Mindful Listening Leadership

This fall, I've been reading Shane Safir's The Listening Leader with a group of colleagues.  The subtitle reads "Creating the Conditions for Equitable School Transformation." 

The text captured my attention right away.  It speaks to my desire to grow a collaborative, dynamic community of adults in our school as a way to increase student achievement and support school culture.  One of my favorite phrases in the whole book is in the introduction, which explains that Listening Leaders are able to "unleash unrealized energy" in their team.

My experience is that educators have a great deal of energy for the areas of practice and experience where we feel successful and empowered.  Where we have a deep, in-the-gut feeling that something we are doing with, or for, our learners, is making a real difference.  Conversely, finding the energy to tackle the things before us where we are less connected and involved is much more stressful and less inspiring.

Safir argues that leaders who adopt a Listening Mindset are better able to transform culture and release this energy.  He suggests four specific strategies to accomplish this:

Slow Down

Listen before Making Decisions

                                             

Harness the Wisdom of the Group

Distribute Leadership

                                                 
By approaching change in this super-intentional, recursive, and thoughtful way, Listening Leadership becomes a powerful driver for change.

I understood what he was talking about as I read these early chapters.  Applying it to daily practice became another story.

I had an experience with some members of my team heading into the break that really tested my understanding of these principles.  We were working through a super challenging situation with one of our very complex students.  Emotions and fatigue were running high, the student was not responding to the interventions or strategies we had in place, and the team was discouraged.

I jumped in to look for ways to support everyone.  I got a referral into our district's Inclusion Support Team, brainstormed with our Student Services teacher for ways to change things up, grabbed a few new visual tools and tweaked the student's timetable and the EA Schedule.  I hurried to get everything into the team's hands so I could help stabilize things.  I dug into my toolkit, built from all of my years supporting unique students and their teams toward success.

It was a disaster.  The strategies, even the ones that had been wildly successful for numerous other students in the past, did not improve the situation.  This young man's Classroom Teacher and Education Assistants were still frustrated.  Now they were becoming angry.  I started to feel defensive.

Two things happened that shifted my stance from defensiveness to something more open.  To nudge me from the feeling I had to hurry, to find all of the answers and allow me to be ready and able to listen for the ideas, emotions, and other information, that were needed to find our way through this difficult period.

The first was a conversation with a courageous colleague who laid it all out for me.  She identified exactly how she was feeling as a result of some of the decisions that I had made, and shared some key information about the situation with this learner that I was unaware of.  While I didn't agree with everything she said, it was an open dialogue that re-framed my perspective, and helped to shift the direction things were taking.

The second was observing the way that our Inclusion Support team interacted with the student's teacher when they visited our site.  They asked a ton of questions, about the challenging situation, strengths and interests of the student, the rhythm of the classroom, the student's needs, the adults' needs.  Every single question was one I knew to be critically important.  In hindsight, I realized that some were questions I had already made up answers to without checking to see how accurate my assumptions were.

I have worked in the area of student support for many years.  I have lots of knowledge about how to support highly complex learners, how to individualize programs, how to create visual supports and structured routines.  And a lot of the time, I believe I know how to listen and work with my team.  In reflecting on how this situation got to be so complicated and stressful, I  realized that I had been focusing on the TOOLS, not the PEOPLE who needed to use them.

Thanks to the perspective afforded to me through slowing down long enough to really listen,  to share the leadership, to harness ideas from everyone involved, we headed into Christmas break in a much better place.  We have some new tools and routines ready to go for the new year, and resource people coming to help us implement them.  We had a productive team meeting before heading off, I feel like we've mended some of the strained relationships and I'm hoping my efforts to really listen to everyone have allowed me to tweak some of our other structures and routines moving forward, so that we really can slow down and be super intentional moving forward.

Safir argues that to really do this well, Mindful Listening needs to occur with a bias toward action.  In reading a little more of this text over the break, that piece has landed as a bit of a "New Year's Resolution" for me.  My action step is going to be focusing on his metaphor of "watering for deep roots."  Safir argues that "strategic listening [can] create the mental space that can lead to more thoughtful action."

