The Struth

Although I sometimes think I know it all (….. YEAH right!!!), this past week provided me with two perfect examples of how much I still have to learn. The interesting thing about being an international school administrator is that A) some people think you know it all and B) lots of people think you know nothing! I can only hope I am somewhere in the middle.

Example #1- last week we held a parent-teacher conference scheduling meeting to get all of our teachers together to ensure that schedules of siblings etc worked out. This year I decided that it was time for our school to go tech, be more environmental and to make everything easier for students, parents and teachers.

To make a long story short…… things didn’t quite go as planned. We did all the little things… tested the parent survey, collated the data using real students etc etc. But within the first 10 minutes of the meeting, it was clear that it had BOMBED! Data was missing from the survey results, schedules were messed up and instead of making things easier for teachers, I had made things harder and had wasted some of their valuable time. Uh Oh- I goofed up!

What to do? The scheduling had to be done and we weren’t going to waste another meeting doing it…. so I did the next best thing: admitted that I had goofed up! I went back to my office, opened my e-mail and wrote a sorry e-mail to the whole staff. Bottom line- I goofed up, I am sorry.

When I arrived at work the following day I was amazed at how many of my staff had replied to my e-mail in a positive manner. Many staff wrote to say thank you for admitting my mistake. It turned into a learning experience for all of us- often you need to mess up to get better. How true is that, especially in education??

Example #2- comes from one of my favorite blogs, Leadertalk.org’s “Change Management: A 21st Century Skill”. It talks about attending a recent Michael Fullan lecture where Fullan laid out his “6 Secrets of Change” (from his new book). For me the one that hit home the most was:

#1 – Love your employees – focus not only on student and customer satisfaction, but, also create schools and districts that focus on quality of life for teachers and administrators

Hmmm… love your employees….. do school administrators really have time to love their employees with all the changes they are trying to make to schools these days? How do you love your employees and maintain that professional relationship? Hmmmm…..

Answer- drink! No, I mean socialize, go out and share some time outside school. Appreciate the hard work of your staff often- not just when they do something really well like finish parent/teacher conferences. We haven’t done that enough. Uh Oh- I goofed up! In trying to change the school and make it better (I hope!) we have not had enough celebrations and thank yous with our staff.

One of the things posted in my office is The Canoe Theory (how Canadian?)- “if people are in the boat with you, they are less likely to drill holes in it!” We need to remember to bring people into our boats and to do that we need to constantly be building trust and working on our relationships. So- this Thursday is our next Staff Social and my goal is to make this a monthly event- a time to relax, leave school right away and enjoy some downtime with our staff.

An aside to this story- last Thursday we had a Professional Day with a twist. Staff were invited (told!) to take an hour in the middle of the day to exercise, do yoga, play tennis, go for a run, have a manicure etc. We even provided yoga and aerobics classes during that hour that were optional. The point is- we tried to honor the need for staff to use the professional day not only for learning, but also to have fun and do something with their colleagues that they might not otherwise do. It was a roaring success! We received so many e-mails about how it was the best PD Day ever! Cool!

I guess the point of my post is that we are always learning. Everyone goofs up- that is part of life. More importantly though is that you learn from your mistakes and keep trying to get better- that is what we want from our students and what we should want from our staff and colleagues.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 at 8:20 am and is filed under 1. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.