The Extreme Principle: What Matters Most, What Works Best

The Extreme Principle What Matters Most, What Works Best Keen J. Babbage Rowman & Littlefield Education A division of...

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The Extreme Principle What Matters Most, What Works Best Keen J. Babbage

Rowman & Littlefield Education

A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Lanhamâ•‡ â•‡ New Yorkâ•‡ â•‡ Torontoâ•‡ â•‡ Plymouth, UK

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Published by Rowman & Littlefield Education A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 http://www.rowmaneducation.com Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom Copyright © 2011 by Keen Babbage All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Babbage, Keen J. The extreme principle : what matters most, what works best / Keen Babbage. p. cm. ISBN 978-1-60709-843-0 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-60709-844-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-60709-845-4 (electronic) 1. School improvement programs—United States. 2. Effective teaching—United States. 3. Motivation in education—United States. I. Title. LB2822.82.B32 2011 371.2'07—dc22 2010029899

™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

To my students at Henry Clay High School

Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction

vii 1

â•… chapter 1

The Best Answers Are Within, Not Without

â•…Chapter 2

Listen, Listen More, Keep Listening

5 33

â•… chapter 3 The â•… chapter 4

Extreme Principal Uses the Extreme Principle

59

The Extreme Principle in the Classroom

81

â•…Chapter 5 The

Extreme Principle Throughout a School District

103

â•… chapter 6 The

Extreme Principle for State and Federal Education Officials

125

â•…Chapter 7

A Simple Way to Solve Problems

149

â•… chapter 8

The Extreme Principle beyond Schools

171

â•… Epilogue:

Teach for a Day

179

About the Author

183

v

Acknowledgments

T

hank you to the dear people at the Rowman & Littlefield Education division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Your encouragement, your expertise, and your advice are deeply appreciated. Our adventures through twelve books are cherished experiences. Thank you to the students whom I taught at Henry Clay High School in Lexington, Kentucky, from 2006 to 2010. You confirmed for me what matters most in education. You helped me learn more about what works best in education.

vii

Introduction

T

he essential concepts of the Extreme Principle are to do what matters most and to do what works best. At first glance it seems purely logical to do what matters most and what works best. Why would anyone instead do what barely matters or what does not work? Is human nature to blame? Is distorted reasoning at fault? Perhaps the culprit is inadequate awareness of the lessons from history. In education, what matters most? The answer is learning. In education, what works best? The overall answer is instruction that causes learning; however, what that effective instruction is cannot be squeezed into a formula, policy, regulation, procedure, or law. How, then, do we improve education if what works best cannot be written precisely and rigidly into the legal language of law itself and of public policies? Think. One approach of such thinking is to evaluate what does not work in efforts to improve education. Every few years the federal government, the state governments, or school districts will proclaim the urgency of education reform. Their intentions are probably honorable, but their reform efforts are likely to produce more laws, regulations, policies, meetings, forms, and bureaucratic counterproductivity than they will produce learning by students. Why are systemic reforms of education so likely to be unsuccessful and so likely to be followed by another well-intentioned, yet guaranteed to accomplish very little, rearrangement of education? One answer is that education reform changes the bureaucratic system of education; however, what matters most and what works best in educa1

Introduction

tion is not the bureaucratic system. What matters most is learning. What works best is seen in classrooms where teachers cause learning. Are we at the mountaintop moment yet when the highest quality and the highest quantity of learning are occurring in each classroom? The pessimist would answer, “No, and we never will be.” The optimist would answer, “Yes, in some. Not yet in others, but we’ll get there.” The Extreme Principle realist replies, “When we do what matters most and when we do what works best, we get the intended results.” That reality is the topic of this book. I am writing this book during the second semester of the 2009–2010 school year. The timing is perfect for many reasons, especially this one: during the first semester of the 2009–2010 school year, the quality and quantity of work done by my students surpassed all of the very good and great results I have seen throughout my twenty-six years of experience as a middle-school and high-school teacher and administrator. What makes this recent semester superior to all others? The results have been analyzed, and the conclusions are definite. First, never have I listened more to students. Their input is taken seriously. I cannot provide everything they request. The rules in my classroom are precise, and they are enforced. Yet, in the process of listening, a partnership is built. I become aware of their part-time jobs, their extracurricular activities, their career hopes, their hobbies, and their interests. Whenever possible, that awareness is connected with what we are studying. When does this listening happen? As students enter my classroom before class begins. As students leave my classroom after class ends. When I take a few minutes before the first class to walk to the library, to the cafeteria, or through the halls just to see students. What I hear and see better equips me to teach my current students. I also listen closely to what students tell me when I ask them about projects we do, assignments we have, test formats we use, or various activities in class. When their ideas can help cause learning, we use their ideas. More of my students this year have artistic or musical interest and talent. More assignments this year have included opportunities for the application of those interests and talents. Another reason for the superior results during the first semester of this school year is that the characteristics of Extreme Students (Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2006) have been taught, emphasized, taught more, 2

Introduction

emphasized more, and increasingly mastered. Coupled with that has been an increased application of the Extreme Teaching (Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2003) ideas. Third, there has been a continuous process of “work, evaluate, revise,” followed by “work, evaluate, revise.” The students know that I arrive at school early and stay late. They know I will write the letter of recommendation that they need today for a job, college application, or scholarship. Why do I not tell them that they waited too long to request the letter or that I do not have time? Because I will not deny myself the opportunity to touch their lives simply because they have not yet fully mastered time management. They do need to learn time discipline, so I have shared time-management ideas with more students this year to help them learn that skill. A fourth factor is persistence. I get to teach my students for 177 schooldays this year. If day 37 was not perfect, day 38 could still be perfect. If a student struggled with a test in October, it is my job to show that student what he or she does not know so there will be improvement in November. I spent more time and effort in the first semester making sure that students mastered the methods of learning. That mastery led to better results. This most recent semester confirms what my career in education has revealed, what my years in the business of advertising revealed, and what many conversations with many colleagues in education have always revealed: we know what matters most, and we know what works best. Here is a recent example that helps remind us that education is a human-interaction adventure, not a bureaucratic process of new policies, procedures, regulations, reforms, or laws. Four high-school students were enjoying the pleasant temperature and abundant sunshine of an October afternoon. School had let out about an hour earlier, and I had to move my car so the marching band could practice in the faculty parking lot. I could have waved to the students; but I am here for them, so I walked over and we talked. I had taught or was teaching each of these four young scholars, and they welcomed me into the conversation. What I learned was that two of the students were in an amateur band that would soon have its first professional performance. That awareness led to a change in an upcoming assignment in class. Students would have 3

Introduction

the option of writing the lyrics to a song about an event in U.S. history. The result was a creative and scholarly masterpiece by one student who was in that band and in my class. He showed complete understanding of the history topic while also applying his excitement about music. The student learned, and the teacher who listened learned. A cherished memory was created. How can the knowledge of what matters most and the knowledge of what works best become the vital resources for improving learning in schools? How can education decisions be filtered through the priorities of what matters most and what works best? How can educators and other people who are concerned about education concentrate fully on what matters most and what works best? Those essential topics are what The Extreme Principle: What Matters Most, What Works Best is about. The ideas in this book are based on experience, judgment, reasoning, advice, and reflection. In scenes, case studies, or simulations where names are used or characters are used, the names and the characters are fictional while the points made or the situations presented are realistic. One more note for the reader: The word reform is sometimes spelled re-form in this book. Re-form is used as an occasional reminder that much of what is called “education reform” is merely education re-form. Re-form changes the structure, the organization, the bureaucracy, the procedures, the policies, the regulations, or the laws. Real reform of education concentrates only on what matters most and on what works best. Keen Babbage Lexington, Kentucky February 2010

4

chapter one


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o what matters most. Do what works best. Following those two standards could enhance achievement in many endeavors. When a business, an athlete, a spouse, a preacher, a journalist, a family member, a friend, or an executive does what matters most and what works best, the results can be superior. Imagine a football team with many skilled athletes who all willingly work very hard at each practice. The team’s field-goal kicker is very talented and is quite accurate with kicks up to thirty yards. He is fairly accurate with kicks ranging from thirty-one to about forty yards, but he never makes a kick of forty-three yards or more. If what matters most for that team is to score points, then what works best is not going to include attempting field goals of forty-three yards or longer. Imagine a wife who, despite having an excellent job in the town where she and her family live, is approached about a great job in a city one thousand miles away. After much thought, she does not consider pursuit of the other job because what matters most and works best for her family is to stay where they are and build upon the wholesome life they have established. Accepting that new job would not support what matters most to and works best for that family. Do what matters most. Do what works best. Those two concepts, truths, guidelines, or directives form the foundations of the Extreme Principle. What could possibly keep a school, a principal, or a teacher from doing what matters most and doing what works best? There are 5

Chapter 1

many possible answers, all of which are part of the common process that complicates improving education. At long last we are going to notice education in this state. If you elect me as governor, I’ll be that first and only governor who actually kept the promise to make our schools the best in the nation. We will make sure that every student learns, every teacher teaches, every school administrator leads, every school counselor advises, and every person who works in any part of the education system in this state does the job right.

Such statements could be made by any candidate running for governor in any state. Such statements could be followed by proposals for education reform. Such proposals could be explained on the campaign website or in printed campaign material. Such explanations could include statements about reorganization of the state’s department of education, about mandating a new curriculum, about implementing new procedures for accountability, and about finding revenue sources to fully support the proposals. In the next campaign season four years later, when the same state will vote in another gubernatorial election, the candidates will make similar statements about finally solving the education inefficiencies and problems that have plagued the state for years. Proposals that would reform the most recent reform will be presented, debated, opposed, supported, approved in part, and, given enough time, replaced by more education reform ideas four years later. Education re-form does not reform education. Education re-form— meaning systemic revisions, bureaucratic reorganizations, procedural changes, regulatory expansions, and political processes—does not do what matters most or what works best. Education re-form impacts the structure, the process, the procedures, the bureaucracy, the regulations, the policies, and the laws of the education system. Certainly there can be times when those aspects of the educational endeavor merit re-form; however, the results of such re-forms are limited. The form of education is not what matters most. A new form of education is not what works best. The differences between re-form and reform will be explored in detail later in this chapter. For now, please keep this thought in mind: what is called “education reform” is sometimes merely education re-form. 6


Improving education requires concentrating effort on what matters most and what works best. Re-form far too often concentrates on systems, processes, procedures, policies, laws, bureaucracies, meetings, and other parts of the form of education. Imagine that the federal government of the United States decides that action must be taken to reform the dietary intake of all Americans. The decision is made to begin with breakfast cereal. The breakfast-cereal reform is nicknamed No Cereal Left Behind (NCLB), and during the next five years all cereals sold in the United States must make sufficient assured yearly progress (AYP) toward reaching levels where the sugar content has been reduced to or below an allowed maximum and the whole-wheat content has been increased to or above a certain minimum. Will the eating habits and nutritional experiences of Americans improve? Will some people just add sugar to their bowls of cereal? Will some new product emerge that is no longer a cereal, according to regulations and policies, but is so much like a cereal that consumers purchase it instead and evade the NCLB intent? What matters most and what works best in nutrition? When families and individuals select healthy and nutritious foods they give themselves far better nutritional experiences than the government’s nutrition-reform plan could have required. The government’s plan could impact the ingredients of cereals, the nutrition data on the cereal box, and the content of advertising about cereals, but families and individuals would still decide what to buy and what to eat. Reform at the bureaucratic, systemic, regulatory, or corporate levels could have minimal impact on reform of behavior, actions, and decisions at the individual human level. Where do students spend most of their time at school? In classrooms. With whom do students spend most of the time at school? Teachers. Keep those thoughts in mind while reflecting on the following questions: What matters most in education? What works best in education? Education reforms come, go, and come back. Education fads and trends come, go, and come back. Students, teachers, and classrooms endure. What matters most to and works best for teachers, students, and classrooms? The answers are not in think-tank position papers, interestgroup critiques, political-party platforms, social engineering, or bureaucratic regulations. The answers are within the human realities of students, teachers, and their shared activities in classrooms. 7

Chapter 1

There must be a structure for the overall process of education to function. State governments and local school boards or local governments must manage a comprehensive system that coordinates construction of school buildings, allocation of funds through budgets, purchase of school buses, and other tasks that enable a system to function. Teachers do not purchase school buses and purchasing agents do not plan lessons or grade papers. What matters most and works best in the school district accounting office may not be what matters most and works best in the high-school principal’s office or in the middle-school math classroom. What matters most and what works best in the accounting office could change with new financial realities or with new accounting procedures. What matters most in classrooms is learning. What works best in classrooms can be dynamic. How is that possible? Jason is a high-school junior who always passes tests, but never turns in homework. He fails classes because of his homework grades. What matters most for Jason is to learn, accept, and complete the responsibility of turning in homework. Then, after that, what will matter most? Perhaps what will matter most then is getting his test grades above the merely passing level. Perhaps what will matter most after that is getting Jason to take some more demanding classes. What will work best to make each of these steps of progress happen can vary from day to day and from student to student. An involved, determined, caring, capable, hardworking teacher could impact Jason’s school experience. That teacher can reform education of, by, with, and for Jason. A systemic reform of education that is imposed by people who will never meet Jason and who never ask for advice from Jason’s teacher will not benefit Jason, his teacher, Jason’s education, or education in general. The best answers are within, not without. Is that to say no idea for improving a school can come from any source except the school itself? Is that to say no idea for improving the work done in a classroom can come from any source except the people in that classroom? Ideas can come from many sources. Ideas that are consistent with classroom reality, so that they concentrate on what matters most and on what works best, prove themselves by passing the classroom reality check. That reality check requires that each idea support what matters most and be part of what works best. Ideas that fail the classroom reality check are rejected. 8


Schools are unique organizations. Managing a school is different from managing a corporation. Leading a school is different from leading a political campaign. Working in a classroom is different from working in a newsroom. Each school is a unique organization. Each corporation, political campaign, and newsroom is unique. The reality of that uniqueness is an important factor as each organization determines what matters most and what works best. One married couple goes out every Friday night for supper and a movie. Another married couple, with twin teenage sons who are in the high-school marching band, attends the high-school football games on autumn Friday nights to help the band. Yet another married couple devotes Friday night to visiting their elderly relatives. What matters most for each of these couples could be to continually express their love for and devotion to each other. What works best for each of these couples is determined by their responsibilities, priorities, convictions, and life experience. The answers will not come from a No Couple Left Behind (NCLB) law, regulation, or policy. A nationally successful fast-food restaurant chain assures customers that the food the chain is famous for will be of consistent quality and taste in all of their one thousand locations. What matters most includes value, taste, quality, service speed, convenience, employee politeness, accuracy, restaurant cleanliness, and a welcoming atmosphere. What works best could have commonalities; however, each location in the chain faces unique competitive conditions based on other restaurants in its neighborhood. Menu items, pricing, promotions, local advertising, and local community involvement may need to vary considerably for each store in the chain to maximize its success. If the restaurant chain’s national management executives decided that efficiency demanded uniformity, they could begin a restaurant-reform effort that mandated, among other changes, that each restaurant would open at 6:00 a.m. and close at midnight. For those locations that competed with nearby twenty-four-hour restaurants, no exceptions would be made due to inefficiency. That is an example of what matters most to the corporate bureaucracy and what works best for the corporate bureaucracy. Did the corporate executives listen to the managers of each location before proclaiming the specifics of the restaurant-reform program? Ap9

Chapter 1

parently not, but what is more perplexing is why those executives denied themselves the important input that each store manager could provide. What also is very perplexing is why the corporate management would deny the restaurant manager and other employees the experience of contributing ideas that are taken seriously—because that communication produces useful ideas while also building mutual trust and commitment, as well as creating better business results. Ideas, communication, trust, and commitment are potentially powerful forces for improving education. Does education reform in its typical re-form mode fully incorporate the vital ideas, communication, trust, and commitment that are essential for real progress? What role is there for education reform in the pursuit of improved education? Advocates of education reform could insist that the status quo is unacceptable; therefore, reform is mandatory. Opponents, critics, or cynics could reply that education reforms of the past have never worked sufficiently, with the evidence being that every reform has been followed by another reform. Is that an indictment of reform? Or, from another perspective, perhaps education reform works so well at keeping bureaucracies busy that it invites further reform from people who benefit from perpetual reform. Education does not need to be re-formed. The form of education is not the problem or the solution. What matters most and what works best is not the form of education, of schools, of school districts or school systems, of the state or federal education bureaucracy. When education reform merely re-forms education, the impact on learning could be negative at worst, neutral at best. Form communicates shape, process, procedure, regulation, and policy. The form of education could include organizing schools by age group, resulting in elementary school, middle school, and high school. Form communicates scheduling, which could mean having a three-month summer vacation from school. Form indicates regulations, policies, or procedures, such as increasing the number of math and science classes a student must take to earn graduation from high school. Elementary-school reformers could advocate having grades K–5 in one building for elementary school and grades 6–8 in another building for middle school. Other reformers could contend that sixth-graders need to remain in the elementary-school structure and that middle school needs to be replaced by a new version of junior high school that includes ninth 10


grade. Still other reformers might insist that ninth-graders need a separate ninth-grade center instead of being grouped with middle-school or highschool students. Are those organizational options dealing directly with the factors of what matters most and what works best? Are grade groupings and building usage the most significant factors in causing learning? Are the hours, days, weeks, meetings, and debates that are spent on the topics of grade groupings and building usage worth the effort that is invested? The re-form mindset, attitude, and perspective are based in part or perhaps in full on the premise that if the process, the procedures, the routines, the policies, the regulations, and the laws of education could be organized efficiently, precisely, and scientifically, with the controlled conformity of an assembly line, the results would be improved. The reform mindset may conceive the ideal structure, process, and procedure for education that proponents claim would ensure that outstanding learning would be attained by each student who completed the thirteen-year efficient, precise, scientific, controlled experience that extended from kindergarten through high-school graduation. Does that process work in factories, where the assembly line can be completely controlled? When products are produced in the assembly-line system, is the result perfection? No, mistakes are made and product recalls are issued. Then the manufacturing process is re-formed in an attempt to perfect the production process, only to find that some products have to be rejected due to various errors. The manufacturing process of cars is 100 percent controlled by the people who design and operate the assembly line and design both the parts and the car itself. The assembly line cannot refuse to do its homework; the parts cannot write a note giving some dishonest or honest excuse for failing to complete an assignment. The car itself cannot talk back, defy, fight, assault, sleep, or cause disruptions. The factory process cannot refuse to function if the humans who operate the factory make it function. Still, manufacturing is imperfect. In the process of engineering the totality of the production system, from design of the factory to completed products being shipped to consumers, mistakes are made. These mistakes are made despite the fact that the products being produced cannot resist the manufacturing experience. When the tires are placed on a car in the manufacturing process, the tires cannot skip work that day, the tires can11

Chapter 1

not show up late, the tires cannot say they forgot to read the assignment about how to last for thirty thousand miles. Schools are different. Assembly-line concepts, thinking, premises, and procedures do not work in schools. Assembly-line processes do not work perfectly in manufacturing products. Assembly-line processes are certain to fail in schools. Why? People are not products. Education cannot be manufactured. Learning cannot be assembly lined. Re-form often seeks to impose an elusive production, manufacturing, assembly-line process and system on an experience that is not mechanical, but rather fundamentally and magnificently human. What works best and what matters most in education will always be based on the human realities of students, teachers, and learning. Is re-form sometimes useful? Yes. Can re-form solve the most important problems in education? No. Can re-form get in the way of what matters most and what works best in education? Yes, it can, but that could be avoided by wise leadership and capable management that assign to re-form what it can achieve while never over-promising the potential of re-form and never permitting re-form to interfere with the real work of teachers and students. Wise leadership and capable management can help filter out the re-forms that are unproductive or counterproductive, leaving only those that could actually enhance the real work of teachers and students. How is that done? STIR. What? Student and Teacher Input Rate. Before any decision in a school or impacting a school is made, evaluate the impact that the decision will have on the work of, the experience of, and the classroom reality of students and teachers. How? Get input from teachers and from students. How do wise leaders and capable managers in education determine the impact that potential decisions will have on the real work done in classrooms by teachers with their students? The answer: they ask them. The answer is not re-forming the system of education. The answer is not expanding the federal or state department of education. The answer is not creating another task force to report their findings in a three-hundredpage study that produces no real improvements. The answer is not in regulations, policies, procedures, meetings, or bureaucracies. Ask them. Treat other people the way you would like to be treated. Ask them. Listen to them. 12


How do we know what matters most and what works best in education? Ask the people who spend all day, every day in the place where what matters most is done and what works best is created. Who are those people? Teachers. Where are those people? In classrooms. The best answers to the questions of improving education are within classrooms, not outside of classrooms. “But what if all they do is complain? ‘The temperature is too hot.’ ‘The copy machine is broken.’ ‘The bells are too loud.’ ‘The morning announcements are too long.’ ‘The weather was bad and we had school.’ ‘The weather was not so bad, but school was canceled.’ ‘The last-minute schedule change interfered with a test or a guest speaker.’ If I listen to some teachers all I’ll hear is a long list of complaints or excuses or rationalizations. Why should I listen to that?” Because within those complaints, excuses, and rationalizations are some truths. The truths may be covered with frustrations, fatigue, disappointment, laziness, or resentment, but under those coverings you can find truth. Listen to all that is said, and probe what is said to reveal the truth within. Would you rather submit to and conform to the edicts of social engineers who seek to impose the next education re-form fad from without, or would you get better results if you discovered the truth about improving education from within? The truth about improving education from within a school could be so productive and effective that the education re-form leviathan might leave you alone to support the real work that matters most and the real activities that work best. That’s one reason you should listen to teachers, including those who tend to complain. “What about all of the experts who create all of the big education innovations and changes? What about the speeches presidents and governors give about education, and all of those conferences and programs that educators attend? Don’t the national experts and high-ranking officials who make the big speeches at those events have all of the best ideas?” Some of those people have good ideas, while others are just scoring political points for their next election or their next career move. You can easily separate the good ideas from the useless ideas by asking yourself whether what you are hearing supports what matters most and what works best. Education re-form can too often be vague, conceptual, generic, and impersonal. Education re-form can too often emphasize the idea of change rather than the reality of what change, if any, is needed in each 13

Chapter 1

classroom. Education re-form can too often be a solution in search of a problem. Students and teachers are not concepts, they are people. The work that students and teachers do in classrooms is not a set of conceptual constructs. Students and teachers are not forms, they are people. The work that students and teachers do in classrooms is real. If that work is really good, analyze it to identify why and how it is working. If that work is really ordinary or really bad, analyze it to identify why and to determine what would work better. Most teachers know if the results in their classrooms are good, ordinary, or bad. Good teachers whose results are good may seek to be great. Teachers whose results are ordinary or bad may eagerly accept interventions, ideas, and support to improve the results of their students and their own career experiences. For teachers who resist the proper effort to improve their ordinary or bad results, an appeal to their original commitment to teaching and the use of a humane program of supportive corrections could have many benefits. It’s a matter of concept versus reality. The concept of education reform is esoteric, while what matters most and what works best are real. Democracy is a concept. Implementing democracy is a very real endeavor that involves the range of activity from voting for candidates to voting for bills to implementing laws. Throughout the history of the United States there have been many attempts to re-form democracy. In 1913 the Constitution was amended so voters could select U.S. senators. That amendment increased citizen participation in the election process. Did that re-form eliminate corruption, inefficiency, mistakes, or political maneuverings in the U.S. Senate? No. Re-form can have some benefits, but the impact of re-form is limited. To the extent that re-form of democracy, education, or anything else supports what matters most and what works best, include re-form as one part of the overall effort to reach the desired results. Do not expect re-form to do more than what merely changing the form can do. Welcome to the real world of the Extreme Principle, where decisions and actions are guided by the standards of what matters most and what works best. To know this very real world better, it is necessary to be in this very real world. We now go within the place where what matters most and what works best are the prevailing realities. We will contrast that place and those realities with a variety of other places and semirealities or nonrealities. 14


First, some perspectives from various parts of life can help establish the proven importance of the Extreme Principle. Why do physicians see patients in person? It is known that eating a nutritious balance of healthy food, getting exercise daily, getting ample sleep nightly, and avoiding certain unhealthy or dangerous activities or substances can add up to an overall program that enhances health. If the general activities associated with good health are well known, why do physicians spend time individually in person with patients? One reason is that no two patients are identical. Another reason is that the exact symptoms, causes, conditions, allergies, medical history, medication tolerances, and other aspects of each patient’s profile are unique. A blanket statement that everyone should walk one mile daily, drink milk daily, and take aspirin at the first sign of an elevated temperature has a logical foundation in the known benefits of exercise, dairy products, and aspirin; however, should people who already get more daily exercise than one mile of walking reduce their workouts? Should people who cannot digest milk force themselves to make a daily attempt to consume milk because a generic food pyramid states that milk is an important source of vital nutrients? Will every person who has an elevated fever benefit from taking aspirin, or do other medications get better results for certain people? When a physician meets with patients individually, there are some questions asked. The capable doctor will listen closely to what the patient is saying. The doctor will obtain additional information through some examination, some tests, and some consultation with colleagues as needed. It is difficult, technology notwithstanding, to diagnose a patient with 100 percent accuracy and thoroughness without seeing the patient, listening to the patient, knowing the medical history of the patient, and evaluating the totality of the unique factors that impact each patient. What matters most in health care is helping the patient get well. What works best in health care will include following ethical, scientific, and professional protocols in search of the solution to each patient’s unique condition, plus direct personal interaction. Similar conclusions can be found within other parts of life. Two athletes who play baseball on the same high-school team are both in hitting slumps. Their batting averages have declined during the past three weeks. They are frustrated. Their team is losing. Nothing has helped, despite the efforts of the coaches and the two players. 15

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What matters most is to once again get base hits. What will work best to make that happen? Will the exact same plan work for each of the players? Does it matter that they are different weights and different heights, have different amounts of experience, play different positions in the field, and have very different personalities, or that one bats right-handed and one bats left-handed? Does it matter that during this three-week batting slump the two athletes each did much better in two separate games? Could the factors in each of those games provide some insight, some ideas, some solutions? Will the baseball coach give the same batting instructions, correction, and guidance to both of the players, or will the coach individualize the instructions, corrections, and guidance to do what works best with each athlete? Will the coach talk with each of the baseball players? Will the coach listen to the players as they explain what seems to be different during the weeks of this batting slump and why the one game was better? Will the coach listen long enough and intently enough to find out that one of these athletes watched a televised interview with a professional baseball player who explained a change he had made in his batting stance, with the result that the high-school player kept trying that new stance? Will the coach listen sufficiently to realize that the other athlete recently began training for an upcoming minimarathon and is running each morning before school? The extra demands on that teenager’s body could be one factor in the recent batting slump. In search of what matters most and what works best, practitioners of the Extreme Principle invest much time in listening. What matters most to people who follow the Extreme Principle is getting proper results. What works best to attain those proper results begins with listening, so that reality is known, understood, analyzed, and directly confronted. To every problem there is an equal and opposite solution. The Extreme Principle helps identify the real problem and then helps create a real solution for the real problem. Working at a school is unlike any other job. Schools are filled with children or teenagers. Most workplaces are filled with adults. Schools are filled with people who have varying thoughts on the purpose of a school, ranging from “to cause learning” to “seeing my friends,” ranging from “to pass my classes and graduate” to “obtaining a full scholarship to an Ivy League school.” Most other workplaces have less variation in perceptions 16


about the purpose of the organization: “This is a bank. Our purpose is to help all our customers maximize the successful management of their finances.” “This is a car dealership. Our purpose is to sell quality cars and to service those cars better so that our customers have zero complaints and 100 percent satisfaction.” The Extreme Principle emphasizes listening, so let the listening begin. Much of what follows in this chapter will take the reader into schools so that the reality within those schools can be revealed. For people who seek to improve schools, knowing the reality in schools, especially in classrooms, is essential. The best way to know that reality is to be there. When being there is not possible, listening to people who experience that reality daily is crucial. Some of what follows in this chapter will take the reader to places, events, and discussions that are about education but that are not situated in schools. Watch, listen, and think, and notice differences in actions, perceptions, and ideas that are from the classroom itself, as contrasted with those from places where education is a concern but is not the total and/ or direct endeavor. Read closely, and listen very closely as we follow the Extreme Principle’s path toward discovering what matters most and what works best. Our first stop on this listening tour is the faculty workroom in a middle school, where three teachers are making copies and doing some computer work during their planning period on a busy Monday morning in September.