I believe I know how to leverage some of these strategies with the "big picture" stuff-  I feel good about the work we did in creating a school vision statement, planning for PLCs, building our tiered support structures by reflecting on student data.  What I learned through this experience is that it's much harder to do when emotions are running high in a crisis situation.  The irony of that is this is that mindful listening has the potential to stabilize things much faster and more effectively than digging in and handing over tools without real consultation.

Fortunately, Safir has a suggestion in this regard, as well.  If I had followed the three steps of Mindful Listening, I would have created the space I needed to navigate things in a much different way.  Being strategic and aware in approaching collaboration-  whether it's for a whole-school initiative, or problem solving with only a few members of the team, it's important to:

1. Look in the mirror....reflect on your own role and interactions.
2. Step into the other person's shoes...no matter how different their perspective, the individual involved has life experiences, information, emotions that need to be considered in moving forward...begin with a bit of empathy.
3.  Step up onto the balcony....take on the stance of a neutral observer watching your interactions with others during the discussion

This situation was an important reminder that our whole team wants what's best for our students, and that the real power to support our learners lays in our collective wisdom.   After all, They're All Our Kids.  

Being Passionately Curious

I saw this on Twitter this morning, and I can't stop thinking about it.  When I went searching for the post so that I could take this screenshot, I saw other examples of it-  but this image with the wings captures my thinking better than any of the other "inspirational picture quote" versions I came across.

I love the vibrancy of this image.  I love that interwoven into this vibrancy is a diverse set of images that span a large cross-section of interests and abilities, thoughtfully interwoven and layered to create movement and energy.  Possibility. 

I think I take issue with it just a little bit-  to me, being Passionately Curious is a special talent.  In fact, I believe the art of nurturing oneself, and others, toward being passionately curious is the most special talent of many educators.  It's what we do when we engage everyone in exploration and foster the sense of wonder the compels all of us to keep reflecting and learning even when the lesson is complete.

It's the bit of bird's nest that comes in after we've looked at habitats in science class.  It's the toppling, sticky-taped, toilet-roll-and-bent-straw ramp that shows up after we've talked about forces and gravity.  It's the outlandish-but-interesting connection that someone offers during lit circle that we keep talking about all week.  It's the Reggio Inspired primary program that has little ones building, creating, inventing.  It's inquiry, and maker-space, and innovation and problem-based learning. 

But it's not just for our kids.  It's for us, too.  It's finding ourselves in deep in the cupboard looking for solo cups or shimmering elastic thread because the perfect community building lesson dawned on us when we woke up at 3 in the morning still thinking about yesterday.

It's the gathering of 2-3 colleagues to plan a special activity, or outing, or buddy project because we're all excited about the same thing.  It's also the energy that builds after reflection on student work samples, or assessment data, and we begin moving forward as a school team in crafting an approach to help propel our leaners to the just-right next place.

I'm not the first person to be inspired by this notion.  A bit of a websearch around this idea landed me some pretty interesting websites to explore almost instantly-  check out the Passionately Curious Kindergarten, the work being done at UBC regarding Transformative Educational Leadership.  or even the goings-on at Science World.

It's such a fantastic time to be a BC Educator.  Embracing a competency-based approach with open-ended exploration is the very best way to be passionately curious students and adults.  Every day, I am blessed to wander throughout my building and hear the buzz of learners and teachers co-creating learning opportunities and exploring ideas together.  It's pretty special to be passionately curious as a community.  And it works. Our learners move forward together when we engage them in what they are curious about as individuals.  Good thing, because They're All Our Kids!

Gratitude for this Year's Lollipop Moments

The end of the school year always has me reflecting back on the year.  June craziness gives way to July appreciation.  As the dust settles, I remember all the things I love about being an educator, and take the time to savour the bits of the year that were extra special.

This year was a whopper.  After 20 years in my previous school district, I found myself in not just one, but two, new school communities.  Not only were my surroundings unfamiliar, but I quickly realized that the scale of things in a larger school district was very different from what I had experienced before.  New people, new systems, different resources, different expectations.  It took until January not to feel like I was driving to someone else’s school every day.

Now that I have time to reflect on what made the difference in the new year, I’m realizing I have some people to thank.  Some lollipops to give out.

