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Parents as partners. Parents have provided very important instruction for many reform leaders. Joe Ryan, now principal of Mathews Elementary School in Columbus, Georgia, told about a lesson he learned from a parent to whom he was trying to deliver some bad news.
This incident occurred in 1982, when we all had a different idea about retaining students. One of our cafeteria workers had a son who was struggling in school. He barely passed fourth grade, and since most of the students in the school were from upper middle class families, I knew he could not keep up in fifth grade. I advised the mother that her son would be better off staying in fourth grade, because he could never pass fifth or sixth grade without repeating fourth. With my college education, I thought I knew what was best for him.When I got through talking, she said to me, "I appreciate what you said, but I want him to go on to fifth grade. If he fails, I want it to be because of what he has done, not what I have done." The student sailed through fifth and sixth grade, and I don't know where he is today.
Since then I've never predicted failure for any of my students. Wisdom and common sense do not come from education; they come from practical experience and understanding people. We can learn them from anyone.
Angry parents are often powerful educators, challenging leaders to resolve conflicts in ways that leave everyone wiser and more committed to students' success. Dahyana Otero, principal of Bryant Elementary School in San Francisco, recalled one incident in which parents and teachers seemed to have lost sight of their shared interest in a child's welfare:
As the children were getting on the bus one afternoon, a fight broke out between two students. When the teacher tried to stop it, an older cousin of one of the students got involved. The situation escalated, and the teacher sent the three students to speak to me. One child was out of control and refused to come. A couple of teachers restrained him and brought him into the building.The next day I received a call from the child's mother. She was very angry because the teachers had "grabbed" her child. She wanted to write a letter to put in the teachers' personnel files and thought I should do likewise. She also stated that she did not ever want a teacher to touch her children.
I thanked the parent for informing me of the problem and asked if she could come in so we could meet with the teachers involved. She agreed to come in the next day. I called both teachers and asked them to explain in detail what had occurred. They informed me that the child was out of control and insisted on getting on the bus, so they had to restrain him and bring him into the building. They said that they did not feel it was safe for him or other students to leave him on the bus or outside unsupervised until he calmed down. I agreed with their assessment; children's safety must be our first and foremost responsibility.
The mother came in, still very angry. We welcomed her and offered her a cup of coffee and cookies; her tone changed by the time we sat down. We all listened to her concern. I explained the legal responsibility of staff and school district policy regarding children's safety, and the teachers explained their perspective. By the time we finished the meeting, the parent understood the reasons for needing to restrain the child. We concluded feeling like partners in taking care of all children.
Sometime parents' anger is a cover for a deeply held anxiety about children's success, and for some, it stems from the parents' own poor experience with schools. Earl Martin, who is now a principal in Olathe, Kansas, told about an event that underscored his commitment to learn by listening.
One of the things I have to work at is listening. . . There are many situations where I have to make fast-paced decisions, but I still try to take a little time to listen to what someone else is saying rather than trying to force things to happen. Efficiency works better with things than with people. This is a story that taught me about listening.A few years ago a parent who was very upset with a teacher requested a meeting with the teacher and myself. He was very angry, very hot, and he wanted the teacher's head on a platter. He felt the teacher was continually coming down on his kid and not giving him any opportunities for success, and there were some specific events that made him come to this point. He was one of the most angry parents ever to come into the school.
Anger usually responds to anger, and the teacher met his anger with her own anger. A conflict was brewing between the parent and the teacher. Fortunately, I had a good relationship with the teacher, and we allowed the parent to talk about his anger. It was a dramatic experience, and the parent moved from anger to a very personal level. He shared his own difficult experiences as a child. He was an odd duck kind of person, and so was his child. The child was almost reliving some of the parent's bad experiences. Moving from anger to tears, the father was able to describe those experiences to us. The discussion moved quickly to a different level, and we provided assurance of respect for his son and the differences in learning styles.
He left after almost two hours, by then clearly supportive of the teacher and the school. He came in wanting to demand removal of his son from the teacher and was given a chance to express his concerns and vent his outrage. When we listened, it allowed us to reach a common level, to solve a problem for the child that had never been solved for the father.
Corporations as partners. In addition to parents, other members of the community make good school partners, and understanding how they might be drawn in is the hallmark of many good school leaders. Donna Kellam, principal of Alimacani Elementary School in Jacksonville, Florida, found that sometimes asking a small, well-bounded favor generates a broader collaborative effort.