Insight 1 Mr. Cooper:â•…E-mail is not leadership. It’s not even management or administration. E-mail is just a way to send information or directives to us without having to speak to us in person. What’s with these people and their e-mails? Do they ever come out of their offices? Ms. Bell:â•…I wonder about that. I know they are busy. Principals and assistant principals have to take care of all kinds of problems. I’ve heard them talk about the parents who show up and complain about the smallest topic. Then they have to spend hours whenever a fight happens and the students have to be suspended or some wild rumor gets started and the students are out of control. Still, it seems to me they would remember what it’s like to teach, and they would show a little more support for us or at least some awareness of what we deal with. 17

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Ms. Franco:â•…Dream on. I’ve worked here for eleven years. It’s always been this way. The central office tells the principals what to do. The principals tell the assistant principals what to do. The principals and the assistant principals tell us what to do, without ever asking us if we think the newest mandate would do any good or if it is even possible to do it at all. Then we get the next e-mail telling us we are not in full compliance, so everyone has to be a robot and follow the exact same plan if you teach the same subject and grade. My seventh-grade English class is different from your seventh-grade English class. It would be a big mistake to teach different people who have different talents or different needs in exactly the same way. Mr. Cooper:â•…I’ve seen the administrators change in the past few years. They go to meetings all the time. Or they are on the computer in their office. Every time I walk through the office, I see the principal and the assistant principal on the phone, or on the computer, or in a meeting. Can’t most of that stuff be done before school or after school? Ms. Franco:â•… You’d think that when the students and teachers are here the administrators would be in classrooms. They spend more time on bus supervision and cafeteria supervision than they spend in classrooms. Ms. Bell:â•…I guess they have a tough job to do. I have a friend who was a principal, and she said her day was controlled by the edicts she got from Central Office. She never got to do the job the way she wanted to. Mr. Cooper:â•…I still think e-mail is part of the problem. The administrators send us e-mail and think everything they wrote and sent to us will get instant results. Could you believe that e-mail yesterday about how we are supposed to start every class with a series of questions and get an accurate out-loud answer from every student? Who says that’s the best way to start class? What’s wrong with asking teachers to suggest ideas for great ways to start class? Then everyone could discuss those ideas. That would give us lots of options. Maybe on certain days and for certain topics we teach there is a different way to start class because it will work better. Ms. Bell:â•…It’s no different with the counselors. They send e-mail after e-mail telling us that we don’t put grades in the computer right or we make mistakes with attendance or we did not give some student who skipped school but whose family lied to cover a chance to make up the work that was missed. 18


Ms. Franco:â•…I notice that teachers get here before the counselors and the administrators and teachers stay later. How many papers do counselors grade each day? Do they have any work to take home? But they think they can tell us how to do our job. I bet they could not keep up with the demands of teaching. Maybe being a counselor or a principal is harder than it looks, but the real work of a school is what teachers do. I can’t e-mail lessons to my students and say I’ve done my job. I work with students face to face. Mr. Cooper:â•… You are right. Maybe we need some policy about what can be e-mailed and what can’t. Ms. Bell:â•… This conversation right now is a good example. We’re talking to each other. We’re listening to each other. We’re coming up with an idea that maybe a policy about proper use of e-mail is a good idea. The way it is now anybody can send any e-mail about any subject to any of us or all of us at school. Mr. Truman:â•… (Enters the faculty workroom hurriedly and with obvious agitation.) Can you believe the e-mail we just got? We have to keep a log of all the time we work at school and of the time we work on school at home. There’s an electronic form we have to fill out every day starting next Monday. It shows what time we arrive. What time we leave. What we do before classes start and after classes end. It even includes a record of what we do at home when we work on school. And it has places for every class we teach every day. We have to list our lesson plan objective and how we measured the results, and summarize something about how well the lesson went. No notice. No input from us. Just one more order. One more micromanagement waste of time. Would it be possible to talk about things like this instead of just “manage and control” by e-mail? Mr. Cooper:â•…I’d add “frustrate and enrage.” It is becoming impossible to succeed in this job. I put in about ten or eleven hours each day at school. I do schoolwork about two hours each night at home. Weekends are the worst. It takes ten, maybe fifteen hours to grade the papers, to grade the tests, to prepare everything. Am I supposed to teach, or to fill out pointless forms about what I would be doing for my students if I were allowed to do what I intended to do when I became a teacher? You know, it should be all about teaching and learning. It’s anything but that now, with all of the chores we have to do that just get in the way. This has got to stop. What can we do? 19

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Insight 2 Ms. Grant:â•… Good afternoon and welcome to all of our school administrators. I hope you had a good day at school. It’s so good to see everyone. I noticed that you are sitting in the groups you always sit in. It must be a strong habit for the elementary-school principals to sit together, and the same for middle school and high school. Well, I do hope that you get to know people from the other school levels. Now, we have a long agenda and it is exactly 4:30, so let’s start. I’ve asked our assistant supervisor of student support services and instructional-intervention management to update you on new requirements that will impact all school-level employees. Mr. Taper, please update us. Mr. Brown:â•… (Whispers to his colleague, Ms. Burke.) Do we really pay someone to be the assistant supervisor of all that stuff? That means there is a supervisor, too? And a secretary? That’s probably $200,000 worth of bureaucracy. No wonder we have these unnecessary meetings. Assistant supervisors have to show how busy they are. Mr. Taper:â•… Thank you, Ms. Grant. First, I’d like everyone to know that Ms. Grant just returned from a week in San Diego, where she was attending the National Conference for Supervisors of Student Support Services. She was named one of the top ten supervisors in the country. Next week she will be in Orlando to make a presentation at the International Conference of Education Reform, Restructuring and Innovation. Congratulations, Ms. Grant. Ms. Burke:â•… (Whispers to Mr. Brown.) Can you believe that these central-office people take these junkets to San Diego and Orlando? The taxpayers should not have to pay for that. What a waste! Those people should take a trip to our schools and do some real work with us, instead of playing on the beach during a boondoggle conference. Mr. Taper:â•… Now, based on information that Ms. Grant has obtained during the past year at several national and international conferences, we have an update on implementation of a new state initiative, about which the school board will consider district policy at their meeting next Tuesday. Here’s how it will work. Mr. Brown:â•… (Whispers to Ms. Burke.) We’re supposed to be leaders of our school. All of this bureaucratic stuff means we are paper-pushers. Don’t these people realize that we’re doing everything we can do? What20


ever this new initiative is, did any of us get to offer ideas about it? Why not involve us in creating the programs we have to manage and implement and be responsible for. This is so stupid. Mr. Taper:â•… The state department of education has completed the regulations for the law that was passed last year. It’s the READ law. You remember that the governor and the legislature worked on this last year. READ stands for Reform Education with Academic Data. The idea came from many business leaders in the state and in the nation who base every business decision on data, data, and more data. The numbers tell business leaders what needs to be done. What matters most is found in the numbers. The numbers tell what works and what does not work. So, get ready to compile a lot of numbers and analyze them a lot. Mr. Brown:â•… (At this point Mr. Brown raises his hand. Mr. Taper looks surprised because nobody has ever asked questions at these meetings. The meetings are events where higher-ranking people speak and everyone else sits silently. Mr. Taper notices Mr. Brown and acknowledges him.) Mr.Â€Taper, I have a question. Don’t some businesses go broke? Didn’t some businesses in 2007 and 2008 lose millions or billions of dollars? Those businesses do a lot with data, but they caused a recession. What makes us so confident that the business approach is exactly best for what those of us who work in schools should do? Schools aren’t factories or banks or stores. So I’m just concerned that we’ll spend all kinds of time on this READ mandate, and in a few years, when a new governor will have a new plan, we’ll forget READ and try the newest mandate. What do you think? Mr. Taper:â•…Well . . . I mean . . . well . . . the state has decided this. It’s the law. The best businesses in the state sent their executives to testify before the legislature about this READ plan. Those people worked on this, and they think it is the best way to get the best results. They said that what matters most is what the numbers tell you. So, thanks for that question. Now let’s watch the video about the READ program. Ms. Burke:â•… (Whispers to Mr. Brown.) Good try. They don’t understand what you are really saying. It’s just impossible to do our job the way we know we should. We want to be educators. They want us to fill out more forms. There’s nothing we can do. Good try. I agree with you. Most people agree with you, but the powers that be think differently. Hang in there, friend. 21

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Mr. Taper:â•…As you can tell from that very interesting video, the message is clear and certain. It’s all about the numbers. The truth is the numbers. Check the data. Analyze the data. Know the data. The truth is in the data. Now, we have some statistics for you to analyze. We’ve made up a set of statistics about a school. At your tables, analyze these numbers and see what they tell you. Then discuss the possible actions that could be taken based on the revelations from the data. Mr. Brown:â•… (Speaks to Ms. Burke and the other administrators at their table.) Is this really happening? Some generic set of numbers is supposed to mean something? What a waste of time. We have real problems at our schools that we should work on. Those problems matter. These made-up numbers are nothing. The truth is not in these numbers or in any numbers. The truth is in people. Whatever numbers can tell, people can tell much more. Ms. Burke:â•…Well, we have to analyze these, just so we obey the instructions. Still, what really matters is not fully shown in any number. My daughter’s basketball team won last night, 61 to 53, but their free-throw shooting was awful and they were lazy on defense. The final score does not show that. No basketball statistic measures laziness. Our school has 95 percent attendance most days, but that does not reflect how prepared for school that 95 percent was. It just says those students showed up. Numbers tell us a little bit. People tell us a lot more. Maybe the centraloffice staff see so few people and so many charts they think school is all about numbers. Mr. Brown:â•… Let’s get this finished. These numbers are about test scores over several years. The trends are obvious. We can write down some conclusions that will sound good, and that might help us get out of here faster. Ms. Burke, you are more diplomatic than I am. Here are some conclusions from the data. When Mr. Taper asks for comments, say something polite about all of this and maybe he’ll let us leave. This is such a waste of time. What would the taxpayers think if they saw all of this? At least we didn’t travel to Orlando for our meeting.

Insight 3 Thomas:â•… Hey, Jason—over here. I’ve got to tell you about what Amanda said. 22


Jason:â•…I heard. That is so strange. Is she really going to quit cheerleading? She loves to cheer. She’s been cheering forever. What happened? Thomas:â•…I don’t know about that. Here’s what I do know. Amanda found some way to graduate from high school at the end of her junior year. She’ll graduate one year early. Can you believe that? We have to do all of this stuff for another year. She gets to go to college. That is so unfair. Jason:â•…Why does she want to miss her senior year of high school? All the best stuff happens when you’re a senior. Thomas:â•… She makes great grades, but she really hates school, or she’s sick of it or something like that. She said what matters most to her is becoming a television news reporter, and staying here for one more year just meant a year’s delay in what she really wants. High school just was not working for her. Jason:â•… That is so weird. She’s involved in everything. She takes all the hard classes. She makes straight As. She’s the perfect student. Thomas:â•… Yeah, that’s just it. She’s too perfect for another year of high school. She asked the counselors and the principals for all kinds of new classes and stuff. They said it would take a long time to do all that. They suggested dual-credit classes to mix high school with college and a work-study plan. She said a diploma made more sense. Jason:â•… They should have listened to Amanda. She had a good idea. What matters most to her is being a television reporter. She’s a great speaker. I heard a presentation she gave last year in our chemistry class. It was great. So why not let her do all kinds of TV work here? Her chemistry presentation could have been a TV show about chemistry. She could create videos for teachers. She could make stuff for the school website. Why would the people here miss out on all of that? Don’t they realize that some students can do a lot more than just take all these classes and stuff? Thomas:â•…I don’t know. Maybe it will change someday. There’s nothing we can do about it. Who would listen to us? If they didn’t listen to Amanda, what chance do we have? I guess we’re just supposed to go to class, make the grades, and move on. Sounds like the whole point of high school is to get out of high school instead of seeing what you can get out of it. Jason:â•… Hey, that’s really brilliant. When did you become so smart? 23

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Thomas:â•…I’m plenty smart. I’m just not school smart. Let’s go. I need to get to first-period class and talk to Ellen. She’s Amanda’s best friend. Maybe she knows more. See ya.

Insight 4 Mrs. Hart:â•…Are they serious? Tell me this is a joke. We have to sit through a three-hour presentation on how to properly communicate the objective for each day to our students. Who decided this would be a good use of professional-development time and money? Mrs. Johnston: I can answer all of that. The state department of education hosted some conference for superintendents of school districts. The new state assistant commissioner for instructional support services came to our state recently and brought quite an agenda. He is convinced that what matters most in teaching is the right statement of the objective for the lesson and putting that perfect objective statement on the board for every student to see. Mrs. Hart:â•… There could be a little logic in that, but other things are more important. And come on, three hours of our time on the day before school starts. How is that a good idea? Mrs. Johnston:â•…Well, the assistant commissioner himself will be here to make the presentation. He calls his system Verbnasium. He says that if you get the right verb to express the right idea about the essential objective of the lesson, then the student will learn much more. It’s all about those verbs. He says that verbs exercise the brain. You’ll find out. Mrs. Hart:â•… Get real. This guy thinks students will do better work if I put the right verb in a lesson-objective statement and then put that statement on the board so the students see it at the start of class. Who comes up with this stuff? That’s like saying if we put up a stop sign every driver will always stop. Stop is the right verb, but some people just slow down a little, and others ignore the sign completely. These three hours will be wasted. Mrs. Johnston: I’ve already read the handouts for the Verbnasium presentation. It’s worse than you think. Maybe someday all of the teachers will be asked what we need to learn about that would actually apply to the real work we do with students. Why are we sitting through this program today? The assistant commissioner of education told the su24


perintendents, who told the principals, who told the teachers. That’s a lot of telling, and just about zero thinking or listening. When will the bureaucrats ever realize that these “save the schools” crusades never work? I bet this assistant commissioner stays in our state for two years, gets a better offer somewhere else, and takes his Verbnasium presentation to the next two-year stop on his underachieving travels through the bureaucracy. I’d like to see him teach in a classroom for a year. I wonder what verbs he would use then. Oh look, it’s time to start. We’ll be free in 180 minutes.

Insight 5 Principal:â•…Everyone is on a tight schedule, so let’s get started. We have a fairly short agenda for this month’s faculty meeting, but the sooner we start the sooner we finish. OK. Everyone take a seat. We expect our students to be on time for class and quiet when we start class, so let’s do the same thing for our faculty meeting. Teacher:â•… (Whispers to a nearby teacher.) Of all the ways I could use this time, sitting in a meeting is the worst way. I notice that our coaches are not here. They get to go to practices. Sometimes this school seems more like a sports-training facility. Look at the list of teachers who do not have early duty or after-school duty or homeroom. It’s the coaches. They get paid extra, but the rest of us work more on our teaching jobs. It’s obvious what matters most here: sports, sports, and sports. Principal:â•…I have asked our head counselor to talk to us about the week of testing we’ll have later this year. That’s our first topic today. Counselor:â•… The testing system is new this year, so plan on two days of after-school training. The schedule for that will be passed out at the end of this meeting. The state has completely changed the testing materials and process. Every student will be involved in testing during test week this year. Three of the days will have tests in the morning and afternoon. The other two days will be morning tests only. As you can tell, there will be very little time for classes or for teaching that week. There is a long teacher-as-supervisor test manual to read, and we are passing that out now. You’ll need to read that before the first after-school training session. I need to warn you: In the manual is a condensed version of the entire set of tests that students will take. You are required to complete that condensed version of the tests. You actually take those minitests, which have the same 25

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design as the student tests but different content. It will take about four hours if you do it correctly. There is a form you have to sign that confirms that you read the manual and took those tests. I know it will take time, but that’s the law. The governor and the legislature decided to reform the testing programs and said it had to be done fast, so the state bought this testing system. To save time, you teach yourself a lot about the tests before our training sessions. Are there any questions? Principal:â•…Wow. We’ll never get to that many questions and finish this meeting before suppertime. Let’s save time by everyone e-mailing their questions to our head counselor. She will compile those questions and answer them, so everyone can get the questions and answers by e-mail. I know, this is a big change. I’ve been to several meetings about it. We are doing what the state is telling us to do. This test reform has been done quickly, and there were decisions made by the state that we just have to live with. Now, our next topic is about access to the building on weekends. Our school security officer will explain the changes that are to begin immediately. Officer:â•… The school district’s director of school safety and security has asked me to read this statement. Every teacher in every school in this school district will be given the same information. Here’s the statement: During this school year our school district has had seventeen incidents of vandalism at schools on weekends. In twelve of these situations, entry into school buildings was due to a door being unlocked, left open, or some similar violation of protocol. Effective this Friday and for the rest of the school year, school buildings will be closed and locked at 6:00 p.m. on Friday. No access codes or access cards will be operational from 6:00 p.m. on Friday until 6:00 a.m. on Monday. If school buildings are in use during weekends, the usage must be approved two months ahead of time by the principal, the school district director of safety and security, and the school board. Approved usage will require that the principal or an assistant principal will attend the activity, and that a school security officer will be present also, with the school paying the standard overtime hourly rate for the officer. That ends the statement. Are there any questions? Teacher:â•… There are probably a lot of questions, but you notice no hands went up. What’s the point of asking questions? The state tells us what the testing process will be. The district tells us what the building-usage procedure is. We’re told to build relationships with our students. Get to 26


know them, listen to them. Use their ideas and input whenever possible. The same people who tell us to listen to students rarely listen to us. So the statement you read is the law or the policy or the directive. You are doing your job. You are the messenger. My concern is that every meeting we have like this is one more series of statements telling us what to do and how to do it. We’re good teachers. We have ideas. We know what works with our students. I guess we get a little frustrated and disappointed when we are not heard or when we are not involved in decisions.

Applause followed. It was not rebellious or revolutionary applause. It was spontaneous, genuine, and energetic. It was easy to translate the applause. The applause was the collective voice of a capable and caring faculty eager to offer ideas and reluctant to be pushed into an assembly line for repetition of scripted motions, words, and processes.

Insight 6 Senator Campbell:â•… This meeting of the State Senate Education, Health, and Human Services Committee will come to order. Our agenda for today’s hearing has one topic on it. We will hear from several invited guests on the topic of twenty-first-century standards for our schools. Our committee is considering legislation that would incorporate a new set of curriculum-content standards for all students to master in grades spanning kindergarten through the senior year of high school. Our first guest is Dr. Richard Sullivan, who has twenty-five years of experience as a consultant to state governments on education curriculum. Before that, Dr. Sullivan taught junior high for one year and in college for four years. Dr. Sullivan, welcome. We’ll hear your presentation, and committee members might have questions. Dr. Sullivan:â•… Thank you, Chairwoman Campbell. The issue before us today is standards. In my career, I have worked with forty-two states and over two hundred school districts. I have helped create many comprehensive kindergarten-through-high-school reforms of standards. These reforms have sought to clarify what content students are to know and what skills students are to master. Senator Chase:â•… Pardon me, sir. I need to ask a question before we go further. I’ve been on this committee for almost thirty years. About twenty-five years ago we reformed education in this state. We reformed 27

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everything. It took time and work and money. Now, most of those reforms are gone. People changed their minds. Education experts had new recommendations. Politicians proposed revisions to the reforms. My point is that time after time we have done what you and other education consultants or state department of education officials or legislators have said we had to do. Then, in a few years, we do it all over again, and we reform the most recent reform. I’ve seen it over and over for thirty years. It never works. I have more confidence in pencils, paper, textbooks, reading, writing, and arithmetic than I do in any reform of education, past, present or future. Dr. Sullivan, what can you tell us now to assure us that if our state goes through all the work of another education reform and revision of standards, this time it will work? Dr. Sullivan:â•… Thank you, sir, for that important question. There is very compelling evidence from many other countries and from several states that comprehensive, holistic, systemic modernizing of education standards for each grade and for each subject is associated with enhanced achievement by key demographic subgroups in the student population, as measured by quantitative and qualitative assessments. The federal government’s Department of Education has just released a major study on this topic titled “Standards Uplifting Curriculum Content and Enhancing Student Success,” with the clever acronym “SUCCESS.” Senator Chase:â•…With all due respect, Dr. Sullivan, the U.S. government violates the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by having a Department of Education. Bureaucrats create reports with cute acronym names. I want to create results. My teachers got the job done years ago without education reforms and enhanced standards. I talk to students in my hometown. They tell me about their best teachers. I talk to parents and guardians. I ask them what is working in our schools. They never say reform or standards. They tell me about a great teacher who was always there for a student, who challenged students, who never gave up on a student, who was enthusiastic, who made a difference. Now, please tell me what standard is going to be written by the state department of education that deals with those things that really matter and really work in school. Dr. Sullivan, I mean no disrespect. You are an accomplished scholar and consultant. What I do mean is that having watched this state reform and reform education for thirty years, I reach the obvious conclusion that what we are looking for is not going to be found in any reform. We already have what we are looking for. It’s in classrooms in this state right now, where a great teacher is getting great results with students. What is that teacher 28


doing? How is that teacher doing it? You answer those questions and you implement those answers everywhere, and we’ll finally have the results we have been looking for. We look in the wrong places. The answers are not in government, in reports, or in bureaucracies. The answers, I am now fully convinced, are in classrooms. Senator Campbell: Senator Chase, your comments have been enlightening. Perhaps at the committee’s next meeting we can further consider the classroom topic. For now . . . Dr. Sullivan, we know you have a full day of meetings throughout our state capitol building, so let’s hear more from you about the national and international efforts to reform education standards.

Insight 7 Ms. Cassidy:â•…Our school-board meeting will come to order again, please. We have completed all our opening ceremonies and informational items. We have agreed on what items will be voted on tonight and which items need further attention with a vote to come next month. Our short recess gave everyone time to confer with staff or audience members on any topics we’ll discuss later tonight, since we did add one topic to the agenda. For now, we have two very important reports. One of our recently retired teachers, Mr. James Williams, will speak to us about lessons he learned from his thirty-three years of teaching. Also, a student who graduated from one of our high schools last year and who attended schools in our district from kindergarten through high school will talk to us about the most valuable experiences our school district gave her. Ellen Bell is now a college freshman. Ellen, thank you for visiting us tonight. Ellen:â•…It’s an honor to be here. I had thirteen very good years in this school district. I was fully prepared for college. The college work is different, and it’s harder, but my teachers in elementary, middle, and high school got me ready for college. In fact, I asked one of my teachers from high school to be here with me tonight. I hope you know Mrs. Janet Covington. She is the best teacher in the world. I really was not excited about Advanced Placement U.S. History, but she made it the best high-school class I ever took. We did research. We did projects. We read books. We had great class discussions. We connected U.S. history to our career plans. My college essay was all about how that one U.S.history homework project about the history of dentistry had convinced 29

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me that I wanted to become a dentist. That same essay helped me get a full-tuition scholarship. So my advice for you is that you go visit Mrs. Covington’s classroom. Everything you ever wanted to know about what students really need is in Mrs. Covington’s classroom. Ms. Cassidy:â•… Thank you, Ellen, and thank you, Mrs. Covington. I hope we can visit your classroom soon. Now, Mr. Williams. Mr. Williams:â•…I taught seventh- and eighth-grade science in this school district for twenty-six years, and then I was a middle-school assistant principal for seven years. Since I retired, I’ve done a lot of substitute teaching. My experiences in this school district were very meaningful. I had the great joy of teaching the children of some students whom I’d taught very early in my career. As an assistant principal, I got to work with some teachers whom I first knew when they were my students. Since I retired, I have thought a lot about schools. When I substitute-teach, I listen to what teachers and administrators talk about. By the way, I strongly encourage school-board members and central-office workers to go substitute-teach regularly, maybe once a month, just as part of your duties and not with any monetary factor. You need to be part of what is really happening in schools. That’s the major point I would like to share with you. After thirty-three years of working in schools, what I remember best are those meaningful experiences with students. In the classrooms or in my administrative work, when I was directly dealing with students to help them learn and improve their skills, I was doing the most important work that anyone does in schools. If you are looking for advice from me, it would be to spend more time in schools, in classrooms, and less time in meetings— and much less time going to conferences out of town. What you need to know is right here in our town, in our schools, in our classrooms. The people at the schools would appreciate your effort to understand what they are doing and what they deal with. You would get the best possible information because it would not be a report or an isolated meeting; it would be face to face.

Education impacts every person. From students to taxpayers, from teachers to employers, from professors to journalists, from parents and guardians to elected officials, from school administrators to school volunteers, from interest groups to talk-show hosts or audiences, education impacts people, interests people, and concerns people. 30


Many people seek to impact education. Candidates for public office punctuate their speeches with sentences that promise education reform and that elicit applause followed by votes. Crusading community groups seek decisions that allocate additional education resources to their constituents. Presidents and governors seek to leave an imprint on the education structure of the nation or of their states. Parents and guardians meet with a principal in a school in hopes that a policy will be changed or a pending decision will be influenced, that a student will be given a second chance or a program facing a budget cut will be spared any reduction. It is likely that most people who seek to impact education have honorable intentions; however, some of those honorable intentions may be in support of unworthy ideas. It is also likely that some people who seek to impact education are motivated by a personal agenda that advances their interests while not advancing education. How is this vast array of people and ideas sorted out so the best decisions are made and the best actions are taken? The use of a guiding principle can filter the good from the bad, the beneficial from the counterproductive, the wise from the unwise. If a person says that his or her guiding principle is the Golden Rule, there are some actions that must happen and other actions that must not happen. The Golden Rule says you check on a friend who is sick, just as you hope that friend will check on you when you are ill. The Golden Rule says you do not steal from people, just as you expect people to not steal from you. The Golden Rule is a decision-making principle that guides a person in knowing what to do and what not to do. In education, the Extreme Principle can guide people in education and people who seek to impact education. The Extreme Principle tells us to do what matters most and to do what works best. How do we know what matters most in education? How do we know what works best in education? We listen. The next chapter will explain why we listen, how we listen, to whom we listen, and what can result from listening. We answer the questions of what matters most and what works best by listening. The Extreme Principle involves much listening, which will reveal what matters most and what works best. As you read chapter 2, listen closely to the words of the chapter and to the thoughts in your mind that emerge intellectually as you think about the Extreme Principle, as you reflect on the chapter, and as you listen to your thinking. 31

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e have problems. We have many problems. We have old problems that linger. We have new problems that emerge continuously. Are there more problems, or are there more solutions? Is it still true that to every problem, there is an equal and opposite solution? When there are problems in public education, it is common for the political process to be involved in the consideration and selection of solutions. Using the political process to solve nonpolitical problems can make matters worse. The political process functions only with compromises. The solutions that are produced by the political process may serve more political goals than education goals. That may help explain why massive reforms of education that come from governmental political processes are temporary, as new political pressures, trends, or election results bring different forces to the political perspectives on education. These new forces propose new re-forms of education. Then, a few years later, after the political pendulum has reversed direction, yet another new re-form of education is proposed. While the political pressures perpetually battle, educators in schools continue their efforts to do the real work of education. Perhaps a task force could be established to investigate the problems of education and report findings to government officials. The task force could include prominent community members, business executives, university administrators, government officials, and parents and guardians, plus a teacher and a principal. The results of the task force would be predictable. Their 33

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report would state a version of what education task forces always state: that schools are inadequately preparing students for the world of tomorrow; that too few students are fully challenged; that math and science must be emphasized more; that reading and writing skills are showing little or no progress; that test scores show students in this state are not keeping up with students in many other states or in most other highly developed nations. The task-force report would conclude that “education has many problems. These problems are more serious now than ever. In a global economy, our students must be the best in the world. To do less would be to doom our state and our nation to second-class status. Action must be taken now.” The task-force process would then take the type of action that taskforce processes commonly take or are followed by. There would be a series of meetings and hearings. Then an assigned government agency would create a long analysis about implementing the task-force report’s proposals. The report and analysis would resemble most prior task-force-process documents. There is no need to repeat the task-force process. That process apparently does not work, as evidenced by the repeated, failed attempts of the perpetual-task-force machine. This machine produces meetings, hearings, reports, and headlines. This machine is a tool of bureaucracies. This machine does not educate students. This machine is not part of what matters most in education or what works best in education. Still, we have problems. If the political process does not create real solutions, and if the task-force machine does not create real solutions, what is to be done? There is hope. Amid all of the education task forces, meetings, hearings, reports, and similar endeavors by think tanks, interest groups, community groups, the media, and politicians, many great teachers are in their classrooms getting great results with, from, and for their students. Ask a great teacher, “What matters most in education?” or “What works best in education?” and she will not reply, “Oh, I’ve been waiting for some task force or some report to tell me.” Instead, she will tell you about what she is doing today to cause learning in the minds of her students today. She will not speak the language of legislation, of bureaucracy, of task forces, of think tanks, of interest groups, or of politics. She will speak the language of the classroom reality. She will speak of outstanding work done by Tasha, of Shawn’s grade increasing from 63 to 89 percent after she showed Shawn that a project from math class con34


nected to his interest in and knowledge of cars. She will talk of arriving at school early to provide time for students to make up work missed due to absences. She will speak of keeping in touch with parents and guardians. She will mention the activities she creates for her students based on what she has learned about them, their unique strengths, their wholesome talents, their undeveloped or underdeveloped skills. She will make few if any comments about the educational system, although her insights about that system surpass any conclusion from any task force. Rather, she will emphasize what she can control and what she can manage in her classroom. She will emphasize what matters most and what works best. During any ordinary day at every typical school, there are hundreds and thousands of comments, conversations, and discussions. Some of this communication occurs in hallways before, between, or after classes. Some of this talking is in the cafeteria during breakfast and lunch. Some of this discussion is in classrooms and is academically productive. Some classroom chatter is purely social and disrupts instruction. There are conversations in the faculty workroom, in the office, in the hallways, and in the bus-loading area; anywhere that two or more people can gather there could be some talking. Some of what is said in these hundreds and thousands of comments, conversations, and discussions quickly evaporates; however, some of it stays in the memory forever and changes a life as it touches a mind or a heart. To capture the comments, conversations, and discussions of a regular day at school could be to obtain words of wisdom that help define the reality of that school and that could be used to create a better reality for that school. In order to get a school to the level of consistently attaining and achieving what matters most—student learning—it is practical to identify what the people at the school currently reveal, through their words and their actions, as being what matters most to them now. In order to get a school to the level of consistently doing what works best—forms of teaching that best cause learning—it is practical to identify what is being done currently at the school. It is now time to visit Lincoln High School—but first with a reminder to create the proper perspective. Schools are unique. A school is not a factory, a bank, a mall, a business, a sports facility, a city, or a neighborhood. There is no organization 35

