Teach Boldly

Years ago, I was blessed to be in a position to hold seminars with groups of educators designed to discuss and build leadership skills both informally and formally, internally – for the individual and externally for the school. As we discussed leadership skills and qualities, we would talk about new tools being put in our toolboxes as leaders. This year in Teach & Serve, I have decided to talk about many of those tools.

HUMOR 

Last week, the tool I wrote about was self deprecation. In that post, I discussed how leaders should not take themselves too seriously and they should have an ability to laugh at themselves if they are going to be successful.

This week, the tool is an even simpler one, related, but simpler: humor.

Leaders not only have to be able to laugh, those who are effective can help others to laugh. They can see the humor in the work we do. 

I once worked for someone of whom a coworker said: “that person is entirely without mirth.” 

It was not a compliment. 

Our vocations as educational leaders take us to some very serious places and into some very serious situations. The way through those, often, is humor.

Lighten up, leaders. Those you serve will be happy you did.

I love Tom Hanks. I love his acting. I love his direction. I love the movies he writes. 

Such is the case with Larry Crowne, a decidedly silly and heartwarming romance featuring Hanks’ Crowne returning to school and falling for Julia Roberts’ community college professor Mercedes Tainot. 

Good work, Hanks: writing a romance with one of the most amazing movie stars in the world. Pretty smart.

The fun of the movie is found in the story, to be sure, but, for me, also found in the quirky, at the end of her rope Tainot who rediscovers in her love of Larry her love of teaching. Though her journey from tired, punch-the-clock lecturer to inspired, make-them-think professor is predictable, it is also an arc that I think many educators go through at various times of their careers, of a school year, of a school day!

The sweetness of the movie rests in Hanks’ Crowne but works in Roberts’ Tainot. It’s worth a watch!

We never know the influence we have… While culture tends to promulgate the “those who can, do, those who cannot, teach” idiocy, there are hundreds of examples of brilliance and impactful teachers in reality and in pop culture. Every-other-week this year, I will share my brief reflections on Smart People Doing Smart Things be they in literature, in film, in music or in real life. Many will be teachers, but not all. Many will be fictional, but some will be real. All will be inspiring. Welcome to IntelliPop!

Years ago, I was blessed to be in a position to hold seminars with groups of educators designed to discuss and build leadership skills both informally and formally, internally – for the individual and externally for the school. As we discussed leadership skills and qualities, we would talk about new tools being put in our toolboxes as leaders. This year in Teach & Serve, I have decided to talk about many of those tools.

SELF DEPRECATION 

Serious stuff happens in the life of an academic leader. Very serious stuff happens.

I will not go into a litany of the items that cross the desk of an administrator or a department chair but they are varied and vast. Many of them are quite consequential.

Mistakes happen in the life of an academic leader. Very serious mistakes happen.

I will not go into a litany of mistakes I have made in my time as an administrator but my mistakes have been varied and vast. Many of them are quite consequential.

If leaders respond to everything from a place of ego and from a place of defensiveness, they will not last long in the role.

The tool of self deprecation has been one of my most important ones in my years in formal school leadership. 

I do not do everything correctly. Nor do the people around me. Things will happen. I will cause them. Some will be bad. As a leader, I need to let people know in my example – and it ought to be an authentic example – that I can be self deprecating, that I do not take myself too seriously.

This is good for the school. This is good for the leader’s soul.

Years ago, I was blessed to be in a position to hold seminars with groups of educators designed to discuss and build leadership skills both informally and formally, internally – for the individual and externally for the school. As we discussed leadership skills and qualities, we would talk about new tools being put in our toolboxes as leaders. This year in Teach & Serve, I have decided to talk about many of those tools.

PINCH HITTING

I never played baseball – not organized baseball. Okay, I never played any organized sport beyond middle school basketball and I was not any good. So, when I write about the tool of pinch hitting, I am coming from a place of very little first-hand knowledge.

But I do know that leaders who are committed to their schools are absolutely unafraid to pinch hit. They are ready to step into gaps. They are ready to fill holes. They are ready to pinch hit. Put them in, coach!

Actually, in this metaphor, the leader is the coach. The leader who is ready to take a class, to mop a floor, to set up chairs because they know it is the right thing to do is a leader who understands servant leadership.

Leaders who are ready to pinch hit for anyone at any time get it.

Be a leader who gets it.

One of the many, many tropes in comic books is that most superheroes have a secret identity. Often, the work the superhero does in her or his “other life” is something out of the ordinary – a newspaper reporter, a billionaire, a doctor and so forth. This is not true in the case of Black Lightning, one of the first African American superheroes.

Jefferson Pierce is Black Lightning’s secret identity and Jefferson Pierce has one of the most recognizable professions of them all.

Jefferson Pierce is a teacher. 

I remember discovering this as a kid and thinking, well, nothing. As a kid, the secret identity of superheroes did not interest me as much as their costumed identity by a long shot. That Black Lightning was a high school teacher did not matter much to me.

It does now. I love the idea that Jefferson Pierce is heroic in both parts of his life, for teaching is truly heroic and, as I re-read some of his adventures, I love when writers pay attention to that. In one comic he says something to the effect of “if you’ve survived a group of high schoolers reading MacBeth, you can do anything.”

Agreed, Black LIghtning. Agreed.

We never know the influence we have… While culture tends to promulgate the “those who can, do, those who cannot, teach” idiocy, there are hundreds of examples of brilliance and impactful teachers in reality and in pop culture. Every-other-week this year, I will share my brief reflections on Smart People Doing Smart Things be they in literature, in film, in music or in real life. Many will be teachers, but not all. Many will be fictional, but some will be real. All will be inspiring. Welcome to IntelliPop!

Years ago, I was blessed to be in a position to hold seminars with groups of educators designed to discuss and build leadership skills both informally and formally, internally – for the individual and externally for the school. As we discussed leadership skills and qualities, we would talk about new tools being put in our toolboxes as leaders. This year in Teach & Serve, I have decided to talk about many of those tools.

TAKE RISKS 

For an organization to grow, it has to change. Stagnation is the enemy of growth and the only way to push through it is to challenge the manner in which things have been done in the past and to find new ways to do things in the future. Discovering new modes of proceeding and adopting new approaches are necessary to the health of a school.

Leaders, therefore, must be willing to take risks. These risks should be calculated. They should be considered. They should be prudent. But leaders who never take a chance or risk failure are likely to find their communities uninspired in falling into ruts more readily than not. 

Pushing a school forward involves risk. Having a growth mindset invites risk. Healthy organizations incorporate risk. 

Leaders who never take a risk will, in the long run, find their schools stagnating around them and they will have to bear much of the blame for that.