A principal remembers how she built trust
2. Giving and receiving feedback with grace and skill
3. A Georgia district works to improve classroom observations
4. Douglas Reeves takes on five myths about grading
5. Enlisting students to comment helpfully on each others’ work
6. Unintended consequences from New York City’s discipline policies
7. The minefield that girls and young women must traverse
8. Thomas Friedman on what the new era portends for young people
9. Short item: An online social-emotional survey
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Teaching Your Students How to Have a Conversation | Edutopia - 1 views
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The Marshall Memo Admin - Issues - 0 views
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“When schools dig in on the underlying reasons why kids violate norms, rather than reflexively and automatically punishing and sending kids away, outcomes can change quickly and dramatically. It’s especially important for everyone in a school to dig deep to decrease head-to-head conflict and understand behaviors that are often quickly labeled insubordination or disrespect.”
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“Trust happens through thousands of small, purposeful interactions over time,” says Sarah Fiarman in this article in Principal. “[L]eaders earn trust when they keep promises, respond when teachers ask for help, and have difficult conversations with adults to ensure high-quality teaching for everyone.” Integral to all this is listening well, speaking wisely, and acknowledging one’s own biases.
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“This requires slowing down, checking to be sure we understand correctly, and sharing back what we hear.”
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Meeting anger or frustration with genuine, compassionate interest builds trust.
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Changing course based on input is a sign of integrity, not weakness.”
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A key value she worked to communicated was about listening to dissent and changing course if necessary.
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Fiarman found that making quick visits to classrooms every day communicated respect and made her far more knowledgeable about instruction.
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it engenders trust when your boss can speak to the specifics of your work.”
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for practice to be an effective tool for improvement, students need to be pushing the limits of current performance and getting continuous feedback – very difficult to orchestrate for 30 students working in their bedrooms. Second, as soon as teachers give grades for practice work, the incentive is for students to play it safe and not push into challenging or unknown territory.
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Here are their ideas on making feedback less threatening and more productive: • Separate coaching from evaluation.
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“Coaching sessions should include no rubric scoring or other evaluations,”
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Be thoughtful about receiving criticism. “The person getting the feedback has the power to decide whether it’s on target, fair, or helpful,” say the authors, “and to decide whether to use the feedback or dismiss it.”
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When feedback rubs you the wrong way, it’s also important to dig deeper to understand what’s really going.
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Be noisy about the importance of improving your school’s feedback culture – for students, for teachers, for parents, and for yourself.”
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In this article in All Things PLC, consultant/author Douglas Reeves confronts these widely espoused misconceptions about grading:
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if grades were effective motivators, homework completion, classroom engagement, and overall diligence would be sky-high. Not so!
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“Asking such questions helps me counteract my unconscious bias,” says Fiarman. “Recognizing the pervasiveness of bias is an important first step. Acknowledging that I might make mistakes because of this bias – then actively working to counter it – builds trust.”
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the only feedback that matters is that the work was finished on time and correctly.
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it’s unfair and demotivating for students to have their final grade pulled down for practice work.
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Myth #3: Grades drive future performance. True, there’s a correlation between good grades and college success, and between poor grades and dropping out of school, but Reeves questions whether grades cause success and failure.
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While it is possible that intelligence and work ethic forge the path from kindergarten to Ivy League and Wall Street, it is also possible that zip code, tutors, and connections – all artifacts of family socioeconomic status – are the underlying causes.”
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Teachers giving zeros for missed assignments and refusing to accept late work lets students off the hook – and starts a spiral of doom with their final grades.
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Averaging grades through a semester punishes students for early failures versus rewarding them for using early problems to improve final performance.
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“Rather than using the last two months of the semester to build momentum and finish strong,” says Reeves, “because of a punitive grading system, they are doomed to failure well before the semester is over. There is nothing left for them to do except cut class, be disruptive, or ultimately, quit school.”
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“grading policies are matters of equity, with disparate impacts on students, particularly based on ethnicity and gender. Boys and minority males receive lower grades just as they are more likely to be more severely disciplined for an infraction. Girls receive higher grades for the same level of proficiency. If racial and gender disparities of this sort took place in any other area of public life, the consequences would be swift and sure.”
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Instead, he suggests replacing each statement of fact – Punishment deters unwanted behavior – with a testable hypothesis – If I penalize students for late, incomplete, and absent homework, then student achievement will improve – and conducting real-time experiments within the school.
