School Leader

The Ennea-Type One School Leader: The Perfection Seeker

Note: The post below originally appeared on the Contemplative Learning website, which will be the host site for this series exploring each Enneagram personality style.

In our first profile of Enneagram types as school leaders, we'll examine the Type One, usually known as the Perfectionist or Reformer.  In our own work, we've begun to emphasize that the key difference among types is motivation, or what we "seek" from work, relationships, and life in general.  In this sense, we call the Type One the "Perfection-Seeker," or (perhaps more flattering), the "Ideal-Seeker." 

Vision: the Perfection-Seeker's gift

Type Ones bring a tremendous gift of vision to their work as school leaders, and can inspire teachers and students to higher ideals and higher levels of achievement.  But as with all types, Ones also have a dark side, and Type One school leaders can be prone to perfectionism and frustration when their vision is slow to become a reality.

Ones view their experiences through a sharply evaluative lens, judging everything as good or bad relative to their refined and deeply innate sense of what "ought to be."  Ones have a capacity for assessing every situation and imagining how it could be better.  This idealist vision can motivate Ones to engage in small and large-scale social reform efforts, to push for improvements to their work environment, and (or) to push themselves and others to higher levels of personal and professional performance.

For a variety of reasons, many school leaders struggle to articulate a meaningful vision for school improvement.  As wave after wave of state- and federally-mandated school reforms are handed down from policy makers, many administrators have occupied a largely passive role, trying to faithfully do what they're told and implement new directives and changes.

Type One school leaders, on the other hand, draw from various reform mandates and movements to articulate their own vision of what schools should become, and can usually share their vision with some confidence, often inspiring teachers to adopt new strategies for improvement.  Type One school administrators tend to be extremely well-organized and seek to maintain an orderly and predictable environment throughout the school, a trait teachers and parents greatly appreciate.

Perfection-seeking has its price

But the One's tendency toward perfectionism can lead to a grueling work schedule and a failure to complete projects until they meet his exacting standards, hyper-criticism and impatience with self and others, and a reluctance to share decision-making and governance with teachers and other stakeholders.  As a part of the "Instinctive" or "Body" Center (along with Types Eight and Nine), Ones have a vexing sense that they are not in control of their own lives.  This is a particularly perplexing situation for someone so dedicated to fighting for an idealized version of reality.

On this last point, the nature and structures of schools as organizations poses specific problems for the Type One school leader.  Schools are generally understood to be "loosely-coupled" systems in which individuals and groups within the school function with a high degree of autonomy.  Research on the impact of school principals on student achievement is clear: while principals can exert a significant effect on student outcomes, primarily through their role as instructional leaders, that influence is always highly mediated through the principal's influence on others, especially classroom teaching practice.

This means that principals must usually work within existing structures and use the power of influence to realize their visions for school improvement.  They cannot control the process or use their own personal power and effort to make their vision a reality.  Healthy and highly-effective Ones appreciate their limitations and trust the process that the ideal will be realized in time, whereas unhealthy Ones become easily frustrated by the slow pace of change, or resentful and critical when others question or challenge their vision.  As the One "goes to" Four, he can become increasingly withdrawn, alienated from others, and overwhelmed by conflicting and negative emotions.

Practices for wholeness: Seeking perfection in what is

To maximize their health and effectiveness, Ones should consciously engage in reflective practices that help them become aware of their strengths and weaknesses and build on their core gifts to gradually transcend more negative habits of mind.

Body-based practices like yoga and mindfulness meditation are highly recommended for all Enneagram types.  For the One, these strategies are particularly helpful since the idealism of the One tends toward spending an excessive amount of time in one's mind.  Body-based practices reconnect the One to the reality of present moment and help her see the goodness and completeness of what is.  Ones should spend time every day reconnecting to their breath, and consciously becoming aware of the mystery and wholeness of reality.

Ones often think the truth of their convictions is self-evident and obvious to others.  This is a blind spot that can lead to dismissing other perspectives.  Ones need to consciously monitor the tone of their messages, practicing boldness in their vision-seeking, but tempering it with compassion for others.  It is sometimes helpful for the One to ask himself, "Would I rather be right, or effective?"  Which is not to say one's "rightness" must necessarily be compromised to be effective, but the One nevertheless can sometimes sacrifice his effectiveness by insisting his is the only perspective to be considered.

