30-Minute Meetings

In this Harvard Business Review article, Peter Bregman argues that we should take on a "sprinter's tactic" when taking on our leadership responsibilities, and plan to accomplish things in half the time that we've previously planned.  The main example is the "30 Minute Meeting," but he also speaks about the 30 minute phone call, the 30-minute coaching meeting, the 30-minute workout.  The effect is that others are hyper-focused, too.

To make maximum use of this time, though, you need to insist on getting the most out of the 30 minutes: no multi-tasking, have a laser focus ("decide on the one thing that will make the biggest difference, and spend the 30 minutes on that"), prepare beforehand, be fully present.

The Power of Shadowing a Student for a Full School Day

            In this Education Week interview by Evie Blad, Stanford University d.school network director Susie Wise talks up the Shadow a Student Challenge (www.shadowastudent.org), which encourages principals to spend a full day following a student through his or her entire routine – classes, lunch, even bus rides. Billed as “a one-day crash course in empathy,” this initiative will take place next week (February 29^th  to March 4^th) and connect participating school leaders via social media so they can share their insights.

            Wise has been a proponent of shadowing for some time, and believes its power lies in building deeper understanding of what it’s like to be a student in the principal’s school on a day-to-day basis. “It felt like it was a kind of interesting gateway for them in terms of shifting their mindset about their role as a leader,” says Wise.

            But how is this different from principals walking around their buildings and visiting classrooms? For starters, the principal is able to downshift from hyperactive administrator mode dealing with 47 things at once and really focus on how students experience their day. “One of the things you get to see is the space in between,” says Wise. “You see transitions and you see posture. Some of the leaders who’ve done it have been surprised with how passive the student’s day is, and how much sitting there is, how many transitions there are that don’t make much sense. You don’t see that when you’re looking at a master schedule and you’re in leader mode… To a person, [principals who have shadowed students] all had realizations, really different ones, that were very profound to them.”

            How should principals decide which student to shadow? Wise suggests asking, “Who are the groups of students in your school that you know the least about? What’s most important is what you might see and how will that connect with the questions you have about your school.”

            There’s one additional benefit to shadowing, she says. It sends a powerful message to students that someone in authority is taking the time to observe and notice with a view to making improvements in the school for their benefit.

“Principals Urged to ‘Shadow’ Students” – an interview with Susie Wise by Evie Blad in Education Week, February 17, 2016 (Vol. 35, #21, p. 6), www.edweek.org

From Marshall Memo 625

Is it Wise to Showcase "Exceptional" Student Work?

Is It Wise to Showcase Exceptionally Good Student Work?

            In this article in Education Week, Sarah Sparks reports on recent studies indicating that the time-honored practice of displaying samples of exemplary student work may be a turn-off for many students. “One of the surprising, negative consequences of the approach,” says Todd Rogers, the co-author of one of the studies, “is when students are exposed to truly exceptional work, they use it as a reference point and realize they are not capable of such exceptional quality. It can lead to decreased motivation and eventually quitting if you believe the exceptional work is actually typical.” 

            “I get the irony,” Rogers continues. “When we teach and we’re doing something new, we want to show them what good work looks like.” But it’s precisely at this early point in the learning process that showing students examples of outstanding work can be the most discouraging – students haven’t had a chance to try it themselves, and seeing very high-quality work makes them doubt whether they’re capable of achieving at that level.

            Not that students should be shielded from examples of exceptional work, says Rogers. Beverly DeVore-Wedding, a veteran high-school and college teacher, agrees: “In life, the marketplace for exceptional performance is robust. We’re disproportionately likely to be exposed to exceptional work of others, rather than mediocre work of others.” But there are ways to expose K-12 students to top-notch work without discouraging them:

-   Show students work at several different levels of proficiency – low-quality, mediocre, solid, and exceptional;

-   Have students rate these work samples and zero in on the specifics of why some are better than others;

-   Clearly label exceptional work as exceptional so students don’t get the impression that work like this is the norm.