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that is exactly like a school. Within the overall uniqueness of schools, as contrasted with all other organizations, is the further reality that each school is unique when contrasted with every other school. There is some amount of “schoolness” that is common to all schools: students, teachers, books, classes, a schedule for each day, classrooms, and hallways. However, what is done and how it is done varies from school to school. The traditions, the culture, the people of each school create a unique atmosphere. The Extreme Principle builds upon the uniqueness of schools in general and of each school in particular. What matters most in all schools is learning. What works best in each school is as unique as the people within each school. Determining, realizing, applying, and impacting the uniqueness of each school can be effective parts of improving a school. How is that done? Listen, listen more, keep listening. The school setting, environment, and working conditions are unique. That reality helps explain why schools as organizations and schools as groups of people resist efforts to force schools into procedures, processes, or systems that are designed at other places for other purposes. This reality also helps explain why schools resist, and why schools are not best improved by, efforts to impose uniformity across a local, regional, state, or national collection of schools. The essence of a school is defined by the people at the school. Contrast a school on a day when the building is empty with the same school on a day when the building is filled with the liveliness of people interacting—in the ways that cause academic learning and, at times, in the ways that build friendships, commitments, hopes, possibilities, and solutions to problems. It is the “peopleness” of school that is the difference between the empty building and the vibrant building. It’s the same building, but it is made vibrant by people. The essence of school is people. The work of school is to cause learning. The top-priority activity of school is face-to-face human interaction designed to cause learning. Listen to the sounds of, the people in, and the ideas within a school, each school, every school, and you realize the reality of that school and the essential wisdom within that school. Lincoln High School was a tranquil place at 6:00 a.m., when Andrew Garner, the head custodian and campus foreman, arrived daily. Andrew followed an established routine that varied only due to the season of the year or an unexpected situation. Lights got turned on. The heat or air36


conditioning levels were checked. The office doors were unlocked. The copying machines were turned on and supplied with paper. The security system was set to the daytime program. The hallways were walked through and the exterior of the building was walked around. Some cleaning tasks were completed. Notes from the night crew were read, and actions were taken as needed. By 6:30 a.m., the first teachers arrived. For a schoolday that began with first-period class at 8:00 a.m., it might seem extra early for any teacher to arrive at 6:30 a.m.; but that was a very productive time to do computer work such as typing tests, entering grades, or answering e-mails from parents or guardians, or to make copies, prepare materials for upcoming lessons, or update the website that showed students and families what would be done in classes for the next few weeks. By 7:00 a.m., the faculty workroom was a busy place, as printers and copiers kept the papers moving and teachers talked with each other. Whether the group was students, teachers, administrators, or staff members, when two people had arrived, the conversations began. The only exceptions seemed to be the students whose ears were filled with plugs that connected to some noisemaking electronic device, and the people who by choice or by circumstance seemed to be, rather unfortunately, isolated, alone, or separate. “You’ve taught here for years. Is it always like this? These copy machines break every few days. The computer system goes down every week or two. The heating and air conditioning are not reliable. The phone calls or announcements during class go on and on. But I notice that the sports teams have what they need. We never interrupt an athletic practice the way classes get interrupted. There are students here working out at 6:45 a.m. in the weight room. No wonder they are tired and sleepy in classes. But they get their workouts done even if they don’t get their homework done. What explains all of this?” The veteran teacher of twenty-four years at Lincoln High School had heard questions like that before from teachers who were at early points in their careers. The answer he would give was true, but not encouraging. “Oh, it has been better, but it’s been worse. There are lots of reasons. Budgets, different principals, different superintendents, does anyone complain enough to get some response, stuff like that. Most of us just do the best we can with our students. That seems to be our unspoken survival guide. You and I can’t fix the copier or the furnace, but we can close the doors of our classrooms and get some work done with our students.” 37

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Another teacher who was in her second year at Lincoln High School joined in. “Even that is more difficult than it should be. I’m one of the ten or more teachers who have to float from classroom to classroom, period to period. That limits what I can do, because I cannot set up every classroom each day the way I want it—because another teacher uses the room the rest of the day. Then the phone rings and rings as people call for the teacher who is usually in the room. Then there’s a knock on the door because someone is looking for that teacher. Or there’s a PA announcement about some student who must come to the office immediately. How can anyone teach the way they’d like to with all of that going on?” Did anyone have an answer? A retired teacher who was at Lincoln that day to substitute-teach had some thoughts. “You are so right. I taught here for eleven years after teaching for twenty years in another school district. Now I substitute-teach. I get to see a lot of schools. Lincoln does some things better and some things worse than other schools. One school I’ve gone to never interrupts classes. Never. The phones do not ring, and announcements are not made during classes. It just is not done. Each school seems to have its own way of doing things.” There were some important ideas and some very valid concerns expressed in the faculty-workroom conversation. Where would those ideas and those concerns go? Would they be heard by an administrator? Would they be formally presented at a faculty meeting, or to the school’s administrative team? Would they merely join other similar comments from other teachers on other days in the black hole of frustrations that got expressed, but that faded away into an eternal collection of spoken, but never acted upon, ideas, questions, problems, and truths? As 7:00 a.m. turned into 7:30 a.m., more students, teachers, staff members, substitute teachers, counselors, cafeteria workers, administrators, secretaries, librarians, law-enforcement officers, visitors, and parents and guardians came into the school building. The offices, the hallways, the classrooms, the cafeteria, the library, and every other part of the school had conversations that created a collection of social chatter, academic discussion, questions asked, opinions expressed, and much more. These conversations were punctuated by the occasional public-address-system voice in search of someone who needed to go somewhere for some reason. 38


“I was up until two or three. I’m so tired, but, man, it was so cool. That’s the best game I ever played. The graphics are crazy. Have you seen it yet?” “I saw the commercial for it. Let’s play it today after school.” “OK, but I have to make up some math test. Wait for me. The test won’t take long. I just need to pass it. No big deal or anything.” “Did you finish that English homework? It was so long. Can I look at yours? I don’t think I did it right.” Alan thought this would be no big deal. His friend was getting tired of always having to do the work. “Alan, do you ever finish your work? We’ll be in college next year. What’s your plan for doing the college work?” Tim’s question was part frustration and part friendship. “Nothing to it. It can’t be that much different from high school. Books, classes, and stuff. How hard can college be? Now, come on, Tim. I need to check that English homework.” “What do you mean? You can’t quit the soccer team. You just can’t. What’s wrong with you?” Stephanie was very serious as she talked to her best friend, Becky. “And worst of all, you didn’t tell me. I got a text message about you from other people on the team.” “Yeah, I know. It’s really stupid. I should have told you. I’m not really quitting. It’s my grades. I’m not eligible to play. I have two weeks to get the grades back up, and then I can play. I just wonder if it’s worth it.” Becky seemed to have a lot on her mind. “Worth it? Of course, it’s worth it. What else matters? We’ve played soccer together forever. This is our junior year. We’re having a great season. Get your grades up, and quit talking about quitting the team.” Stephanie was emphatic. Becky was not convinced. “Maybe. I do need to get my grades back up. It’s, well, you know, it’s, I mean, there’s just a lot of stuff going on.” Becky seemed to be confused. Stephanie was realizing something was not right. “Becky, what’s really wrong? You can tell me.” The tears began. “It’s my parents. They argue all the time. Home is awful. I don’t know what to do.” Stephanie knew what to do. “Come with me. We’re going to see a school counselor right now. This is too important to wait.” “It was so amazing. It’s the best movie I ever saw. It was last night at midnight. My mother made me get up for school, but I’ll just sleep in classes. You’ll love this movie. I had to see it first.” Stan was a serious movie fan. 39

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“That scholarship meeting last night was great. Do you realize how much money is available? Our grades are good. Our test scores are good. Now if we fill out all of the scholarship applications, we can pay for college.” Stan was barely listening to the words of his friend, Drew, who was certain that scholarships were there for the taking. “Yeah, Drew, that’s good. Hey, did you get the math homework?” “Stan. Listen to me. Money. Thousands of dollars. You apply for it. You write some neat little essay. You get college paid for.” “Yeah, Drew, I get it. What I don’t get is this math.” “Stan, if you’d pay attention in math it might help. All you do is play with your cell phone, or text people about movies when the teacher is not looking.” In one long hallway two teachers had early-morning duty. One teacher had a folder full of papers that he was grading. The other teacher talked to students, talked to teachers, helped a visitor find a classroom, stopped a small confrontation between two students before it became a larger confrontation, and spoke to one student who was curled up in a corner. It was that one student who really needed someone to notice her. “Hey, that corner does not look very comfortable. Is there a better place?” No response, so Ms. Camden tried again. “Good morning. Are you sure you like that corner? The library or the cafeteria might be better.” “Oh, I’m sorry. Am I allowed to stay here?” “Yes, you’re allowed. I just thought that the walls and a floor would not be very comfortable. I don’t know your name. I’m Ms. Camden. I teach sophomore English. What’s your name?” “Me? I’m Anne. I’m a ninth-grader.” Anne was standing up now. “Hi, Anne. How’s ninth grade? Is this year going well for you?” “Uh, no, I hate ninth grade. This place is nothing like my old school.” “Where did you go to school before?” Ms. Camden was quite eager to learn more about a student who might be in her classes next year. “I went to Lakeside Middle School. It’s in another town. I really liked it. Now, well, this place is different. Everyone has their friends. I don’t know anybody.” Anne sounded very discouraged. “Anne, what were you involved in at your middle school?” “The school newspaper,” she said quickly and enthusiastically. “I was the editor. I created our e-newspaper. I can get the Internet to do anything. My father is a computer expert. He showed me everything.” 40


This did not sound like the isolated, curled-up-in-the-corner student Ms. Camden had noticed earlier. “That’s great. Have you done any work on the newspaper at this school?” “No. I don’t know anybody on the newspaper.” “Anne, let’s change that right now. One of the English teachers is the newspaper sponsor. Her name is Mrs. Armstrong. I just saw Mrs. Armstrong walk into her classroom. Let’s go get you introduced to her so you can get involved with the school newspaper. With all the talent and experience you have, who knows, maybe someday you’ll be the editor of the school newspaper here.” “You needed to see me, Mr. Mitchell.” “Yes, Mr. Prather. Thanks for coming so quickly. I know it’s awkward to hear your name called over the loudspeaker system just a few minutes before first-period class, but this may just take a moment. This is Ms. Stephens. Her son Nicholas is in your third-period class.” Mr. Prather was polite and professional. “Hi, Ms. Stephens. What could I do to be helpful?” Ms. Stephens was not polite or professional. “Stop giving Nicholas so much work and so many bad grades. He complains about your class every day.” Mr. Mitchell spoke next. “Ms. Stephens, let’s work together to find some ways that Nicholas can be more successful in school. Mr. Prather, what can you tell us? Mr. Prather collected his thoughts. He had not anticipated this meeting, so he did not have his grade book or any computer printouts. Still, he could provide meaningful perspective. “The class is Advanced Placement U.S. History. It is possible to earn college credit for the class, so the amount of work is equal to that in a college class. Nicholas can do the work. When he pays total attention and really thinks, he makes brilliant comments in our class discussions. When he pays no attention, he learns very little or nothing. He was absent for our most recent test, and he did not make up the test. He did not turn in our last project. I share your concern and your disappointment because I know that Nicholas can do great work.” Ms. Stephens was not satisfied. “It’s your job to make sure he pays attention. It’s your job to get him to make up his work. He’s a junior in high school. You can’t expect him to do everything.” 41

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Mr. Mitchell knew that first-period class would begin in four minutes, so Mr. Prather had to leave this meeting. “Ms. Stephens, I just checked on the computer, and Nicholas has lower grades now in every class than you would be satisfied with. I would suggest that his school counselor schedule a meeting with you, all of Nicholas’s teachers, and me. Nicholas can do better. We’ll all work together on this.” Mr. Mitchell was trying to concentrate on what mattered most. “That’s not good enough. I’m on my way to the school-system office. This is no way to treat a parent or a student.” Ms. Stephens angrily left the office. “Mr. Prather, thanks for coming to the office on such short notice. I’m sorry Ms. Stephens was unreasonable. We’ll set up that meeting and get this resolved.” “Two minutes. You have two minutes to get to class. Let’s go.” The assistant principal who spoke those words was repeating what he said each schoolday in the hallways at the same time. “Let’s go. This is your twominute warning.” Some students hurried to class. Many other students were already in class. Some other students who could easily get to class in the next two minutes lingered to continue a social conversation, wandered aimlessly through a hall, or intentionally arrived late just to annoy the teacher or to get noticed. When the bell rang for the first-period class to begin, about 99 percent of the students who were in attendance this day were in class. The other 1 percent of the students knew where they were supposed to be, knew the rules about being on time, and knew the disciplinary action that would follow for being late. Throughout Lincoln High School, the morning classes met as scheduled. During first-period classes, several teachers who had planning that period were in the faculty workroom making copies and doing some computer work. The conversation turned to a range of programs the school had for students who failed classes and who needed to make up those classes to stay on schedule for graduation from high school. “What really frustrates me are the students who flunk classes on purpose. They never intend to read or study. They never intend to cooperate in class. They know that eventually they can sit in front of a computer for a few weeks and eventually guess enough correct answers on some tutorial program that they will be given a passing grade. They can play and act silly 42


for months, then do a little bit of computer activity and they pass. What kind of an education is that? Why do we give that option?” “I asked that same question last year. I was told that the drop-out rates and the failure rates were getting a lot of attention. Something had to be done. Are those students learning anything? Not really, except how to get an easy D grade and then get an easy high-school diploma.” “I know what you mean. I wonder what went wrong. Were these students ever serious about school? By the time they are in high school, how do we change their habits of doing nothing and still finding a way to get by? How did they ever get to high school?” Another teacher had walked into the faculty workroom and heard part of the conversation. “I think the problem is that the people who insist on all of these second-chance programs do not work in schools. They sit in their offices and read reports. They find some number that is bad. They blame us and tell us to do more. What more can I do? One class of mine had a couple of students who asked if we could go to the library one day. I worked with the librarians to create a good project with lots of choices, so that students could pick something of interest to them. Twelve of the twenty-eight students in the class did not do the project. The two students who had asked for the library activity did not do the project. What else can I do?” There was no immediate answer. There was much agreement. There was much concern and much frustration. Talking to each other confirmed the shared concerns and frustrations. The next teacher who walked in had some encouraging news. “Did you hear about our academic team? They won their regional competition, and now they go to the state tournament. I hope we make a big deal about this. I know that people love sports and we cheer for the athletes, but this academic competition is just as demanding. The academic team practices as much as any sports team. They deserve a lot of support.” One teacher replied, “Tell the local newspaper about that. For students who can put a basketball through a hoop, the newspaper can’t give them enough publicity. For students who can answer hundreds of academic questions correctly, the newspaper might give a tiny paragraph in a barely noticed page of the paper.” In one third-period U.S. government class, the teacher had arranged for the mayor to visit. The class was well prepared for the occasion. The 43

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questions and answers were nonstop. The students and the mayor learned. The teacher had told all of the school administrators about the visit and had hoped that an administrator would come to the classroom to welcome the mayor. That did not happen. The teacher thought about how she could have invited some famous coach to speak to the class. That would have garnered attention, but that would not have related to the curriculum of U.S. government. The students had learned from the mayor. That was what mattered most. Lunch at Lincoln High School was a daily combination of several factors: hunger, socializing, time limits, crowds, and the various interactions that came with hundreds of teenagers gathered together for food. Students seemed to claim a table like church members claim a pew. “Hey, where’s Jason? He always sits with us. He always gets here first! He’s not missing lunch, is he?” Thomas was curious. Phillip knew the answer. “He’s in the library. That project for English class is due today. We’ve known about the project for weeks. Jason started it last night.” Thomas responded. “He always does that. He did that in middle school. I could never wait for the last minute. I’d rather get it done early and not have to worry about it.” “Thomas, that’s your OCD showing. Relax. Jason’s system works. Your system works. Hey, who has an extra dollar? I need more pizza.” “Oh, no, that reminds me. My math teacher is convinced that every geometry theorem about circles can somehow be shown with a pizza. I have to use a paper pizza to prove some theorem. What a dumb idea,” Thomas complained. Phillip saw it differently, “I’d rather do that than worksheets. All we do in geometry is worksheets.” The administrators supervised in the cafeteria during lunch. One of the assistant principals was in constant motion. He moved from place to place, table to table, student to student. He visited some classrooms every day; then at lunch he always saw students whom he could compliment, and other students who needed to be told that they could do better than what he had seen them doing in class, or what he had noticed they were not doing in class. He asked questions. He introduced himself. He did not bother students or interrupt students, but he was determined to make every minute count. Cafeteria supervision was nobody’s favorite duty, but 44


it could be done with an attitude of making the most of it or an attitude of wishing it would end soon. As some teachers gathered for lunch in one classroom, the topic became a local community group that had made a big presentation at the school-board meeting the night before. The group was advocating that every student in every school have thirty minutes daily of physical exercise at school. “Where will we find that time? Are we adding thirty minutes to the schoolday? Are we reducing the number of classes students take?” “I heard one person suggest that in high schools each teacher could supervise five or so minutes of exercises at the start of each class or at the end of each class. Can you imagine that? We’re going to lead twenty-eight students in jumping jacks and push-ups to start each class. Have the people who come up with these ideas ever worked in a school? Do they realize what it would be like to exercise in every class? I bet they don’t exercise where they work. Imagine some office manager telling the employees to do push-ups every hour. Would that work in a factory or in a bank?” “Everyone knows that students need exercise. But this is a school. We can’t solve every problem in our society that involves people who are between the ages of five and eighteen. Can’t families make sure that their children and teenagers get some exercise?” Another teacher took that idea one step further. “I’m supposed to be sure that my students have mastered all the skills of junior-year English. If more time is taken away from my classes for physical exercise, a blood drive, some community survey, field trips for other classes, meetings of clubs, fund-raising events, or who knows what, I should only be expected to get my students up to 85 percent mastery of English, because I am getting only 85 percent of the class time they are supposed to be with me.” The principal and a counselor grabbed a quick lunch in the workroom area in the office complex. The counselor had a question. “Why do we always have to search for the teachers when they have conferences with parents? We send one or two e-mail notices about upcoming 7:30 a.m. meetings or meetings after school. It’s rare that everyone is on time. We always have to call for people.” “My guess is that they just get busy. Sometimes they have a schedule conflict. They are told to attend a 7:30 a.m. meeting on a day they have 45

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early duty in a hallway at 7:30 a.m., so they can’t do both. The other problem is when a parent or guardian does not show up. Some teachers wait to be called just to be sure there will actually be a meeting. Is there a better way?” “Not that I know of. That’s how we have always done it. I don’t know of any other way. Do you? Maybe somebody has a better idea.” The afternoon classes were difficult for some students who complained of being tired after they ate lunch or who began concentrating on their after-school plans. Teachers who heard students say how tired they were after lunch were likely to remind students of how energetic they were at lunch or on the way back from lunch. Teachers who occasionally visited the cafeteria at lunch gave themselves that advantage. “But Ms. Miller, I ate too much at lunch. I can’t stay awake in your class on a full stomach.” “Good try, Sam. You and I talked at lunch. You never said anything about being tired. You were very lively. If you can be alert in the cafeteria, you can be alert in our classroom.” In the minutes between the final two classes of the day, a teacher was standing in the hallway by his classroom door. He saw a student from his first-period class and offered a reminder about the test tomorrow. “No problem, Mr. Harris. I could make an A on it right now.” The same teacher saw another student who had skipped several days of school recently. Their eyes met. The teacher said, “Douglas, I’ll see you in class tomorrow morning. Did you get to school late today?” There was no reply. Douglas was hurrying to catch up with his girlfriend. In his last-period class, Mr. Harris had twenty-seven students for Advanced Placement World History. Some of the students took the class for the academic challenge. Some of the students took it to be in a class with their friends. Some of the students were in the class because their parents or guardians insisted. The teacher had asked a school counselor and an assistant principal what to do about the four students who just would not do the quantity and quality of work required. There had been no answer given to that question. In the faculty workroom after school, a teacher was looking for information about an upcoming professional-development program that all teachers had been told they must attend. “Does anyone know about this ‘Know the Neighborhood’ training we have to attend?” 46


“Yeah, some community groups think that teachers would do a better job if we knew everything about the history and culture of each neighborhood that is in our school-attendance area. So we get a two-hour crash course on all of that.” “I think I could get more done for my students with two hours to grade their papers. My time is limited. Who decided that we have to do this?” “The superintendent or somebody else at the district office, probably. They got a good newspaper editorial about it. Good press. They get the headlines, and we sit through the training. There’s got to be a better way.” The principal and assistant principals supervised in the bus-loading area after school. The assistant principal who always talked to students at lunch was talking to students as they waited for their bus. Most of the teachers who had bus duty stood off to the side and talked to each other. One teacher walked around and talked to students. The principal walked up to the group of teachers and asked what they were talking about. He seemed to be sincerely interested. “Oh, we just wondered if the law that says we have a duty-free lunch could be expanded to eliminate beforeschool hallway duty or after-school bus duty.” The principal gave a surprising reply: “You get the funding for two more assistant principals, and I’ll eliminate those duties myself without a law.” Something at football practice was unusual. Football practice was precisely scheduled to the minute. Each student knew the routine. Everyone knew where to be and when to be there. There were no delays. Nobody was ever late for practice or for any part of practice. There were no excuses. The unusual part of practice today was that a teacher of sixteen years’ experience came to practice immediately after school and stayed to closely observe the entire ninety-minute session of drills and more drills; of coaches working with small groups of players who had clear duties at their offensive or defensive positions; of running and more running; of results with no excuses; of doing a drill over and over until everyone did everything perfectly. A student who had a D average in one of the teacher’s classes came up to the teacher and said, “I never thought I’d see you here. Why did you come to football practice?” 47

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“That’s easy to explain. Someone told me how hard you work at practice. I knew you were a good football player. I’ve heard you talk about your dream of playing football in college. The truth is that you never work hard in our class, but I always knew you could do better. Today I saw a student who is satisfied with a D grade in class do everything at football practice with A effort and A results. I’ll expect to see A results in class from now on. We both know you can do that.” The head coach joined the conversation. “Ms. Hart, thanks for coming. Did you see what you were looking for?” “Yes, sir. I saw a student who demands greatness of himself on the football field. I expect him to demand greatness of himself in our class.” As the teacher walked toward her car, she thought how helpful it was that those ninety minutes of football had no interruptions, no students hiding their cell phones, and no excuses for why work was not done. Maybe classes should insist on getting the same level of support that sports teams and athletic practices are given, she thought as she drove toward home— where two or three hours of paper grading awaited her. While driving home, she heard this on the radio news: “The governor today asked the general assembly to give serious consideration to a longer school year. The goal is to add five more schooldays to the currently required 180 days of school instruction.” She thought to herself, “Mr. Governor, you come spend five full days in a school doing my job, and then let’s talk about what matters most in education and what works best in education.” How many questions were asked throughout this day at Lincoln High School that, if thoroughly analyzed and answered, could result in very useful ideas that might increase the quality and quantity of student learning, enhance the wholesomeness of the workplace, and lead people to a deeper knowledge of what works best and a strengthened commitment to what matters most? What became of those questions asked and ideas expressed throughout each day at Lincoln High School? Were they heard by people who could act upon them? How many moments were there when an isolated, curled-up-in-acorner student could be inspired by a genuine expression of kindness from a teacher? What impact does such a moment and such an expression have on a student? Can any re-form of education equal that impact? Can any law, regulation, or policy equal that impact? What do moments like that reveal about what matters most at school and what works best at school? 48


How many ideas were expressed during this schoolday at Lincoln High School as people experienced their many spontaneous conversations? How many comments were made by students, teachers, staff members, and administrators that contained a valid criticism, a useful suggestion, an insightful observation, or a profound opinion that could be analyzed and used as the basis for an improvement of some aspect of the school? What could the results be if many of those ideas were heard and taken seriously? What impact would that have on the atmosphere of the school? What could it mean to be a place where ideas, questions, complaints, and opinions were seriously sought and genuinely considered? Could the commitment people have to Lincoln High School increase if the atmosphere were one of listening? When a school, or any organization, shows people that they matter by convincing them through actions that they are heard, the mutual commitment of people there to each other is strengthened, and the commitment people have to the organization is strengthened also. But who has the time to do all of this listening? Who has the time to evaluate everything that is heard? Who has the time to make decisions about what ideas will be implemented? Who has the time to implement those ideas? The answer is that people who would like to save time and increase results make the time and take the time to listen. It is part of their continuous effort to do what matters most and what works best. The assistant principal who was so interactive during cafeteria supervision did not add time to his work; rather, he added work to his time. He used the time to accomplish more than standing and watching could ever accomplish. How can people who already have more work to do than they have time in which to do that work add another time-consuming responsibility? They cannot. Instead, they can use time-saving methods so that they accomplish more work in the same amount of time. In the very busy pace of Lincoln High School’s daily activities, how do teachers, administrators, counselors, secretaries, and staff members find the time to listen? The time is already available. Time is not the issue. How the time is used or not used is the issue. Critics, skeptics, and pessimists deserve to be heard, so it is their turn. Listen to the following four critical comments. “Do you realize what my job is like? I’m the assistant principal of a middle school with eight hundred students, fifty-four teachers and other 49

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professional staff members, nineteen hourly wage workers, and endless emails telling me what to do, telling me of some situation to investigate, or telling me of some problem to solve. Now you want me to listen to people, so I can create some happy place where everyone listens to everyone else and we smile together all day. You’ve got to be kidding. Come do my job for a day. The only listening you’ll do is to hear complaints and excuses. People complain about everything. People make excuses about everything. I’m way too busy solving the problems and the emergencies of each day to take any time just to listen when I could be doing something else.” “I’m a teacher. The work I do is exhausting. I like my job. It really fascinates me, but I have more than any person can get done. Every year we are told to do more. Attend more meetings. Fill out more forms. Update more reports. Close every achievement gap. Get every student up to grade-level work. Eliminate failure. Challenge every student. Prepare every student for college. Teach every student to be honest and responsible. Work with each student individually. Improve the writing skills of every student. Be sure each student makes up all work missed when absent. I have 142 high-school juniors in my classes. If I give them a writing assignment each week or a written test and it take me ten minutes to thoroughly grade each paper, that’s 1,420 minutes per week. That’s almost twenty-four hours of grading those papers. Even if it just took five minutes per paper, that’s twelve hours of grading. I’m at school ten or eleven hours every day. I need about ten hours each week to plan and prepare lessons. There are other papers to grade. Time. Tell me about time. No, better yet, let me tell you about time. I have no time. I have no life except school. There is no time to do anything else. Don’t tell me to do one more thing for school, or well, here’s what will happen: you will make a job that I really care about into a job that is just impossible to do. There is no time for anything else.” “My career plan was to teach for about ten years. I did that. Then I was an assistant principal. I thought about five years would be good in that job, but I became a principal ahead of schedule after only three years as an assistant principal. What’s it like to be a high-school principal? It is not the job I prepared for or expected. A good day is when we only have a lot of problems but avoid a crisis. A good day is when I can stay on schedule to observe the class I had planned to visit that day instead of getting stuck in the office with some teenage criminal who stole property from another student or getting stuck in the office with an irate parent who brought a lawyer and can’t 50


wait to go tell a pack of lies to some local journalist who needs a sensational story for the local news report. So I’m sure there are great concepts about how to lead and manage so that there’s an ideal high school in every community, but that’s just not the way life works. We deal with what we have. I don’t make up the problems here. I deal with them. The higher-ups in the school district or on the school board, or the people in the state department of education, may have these utopian schemes for peace on earth through better schools. The politicians are worse. They think a new law will fix every school. So we do the best we can with what we’ve got. I can’t do more than I’m doing. The teachers and the staff are the same way. Everyone is busy and stretched to the limit. We’re doing everything we can. If we are told to do more, well, something will have to give or some people will just quit this type of work. Who would take their place?” “I’ve worked in this elementary-school cafeteria for twenty years. My children went to this school. I have a grandchild here. I work in the serving line. It’s a great job for getting to know people. They tell me everything. You wouldn’t believe what I hear. The students, well, they tell me about their favorite foods and about their birthdays and what they did on the weekends. They tell me about their friends and their schoolwork. They tell me what they like best about school and what they don’t like. I’ve wondered if they talk to other people the same way. I visited my grandson’s class recently. It was strange, I thought. Everybody was so quiet and still, just sitting there filling out some answers on a paper. He told me they do a lot of that. No wonder they talk all they can at lunch. They have a lot to say, and they were quiet all morning. I know they are very young children, but I think it is really interesting, you know, to hear what they think. I did have an idea once about involving students in planning the menu for the cafeteria. I was told no, absolutely not. I asked why. The rules do not allow that. The government tells us what food to serve and what food not to serve. That was the last idea I ever suggested. What does the government know about feeding eight-year-olds? I’d like to see the government rule makers come do my job, and then things might be different.”

