so demanding and so, so personal. Much like traveling the rocky road of life all alone, we are more comfortable remaining within our comfort zone. Leaders have difficulty allowing others to see themselves in their entirety, because it is just so darn revealing. This is why we must lead from the heart.

Leading from the heart can be difficult. Although the heart is wise and, at times, can be tenacious, it is also shy and reluctant to be trusting. The heart is an introvert. The heart demands you know thyself. It asks you to be confident in yourself before you ask others to follow. So, how do we help the heart grow with confidence? The journey of knowing ourselves through the heart actually begins and ends with the heart itself. Ask yourself, “can you define your heart virtue?” Is it compassion, collaboration, integrity, knowledge, honesty or a combination of all of the above? Until we can aptly define our heart virtue, we will not be able to lead from the heart.

Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, writes, "Comparing the three domains, I found that for jobs of all kinds, emotional competencies were twice as prevalent among distinguishing competencies as were technical skills and purely cognitive abilities combined. In general the higher a position in an organization, the more EI mattered: for individuals in leadership positions, 85 percent of their competencies were in the EI domain."

Martin Luther King Jr. so aptly knew his heart virtues were compassion and equality and therefore he could lead from the heart with confidence. Siddhartha Gautama, the widely acknowledged founder of Buddhism, knew his heart virtue was enlightenment and was able to lead an entire, faithful community towards inner faith and their own personal enlightenment. They both initiated reformations in their own ways. Most leaders today will not need to lead a reformation. Accordingly, we need to help others to see themselves as agents of change and encourage positive forward momentum. If we look at both Martin Luther King Jr. and Siddhartha and analyze their commonalities, we see that one might be that they both listened to themselves. They listened to their heart and then they responded to the voice they heard from within. This is the difference between reaction and reflection.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation when you were forced to make a decision and your emotions were running rampant? Often we will make a reactive decision based on what we perceive to be the truths. If we force ourselves to reflect, to look within, the truths can often be revealed, and we can respond and lead accordingly. Trust me, I have only learned this lesson from making mistakes. As a Head of School, one of the many lessons I teach the students at Harbor Country Day School is that it is ok to make mistakes. It is acceptable to fail. It is only out of failure that we truly grow and mature. I remind our students that it takes courage and tenacity to bounce back after a pitfall. Who among us has not failed at least once?

When I am faced with a challenging situation, I force myself to look within, to listen to my heart and sit still for a while. Then, and only then, do I respond. Then I act with confidence and know I am leading from the heart.

I learned some of what has shaped my perspective on leadership from professional life coach, Lolly Daskal. She is a very wise and introspective woman who helps many learn about Leading From Within.

Charlie Brown Teaches Us About Formative Assessment

During the holidays, Charlie Brown and his eternal optimism always finds his way into our hectic and harried lives. We have all seen the Halloween Special with The Great Pumpkin and his Thanksgiving dinner around card tables and beach chairs where he served toast, popcorn and jellybeans. I love how after a dismal display of a meal Charlie Brown concluded his day by singing his way through a fabulous journey with friends to celebrate at his grandmother’s house. Not surprisingly, a few weeks later he was severely ridiculed by his peers for buying a small, withering Christmas tree to cherish during the holiday season. The Charlie Brown Christmas pageant concluded with an inspiring speech by Linus that truly captured the spirit of Christmas. Charlie Brown always won in the end – even after experiencing several mishaps and setbacks. Thanks to Charles Schultz, these cartoons and its beloved characters became an American icon, and I have tried to pass on their eternal messages and enduring understandings to my own three children. The messages of optimism, kindness, generosity and respect immediately come to mind. Recently, Charlie Brown sparked a different thought: summative and formative assessment. Strange connection? Perhaps. The famous scene of Lucy Van Pelt above captures the basic principle of formative assessment. We see Charlie Brown once again fall subject to the challenges of life. Once again, he summoned the energy to challenge himself, faced his demons directly in the eye and tried to succeed by kicking the football halfway down the field. Ugh! Only to have Lucy pull it away at the very last moment, does he experience his inevitable defeat. However, he remains the eternal optimist. If only Charlie Brown knew what was happening to him each time he failed. The numerous experiences merge to help develop a young, tenacious boy who has learned to never give up when a challenge arises.

The concept of formative and summative assessment often gets confused and the difference is critical when we consider teaching and student engagement. Formative assessment is when the teacher and the student are both fully engaged in the learning process and view each assessment or small experience as an actual formation of the student. Ideally, the student is engaged every step of the way and receives consistent feedback, which provides a wealth of data from which to draw. Think of the learning process and John Dewey’s constructivist approach to learning: like building blocks each experience builds on another and constantly works towards constructing/building/ teaching the student. The goal is the fully developed student who sees learning as an ongoing process, not the one, single assessment itself. Summative assessment is when teachers assess a student’s understanding of a topic at a specific period in time, most likely after the teaching of a particular unit. Think of a dipstick gauging the level of oil in a car. Teachers assess the level of understanding at a particular moment in time through a quiz or a test. While I think both styles of assessment have their proper place in education, it is formative assessment I look to when I consider a more thorough and engaging approach to teaching. Consider the following elements that accompany formative assessment: student engagement, critical thinking, analysis, synthesis, meta-cognition, student-led conferences, differentiated instruction. Student engagement is the most critical of these because it can lead to all the others.

As educators we will not truly affect nor teach our students the necessary 21^st Century skills until we begin to look more seriously at formative assessment, rather than spending quality time and resources towards state-testing, benchmarks and consistent summative assessments. Let’s begin to teach students how to think critically, how to construct logically, how to build creatively, and how to act empathically. Great teachers will always be brilliant, masters of their subject matter, but they will also understand their students and show empathy and understanding. This is a movement we all must help propel forward.

Charlie Brown has never learned how to punt a football because he never had the chance! But perhaps that wasn’t the intended lesson? Perhaps the lesson was found in the small, difficult moment of defeat. Each time he attempted to punt the ball down the field, he learned something new. He learned to never give up. He learned something far more valuable: how to be tenacious. Is that a concept or a skill that one can assess through a summative assessment? How can one fully examine the concept of tenacity through a state test, a fill-in-the-blank quiz or a benchmark? By engaging the student in a process where teachers can gauge their learning and how they learn best by consistent formative assessments, critical skills and concepts similar to tenacity can be taught effectively and the way in which the student learns best.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nED1LulaRwY&feature=related