When I opened a new elementary school in 1990, I kept in mind two guiding ideas: Lyndon Johnson's claim that "the vision for America is not that of the President but that of the people" and Carnegie's epitaph, which cited the benefits of surrounding yourself with people better than you are. My goal was to set up a superior school for the 21st century. The vision for the school was collectively formulated by parents, teachers, students, and community. I made it my job to establish partnerships with business and higher education to help realize the vision.One of the businesses I approached about forming a partnership was the Mayo Clinic. For a variety of reasons, they were not then willing to become "official" partners. They would, however, happily be a site for field trips. After some thought, I called the CEO and invited a staff member to join our newly formed advisory committee to help shape the vision of the school. He sent his human resources person, with the notion, I assumed, of wanting the person responsible for Mayo's hiring to get inside information about the schools in Jacksonville. Mayo's representative served for the year, becoming increasingly involved with our school. At the end of the year, he signed Mayo on as an official partner. Today Mayo is proud and vocal about the partnership and has fully equipped the school's math/science lab, acted as a key player on the school's career days, and recently received the highest business partnership award given in Jacksonville. Students benefit from the lab, the tutors, and the role models. The affiliation with Mayo has tremendously increased the self-esteem of teachers as they have the opportunity to interact with other professionals.
Teachers as partners. We think of teachers as the naturally occurring partnership group in a school, but when reform happens, often faculties find themselves divided into "us" and "them" camps. David Pava, principal of Logan High School in Union City, California, had to puzzle his way through the challenge of building a unified team from a fragmented staff:
During our restructuring effort at school, the steering committee ("us") was disappointed that the staff ("them") had not become as involved, motivated, and energized about the "new principles" that were going to define the school as we were. For several hours, the committee discussed and argued about how to get "them" to be willing participants in change.Through this discussion, I think I was able to help them (and me) to recognize some fundamental issues in leading a school through change. My ability to get the leadership team to trust the competence of the staff was a key. I had to help them internalize a belief that when teachers feel trusted they will join in changing the school for the better. Also, I recognized that my ability to recognize the special skills, talents, and abilities of each member--the zealots, the visionaries, the analysts, the caretakers--with respect to restructuring will help sustain it. The typical education system doesn't trust the teaching staff. For our reform to succeed, we had to cultivate that trust.
Internal team building is an early and ongoing challenge in any reform effort, especially in secondary schools where departmentalization can make getting together logistically difficult even under ordinary circumstances. Joining previously existing teams demands special leadership skills as well as time to exercise them effectively. Rainer Houser, principal of Edmonds-Woodway High School in Edmonds, Washington, catalogued the kinds of expertise he had to acquire to create one great new school out of two traditional institutions:
The greatest challenge to my leadership was in merging two rival high schools, each very different from the other, with communities not emotionally sold on a merger. I was hired by the Edmonds School District as the planning principal for the merger and given a year to conclude the process.The leadership qualities and skills needed to achieve this goal were extensive; the assignment tested every one of my leadership traits, learned or inborn. Coming from the outside, I was seen as an unbiased person, but also one who had not yet established the confidence and trust of the parties to be dealt with: the two communities, two student bodies, two opposing traditions, two staffs with differing "cultural" values.
Organizing, listening and categorizing, compromising, empathizing, befriending, sharing expertise, and never losing sight of the goal became essential. My biggest initial task was to identify and organize everything that had to be dealt with to accomplish the merger. Then, I had to get good representatives from the appropriate groups to solve problems or recommend how to do tasks.
My most consuming "people" focus was on the two student bodies. I was completely occupied with getting to know them, planning with them and their reps, constantly informing them about--or letting them discover--the positives of merging, and constantly being a positive, enthusiastic, and tireless advocate of creating a new school much better than the ones they had before. I really worked to develop student advocates and we sponsored lots of joint activities--and it worked! As students became converts, so did their parents, and as parents became convinced, they expanded the support of the communities at large.
Sharing my vision of what a new school should be, and allowing the two staffs to be partners in this also began to point the staffs in a new direction. Although they were my toughest sell, they did come around!
Participants' stories about their partners and partnerships reveal the deep-seated beliefs about reciprocity that inspire even the most directive leaders. Those who begin with a question--how can we solve this problem?--listen to responses from many sources before they guide the school community toward a plan. Those who begin with strongly held views of their own find ways to win support for initiatives that, even as they are evolving, take on the features that reflect the stakeholders' contributions. Sustaining reform when it has so many kinds of support does not then depend on any one person's commitment. The partnerships arising from an interested, collaborative approach offer ongoing refreshment for the collective enterprise.
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[Stories of Vision and Values]