Above all, Type One school leaders must consciously acknowledge their interdependence with others.  Ideal visions are co-created.  While the One may serve as a great source of inspiration and focus for building a vision and plan for school improvement, they cannot do the work alone.  Their relationships, and a healthy sense of what is right in every situation as it is, serve as the foundation for a Type One school leader's effectiveness.

Look for additional profiles of other Enneagram Types as school leaders in coming weeks.  For a complete list of Enneagram resources, check the Enneagram links on the left-hand side of this page, and visit our Services page to learn about the wide range of CLS workshops available for leadership and professional development.

Fall 2012 schedule update

Students in the WKU principal preparation program should take note that a new section of EDAD 590, Administration of School Personnel, is now available for Fall 2012.

This section will be offered fully online, and I will be the instructor.  This course will be offered in addition to my Wednesday, web-enhanced, night class on WKU's main campus.

EDAD 590 is a required course for Level II Principalship certification.  Visit the WKU schedule of classes or TopNet to register.

Montell pledges to continue Kentucky charter school fight in 2013

CN2's Ryan Alessi interviewed Kentucky State Representative Brad Montell on Pure Politics last week.  Montell is the leading advocate for charter schools in the General Assembly, and after several years of trying finally got a hearing in the House Education committee last year, though his bill lacked enough support for an official vote.  Montell vowed to continue his fight for public charters next year.

Rep. Montell did a fine job explaining why charter schools will be good for Kentucky (one of only nine states in the U.S. that currently forbid them).  In particular, he responded to the allegation that charter schools drain money from traditional public schools, and they will enroll only the top students.   In response to other concerns often voiced by educators, Montell emphasized that teachers in charter schools (who typically report high levels of job satisfaction) are still eligible to unionize and initiate collective bargaining, and explained how sensible value-added measures can be used to evaluate teacher peformance (rather than simplistic test-score based measures, which some people fear will be the norm in charter schools).

The strength of Montell's ideas lies in the great specificity of his proposed charter school legislation, which sets clear and high expectations for how charters can be initiated and how they'll be managed and evaluated.

See the complete CN2 interview here: 

 

Upcoming series: Enneagram type profiles for school leaders

Note: The post below originally appeared on the Contemplative Learning website, which will be the host site for this series exploring each Enneagram personality style.

Contemplative Learning Solutions was born from our (Tom and Gary's) work as school administrators.  As district-level leaders, we were responsible for designing and facilitating a range of professional development opportunities for teachers and administrators.  Today we both work in university settings, where our primary responsibilities are the training and growth of aspiring teachers and school leaders.  Through CLS, we've continued to serve practicing educators with a range of supports and services.

In both professional and pre-professional settings, we've found that educators long for reflective practices that help them know themselves (and others) better and create more authentic, meaningful relationships, which in turn helps enhance effectiveness as teachers and school leaders.  The Enneagram personality typing system is one of the most powerful tools we've discovered for facilitating this process of self-discovery and professional growth.

According to the Enneagram there are nine basic personality types ("ennea" means nine), each of which is driven by a unique set of motivating fears and desires (for one of the best online resource on the Enneagram, check out the Enneagram Institute website).  Understanding your Enneatype, as it is sometimes called, helps you identify your most common positive and negative patterns of behavior, and allows you to start letting go of unhelpful habits of mind so that you can lead, love, and live from the foundation of your core strengths.

Since our work began with school leaders and continues primarily to serve educators in leadership roles, in coming weeks we'd like to offer a series of reflections on how each Enneagram personality type tends to shape an individual's work as a school leader.  While many books and other internet resources offer profiles of the nine types, none that we know of applies this information specifically in the context of schools.

And we believe that in almost everything, context matters a great deal. 

Leading in schools offers unique challenges that have few parallels in other fields.  Schools are generally considered to be "loosely coupled" systems in which individuals and groups operate with relatively high degrees of autonomy.  The nature of classroom teaching, as schools in the United States have been traditionally been structured, leans toward high levels of professional independence and isolation. 

The key implication of such structures is that relationships and communication occupy a far greater importance in the work of school leaders than power, authority, and control.  The effective school leader must know and understand the great variance in individual personalities and motivations.  Above all, the effective school leader must know herself, including her own habits of minds and potential blind spots in order to build authentic relationships.

We'll explore the important features of leadership in schools as we examine how each Enneagram type tends to function in such a role. 