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He’s found that non-evaluative comments are “easy to receive, easy to give, and easy to act on.”
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Teaching sentence stems can be helpful: I’m not sure I understand the opening of this piece… I’m not sure why you did this; can you explain it more?
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Be specific.
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Prior to peer feedback, the teacher should introduce a rubric and lead the class in a group critique of an exemplar paper, focusing on suggestions that will make a difference.
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The teacher might also display samples of feedback statements and have students break into groups and rank them from helpful to unhelpful, taking note of sentence starters and phrases they can use in their own feedback conversations.
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Be timely. One of the greatest advantages of well-orchestrated peer feedback is that students can get comments on their work immediately, rather than waiting days, perhaps weeks, for the teacher to wade through piles of papers.
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“Unfortunately,” Eden concludes, “by second-guessing teachers’ judgments about how to maintain order, policymakers and district administrators are likely harming the education of many millions of well-behaved students in an effort to help the misbehaving few.”
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“[T]hey are encouraged more than ever to present themselves as ‘sexy’ – not about being attractive or beautiful, but a very narrow, commercialized idea of sexy. What’s particularly complicated is they’re sold that idea [of sexiness] as being a source of personal power. There is a complete disconnect between that image of sexiness and an understanding of their bodies, their own wants, needs, desires, and limits, what those might be, having those respected.”
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young women “are almost conditioned, starting in middle school, to have their bodies publicly commented on by young men, [and] they don’t think they have any power to really stop it.” In schools, she says, the “everyday chipping away of girls’ self-worth by reducing them to their bodies is completely ignored.”
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We tend to silo conversations about sex as if it is not about the same values of compassion, kindness, respect, mutuality, and caring that we want our children to embody in every other aspect of their lives.”
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The Internet – “Unfortunately,” says Orenstein, “the first thing kids Google is porn. The average age that kids today are exposed to porn, either intentionally or not, is 11. We have to ask what it means that kids are learning about sex from that realm before they’ve even had their first kiss and how that’s shaping them, their attitudes toward sexuality, and their expectations of sex.” Parents and schools need to explicitly teach kids to apply a critical lens to what they’re seeing, and shape values that will help them safely and wisely navigate this very challenging era.
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“If you want to be a lifelong employee anywhere today, you have to be a lifelong learner.” He quotes education-to-work expert Heather McGowan: “Stop asking a young person WHAT you want to be when you grow up. It freezes their identity into a job that may not be there. Ask them HOW you want to be when you grow up. Having an agile learning mind-set will be the new skill set of the 21st century.”
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“While people usually gain power through traits and actions that advance the interests of others, such as empathy, collaboration, openness, fairness, and sharing, when they start to feel powerful or enjoy a position of privilege, those qualities begin to fade.”
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Behaviors like these undermine leaders’ effectiveness by depressing the performance of those around them, and are ultimately self-defeating.
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power puts us in something like a manic state, making us feel expansive, energized, omnipotent, hungry for rewards, and immune to risk – which opens us up to rash, rude, and unethical actions.” But it turns out that simply being aware of those feelings – “Hey, I’m feeling as if I should rule the world right now” – and monitoring impulses to behave inappropriately helps keep those behaviors in check.
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When Keltner works with up-and-coming executives, he counsels them to remember and repeat the virtuous behaviors that helped them rise in the first place and develop three essential practices: empathy, gratitude, and generosity.
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To practice empathy: - Ask a question or two in every interaction, showing genuine interest in the subject. - Paraphrase important points made by others. - Listen with gusto, orienting your body and eyes toward the person speaking and verbally showing interest and engagement. - When someone comes to you with a problem, don’t jump right to judgment and advice but say something like, “That’s really tough” or “I’m sorry.” - Before a meeting, take a moment to think about the person you’ll be with and what’s happening in his or her life.
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The alternative mindset is that people can grow professionally and managers can change the way people perform through effective coaching, management, and intrinsic rewards like personal development and making a difference.
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“From Silicon Valley to New York, and in offices across the world, firms are replacing annual reviews with frequent, informal check-ins between managers and employees.”
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One observer called the traditional performance evaluation a “rite of corporate kabuki” that restricted creativity, generated mountains of paperwork, and served no real purpose. It was also an incentive to put off bad news until the end of the year, at which point both manager and employee may have forgotten what the problem was.
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There’s one more reason: once-a-year reviews focus on past performance rather than encouraging current work and grooming talent for the future.
