Let me tell you a little story about a high school job I had once had in my home town of Bigfork, Montana. I worked in a very popular restaurant and, of course, I started at the bottom like everyone always does in those jobs — washing dishes. We had a chef, who was in charge of the kitchen, and a hostess who was in charge of all the waitresses, but was also the owner’s wife. The chef would tell me to make salads a certain way, and she would come and demand them a different way. There was a procedure for cleaning the silverware established by the chef, the hostess would come and tell me to not follow the procedure. In this situation, I blame both of them, because if they disagree with each other, they should sort out the problem, not put me in the middle of it. Of course, being adults, they weren’t able to solve or confront their problem, so it continued to be my problem as well until I finally left that job to work at a pizza place as a delivery driver. How much money, time, and energy had been lost on having to train another worker? Who knows! But those are the type of expenses companies should avoid. The moral of the story is the commandment itself — help people more, hassle people less.

Especially in education I see a lot of hassling people needlessly. One example of this I discussed in a previous post about not making rules or policies for the sake of making rules and policies. Schools are horrible about this activity. One student, or even a small group of students, makes a mistake and then we punish all with a new policy instead of educating the few about proper usage. In 1:1 schools this tendency must be avoided at all costs; otherwise you will find yourself working at a 1:1 school with no websites available for access to students or faculty and no computer programs that can be used other than Word or Pages. Recently another ADE asked about blocking Facebook, I informed her that Korea International School doesn’t block it, because we feel it is more important for students to learn correct usage of the Internet and computer than to make a rule about it. Our computer use policy states that the teacher has the right to decide if the website is appropriate for class or not; after all they are professionals and can decide best how to use the tool, why take it from them for no reason? Facebook, and any other social network site for that matter, is a part of life; students need to know how to manage their time and use of these tools; they won’t learn it from their friends or parents, trust me on that one. It is our job to provide guidance, not to simply outlaw it. Help people more, hassle people less!

1. An Educational Leader inspires teachers to improve, try new techniques, and push the envelope with student learning; an Administrator causes teachers to stagnate, stick to old methods, and focus on standardized test scores.
2. An Educational Leader is concerned with planning that promotes student learning; an administrator is concerned with planning that promotes numbers.
3. An Educational Leader supports his/her faculty with encouragement and celebration of success; an administrator degrades his/her faculty with highly critical comments and public displays of failure.
4. An Educational Leader displays a love of learning; an Administrator displays a love of control.
5. An Educational Leader hears his community of students, teachers, and parents; an Administrator hears his/her own voice.
6. An Educational Leader focuses on continual school improvement through various avenues; an administrator focuses on his/her narrowing budget and road blocks.
7. An Educational Leader has a vision and philosophy; an Administrator had an agenda and dogma.
8. An Educational Leader sees what can be done; an Administrator sees what can’t be done.
9. An Educational Leader is a life-long learner; an Administrator is a life-long talker.
10. An Educational Leader leads by example; an Administrator gives orders.

Don’t misunderstand me, I know that sometimes an Educational Leader needs to think about budgets and the routines of the school, but if you are solely concerned with the budget and never think about student outcomes and learning, then you are horribly off track as an educator.

I’m a big believer in leading by example; if you aren’t willing to do it, you better not ask someone else to do it. Of all the lunch time duties we have at my school, lunchroom duty is the one despised the most. It makes sense, because the lunchroom is large, loud, and messy all the time. Middle school students are talking, yelling, playing, and basically being kids during lunch. Teachers don’t want to deal with it. That is exactly why I do the lunchroom duty myself. Everyday I am in the lunchroom and everyday the teachers see me on duty. They see me interact with students; they see me talk to the students in lunch detention; they see me order students to pick up their messes; they see me pick up after the students who forgot and I didn’t catch. They see me taking duty seriously and it teaches them to do theirs well. I’m part of the team because I do the job that everybody hates each and every day. They respect it and they respect me because of it. And that is leadership.

I also handle the after school detention program for the same reason. Teachers need to feel supported and they want to know that they can relay on administrators to lessen problems, not increase problems. At one school I worked at the high school principal asked me why I wanted to schedule a special room for after school detention. “Why not just have teachers do it in their classrooms?” was the question he asked. I explained that I didn’t want to burden the teachers with a painful duty that I had time to do myself; furthermore, I didn’t even want to intrude on a teacher’s classroom after school, so he/she wouldn’t feel uncomfortable with a room full of students he/she didn’t know. Teacher’s do a lot of work in the classroom when students are gone and the room is quiet. I didn’t want to take that valuable time, when I knew that I could do the duty in a separate room. My response stupefied him to the point that he was unable to respond to me; I never got the room I was looking for. I believe that man is still thinking about the situation and pondering the idea, “He took something off a teachers plate instead of putting something on… Hmmm…”

Teachers need to see me work just as hard as they are, even harder. I’m supposed to be a leader; one cannot lead from the back, you need to be in the front. Teachers see me do lunch duty and they are thankful; they know I handle after school detention and they are thankful. They are thankful for a person who works with them and doesn’t simply sit behind a desk and delegate work to them. It is a small semantical difference, but an important difference none the less.