One important note: We'll use the term "school leader" fairly broadly.  While many of the specific examples we'll describe refer to school principals, the profiles we'll discuss are intended to include other administrative types, including assistant principals and district-level leaders, as well as teacher leaders.  Increasingly, research is revealing the critical importance of teachers as leaders of change and improvement in schools.  To the extent that relational power is more important than formal power in schools, the role of teacher leader becomes far more evident.

Above all, we invite readers of our blog and followers of our work to join in a dialogue with us about the nine Enneagram types and the work of school leadership.  When we "teach" the Enneagram (or anything else for that matter), the best lessons and examples come directly from the experiences of our students and participants.  Feel free to post comments and write to us with your own thoughts about the Enneagram, self-reflection, and the work of school leaders.

We look forward to sharing this journey of discovery with you. 

Update: The following type profiles have now been posted:

• Type One: The Perfection Seeker
• Type Two: The Acceptance Seeker

Contemplative Learning Solutions website and blog now live

After nearly two years with an active Facebook presence, Contemplative Learning Solutions, my professional development partnership, has now launched a blog/website to further support our work in bringing meaningful professional learning to teachers and school leaders.  Visit www.contemplativelearning.org

Dr. Tom Stewart and I launched CLS in 2010, building on our rewarding experiences as former district-level school administrators.  We founded CLS on the belief that to be more effective, schools must become more deeply human, fostering cultures of authentic communication, meaningful collaboration, and continuous professional and personal learning that engages both heart and head.

We've offered a range of professional development workshops and supports to schools and districts in the region.  Our work has focused primarily on the implementation of effective formative assessment strategies, and on using the Enneagram personality typing system for team-building, positive classroom cultures, and reflective school leadership.  This fall we expect to initiate a new series of workshops on leading and implementing differentiated instruction.  Our clients  have included the Butler, Warren, and Simpson County school districts, as well as the Green River Regional Educational Cooperative.

The new website and blog will provide another medium by which Tom and I can share ideas and resources for professional growth and development.  We welcome you to visit and join in the conversation about how we can make schools more contemplative and effective learning environments.

Monroe County Schools' Falcon Academy named Best Practice Site

I learned late last week that Monroe County's Falcon Academy will be recognized as an alternative school Best Practice Site by the Kentucky Department of Education.  More information will be forthcoming on the KDE website and the school will receive official recognition at an upcoming meeting of the state Board of Education.  I want to extend my congratulations to the staff of Falcon Academy and to the Monroe County Schools for this impressive accomplishment.

In an effort to highlight and promote high-quality learning in alternative school environments, since 2009 KDE conducts a rigorous annual nomination and on-site visit process to discover and celebrate the state's best examples of schools that serve at-risk students.  Awards are given in three categories, including (1) Curriculum, Instuction, and Assessment, (2) Culture, Support, and Professional Devleopment, and (3) Leadership, Resources/Organization, and Planning. 

I'm familiar with this award in part because Simpson County's Learning Opportunity Center alternative high school, where I formerly served as principal, was recognized as Exemplary in Category 2 in 2010.

Falcon Academy will be recognized as Exemplary in Category 1 (Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment).  I can attest to the Academy's accomplishments and worthiness for this designation because I spent time there during the last school year working closely with Principal Max Petett on a research project that provided professional coaching designed to enhance instructional leadership.

In an era when so many districts are relying more heavily on computer programs to provide credit recovery and fill hard-to-staff subject areas, Mr. Petett and the staff of Falcon Academy have pursued a deliberately different strategy.  Concerned that students in online courses were not receiving a sufficiently rigorous exposure to curriculum that is assessed on End of Course assessments, Mr. Petett initiated a new effort to provide regular, teacher-facilitated instruction in almost all core area classes.  The goal was to provide routine instruction and formative assessment that would ensure students were exposed to the same curricular standards as students in traditional classes, and to offer enrichment and intervention for students based on their progress.

The Falcon Academy still utilizes online courses, but relies on it as a supplement to instructor-led learning.

Full outcome data won't arrive until the fall, of course, and given the transient populations of most alternative schools it will be difficult to fully assess the impact of this strategy in the short-term, but Mr. Petett reports gratifying results on portions of the End of Course assessments, and is confident his staff is now providing a richer, more rigorous learning opportunity for Academy students.