I don’t know how many others out there are familiar with lollipop moments.  It’s a new idea for me.  I stumbled upon this great TED Talk while I was looking for something about Leadership for a group of grade 6 students that I worked with this year.

 

Drew Dudley, "Everyday Leadership"

In his talk, Drew Dudley argues that lollipop moments are moments in life where “you have made someone’s life better by something that you said or that you did...” These are moments that resonate for us, as individuals, but the person who created them isn't even aware of what they've done for us.

He defines these moments as acts of everyday leadership, explaining that “we need to redefine leadership as being about lollipop moments, how many of them we create, how many of them we acknowledge, how many of them we pay forward, and how many of them we say thank you for.”

As I was wrapping up my time with students this year, I invited kids from a number of classes to make a lollipop for a special adult in our building.  Many knew exactly who they wanted to give them to.  An EA who “didn’t give up when I didn’t understand the math.”  A teacher who “let me be creative when we made puppets.”  A counselor who “helped me with my friends and finding people to hang out with at recess.”  These lollipops weren't created quickly.  I was astounded by the love, care and genuine appreciation that went into them.

Older students watched the clip with me.  It's less accessible for the little ones, so with them, I read Cara's Kindness, a great story about paying it forward.  The idea of giving someone a lollipop to say thank you wasn't hard to wrap our heads around after we thought about kindnesses that had been done for us over the course of the school year.

As educators, EAs, secretaries, principals, custodians, we are making a difference every day, whether we know it or not.  Our bulletin board had over 100 lollipops when we were done, and each one was different.  And I know with certainty that the adults receiving them didn’t already know how deeply the students felt about the things they had done for them, because I spoke to a few who were genuinely surprised, and touched, by some of the sentiments shared by the kids.

I wish I’d taken the time to speak directly to more of my colleagues before the year wrapped up.  the easy excuse is the fact that I was inordinately busy this June, even for someone who works in education-  I was at two schools, was packing to move to a third, had a kid turning 16, another graduating from high school, and both of them leaving for an overseas trip with their Scout group.

But that really wasn't it.  I didn't offer the lollipop thank yous personally because the thank-you’s were coming with good-byes for the second year in a row, and in all honesty, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.  I had lots of lollipop moments this year.  I was warmly welcomed by two school communities. I shared two different school offices with clerical and admin colleagues who always put kids first, even when they were making it really difficult for us to do so. I worked with dynamic educators who were creative, and energetic and positive.  I had the opportunity to learn alongside some beginning teachers who asked amazing, smart questions that pushed me to become a stronger educator.  I collaborated with a diverse team to bring a highly complex group of grade 12 students through to graduation, and shared a rich kindergarten/grade one classroom with a master teacher of infinite patience.  No one gets to do all of that in a single school year.  I was given a tremendous gift.  My lollipops are for the teams at Cedar Elementary and Secondary Schools. 

 

I highly recommend Dudley’s talk if you haven’t seen it.  Next year, I’m going to collect lollipop moments right from the beginning of the year.  And, I’m going to have a stash of lollipops in my desk to help me celebrate them.  I challenge everyone who reads this to do the same.  We should be celebrating and acknowledging the grown ups.  It's the work they do every day that makes such a profound difference for our learners.  We are all working together, because They're All Our Kids.

Lessons Learned in Porlier Pass

My husband and I had an eventful paddling excursion last week.  As you read this, keep in mind that we already know that we were out there lacking some of the knowledge we needed.   We were definitely lacking the experience we needed.  The day was significantly longer than what we needed. Those were the "instant lessons" learned.

As in most circumstances where I find myself in way over my head about something, I start digging for the silver lining, the bit of learning that I can bring forward to make things easier next time.  As we brought the kayak onto the beach 30 km and 10 hours later, I looked at my husband wryly, and said, "there's a blog post in here somewhere."

No way was I going through a day like that and not garnering something of value from it.

If you're a water enthusiast, please pardon the basic definitions that follow.  They're alot more meaningful to us now than they were a week ago.

Slack tide:  that time between high tide and low tide where the water is calm and current at it's minimum.  It's tight window. About 40 minutes in Porlier Pass, between Galiano and Valdez Islands.




Flood tide:  when the tide is coming in.  In Porlier Pass, it means the water is heading back to Salt Spring.