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To practice gratitude: - Make thoughtful thank-yous a part of how you communicate with others. - Send colleagues specific and timely e-mails or notes of appreciation for a job well done. - Publicly acknowledge the value that each person contributes to the team, including support staff. - Use the right kind of touch – pats on the back, fist bumps, high-fives – to celebrate success. • To practice generosity: - Seek opportunities to spend a little one-on-one time with people you lead. - Delegate some important and high-profile responsibilities. - Give praise generously. - Share the limelight – give credit to all who contribute to the success of your team and your organization.
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employees, especially recent college graduates, learn faster from frequent, detailed feedback from mentors and superiors. Second, companies realized they needed to be agile to survive and thrive in the competitive, ever-changing marketplace and real-time performance monitoring and feedback led to more rapid adaptations. And third, managers saw that teamwork was key to innovation and productivity and moving from forced annual ranking to frequent individual accountability was more conducive to teamwork and better results.
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Studies of the workplace show that the time employees spend helping others is as important to their evaluations and chances of promotion as how they do their jobs. And Grant’s own research on “givers” (who enjoy helping others) and “takers” (who are focused on coming out ahead) shows that givers consistently achieve better results.
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on the most difficult part of his exams – the multiple choice section – if a student was unsure of an question, he or she wrote down the name of another student who might know the answer – like asking for a lifeline on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” If the classmate had it right, they both earned points; one person’s success also benefited a classmate. Grant reports that this made a big difference – more students joined study groups, the groups pooled their knowledge, and the class’s average score went up 2 percentage points compared to the previous year. Why? Because one of the best ways to learn something is to teach it to someone else, and that’s what was going on in the groups.
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There was something else going on in the lifeline idea: transactive memory, or knowing who knows best and taking advantage of their knowledge. It’s easier to get help if you know where to look.
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In this Chronicle of Higher Education article, Ellen Boucher (Amherst College) says the “pressure of perfection” is causing lots of stress for students in their teens and twenties, contributing to the rising suicide rate in this age bracket.
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The burden of multiple obligations can seem insurmountable.”
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Sociologists have shown that students from less-privileged backgrounds often have trouble understanding the unwritten rules of college life – the so-called hidden curriculum… [A]sking a professor for an extension doesn’t always come naturally. It might not even occur to them as an option.”
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all students can elect to take a two-day grace period on any paper, with no questions asked.
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“Since changing my policy, I’ve seen higher-quality work, less anxiety, and fewer cases of burnout.
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Rebrand. A more inviting name for these perennial meetings is “progress conferences.” This is more positive and doesn’t seem to exclude foster parents and guardians.
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Finesse the childcare issue. “To pay a babysitter to watch your three younger siblings so a parent can attend a conference is not going to happen,” says Ohio high-school teacher Allison Ricket. She invites parents to bring along other children and provides crayons and paper in an area at the back of her classroom where they can entertain themselves during conferences.
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Accommodate. Some parents need an interpreter (children shouldn’t be asked to translate) and support with disabilities.
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Change the dynamic. It makes a difference if a teacher sits side by side with family members and doesn’t hold a clipboard or pad of paper; open hands suggest an open mind.
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Involve students. Progress conferences are much more helpful when students are at the table reporting on their progress, challenges, and goals. Advisory group meetings focus on preparing students to lead parent conferences and lobby their parents to attend.
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• Listen. “Parents usually come in having an idea of what they want to talk about, so I like to be open and ready for whatever they need,” says Ricket. Although she has students’ grades and portfolios on hand, she lets parents go first and is careful to empathize with any concerns they have.
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“mathematics is better taught when everyone shares in consistent language, symbols and notation, models and schema, and rules that support developing learners. The idea behind this comprehensive agreement is not unlike a schoolwide behavior management policy – whereby children hear the same phrases, share identical expectations, and experience practices that are common and consistent year after year across classrooms and throughout the school.”
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Language – Moving from less conceptual language – borrowing, carrying, reducing fractions, the “Ring around the Rosie” property – to more mathematically appropriate language – regrouping, simplifying fractions to the lowest terms.
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Symbols and notation – For example, writing fractions with a slanted bar 3/8 may confuse students who think the bar is the numeral 1 and think it’s 318.
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Models and schema
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Number lines or graphics should be consistent through the grades, for example, a graphic showing two parts next to one whole.
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Rules
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“This unified approach is particularly helpful for students who struggle,” conclude Karp, Bush, and Dougherty, “as it provides a recognizable component to new content. Additionally, all learners in a school can make connections among ideas in a unified and collaborative culture that promotes stronger learning in mathematics.”
