The following is a copy of the Spring 1999 address to the Nova Scotia Symposium on the Principalship. Please cite appropriately when making reference to this text.
Principals And School Community:
Wholeness
Incorporating Diversity
Stephen Leacock once wrote about a character, Sir Roland, who "flung himself from the room; flung himself upon his horse, and rode madly off in all directions." (Leacock, 1911).
I'm well aware that frequently school principals feel like that. And I want to assure you that I recognize how difficult and how important your job is. In fact, the more I conduct research related to change and improvement initiatives in schools, the more I have evidence that the leadership role is full of exciting opportunities and is essential for introducing and maintaining change initiatives that make a difference for all students. I have recently conducted a longitudinal study of a school that opened four years ago as a model multi-track junior high school, with multi-age and flexible classroom groupings, interdisciplinary instruction, small student advisory groups, and a policy that encouraged students, teachers, and parents to participate in democratic governance procedures. It was a safe and exciting place to be. Last year, the first principal was wooed by the United Way and a replacement appointed. This year, during a recent visit, I found the atmosphere completely changed -- to such an extent that the new vice-principal told us they plan to charge students a fee just for staying in the building over the noon hour.
In today's climate of educational change, increasing social pressures, increasing diversity, alienation, and fragmentation, such changes are really not acceptable -- and I believe the principal is the key -- either to effective change or the opposite. But, with so many pressures coming at schools from all sides, how can a principal ensure that change is appropriate and effective?
I will argue here that a key task of a principal is to help to create a community of learners. In other words, the major focus is learning -- and the appropriate context for learning is a community. This places the emphasis clearly on instruction and learning - the primary tasks of the school and identifies the context within which it happens -- not an alienating, marginalizing, or isolating factory, but a community.
The central point of this paper is that we need to understand the nature of diversity in our schools and to confront and challenge the status quo, where necessary, in order for all students to be well served.
Now once upon a time, a community was relatively homogeneous. It experienced relatively little change from one decade to another, it had a long history of continuity and shared culture, and resented the little change that it did experience. A traditional community often demanded a high degree of conformity and was frequently unwelcoming to strangers. When I first moved to a town in NFLD, an old gentleman on the street stopped me and said, "You don't belong here, do you?" I started to say that I did, that I had just moved there, when I realized that that wasn't what he meant. In his frame of reference, I would never belong to his community.
If we are to create a community of learners in this day and age -- a community that is welcoming of both newcomers and old timers, of Caucasians Asian Canadians, First Nations, and African-Canadians, of different cultural traditions and various spiritual values, different abilities and disabilities, of rich and poor -- then we cannot assume that the starting point is the same as it was 50 years ago.
I'm going to tell a number of stories. In some, while the specifics may not be similar to your contexts, the principles will apply; so I hope you listen to them in that spirit. What can they help you to learn about your contexts? First, I believe that there are five major components to developing a community of learners, and creating a sense of wholeness that incorporates diversity
They include considerations about the
When I first went to the UBC, I heard one colleague, arguing with another, retort, "ethics has nothing to do with educational administration!" On the contrary, I believe it has everything to do with it! (And I think he really agrees). Increasingly today, practitioners and researchers agree that the purpose of education is a moral one, although there seems to be considerable confusion about what the purpose of education really is.
Purpose
On one level, one might assert that schools exist for the benefit of all students. But this is a task easier said than done - and much more complex than it usually appears. In fact, some would suggest that benefiting all students means making a difference in their life chances - and that this means making more of a difference for disadvantaged students because they have further to go· At another level, one might suggest that the moral purpose of education is to contribute to societal development and democracy. Both purposes require educators to attend to issues related to diversity, equity, and power. Both require a consideration of the context within which you exercise your educational leadership.