Ebb tide:  when the tide is retreating from the shore.  In Porlier Pass, it means the water is heading out of the pass toward Vancouver.  

Flood and Ebb tides in Porlier Pass both look a bit like a fast-moving river.  In telling our story since returning home, my husband has taken to referencing it  as "the maelstrom."

Intuitive readers are already going to have identified that this was some of the deep learning that we hadn't quite solidified on our way to the Dionisio Point campground last week.  We had done some research, knew the water could be quite different at different times of day, and had planned to head in at slack tide.  We have a healthy respect for the water, and had saved tons of extra time, and had lots of extra food as well as our sleeping bags, in case we ended up needing to spend the night.  We had checked and re-checked the tide table before we headed out.

Yet, 3 1/2 hours into an already challenging paddle-  strong currents are found throughout the Trincomali Channel -  as we entered Porlier Pass under glorious sun for our picnic -  we didn't truly understand how quickly things would change.  After a 15 minute munch, (under the only cloudy skies we had the whole four days we were away), we looked back at the way we'd come, to see a vastly different body of water.  It turns out that most of the "slack time" is in the lead-up to the published time for slack tide, not after it.

Before putting the kayak back into the water, we walked out to the point to peek around the corner, and found a roiling boil of swirling whirlpools and what looked like a fast moving river, heading the opposite direction of where we wanted to go. We knew it was 6 1/2 hours before the next slack tide. The actual campsite was a bit further around the point that we'd anticipated, so our picnic spot had actually been rocky shelf,  about 500 m shy of the spot we had originally planned to go to, and was somewhere that wouldn't really be great for camping,  so we decided to go for it and see what happened.  The plan was to stick right along the shoreline and chip away at things bit by bit.  If necessary, we'd pull in along the way and spend the night.

That worked to get us through the really fast moving water right at the point.  We got through the first bit more easily than we expected.  Right up until the kayak got wedged on some shallow rocks.  After rocking side-to-side for a bit to loosen ourselves, and launching off of the rock we backed into, we shot into the middle of the pass.

By now, our clear heads were a little less clear.  We got this idea that the water looked smoother in the middle, so we stayed there, rather than heading back towards the shoreline.  We paddled like crazy to get ourselves out the mouth of the pass.  Forty-five minutes later, when we realized that the landmarks right beside us hadn't changed, (except for when we took turns having a sip of water and shot backward 100ft), it was time for a new plan.

We took a hard right turn to tuck in behind some rocks to regroup. A short breather there let us brainstorm another plan.  There was a second out-cropping of rocks right at the mouth of the pass a little further north, we decided to leapfrog to that.  We did a full 360 in a whirlpool on the way, but safely got behind it.  My husband stepped out to see what that last point looked like- we decided to hug one more corner in the kayak, rather than portaging, and went for it.

This time we made it, and headed to a beach at the southern tip of Valdez Island.  Heading north instead of south added about 7 km to our paddle by the time we would get back to Salt Spring,  but we were finally in safer water, and knew we'd be able to make it back before dark.

I'm not telling this story as a celebration of our kayaking prowess. There's no doubt we were in way over our heads and need to be a lot smarter when out on the ocean in the future.  There's a reason why people go into Dionisio at slack tide, stay over, and leave the next day, at a new slack.  Clearly our misunderstanding the difference between the direction of the water at ebb and flood meant we could have sent us halfway to Vancouver rather than propelling us out to Triconomali after lunch.

But I think I've found a pretty good metaphor for the changes coming for me in the fall.  After 20 years in the Qualicum school district, with the last 5 1/2 in district learning services, I'm moving back into a school-based admin role, with Nanaimo-Ladysmith Public Schools.  I have plenty of learning to do.  Not only do I need to develop and understanding of the district's systems and processes, I'll have TWO school communities to learn from - one elementary and one secondary.

I've been doing some research this summer.  I've had tours of the schools and met the principals I'll be working with at both sites.  I know a little about the schools' goals and focus, as well as the initiatives that the two teams have been working on.  My husband is already with the school district, so I know a little bit about the processes and overall district culture and vision.