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"Online Resources for Teaching About the Presidential Campaign In this article in Education Week, Madeline Will shares five free classroom resources for teaching and discussing this year's election: - Letters to the Next President 2.0 www.letters2president.org - Students' letters to the 45th president will be published by PBS member station KQED and the National Writing Project. - Teaching Tolerance Election 2016 Resources www.tolerance.org/election2016 - These include a civility contract, civic activities, and PD webinars. - iCivics www.icivics.org/election_resources_2016 - Materials on the basics of democracy, with an interactive digital game in which students manage their own presidential campaign. - C-Span Classroom www.c-spanclassroom.org/campaign-2016.aspx - Primary sources with historical and contemporary video clips and related discussion questions, handouts, and activity ideas. - Join the Debates www.jointhedebates.org - Curriculum materials for collaborative discussions on issues in the campaign and debates. "Educators Grapple with Election 2016" by Madeline Will in Education Week, September 14, 2016 (Vol. 36, #4, p. 1, 12-13), www.edweek.org "
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Tips for Coaching Teacher Teams | Edutopia - 0 views
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It can be very, very, painfully slow to build trust in a group of adults -- but it can be done, and you as the facilitator have to believe it can be done.
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As a facilitator, it's our job to clarify purpose and raise it, integrate it, and reference it all the time.
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When we do things together that are new and challenging (but within our zone of proximal development), our brains actually produce hormones that make us feel good and feel closer to each other.
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even if we trust and like each other, we need to know why we're there.
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Purpose needs to be connected to a school's mission, vision, and goals. When there isn't alignment and correlation, again, we can get lost.
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Trust grows in tiny little ways when people are open and authentic, when they ask real questions and listen to each other, when they share their stories and others hold space for those stories, and when they do things together and those things go well. So create space for speaking and listening, ensure that everyone is participating, and then give them something to do.
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while you can have a lot of power in a team, you may not have had the skill development to do so.
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And then it happened! They opened up and started sharing their fears and concerns, they asked meaningful questions, and they started learning together
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What's Missing from the Conversation: The Growth Mindset in Cultural Competency - Indep... - 0 views
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“In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them. They also believe that talent alone creates success — without effort. They’re wrong,” according to Dweck’s website. “In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work — brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment. Virtually all great people have had these qualities,” according to Dweck’s website. (See graphic by Nigel Homes.)
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The “All or None” myth teaches us that there those who are “with it” and those who are not. Under this myth, those of us who understand or experience one of the societal isms (racism, sexism, classism, ableism, ageism, heterosexism, ethnocentrism, etc.) automatically assume that we understand the issues of other isms.
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This myth keeps us from asking questions when we don’t know; we spend more energy protecting our competency status rather than listening, learning, and growing.
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In the growth mindset, we understand and accept that there is always room to grow. No one can fully master all aspects of cultural competency for all cultural identifiers, and mistakes are inevitable. With humble curiosity, we seek to better understand ourselves, understand others, develop cross-cultural skills, and work toward equity and inclusion.
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The “Mistakes and Moral Worth” myth teaches us that those who offend or hurt must be doing so because they are bigoted and morally deficient, and good-hearted people do not speak or act in ways that marginalize. Under this myth, those of us who make an offensive comment, even if unintentional, are attacked as though we had professed to be a member of a hate group.
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This myth leaves us afraid to speak our mind for fear of public shaming. It keeps us focusing on our intentions rather than on our impacts. We try to prove our moral worth by debasing others who have displayed shortcomings.
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In the growth mindset, we understand that good people can make mistakes. Mistakes do not define us.
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When others make mistakes, we are likely to respond with patience and desire to teach, understanding that it’s possible to dislike an action without disliking the person.
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Under this myth, those of us who’ve had some training to understand another’s identity and difference assume that we have learned everything we need to be competent.
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We also believe that relationships can “fix” our misconceptions about a whole group of people.
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This myth leaves us slipping into complacency and clinging to a false sense of mastery, reluctant to look for authentic understanding and growth. It makes us think, “If we just find the right all-school read, the right professional development workshop, the right speaker for the MLK assembly, we can fix all the problems at the school.”
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In the growth mindset, we understand that bias and prejudice, as Jay Smooth puts it, are more like plaque. There is so much misinformation in the world reinforced by history, systems, and media. If we are to keep the myths at bay, we must get into a regular practice, much like brushing and flossing every day.