Insight 8 There are many ways to format a test—from multiple choice to fill in the blank, from essay questions to analysis of reading passages. There 51

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are many other acceptable and accurate ways to measure what students have learned. My U.S. history students were scheduled for a test on Thursday. The weather prediction on Sunday told our community to anticipate much snow on Monday and Tuesday. I gave the students an abundance of material to read and several Internet-research activities to do. We agreed on Monday that if Tuesday and/or Wednesday became snow days, the test would be on Thursday as planned. The snow arrived on Monday night, and we missed two days of school. Snow days are evil. They destroy the momentum, the continuity, and the productive pace of the work my students and I do. I rank snow days and cell phones as two of the most severe annoyances a teacher confronts because both disrupt classroom achievement. When we returned to school on Thursday, the U.S. history students were given their quiz from Monday, and we quickly asked and answered each question together. After two snow days, it was helpful to refresh their memories. Sure, I hoped they’d used the materials they were given on Monday to continue their study during those two snow days, but reality dictated that not everyone did so. “We have a test today. We did not get to work together the past two days, so I have prepared two different tests. Both of the tests are about the Progressive movement. Both are formats you have used many times. Both tests will require a lot of thinking and a lot of writing. You may select which format you prefer. The choices are an essay test and a historical-document-analysis test. Raise your hand if you prefer the essay test, and if you think that would work better for you.” I watched closely as the students in those three classes took their tests. All students concentrated 100 percent as they completed the tests. The classroom atmosphere was intensely intellectual. The classroom atmosphere also was one of a partnership between teacher and students. Both tests were challenging. Both tests would show the teacher what the students knew. Both tests accomplished the purpose for the day. The students knew that their concerns about taking a test after two snow days had been addressed. I heard their spoken and unspoken concerns. I had anticipated those concerns. The power of choice in the test format removed the concerns. Now they could work confidently, productively, and with complete concentration. It was their test. It is our classroom. We listen to each other. We work together. We do not re-form education in this classroom. We continually create, invent, experience, build, improve, and share the educational experience 52


together. That approach does not add more hours to my work; rather, it adds more results to my work. The students and I are together daily— unless it snows, of course. The time I am with them does not increase or decrease if I listen closely to them during that time. The amount of time does not change. The quality and quantity of what we accomplish in that time does change for the better—because leaders listen, and my responsibility is to be the leader of learning in my classroom, as I provide the experiences that enable each student to increasingly take the lead in his or her education.

Insight 9 The rumors were flying at the speed of seven hundred middle-school students’ imaginations. It seemed as if every student in the school was certain that there would be a fight, maybe a brawl, after first-period class. The tension was thick. The turmoil was expanding. The assistant principal heard students talking about “a big fight.” “I heard it would be upstairs.” “Yeah, it’s by the band room. Some guys are going to hide in that bathroom by the stairs.” The assistant principal asked a few students what they knew. “It started on the bus. They threw stuff.” “I heard it started last night with some text messages.” “I know they are going to fight. Lots of them.” School law-enforcement officers in this school district were asked to help. They responded quickly. The school counselors were told to help. The plan was simple: when the bell rang to end first-period classes, all students would walk into the halls, and when they looked to the left or to the right, they would see a school law-enforcement officer, a school counselor, or the assistant principal. The bell rang. “Look at all the cops” was heard. There were no fights. There was no brawl. The hallways were orderly. The rumors stopped. Students had been listened to earlier, and now students were clearly hearing the nonverbal message of the problem-prevention plan. A few minutes of listening and about twenty minutes of preparing a plan, followed by five to ten minutes of implementing the plan, had avoided hours of dealing with the aftermath of a fight. There were no injuries. There were no suspensions from school. There were no difficulties the rest of the day. 53

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Insight 10 This job is impossible. Absolutely impossible. Nothing works. Nobody is ever satisfied. What do they mean “analyze the data by demographic groups”? Dr. King told us to look at the content of a person’s character, not the color of his or her skin. So, based on that, the character content of my students who failed the semester is severe laziness combined with severe irresponsibility. Within that group are both genders and a range of ethnicities. The students who did average work, good work, or great work have different character elements, including manners, work ethic, and willingness or eagerness to learn. Don’t ask me to fill out some pointless form about semester exam grades by ethnic group and gender. Instead of using your high-paid school-administrator time or school-district-bureaucrat time telling me to fill out a form, do something that helps me teach my students. Make sure the copy machine works, be sure the furnace works. Quit taking students out of my class so they can meet with you or attend some event to represent the school. You can come to my classroom and see the student for a few minutes. Why does everyone have to come to you? Oh, yeah, get the computers fixed. How can I do my job if the computer system goes down so often?

What did the day at Lincoln High School tell us? What do the insights in this chapter tell us? Think, please, and create a list of ideas revealed by the day at school and insights 8–10. Think also of the thoughts expressed by the critics, skeptics, and pessimists. What is each of these voices saying? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 54


9. 10. The voices of the many people at Lincoln High School—of the skeptics, of the people in the “insight” stories—these voices, and many more, speak each day at every school. Are these voices listened to? Are their ideas and questions, their frustrations and complaints, their successes and hopes listened to and acted upon? Amid the continual busyness of a school, can the effort be made to hear the voices of hope and despair, of success and frustration, of criticism and celebration? The truth is that because schools are such busy places, the voices must be heard. Are we too busy to listen? No. Because we are so busy, we must listen. Sometimes we are busy doing what does not matter most and what does not work best. Listening provides a reality check that helps education concentrate on what matters most and what works best. Listen, listen more, keep listening. Perhaps we are too busy because there is too little listening. When a state government creates and implements a massive re-form of education, that process will cause thousands of people to be very busy for many years to install the new re-form. It is likely that some parts of the re-form will not work as intended, so those parts of the re-form must be re-formed. What direct benefit are students getting from the time, effort, money, and work that these re-forms consume? All of the busyness produced by unproductive re-form could have been avoided if there had been more listening to people who knew the reality of classrooms and schools. That listening could have helped the decision makers realize what matters most and what works best. Unproductive or counterproductive re-form can be avoided. Concentrating on classroom reality by listening to the people who live in that reality helps eliminate wasted effort on unnecessary re-forms. Also, giving much attention to school reality—the aspects of education at the school level that are beyond any one classroom—can help eliminate wasted effort on unnecessary re-forms. What matters most in education is not the form of education. What works best in education is not the form of education. Repeated re-forms too often merely rearrange education. 55

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What matters most in education is learning. What works best in education to cause learning is known by teachers who persistently, consistently, and relentlessly get great results with their students in their classrooms. The proper and productive experiences in those classrooms between teacher and students are what works best. How do we identify what those proper and productive classroom learning experiences are? Ask the people in those classrooms, and listen to them. How do we identify the problems and challenges that those teachers encounter daily and that those teachers know are the real limitations on student achievement? Ask those teachers, and listen to them. How do we improve schools? How do we make sure that our efforts are completely devoted to doing what matters most and what works best? Listen to the people who know what matters most and what works best. It is common in schools to find students who do better work in one class than they do in another class. What is working in the class where the student is achieving more? How can we find out what is working there? Ask the teacher. Ask the student. Listen to the teacher and the student. This seems so simple. It is simple, but it is not easy. It is practical, human, wise, and efficient. It is not easy. It is productive. It is more productive than systematic, bureaucratic, procedural, political re-form of education has been or can be. It is genuine, it is real, it is face-to-face, person to person. It is similar to what works best in classrooms. Listening is a simple process. Implementing the good ideas listened to, solving the problems heard about, and addressing the concerns listened to are all demanding endeavors; however, by listening to reality you can apply your work to endeavors that matter. That is honorable, humane, efficient, and just plain smart. What matters most in education is learning. What matters most in improving education is learning what the current reality is—what is working, what is not working. Then, after learning that, efforts are directed toward doing what works best. The Extreme Principle reveals that relentless emphasis on what matters most—learning—is essential in education and in the improvement of education. The Extreme Principle also reveals that what works best in causing learning also works best in causing improvements in education. The task is monumental. Listening is not complicated. Listening provides information about ideas, questions, complaints, problems, and 56


opportunities. Going from listening to meaningful actions that get results can be complicated and exhausting, but it is much more productive and much more rewarding than another temporary re-form of education. Listen. Listen more. Keep listening. Please think of opportunities during your usual routine of duties where you work where listening could be done as you went about your regular tasks and responsibilities. If you are a teacher, think of the times at which you could initiate more conversation with students, colleagues, or parents/guardians to hear ideas, questions, opinions, and suggestions. You are building a deeper partnership as you increase the number of conversations. You and other teachers are waiting for the copy machine together, so why not use that time to learn about their successes with students or their concerns about school. If you are a school counselor, administrator, or staff member, you see people from throughout the school building all day. How could you increase the number of ideas and questions, concerns and opinions, that you hear, that you really listen to, that you think about, and that you apply in various ways to improve the school? If you work in education, but not in a school, how can you make more communication connections with people who work in schools? E-mail can be useful, but it is limited. Can you find ways to be in schools and to thoroughly interact with people? Could you go to a school cafeteria or a faculty workroom for lunch instead of eating lunch at your office or going to a restaurant? Could you attend after-school events? Is some of your work portable, so you could do your job in a school library and become a regular visitor to that school? If you do not work in education, how can the power of listening be increasingly applied where you work? How could your business or organization become a place of continuous improvement through continuous communication, especially listening? If you are not involved with education, but you seek to have an impact on education, how can you directly interact with people who work at schools? Are there volunteer duties at school that you could accept? Are there school activities that you could attend and support? While providing that help you will find many opportunities to talk with and listen to people who work at schools. People in positions of leadership and management duties in education are constantly told to improve the results at their school, in their school 57

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district, in their state, or throughout their nation. In the next chapter the emphasis will be on application of the Extreme Principle by an administrator at one school. The goals will be to do what matters most and what works best. An essential tool in reaching those goals will be aggressive listening. The principal who uses the Extreme Principle does not wait to find out what could be listened to next. The extreme principal uses the Extreme Principle intentionally, proactively, pre-actively, politely, and aggressively to seek and create opportunities to listen. Those listening experiences are a vital resource. Those listening experiences are an essential tool. Those listening experiences are a gift the extreme principal gives himself or herself to concentrate fully on what matters most and what works best. Those listening experiences also create new opportunities for the extreme principal to keep the school attention on or redirect the school attention back to what matters most and what works best.

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The Extreme Principal Uses the Extreme Principle

“P

eople talk to me all day. Well, to be honest, people talk at me most of the time, and I’m sure that some people talk about me. I never have a quiet moment. I always hear someone talking. How could I possibly listen more than I do now? How can I possibly find time to do more of anything when I have too much to do now and not enough time? I really don’t have extra time just to listen.” No person needs to listen more than the person who does not have time to listen. Two effective time-management tools are to ask yourself these two questions: (1) Right now, am I doing what matters most? (2)Â€Right now, am I doing what works best? For a school principal who is walking through the hallways during class-change time, various factors could impact the answer to the question, Right now, am I doing what matters most? When the principal sees and hears two students becoming confrontational, what matters most at that moment is to intervene so the emerging escalation is reversed. When that same principal is walking the hallways during class-change time and there are no confrontations, what matters most is speaking to a student who had a great question in a class the principal observed earlier in the day. School principals have extraordinarily demanding jobs. Both schoolteachers and school principals (or assistant principals) work in school buildings, but they have drastically different jobs. When a teacher makes the career move from classroom teacher to school-building administra59

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tor, the job-description journey is much farther than the distance from a classroom to the school office. That journey is traveled in different ways by different people; however, our goals for the journey are to do what matters most and to do what works best. The following examples show two different middle-school principals using two different approaches to the job.

Case Study 1 While driving to school, Marian Morgan anticipated a very demanding day. She had three scheduled meetings with parents. There would probably be other parents or guardians who would just show up and expect to meet with the principal. Some teachers would be absent, and Marian knew that when the number of absent teachers exceeded six there would be many discipline problems, as some students would spend several class periods with substitute teachers. Marian had eagerly sought the middle-school principal job. She had initially taught elementary school, but then she did some work one summer at a church camp with middle-school students. She quickly realized that her talents and her concerns fit perfectly with the unique characteristics and needs of the middle-school age group. She was able to transfer within her school district from the elementary school where she had taught third and fourth grades for four years to a nearby middle school where she would teach eighth-grade math. She was thrilled to see students in her eighth-grade classes whom she had taught four years earlier in fourth grade. During the years of middle-school teaching, Marian earned her master’s degree and included certification as a school principal in that degree program. After six years of teaching middle school, she became a middleschool assistant principal at another school in the same school district. Some graduate-school friends who worked in a nearby school district had tried to recruit Marian to come work with them, but Marian had a desire to build on her experience in the district where she had worked for ten years. The middle-school assistant principal job was not what Marian had expected. She had expected to work closely with teachers to guide them in creating the most effective instruction. She had expected to work with the school counselors to implement problem-solving programs that ad60


dressed the volatile and unpredictable personalities of students in grades 6–8. She had also planned to work on curriculum innovations to update the class offerings for students, although she also thought that some of the old-fashioned classes such as home economics and industrial arts needed to be brought back to middle school. Learning to cook and learning to make furniture could be meaningful and beneficial experiences for twelveyear-olds. Instead, Marian Morgan was the middle-school police officer much of the time. In a middle school of seven hundred students, if only one percent of the students caused serious problems on any day, that could become hours of time that Ms. Morgan had to spend investigating the misbehaviors; imposing the disciplinary actions; completing all paperwork or computer work related to the disciplinary actions; notifying parents or guardians if a student had to be suspended; and answering questions if another parent or guardian called or came to school to complain about how unfairly discipline decisions had been made. Ms. Morgan had other daily duties, including cafeteria supervision during breakfast and lunch; bus-loading-area supervision after school; hallway supervision throughout the day; dealing with building-maintenance problems; and keeping up with the schedule of classroom observations to complete the school district’s plan for teacher evaluation. This was not what Marian Morgan had expected school-administration work to be, but she was determined to keep up with the demands. “Surely,” she kept telling herself, “it will be better when I’m a principal instead of an assistant principal.” Marian’s principal retired, and, with four years’ experience as the assistant principal, Marian was confident that she was ready to move up. The interviewing process and the selection process took several weeks. Marian wondered what could take so much time. The school year had ended. The principal was using vacation days to complete her final weeks of the job, so Marian was doing her own work as assistant principal and awkwardly, due to the absence of a decision, doing some of the tasks of a principal because those tasks had to be done. Finally, Marian Morgan was told she had been chosen as the new principal. She was pleased, but she did wonder why that process had taken so long. She found out that there had been some questions about whether the school needed someone new to come in from another school, or 61

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whether a person coming from within the school could provide the necessary leadership. Marian saw the benefit in continuity. Some other people thought that changes at the school required a new start. Still, Marian was the principal, and she was eager to begin her work. Her first priority was to select a new assistant principal. That process took longer than Marian had hoped because the procedures that had to be followed created a slow sequence. Still, the new assistant principal was selected, and Marian was able to take a week of vacation in late July. She returned to school on August 1, ready to begin a school year that for students would start on August 15. These two weeks in early August consisted of nonstop activity to prepare everything for 712 students, 53 faculty and staff members, and the building. Those weeks passed quickly, and now it was time for Marian Morgan’s first schoolday as a middleschool principal. It was not a good day. Twenty-three unexpected students showed up, but because they were not expected there was much confusion about each of them. All of the buses were late. Two cafeteria workers and one custodian called in sick. Two sixth-graders got into a fight. One seventhgrader had a preventable medical emergency that her family did not tell the school about in advance, and so the preventable emergency instead became a 911 call. When Ms. Morgan left the school at 6:15 p.m., she wondered if every day would be like this one. She also wondered what could be done to get control of these constant problems. She had been in classrooms for about fifteen minutes of her eleven or twelve hours at school on this day. She had expected to be in many classrooms throughout the day, but problem after problem had kept her chained to the office. She had to hope that tomorrow would be better. The next day was not as bad, but it really was not great. Nine new students showed up. That was fewer than the day before, but Marian wondered why people had not come to school to enroll before the school year started instead of doing so after the school year had begun. Most of the buses were late, instead of all of the buses being late to school in the morning. The buses had to be on time, or the schoolday could not begin well. “What can I do about transportation?” Marian wondered. “I can’t drive every student to school myself.” It did help that the cafeteria staff and the custodial staff were all at school today. It made no sense to Marian 62


that five teachers were absent. How could they not come to school on the second day of the year after they had had a long summer vacation? Throughout this second day of the school year there were many complaints, but few of these were heard by Ms. Morgan. “I’ve been saying for two weeks that we needed to work with the transportation office. So many of the bus routes for our school were changed. The times and the locations are different from last year. Transportation was late getting those schedule brochures to us. No wonder the buses have been so late the past two days.” The counselor who said this had worked at the school for seventeen years. He knew the neighborhoods where students lived. He knew where and when people expected the buses to arrive. He also knew that it was not good enough to post the schedule and route changes on the school-district website and expect everyone to be fully informed. He had mentioned this concern in a faculty meeting the previous week, but it got lost amid many other comments and announcements. “Those two sixth-graders who fought yesterday have had problems before. Their friends said they used to fight in elementary school. I checked their student folders, and the records show that they each got in some fights as fourth-graders and as fifth-graders. Why would people let that go on for years? Their parents could have told us.” The assistant principal was very frustrated that so much of the first day of school had been spent on dealing with that fight. “I heard these teachers say they would be absent today. They said that their children were starting college. They were going to take them to college and help them move in. The substitute-teacher service says they all used illness as the reason for being absent. I thought you would need to know.” The secretary who reported this to the school’s accountant and record-keeper added, “As a taxpayer, it bothers me that some people use all of those sick days just because they have the days, not because they are sick. There’s something wrong with that. If it’s a personal matter, use a personal day. Maybe we’re given too many sick days. Some people use them all. Other people rarely use any.” Some students were talking about the sixth-graders who had fought the day before. “I heard it was all set up. They hate each other, but they hate school even more. Lots of people knew there would be a fight. It’s fun to watch a fight, so nobody said anything to stop it.” 63

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One student knew more. “Yeah, it was all set up and stuff. They said if they got suspended it would be like summer vacation could keep going.” One teacher in the faculty workroom was not pleased with the first day of school. “Could you believe how many times there was something said over the PA system yesterday? How can I check attendance, get each class organized, begin to learn names, and get the work started in each class if every few minutes there is some PA noise? Why do so many people have the authority to use the PA? One person is looking for one student, so the whole school has to hear the announcement about that one student. Can’t they check the schedules and find out what rooms the students are in?” On the second day of the school year, Ms. Morgan made a quick stop in each classroom during second-period class. There was not much she could do in a one-minute visit, but at least it was a start at getting to know everyone and being informed about what was going on at her school. The afternoon of the second day was fairly quiet—well, quiet for a middle school of about seven hundred students. There were no fights today. All of the unexpected students were either in class or had been sent to their correct schools. Ms. Morgan wondered how a family could just send a student to a school without any preparation for enrolling and feel sure it was the school the student was supposed to attend. After all of the buses had left to take students home and Ms. Morgan was coming back into the school from the bus-loading area, she heard one teacher say, “I can tell this will be a difficult year. I guess every rookie principal has a tough first year.” When the teacher saw Ms. Morgan, she hoped her comment had not been heard. She said, “Ms. Morgan, how are the first few days going for you?” Ms. Morgan chose to be diplomatic, for the most part. “Oh, today was better than yesterday. Tomorrow should be great. There’s a lot for a rookie to learn. Please let me know if you have any ideas for me or our school.” “I certainly will. Maybe I’ll have an idea later, but I’m sure you’ll do fine. I’ll let you know of any ideas.” Ms. Morgan was not as sure that she would do fine in her first year as a middle-school principal. She had been a great teacher. She had worked very hard during her years as assistant principal. She’d thought she was ready for this job, but being principal of this middle school was, at least so far, not what she had expected. What could she do? 64


Marian remembered two ideas from one of her graduate-school professors in a school leadership and management class: “Most problems are people problems, and most solutions are people solutions.” “There are very few new problems that you will face. Someone has faced each problem you will encounter, and someone has solved each problem you will encounter. Learn from those people.” So, Marian decided to call her good friend who had been a middleschool principal for seven very successful years. Certainly some words of wisdom from Michael Hanover could help Marian get this job under control. Questions for the reader: 1.â•‡What would you have done differently from Ms. Morgan if you had been in her job? 2.â•‡From the day you were selected as principal through the second day of school, with what you know about Ms. Morgan and with your knowledge and experience, what would you have done to prepare for the start of the school year and to manage the initial days of the school year? 3.â•‡What advice would you give Ms. Morgan if she called you after the second day of school?

Case Study 1, Continued When asked how his career as a middle-school principal was going, Michael Hanover once said, “Seven years on the job. No students expelled. No teachers or staff members fired. No vandalism. Lots of very successful students. Many people eager to come here to work. How’s that?” How is that? Does that summary of seven years as a school principal equal success? Perhaps it depends on who answers the question. Marian Morgan expected more of herself and expected more of the principal’s job than what Michael Hanover’s seven-year evaluation included; but maybe in seven years Marian would think that matching Michael’s achievements would be admirable. Still, Marian expected more of herself and her job—at least she expected that now. Marian e-mailed Michael to give him a quick summary of what was on her mind and to set up the best time to call. Michael worked in the 65

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same school district as Marian. They were both middle-school principals. Their schools were vastly different in many ways. Michael’s school building had been remodeled, renovated, and modernized two years earlier. Marian’s building had been constructed eighteen years back and was showing signs of wear and tear. Michael’s school had a larger percentage than the school-district average of students on free or reduced lunch plans, but he did wonder how so many of those students could afford cell phones and other electronic gadgets while claiming they could not afford lunch. Marian’s school had a larger percentage than the school-district average of students who read two or three years below grade level and also of students who read two or three years above grade level. How could Marian’s school fully serve both ends of that literacy spectrum when most directives from her school district emphasized only those students who were below grade level? Michael replied to the e-mail within fifteen minutes, and they agreed to talk by phone at five o’clock that afternoon. The school buses would have returned all riders to their homes. The after-school activities would have thirty minutes to go before concluding. Perhaps on this day there would be no irate parents storming into the office at some point after school, expecting the principal to stop working on every other matter except their very loud complaints. “Michael, this is Marian. Thanks for taking the time to talk.” “Marian. Good to hear from you. Congratulations again on the new job. How are the first few days?” “Michael, what’s wrong with this job? We take all of those lofty classes about being instructional leaders and about developing talent and teamwork. Who has time for any of that? I just bounce from problem to problem. Who has time to be a leader when all of your time is spent dealing with one crisis after another?” Michael thought for a moment. “Tough two days, I can tell. You’re right, Marian. Much of what we’re taught about being principals is not what the job really is. The leadership theories are interesting, but when seven teachers are absent, two students are fighting, the computer system is not working, buses are late, elementary schools have sent us some students who can barely read, we’ve passed some seventh-graders to eighth grade and they are not really ready but seventh grade for a third time is not good . . . yeah, it’s a really difficult job.” 66


“So, Michael, what keeps you going? What can I do to get this under control? What can I do to, you know, actually lead this school instead of just coping with each crisis?” “Well, Marian, it can be done, but there is no magic formula. I know that the central-office supervisors and the state department of education officials are convinced that they can control education through their policies and directives and other bureaucratic stuff. They can’t do our job, but they think they can tell us how to do our jobs. They usually mean well and we can’t defy them, but we can inform them so that they almost realize what we are up against.” “That’s just it, Michael. What we’re up against is too much. How do you get in front of the next crisis and prevent it before it consumes all of your time?” “Great question, Marian. I can tell you what works for me. It does not prevent every crisis, but it does make it much more possible to manage the school and to have some feeling of control, instead of thinking that all you ever do is react to problems that multiply every day. What works for me is to listen to everyone all the time.” “Listen? That’s all, just listen? Come on, Michael. This job is impossible. You know that. How can listening be enough to get an impossible job under control?” Marian was beginning to think that this call was a waste of time. “Yeah. It does sound less sophisticated than everything we learned in graduate school about school administration. And the central office and state officials never tell us to listen more. Of course, listening is not their strong suit. They pronounce and direct and command more than they listen, but maybe they think that’s what their jobs require. Anyway, what works at our school is very aggressive listening.” Marian was curious now. “How do you listen aggressively? There are not levels of listening, are there? You either hear something or you don’t.” “True, but I said aggressively listen, not passively hear. There’s a big difference. One you make happen; the other just consists of blending in with it. It takes some effort to be an aggressive listener.” “OK, Michael, I need to do something. If this type of listening works for you, maybe it’s worth a try for me. These first two days have been awful—nothing like I expected. So tell me how to listen, because I’ve got to do something so tomorrow is not like today.” 67

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“I can’t provide overnight miracles, Marian. I can provide ideas. Start with right now. As soon as we hang up, go walk throughout your school and ask people about the first two days of school. Ask teachers what went well. Ask the custodians how the building is functioning. Ask teachers who are supervising an after-school activity how that is going. Isn’t it amazing that middle-school fall sports begin practicing in August and are practicing after school the day school starts? I think that is too much, but the high-school coaches and middle-school coaches got it approved. “So, go listen to people. Then, tomorrow, all day, no matter where you are, initiate conversations. Ask students if their class schedules are OK. Ask the counselors if they are noticing anything unexpected. Talk to the cafeteria staff to see if the lunch schedule is working. Talk to people who come into the office with a question or a problem and get them to the right person who can help. Go to classrooms and listen to the sounds of learning.” “Wait, Michael. I’m supposed to do that all day? How will I get anything else done if I spend all day walking around listening to people? Is that my job?” “No. It’s how you can do your overall job so you are in control of the job instead of the job controlling you. There’s no need to stay in the office. Get out in the school. Call the office whenever necessary. Be involved in the real life of the school whenever possible.” “That I like,” said an encouraged Marian Morgan. “Could I call you tomorrow at the same time to discuss how the listening experiment worked?” “Sure, Marian, just remember that it is aggressive listening. Make the effort. Start the conversations, listen, and then take action. Lead by listening. What you learn by listening can help you get the job under your control so you don’t feel as if the job is beyond doing. Call me tomorrow. Go listen to people now. See ya, Marian.” “Thanks, Michael. Thanks for your ideas and for listening to me.” Michael smiled as he said, “See how much good listening has already done? Talk to you tomorrow. Bye, Marian. Oh, one more thought: There is more talking than there is listening. People talk more than they listen. Leaders listen more than they talk.” “So, Michael, if I listen more I’ll be a better leader? I’m supposed to listen and lead. OK. It’s worth a try. Thanks. We’ll talk tomorrow.” Marian Morgan left the office and walked through the hallways. She stopped in each classroom where a teacher was still there. She spoke to 68


each custodian. She talked to students who had stayed for sports practices or for an innovative math-tutoring program. She went to the driveway area of the front entrance of the school and talked with several parents and guardians who were picking up their children. As Marian returned to the front door of the school and entered the building, she encountered a student who was in tears. This student was alone and sobbing, so Marian walked up to her and gently said, “I’m sorry you are so upset. What could I do to help?” The student kept crying, so Marian tried again. “Come with me, and let’s see what we can do for you.” The student looked up and, although still crying, did begin to walk with Ms. Morgan. Ten minutes later, Ms. Morgan had heard the details about everything that could go wrong for a sixth-grader during one day of school. Between tears, sobs, and sniffles, the principal had heard the student tell her about getting lost in the “huge hallways where everybody else knows where they are going.” She had heard the details of how “my best friend from elementary school said she hates me. I don’t know why she would say that!” Then there had been more, including “My mother was supposed to pick me up twenty minutes ago. I stayed for tutoring. She’s not here. How will I get home?” The school computer system included all phone numbers of family members. Soon Ms. Morgan had Sarah’s mother on the phone. She explained that a car accident had blocked traffic, but she would be at the school soon. Ms. Morgan promised that a school counselor would meet with Sarah and her best friend tomorrow to figure out how to restore that friendship. Ms. Morgan promised to personally show Sarah around the hallways right then while they waited for Sarah’s mother. Ms. Morgan and Sarah walked through the halls and practiced going from classroom to classroom according to Sarah’s schedule. Sarah was no longer crying. Sarah was starting to show Ms. Morgan around the school. “Look, here’s where I have orchestra class. It’s my favorite.” Long after Sarah’s mother arrived, Marian Morgan was thinking about all of the people she had spoken with and listened to after school today. She said to herself, “Sarah just needed someone to listen to her and then show her the way. Maybe there’s something to this listening idea. I’ll see if it works tomorrow as well as it did after school today.” 69

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Case Study 1, Conclusion It worked. It did not prevent every problem. It did not solve every problem. It did work. It kept some problems from getting worse. It began to solve other problems. Day 3 of the school year was encouraging—not perfect, but a lot better than days 1 or 2. Listening worked. Early on the third day of the school year, Marian Morgan, first-year principal, replied to the sixteen e-mails that were waiting for her at 7:04 a.m. She checked voice-mail messages and replied to those questions with e-mails, promising to call back later in the morning. She collected eight items from her faculty-workroom mailbox and was able to deal with most of those issues quickly, though two of the items would require follow-up. Two teachers had left copies of ideas that the school’s curriculum committee would consider soon. At 7:44 a.m., Ms. Morgan went to the side of the building where the school buses began arriving each day at about 7:45 a.m. The first bus was right on time, and Ms. Morgan hoped that meant all of the buses would be punctual. She spoke to students as they exited their bus. She talked to the bus drivers. This continued until 7:55, as six buses arrived during those ten minutes. A staff member, Mr. Seymore, logged the arrival time of each bus daily, and Ms. Morgan spoke to him to learn more about the bus-arrival process. “Well, I can tell which students will get in trouble today by watching them get off their buses. It rarely fails. Problems that get bad during the day often had some warning signs or some escalation on the bus. See those two seventh-grade boys over there? They’ll get sent to you today. They’re already starting the verbal part. You watch.” Ms. Morgan had no intention of merely watching. She approached the two students and asked, “Are you both ready for a great day at school?” The two students, Taylor and Marcus, seemed shocked that the principal was talking to them. The honest answer was no, they were expecting to fight each other in the cafeteria during breakfast. That was the plan. One of them spoke. “Well, yeah, something like that, except he keeps bothering me so I have to stop that.” Ms. Morgan knew where this was headed. “Let’s do this. I’d like to have breakfast with both of you. Let’s go to the cafeteria. You’re both in seventh grade, and I’d really like to know how seventh grade is going so far.” 70


