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What can school leaders do to ensure that their faculty members, including themselves, continue to grow and learn? It is the responsibility of school leaders to create a setting in which adults learning with and from one another becomes the norm.

Collaboration focuses only on the product; collegiality focuses on the product and what the participants gained from their collaboration.

"Many studies have shown that social connections with co-workers are a strong predictor — some would say the strongest predictor — of job satisfaction. People with friends at work are happier at work.

the goal of school leaders is to create a setting in which everyone grows. When this takes place, happiness will follow.

the work of Roland Barth. As a metaphor, he cites the instructions that are given to passengers about how to proceed when using an oxygen mask on an airplane. We are always told, he notes, that the adults should place the oxygen mask on their own faces before tending to a child or an elderly person. While this sequence is counter-intuitive to our desire to take care of those who need our help, the reality is that without giving ourselves oxygen first, we will not be able to help anyone else

If collegiality is not the norm, a school cannot achieve its potential.

Teachers talking together about students.

Teachers working together to develop curriculum

one another teach. This occurs rarely, even in the best schools

observing

One way to address this anxiety is to "ask teachers to observe a peer with the goal of finding one thing they like and one idea they'll use,

In a collegial setting, teachers share their expertise with colleagues and further everyone's learning.

an elderly person. While this sequence is counter-intuitive to our desire to take care of those who need our help, the reality is that without giving ourselves oxygen first, we will not be able to help anyone else. We must take care of ourselves in order to be able to take care of others. Teachers teaching one another. This doesn't necessarily mean that a teacher stands in front of peers and imparts expertise. Although that can happen, the interaction that takes place at faculty and committee meetings offers richer opportunities for teachers to teach their colleagues. Sharing what did and didn't work yesterday, reviewing action re

Intelligences and Succeedin

Teaching a class, laudable as that may be, only satisfies this need if the administrator's teaching responsibilities cause the faculty to view him or her as someone who understands and appreciates teaching, rather than as "an administrator who teaches."

leaders must try to position themselves among the group rather than above it."

Faculty committees should be a school's R&D department, a place where academic research and development takes place.

When teachers serve as leaders of a faculty committee, they also develop their leadership skills.

An easy (and fun) way to encourage collegiality is by forming a faculty book group

First, participation should be voluntary. That may be hard for school heads to accept, but my experience is that making attendance optional works better. Only a minority of the faculty is likely to join, but because those who are attending choose to participate, the dialogue is far more likely to be open and positive.

providing food is always good. Paying for pastries or pizza always sets a nice tone.

If students are to grow and learn, their teachers must grow and learn; if teachers are to grow and learn, their administrators must grow and learn as well. School leaders must be learners. We must invest in ourselves, too.

must be visible learners

It may be difficult to admit that you don't know the answer or that you'd do something differently next time, but it's important to do so. This is part of the Make New Mistakes philosophy noted in Chapter 1. Sharing that philosophy with staff members and parents helps set the expectation that everyone is expected to learn — and that learning can be messy.

Listening well includes structuring in designated times when you have to listen and also ensuring that you listen to opinions you don't want to hear. That is neither easy nor pleasant, but it is necessary

I have found surveys to be effective in reaching out to parents.

"360-degree evaluation for growth." The term "360 degrees" captures the fact that feedback is generated from all sectors of the organization, not just from above. The term "growth" indicates that the data came directly to me, for use in my reflection and growth, rather than to a third party for the purposes of evaluation. Many organizations offer this service, and the format is generally the same. To start, I reflected on my strengths and weaknesses. Then online feedback on the same items was collected from several dozen people whom I nominated, people from all 360 degrees of the school, from trustees to staff to students' parents. A "coach" working for the company that conducted the survey then led me through an analysis of my profile, paying special attention to how my self-perceptions did and did not contrast with how others saw me.

Flipped Learning

nstead, teachers take on the role of a facilitator of learning.  They are able to work with students in small groups and have more one-on-one interactions.

We resort to lecture and didactic instruction sometimes out of necessity (I believe that there is still a time and place for the teacher to be the expert), but mostly out of insecurity. It just *feels* good to instruct and weave a compelling story for students. It *feels* like you’re doing work. It also *looks* like you’re doing work, which keeps the parents and admins happy.

Give yourself 30 minutes every couple of weeks to learn a new tech tool from Tammy's Technology Tips, Edudemic, Monica Burns' ClassTechTips, Kathy Schrock's Guide to Everything, Cybraryman's Teacher Tools, or Richard Byrne's Favorite Resources. Happy clicking!

"The time I spend helping my students to edit and refine their writing as they write is exponentially more valuable for them than the final comments I leave on their essays."

For even more information on this topic, visit Edutopia’s Resources for Technology Integration.

Families send their kids to our schools, and we must prove that we are better than local public or other school options. In other words, we ask the majority of our families to give us financial support so that their kids can get more—not necessarily different—than what their taxes pay for; the “more” is the ROI.

Furthermore, this hierarchical worldview permeates our practices—from grading to sports, we promote hierarchies cemented on ability, access, and popularity, among other things. By viewing race problems in our schools in purely cultural terms, we are articulating our hope that we will promote some hierarchies while erasing other hierarchies based on race, gender, and sexual orientation. But as we know, hierarchies intersect and sustain each other.

the demand that our teachers get better or different professional development, that we hire and admit more people of color, and that we collectively become culturally competent is a way to deal with the symptoms of racism, not with a system of racism.

Why would those who have privilege, and want to keep it by paying for a special pathway for their children, want to give it up? Anyone familiar with the college admission process knows the tensions that emerge around race and class. If our students and families are happy to embrace the language of inclusion, such superficial pretense often evaporates when college admission lists appear. It is then that we see the hard limits of our inclusivity.   The families in our communities are essentially good people who want to share, but they don’t want to be left out.

They like the idea of “giving back” but do not want to take less.

many of our enrollment challenges derive from the fact that millennial families are looking for meaning and value—not access. We need to stop worrying about providing an illusory ROI and ensure that we help our students develop lives of meaning and purpose; we need to stop worrying exclusively about leadership and prepare them for ethical and active citizenship. It is only when we can talk to our students about the need to take less so that others can have their fair share that we will be able to honestly talk about race.