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This article offers up several ways in which a fixed mindset can prevent us from better understanding diversity and how a growth mindset can move us in the direction of inclusion and equity.
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shared by Jill Bergeron on 10 Mar 16
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1. What makes a team effective? 2. A new perspective on closing the achievement gap 3. Project-based learning 101 4. A school network experiments with high tech and student choice 5. Opening up a daily 40-minute block in a North Carolina high school 6. How to hold onto high-quality new teachers 7. The effect of reading about the struggles of accomplished scientists
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Project Aristotle, as it was dubbed, found that some team characteristics that seemed intuitively important – members sharing interests and hobbies, having similar educational backgrounds, socializing after hours – didn’t correlate with team success.
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The ‘who’ part of the equation didn’t seem to matter.”
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Then Project Aristotle began looking at group norms – the culture of unwritten rules that guide people when they collaborate – and hit pay dirt. It turned out that two group norms were shared by virtually all of Google’s most effective teams: - Equal air time – In teams that got the best results, members participated roughly the same amount during meetings. “As long as everyone got a chance to talk, the team did well,” said Google researcher Anita Woolley. “But if only one person or a small group spoke all the time, the collective intelligence declined.” - Interpersonal sensitivity – Effective team members had the ability to intuit how colleagues felt by their tone of voice, facial expressions, and other nonverbal cues. The members of less-effective teams were less tuned in to their teammates’ feelings.
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The behaviors that create psychological safety – conversational turn-taking and empathy – are part of the same unwritten rules we often turn to, as individuals, when we need to establish a bond. And those human bonds matter as much at work as anywhere else. In fact, they sometimes matter more.”
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In the best teams, members listen to one another and show sensitivity to feelings and needs.”
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He believes there are two “ubiquitous features of conventional school environments” that trigger and reinforce the psychological factors noted above, augment the disadvantages with which minority students enter school, and feed the peer pressures to disengage from schooling – all of which creates a self-reinforcing downward spiral of achievement. The two features are: - Students being given work that is too difficult for their current academic level; - Students getting low grades on their work rather than frequent, individualized, objective feedback.
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“The hypothesis,” say Yeh, “is that the conventional school system is inadvertently structured in a way that fosters disengagement, thereby reducing effort, which depresses achievement and grades, causing demoralization, which further reduces engagement and achievement.” The process kicks in around third grade, when struggling students begin to view themselves as intellectually inferior because their grades are lower than their classmates’, contributing to decreased self-efficacy and increasing passivity; it accelerates in middle school, at which point low grades strongly correlate with eventually dropping out.
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What is to be done? Yeh’s theory is that by flipping the two pernicious factors, schools can turn the downward spiral into a virtuous upward cycle of achievement. That involves: - Adjusting task difficulty for low-performing students to an appropriate level of challenge so that if they apply effective effort, they will be successful. - Rapid performance feedback with respect to a standard, not other students.
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He cites positive research on two programs using this approach – Reading Assessment and Math Assessment – and reports on a systematic study comparing different interventions aimed at closing the achievement gap – charter schools, voucher programs, an additional year of school, various high-quality pre-school programs, full-day kindergarten, class size reduction, value-added assessment, summer school, teacher salary incentives, teacher experience, teacher PD, longer school day, computer instruction, tutoring, and school reform. Rapid assessment is dramatically more successful at raising student achievement than any of the others.
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by far the most powerful and cost-effective intervention is to adjust task difficulty and provide students with prompt, objective feedback on their efforts.
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“When students engage in project-based learning over the course of their time in school,” says John Larmer (Buck Institute for Education) in this article in Educational Leadership, “there’s an accumulating effect. They feel empowered. They see that they can make a difference.” In addition, they’re more likely to acquire the skills, knowledge, and dispositions needed for college and career success.
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the key elements of project-based learning, carefully planned and skillfully managed by the teacher:
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A challenging problem or question
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Sustained inquiry
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Student voice and choice
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Authenticity
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Reflection
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Critique and revision
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Public product
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four ways that project-based learning can go off the rails and not fulfill its potential: - Mistake #1: Using materials that aren’t truly project-based; beware of PBL-lite! - Mistake #2: Providing inadequate training and support for teachers; one-shot workshops are not enough. - Mistake #3: Over-using projects in the curriculum; basic skills can still be taught in a more conventional format. - Mistake #4: Implementing project-based learning on an ad hoc basis; to get the long-term effect, students need to engage in high-quality projects on a regular basis through their school years.