Fifteen minutes later, Ms. Morgan walked with Taylor and Marcus from the cafeteria to their first-period class. Other students watched and wondered. Ms. Morgan heard another student say, “Those guys are in trouble. The principal probably caught them fighting. Everybody knew they were going to fight.” This was a teaching moment. Ms. Morgan introduced herself to the third student, and learned his name was Anthony. “Taylor, Marcus, for some reason Anthony thinks you guys fought each other. We just had breakfast together. I don’t remember any fighting. Taylor, you even shared your extra syrup with Marcus for his pancakes. Nobody fought. We used our brains, right?” Marcus and Taylor nodded their heads yes. Ms. Morgan advised Anthony, “If you ever think there is going to be a fight, you tell me. We’re here to learn, not to fight. Now, Anthony, you go to class. Be sure to see me at lunch and tell me what you learned this morning.” As Ms. Morgan walked through the halls with Taylor and Marcus, other students noticed, as did some teachers. A fight that was widely anticipated had been prevented. Marcus and Taylor had been friendly at breakfast. Their principal helped them realize that other people had spread rumors and were trying to set up the fight. When Taylor and Marcus listened to each other they realized they had no real problem except they had almost fallen into the trap of rumors. When they listened to each other instead of to the rumors, they were able to work out their unfounded animosity. The truth is they had been friends before, and with Ms. Morgan’s help they could become friends again. With Taylor and Marcus properly in class, Ms. Morgan walked throughout the halls reminding everyone to get to class quickly. She went into one class to watch the morning announcements, which the assistant principal and two students presented daily on the school’s television system. She then returned to the office, but along the way she had two useful conversations, one with the librarian and one with the cafeteria manager, as she intentionally walked through the library and the cafeteria. Final plans were being made for the library’s upcoming book fair and for the monthly baked-potato bar at lunch in the cafeteria. Students really liked both of those events, so Ms. Morgan made a note on her calendar to be sure that nothing kept her from spending lots of time at both of those highlights of the next week. 71

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Most problems are people problems. Most solutions are people solutions. The very capable staff member, Mr. Seymore, had informed Ms. Morgan of an emerging people problem. Ms. Morgan worked with Marcus and Taylor to solve the problem. There was nothing complex or complicated about listening to Mr. Seymore and then spending time with Marcus and Taylor to mediate their differences. No new laws or new policies were needed. Ms. Morgan initiated a conversation with Mr. Seymore, then took action with Taylor and Marcus. Ms. Morgan had listened aggressively. She did not simply watch Mr. Seymore do his job. She spoke with him, interacted with him, listened to him, and took what she heard from him seriously. She then intervened to stop an emerging problem and solve that problem. She established a plan so that Mr. Seymore would notify her daily of any emerging problems. Ms. Morgan would visit the bus-arrival area on many days, but she would hear from Mr. Seymore daily with a report of “no problems,” or “here’s who needs to be seen by you or someone else,” or “here’s some good news.” During the rest of the morning, there were times when Ms. Morgan could not leave the office. The management of a school is the responsibility of the principal. Everyone who works at the school has a job description and specific duties. The principal is the one person with overall management responsibility. The irate parent, the frustrated teacher, the underperforming custodian, the tight budget, and the monthly fire drill are issues that the principal must deal with, or make sure the right person deals with. Whether done directly by the principal or delegated to someone else by the principal, the overall responsibility for everything at the school is exclusively with the principal. So Ms. Morgan had to be in the office many times in the morning and in the afternoon; however, she increasingly found times when getting out of the office and into the school was possible. She just had to take action—to get up and go to the halls, the classrooms, the library, the gym, the band room, or the computer lab, and then back to the office. The office tasks never stop. The phones ring. The e-mails come. The questions get asked. The mail arrives. The problems that cannot get solved elsewhere in the school get sent to the office. A principal could find nonstop work in the office. Ms. Morgan had promised herself today that she would control the office rather than letting the office control her. Her twenty minutes with Taylor and Marcus encouraged her to believe 72


that twenty minutes of aggressive listening combined with effective action could prevent one or two hours of dealing with the much larger problem had Taylor and Marcus actually fought. Also, Taylor and Marcus had learned about resolving conflicts and about resisting rumors. If they had fought, they might have been injured; the school would have been disrupted with the turmoil of a fight; and no lessons about conflict mediation would have been learned or applied. During cafeteria-supervision time at lunch, Ms. Morgan talked with Anthony. He did not expect her to remember their earlier conversation. He also struggled to find any answer when Ms. Morgan asked him what he had learned that morning in his classes. Anthony was stunned when Ms. Morgan appeared in one of his afternoon classes to see what was being done, to hear the discussion in class, and to listen closely when the teacher—prompted earlier by Ms. Morgan’s e-mail—asked Anthony a question. When the schoolday ended, Ms. Morgan was in the front loading area of the school, where students who were picked up waited for rides and where many students who walked home were exiting the campus. A principal could stand and watch or move around and talk. A few times Ms. Morgan did have to stand and direct traffic when the adult drivers created gridlock. Most of the time Ms. Morgan could move around and talk to students, parents and guardians, and school neighbors who were driving through the area. “Ms. Morgan, could I ask you a question, please?” said a polite adult whom Ms. Morgan did not recognize. “Yes, of course. How can I help?” “I saw you out here, and that made it so easy to talk to you. I want to thank you. I’m Taylor Morton’s mother. Taylor just told me about having breakfast with you today. Thank you for that help. Now, here’s my question: how do I get him to quit paying attention to those rumors?” “Good question. Middle-school students seem to think that anything their friends tell them is true. They don’t think through what they hear. They react. Taylor’s counselor is Mr. Kenton, and he is an expert on middle-school matters like this. I’d suggest that you meet with Mr. Kenton and keep in touch with him. Get his advice and his expertise. I could have him call you, or you could go see him now.” “Thank you so much. I’ll call him tomorrow.” 73

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One week later, Ms. Morgan was amazed when there was a letter to the editor of the local newspaper telling of Ms. Morgan’s excellent work. Dear Editor: I have never written to the newspaper, but this is something our community should know about. People complain too much about schools. The principals, teachers, counselors, and staff at schools are good people. My son almost got into a fight at school, but his principal, Ms. Marian Morgan, was told of this possible fight. She got my son and the other student together. Then the three of them went to the school cafeteria to have breakfast together to show everyone there was not going to be a fight. Ms. Morgan put me in touch with Mr. Kenton, a school counselor, and he gave me so many good ideas about how to deal with my seventh-grade son. So lots of good work goes on at our schools. Probably most people who complain about schools never really spend time there and would fail if they tried to do the work educators have to do. Let’s support our schools.

Ms. Morgan was pleased with and encouraged by those kind words. She did not dwell on the words of the letter to the editor, though. She analyzed the sequence of events that had led to that letter: her willingness to aggressively listen to Mr. Seymore; her time with Taylor and Marcus when she listened to them and they listened to her; the time with Anthony after she heard his hallway comment and followed up; plus her time in front of the school at dismissal, which gave Taylor Morton’s mother the convenient opportunity to speak with Ms. Morgan, who listened intently to her. That sequence of events began with Marian Morgan being at the right place at the right time and taking the right action. That sequence of events included leaving the endless paperwork, computer work, phone calls, and other office tasks to be instead where students were, where teachers were, and where staff members were. That sequence was enhanced by aggressively listening to Mr. Seymore. Being at the right place at the right time was a start, but aggressively listening to Mr. Seymore was essential in the process of preventing a problem rather than wondering later, after a fight, what could have been done to prevent that fight. Ms. Morgan knew that she could not be everywhere in the school at the same moment. But she realized that there were enough moments in each schoolday that she could be everywhere in the school for at least one 74


moment in the course of each day. She further realized that by initiating conversations and aggressively listening during all of those moments, she could make herself much more efficient, much more productive, much more involved in the many moment-to-moment activities during the schoolday, and much more positioned to manage the school and lead the school. She could not be everywhere at all times, but she could listen throughout the day to people who collectively were everywhere in the school at all times. Marian Morgan and Michael Hanover had spoken several times since their conversation on the second day of school. When Michael saw the letter to the editor he instantly called Marian. “You are a superstar. One week you were wondering if this job could be done at all. Now you’re setting the example for everyone. Way to go.” “Thanks, Michael. You deserve a lot of the credit. Your ideas and advice helped me find a different way to do this job. It’s still very difficult and exhausting, but, well, that’s just how this job is. I feel more productive. I feel more confident and in charge. Truth is, I try to spend more time each day listening to people. If it’s a problem, I would probably eventually have to solve it anyway, so why not keep the problem small and hear about it early.” Michael was curious. “It’s just been a week, but do you notice anything else?” Marian had a quick answer. “Yes. Fewer students are getting sent to the office for misbehavior. Some situations I deal with on the spot. I go into a classroom and listen to a teacher tell me about a student. I take the student into the hallway. We discuss it. I might get the family on the phone right then, and that way everyone is informed. I’ve watched several students go back into a classroom after a quick phone conversation with a parent or guardian and be completely different. In those four minutes we solved a small problem, prevented a big problem, communicated thoroughly with a lot of listening, and saved much more time that would have been spent dealing with a student if he or she had been sent to the office.” Michael had to go, but he concluded with this thought: “You might be asked at an administrator’s meeting to tell everyone about your system. That could be great for your career.” Marian replied honestly. “If I’m asked to do that, I’ll be glad to, but my career is best served by my work here, not in fancy presentations. I need 75

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to go. Thanks for the help and advice and kind words, Michael. I need to go listen to other people now.” Michael agreed. “Me too. Maybe I can be written about in the paper someday too. Keep up the great work. Bye.” Michael’s call gave Marian a reminder to evaluate other results of her aggressive-listening process. Later that day, after all the classes had ended, the buses had left, the after-school activities had ended, and the school had only a few teachers, three custodians, and the principal in the building, Marian typed a list of ideas, comments, questions, and concerns she had heard in recent days through her very active, intentional, aggressive lead-by-listening adventure. She remembered a teacher who said, “This job has become impossible, absolutely impossible. I really care about my students. I arrive early, I stay late. It’s never enough. Sixty-five hours per week. Seventy hours per week. It’s never enough. Then students are absent over and over. Getting them caught up is like doubling my work. All of the unnecessary PA announcements during classes interrupt my work. We have so many pointless meetings after school. If you could just protect my students and me from everything that gets in our way, I could make sure that every student learned.” Marian thought about the discussion she had with a teacher and his class when she noticed two signs in the teacher’s classroom. One sign read, “Reading is the best brain food. Feed your brain. Read.” The other sign said, “Results, not excuses.” Ms. Morgan shared those ideas with the faculty and staff via e-mail. She also announced a poster contest. Any student could design a poster with either of those sayings. She hoped to cover the walls throughout the school with signs that communicated those messages about reading and results. Marian thought at length about a teacher who, when asked her thoughts about a local politician who had introduced an education bill in the state legislature, had said a little about that bill, but a lot about school. “They always blame us. Do they blame the police when a crime happens? Do they blame the fire department when a fire happens? No, the police tell people to lock their cars and their houses, but some people never lock anything so they get robbed. The fire department tells people to install smoke detectors, but, no, some people won’t do that. I tell my students to read. I tell them to participate in class, to pay attention, to sit up and 76


stay awake. If they do what I tell them to, they learn. If they won’t follow instructions and do their part of the work involved with learning, how can everything be my fault?” Another teacher had talked with Marian one morning as students arrived. The teacher had said, “Ms. Morgan, I do everything I can for our students, but, well, until this year I never saw it as a job. It was a calling or a crusade. Please convince those people at the school-district office that all of the forms they make us fill out and all of the procedures they make us follow in the classrooms are driving people away from this work. If they want all students to have the same experience no matter who the teacher is, they can just tell everyone to use the textbook and the videos and have multiple-choice tests on Fridays—but that is not teaching. That is robotic and generic. I can teach. Please tell the district-office people that filling out their forms and following their procedures is generic. I don’t have any generic students, and I refuse to be a generic teacher.” One student continued to amaze Ms. Morgan. When asked at lunch recently what she had learned that morning, the student had said, “Well, Ms. Morgan, I learned that I get no credit for late work in Mr. Johnson’s class. I forgot the paper or I lost it or something. I got a zero. How can I remember to turn in my work? Please tell me how.” Ms. Morgan had given the student a few ideas and had later made sure that the student met with a teacher and a counselor who were both organizational experts. Ms. Morgan wondered how many of these ideas, concerns, comments, and questions would have been heard if she’d stayed in the office hour after hour, day after day. The truth is that few or none of these insights would have been listened to until Ms. Morgan began aggressively listening. She began to think that leaders must listen, and the best leaders must not wait for the spoken words to come to them; rather, the best leaders aggressively listen by going to people and learning what is on their minds. Leaders listen. The best leaders aggressively listen. If an educator in a leadership position is not aggressively listening, he or she could mislead himself or herself, or the school. Ms. Morgan listened to herself. “I think my old style was to unlead. I waited until something came to me, and I reacted to deal with it. Leaders don’t just react. Leaders lead. Leaders take the initiative. Leaders take charge, and step 1 is to listen aggressively.” 77

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Insight 11 Please think about Ms. Morgan’s experiences since she began aggressively listening. Superimpose on that thinking the questions: What matters most at school? What works best at school? The answer to the first question— What matters most at school?—is learning. How much has Ms. Morgan learned by aggressively listening? How much more does she know about the learning at her school because of aggressively listening? How much has learning at her school been caused, enhanced, and supported by the ideas, concerns, encouragement, problem identification, and human interaction that aggressive listening has helped make possible? The second question—What works best at school?—is continually answered anew. There are some eternal truths in education, but how current students and those truths interact is a daily innovation. Discovering what works best at school today with our current students involves much awareness, analysis, and aggressive listening, and an adventurous eagerness to abide by the standard of results, not excuses. The reader is asked to reflect upon Ms. Morgan’s experiences and to create his or her own insights. Please pause, reflect, and be very insightful. The demands on a school principal are relentless and challenging, and they extend beyond the hours in a workday. Yet they can be managed effectively. The Extreme Principle enables an extreme principal to establish priorities according to what matters most. Learning is what matters most, so allocate your time to the actions that most effectively support, enhance, and cause learning. Yes, the other tasks must be done, but those tasks collectively or individually are not what matters most. Doing those chores will never improve schools. Failing to do the routine paperwork or the managerial tasks can cause major problems. Do the chores or get the chores done, but not at the expense of or instead of what matters most. The Extreme Principle also enables an extreme principal to make decisions, to allocate resources, to eliminate wastes of time, and to have reasons for what is done versus what is not done based on what works best. The two foundations of the Extreme Principle—what matters most and what works best—are efficiently reinforced by, identified moment to moment by, and initially implemented by aggressive listening. As an extreme principal listens, he or she is learning about the current reality 78


in the school and making decisions to shape that reality into the desired ideal. As an extreme principal aggressively listens, he or she also emphatically speaks, to confirm what matters most and to lead colleagues in the continuous search for and implementation of what works best. The extreme principal knows that reality is spoken by the voices in the school. Sincerely, constantly, aggressively listening to those voices in the school is part of what works best for a school administrator. The Extreme Principle also works as a vital tool, technique, and resource for a classroom teacher. The next chapter applies the Extreme Principle to the work teachers do with students in classrooms to best cause learning. One essential factor: The G-rated, legal, ethical standard is required as what matters most is done and as what works best is done. In the pursuit of applying the Extreme Principle it is essential that the pursuit be done in G-rated, legal, ethical ways. What matters most in school is learning. The learning must pass the G-rated, legal, ethical standard, or it is unacceptable learning and not what schools are intended to do. Proper results are a combination of what we do plus how we do that. What works best in schools to cause learning must be done in Grated, legal, ethical ways, or it is an unacceptable method and not what schools are intended to do or allowed to do. What we do is enhanced by how we do that. Now we explore the Extreme Principle in classrooms.

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ixteen hours. Can you believe that? Sixteen hours. I counted them. Two hours on Friday night. Nine hours on Saturday. Five more hours on Sunday. I did sixteen hours of schoolwork at home this weekend. The U.S. history essays take forever to grade if you really read them and make helpful comments on them. This job is impossible, it’s just impossible. What am I supposed to do?” Ellen Nichols was searching for advice as she released much accumulated frustration. Ellen’s teaching colleague, Elizabeth Temple, shared the frustration but had no real advice. “The job is impossible. We’ve been at this high school for eight years. We’ve won teaching awards. We take this job seriously, but the more work we do the more work we are told we have to do. Why does our country use the schools to try to solve every problem that children or teenagers face? I’m sorry that some students are overweight, but my job is to teach them chemistry and physics. I am not their personal fitness trainer.” The faculty member whose thirty-three years of teaching at West Wilmington High School made him the most experienced member of the faculty entered this teacher-workroom discussion just as the digital clock changed to 7:30 a.m., which meant that first-block class would begin in forty-five minutes. Bill Covington had news. “You have nothing to fear. The news I hear is that later this year the school board will approve a prepackaged curriculum program for all math, science, social studies, and English classes. The 81

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program provides 150 lessons to be taught in sequence and according to a script. Tests are included. Classroom activities are included. A once-perweek fifteen-minute video presentation is included to match the content of every five lessons. It’s the education version of paint by numbers.” Ellen was offended. “You can’t be serious. They really think that a school can be an assembly line. Do those school-board members have any idea of what really works and of what we deal with? Can you imagine reading a script to your classes every day of the year? Who would learn anything? What possible reason could anyone have for supporting that idea?” Elizabeth knew something about this new plan. “I heard that two elementary schools and one middle school in a school district not far from here tried it. The school-district people at their central office like it because every second-grade math class in every elementary school follows the same script each day. Nobody can say that one school offers something that other schools don’t offer. And when students transfer from one elementary school to another, they pick up right where they left off. Every school is identical.” Bill had his opinion. “Yeah. Like hamburgers in every location of a fast-food chain. Each hamburger is identical, ordinary, and average. I’ve seen things like this come and go. Some U.S. Department of Education grant pays for this stuff, or the state department of education gives the materials to districts to test the plan. Nobody asks us. Our school board must think it will get every school to march in step with the curriculum and other stuff. Don’t fight it. Things like this last for a year or two, and then some bureaucrats come up with the next cure-all plan and we try that for a year or two. It’s been that way for decades. Just put up with it.” Ellen had another idea. “Why put up with a bureaucratic plan that limits what we can accomplish or how we can accomplish it? I’ll offer to be the control. We’ll see how my approach works against the new variable of the scripted approach. I bet my students do better than students in the paint-by-numbers and read-the-script classes. The education bureaucracy needs to be shown that teachers know more about teaching and about our students than anyone else knows.” Bill’s response was unexpected. “You might be surprised, Ellen, at what some teachers think of this scripted plan. To you it violates everything you believe about teaching. You put heart and soul into your work. The students are your top priority. They matter most to you, and you do 82


whatever it takes to get results in your classroom. Not everyone thinks that way. The central-office people want to control everything. They know that some teachers are better than other teachers. So they look for ways to eliminate the teacher variable. They see the script as a way for each classroom to be ‘good enough.’ They prefer 100 percent ‘good enough’ to a range where some classrooms are great, some are good, some are ordinary, and some are unacceptable. Plus, some teachers might see the script as a way to simplify everything. No more lesson plans to prepare; and, if a student fails, the response from a teacher or the principal could be that we followed the script. It’s not our fault. You gave us a bad script.” Ellen knew what she had to do. “I did not become a teacher so I could spend seven hours each day reading some mundane script to my students. You can’t script teaching any more than you can script life itself. Each student is unique. Each class of students forms a unique group personality. I teach to those individual strengths and needs. I teach each class differently based on the individuals in the class and the group strengths and needs. Our work is about people and brains and commitments. Can you imagine any student saying years from now that his or her life changed because of a script a teacher read to the class day after day? No. The people who think that what matters most is to make each classroom a bureaucratic, rigid, cookie-cutter duplicate of the central-office or state-office or federaloffice lowest common denominator are people who fill out forms all day in some office far from students. This is just wrong.” Bill offered some guidance. “Don’t protest too much. Central-office programs, state programs, they come and go. Of course you know what works best for your students because you really know your students. The people who force this scripted stuff on us don’t know your students or any other students or us. They do know policies, regulations, and laws. They can make life miserable for you. Don’t protest too much. In a year or two this script nonsense will be gone and the bureaucrats will spend a few years analyzing what happened. Then they’ll have some new, worse idea to force on us. That’s how it works, Ellen.” It was time to get to the classroom. Ellen had a lot to think about, but more importantly she would have students arriving in first-period class soon. Those students and their learning mattered most to Ellen. Doing what worked best for those students was what Ellen always did. She would have to find a way to continue doing what mattered most and what 83

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worked best. For now, for today, she could do that. She was concerned about the future of her students, of her teaching, of her classroom, of her career. For right now, her total effort would be directed to the students she taught today. The results would be great. There would be no script. There would be much learning. Then Ellen worked on her idea. She would ask to be exempted from the scripted-lesson requirement, but she would base that request on evidence from her classroom. She created two different sets of lesson plans. One set was designed to provide a week of precisely scripted packets of materials for the students to read and complete. The materials included two study guides that amounted to fill-in-the-blank outlines of two chapters of the U.S. history textbook, five worksheets that were included in the boxes of instructional materials that the textbook publisher had provided, five very short biographical summaries of important Americans from the 1920s, a set of instructions about what to do during class time each day during this scripted week, and a practice test to complete in anticipation of the real test on Friday. On Monday morning, Ms. Nichols began her first-period U.S. history class by returning the World War I test that had been taken in class the previous Thursday. The test had included a pair of essay questions from which each student selected one question to thoroughly analyze. This test had also included several original documents about the Treaty of Versailles, which was negotiated after the war ended. The students had analyzed those documents and then applied their analyses to explain why the U.S. Senate never approved the Treaty of Versailles. The test papers showed that the students had a scholarly and masterful understanding of the facts, the issues, and the ideas of the World War I era. After returning those tests, answering questions about the tests, and acknowledging the very good work that the students had done on the tests, Ms. Nichols distributed the fourteen-page packets about the 1920s to each student. One student commented, “It sure took a lot of trees to make all this paper.” Ms. Nichols smiled and replied, “No doubt those trees are honored to become part of your educational materials.” Ms. Nichols read her prepared script: “This week we will study the 1920s. This was a very important decade that had everything from a political scandal to an airplane flight over the Atlantic Ocean, from movies that talked to the stock-market crash and the beginning of the Great Depres84


sion. You will have textbook pages to read and to outline each day Monday through Thursday. There will be several biographical summaries to read and answer questions about. There is a video to watch on Wednesday. We have a practice test on Thursday and the actual test on Friday. The papers marked ‘homework’ are due on Tuesday and Wednesday. The materials to hand in at the end of class today are marked accordingly. Are there any questions?” There were none. There were some puzzled looks on the faces of a few students who clearly wondered what had caused this change. They never used packets or practice tests or biographical summaries. Still, they accepted the instructions and began to complete Monday’s work and Tuesday’s homework. None of this was difficult. All of this was simple and straightforward. The week continued, with each set of daily tasks being completed. There were occasional questions, but they were about what to hand in or how to comply rather than about any of the topics, ideas, people, or events of the 1920s. The results of Friday’s test were better than a bellshaped curve would suggest, but they were not great results. Those tests were returned to the students when class began on Monday morning. Ms. Nichols and the class checked each question to be sure the grading was accurate and to resolve any confusion about topics that were on the test. Ms. Nichols then surprised the students on this Monday morning when she said, “We are not quite finished with the 1920s. Last week just got you introduced to that decade. We’ll spend two or three days this week really getting to know the 1920s. Cody, you are on the school’s baseball team. What do you know about professional baseball during the 1920s?” Now the second set of lesson plans were put to use. Cody spoke with confidence and enthusiasm. “Baseball in the 1920s was amazing. Babe Ruth hit all of those home runs. Big crowds went to the games. I’ve seen the pictures of people being all dressed up at those games. It was a big event. People had the time and the money to go watch games. I think there were some games on the radio then.” Ms. Nichols had just been given every instructional resource she could ask for. With the answer that Cody had given, which everyone in the class had listened to, Ms. Nichols could lead her class on a fascinating exploration of the 1920s. Her questions would lead everyone to much learning. “Radio. Good point, Cody. In the 1920s many a family bought one of those new, fancy radios. They were big pieces of furniture that brought 85

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news or music or sports right into the living rooms of the country. There’s a picture in our book on page 547 of a 1920s radio. Turn to that page, and think about this: if radio is so old, why do people still listen to it now, even though they have many other electronic and computer options?” The discussion that followed involved about eight different students speaking and all twenty-seven students listening. Ms. Nichols then added, “Cody, you mentioned that people in the 1920s could afford to attend baseball games. What about radios? How did people in the 1920s buy radios? Remember, credit cards had not been invented yet.” At first there was no answer, so Ms. Nichols let a few moments of silent thinking linger, and then she took a one-dollar bill out of her pocket. Everyone looked at the dollar. “If the price of a radio was more dollars than a person in 1927 had, what could that person do?” Paula had an answer. “I guess the person just saved up money until it was enough . . . or, well, I guess the person just did not buy a radio at all.” Perfect. What matters most in Ms. Nichols’s classroom, in any classroom, is learning. What works best in Ms. Nichols’s classroom is the continuous connection of what students know and what students need to know. Scripted, generic, one-size-fits-all, “one instruction plan fits all goals of teachers and all needs of students” approaches are not what works best in education. The scripted, generic approach says that what matters most is bureaucratic control, conformity, and uniformity. The education bureaucracy can supervise implementation of generic scripts. It takes more effort, more enlightened leadership, and more energetic management to supervise a school or a school system where each classroom is pursuing learning in a unique manner. The people in each classroom are unique individuals and groups, so what works best in each classroom will vary. Life is not generic or scripted. The best learning is not obtained through generic scripts. It might be true that use of the prepackaged, generic, scripted materials establishes a clear routine in the classroom process; however, a routine is not what matters most in education. Ms. Nichols was able to alertly include every important name, fact, event, person, and idea from the 1920s in the discussions she led her classes through. As students asked questions, Ms. Nichols would answer with relevant information that ensured the students knew all of the information that the textbooks and the scripts included. Yet because that was done within the dynamic 86


teacher-to-students and students-to-teacher interaction, it was more meaningful and more compelling. Ms. Nichols listened to her students. She then created spontaneous teaching and learning moments that surpassed any script. Students were required to read the textbook. Ms. Nichols asked questions that could be answered by any student who had done the reading, yet the discussion went far beyond mere recall. The discussion explored meaning, analyzed impact, and made connections between the 1920s and the real lives that students were living now. Scripts cannot do that. Ms. Nichols addressed the class. “Based on what Paula said, people in the 1920s either saved their money to buy something or they just did not buy it. Is that how shopping works now?” The discussion during the next three minutes took the class on a lively intellectual tour of saving, credit, capitalism, debt, the Roaring Twenties and inventions of that era, the National Debt, and the old idea of buying a product on the installment plan. The class then watched five minutes of video about the economy of the 1920s. Ms. Nichols then distributed information about some significant people and events from the 1920s: Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Charles Lindbergh, the Scopes trial, Prohibition, the advent of movies with sound, and the ModelÂ€ T car. Three or four students read the information about each topic. After some time was provided for reading, each topic was discussed. The final part of class was a set of math problems related to the 1929 stock-market crash. As students did the math, they could realize the impact on individuals, families, communities, and the nation as the prices for stocks fell, banks closed, mortgages were foreclosed, jobs were lost, and the apparently prosperous excesses of prior years were reversed with the agony of the events that began the Great Depression. As class ended, Ms. Nichols collected those money math problems and told the class that their work tomorrow would begin with a thorough analysis of the financial numbers they had calculated, to determine what insights those statistics revealed. As the second-period U.S. history class entered the classroom Ms. Nichols thought to herself, “We accomplished more in today’s first-period class than we did in all five sessions of first period last week. I hope those results continue with my other classes today. Somehow I have to rescue my students from the limits that the scripted process would impose on them.” 87

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At that moment, two juniors in Ms. Nichols’s second-period class entered the classroom as they continued a very lively conversation that must have begun much earlier in the day. Brian was speaking. “Come on, Julie, you know how hard we work at track practices. Every practice is harder than the practice the day before. Our coach always has some new drill for us to do. He says that after each practice or track meet he analyzes everything. Then he decides what we have to work on. It’s not just stretching and running. It’s really tough. You could come try it, but no, you have rehearsals for the spring musical.” Julie was more than ready to respond. “You’ll never understand how hard it is to put on a musical. We have auditions. You can’t just show up for that, you have to prepare. We have callbacks to see who made it past the first round of auditions. Then the cast is chosen, and all of the behindthe-scenes positions are filled. Then we start rehearsing. In six weeks we have to go from a group of individuals to a perfect—I mean perfect— performing cast. We practice more hours during those six weeks than any sports team. You should audition for a show next year.” Brian actually liked that idea. “I might do that if you’ll run on the cross-country team next year. You ran in ninth grade, and you were pretty good. I’ll audition and you run.” The bell rang, and second-period class followed a sequence of activities that was similar, but not identical, to the one that the first-period class had used. Ms. Nichols knew that almost every student in the second class played a sport or was in the marching band; so after the tests were returned and discussed, Ms. Nichols told the class they still had some 1920s work to do. “Watch the video and listen to the music. They were not put together originally, but they do fit. The pictures are from 1920s sporting events, and the music is 1920s jazz.” After four minutes of baseball, boxing, other sports, and jazz from the 1920s, the class discussed what those aspects of the 1920s revealed about that decade. This led to a discussion of whether the “Roaring Twenties” decade had earned its nickname. The reading materials were used, and the money math problems were completed. The pace and energy level in class, along with the vibrant activities, were causing much learning. The classroom seemed to roar as the Roaring Twenties had. What mattered most—learning—was being caused by doing what worked best with these students. 88


Ms. Nichols had planning period after her second-period class. Due to overcrowding in her school, another teacher and his class floated into Ms.Â€ Nichols’s classroom for their third-period class. Ms. Nichols sometimes worked in the library, in the faculty workroom, or in the social-studies storage room, but she stayed in her classroom today for the first few minutes of third period to complete some computer work. She updated her website to show her students and their families the overall plan for her classes during the next three weeks. She updated the grading portion of the computer program where teachers entered all assignments and grades to include upcoming tests, homework, and projects. She also sent an e-mail to one faculty colleague: Update on the scripted lessons versus real teaching. I used scripts and prepared packets last week. The students complied. The papers were turned in. The test was taken. Some learning happened, but it was more recall of information than it was really understanding the topics. Today we returned to real teaching and the results were magnificent. I have to find a way to spare my students and me from the bureaucratic emptiness of the scripted lessons. Here’s an idea: I heard two students talking about the track team and the spring musical. Correct me if I am wrong, but the athletic coaches and the drama director are not required to follow an exact procedure that is mandated by the school district or by the school, are they? I figure that if extracurricular sponsors are allowed to figure out what works best, then teachers deserve that much opportunity and more to create what works best in their classrooms. What do you think?