I sat a staff meeting once, where the principal was telling his teachers that there was money left in several funds that needed to be spent. We have $500 left here, another $2000 in this fund, and there is quite a lot left in a special district fund. If you want anything or have any ideas, come and tell me." When I went into his office, I asked if the money was allocated on a first-come first serve" basis and he replied that mostly it was. I wondered whether it might be more useful to develop as a staff a list of goals and priorities and what they needed to do or have to meet their goals. Then when there was money left, they could just go down the list. The next time I visited the school, they told me they had spent time together identifying their goals and priorities. And now, five years later, you can still walk into that school and ask any teacher what the school's goals and priorities are, and you will be told "Literacy -- language rich instruction." Purchases and programs are not directed to that end and there is a sense of purpose about the school that had previously been missing. They had taken the time and effort to develop a sense of shared purpose.
Context
I teach a course in instructional leadership and the administration of the educational program. For a long time I taught my graduate students to consider issues related to grouping and tracking, to interdisciplinary instruction, and to different models of teaching. Then, as I visited schools and conducted research, I realized there were some fundamental issues that were being ignored.
In one school, I visited, there was an international baccalaureate program, a First nations program, an advanced placement program, a full range of technical and vocational subjects, and a district gifted program. I noticed that the First Nations program was located outside of the mainstream of the school - in a portable building. I also noticed there were no FN students in the gifted program. I asked the gifted coordinator who told me that these students were just not attracted to the gifted program. I then asked if there had ever been any FN students in the program. The answer was - yes, we had one once, but she only lasted a couple of months. The principal then indicated they had never considered whether the advertising, screening and acceptance criteria contained culturally biased assumptions. The following year, although there were no FN students in the gifted program, the FN program was moved into the school, in order to stop
Now I ask my students to develop a school profile. Who are the teachers in the school? Their age, gender, ethnicity. Who are the students in the school? Their ethnicity, abilities and needs. What special programs are there in the school? Who is well served and who is not? Who is on the honour role and who is not?
After one such exercise, one student returned to class saying that he had discovered that ESL students at his school were not permitted to be on the honour role. He had discovered that because they did not enrol in six discrete subjects, they were not considered eligible. A student across the table stated that ESL students at his school were not on the honour role either. There was an unwritten rule that they could receive no more than a B+.
Knowing the context of your school involves asking difficult questions about who is well served by your school and who may not be. It involves knowing your school community, your student body and taking steps to ensure that all groups are represented when decisions are made. In one instance in BC, although about 70% of the students in the school were Asian, the Chinese parents were not accepted on the parents' council and decided to set up their own parallel council. Knowing your context and being sensitive to the needs of all participants means that you will not permit one group to be segregated or marginalized in this way. It may be much more subtle in your school, more a matter of class or socio-economic status, but it is important to take steps to ensure that all members of the school community feel that they have a place and that their participation is welcome.
While I have talked about knowing the context with respect to the immediate student body, it also involves being aware of the wider social, political, and fiscal issues within which education occurs in your community.
Knowing your context often raises issues related to school culture. Sometimes understanding the school culture can be a very threatening and uncomfortable activity for those in positions of power and authority. At times, it may involve recognizing that the culture of the school is closed and unwelcoming.
One US district in which I have conducted research for seven years, has approximately 50% Navajo population. Most of the Navajo live in the south, while most of the Anglo population is in small towns in the northern part of the district. In the area served by the five most southern schools, the students live in remote, isolated, and very beautiful areas like this. They live in small, scattered homes and attend very modern schools. Many come from homes or hogans in which traditional ceremonies are practiced, and they are also very proficient in the use of technology and computers. What are the things educators need to know about the context? It is probably useful to know that 80 % of the students have electricity, that 70% do not have running water but that 88% do have television sets -- but it is likely more important to know that those students who are the most connected to their ethnic traditions and roots are likely to be the most successful in school. With changing family norms and configurations, how do we ensure that all students remain connected to their roots?
Although students test scores are extremely low and few are successful in colleges or universities after high school graduation, many teachers believe that the kids make the transition between home and school "just like this" (snaps fingers). Here, it is important for the principals to help all teachers to ask questions about how to help the students make the transition and be both comfortable and successful in both the home, school, and subsequent workplace environments.