Additionally, the Academy boasts an impressive aviation program offered in conjuction with the Monroe County Airport in which students get real-world experience working with aviation technicians and flight instructors to learn about airplane mechanics, aerospace engineering, and piloting. 

All of these programs reflect an alternative school that has high expectations for student learning and has faith that all students can learn and achieve at high levels.

I commend Mr. Petett, the staff of the Falcon Academy, and the leadership of the Monroe County Schools, for their dedication and success. 

Update: Official KDE announcement here.

My row with Ravitch: Lessons learned

I've had an interesting experience the last couple of days sparring with education historian Diane Ravitch and readers of her blog over my post challenging her reactions (and those of others) to the new Gates-funded research using biometric sensors to measure student engagement.  Ravitch responded to me on her blog, and that generated a lot of dialogue with some of her passionate followers, whose comments ranged from the thoughtful and insightful to the bizarre and uninformed.

In the midst of all that give and take, I gained some new understandings, both of myself and others, and of how meaningful intellectual dialogue should work.  I'd like to reflect a bit on this debate, and acknowledge some missteps on my own part.

My original blog post called Ravitch's response (and those of others) to biometric engagement research "hysterical."  Ravitch seized on that word, not so subtly suggesting that it was a sexist jab.  While the etymological origins of this word are, in fact, gender-specific, it was obvious to anyone who read my post that no such reference was intended.  In a comment posted back to Ravitch's blog I called it a "cheap, intellectually lazy shot."  And indeed, I think it is.

I've recently been reading Jonah Goldberg's witty and cutting new book, The Tyrrany of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas.  Goldberg explores the myriad ways some people avoid having real debates by throwing out meaningless cliches that sound smart but are really diversions from actually taking your opponent's ideas seriously.  My ensuing squabble with commenters over the word "hysteria" brought Goldberg's book to mind.

But the truth is, liberals aren't the only ones who take short-cuts or circumvent real discussions by using provocative and hyperbolic words, and I believe I made this error myself several times in my blog post, including my use of the word "hysterical."

Several of Ravitch's thoughtful readers challenged me to think to more carefully about the Orwellian implications of using the Galvanic Response Skin bracelets to measure such deeply personal data.  Some noted the endlessly-creeping influence of the government in all aspects of our lives, and the tendency (which I did, in fact, note in my original post) of school leaders to misuse student data in countless ways, continually transferring living, breathing children into numbers that can be crunched and analyzed, and ultimately used to evaluate teacher or school effectiveness.

There are several ironies present here.  First, anyone who knows me well at all can attest to my political leanings, which are decidedly libertarian and anti-authoritarian.  I passionately share my interlocutors' concerns about all of these breaches of privacy and our creepy tendency in education to (poorly) measure everything.  (Read my blog post from last week, and from a few months back, condemning the utter lack of instructional sensitivity in standardized testing).  I am a strong advocate for standards-based assessment of student learning, and believe passionately in non-traditional, student-centered approaches to education like Montessori.

So I share all of my colleagues' concerns, including Professor Ravitch's, about all these things.  That concern should have led me to characterize their response to the Gates research as an over-reaction, and not "hysteria."  I overstated myself for rhetorical purposes and wound up mischaracterizing the feelings of the people I was describing. 

But I do believe outright opposition to this Gates project is an overreaction.  Yes, gathering biosensory data on children is disconcerting and has lots of possible implications we do not want.  And yet, I do not find this reason to condemn such data-gathering outright.  Professionally, I'm curious to see what they find out.  When it comes to application of their findings, then there will be plenty of reason to discuss and debate.

I actually think what provoked the most ire in what I wrote was my description of Diane Ravitch as a defender of the educational "status quo."  I did this both in the blog post title and in the text.

And this, to be fair, is also a mischaracterization of Diane, her work, and her beliefs, and one that I regret.  Ravitch is an ardent opponent of our industry's obsession with standardized testing, which is as much a part of the educational status quo as anything.  As noted above, I share her concerns about this policy trend in education, and I apologize for confusing Diane's resistance to "measurement mania" with her opposition to school choice.

Because it's on this topic that Ravitch is most definitely on the side of the status quo.  I am certain she has good intentions and believes wholeheartedly that she is fighting for what's best in education, but I find her writing to reflect a real misunderstanding of both the goals and methods of school choice advocates and of the philosophy and practical policy applications of expanding educational options.  My disagreement with Diane on this count is deep, but it is professional, and not personal.