Later in the day, during lunch, the colleague replied: Are you kidding? Coaches cannot script a season. There are too many variables. They have a game plan, but after a few minutes they may have to change that due to mistakes, problems, opportunities, or something else in a real game. They set up each practice, but if a drill goes wrong, they do whatever it takes to get results. Theater performances are the same. They use a script, but their work is not scripted. As the cast of a show begins their work, many adjustments have to be made based on unpredictable ideas or difficulties. I see your point. If we don’t limit extracurricular activities to controlled, mandated actions, nothing more and nothing less, then why would we restrict what teachers can do in classrooms, where the human variable is so important, so dynamic, and so resistant to cookie89

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cutter mandates? It almost makes you think that extracurricular activities, especially sports, are what matters most at this school, instead of academic learning in classrooms. Maybe what works best in football and what works best in classrooms can be pretty similar.

Ellen replied to her colleague after school: Here’s an explanation: The third-period class that floats into my classroom has about ten or fifteen students who never behave. Those fifteen students should refund the taxpayers the money that is being wasted as they refuse to work or behave. The rest of the class generally cooperates, and they deserve better. I overheard two of the disruptive and defiant students today make these comments: “I was so lost in geometry class last year.” “Did you fail it?” “Well, yeah, I did fail geometry, but I didn’t really fail it.” Then his friend said, “You can fail to learn and not fail the class.” That’s the point I am making with the scripted, generic, paint-bynumbers, fill-class-with-worksheets process. Students can fail to learn from the scripted procedures, but not fail the class, because they complete enough of the tasks to earn a passing score. My students master everything that any script can include, but my students learn so much more. They cannot pass my class if they fail to learn. Students almost never fail my classes because we do what works. What matters most is for my students to thoroughly learn. We do what works best to cause that learning. How can anyone think that different groups of twentyseven unique high-school students will have the best possible learning experience by following the same scripted content day after day after day? I have to find a way to rescue my classes from the bureaucracy before our brains are numbed by scripts.

Ellen Nichols did find that way to rescue her students. The local school board did approve the scripted curriculum and instruction plan. It quickly became known as SCIP, which was pronounced “skip.” And that was exactly what Ellen hoped to do—skip the SCIP. The school board directed each principal to establish a SCIP task force to develop the SCIP-implementation plan for each school. Ellen quickly volunteered to serve on her school’s SCIP task force. The SCIP name caused so much confusion and invited so many jokes that the name was changed to Managed Education Results in Greater Efficiency, or MERGE. Ellen was determined to not merge her classes and her students with the MERGE 90


process. Her goal as a task-force member was to encourage the school to not completely implement the scripted-lesson process, but to maintain some variety in some classrooms, so that all results could be evaluated to see if MERGE or other instructional methods worked best. The MERGE task force at Ellen’s school had sixteen members, including administrators, counselors, teachers, and parents. At the first task-force meeting, after everyone introduced themselves, the principal provided the background information about MERGE. Then each task-force member was asked to offer one idea that he or she thought would help with the implementation of the scripted instructional plan (or, as the principal insisted on calling it, managed education). Apparently the central-office officials and the school-board members were convinced that precise instructional management was the missing element in educational improvement. When it was Ellen’s turn to offer an idea, she spoke with conviction and confidence. “My idea is that some teachers should not use the scripted lessons, I mean the MERGE lessons. Let’s give ourselves the opportunity to evaluate what works best. Maybe some students will benefit from the scripts, but my students thrive on creativity, innovation, spontaneous thinking, and that unpredictable sequence of Socratic questions and answers that no script can provide.” What amazed Ellen was how supportive most of the task-force members were of the scripted instruction plan—which, no matter how hard people tried to call it MERGE or managed education, was labeled as scripted instruction, with the latter name being etched into the faculty vocabulary. The anticipated efficiency and precision, the hoped-for uniformity and commonality of every student who was taking the same math class, doing the same lesson, had much support. Why? There were few reasons mentioned. It seemed that the school board had spoken their approval of the MERGE plan, which the central-office staff had recommended, and that had been the end of the discussion. The decision had been made. Why have a task force at each school to develop the unique implementation plan for each school if everything about MERGE was already decided? Ellen let that question remain unspoken in hopes that her request to have an experiment within the larger MERGE experiment would be accepted. The principal summarized the sixteen ideas after all the task-force members had spoken and then said, “Very good. Your interest in the 91

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managed-education program is very commendable. The assistant principals and two counselors will attend an all-day training session on the specifics of the managed-education program. They can give us a summary at our next meeting. Then we can be more specific about our implementation plan. I’m distributing to you now copies of the managed-education proposal that the school board approved, along with supporting data from schools and school districts that have used this plan or similar plans. Please read all of that before our next meeting, which will be two weeks from today. Are there any questions?” There was one request. Ellen said, “I’m very hopeful that our school will permit at least one teacher, me, to use the teaching methods that my classroom results show work best for my students. I recently experimented with a scripted-instruction process. The results were very limited and very ordinary. Other people may get better results with managed education, but as a way to keep learning about what works best, let’s have at least one teaching method in use that is not scripted. I hope that can be allowed, please.” One parent spoke. “I agree with Ms. Nichols. My daughter is in Ms. Nichols’s class this year and is having a wonderful experience. My son hopes to have Ms. Nichols the year after next. Let’s do what it takes to let Ms. Nichols and other interested teachers use various methods, so we all can discover what works best.” The principal concluded the meeting. “I’m convinced that what works best for task forces is short meetings, so let’s end now. Ms. Nichols, your request will be considered seriously. Thank you to everyone for being here today. We’ll meet again in two weeks.” Task-force meetings do create more meetings. Ellen realized that if she had not been on the task force, managed education would have been imposed on every teacher, every student, and every classroom, whether or not managed education worked best to create the results that mattered most. At the next meeting of the task force, it was agreed that each of the departments involved in the first year of MERGE—math, science, English, and social studies—could name one teacher who would use methods other than managed education. The departments could have all teachers use MERGE if no teacher asked for the option to do otherwise. If more than one teacher in a department asked for an exemption from MERGE, the department chair would select based on what other priorities had been set for that department. 92


As it turned out, Ellen was the only social-studies teacher who was especially interested in an exemption from MERGE. The other teachers in her department either liked MERGE or disliked challenging the centraloffice power structure. Ellen had not seen her effort to avoid MERGE as defiant or rebellious; rather, she was doing what she knew was best for her students. Her colleagues figured that after one year, MERGE would be 100 percent mandated or 100 percent abandoned, so there was no point in challenging the power structure. As Ellen’s U.S. history classes began their work on the 1930s and 1940s, she became increasingly curious about what the MERGE version of the 1950s U.S. history lessons would be. She was able to find a central-office friend who gladly provided her with some of the materials that administrators and counselors were using at their training. As Ellen read the managededucation scripted lessons about the 1950s, she realized that her concerns about MERGE were valid. She also realized why the school board, the central-office staff, and the principals were either supportive of or willing to try the Managed Education Results in Greater Efficiency program. The program looked good, and it was based on an appealing premise: if you completely control the process, you can completely control the results. The “looking good” part of the program was that each subject was precisely divided into 150 daily sets of instructions, script, and materials, plus 30 tests. The teacher was told what to do on each of those 180 days, in a rigidly designed minute-to-minute procedure. It reminded Ellen of diet plans or exercise systems sold on late-night television through loud infomercials. Those carefully scripted infomercials did sell products, and the materials that would be used with the MERGE program were a product that an education-materials supplier had created. Of course, the MERGE materials had just enough technology included to be sufficiently trendy. Students could access a website for the Internet version of daily materials. This meant that if a student was absent or school had to be canceled due to bad weather, the work for that day would still be assigned on the original schedule and due upon the return of students to school. It was possible that what used to be called snow days would now be called “MERGE days,” and there would no longer be any need for makeup days. Ellen wondered how significant a factor that had been in the school district’s interest in this program. To Ellen, MERGE looked more and more like one big educational assembly line 93

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that added precisely measured and fitted parts each day, so at the end of the manufacturing process students would emerge (or e-MERGE) with a high-school diploma. Ellen wondered if anyone else realized that products were manufactured, but students were taught. The MERGE materials Ellen was sent included a very fancy and artistic introductory brochure with this opening paragraph: Education reform has never produced the results that were promised or the results that were needed. There is a reason for that failure. Education reform has always had too many variables. The instructional system you hold in your hands eliminates the variables, and that eliminates failure. Finally, every student in every classroom will have an exactly designed instructional experience daily. The results can be better than any previous education reform. Better processes bring better results. The process is in your hands. The results will soon be in your school.

“Not so fast,” Ellen thought, as she looked at the 1930s and 1940s material and then at the introduction to the U.S. history material for the 1950s. Teacher script for lesson 130: Good morning (or afternoon). Today we begin our study of the 1950s. The materials you need to get started are being passed out now. Notice that before the end of class today you will complete and turn in Reading for Understanding packet 130-A and Vital Vocabulary sheet 130-B. Everything you need for today’s work can be found in the materials that are being distributed, in your textbook, and in the short four-minute 1950s preview that we will watch now via Internet connection. As you watch the preview, pay particular attention to information about the Korean War, the presidential elections of 1952 and 1956, the red scare, McCarthyism, the baby boom, the arms race, the space race, the popularity of television, and the early years of rock and roll music. When the preview is over, begin your work on packet 130-A and sheet 130-B. They are due at the end of class. If you finish both before class ends, read the portion of chapter 30 that you did not use for today’s assignments. Are there any questions? We will begin the video now.

Ellen could not imagine reducing her classroom to a mundane, bureaucratic, robotic assembly line where for 180 consecutive days scripts 94


like that one were read and procedures like those were followed or prepackaged tests were taken. If what mattered most was learning, then the teachers must be allowed . . . make that encouraged . . . no, make that required to create the experiences that would maximize the learning of today’s students. MERGE suggested that what mattered most was uniformity of schedule, content, and process, whether learning occurred or not. What worked best might not be what provided the most uniformity. It was time to ask Bill Covington for advice. Ellen talked with Bill after school. “Bill, this MERGE process really concerns me. Thank goodness, I got exempted from it so my students can work with me in the ways that get results. Help me understand what is really going on with MERGE.” Bill was glad to provide some perspective. “It’s nothing new. I’ve seen versions of this through the decades of my career. New people get on the school board, and they have a political agenda to advocate. A new superintendent gets hired, and she brings her plan that she uses in every district that hires her for the next four-year contract—which is never renewed, because the promised miracles do not appear. Or a new governor has big plans. Or the state education department officials attend some January conference in Florida—great timing and great location—and hear of some idea from some school district in Idaho or Delaware, and suddenly every school in our state has to mimic what allegedly worked in Idaho or Delaware. Then the new plan falls short of reaching the promised results, so we go back to what we were doing, until the next reform comes along offering another elusive miracle.” Ellen was inquisitive. “But why is everyone so willing to accept this MERGE plan? I’ve seen the materials. They are superficial, ordinary, and inhuman. Why did people go along with this?” Bill’s answer was honest and accurate, but not encouraging. “Well, Ellen, probably a third of the teachers actually like MERGE and can see that it might make their lives easier. They figure the students will accept it and not complain. Plus, they may be doing something like MERGE already, as they repeat use of their own materials year after ordinary year. About a third of the faculty just accept all decisions of the school-district or school authorities. Then a third of the teachers agree with you, but saw no benefit in challenging what was obviously going to be forced upon us no matter what anyone said or did. That one-year exemption you got was not to evaluate MERGE versus what you do. If 95

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MERGE lasts more than one year, you’ll be told to use MERGE. The reason will be fairness, or equity, or efficiency, or some new bureaucratic rationalization.” Ellen was concerned, but at least she understood more about what was happening around her. “Thanks for the insights, Bill. Let’s hope that MERGE is gone after one year.” MERGE might last only one year or it might endure longer, but it would not last forever. A new reform would be imposed on schools from one or more of the sources and forces that perpetrated reform after reform. Ellen was realizing that this truth was eternal: students, teachers, and learning were the three things that always remained. What always mattered most was causing students to learn. Ellen was dedicated to doing what best causes learning. Her thoughts on teaching were honorable: do what works best to get the results that matter most. Ellen was dedicated to the Extreme Principle because she was dedicated to her students. How did Ellen’s students learn about the 1950s? Ellen knew the curriculum document thoroughly, so she knew what the students needed to learn. And she knew her students, so she knew how they learned best. The students in U.S. history classes taught by Ellen Nichols had the following educational experiences to learn about the 1950s. First, Ms. Nichols began class by asking the students what they knew about the 1950s. Each student in a class of twenty-six juniors was expected to participate in this initial consideration of the 1950s. Ms. Nichols mentally kept track of who had participated and who still needed to participate. Half of the class quickly raised their hands and were called on. Ms. Nichols called on the other half, who, as usual, were just as capable of answering the question but were less inclined to offer a reply until the teacher educed a response from them. Ms. Nichols thought that part of the duty of an educator was to educe answers from students. She was certain that Socrates would have approved of her use of this method. “Television was really popular.” “People worried about World War III.” “My grandfather fought in the Korean War. He says it is the ‘forgotten war.’ It was when the cold war got hot.” “I think Truman was still president then.” 96


“The Russians launched Sputnik, and that started the space race.” “I think there was some really neat and creative and sort of weird group. Not hippies, but they did hippie stuff. Rebels—no, that’s not it. Beat-something. Beatniks, that’s it. Beatniks.” “The civil rights movement got really active.” “Yeah, the bus boycott we studied in ninth grade . . . that protest began in the 1950s.” “I think Dr. King began his work in the 1950s.” “I heard that McDonald’s started then. It was a really small business then.” “My mother told me that schools were segregated then.” “The baby boom happened. That’s when my mother was born—she’s a baby boomer.” “The arms race got really serious. The Russians and the United States built more atomic bombs than anyone needed.” Ms. Nichols was encouraged that so many 1950s topics had been mentioned. She listed each idea from the thirteen students with a short but accurate summary on the marker board at the front of the room. Her job might have been easier if she’d stopped getting input from students now, but thirteen participants out of twenty-six students was not enough. Ms. Nichols then called on the remaining students. All students had been required to read the textbook chapter on the 1950s prior to class today, so everyone could be expected to know something about the 1950s. She began to call on these students, and they willingly responded. “I think I read that a lot of houses got built then.” “I know I read that some houses were identical to others. We had to build them really fast.” “The book said something about the Interstate Highway System.” “I don’t remember exactly what it was, but Nixon did something back then. It wasn’t Watergate, but maybe something like that.” “I know. Nixon gave some speech on television. Checkers. That’s it. His Checkers speech. It was about a dog named Checkers that somebody gave his children.” “The most popular television show was I Love Lucy. It’s still on after all this time.” “The 1950s was the time that rock and roll started. Elvis was the most popular singer.” 97

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“Sports were popular, and around the 1950s African American baseball players were admitted into the major leagues.” “Everything cost less. The book said you could buy a house for $7,000 or something like that.” “Soldiers were buying houses. The World War II soldiers got government help to buy houses.” There were three more students to hear from. Ms. Nichols offered some direction. “There was a really important Supreme Court case in 1954. It was about schools. It was also about the Fourteenth Amendment, which we have read and analyzed. So, Jared, Natalie, and Tyler, what do you know about that court case? Jared, let’s start with you, then we’ll hear from Natalie and Tyler.” “I read that it’s when the Court said that students could not be separated by skin color.” “Yeah, the Court said segregation in schools was unfair. It was not equal.” “I think the case was Brown v. The Board of Education. It changed everything about schools and people trying to discriminate.” Perfect. Ms. Nichols had everything she needed to begin a very productive several days of work on the 1950s. The topics the students had mentioned were a good summary of the chapter from the textbook, but it was a summary that Ms. Nichols and the students had created together. This summary was not on a worksheet and was not from a script. It was of, by, and for the students and their teacher. It was learning that began with listening, yet built on what was heard. “Now, as you think about all of these topics from the 1950s, let’s search for themes that connect some of these topics. What did you notice that several of the topics have in common?” After a few moments of thinking, Ms. Nichols saw several hands go up, and she saw facial expressions from some other students indicating that thoughts were emerging in their brains though they had not raised their hands. By calling on students from both groups, Ms. Nichols kept the pace of thinking and the pace of participation in the class very lively. No script could inspire this or do this. “Protests.” “Unfairness.” “War.” “Technology.” 98


“Families.” “The cold war.” “Adjustments after World War II.” “Different entertainment.” “Fear of communism and World War III.” Ms. Nichols decided that the class was ready for their next endeavor. “Good analysis. Here’s a 1950s story. You’ll notice that some of the topics and some of the themes you have mentioned are in this story. The two parts we need read out loud while we all follow along are an older brother and a younger sister. Both are high-school students. Good—Taylor, you read the older brother’s part; and Rachael, you’ll be the sister. Taylor, you start.” Brother:â•…Cold war. What do you mean “cold war”? I can’t stay home and work on some bomb shelter. There’s a dance tonight, and it’s going to be a blast. I’ve got to go help decorate for the dance right now. Why aren’t you going to help decorate? Sister:â•…I’m sure the dance will be a blast and it will be really boss to help decorate, but I don’t have any bread for any dance. It really bugs me that you don’t care about the problems in the world today. This is 1957. The Russians launched that satellite. They could attack us from space. How can you dance when we might get attacked?” Brother:â•…Well, when I cast an eyeball in the sky, I don’t see any Russian satellite. Come on, all of the cool cats will be at the dance. I’m going to drive my chariot to school now and help turn that cafeteria into the perfect radioactive place for the best radioactive sounds. Everyone at the dance will be on cloud nine. So just cool it, and don’t have a cow. The Russians are cruisin’ for a bruisin’ if they mess with the U.S.A. Don’t ya dig it, Little Sister? Nobody is going to attack us. Sister:â•… You fracture me, Big Brother, but this is too serious to just laugh about. Radioactive sounds . . . yeah, your music is OK, but fallout from bombs is really radioactive. Then what? You and your friends can work on the dance, and you’ll have it made in the shade. Everyone else will make the scene at the dance. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I’ll be working on our family’s bomb shelter. If I don’t do this myself, it will be so grody. Why did I think you could help design our bomb shelter, anyway? Go ahead and get a kick out of doing those decorations. I’ll get on the horn and find a friend to come help me. You may think that a bomb shelter is nowheresville, but when the war starts, the only place to 99

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be is in a bomb shelter. It may not be much of a pad, but it will be safe. Go ahead—split. Get out of my way. I have serious work to do. Brother:â•… Little Sister, you are just unreal. I’m going to decorate for the dance. Then I’m going to come back to the pad to get all dressed up in my best threads, and I’m going to dance and dance. Sister:â•… Yeah, well, when your friends ask you what’s buzzin’ cuzzin’ you won’t know, will you? You’ll think that what’s buzzin’ is some record playing at the dance. What’s really buzzin’ is some Russian satellite that is their way of winning the cold war and then winning World War III. If 1957 is going to be a good year for any of us, it will be because we prepared, we built bomb shelters, and we took this cold war seriously. Brother:â•… You take care of that. I take this cool dance seriously. I’ve got some serious dancing to do and some serious dance-hall decorating to do. Thanks for taking care of the country, but don’t go ape over all of this bomb-shelter stuff. I gotta split. Do you really want to stay here in bombshelterville? Sister:â•…I might come later, but there will be other dances. Sputnik is no dance. The cold war is no joke. I have to be earthbound about this. See ya. You go ahead and cut out. I’ll get this done.

“So what does that story tell us about the 1950s?” Ms. Nichols asked after thanking Taylor and Rachael for their dramatic portrayal of the 1950s siblings. Three students had answers. “It shows that some people really were scared—and, worse, that the U.S. and Russia could have fought and destroyed the whole planet.” “It shows that the way people talk changes a lot over time. The concerns and, you know, the fads of the 1950s added to the language then.” “It also shows that teenagers can get involved. She was concerned about a war. That’s like a lot of us are concerned about wars now, or about the environment and stuff like that.” Ms. Nichols explained what would happen next. “Good thinking. Those ideas make lots of sense. Now we look at three people from the 1950s. This video segment is about six minutes long. We’ll meet Senator McCarthy, vice-presidential candidate Nixon, and civil rights activist Rosa Parks.” When the video ended, Ms. Nichols and the students analyzed what they had seen and heard. Ms. Nichols then distributed copies of Nixon’s 100


Checkers speech. Each student read aloud one paragraph of that speech. There were a few minutes of class time left after the speech had been read and discussed—enough time for one more activity. “OK, take the next ten seconds for silent thinking. The 1920s had a nickname: the Roaring Twenties. What would be a good nickname for the 1950s?” After ten seconds had passed, Ms. Nichols asked for ideas. “The Nifty Fifties.” “The Rocking Fifties.” “The Frightful Fifties” “The Chaotic Fifties.” “The Almost Normal Fifties.” “The Schizophrenic Fifties.” “The I Can’t Wait until the Sixties Decade.” With about thirty seconds left in class, Ms. Nichols reminded everyone to access the Brown v. The Board of Education Supreme Court decision of May 1954 on the historical-document link of the textbook’s website and read the Court’s opinion in that case for the next day. As the bell rang, Ms. Nichols knew how productive this unscripted, but very thoroughly planned and very properly managed, class period had been. She also knew that every student had learned. Planning, management, and efficiency were important tools for Ms. Nichols, but they were not the ultimate goals. What mattered most was to cause learning. What worked best was a vibrant variety of teaching methods and activities designed with the current students in mind. Ms. Nichols did not have to convince her students that working in and for her class was worth the effort. She might have to convince the school administrators and the central-office authorities that teaching was a dynamic human adventure, not a static scripted routine. Ellen Nichols and her colleague Elizabeth Temple found themselves in the faculty workroom early—again—one morning, about an hour before the first-period class would start. “Ellen, thanks for letting me use that 1950s slang story you wrote. Some of my students are in your classes. They wondered why we would use something from U.S. history class in our English class. We rewrote the story with current slang and current topics. Then we went back to Charles Dickens’s time period because we read two of his novels. Then we rewrote the story with a Dickens-era place, tone, vocabulary, and style. It was great.” 101

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“Maybe that’s all we need to do, Elizabeth, trade good ideas. The teachers here work hard and create great lessons, but we never get to hear about what works in other classrooms. We really do not need the state or the central office to shove another education reform into our classrooms. We just need to trade the best ideas with each other.” Bill Covington had entered in time to hear most of what Ellen and Elizabeth had said. “I do admire your energy and your determination. Believe me, education reforms come and go and come back. This scripted fad will fade away. I heard someone the other day say that stuff like this scripted mandate is not education reform, it is education deform. Whatever it is, it won’t last long. Don’t let it get you down. A year or two, and it will be gone. Then some other scheme will get imposed on us by people who do not know how to do our job, but who think their reason for being is to tell us how to do our job. Hang in there. Keep doing what matters most. Teach those students. Teach them the way you know works best. You are the expert on your students.” Now the reader is asked to think about the scripted lesson from this chapter and the other lesson that Ms. Nichols designed. What were the strengths of each, and what were the weaknesses of each? What is the perspective on education that says to use scripted lessons throughout a school and throughout a school district? What is the perspective on education that says to emphasize what matters most and what works best? Which perspective is closer to your way of thinking? What advantages does Ellen get by continuously listening to her students? How does that impact her teaching and their learning, plus her learning about how to most effectively teach? In the next chapter, the Extreme Principle will go from one classroom to an entire school district. The truth that what matters most is learning applies to an entire school district and for all education. What works best throughout an entire school district includes daily discoveries by very alert, innovative, disciplined, and eager-to-listen educators. The term school district describes what may also be labeled with the words school system or school region or some other collective term; but the idea is to apply the Extreme Principle throughout a group of schools that are within one jurisdiction.

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hat happens when a school district listens to Ellen Nichols and to other people throughout the school system? What happens when Ellen’s ideas about what matters most and what works best are heard? What happens when the standard operating procedure in a school district is to encourage the continuous communication of ideas, questions, and concerns? What happens when education reform is not a bureaucratic process of trickle-down mandates that are proclaimed throughout the management power structure—principal, superintendent, school board, state department of education, governor, federal Department of Education, U.S. Congress, president—but is instead a very human, interactive, participatory process involving many participants, including the people who know the classroom reality better than anyone else? Let’s find out. What will work best to find the answers we seek? What matters most as we seek these answers? Every employee of a school district or a school system has a job description or the equivalent of a job description. From bus driver to teacher, from cafeteria manager to principal, from guidance counselor to custodian, from office secretary to superintendent, each employee has specific duties. Is it common, is it unheard of, is it occasionally true that one of the duties in each of those various job descriptions is expressed in words along the lines of “offer ideas, ask questions, express concerns, all with the intention of continuously improving our school system”? 103

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“Oh, our employees know they can offer an idea at any time. They know their questions and concerns are welcome.” That might be the perspective of a school-district official or a school-board member, but is that presumed openness what employees would say truly characterizes the work environment in their school system? Is it possible that some employees might think that “we just show up and do our jobs”? “Nobody cares what we think or what ideas we could offer. The last person who asked a lot of questions . . . well, she decided to go work somewhere else. Everyone figured that she was encouraged to go work elsewhere.” What matters most at school? Learning. What works best to cause learning? That answer will vary from day to day, from classroom to classroom, because the major variable in education is the human variable. The human variable does not hold still, so to fully understand and always understand the perpetually changing human variable it is essential to continuously listen to humans. Companies that are successful listen to their customers. The chef at the restaurant cannot repeatedly say to the restaurant owner, “I’m sorry that the customers do not like the food. I cook it perfectly. I cook it the way I learned to cook at the finest culinary institute in the world. The customers are wrong. They do not appreciate the perfect meals that we serve.” What matters most to the restaurant? Being profitable by continually attracting many customers who are completely satisfied. What works best for the restaurant to be successful? Listening to customers and then providing what they prefer in better ways than any competing restaurant does. What is a restaurant’s goal? To be profitable. How does the restaurant reach that goal? By satisfying the customers. How can the restaurant satisfy the customers? By learning what the customers prefer and providing that better than any competitor does. Now, how is that sequence applied in a school district, where the ultimate goal is to cause learning, but where many different job descriptions exist, with varying degrees of direct or indirect impact on learning? Listen. The answers can be heard if you listen. Do school systems listen to their employees as the system seeks ways to reach the essential goal of enhancing student achievement, that is, ways to reach the goal of learning? Do school systems take the time and make the effort to learn about what works best by listening to teachers and other employees? Do school-system officials establish relationships with 104


employees, just as they tell teachers to get to know their students, to build connections with their students, and to listen to their students, so that students realize the teachers are completely dedicated to them? The answers will vary from school district to school district, but it is likely that more listening could be done and should be done in many school districts. In the busyness of the daily tasks in a school system, where is the time to listen, listen more, and keep listening? Wise teachers make the time to listen to students because they know the efficiency of listening. They also know that it is better to listen and learn about problems today than it is to let the problem grow into a crisis that has to be resolved tomorrow. School systems can sometimes see education as if it were designed with rules similar to those governing the game of checkers. The options are few. At first, all pieces on the checkerboard can move one forward step at a time. It is possible for some pieces to eventually earn the option of a second type of move, but that is where the variation ends. Teachers can see education as if it were designed with rules similar to those governing the game of chess. There are many different pieces in chess. The types of moves that can be used in chess will vary with those pieces. Each move creates the possibility of multiple countermoves. School systems can sometimes see education as if it functioned according to the rules of arithmetic, where addition and subtraction are dominant processes. A new policy is added. An old policy is subtracted. Money is added to part of the budget. Money is subtracted from another part of the budget. A new task force is created. An old task force fades away. One school year ends. A new school year begins. Teachers can see education as if it functioned according to the rules of geometry, where lines intersect, angles are of different types, theorems are applied to prove a statement, multiple routes can lead to a problem being solved, and exponents and unknowns take the mind to places where addition and subtraction either do not go or will not arrive for a very, very long time. Checkers and arithmetic versus chess and geometry. What is to be done so the best parts of checkers can team up with the best parts of chess? What can be done so the strengths of arithmetic combine with the strengths of geometry? Chess and checkers are both good games. Arithmetic and geometry are both essential aspects of mathematics. The issue is not chess or checkers, arithmetic or geometry. The issue is to maximize 105

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symbiosis. How is that done? What does the Extreme Principle remind us is the path to improving education by doing what matters most and what works best? Listen. Listen more. Keep listening. What matters most in education is learning. School districts can be learning organizations where student learning is enhanced as the district officials and the school-building administrators learn by listening. The case study that follows explores the power of listening across and within a school district.

