you design a student learning experience if the quality of the relationship was at the core? What personal and authentic experiences have impacted you as an educator? Share them on social media, using the hashtag #AuthenticEDU.
When we become more concerned about what we teach than who we teach, we have lost the purpose of the work.
Try This
Ask the previous year’s teacher, or a family member if necessary, the proper pronunciation of the child’s name and what she prefers to be called.
Be vulnerable and authentic with students and don’t be afraid to be transparent about your own struggles and challenges. Such a perception makes you approachable and relatable.
Begin the day with three Post-it notes on your desk. Over the course of the day, write a brief note to three different students, highlighting something you appreciate, recognize, or that makes you proud. After students have left for the day, place the three notes in a creative place where the student will find it the next day, such as inside a locker, on the textbook page he will open to next, or in a folder inside her desk.
Designate a classroom greeter who is responsible to greet each student at the door each morning or before the class period every day for a week. Students enter with their choice of a handshake, high-five, or fist bump, and a hello by name.
Early in the day (for elementary students) or at the beginning of the class period (for secondary students), provide a “one-minute reflection” opportunity. Students can ask a question about the previous day’s content, reflect on what they just learned, or share something currently on their hearts with the teacher. Handing in the reflection can be optional or completed through a digital tool such as Google Forms. This allows every student to provide confidential feedback in only a few minutes.
Don’t simply tell students that you care; show them that you do. Empty words become meaningless, whereas modeling through your actions enables personal and authentic connections.
A Closer Look
For a deeper dive into Chapter 1 as well as free tools, resources, and study guide questions, visit thomascmurray.com/AuthenticEDU1.
Chapter 2
Creating a Culture for Learning
We may not get the chance to choose which kids or families to serve, but we do get to decide what kind of climate we want to serve them in.
—Jimmy Casas
For learning to be personal and authentic, a dynamic learning culture must exist. Developing such a culture, whether as a teacher in a classroom, a principal in a building, or a superintendent of a district, becomes possible when four core pillars are solidified. It is on these pillars where such a culture can be built. Ultimately, it is within this culture where a shift in the learning experience for kids becomes possible.
The four pillars to create a dynamic learning culture:
1 Leadership
2 Interactions
3 Trust
4 Risk-taking
For learning to be personal and authentic, these pillars must be intentionally reinforced and done so regularly. A culture for learning is bound in the strength of these pillars.
Stop & Reflect
Which of these pillars is strongest in your classroom or school? Which needs to be solidified the most?
Leadership Starts with You
“What you do has far greater impact than what you say.”
—Stephen Covey
I’ve had the privilege of working for some fantastic leaders over the years. Those leaders had courage. They had articulate, kid-centered visions. They valued people first and helped foster cultures of risk-taking and innovation. Those leaders modeled the way, led by example, and saw kids as far more than data points and test scores. They were willing to challenge the status quo and do whatever it took for the students they served. They understood that to be effective, they had to lead by being personal and authentic.
Working with educators in the United States and throughout the world gives me great hope. Spending time with educators every week affords me the insight as to the vast array of work that’s being done to support our students. Many incredible things happen in classrooms every day.
I’ve worked with amazing leaders in states like Mississippi where 100 percent of the students where I served lived below the poverty line. In places like this, I’ve met dynamic, passionate, and talented educators who serve brilliant, determined, hard-working, and courageous kids.
I’ve also spent time on the other end of the financial spectrum, in some of our country’s wealthiest suburbs, where outfitting the newest virtual reality and STEM lab with the latest technology and spending tens of thousands of dollars on such products each year is more than feasible. In places like this, I’ve also met dynamic, passionate, and talented educators who serve brilliant, determined, hard-working, and courageous kids.
If I’m fully transparent in these thoughts, the converse is also true. I’ve worked with leaders in some of the most impoverished areas and leaders in some of the wealthiest areas whose leadership I’d struggle to place my own children under. These interactions have been limited, as the vast amount of school and district leaders I work with are people-loving, kid-centered, dynamic, and talented individuals who pour their hearts into other people’s children each day.
With the vast experiences mentioned above, from urban to rural, from large to small, and from poor to wealthy, incredible educators can be found in every demographic.
What I’ve come to know is . . .
. . . a school’s budget doesn’t make a great leader.
. . . a school’s location doesn’t make a great leader.
. . . a school’s size doesn’t make a great leader.
. . . a person’s title doesn’t make a great leader.
In Learning Transformed: 8 Keys to Designing Tomorrow’s Schools, Today, Eric Sheninger and I address this issue as we contrast “Leaders by Title” (LBTs) with “Leaders by Action” (LBAs):
In our opinion, the best leaders have one thing in common: they do, as opposed to just talk. Leadership is about action, not position or chatter. Some of the best leaders we have seen during our years in education have never held any sort of administrative title. They had the tenacity to act on a bold vision for change to improve learning for kids and the overall school culture. These people are often overlooked and may not be considered “school leaders” because they don’t possess the necessary title or degree that is used to describe a leader in the traditional sense. Nevertheless, the effect these leaders can have on an organization is much greater than an LBT. We