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AltSchools encourage students to dive into topics they’re passionate about, with teachers tracking everything they do using classroom video cameras and elaborate K-8 databases. The schools make a point of shaping diverse student bodies by giving scholarships to students whose parents can’t afford the $30,000-a-year tuition.
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We are raising a generation that will have the sum of human knowledge at their fingertips, for every minute of their life, so clearly education needs to change to accommodate that.”
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“Basically, what we have told teachers is we have hired you for your creative teacher brains, and anytime you are doing something that doesn’t require your creative teacher brain that a computer could be doing as well as or better than you, then a computer should do it.”
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To a computer measuring keystrokes, a student zoning out because he’s bored is indistinguishable from one who is moved by her book to imagine a world of her own.”
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“People are very focused on the algorithm. But equally important is the quality of the materials” – the clarity of the math questions and the worthiness of the readings being presented on students’ computer screens. Willingham also notes that teachers in high-tech classrooms often have to prepare two lesson plans – one that uses the technology and one for when the technology breaks down.
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Hire capable, well-matched teachers. Detailed advertisements and postings are important to giving candidates a clear idea of each position, says Clement. She also recommends longer interviews with more candidates, enlisting experienced teachers to take part in interviews, and gathering information on candidates from multiple sources.
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Provide continuous professional development. This should include induction that eases new teachers into the demands of the full job – orientation before classes begin, well-matched mentors through the first five years, and ongoing PD specific to rookies’ needs.
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Use colleagues to provide feedback. Traditional “gotcha” teacher evaluation has rarely been helpful in supporting new teachers, says Clement. Trained mentors can provide non-evaluative feedback that really makes a difference, perhaps with a firewall between their observations and the formal evaluation process. Of course it’s important that incoming teachers know the district’s criteria for effective teaching and are familiar with how administrators will assess their work.
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Understand millennials. “This generation of teachers wants to network and have input,” says Clement. Most have a strong preference for electronic interaction, and administrators and colleagues should meet young teachers where they are tech-wise and provide strong online resources.
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• Provide leadership opportunities. “While many new teachers are just surviving, others actively seek an avenue to truly make a difference,” says Clement. To find fulfillment in teaching and stay in the profession, they need to get involved in meaningful roles outside their classrooms. Some possibilities: speaking at induction ceremonies and serving on a welcome committee for the newest hires; leading book study groups; taking part in social service organizations on campus; and serving on curriculum committees
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students who read about scientists’ struggles, whether intellectual or personal, got better grades in science after reading the texts. The positive effect was most pronounced among students whose science grades were low before the experiment.
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Another finding: both before and after reading the texts, students who had a “growth” mindset (effort, not innate talent, determines success) tended to do better in science classes than students with a “fixed” mindset.
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This week's articles cover PBL, differentiation, effective teams, tech integration, teacher retention and science teaching and learning.
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The Skills Students Need to Survive and Thrive | Getting Smart - 0 views
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The Skills All Students Need
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Communication. Demonstrate strong writing, speaking, and listening skills. These skills are game changers for employees with strong technical skills, since their work often impacts members of other teams, technical and non-technical, across the company. Critical thinking. Assess a situation and determine whether or not to ask for help, seek additional information, or forge ahead. Recognize when to “pull the cord” and stop the bus. Ownership. When taking on a project, own it from start to finish. Be reliable and know what needs to be done to complete the task, project, or initiative, whether alone or as a member of a team. Leadership. Act as leader, with or without the title. Recognize that leadership lies in how you behave and how you conduct yourself as much as it does in the title that you hold. Creative problem solving. Enjoy solving problems and doing so in creative ways, especially when resources may be constrained, time short, and expectations high. Self-directed learning. Own professional learning and stay up-to-date on new trends in the field. Participate in ongoing learning through online and in-person options, and be willing to share what you’ve learned with colleagues. Curiosity. Get stumped, but never get overwhelmed. When stuck, turn to personal and professional learning networks to problem solve. Failure is a part of the learning process. Collaboration. Contribute to larger projects and meet game-changing goals. View collaboration as a key part of the job, especially when it comes to achieving outcomes. High threshold for uncertainty. Be comfortable with the uncertainty that often accompanies problem solving, innovative and creative work. Uncertainty is what drives leaders to seek answers and solve problems. Recognize that setbacks and dead-ends are part of the process.