Case Study 2 Kimberly Lane’s career as an educator had included twelve years as an outstanding elementary-school teacher, three years as an outstanding middle-school teacher, four years as an award-winning assistant principal at a middle school, and four years as an exemplary middle-school principal. Now she was in her second year as the assistant superintendent of the school district where she had worked throughout her career. In her twenty-fifth year as an educator, Kim never thought about retirement other than becoming increasingly aware of and preparing for the financial realities that had to be anticipated. On this Monday morning in February, Kim spoke with Dan Kenton, superintendent of schools in Arlington County. Dan was in his fourth year as superintendent in this school district. He was known as a capable, conscientious manager who knew where every dollar was spent and who expected every employee to do more than was required. Dan arrived at work early each day, stayed late each night, and never missed a day of work. “Dan, may I have a few minutes, please? There’s an idea I would like to suggest.” “Sure, Kim. The 8:30 Monday-morning meeting of the executive team starts in six minutes, so let’s talk right now.” “Thanks. It might sound unusual, but I got this idea from a restaurant over the weekend. My husband, our two children, and I went to a restaurant on Saturday night. They were giving a two-dollar discount to every person who filled out a five-question survey about the restaurant, the food, the menu, the service, and the prices. After we finished eating and then did the survey, a cook came to ask us about the meal. He seemed really interested in our thoughts.” 106


“Kim, what does all of this restaurant activity have to do with education? Did you see some teachers there? Were some of our students working there?” “I did see some teenagers working there, and three of them told me that they are in our school system, but I did not recognize anyone else. Still, after we paid for supper, the assistant manager asked us if we would come back in a week if we got another two-dollar-per-person discount. We said sure, and she gave us four coupons for $2 each, with a one-week expiration date. She said that when we come back, our server will know about the coupons, and we could also get one free appetizer. They said we could fill out another survey next time and get coupons for a free dessert for everyone when we go back a third time. So I wondered if we could take a survey. What do you think?” “Well, Kim, I’m sure glad you suggested a survey instead of suggesting that all of the school cafeterias give everyone a free dessert. What type of survey did you have in mind? Who would get the survey? What questions do we ask? How would we use the survey results?” “Maybe we just need two questions. First, what is the most important problem in our school district? Second, what is the most effective, practical, and reasonable solution to that problem?” There was a pause in the conversation. Kim was not sure if she had said something wrong or if she had said something profound. Dan did not reply, so Kim continued. “I would suggest that we survey all employees by groups: teachers, principals, and staff. I’d also suggest that we consider a second survey of some students, parents and guardians, and community members.” Dan replied now. “Well, it’s time for our leadership-team meeting. Put your survey idea in an e-mail, and send it to me so I can share it with the leadership team at our meeting next Monday. Keep up the interesting thinking you are doing, Kimberly. Now, let’s get to that meeting.” Kim was increasingly fluent in the nuanced language of bureaucracy, but some translations were complicated. When Dan told her that she was doing some “interesting thinking,” was he really saying “keep that idea to yourself ”? When Dan told her to put the idea in writing, was that a signal to give the idea no more time or effort? Kim got her answer at the leadership-team meeting. Her instincts had told her to continue working on the survey idea. The leadership-team meeting confirmed those instincts. 107

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Toward the conclusion of the meeting, Dan Kenton brought up the final topic. “As everyone knows, there are elections in our community this year for mayor and city council, plus both houses of Congress and some state-legislature seats. Many candidates take polls. Some candidates send surveys to voters. Kim and I were just talking about the possibility of our school district doing some surveys. Kim is going to work on a proposal. If you have any ideas or questions, see Kim this week. She or I will e-mail you her proposal on Friday, so we can discuss it next Monday. That’s the same schedule we use for any leadership-team agenda item. Well, it is 9:15, and we always adjourn at 9:15, so let’s get to work.” For the people who attended the school-district leadership-team meeting each Monday morning, getting to work meant attending other meetings, doing computer work in their offices, processing paperwork, making phone calls, dealing with complaints, or hearing requests from people in the community. The days also included compiling federal-government reports that had to be submitted, responding to state-government due dates for grants or reports or forms, and anything else the state government required or the federal government worked through state governments to make local school districts do. For some of or most of the people who attended the school-district leadership-team meeting each Monday morning, the typical workday would include no interaction with students, no interaction with teachers, and little or no interaction with school principals, counselors, or staff members. Kim Lane was increasingly aware of this divide within the school district. She hoped that her survey proposal would be approved and that the survey would be one effective way to close that divide. Two questions. That’s all Kim included in her survey. The same two questions she had mentioned to Superintendent Kenton. First, what is the most important problem in our school district? Second, what is the most effective, practical, and reasonable solution to that problem? The leadership team supported the idea of a survey. The team added two more questions: What is working best in this school district? How can everyone in this school district learn more about what other people in the district are doing that is working best? It was agreed to survey employees now and community residents later. One comment from a curriculum-and-instruction specialist who attended the leadership-team meetings stirred more discussion than did the 108


overall topic of a survey. Her comment was “Surveys can be useful, but they are limited. Beware of the data. Beware of the analysis of statistics or of verbatim comments. People have many more ideas and concerns than they will ever express on any survey. It’s like those achievement-gap numbers I keep warning you about. When we take test scores of one hundred students and squeeze those scores into one statistic, that one number does not tell us about any student. Then we contrast that squeezed score from group A with the squeezed score from group B, and if the squeezed scores are not identical there are all kinds of questions about achievement gaps. The only achievement gap we can close is the gap of each individual student. When we take Tasha and Shawn each from their different levels of achievement today to actually reaching their unique potential levels tomorrow, we have really made a difference! So, surveys can be good, but no survey will ever replace face-to-face, person-to-person listening, caring, and working together.” Kimberly Lane, assistant superintendent of the Arlington County Public Schools, was eager to implement the survey. Every time that Kim and her family returned to the restaurant that listened so closely to customers, Kim became more dedicated to finding better ways for people in this school district to listen to each other. If people in the district could agree on what mattered most and share information about what worked best, the subsequent results could be better than anything the district had ever seen. That was Kim’s hope. That was Kim’s new mission. Kim was advised to test the survey with a small number of people before sending the survey to everyone. The survey was sent to five people at the school district’s central office; five elementary-school teachers; five middleschool teachers; five high-school teachers; five principals or assistant principals throughout the elementary, middle, and high-school levels; and five classified employees such as cafeteria workers, custodians, bus drivers, or secretaries. Kim asked the four questions that had been agreed upon at the district leadership-team meeting. She also asked for the respondents’ overall perspectives on the content of the survey, plus what people thought of eventually sending this type of survey to all employees of the school district. Twenty-six of the thirty recipients of the “rough draft” survey responded within one week, as Kimberly had requested. The surveys had been color coded so each group of five participants received the same survey content, but on a different-colored sheet of paper. Kimberly wondered if the survey 109

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results with all employees might vary due to the type of work location or the type of work participants did at the location. The twenty-six responses expressed very favorable support for taking the survey. Many responses included a statement to the effect that the survey or other methods of getting input from employees would be appreciated very much. Not one of the twenty-six responses suggested that the survey should be canceled before it went any further. Kimberly did find that the twenty-six responses fit into four very separate groups: central-office workers, classified employees, teachers, and principals/assistant principals. The verbatim comments on the first question were quite revealing to Kim. A sample size of twenty-six was not large enough to use as a basis for extrapolated conclusions, but within the twenty-six responses were vastly different perspectives. Kimberly was encouraged that all twenty-six responses endorsed the process and content of this survey. Kimberly was concerned that the thinking revealed from this very small group could suggest a problem that the full expansion of the survey to all employees might also suggest. The verbatim comments from the twenty-six respondents about the survey’s first question surprised Kimberly. Those comments are below, grouped by work location or category.

Insight 12 First Question: What is the most important problem in our school district? Central-office workers: 1.â•‡“ That’s easy. It’s money. The budget is tight and getting tighter.” 2.â•‡“It’s the people in the community who say they value education but then don’t really give the support we need.” 3.â•‡“Money. Money. Money.” 4.â•‡“ The cost of everything keeps going up. Fuel for the buses, cafeteria food, health-care costs for employees, taxes. Salaries go up a little each year, but that’s the biggest part of the budget, so it adds up fast.” 110


5.â•‡“The budget. People ask for everything. There’s never enough money. Then one school complains because they think that another school got more money. Well, we hear complaints about some schools being better than others or some schools doing things differently from other schools. Why can’t all of the schools do things the same way and get money based on some formula that treats each school the same?” Elementary-school teachers: 1.â•‡ “The students who come to us unprepared to start school.” 2.â•‡“ The students whose families just don’t make education a high enough priority.” 3.â•‡“Biggest problem is all the chores that Central Office makes us do. The training sessions they require. The reports and forms. Then they keep visiting our classrooms, leaving notes with our principal telling us what they don’t like, and then they go back to their office.” 4.â•‡“It’s all of the changes that get made every year. A new reading program. Then a new math program. Then another new reading program.” Middle-school teachers: 1.â•‡“Cell phones. Why does our school district let students bring cell phones and other electronic devices to school? I taught before there were cell phones. Things were much better then. Why should I have to spend one minute of my time dealing with some student who uses his cell phone in class instead of using his brain?” 2.â•‡“Homework. More students every year just don’t turn in homework. They figure they can still somehow make a D grade and get by.” 3.â•‡“ We never do enough for the students who behave well and work hard and want to learn. We do so much for students who 111

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never work and never behave. It’s not fair to the good students when every year we add nothing for them, but create some new second chance or third chance for the students who rejected last year’s second chance.” 4.â•‡“ The people at Central Office keep coming into our classrooms to observe for about five minutes . . . and then they never talk to us, but they leave some form with notes and check marks telling the principal how imperfect our teaching is. I work ten or eleven or twelve hours each day. What can you learn about my job if you only watch me for five minutes, then leave and never talk to me? The reason this is the biggest problem is that it is so discouraging to teachers. Why should we try to improve when no matter what we do it will always get another superficial checklist filled with criticism?” High-school teachers: 1.â•‡“Cell phones. Cell phones. Cell phones. No matter what we do, students use the phones between classes, in the halls, in bathrooms, at lunch, in classes. This school district needs to tell the students and their families that learning is more important than calling or texting. No cell phones. Period. None.” 2.â•‡“Cheating. Students copy each other’s work. They take things from the Internet and claim it is their own work. They use cell phones to cheat during tests.” 3.â•‡“I’d say sports. A student gets offered a scholarship to play a college sport, and there’s a big signing celebration. Another student earns full tuition for his or her grades, and nothing gets said. Sure, sports can be good experiences, but our priority should be academic learning, not touchdowns or free throws.” 4.â•‡“I think the biggest problem is money—not how much we have, but how we spend it. I see money wasted at our school. There are five or ten or fifteen teachers absent every day. The district has to pay for substitute teachers. Don’t give us so many sick days. Some people use every sick day they are given no matter what 112


their health is. And quit paying for teachers or anyone else to go attend some conference, especially out of town. And never let the central-office people go to a conference. If they want to learn about schools they should get out of their offices and travel to our school for a few days, instead of taking their expensive trips to conferences in Florida all the time.” Principals and assistant principals: 1.â•‡“I’d say that the biggest problem is money. Whenever the school administrators tell the central-office authorities what we need, the answer always includes some explanation that there just is not enough money.” 2.â•‡“Mandates from the district. We keep getting told more and more what we have to do. No two schools are exactly alike, but Central Office keeps making every school do more and more of the same procedures.” 3.â•‡“Excuses. What I hear more of every day is excuses. Parents make excuses for students who did not complete projects or who were absent for no reason. Teachers make excuses for why they missed bus duty or why their grades are late getting put into the computer. If everyone would just accept their responsibilities instead of lying or making excuses, school would be a much better place.” 4.â•‡“People who are out of touch with reality. Example: We have to suspend students who violate certain rules or policies. Then the central-office people complain that our suspension numbers are increasing or that one group of students has more suspensions than another group. We do not make up the discipline incidents or the discipline reports. The people who tell us our suspension numbers are too high need to realize what reality is. We deal with the facts. Those people who tell us that our suspension numbers are too high just deal with charts and policies.” 5.â•‡“ The biggest problem is the school buildings. They are old and out of date. They are overcrowded. I guess there is not enough 113

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money to fix all of the school buildings, but how can places with bad working conditions be places where great results are obtained?” Classified employees: 1.â•‡“I just think our school district needs to carefully select employees. We have had some who were great and a few who should not have been hired.” 2.â•‡“ The biggest problem I see in our cafeteria is that more and more students complain about the food. I hear it’s the same complaints in all the schools. They won’t eat the healthy food we have to serve.” 3.â•‡“More thorough job interviews and screening. Let’s be 100 percent sure we recruit and get good workers.” 4.â•‡“From what I can see it is old buildings and old equipment. How can people work with such old stuff and accomplish much?” As Kimberly Lane read the twenty-six responses to the rough draft of the survey, she had three major observations. First, the responses were not in rough-draft form. People had replied with clear, certain, direct statements. Second, the questions, format, and wording of the survey seemed to work; there was little change needed. The one format change would be to provide more room for people to write their answers. Third, the range of responses to the question about the most important problem in the school district was much wider than Kim had anticipated. This third observation caused Kim to do much thinking. Since the days in college when she was preparing to become a teacher, Kim had fervently believed that what mattered most in any school was students, specifically how much and how well students were learning. Throughout her career she had been especially fascinated with why some teachers were so effective, so dedicated, and so willing to do whatever it took to get students to learn. This fascination with great teaching had long ago convinced Kim that what works best in schools is fully known and does not change from year to year or from decade to decade. What works best is great teaching. What matters most is for students to learn, 114


and that is done through great teaching. Kim often wondered why education became so complex, complicated, political, and bureaucratic when the essentials of education were teaching and learning. Twenty-six survey replies had confirmed for Kim that the survey idea had merit. These twenty-six replies also gave Kim an unexpected hypothesis about what the broader survey responses would indicate: that what a person thought was the most important problem in the school district was significantly influenced by the job the person currently had. Teachers saw education from the perspective of the classroom, where teaching was the tool and learning was the duty. Administrators at a school building saw education from the perspective of the overall organization, where supervision, management, and leadership were the tools and maintaining a functioning organization was the duty. People who worked at the central office saw education from the systemic perspective, where budgets, policies, meetings, and laws were the tools and compliance with budgets, policies, decisions from meetings, and laws was the duty. Classified employees might see the education system as where their work was done, but perhaps with a less direct connection to the academic aspect, though their support services were vital. Kim asked herself, “What could our school district accomplish if everyone agreed on what mattered most and what worked best? If we had that type of fundamental agreement, we could all move in the same direction, toward the same purpose, and toward the same goals. As it is now, we move in many different directions and scatter our work so much that we limit our results. That self-imposed limitation is unintentional, but it seems to be inherent in how our school system thinks and functions.” Two weeks after the rough-draft survey had been sent to the thirty recipients, Kimberly Lane was prepared to update the district’s leadership team on the status of the survey project. Her report included two significant findings: 1.â•‡ The survey content and format worked. The only adjustment needed was to provide more space for respondents to write their answers to the four questions on the survey. 2.â•‡ The response rate had been very strong. Twenty-six out of thirty people who had received a rough-draft survey had completed and returned the survey. 115

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The leadership team endorsed Kim’s report and agreed that the survey should be sent throughout the school district promptly, with proper notification to all district employees via e-mail that a survey would arrive soon. A few team members asked Kim whether the initial twenty-six responses offered any preliminary conclusions. Kim knew that a sample size of twenty-six was too small for any reasonable extrapolation, yet she had formulated her hypothesis about the impact of where you work on your perspective of the biggest problem in the school district. Kim decided to wait until full survey results were analyzed so she could avoid any confusion or rumors that premature analysis and discussion could bring. Kim reminded herself that politics and diplomacy were essential realities in any bureaucracy, including a school district’s central office. The 87 percent response rate of the rough-draft survey was not matched when the color-coded survey was sent to every employee in the school district. Still, 63 percent was a very good response rate and was quite adequate as a basis for conclusions. Kimberly worked with the school district’s manager of information technology and research to compile and analyze the responses. Thirty-seven of the forty-two central-office employees had completed and returned the surveys. The thirty school-building administrators had provided twenty-six completed and returned surveys. There were 217 responses from the 380 teachers in the school district. There were 96 responses from the 143 classified employees. The total of 376 responses from 595 school-district employees gave Kimberly Lane much to read, think about, and analyze. Kim analyzed the responses from teachers. Her colleague, Thomas Scott, analyzed the responses from central-office workers, principals and assistant principals, and classified employees. Two weeks after the surveys were received, Kim and Thomas had completed their work. The surveys had been read word for word. The surveys had been analyzed idea for idea. The conclusions had been reached, call to action by call to action. Kim and Thomas had agreed to analyze the verbatim comments with a determination to uncover truth. Underneath all of the comments, underneath each of the comments, were underlying perspectives. When a teacher wrote that students skipping classes was the biggest problem in the school district, the teacher was also communicating that someone in the district needed to get that skipping student to the classroom so the teacher could teach that student along with all other students in the class. 116


When a principal wrote that the biggest problem in the school district was that principals had no time to be instructional leaders in their schools because of all the paperwork and the bureaucratic procedures that consumed much of their time, that principal was asking for some changes that would enable him to be an educator instead of a crisis manager or paper-pusher. Kim and Thomas completed their tasks. They met to combine their findings. They sat at the same table to talk and review materials. The ideas they discussed were so different that they wondered if the school-district employees had any shared opinions or objectives. Their conversation was convincing evidence that the Arlington County Public School District needed to implement the Extreme Principle quickly and completely. Kim:â•…We could read every answer from every returned survey out loud right now, and, based on what I have read and analyzed, it would sound as if no two people in this school district spoke the same language. I’m still amazed at what I read. No two answers were exactly alike. How can every person have a completely different perspective? Tom:â•…My experience was similar. I kept looking for issues or topics—or anything—that would connect across the survey responses. It’s not there. It’s like we asked people to tell us their favorite flavors of ice cream and somehow everyone mentioned a different flavor. What’s all this mean? Kim:â•…It means the survey was more revealing, more productive, and more important than anyone expected. It also means that the biggest problem in this school district is quite obvious. Tom:â•…Obvious? Quite obvious to you. Tell me what is so obvious. I read about a lot of “biggest problems.” I was beginning to conclude that our school district’s biggest problem is that we have hundreds of big problems and they are all different. Kim:â•… That’s it. If we can’t identify the number one biggest problem, we have a completely different challenge. If everybody thinks and works differently, how do we ever get everyone to move in the same direction? Tom:â•…I hope you have the answer to your own question. Kim:â•…I might have ideas, but the answer is not going to come from only one person. We need a collective, agreed-upon, priority problem number one that is matched with an agreed-upon solution or solutions. 117

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Tom:â•… Before we get too far from the survey, satisfy my curiosity. What did teachers say the biggest problem is? Kim:â•…Everything was mentioned. Absolutely everything. It really made me wonder what in the world is going on in these schools. How can people who work in the same school or who have identical jobs at different schools come up with such a variety of perspectives? How can teachers throughout this school district have such a wide range of opinions about the biggest problem in the school district if they all work in the exact same school district? Tom:â•… That’s an interesting question. We’ll figure it out, but first I’d really like to know what teachers said the biggest problem is. Kim:â•…Everything. They said absolutely everything. Crowded schools. Weak reading skills. Truancy. Students who never do homework. Parents and guardians who ignore requests to attend meetings or to talk with teachers. Students who skip school. Families that do not value education. Buildings that are in bad condition. Old textbooks, old computers, old everything. Sports are emphasized too much. The juvenile court system keeps sending young criminals back to school. Families that lie about free or reduced lunch status and who try to cheat the system in other ways. The school board is out of touch with schools. The central office is too big, too bureaucratic, and out of touch with schools. Principals who are never in classrooms. Principals who are in classrooms too much. Paperwork. All of the noninstructional time-consuming tasks and chores that teachers are required to do. All of the teaching time that is lost to everything from state-mandated tests to U.S.-government-mandated tests to “everyone had to watch an hour-long video about computer safety” to field trips for one class that made students miss other classes. The teachers who arrive at school just before class, leave school immediately after class, and are absent as many days as they are allowed to be absent. Students who intentionally fail classes. Families who drop off their young children at school before the building opens and are always late picking up their children. Students who come to school sick and make other people sick. The community keeps asking the school to solve every problem that children or teenagers might face, but all of that work reduces teaching time. Politicians who pass inane laws about education and never ask teachers or principals for their ideas before those unrealistic laws are passed. How’s all of that for starters? 118


Tom:â•…Are you serious? I would never have expected all of that. We could never do enough to solve every one of those problems. The district usually sets up some committee or some program to address the most serious problems. Can you imagine how many new committees and new programs it would take to tackle all of those problems? It will never happen. So what is the school district supposed to do? We can’t just take a survey, publish the results, and then say that it is all too complicated to do anything about. Kim:â•…Exactly right. It would be far too complicated to take on each one of those problems individually. I’ve become convinced that there is a better way. We need to figure out what really matters. We can’t do everything, so we need to fully concentrate on doing what matters most. We have to eliminate any waste and inefficiency. We have to put our time and other resources only into what works, what really gets results, what really works best. Tom:â•…Interesting idea. The survey results I read were as scattered as yours. The answers were different, but the range was just as wide. So how do we concentrate more on what matters most? I thought we were already doing that. I thought we were all doing the jobs we were supposed to do. Kim:â•…Apparently something went wrong. Even if people are doing their assigned job tasks, when you add up all of those job tasks the total of all those pieces does not combine into a perfectly assembled puzzle. The pieces do not fit together. They don’t connect. We all seem to be independently doing our own work, but the overall school district is moving in hundreds of different directions, instead of having hundreds of employees who are all doing their part to connect the total work in the school district into one unified movement in the same direction. We don’t all need the exact same job description, but we need each job to contribute to or support the number one goal. Tom:â•… That sounds wonderful, but how do we get these hundreds of people who work in different school buildings or in other places to all move in the same direction? Even people in the same school building have little contact with each other on a typical day. People are different. No two schools are exactly alike. How does everyone move in the same direction? Kim:â•…It’s not like we all become robots. But we do our parts of the overall work that everyone is supportive of. Here’s my idea: we substitute-teach. 119

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Tom:â•…Who is “we”? Who does this substitute teaching? Kim:â•… You would substitute-teach. I would substitute-teach. Everyone who works at Central Office would substitute-teach one day each month. Principals and assistant principals would substitute-teach one day per month. When a principal did substitute teaching, someone from Central Office would be at that school to cover for the school’s principal; the same plan would be used when an assistant principal did substitute teaching. The superintendent would substitute-teach. The supervisor of bus drivers, the school-board members, the school-district attorney . . . everyone would substitute-teach. And while we are in the school for our monthly day of substitute teaching, we get there early and we talk to people. We eat lunch with teachers or with students, and we talk to people. Tom:â•…Where did you get this idea? Kim:â•…I read books about what the best business managers and executives do. The highest-paid executives of some companies are required by company policy to go do the work that the typical employee does for several days each year. If it is a restaurant company, the president of that corporation goes to the restaurant and works in the kitchen, serves the food to customers, cleans the place, unloads trucks, and deals with problems that come up. The benefits are endless. When that executive is back in the office making decisions, now he or she will know what it is like to work in the place where those decisions get implemented. Tom:â•…I can see the good it will do. But let’s be honest: some principals and some central-office people who used to be teachers changed jobs so they would not have to teach anymore. They got out of the classroom for a reason. Will they agree to going back to the classroom? Kim:â•… Good point. There will have to be some diplomacy and politics involved. There are several businesses in this city that use this type of plan. The president of a local bank spends one day per week out in bank locations, not in his comfortable office. He spends part of that day as a teller in the bank. He is face-to-face with employees and with customers. He sees and hears what the work reality is. I’ve talked to him. He says that being in the banks and doing the retail bank work is the only way to keep in touch with what matters most and to continually learn about what works best. So we get people like that bank president to support this idea, maybe to present this idea, or maybe, even better, to lead by example. That bank president might agree to substitute-teach 120


one day per month. His bank would be respected for investing time in the schools. If the bank president can substitute-teach, then the schoolboard members and the superintendent and everyone else can make the time to do this. Tom:â•…Are there any laws that get in the way? Conflict of interest, or teacher certification, or being paid as a substitute if you already work for the school district or are on the school board? Kim:â•… Good questions, and we can get the answers. We’ll comply with laws, of course. Maybe some laws or regulations need to be changed. Tom:â•… So, tell me, if all of this substitute teaching happens, how will that show we are responding to all of these surveys? Kim:â•… By substitute teaching we are going from one survey per year to an attitude of constant surveys. We become the school district where everyone listens to each other. We also become the school district where it is obvious that our highest priority is what happens in classrooms. What matters most in education is learning, and this will be the school district where learning is not just part of a slogan or motto or mission statement, it is where we put our time and our effort, all of us. Each day, in each school, we’ll have the potential to deal with and understand what all of the employees are saying they think the biggest problems are. We’ll be solving those problems together. And the truth is, if we get the classroom right, a lot of the other problems will be taken care of at the same time. Tom:â•… So if we concentrate on the big problem, or the big priority, the other issues go away. Kim:â•… Not by magic, but by design. When the classroom thrives, when all classrooms thrive, some other problems just do not happen or do not seem so annoying. Teachers and students who have great classroom experiences day to day will have fewer of the other issues that come up or take over when things in the classroom are not the best. Example: Schools are crowded. Instead of a hundred little programs or actions, let’s try two big actions and build two new schools. Then every teacher has his or her own classroom all day. That shows our priority is teaching and learning. Some problems associated with crowded schools would be reduced or eliminated. We can get so much done if we concentrate on what matters most and what works best. Tom:â•…Makes sense. Now what? 121

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Kim:â•… Now we write the complete analysis of the surveys. In the indicated action sections, we include the substitute-teacher proposal. But first we recruit some teachers, principals, other district employees, and community members, plus the superintendent, to join us for a preliminary discussion of the rough-draft version of the analysis. We’ll hear their ideas. We’ll work to build support for the conclusions that come from our findings, we will listen to their analysis and conclusions, and we’ll build support for the next steps that need to be taken. Tom:â•…Where did you learn to be so diplomatic and so politically astute? Kim:â•…I read a lot and I listen a lot. Plus, years ago when I was in high school, I attended a leadership conference. Dr. Earl Reum, a master at developing leadership skills in students, taught us that “people support what they help create.” In my experience, listening to people is the best way to start the process of creating shared success. Let’s go. We have work to do. The people who participated in this survey have helped create some very important insights. Now let’s build on those insights and organize a way that everyone can help create a shared goal that we all work toward. The purpose of a school is to cause learning. If we all work toward that in all we do, we’ll fulfill that purpose. It’s what matters most.

“That is an enlightened idea. The benefits are endless. There are few actual costs. If a corporate executive who makes millions of dollars per year finds it worthwhile to do work in his company’s restaurants where some employees make minimum wage, then central-office workers can go substitute-teach. Don’t look at their pay per day versus substitute-teacher pay per day. Look at how much good this can do and how much money this can save. We’ll concentrate on what matters, instead of starting so many new programs every year—and getting zero results from most of those new, expensive, trendy programs that promise to reform everything, but that never work.” “That is a terrible idea. Do you know how busy the central-office people are and how busy principals are? There are so many meetings to attend and conferences to attend and reports to submit and forms to fill out and phone calls and more meetings. Who has time to substitute-teach one day each month? Do you know how many meetings I would miss?” Those two responses to Kim’s recommendation are likely to be heard. What is actually communicated with those responses? According 122


to each of those responses, what matters most—teaching that causes learning, or attending meetings? According to each of those responses, what works best—a continuous exchange of ideas and shared experiences, or filling out forms? The substitute-teacher idea is one approach to implementing the Extreme Principle throughout a school district. A single approach will not work perfectly in every school district; so probe deeply into the reality of your school district and, whether through surveys, innovative substitute teaching, or other approaches, think about how everyone in your school district could move harmoniously, efficiently, and productively toward what matters most by doing what works best. In the next chapter, the emphasis goes from a school district to applying the Extreme Principle for work done by state and federal education officials.