As a result of a long and hard fought legal battle, the school district has introduced a policy of requiring students to be taught classes in Navajo culture and language. This has not been a particularly popular policy with a large group of parents and educators. While many support the policy, others state that culture belongs in the home. Schools should just teach kids. This position implies that the culture of schools is neutral. It implies that schools do not perpetuate the dominance of some positions and the exclusion of others. In fact, when people say that culture belongs at home, they really mean that "minority culture belongs at home." Ultimately this kind of racist position creates a kind of community that divides rather than unites. In some of the schools in this US district, educators say that the minority students who are the most successful are those who have given up their heritage languages and cultures and who do what is necessary to be successful.
This view of culture is extremely problematic. It implies, as some have suggested that it is only people from minority groups -- whether we are talking about race and ethnicity, social class, socio-economic power, religion, or sexual orientation -- who have culture. The rest of us don't -- at least not one that needs to be acknowledged or examined. Some of the white" kids in this district say that questions about culture do not apply to them, they are confused and say they have no culture. But, as one of my UBC colleagues has written, "White is a colour too."
We have to pay attention to questions of culture if we are to create wholeness out of diversity. We cannot assume that everyone automatically thinks alike. We cannot assume that because school is a fine place for us to be, it as comfortable for everyone. In fact, building a sense of community out of the diversity of our school populations requires creating safe places for the conversation about culture to occur. We need to find out from parents, students, and teachers about their experiences with schools. Making assumptions about others is dangerous. Finding out about others is an important step to building a real sense of school community. Yet, too often, we are hesitant to begin the conversation because we know that conflict and different perspectives will come to the surface. We need not to be afraid of the conflicting perspectives, but to explore them -- this will result in changes. Recently a prominent educator argued this point with me. His position was that if we bring the discussion into the open in schools, we will do violence to the existing culture of schools. I maintain that we already do violence -- to people who for one reason or another are outside of the mainstream culture. We cannot engage in this conversation without expecting some changes to occur. But making a place for all students to feel they belong at school, a place where they can make connections with other people and with the ideas being explored -- may be one of the most important task of educators today -- and I think the recent incidents of school violence in both the US and Canada bear this out.
This is where philosophy comes in. How do we organize for teaching and learning? What do we mean by teaching and learning? How do we want to relate to others in the school community? What kind of community do we want to have?
Philosophy
In a recent 3 year national Canadian study of student engagement in learning and school life, in which I participated, we discovered that it was really impossible to talk about student engagement in learning and school life without talking about engaging schools. And we also discovered that the overall philosophy of a school contributed significantly to whether or not it was an engaging place to be -- not just for students but for the adults in the building as well. Basically (although I am simplifying the findings in the interest of time) we identified three dominant educational philosophies -- They relate not only to curriculum, but generally to organizational patterns and practices within a school.
The three were:
The first is an authoritarian approach to education. This is the typical way of thinking about schooling as fixed in time and place. Exaggerating only slightly, this is the philosophy that implies that schools should remain as they always were. The superintendent is in charge. The principal is the middle manager. The teachers do as they are told and the students are better seen and not heard and parents are expected to come to the school when summoned and stay away the rest of the time. In this philosophy, we found that student engagement in school life was contained in traditional ways. Students participated in ineffective students' councils, they acted as captains of school teams and presidents of clubs, and had very little meaningful involvement in the life of the school. Sometimes, they felt there was no place for them -- no gathering place, no psychological space. We saw in one school, segregated groups of students: Asians studying in the cafeteria, Caucasians sitting in the halls; Asians in two rows beside the doors, and Caucasians in rows against the windows. In another students told us that they had raised money and bought couches that had subsequently disappeared and that they felt they had no place to gather. In a transmissive philosophy, the status quo is never questioned and there are few, if any discussions about who is alienated and who feels comfortable in school.
