I was supporting become better teachers. I desperately wanted to make my school a better school—one in which all my students would be successful. This meant I would go to the trainings and then try to apply the new strategies I'd been taught when I returned to my school. I would spend hours devouring leadership books. The leadership strategies I encountered always seemed to work in the trainings or in the books, but they rarely worked the way I'd envisioned when I tried to use them with actual teachers. And I'm ashamed to admit that when those leadership strategies didn't work like I was told they would, I often blamed my teachers. I thought they were just too resistant to change, too invested in the old ways of doing things, too focused on their issues instead of the kids.
Other times, I blamed myself. Maybe I was the problem. Maybe I wasn't the leader I thought I was. I'd reach for another leadership strategy, to make myself a better leader. I'd go to another training. I'd read another book. There was always the chance that this next new thing would be the key, the answer I sought. But it never was. Hope would turn to frustration, and the cycle would repeat itself.
I remember working with someone I would conservatively consider to be the worst teacher I've ever met. I'll call him Mr. Smith. Not only was Mr. Smith gravely ineffective in the classroom, he was resistant to any suggestion I made to help him. I had tried modeling lessons, giving him resources, and having him work with a coach. I sent him to trainings, gave him more and more feedback, and had him co-plan with a veteran teacher. I took him with me on walk-throughs to observe other teachers, gave him inspirational pep talks about how important it was for us to better serve students, and put him on a performance plan. All those tactics I'd encountered in trainings and read about in books? I tried them all. And yet Mr. Smith didn't get any better.
The day came when I finally reached my limit. After another observation of another dire instructional performance, I decided that enough was enough. There I was, sitting in my office with the mountain of paperwork I'd already collected on him and the form that would start the very long dismissal process. This wasn't my first time dismissing an ineffective teacher, and I knew the road ahead would be complicated: months of filling out more paperwork and negotiating with him and possibly the teachers union while the students in his classroom would continue to pay the price. I told myself that I was doing it for them. I told myself that Mr. Smith hadn't taken advantage of the resources I'd given him. I told myself that he was taking up time that I should be spending on doing other work.
While I was thinking all this, another teacher walked into my office and asked if I had a second. I put the paperwork aside and invited her to sit.
"You know that I've been having a lot of trouble with Kelly lately," she began.
I nodded and arranged my face into a neutral expression. Kelly had become an almost daily complaint for this teacher. She would constantly send Kelly out of class for various infractions. We had called Kelly's parents, conducted several parent conferences, worked with the guidance counselor, and tried numerous interventions, but none had worked.
The teacher continued, "I was thinking today how unfair it is that I am spending so much time on one student who clearly doesn't want to learn and neglecting those who do want to learn. I think that maybe you should just remove Kelly from my class."
I bristled when I heard that. How dare this teacher give up on Kelly! Immediately I launched into an impassioned speech about how they are all our students, and how we have to work to make sure that they all learn. I told the teacher that I knew it was hard, that I too had a "Kelly" when I was in the classroom, but it was our job to find a way to help our "Kellys" succeed.
When my platitude-filled speech was over and the teacher had left my office, I pulled out the dismissal paperwork and resumed looking for a way to get rid of frustrating, intractable, ineffective Mr. Smith. And then the hypocrisy of what I had just said hit me.
No, a part of me protested, Kelly is a kid, and Mr. Smith is an adult. We are paying Mr. Smith to be here and do a job. Kelly isn't here by choice, and she isn't getting paid. But another part of me wondered, if I expected my teachers to persist with every student until they found a way to reach that student, shouldn't I do the same when working with teachers? They weren't allowed to give up, but I was? And yet, when I mentally scanned all the leadership strategies I'd tried, I couldn't think of anything else I could do except dismiss Mr. Smith.
I sat back in my chair and closed my eyes. Then, from out of nowhere, a new question came to me: What would I do if Mr. Smith were a student in my classroom? It was just the switch I needed to flip. Freed from the confines of "leadership strategies," a host of additional ideas came to me—new, tangible things I could do right away to help him grow as a teacher.
The next day, I sat down with Mr. Smith, and instead of "leading him," as I had always done, I began to deal with him, one human being to another. I talked with him about what my vision was for the school. I was honest about what I saw in his classroom. However, instead of going on to list (again) the go-to strategies from the trainings and books—things like "provisioning," "dip-sticking," and "increased wait time"—I talked to him about what I believed the root cause of his classroom dysfunction to be. He was doing a lot in his classroom, but very little of it was promoting his students' learning. I asked him to focus on that … just that. Instead of inundating Mr. Smith with materials and yet another round of generalized support, he and I co-created a way for him to get what he really needed to promote tangible student growth. Instead of filling out another "improvement plan," we just agreed what we would do next. Then I put a system in place that allowed us to monitor his progress and him to be accountable for the outcome. No stress. No fuss. It was the best conversation we'd had in months.
A few days later, I walked into Mr. Smith's classroom and saw, for the first time, a little improvement: he was trying to stay focused on one learning target and attempting to connect his warm-up to the learning goal for the day. Granted, he still had a long way to go, but something had begun.
At that moment, I understood that the real problem I'd been having with this teacher wasn't the teacher himself, and it wasn't me. It certainly wasn't that I needed another leadership strategy. The real problem was that leadership strategies are fallible, and they fail pretty often. Sure, these strategies work when circumstances are perfect.
But what do you do when things aren't "perfect"?
You Need Something More Than Leadership
I'm assuming that you're reading this because you want to make a dramatic difference in the lives of students and turn your school into a rave-worthy success story. Maybe you've been struggling for a while now because you can't seem to get your school unstuck from years of toxic cultures, low expectations, and underperformance. Or maybe you've already reached a certain level of success, but you want more. You want to turn the corner from good to great.
If any of these statements describes you, I've got some questions:
How long have you been trying to weed out the "bad" teachers so that you can finally move your school forward?
How long have you been chasing, checking, and correcting teachers in the hope that they will get on board with your vision for your school?
How long has your vision been held hostage to teacher resistance?
How many years have gone by without any serious improvement?
How many books and programs have you purchased, hoping that they will erase the challenges you're facing?
How many school improvement initiatives have you started, only to have them fizzle out before the end of