There’s another dimension to displaying exceptional work: if the students who produced it are in the class, the result can be social isolation for those high-performing students – even bullying. DeVore-Wedding suggests two solutions:

-   Use exemplary student work from previous years;

-   Have students review each others’ work in a “learning community” atmosphere where evaluation and peer-to-peer comparisons are downplayed and students focus on what they can learn from their peers.

“Study: Showing Standout Work to Students Can Backfire” by Sarah Sparks in Education Week, February 17, 2016 (Vol. 35, #21, p. 6), www.edweek.org

from Marshall Memo 625

Work-Life Balance 101

            In this Education Week article, Connecticut educator Christopher Doyle worries that many educators are not taking very good care of themselves – not balancing the intense challenges of work with family, friends, love, sleep, vacations, exercise, good nutrition, emotional health, and civic engagement. “Like American society at large,” says Doyle, “ many of us are overworked, stretched thin financially, and torn between roles as spouses, parents, and employees… Not unlike other professionals devoted to nurture, such as doctors, teachers are measured – and measure themselves – against an idealized image of excellence that involves incessant work.”

Adding even more pressure, there’s the stereotype of the lazy, unionized teacher with a cushy, tenured job and long summer vacations. In an attempt to counteract this degrading image, school and district mission statements include verbiage like The relentless pursuit of excellence. “Such single-mindedness rings false,” says Doyle, “but it, too, pits teachers against an expectation that they will spend all their time working.”

And then there are economic pressures. Teachers occupy the middle to lower tiers of the American middle class – whose wages have been stagnant for some time. Many live from paycheck to paycheck and dread being swept into the underclass of the working poor. Doyle says he knows all too many teachers living a “Dickensian” existence teaching full time, juggling second and third jobs, taking graduate classes at night, and constantly struggling to arrange for child care.

Stressed, workaholic educators are not in the best position to help students achieve some kind of balance in their overscheduled lives. All too many secondary-school students don’t get enough sleep, rarely read for pleasure, don’t regularly eat dinner with their family, and are looking ahead to their post-college lives with foreboding. Three of Doyle’s students recently told him they didn’t think they’d be able to fit marriage and children into their futures.

How can educators take better care of themselves – a “core standard” in Doyle’s estimation. Here are his suggestions:

• Put overwork in historical perspective. “Hunter-gatherer societies and subsistence-farming cultures worked far less than do modern Americans,” he says. “Many averaged three to five hours of labor per day.” Industrialization brought much longer hours, but unions have been effective advocates for setting reasonable limits on work hours – basically supporting work-life balance in the new era.

• Prioritize balance in the school schedule. This means building in time for teachers to prepare, think, meet with their colleagues, eat lunch, and pay an occasional visit to the bathroom. It’s also important not to burden teachers with unnecessary meetings.

• Get student loads, preps, and grading under control. Teachers and school leaders especially need to focus on teachers’ workload if they are reading assignments from 80-130 students. Are there simply too many students? Is too much work being assigned? How much responsibility are students taking to assess and improve their own work and get peer review? And how much time are teachers spending, sometimes late at night, correcting papers?

• Negotiate reasonable time off. This includes sick leave, care of sick children, parental leave, personal days, and sabbaticals.

• Set limits. “We need to put down our laptops, stop grading papers, and go for a walk,” says Doyle. “We have to read books that challenge and deepen our intellects. We should make dinner for our families and find time to enjoy it with them. We should get together with friends and share a laugh. We must ask ourselves questions about how much money we really need. We should show our students, through the examples of our own lives, that they can lead healthy, multifaceted existences and not be slaves to their careers.”

“Self-Care Is the Educator’s Core Standard” by Christopher Doyle in Education Week, February 17, 2016 (Vol. 35, #21, p. 20-21), www.edweek.org

from Marshall Memo 625