"Beginnings and Endings"

This time of year in the world of education is synonymous with graduations – new beginnings and new endings.  Like nature, graduation brings the promises of new beginnings.  Graduation also signals endings as well. 

Beginnings and endings produce myriad emotions.  Running the gamut of emotions including elation to disappointment, beginnings and endings are a way of life.  Tears of joy and tears of sadness blend together as transitions shift students to graduates, graduates to students, graduates to work, graduates to military service, graduates to the unknown.

Idealism and optimism are spoken with unbridled confidence as graduates set their sights on the next.  Hearing from family, friends, teachers, and community about how prepared they are unlike previous generations this class of learned graduates will be the ones that make the differences in the years ahead.  These are all said with sincerity, good intentions, and best hopes.  Yet, tomorrow waits with a different reality for many if not most of our graduates.

What we can or should be able to say with confidence is that we have provided opportunities and experiences focused on learning how to learn not necessarily why or even what to learn that will serve graduates well in the near as well distant future.  Certainly graduates have acquired skills, knowledge, and experiences as requisites for career, family, community, and life but these are merely foundational.

The beginnings our graduates face are similar to those alumni faced, yet, they are argumentatively unprecedented as well.  The demand for instant value, profit, contribution or production is significantly accelerated as well as intensified.  The pressure to apply industry or workplace skill, knowledge, and experience to create value especially from those that have little or none is exceptional.  Never in our history have graduates faced competition of this magnitude.

Many believe that little has changed.  Just as the seasons change from one to another, graduation and graduates will keep in step with traditions and transitions as if tomorrow will be the same as yesterday.  We must not be naïve to accept that the beginnings for today’s graduates are the same. 

In as much as our graduates face a beginning different from the past, parents also face an equally different ending.  Gone are the securities of knowing that college bound graduates will in four to five years time earn a degree and gain a foothold in a career.  Gone are the securities of knowing that our work bound graduates will enter the workforce in a decent job paying decent wages.  Gone are the many traditions and transitions we took for granted or assumed would always be there.  Yes, our endings are different.

There are however opportunities with beginnings and endings.  This present generation can find solace in a spirit that has laid in dormancy for several decades.  It is time for the spirit that fueled innovation, creativity, ingenuity, imagination, and risk to resurrect in communities across our state and nation.  This spirit – the idealism and optimism of youth can and must be encouraged, cultivated, and allowed to lead.  We have somehow lost sight of what builds and sustains determination, work ethic, commitment and perseverance.  We live in a time where it is far easier to be pessimistic, distrustful, cynical, and defeated.  Idealism and optimism are waiting for permission to fan fully back to life.  I am convinced that idealism and optimism is the key to both beginnings and endings.

Idealism and optimism do not mean reckless, irresponsible, or immature thinking or action.  Rather, they combine to frame and form an outlook and subsequent actions of “do ability” - the “can do” attitude, which incorrectly categorizes Americans as arrogant.  It is not arrogance – it is confidence.

The challenge therefore is to make sure that our graduates have confidence not confused with inflated platitudes or false praise.  Confidence comes from both knowing and doing; failure and success.

The best gift we must give our graduates is permission to use their idealism and optimism.  They are also the best gifts we can give ourselves.  Beginnings and endings require both. 

“In the state of blur everything must connect”

It’s official; we are in the state of “blur”. 

Stan Davis and Christopher Meyer introduce the business world to “Blur: the speed of change in the connected economy” (1998). They challenged thought leaders in business with a framework to make sense of the then unprecedented speed of change. Fourteen years later, two of their ideas “change is constant and knowledge and imagination are more valuable than physical capital” are arguably still considered as novel or some sort of aberration to our daily work.

Of particular interest to me are the recommendations of Davis and Meyer to prepare, adjust, initiate, and navigate blur. Here is one that has import today: “connect everything with everything”.

Sounds simple enough but not so easy to do.

In our recent Organizational Assessment (OA) exit interview, senior leadership listened to the OA team share their preliminary findings. One finding, though disappointing, is that many in our organization and community are not aware, understand, and support the vision, mission, strategic commitments, and expectations for results.

An additional finding was the limited awareness and understanding of the role of the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) and the consequences or penalties hanging over the head of our entire organization.

It was communicated during the interviews that staff and community members were unaware of Race to the Top and the recommendation and approval by our Board of Education to choose the transformation model to reform the school system.

The transformation model requires several actions including replacing ineffective principals, ineffective teachers, meet student performance targets set by DPI, agree to district, school, and instructional coaches, and agree, if performance growth is not achieved to relinquish control organizational decisions to DPI including budget, staffing, and instructional programming.

DPI control means that the School Board has no authority or control for decisions or direction of the school system. There are several additional requirements that must be met before the end of the instructional year 2014. The Anson County Board of Education in the late fall of 2010 agreed and approved all of these requirements.