It's like paddling in slack tide.  I'm armed with information and I'm moving forward, but without experiencing it first-hand, I don't really know what the waters ahead will bring.  I don't know where the periods of calm will be, nor do I know when the whirlpools and fast-moving current of the flood and ebb tides will start to pull me somewhere unexpected.

Like paddling in the heavy currents of the pass, I need a plan that provides me with a way to collect the information I need, as well as the moments to pause, to reflect, and to correct course, if I'm to be successful in this transition.

I've decided to draw a springboard for this plan from the Leadership Symposium I attended with Sandra Herbst and Anne Davies in early July.   We spent 2 1/2 days talking about ways to "become a system of Master Learners."

Over the course of the session, Anne, Sandra and their team encouraged us, as a group of educational leaders, to consider evidence of being master learners in our own practice.    We were asked to reflect on how our own work aligned with that of the broader system- both at the school level, and at the district level, and to consider "are you owning or renting the work?"

I believe that to successfully navigate the complex tides of the coming school year,  I need to work toward becoming a master learner, to soak up what I can of the new culture and seek opportunities to contribute to my new environment in thoughtful, deliberate ways.  Anne and Sandra call this "Assessment in the Service of Learning."   

They argue that to do this, leaders must deliberately and systematically collect data as evidence of specific goals.  This data, must take a variety of forms-  

a) products - samples of student learning, quantitative data; 
b) conversations - with teachers, students and parents, and 
c) direct observation of learning activities - by both adults and students.  

Looking for the patterns and connections in this data (triangulation), will create a picture of progress toward those goals, and help to identify the areas where additional work needs to be done.

Once I decide on my focus goals, (which I will narrow down after I learn more about the goals and focus of the schools and district), I will begin to collect evidence and build myself a portfolio.

The digital portfolio I started a few years ago is a repository.  An electronic photo album of bits of writing and PowerPoint presentations from workshops I've hosted, illustrating where my thinking was at at the time the samples were generated.  It's a good definition of my beliefs and philosophy regarding my role as an educator.

My new portfolio will be far more focused and organic.  It's not that the things I've collected are irrelevant-   in fact, I believe they're a great snapshot of my learning over time - but they are not focused on my current journey of  becoming a master learner.  They are not focused on Assessment in the Service of Learning with respect to the specific goals and objectives of the schools and district I will be working in next year.   The "umbrella" goal of my revised portfolio will be to help bring me into alignment with my new environment.

By collecting valid, reliable, evidence in multiple ways,  I'll be able to see progress toward my personal goals.  If these personal goals are drawn from the goals of the school and district, I will be in alignment with the bigger picture.  This should help me to find ways to contribute to the work being done both in classrooms in my own schools, and across the district.

Anne and Sandra suggest three questions to help focus the reflection that follows this evidence gathering:

What counts?

What matters?

What's important?

Creating this portfolio will also give me an opportunity to provide what Anne and Sandra describe as "tight support and loose pressure."  If I'm becoming a master learner, I will recognize that collecting data is not simply to help me complete a tick-box-  it's a way to check-in and learn how things are going in a deep and meaningful way.  Once I am more informed about the status of the initiatives and student learning in my schools, it will be easier to encourage myself, and my team, to keep moving forward.  And it will compel me to provide whatever support and encouragement I can to make further growth happen.

My husband and I were in over our heads when we paddled out of "the maelstrom."    Our focus and goal shifted significantly over the course of the day.  In collecting bits of evidence as things unfolded, we adjusted our plans and strategies- and our perspective on what counted, what mattered, what was important.   It wasn't until we deliberately sought calmer waters and really took stock of our environment and our learning to that point when we were able to adjust our goal and make a plan that led to a successful adventure.  It also very clearly pointed us in the direction of additional learning we need to do.

That's the bit I'll take with me in this transition. The deliberate collection of evidence in a portfolio, and intentional stops in the year to reflect on what I've learned, will allow me to construct that moment in calmer waters to take a look around my environment and to consider the variety of options and pathways available to me, helping me to make the best decision I can in moving forward at that point in time.  To provide both myself, and my team, with that tight support and loose pressure toward our goals.

In becoming a master learner, I will better be able to serve the students and staff of my new school communities.  Because, they're all our kids.