We saw a second dominant philosophy operating in a number of schools-- one we might call student-centered or experience oriented. Superintendents visited occasionally, principals were somewhat more collaborative and shared some decision-making with the teachers. Parent volunteers were frequently in evidence (at least in the elementary schools) and the schools operated according to this philosophy were generally quite happy places to be. Teachers worked hard to provide opportunities for students to engage in activity-oriented instruction. They provided field trips, hands-on activities, group work and cooperative learning. But, for the most part, all choices and experiences were determined, planned, and delivered by the teachers. We were told of one school in which teachers planned a Christmas craft fair. They spent hours making gifts that the students could buy to give friends and family for Christmas. (And we wondered why they had not had the students making crafts to sell and participating in the organization of the activity.) In an activity-oriented, student-centered school, teachers often gave students opportunities to make a choice of topics for assignments. An innocent comment suggests the limitations of this approach. One small girl told us that when it was her turn to select a topic, the only thing left was "helicopters' - out of the whole range of topics in the world, that was all that was left! While a student centered philosophy may involve students in less passive classroom activities than the transmissive approach described earlier, it does not go much farther towards sharing the responsibility for building a welcoming community in which all members of the school community find a place. Community is still defined by the administrator and teachers in the school. Parents and students help out when asked and enjoy the variety of activities presented.
The third philosophy we found operating in a few schools was one we might describe as a critical philosophy of education. Here even very young students were considered old enough to understand and sometimes to challenge the status quo. Teachers were not pawns in the hands of the school board and school administration; and parents as well as students were considered to be full participants in the processes of education. In these schools, conflicting perspectives were recognized as something that was real and worthy of exploration and discussion. In one school, for example, regular Town Hall meetings were held. At one, a first grader raised a problem. The younger kids did not have a chance to pay on all of the playground equipment at recess; what could they do? Following a discussion of the problem, the children solved it themselves -- if there was a waiting line, they would voluntarily limit time on equipment to 2 minutes each. Contrast this with the experience of a high school girl in a school with a transmissive philosophy. She had had difficulty with the approach of a particular teacher. When she had tried everything, she told us, she decided to take the advice of a counselor, She wrote out a description of the issue, "When you do·, I feel· and took it to the teacher. He tore it up on the spot, saying, 'I don't need to take this from a student.'"
A critical approach to education not only permitted, but encouraged the questioning. A critical approach would not accept the previously cited statements of the US school principals in my study about students needing to give up language or culture to be successful. It would accept the attempts of this student to challenge what she perceived to be injustice rather than to oppress her. It would lead students to investigate different conceptions of success and the implications of one person trying to impose his or her definition of success on another. In a school with a critical philosophy, when an article appeared in a local newspaper describing the students of a particular elementary school as generally poor - at risk students of poverty, the children were concerned. With the help of their teachers, they began to explore the social construction of poverty and wrote letters back to the paper explaining their position. This is reflective of a critical approach in which the traditional power is overthrown and students share real responsibility for their own learning.
In one of the US schools I showed you earlier, I once attended a staff meeting following the announcement of the students' achievement on a set of standardized tests. Once again, the students had performed very poorly and once again the teachers were frustrated -- wanting to find solutions and also hoping to find someone to blame. Again, the discussion turned to the students. You have to realize they are very poor, they don't have a lot of material things, many live in homes where there is abuse, and alcoholism. We do our best but we just can't make a difference. Once teacher actually said that the problem was that they presented the students with a smorgasbord, but that the students just were not hungry enough, they just did not want to learn. When asked if perhaps the food was not palatable enough, perhaps it was not the right type, he persisted, 'No the food is fine, We don't need to change, The students are just not hungry enough."
The next day I talked to several people -- a parent told me that his daughters got home after basketball practice and after dinner sat in the cab of their truck to do their homework, as they did not have any lights in the house. An 11th grade student told me of how she had to get up at 5 am so she could drive with her mother and step-father into town, and then get to the public showers. After her shower, she either went to the principals' house or back home to wait for the school bus. She was the last one off the bus after basketball practice, and got home after the rest of the family were in bed -- so she did her homework in the tiny bathroom where the light would not disturb others. She worried that she sometimes had trouble getting all her homework done. Not hungry enough? I would suggest that we often don't know our students very well. We don't know what motivates them, the effort they make to attend school, or to do homework.