To be fair, administration crafted the plan that included almost all monies provided by the RttT grant to be used for Human Capital Development (HCD) and the adoption of Common Core Essential Standards (CCES).

Presently, the Learning Development Centers (LDC) at Anson Middle and Wadesboro Elementary are a part of the HCD plan. With the funding provided by the School Improvement Grants (SIG) at Anson High and Morven Elementary two more LDC’s were added. The HCD plan also includes our strategic partnership with Discovery Education, Learning Together, Math Together, Pitsco, Instruction Technology integration, Power of Teaching, Total Instructional Alignment (TIA), A+, Model Schools conference, and much more.

These combined with the vision of Best of Class, the mission, “All means all”, and the Strategic Commitments provide a clear picture of “how” the Anson County Schools plans to meet or exceed state standards as well as community expectations for their schools – our schools.

There is also a general lack of awareness and understanding about the new evaluation model. The model is designed for coaching staff by providing specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and timely (SMART) feedback and input to assist staff in building capacity. It is fundamentally different in two ways.

The first is that it takes more time, more reflection, more implementation, and more focus on the evidence of effective practice including actual student learning results.

The second difference is that the principal’s assessment of teachers is public, under unprecedented scrutiny, and includes actual student performance as a measure of instructional effectiveness.

What may be confusing is that these are not my rules, the Board of Education’s rules, or Anson County School’s rules. These are State and Federal rules. As I was told by DPI when I questioned attending required training – when we said, “yes” to the money, we said, “yes” to conditions and requirements.

Change is blur.

We must work with renewed determination to connect everything we are doing with everything we are doing.

“What will it take?”

“What will it take?”  I asked our leadership team this week.

Seriously, what is it going to take for each of us to do what is right, true, and good on behalf of each learner in our school system?

This question is not reserved for leadership alone.  It is a question that each individual must ask irrespective of position in our school system.  It is also a question that each citizen must ask as well.

This question is not rhetorical.  In fact, it demands a response.

There is a “new” normal forming emerging with significant implications for educators.  The “new” normal has far reaching implications – it will take educators further than they ever imagined, cost more than most are willing to pay, and keep them longer than they wanted to stay.

This "new" normal requires unprecedented focus, alignment, and courage.  Without these three, it will be easier to regress, retreat, and resist the change, the improvement that is needed.  There is propensity to become recalcitrant without focus, alignment, and courage.

Focus requires clarity.  The purpose, mission, and vision of what the work, the change, the improvement produces must be clear. The past as well as the present informs our focus. Informing requires reflection, reviewing, planning, constant and consistent monitoring, and adjusting and corrective action when necessary. 

The "new" normal requires alignment. The alignment however begins with the values, beliefs, convictions, and commitments of "why" we are in this work.  Without an aligned “core”, alignment of programs let alone the practices, the decisions, the choices made daily to move the work forward will not happen.

This alignment of individual and organizational core is critical.  In fact, improvement alone cannot achieve the expected or desired results without core alignment.  Though an organization will experience initial success, enduring long lasting improvement will never be realized. We have achieved much and there is a sense that we are so close to achieving unprecedented results.  Yet, our “core” is not aligned fully and completely. 

The "tipping point" for breakthrough results is the alignment of the core followed by the alignment of programs and practices.  As we have learned aligning programs without aligning the core has prevented fidelity of effect and systemic utility of powerful supplemental instructional programming.  We will get there but understanding the importance of aligning the core must take priority.  Yet, how long do we wait?  Moreover, how long can our students wait for their teachers, their principals, and central office leadership to demonstrate the values, the beliefs, convictions, and commitments commensurate with the calling of being an educator?

Courage is the operating system for the "new" normal.  Courage is not a heroic act of bravery or extraordinary or Herculean feat.  Rather, it a choice, a deliberate decision to act according to what is right, what is good, and what true. 

Lacking is courage to be a "truth teller" irrespective of the cost, the price, the popularity, acceptance, and consequences being truthful in our schools and in our community.

Let me be clear, I am not talking about reckless or careless, insensitive, caustic, or possibly toxic discourse.  We live daily the incivility that, like a cancer, has spread indiscriminately throughout our community, state and nation as if by attacking, putting down, or humiliating others is playing “sport” or a “game” where there are winners and losers.  Haven’t we learned we all lose?

Civility and the motivation to build up, support, encourage, and help others takes courage.  It appears, this too has been replaced with a distorted and possibly perverted practice that although is often privately condemned is somehow allowed, tolerated, or even dismissed in the public square. 

We are better than this!

Suffice, courage like focus and alignment is a deliberate choice to act in word as well as deed. 

The “new” normal comes with a price.  It may cost us discomfort, conflict, and a gamut of emotions.   Currently however, our students are paying a price that only the adults have the responsibility, accountability and authority to control.

I circle back to my question, “what will it take?”

Further, “if not now, when?”

“If not here, where?” and

“If not you, who?

The time is now to embrace the “new” normal to truly and authentically do what is right, good, and true for each child.