I am grateful to Diane's readers for engaging with me on all of these issues.  I am zealous about fighting for an educational philosophy and practice which I believe is best for American children, but I must resist the tendency to turn others into straw men (and women) for purposes of making my point.  

In my day job, I spend most of my time training teachers who aspire to become effective school administrators.  One of the things I emphasize regularly is the need to become more self-reflective, and to be authentic and vulnerable in your leadership, seeking greater compassion and understanding toward self and others in all our professional pursuits.  These contemplative dimensions of leadership are long-neglected in the world of school administration, and I believe hold the key toward creating healthier, happier, and ultimately more effective schools.

In that spirit, I acknowledge my own growth areas as an educator and a communicator, and commit to a more contemplative approach as I continue to teach, write, and argue for better schools.

Biometric hysteria: The anti-research mentality of the educational status quo

There was a loud buzz in the education community this week over the announcement of a Gates Foundation grant that will investigate the use of biosensory devices to measure student engagement during classroom learning.  As is becoming increasingly typical, some in the education establishment reacted hysterically.

The Gates grant of about $1.4 million will fund university researchers at locations around the country.  According to the Baltimore Sun, here's how it works:

The biometric bracelets, produced by a Massachusetts startup company, Affectiva Inc, send a small current across the skin and then measure subtle changes in electrical charges as the sympathetic nervous system responds to stimuli. The wireless devices have been used in pilot tests to gauge consumers' emotional response to advertising.

Gates officials hope the devices, known as Q Sensors, can become a common classroom tool, enabling teachers to see, in real time, which kids are tuned in and which are zoned out.

The slant on this story in the education media, and the ensuing response from commentators, was nothing short of irrational. 

Education historian Diane Ravitch, who has in recent years transformed herself into a full-time lobbyist on behalf of the educational status quo, typified the hysteria:

"They should devote more time to improving the substance of what is being taught ... and give up all this measurement mania," said Diane Ravitch...

Ravitch blogged about the biosensor bracelets a few days ago after a critic of the Gates Foundation flagged the grants on Twitter. Her posts generated a small storm of angry commentary online, with some teachers joking that they would have to start screaming at random intervals or showing the occasional soft porn film to keep arousal rates among their students sufficiently high.

In another article, Ravitch was quoted this way:

Depending on the GSR readouts could mean that an educator who maintains a classroom full of excited and anxious students would be rewarded for keeping kids engaged. That, Ravitch wrote, would give a distinct edge to “tyrannical teachers” who “inspire anxiety by keeping students in constant fear.”

“The idea that this powerful foundation is setting in motion a means of measuring physiological responses to teachers is deeply disturbing,” Ravitch wrote in a blog post. “The act of teaching is complex. It involves art, science, and craft. Learning is far more than can be measured by a GRS bracelet.”

Of course it is.  But nowhere in the descriptions of the Gates research do I see the suggestion that a teacher's effectiveness will be evaluated based on a student's biometric feedback.  In fact, in response to all this anti-science foolishness, the Gates Foundation issued a statement, which Ravitch actually quoted on her blog, and then summarily dismissed, insisting teacher evaluation was not the goal of this study:

These grants are not all related to the Measures of Effective Teaching research project, and will not in any way be used to evaluate teacher performance.  Rather, these are tools to help students and teachers gain a better understanding how and when students are most engaged in the classroom, with the ultimate goal of learning how to help students learn better.

Maybe this is all a testament to how poorly schools have used student data in the past, or the slip-shod approach so many administrators take to using teacher observation data, or the badly-designed systems of teacher evaluation in so many states, that so many people reacted to a simply scientific study with such thoughtless fury.  Maybe I shouldn't be surprised.

But in my experience, student engagement is one of the most critical and difficult-to-measure components of the learning process.  I have watched experienced educators wrestle for hours trying to refine definitions of engagement for establishing better classroom walkthrough processes.

And while simply measuring arousal without a lot of additional contextual information obviously won't give you a very reliable assessment of what's actually going on in the classroom, this kind of simple biometric data still has the potential to tell us something.  And given the widespread problem of poor student engagement, especially at the secondary level, I'm willing to give researchers the benefit of the doubt and see what they can find by doing some basic exploratory studies.

I'm sympathetic to teachers who are weary of school leaders who repeatedly misapply research findings to further complicate their already difficult jobs.  But to reject the idea of even examining such things with empirical evidence is yet another poor reflection on our profession and speaks volumes to how blindly entrenched we've become to the status quo.