The stories from your schools are different, each student's story will be unique -- but we must take time to know our students, to listen and learn from each of them and from their teachers if we are to create a community in which they will be able to find a place. We need to question assumptions to examine the commonly accepted beliefs and practices of our workplaces. I had a special education professor once who told us that if we learned nothing else from his course, he wanted us to remember that if we don't know one thing about each student's lives outside of class we are failing them. Likewise for administrators: if we don't know one thing about the lives of our teachers and staff members outside of school, we are failing them.
To this point, we have examined a few components of creating what I have been calling communities of wholeness -- communities that do not attempt to emphasize sameness or conformity, but that respect diversity and foster inquiry. We have identified
During the rest of the time available, I want to look in more detail at some implications of these ideas for educational practice.
When we focus on building a sense of community in a school, we need to recognize that the underlying purpose is educational. We build community, not to make everyone feel good, but to provide a welcoming and respectful place so that people will be free to explore ideas, to learn to think critically, to live creatively, and to act justly.
This is not easy. It does not happen if we do not develop a sense of shared purpose to guide our educational practices. We saw the importance of purpose in the little school dealing with budget allocations. Research teaches us about some of the components of shared purpose that may be helpful to consider. I want to discuss five of them here.
First. We have to guard against the danger of a formulaic approach to inclusion:
By this I mean the kind of response sometimes known as the three "F's" of multiculturalism: food, fashion, folk dancing. "We've had two multicultural dinners and one evening of ethnic dance. We don't have to worry about including 'other' groups because we have already done our part." Here, as generally is the case, well intentioned people are going through the motions, but not really attending to the deep issues related to difference. They and many others, mistakenly think that inclusion can be achieved through a series of discontinuous events.
I interviewed an Indo-Canadian teacher last year, who told me how upset she felt when they staff were discussing the activities for the annual multicultural week. You'll look after the dinner, of course, Anita, one said. Her response was to "go up one side of them and down the other. Why should I do it? Is it because I'm brown? Don't you think I know I'm brown? I look in the mirror and am reminded every day. It' not my job, you know. It's up to all of us to work for inclusion and understanding and respect." Her point is an important one for school leaders -- creating a community that is accepting of difference is everyone's job -- it must not be left up to representatives of minority groups in the school.
Second: We need to learn that generally it is neither appropriate nor helpful to "do things" for people rather than "with" them. The teachers who prepared the craft sale could have taught their students much more by working with them.
One school I know well, has 250 students, 26 different ethnic groups and a 46% First nations population. It is located in an area of Vancouver reputed to have the lowest socio-economic status in Canada. There, teachers are convinced that the students come from deprived situations and neither they nor their families have anything to contribute. They think that their primary task is to make the students feel safe and secure and often forget they are there to teach them. One teacher told me last April she had spent so much time working on self-esteem and safety issues she had just then begun to teach the 5th grade curriculum for the year.
Self-esteem and safety are important, but I am afraid that one of the spin-offs of recent school violence will be more of this kind of deficit thinking. There is some interesting research about what happens to disadvantages students in schools. In 1978 the NY Board of regents did a study about summer learning loss. They found that children from advantaged home gain approximately one year and one month worth of learning during an academic year and gain an additional three months over the summer as they engage in activities with their families. This amounts to an academic gain of approximately 1.5 years for each year in school. At-risk students, on the other hand, tend to gain about nine months worth during an academic year and to lose three months of progress over the summer for a net gain of approximately ,5 year. The gap just gets wider and wider.
We cannot afford to have the students with the least advantaged home environments, being disadvantaged at schools too. We cannot continue to act as if they are to be pitied rather than taught. And we must do things with them and their families rather than for them if they are to be empowered to take responsibility for their own learning.
Third, we have to explicitly reject any notion of cultural deficiency and recognize that different does not mean deficient. Do we believe poor children can't learn? First Nations children are less intelligent than Caucasian children? There is some interesting research from the University of Texas that shows that the single most important factor in the academic success of children often thought to be at-risk is the explicit rejection of the model of cultural deficiency and the explicit decision to hold all students to high standards. That means principals need to talk about it.
When I visited a remote FN school last year in northern BC, I was privy to a very typical example of lowered expectations and inappropriate curriculum modification. The curriculum guide had outlined an activity in which students were to use the telephone to gather information. I visited a ninth grade class and found the teacher engaged in what I thought was a very strange activity. He was asking his students to name a product - not a generic name like car or jeans, but a brand name like Dodge, or Guess. I wondered what was going on. Finally he said to the group, "I need the brand name so that when I call to get the information, I can find out where they are manufactured, what the mark-up is etc". I couldn't remain silent any longer and asked if I could ask a "stupid question." I wondered why the students were not making the phone calls. They said, almost in unison, "We can't. We don't know how."
I suggested they could develop questions together, practice on each other etc. and escaped from the room ·.Later I saw the teacher in the staff room and he said, "You know the curriculum guide ask us to have the children call, but I knew they couldn't do it." I suggested they should role play, that he might phone some businesses and inform them that the students were trying to learn how to get information, He might run interference, asking if there was someone specific the kids should ask for." As the conversation ended, I said that I believed curriculum modification meant finding strategies to help students reach the goals -- not changing the goal posts. He thanked me profusely and said, "This is great -- you should write about it!"
Here the point is that the principal was aware of what was happening in the classrooms of the school, or rather I might say, of how little was happening in many of them. And she ignored it. She did not ensure that every teacher knew that modifying the curriculum did not mean lowering standards. She did not help her teachers to reject the notion of cultural deficiency. It is also worthy of note that in this case the principal was a very bright, well-educated FN woman from the community who had apparently without even realizing it, bought into some of the negative stereotypes associated with the performance of her FN students. The situation reminds us again of how important it is to be sensitive to our own assumptions, as they can blind us to the real needs of the students.
Fourth: We have to move away from being reactive and toward being proactive. This means that in every school, we will develop a sense of what we are about. We will have clear goals and directions that determine what we can and cannot do. Principals are in unique situations to act as bridges between the community and the school, to act as go-betweens between the district and the ministry and the community. And sometimes this means you have to say No. You have to act as a buffer for your staff and not permit every special assembly or every new program or every special interest group to take precious academic time.
I cannot avoid making the observation here that being proactive rather than reactive is perhaps one of the most important lessons from the recent tragedies in Littleton and Taber, AB. For the last two weeks we have been reacting - radio talk shows, town meetings, Cross-Canada check-up -- everyone has been suggesting reactive solutions to deep-seated societal problems. I want to suggest two things. One is that a proliferation of special programs that pull students out of classes and fragment their school days even more than is presently the case, may not work towards building a sense of community, rather the opposite may be the case. In fact, in the small school with the low SES population I mentioned earlier, there is a ratio of 4 pupils for each adult, and there are so many special programs that there is little or no consistency. For the past two years, teachers have been talking about the need to establish yet another program to ensure that every student has a positive interaction with an adult every day. Consistency and community and a critical examination of the status quo are likely more effective than special programs.
This is important. Respecting diversity, talking about difference, does not mean we abrogate responsibility and adopt an "anything goes" attitude. While we cannot ultimately lay blame other than at the feet of perpetrators of violence and at some disfunctional aspects of modern life, we can suggest that had the principal and school staff of the high school in Littleton been more proactive in being aware of his context and the culture of his school, there might not be the need for reaction now. When a principal can say publicly on national television that he had never seen a student wearing a trench coat, nor had ever heard of the trench coat mafia, I wonder how well he really knew any aspects of his school's culture. Moreover, the two most recent school tragedies, like those before them in recent years, remind us that difference and diversity are everywhere. None of these schools were inner city schools with obvious gangs and factions. In fact, being proactive necessitates understanding difference and diversity even when it is subtle. It's like oft cited parable of the boiled frog: if you place a frog in a pan of boiling water, it will jump out. But if you place him in tepid water and gradually raise the temperature to a boiling point, it will boil to death. We need to be sensitive to gradual changes that may "kill" us.
Five: It is important to recognize that it is not the job of a principal to be liked but to lead.