Update: Follow-up to this post, wherein I acknowledge some rhetorical over-reach.

The pushback against high-stakes testing, and some alternatives

There's been a spate of news stories recently about various educator and parent groups across the U.S. protesting the ever-expanding emphasis on high-stakes testing as the ultimate means of educational accountability.  While I basically agree with many of the concerns about our pathological attention to testing in K-12 education, I worry that there's not enough public discussion on what should replace this emphasis.

Critics of high-stakes testing make many valid points.  When schools are obsessed with test scores, other concerns take a back seat.  Non-tested areas like the arts get squeezed into narrower and narrower slices of the curriculum and kids increasingly lose their unique identities (and needs) to educators who view them exclusively in terms of their test score output.  This leads to an extreme emphasis on interventions for kids who are just below proficiency, especially if they are in a targeted population, because tiny test score gains for these students yields the largest bump in most accountability systems, while students who are extreme high or low achievers are often allowed to languish.

Many educators, myself included, have rightly noted that standardized tests aren't even a particularly valid measure of instructional effectiveness.  In other words, they don't do a good job of measuring the real impact individual teachers make on individual students over some given period of time.

Perhaps one of the best arguments against high-stakes testing, if not always the most effectively voiced, is the idea that such assessments represent the ultimate form of industrialization in education.  Schools operate far too much like factories (they were actually designed to be this way), where students (and sometimes teachers) are treated as manufactured products.  Such an approach always tends toward standardization of processes that brush over the myriad individualized intersts, personalities, and needs of students.  (For the best critique of traditional education in this vein, see John Taylor Gatto's Weapons of Mass Instruction, which I reviewed here and here).

In many respects, Kentucky fairs far better than other states on several of these counts.  We are not immune from it, of course, as many frustrated parents, students, and teachers would no doubt attest.  But at least in Kentucky there has been a shift toward End of Course assessments at the high school level, which, while certainly imperfect measures, provide a closer gauge of what students have actually mastered in a given year.  The expansion of program reviews for arts and humanities and other "non-tested" areas may prove to be a better system of accountability for these subjects.  The growth component of the state's new accountability system will give better measures of how students have increased their knowledge and skill over the period of a year, even if they didn't reach proficiency, than we've ever had before.  And even though Kentucky's proposed teacher evaluation system does include some measure of student performance in assessing teacher effectiveness, it does so in a far more reasonable and effective way than many other states (and I happen to believe that value-added measures of teacher effectiveness do have some validity and should be further pursued).

Nevertheless, Kentucky like most other states does suffer from test mania, and many of the critiques against testing in general do apply here.

My concern with all of this is how rarely critics of testing offer some other meaningful alternative for promoting high performance and accountability.  I've argued elsewhere that given the enormous taxpayer investment in education, the public has a right to know whether we are delivering a good service.  For all its problems, testing has brought a long-needed emphasis on achievement gaps for poor and minority students and students with disabilities that were simply shameful in the past (and happily, some of these groups have shown real academic progress in recent years, though still much work obviously needs to be done).

To my mind, two things must fundamentally change to make genuine progress in getting more students to proficiency in content knowledge and skill. 

The first is teaching quality.  In my experience, teaching most traditional American schools has changed at a glacial pace.  I do believe teaching has improved, especially at the elementary level, but most changes in teaching practice have been largely cosmetic.  In many American high schools, rigor is lower that in past decades while teaching methods are largely unchanged.  Schools in crisis (as measured by test scores) continue to emphasize expensive programs or elaborate intervention models, with little attention to what happens during regular classroom instruction.

Practicing and aspiring school leaders who are serious about student achievement need to start with a thoughtful and direct assessment of teaching practice (which includes a transformation of classroom grading and assessment).  The best framework I've found so far for doings this can be found in Marzano, Frontier, and Livingston's Effective Supervision: Supporting the Art and Science of Teaching, which I use in my instructional leadership courses at WKU.  For a much more focused and greatly simplified treatise on the basics of good teaching practice, I recommend Mike Schmoker's Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning, which I've written about extensively on this blog and discuss ad naseum in my classes.  Either book is an excellent starting point.

A strong emphasis on instruction should be the number one school leadership imperative, and it's not one that is easily legislated or directed from the state and federal level.  Individual teachers and administrators at the school level must take the initiative to make these needed changes of focus.  As I tell my students, if you have a strong enough instructional vision, then the state can again change the curriculum and testing systems (and trust me, they will), and your vision can remain steady.  If your school is serious about the work of transforming instruction, testing and accountability take care of themselves.

But the second thing that must change to ensure genuine accountability is to vastly expand the range of educational options available to families.  I question the extent to which traditional schools can innovate new approaches to curriculum and instruction as long as they maintain an exclusive monopoly on educational services for the vast majority of families.  Meaningful, widely-available school choice programs provide the autonomy for schools to innovate new and creative approaches to instructional delivery and meet educational needs that are so often neglected under the current system. 

The need for accountability remains, and improved testing programs might be one part of it.  But testing alone doesn't ensure high-quality learning experiences for students.  Only teachers (supported by effective leaders) and parents can do that.  We need to place far greater emphasis on liberating these groups to do the real work of improving student learning, and testing will find its proper place.

 

Enneagram workshop series

As anyone who has taken one of my classes, worked with me professionally, or spent much time around me at all will know, I'm a big fan of the Enneagram personality typing system.

According to the Enneagram there are nine basic personality types ("ennea" means nine), each of which is driven by a unique set of motivating fears and desires (for the best online resource on the Enneagram, check out the Enneagram Institute website).  Understanding your Enneatype, as it is sometimes called, helps you identify your most common positive and negative patterns of behavior, and allows you to start letting go of unhelpful habits of mind so that you can lead, love, and live from the foundation of your core strengths.

I was first introduced to the Enneagram about 17 years ago when my wife and are were preparing for our wedding and our pastor used it to help us get to know each other better.  Over the years I used the Enneagram as a tool for personal growth and development, and then about four years ago started using the system professionally to help school leaders and teachers enhance their leadership, communication, teamwork and professional effectiveness. 

I discuss the Enneagram informally in most of my WKU education administration classes, and make it a key part of my Advanced Organizational Theory class, EDAD 696.  Students usually love working with the Enneagram and often ask me about professional development opportunities for school faculties and leadership teams using the system.

I'm happy to share a new brochure from Contemplative Learning Solutions (CLS), my consulting partnership with Dr. Tom Stewart, which features our basic series of Enneagram workshops.  Over the years Tom and I have trained hundreds of educators on using the Enneagram system for enhancing professional effectiveness, delivering lectures and presentations at national meetings, including at this year's Canadian Institute for Enneagram Studies annual gathering.  Tom was trained in using the Enneagram for professional coaching by Dr. Ginger Lapid-Bogda, and our writing about the Enneagram has appeared in Nine Points magazine, published by the International Enneagram Association.

Recent local clients have included the Green River Regional Education Cooperative (GRREC) and the Warren County Public Schools Leadership Academy for aspiring administrators.  In August we'll do a back-to-school workshop for the faculty of Warren Central High School.

You can access the brochure via the CLS Facebook page, but I'm including descriptions of the three basic workshop formats here as well:

Introduction to the Enneagram: Getting to Know Yourself and How You Communicate – 3 hours

In this interactive workshop, participants will explore the nine core personality types of the Enneagram, determine their own individual type, and reflect on ways their Enneagram personality type shapes their communication patterns at work and in everyday life.  Ideal for those new to the Enneagram, or for leaders seeking to introduce the Enneagram to their entire faculty or team.

The Enneagram: Transforming Your Leadership, Your School, and Your Classroom – 6 hours

This interactive, day-long session includes all of the components of the 3 hour introductory workshop, but also features reflection and discussion activities on how the Enneagram personality typing system can improve your approach to conflict, teamwork, and leadership.  Participants will also explore implications of the Enneagram for classroom climate and differentiation.                                                  

The Enneagram Leadership Series – five 1.5-hour face-to-face or virtual workshops

After your leadership team has a working familiarity with the nine Enneagram personality types, this workshop series, which is available in either face-to-face or virtual formats, will take participants deeper by using the Enneagram to develop individual leadership growth plans and explore specific applications to the work of school administration and teacher leadership.

Pricing details are included on the brochure, but all workshops are fully customizable and so pricing is negotiable based on individual client needs.

Workshops like these are a terrific way to introduce the Enneagram to fellow educators or use the system to go deeper in your own leadership development.  Let me know if you have questions or are interested in further exploring these opportunities.