You cannot please everyone all of the time - and perhaps not even everyone some of the time. Sometimes you have to take a tough and ethical stand. The students, CUPE workers, and even the teachers have smaller, more vested interests in what is happening in the school. Teachers put their classrooms or their students or subjects first. Secretaries and caretakers sometimes put the demands of their contracts first. But the principal must have the big picture and act in the interests of the whole community. This will require identifying areas of conflict and difference. It will require identifying areas of injustice and inequity. And it will require making the difficult decision to bring them to the forefront of the conversation in the school. There will be conflict, but if it is not dealt with openly and honestly, it will fester. Michael Fullan used to say "conflicts are our friends." He now says that we need to go deeper, and recognize that "conflict and diversity are our friends."
This is a little too simplistic and pat for me. They may not be friends. And neither conflict nor diversity are to be welcomed for themselves. We do not seek diversity because it is friendly. We do not deal with conflict because we like it. But we do deal with them because otherwise the school community will not be healthy or whole -- because unless we make difficult decisions and act ethically, the school communities in which we work will and marginalize and fail to serve some of their members.
Conclusion
It is obvious that is times of crisis, like the incident in Littleton, CO, Taber, AB, or the Swiss air disaster here in Nova Scotia, communities know how to pull together, to be compassionate and generous. How do we transfer the learning about and understanding of others that takes place in a crisis situation to our daily interactions so that they lead away from a sense of disjointedness and fragmentation and marginalization and toward a sense of community?
I have suggested that as educational leaders we need to constantly examine and reflect on five key areas and five principles of practice that may help us to create schools in which diversity contributes both to a sense of wholeness and a sense of community.
We need to be constantly aware of: the purpose, context, culture, philosophy and practices of our school.
We need to:
There are numerous other things I could have talked about and issues and illustrations that could have been explored. I have not talked about how to bring about change, or how to analyze or reformulate and solve problems. We are in difficult fiscal and political times. These bring particular demands and pressures on schools and principals that I have not had time to explore. Yet as we respond to the political and fiscal pressures, we are forced to deal with conflict and difference -- demands from special interest groups, each one thinking its request is the most pressing and the most compelling, demands from parent groups for more voice, requests from districts to streamline budgets and cut back on services. All of these pressures require the strategies that I have been suggesting this morning. If, as educators, you work with your staffs to develop a shred vision around the five key areas and if you keep the five principles in the forefront of your thinking, you will move your school ahead toward being a healthy and inclusive community of learners.
We conclude where we started. You cannot run madly off in all directions. You cannot and do not need to do everything by yourself. You have likely heard people talking of the relevance of chaos theory or complexity theory for education. While I don't pretend to understand it all, and I do not believe that chaos theory translates directly, there is one aspect that is particularly useful. Margaret Wheatley (1993) in a book called Leadership and the New Science reminds us that in nature, there are numerous repeated patterns or fractals - the patterns of leaves and ferns, of clouds, etc. She also suggests that we learn from looking at the movement of atoms, that although we cannot know where any individual atom will move next, there is an overall pattern that can be predicted. And science tells us that the whole system is held together in patterns by something known as strange attractors. From the physical sciences, we must learn that just as it is not possible to control atoms and particles, we cannot control behaviour. In fact, some would say that educational leaders have spent far too much time trying to predict, and order, and control behaviour within schools and not enough time trying to understand the patterns that exist. A new and more effective approach would then be to understand the patterns of belief and behaviour in your school, the patterns of agreement and disagreement, satisfaction and discontent, acceptance and marginalization, patterns of support or resistance, patterns of power and powerlessness. The task then is to identify one or two pressure points. Where can you help to bring about small change in one place that will have a ripple effect on the organization. Which patterns can you begin to change that will bump against other patterns and set in motion the kinds of changes you would like to see?
The trigger may be a person, a small group, an idea, an activity -- only you can decide where to begin to effect change in your school. I wish you great success as you consider how best to create wholeness from diversity, to create with your teachers and your students, the best, most respectful, most empowered communities of learners possible.
Follow-up Questions:
Think of the way things have always been done in your school:
1. What is one question you would like to ask?
2. What is one assumption you would like to understand?
3. What is one practice you would like to challenge?