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The Extreme Principle for State and Federal Education Officials

“B

een there. Done that.” No, you have not been in my classroom today, and you have not done what needed to be done with my students today. Some state and federal education officials were teachers earlier in their careers. Some state and federal education officials were teachers for a very few years, or, amazingly, may never have been classroom teachers. The most important work in education is done in classrooms. The most important work in education is not done in the federal government’s Department of Education or in any state government’s department of education. Yet since the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957 and the federal government claimed that the defense of the nation required more and better instruction in math and science, the federal government has increasingly impacted schools. That bureaucratic, political, and inefficient invasion was accompanied by a detour around the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Education policy is not a power given to the federal government or denied to the states; therefore, the Tenth Amendment directs that power to the states or to the people. It is unlikely that the federal government will remove itself from the arena of education. Creative and expansive interpretations of the Constitution or blatant power grabs virtually guarantee that the federal government will maintain or increase its role. State governments and educators are cautioned: resist the pennies that the federal government offers in return for increasing federal control of schools. What logic is there in a state 125

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making permanent changes in its education laws, politics, regulations, and practices in return for a relatively small amount of one-time funding from the federal government? Do not sell the soul of education for thirty pieces of U.S. government silver. When all problems are seen as political, new laws are seen as the only solutions. Imperfect laws are not the major obstacle to educational improvement, although some laws do impede school progress. Perfect laws would not ensure school perfection. Student achievement is not a function of political compromise, legislative deal making, presidential speeches, or a candidate for governor promising the ultimate education re-form. Some of the decisions made by the political process can complicate or limit the real work of education, especially those far off, micromanaging, political positioning, out-of-touch-with-classroom-reality reforms of education imposed by the federal government or by state governments. It is sad but true that the political process will continue to excessively impact education. The challenge is to somehow make that impact supportive of education rather than using education re-form to nurture the egos, ambitions, or agendas of politicians and bureaucrats. “According to data released today by the U.S. Department of Education, fourth-graders in this country showed no progress in reading levels for the second consecutive year.” This could be a statement in a newspaper article. How many of those fourth-graders are known personally by the U.S. government officials who compiled, analyzed, and released that data? None. What do those broad, national reading statistics reveal about any one fourth-grader’s ability to read? Nothing. What are some possible governmental and political reactions to those statistics? Criticism of schools, hearings, new laws, new mandates, a complication of the work that is done in schools, a message to voters that a new reading re-form has been signed into law, and puzzlement over the fact that perfect literacy achievement has not quickly resulted. Do members of Congress or members of a state legislature who do not fully read a reading re-form bill that they vote on truly expect that bill to improve students’ reading skills? “But it is a problem throughout the nation. Reading scores are not going up. Math scores need help, too. This is throughout the country. Don’t we need a national solution that the U.S. government organizes? Don’t we need some new laws, more funding, and major education reform?” 126

The Extreme Principle for Education officials

The contrarian question could be as follows: “We already have many laws and many programs. If those have not worked, doesn’t that suggest that the solution to literacy problems may not be more laws, more programs, and another major reform?” What could work better? We know what works. Let the power of, the assurance of, the liberation of, and the reality of that thought fully fill your consideration of this question: What could work better? We know what works. The emancipating truth of the statement “we know what works” invites another question: are we doing what works? Let’s see what could happen if state and federal education officials explored that question. First, consider this leadership and management truth: every decision made at a school or about a school communicates what the decision maker thinks matters most. When a high-school principal is asked to have students visit a middle school to tutor seventh-graders in math during the schoolday there is a battle in priorities between those highschool students being in their classes for the instruction their teachers will provide and the seventh-graders possibly improving their math skills due to the tutoring from high-school students. Whose responsibility is it to teach the seventh-graders? Could the high-school students tutor the seventh-graders after school was dismissed one day, rather than during the schoolday? If the high-school students are not in class, they miss that day’s learning while they help seventh-graders learn. Thus, the result is no absolute gain, because some students missed class and some other students might benefit from a tutor. The school administrator who decides that her high-school students will not miss classes to tutor seventh-graders is saying yes to the learning priority for her school, her students, and her teachers. She is telling her teachers that she will not impose a double duty on them to work extra with the students who would have missed class. She is telling her students that school time will not be reduced for another endeavor, no matter how apparently worthy. The principal’s decision is consistent with the Extreme Principle. Having an overall guideline such as the Extreme Principle to filter all ideas, questions, and decisions helps the school direct all effort toward its purpose—causing learning—which also is what matters most. The department of education in any state has a demanding task: regulating, supporting, and improving education throughout the entire 127

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state. How is that done, given the wide range of factors across the state— including property-tax rates, amount of taxable property per student, level of community support for schools, levels of student achievement, and varying priorities at schools—and the complexity of managing across all school districts? There is a way: listen. Do not try to determine what people need to know and need to do until you listen to what they already know and what they already do. Let’s repeat that. Do not try to determine what people need to know and need to do until you listen to what they already know and what they already do. Furthermore, educational progress can happen only in classrooms. Federal education officials and state education officials spend little to no time in classrooms. When those officials are in classrooms, it is more likely to be for a quick visit than to teach or to thoroughly listen to ideas and questions from a teacher. The classroom is where learning at school happens, so federal and state education officials enhance their productivity when they listen to teachers who can guide them to awareness of real problems and to an understanding of real solutions—as opposed to nonproblems and nonsolutions. We travel now to three regional meetings throughout a state. The purpose of the meetings is for state education officials and elected legislators to hear ideas, questions, and concerns from citizens about schools in their communities, within each region. At the second meeting, a federal-government education official will join the state leaders to hear citizen input. Educator:â•…On behalf of Governor Campbell Mitchell, we would like to welcome everyone to this forum. The governor will watch the video of this event, so he will be fully informed of your ideas. There are four executives from the state department of education with us this evening, and there are six members of the state legislature from the western part of our state who are here tonight. There are twelve people who have already signed up to speak, so we will hear from each of them first. If other people decide to participate, that is fine, and we’ll be glad to stay as long as you have comments to make. When you signed up you were given your number, so you know the sequence. Ms. Caroline Miller, we’ll hear from you first. Speaker 1:â•…We have good schools in my county. I have three children, and they are doing very well in school. The one question I have is, why don’t they have to memorize anything anymore? When I was in school 128


we memorized poetry and the Gettysburg Address and a long list of prepositions. I know you can find anything with a computer, but memorizing is good work for the brain to do. If all the students can do is look up information on the computer, how will they know if what they see on the screen is any good or not? I know they have to be up-to-date with computers. I just think that some of the old-fashioned ways of learning can still do a lot of good. Let’s not get so fancy that we make it too easy. Thank you. Speaker 2:â•…I have a son in the seventh grade and a daughter in the eighth grade. They are both capable of doing high-school work, but they have to stay in middle school. Why? I have asked for them to be moved up. They read at high-school level. They make straight As. They never feel challenged, but they would like to be challenged. My daughter is teaching herself Spanish and geometry. My son is teaching himself chemistry. They tell me about students who disrupt class or who fail everything. I know we have to do a lot for those students who need extra help, but it only seems fair to do just as much for the students who behave and work and want to learn. Speaker 3:â•…I also have children in middle school. Years ago when I was in seventh grade, it was called junior high school. I’ve spent a lot of time at the middle school my children attend, and to be honest it is nothing like the junior high I attended. There are all these classes that just seem to fill the time. The old junior high was set up to get us ready for high school. From what I can tell, the middle-school curriculum is more learning about making friends than it is learning about reading and math and science and history. â•…â•…I’ll make sure that my children learn how to cook and that they get some exercise every day. I don’t need the middle school to do that. I’ve taught them right from wrong, so they don’t need all of that character education. They need the academic basics. I’d suggest that the middle schools go back to being junior high schools and really get students ready for ninth grade. I hear that a lot of ninth-graders get off to a bad start in high school. No wonder. They know how to cook, but they don’t know how to count. They can play basketball, but they don’t read or write very well. Basics. Teach them the basics, please. Speaker 4:â•…I own two restaurants, and I employ a lot of high-school students. Most of them are good workers. I require them to bring their school report cards to show me. That’s just a condition of working for 129

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me. I’ve got some employees who never miss an hour of work, but they miss day after day of school. Some of my employees do everything their job requires, but make average or below-average grades. When I ask them about all of this, they say that they just need to pass classes and graduate. When did just passing classes become good enough? I would like to suggest that schools eliminate the grade of D. I’ve checked, and for most schools I know of the grade of C goes down to about 75 percent. That means you do not know 25 percent of the material. My employees cannot keep their jobs if they serve what the customer has ordered only 75 percent of the time, but at least raising passing to 75 percent would be better than schools where you can pass a class with a grade of 65 percent. â•…â•…I’d also like to suggest that school attendance requirements for teachers and students be increased. Why do teachers get so many sick days and personal days and emergency days? Some of the teachers never miss a day of work. Do we reward those people? We should. Some of the teachers, based on what I am told, miss exactly the number of days they are allowed to miss. Who believes that those teachers suddenly improved their health when they ran out of sick days? At that point they came to work rather than take a day without pay. So, I’m for higher standards. Everyone needs to show up, and the passing grade needs to go up. Speaker 5:â•…I have three children who are in our county school system. All of them are doing well in school. In fact, they make great grades and they have won several academic awards. Here’s my concern: My children show talent in music, in theater, in debate, and on the academic team. Once a month, the local newspaper has a tiny column with names of local students who have won an academic award or earned Eagle Scout or earned an academic scholarship. But the newspaper fills page after page with pictures and stories about children and teenagers who can hit home runs or put a basketball through a hoop. What message does that send? My children work harder than any athlete. My children and other students with similar academic talents accomplish results that—let’s be honest—matter more than points in a football game. So my question is, what can be done to acknowledge the students who study hard, learn much, and behave well? Speaker 6:â•…I’m an elementary-school teacher. I’ve been an elementaryschool teacher for twenty-nine years. I’ll retire after one more year of teaching. I get asked very often about what changes I’ve seen during my three decades of teaching. The truth is, way too much and not very 130


much. I’ll explain. I’ve seen way too much change in what teachers are told to do differently each year. Use one reading approach this year. Use a different reading approach next year. Why? The state says we have to. The federal government had grant money to pay for a new reading program. The truth is, the people who create those programs are not teachers. The people who come up with those grants are working in some office far away and have no idea about how to teach. Quit changing everything every year. â•…â•…On the other hand, some things never change. Students still work hard for teachers who care about them. Students still cooperate for teachers who take a real interest in them. Students still respond to learning activities that are creative and interesting and meaningful. Students still hate stupid busywork tasks. So my advice is that the government should take a few years off from passing new laws about schools. Those laws just complicate everything. Not to brag, but I know more about teaching based on my twenty-nine years in the classroom than any lawmaker will ever know. Who do those lawmakers listen to? They never asked me for my opinion, so that’s why I’m here today. Speaker 7:â•…My topic is homework. From what I can tell, students need more homework. I pick my son up some days at his high school. Most of the students I see are carrying no books with them when they leave school. Don’t they have any homework? My son tells me has heard some students claim that they never do homework. How do they pass any classes? Apparently there are all kinds of second-chance programs so students who usually do nothing can finally do a little bit of work, earn a D grade, and pass. I’m concerned that students who want to learn and who expect to do homework are surrounded by students who just come to school to eat breakfast, eat lunch, and visit with friends. Can’t these students who disrupt the schools be assigned to an alternative program, so regular schools can actually be schools? Speaker 8:â•…I don’t understand why people at schools dress the way they do. I have grandchildren in elementary school, middle school, and high school. I visit their classes one or two times each year. The students are dressed for a party. The teachers and other adults are all dressed for a casual weekend. The way people dress has an impact on the way people work and act. If you dress for play, you play. If you dress for work, you work. I also don’t understand why the high school my grandson attends has so many students out in the halls all the time. I visit a class and then I walk around some. I see five, ten, or more students talking in the halls, 131

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using their telephones, skipping class. Don’t we have enough adults at the schools to make sure that all of the students are in their classes? Speaker 9:â•…My question is about the school calendar. I don’t see why the school year is so short or why schools take so many days off. How many five-day work weeks do schools have during the year? They take a lot of Fridays off and Mondays off. They take almost every possible holiday. They take two weeks in the winter, one week in the spring, and then all summer. No other part of our society uses a schedule like that. How can a school be productive if it is on, off, on, off? â•…â•…And something else that impacts school time: why do we let highschool students have part-time jobs that become almost full-time jobs? Are they students, or are they laborers? I’ve heard teachers say that every year they see more high-school students arrive late to school and then sleep in classes because their part-time jobs the night before kept them up so late. â•…â•… Speaking of being up late, I know of students in my neighborhood who are up all hours of the night. I guess they are on the computer or playing video games. Sometimes they are outside. Do their families have no control over them? Does the idea of going to bed at a reasonable time on a school night just not apply anymore? Speaker 10:â•… Thank you for this opportunity to be heard. My concern is the juvenile justice system. I have twin daughters in high school. They are good students. They tell me what they hear about some high-school students who get arrested on a Friday or Saturday night. They get put in jail, and then their families get them out in a few hours. Then on Monday morning, these students who were just in jail are sitting in a class where my children are sitting. How does that make any sense? Were the school officials told about the arrest? “Innocent until proven guilty” does not have to mean “back in the same school until proven guilty.” Then if they are actually tried in court and found guilty, they get some tiny punishment and the judge orders them back to school. The judge should order them to jail or to juvenile detention school. â•…â•…A sixteen-year-old who steals a car is a thief—not a juvenile thief, but a thief. Don’t kid yourself into thinking that the sixteen-year-old just made a bad choice or is underprivileged because his family cannot afford a car for him. Don’t ask the school to be the place where he serves his punishment. If he stole a car, lock him up. Why should students, teachers, and principals be put at risk of losing their health and safety because the juvenile justice system is too weak to deal with a sixteen-year-old criminal? 132


Quit asking schools to do absolutely everything. Schools are for education, not for doing the work the juvenile justice system refuses to do. Speaker 11:â•…I am very pleased with the education my fifth-grader and my ninth-grader are each getting in our public school system. I would like to thank their teachers for the wonderful work they do. Now, here’s my comment: There is nothing wrong with this meeting. There is much to discuss tonight about education. But let’s be honest: the comments we make tonight will not amount to anything. The people who play politics will do what they intend to do. The lawmakers have their ideas and agendas. The lobbyists and interest groups put pressure on lawmakers that none of us can match. When was the last time that any of you who are here today listening to us actually spent a full day in a school? My guess is you already know what you plan to do, and this public event right now is just political cover so you can say you got public input. I’m sure you disagree with me, but until I see any of you spend a full day in a school, I will not be convinced that you really care what the common people think. Speaker 12:â•…I’m a teacher. I’ve been a teacher for twenty-six years. I’m good at it. I work hard at it. No disrespect intended, but I doubt that any of you from the state could do my job. And it’s probably true that I could not do your job in the state department of education or in the legislature. The difference is that you keep telling me how to do my job. I never have told you how to do your job, but it’s time I did. I think I can save you a lot of time and a lot of money. I’ve watched for years as you made decisions and passed laws. That takes a lot of time, and your laws always end up costing too much money. So I would suggest that for the next two years, you do not pass any new laws about education. You know what would happen if you did pass laws in the next two years to make changes in schools? Why, in two more years you would pass more laws changing the laws you just passed a year or two before. â•…â•… You might wonder what would happen in our schools if the state lawmakers took two years and passed no new laws about schools. That’s easy: all of us who work in schools could fully concentrate on our students, instead of wasting time obeying some new and unnecessary law you made up for who knows what reasons. Here’s an example of what teachers can do, and of what laws cannot do. Please listen closely, and you’ll hear what really matters in schools. â•…â•…I gave a test recently to my U.S. history classes. I had every reason to expect good results. Our class discussions on the 1960s and 1970s had 133

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been lively, intellectual, and productive. We read some original materials from those decades. We saw newsmagazines and newspapers my family had kept. We listened to a record of a political speech—Kennedy’s inaugural address. We saw very short videos about Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. I really expected great test results, but that did not happen. Across the classes, scores on the test were lower than I’d expected and below the usual good or great results on tests. â•…â•… So, I had to figure this out. I’m their teacher. They are my students. No education bureaucrat or politician has any law that can solve this problem for me. I analyzed the test. I noticed which questions were missed most often. I was still certain that the students knew more than the test indicated they knew. I returned the tests the next day. We discussed any questions from the test that were still unclear. We discussed the topics of the most commonly missed questions. I gave them part 2 of the test, which I had prepared so they could show themselves and me how much they knew. We were not going to the 1980s until we’d mastered the 1960s and the 1970s. Success. The results on the unscheduled but necessary part 2 of the test were as great as I had expected originally. â•…â•… That’s not all. At the end of the twenty questions on part 2 of the test I’d left two spaces for them to tell me more things that they knew, but that I had not asked about. They wrote details, specifics, ideas, insights, and more. They had listened. They had thought. They had learned. Their grades improved. We could share a victory that we had created together. You can’t put that type of classroom togetherness into a law. Teachers and students create that partnership together. I listen to my students. They told me a lot through both of those tests. The best way to improve schools is not with more laws or more anything the state government does. It’s creating the opportunities for teachers to really teach, so we keep up with what our students need instead of having to keep up with all of the paperwork and changes that the government for some reason thinks it needs. Thank you for listening. Moderator:â•…We appreciate all of the comments from everyone who signed up to speak. There are many more people here who have not spoken, so this is your turn. Just form a line at the same microphone that everyone else has used, please. Yes, sir, please begin. Speaker 13:â•…My concern is that things at schools just are not fair. A new school in our county opened last year, and it is a perfect building. Most of the other schools are old or at least have some outdated equipment. So here’s my idea: When a new school is built, all of the other 134


schools in the county have to be updated at the same time, so it’s fair to every student and to everyone who works in the schools. Speaker 14:â•…I have always heard people ask, “Why can’t every teacher be a great teacher?” I hear people run for governor or some other office, and they promise to be sure to put a great teacher in every classroom. Life never works like that. Some governors get voted out of office. Some businesses make money, and others go broke. What is it about teaching that makes politicians think they can magically make every classroom have a great teacher? â•…â•…I’d suggest another plan: You ask the people at any school who the best teachers are there, and people will tell you. Have those best teachers help the teachers who need to improve. â•…â•… That’s another concern. Friends of mine who teach tell me that they get observed by the principal two times each year, for maybe one hour each time. Is that any way to treat an employee? What conclusion can two hours of observation lead to? Whatever it is, it is pretty superficial. So I suggest that the best teachers in each school be given some time to work with teachers who need help. I’d also suggest that principals spend more time observing teachers in the classrooms. Speaker 15:â•…I’m really interested in having fewer extracurricular activities—or maybe having less time put into those activities is my real point. Those high-school football players practice from July to November. Basketball players go from October to March. Other sports go just as long. Some teams I’ve heard of practice for an hour early in the morning before school and then again after school. Aren’t there any limits on this? Why do our coaches get to spend more time per day with a student than any of the teachers get to spend with the students in class each day? â•…â•…I know that sports and marching band and clubs that take trips are enjoyable and can motivate students, but should all of those activities be given unlimited time? I know a really frustrated teacher who says that her classes get interrupted all the time with announcements, students leaving school early, and students going on field trips. She wants to know if sports practices are ever interrupted the same way her classes are, but she knows the answer. Why do we put such a high priority on all of those activities, but we don’t give the same support to the classes that students take? We send the message to students that reading the new playbook for football is more important than reading the classic Shakespeare play for English class. That’s just not right. 135

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Speaker 16:â•…It looks like I’m the last person in line, so I’ll be quick. My son and my daughter are both in high school. They have yet to be challenged. They could easily have finished middle school in two years. It was a waste of their time to make them sit through three years of those middle-school classes that were nothing more than a slight extension of elementary school. My wife and I gave them a lot of academic work at home to make up for that simplistic middle-school curriculum. â•…â•… High school keeps them occupied, but rarely challenged, so we arranged for them to sit in on some night classes at a private college. They love the college classes. So my request is that we add more challenging classes in high school and let each student move through high school at his or her own speed, rather than making them all conform to the same four-year pace. My children could finish every high-school requirement and more in three years. Why make them delay college? Moderator:â•… Thank you to everyone who has been here tonight. You are welcome to stay and talk individually with the state legislators and with the state education officials. A transcript of all comments made tonight will be posted on the state department of education website, along with the video and audio of tonight’s session. Thanks for being here, and travel home safely.

The state education officials and the state legislators did speak with many people who attended the meeting. Some people had preferred that, so their comments would not become part of the official record of the meeting; thus, they talked informally. When everyone was ready to leave, one state education official was speaking to a state legislator. Their comments are worth noting. Official:â•…Well, sir, what did you think of the input we heard tonight? Legislator:â•…It was not what I expected. When the legislature talks about education, we discuss budgets and taxes and the latest trends in education reform that some other state is using. These people tonight never once mentioned the school topics we talk about in the legislature. Don’t they keep up with the topics in the news? Moderator:â•…I wondered about that. Maybe they deal with matters that are close to home. Almost everything they mentioned could be done by the local people in their schools. Maybe they don’t know everything the state does for their schools. 136


Legislator:â•…We heard more about what they think the state does to their schools than what the state does for their schools. Maybe the typical citizen just is just not listening enough to all of the debates throughout the state government. Well, tell me how the next regional meeting goes. I’ll be interested to know if the people at that meeting are better informed.

The people at the first regional meeting were thoroughly informed about what mattered most to them and about what they thought could work best in their schools. The legislator who thought that the citizens needed to listen to the state government more needs to invert that conclusion and realize that the state government would benefit by listening more to the citizens. The second regional meeting was held in the theater at a high school. The theater had a capacity of four hundred people, and for this meeting it was about half full. There were eight state education officials, including the assistant commissioner for curriculum, instruction, and testing. There were seven state legislators, including the chairman of the House Education and Culture Committee and the vice-chairman of the Senate Education and Economic Development Committee. Two people who were expected to run for governor in the next election were there. Also attending was the member of the U.S. House of Representatives whose district was similar to the region of this meeting. That U.S. representative was accompanied by an official from the U.S. Department of Education, whose job title was Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Education for Innovation, Reform, and Intergovernmental Affairs. All of those guests were introduced by name and by job title, except the potential candidates for governor, who were not introduced but who spoke to all the attendees as they arrived. Moderator:â•…Welcome to everyone. Thank you so much for being here tonight. Our topic is education, and the ideas spoken tonight will come from the citizens who are in attendance. This is the second of three regional meetings that are being held across our state. A transcript, plus audio and video, of the first regional meeting is already posted on the website of the state department of education. Similar postings will follow this meeting and the third regional meeting. Fifteen people have signed up to speak tonight, and they all have their numbers. In addition, 137

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the list of speakers, in sequence, is on the screen, thanks to some quick computer work by Max Owens, a senior at this high school. If other people would like to speak after those fifteen speakers, that will be fine. Let’s see . . . Janet Ridge, you are our first speaker. Speaker 1:â•…I really appreciate the opportunity to talk to state legislators and the people from the education office. Somebody like me would never get to do this usually, so this means a lot. I think our schools do a really good job. It’s not easy to keep all of those students under control, but the teachers and principals I know really work hard. My children like school. Oh, sure, they complain sometimes, but they like school. But there is one thing I have to ask about. â•…â•…My son is in high school, and my daughter is in middle school. They tell me about all the fancy tests they have to take. I don’t mean the regular tests their teachers give every week or so. I mean those maximum-security tests, where for three or four days in a row they lock down the school and test like crazy. Then I see some story in the newspaper about test scores—but who knows what all of those numbers mean? My point is that too much time is spent on all of that testing. Plus, the teachers I talk to say the fancy test results don’t tell them that much. It takes months to get the test scores back. What good does an old test score do? So I’d suggest that we limit or just get rid of those tests. It would save time, money, and a lot of aggravation. Thank you for listening. Speaker 2:â•…My comment is about attendance at school. I own two stores that are each close to a high school. I see students walking past my stores every day. I know they are skipping school. I used to call the school and tell them, but even when someone from the school came to check on the students who were skipping, it just started up again in a day or two with other students. As a taxpayer and as a business owner, I’m really concerned about how our tax money is used, and I’m concerned about safety. Those students who skip school put themselves and other people at risk if they are not where they are supposed to be. Speaker 3:â•…I don’t know much about the tests or about skipping, but I’m sure those are important topics that need some attention. Here’s what I know about: My daughter is in the ninth grade. She is doing well in her first year of high school. I visit her school once a week to volunteer in the office and help teachers. There are two things I need you to hear about. First, the language in the hallways is awful. Why do so many 138


students think they have to use such crude language? Does anyone ever deal with that? â•…â•… The other thing is that teachers have to do everything for themselves. I offer to make copies of materials for teachers. They act like I’m giving them money. They are so appreciative that someone is actually helping them with one of the time-consuming tasks that they have to do for themselves. Our teachers have better uses for their time than standing at a copying machine and hoping the machine does not fall apart. Can’t schools set up some help for that? Why does the principal have a secretary or two, but the teachers have to do everything themselves? Speaker 4:â•…I would like to talk about elementary school. My children are in the second grade and the fourth grade. Whatever happened to good old-fashioned spelling tests on every Friday? We have a spelling test at our house every Saturday because I want my children to know how to spell. Some people say that the computer will do the spelling for you, but I disagree. Knowing how to spell is part of being educated. â•…â•…And one other thing: My children are not being taught at school about how to write in script, or cursive, as I think it is called now. All they learn is how to print. Well, we practice real writing at our home on Saturdays after our spelling test. My children got excited because they could write in a way that a lot of the older students in fifth grade or middle school couldn’t. So call me old-fashioned, but let’s not forget the basics like spelling and what my teachers called penmanship. Speaker 5:â•… Thanks for having this meeting. I hope we can do this often. I have a question for the people who work in that big education office in the state capital. What do you do all day? I know what teachers do. I retired from teaching after thirty-one years. I know what school principals do. I was a fill-in principal at two different schools for one year each soon after I retired, when they needed someone to be there for one year. But I never did figure out what the people in the big education office did. You don’t have any papers to grade. You don’t have any students or teachers to work with directly. You don’t supervise events at schools. So I’m really curious. What exactly happens up there in that big education office? Speaker 6:â•…I’m surprised that nobody has mentioned this yet, so I’ll see what you think. What happens to teachers who do great work? What happens to teachers who do average work? What happens to teachers who do bad work? From what I can tell, the answer for all three is pretty much the same. They all come back to teach again the next year. 139

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â•…â•…In the business I own, people who do great work win rewards and earn bonuses. The people who do bad work are told what to improve and are shown exactly how to improve. Either they improve a lot, or they do not keep their jobs. I’m as concerned about the great teachers who deserve some bonus or recognition as I am about the teachers who just do enough to not get fired. Is anything being done about all of this? Maybe this is something that the people in the big education office can work on. Speaker 7:â•… Good evening. I graduated from high school last year, so school is a very recent memory for me. I’m in college now. Here’s my idea: We need to make school a lot harder, a whole lot harder. I usually made B grades in school, but college is something else. College is hard. I have to do twice as much work in college to make a C, and more than that to make a B. I’d suggest that every student in every school should have to read all the time. That’s what we have to do in college. The professor assigns a book for us to read for the next week. A book. In high school it was a chapter, and in middle school it was a few pages. So make school a lot harder, or college freshmen will flunk out of college. Speaker 8:â•… Hi. I work for a newspaper, but I’m not here tonight as a reporter. I’m here to speak up for students who make good grades in school, never get in trouble, and do the right thing day after day. We just don’t hear much about those students. It’s partly our fault. We don’t ask for good news as much as we ask about problems or as much as we cover athletic events. So my hope is that schools will tell us more of the good news. The people in the community would like to hear the good news. And those great students deserve the recognition. Speaker 9:â•…My question is about taxes. It seems to me that our taxes go up a lot. But then I read that schools always need more money. All kinds of school groups are out there raising money. Where does all the tax money go? Do we have a good accounting system set up so we make sure that the money gets spent on education and not on anything that is unnecessary? I’ve attended some meetings of our local school board. Their agenda always has a list of trips that teachers or principals or central-office people take. Why do they take all of these trips? Those trips cost a lot of money. I’d say stay here, go to work, skip the trip, and put the travel money to better use like buying books or computers. Speaker 10:â•…I am so glad that we are all here tonight. It’s important to listen to each other. I’ve been very interested in what everyone has said. There is one topic I would like to include. Bus drivers, cafeteria work140


ers, custodians, secretaries, and people in our schools with jobs like that sometimes get to know students very well. Some student might cause problems in classes, but he never causes a problem for his bus driver. What does that bus driver know that other people need to know? The cafeteria workers get to know some students and maybe could help tutor a student or work with students to help them learn job skills in case the student works in a food-service job now or later. â•…â•…I just think that we have some human resources in our schools that are underutilized. Some people might not be interested in working as mentors, but other people would love to do that. For that matter, how about you state legislators and education experts coming into schools and actually working directly with students? That could do more good than raising taxes! Speaker 11:â•…I haven’t heard people say much about sports. The only thing that keeps my children working hard at school is the fact that they want to play sports. The school doesn’t require much, so I require a lot more. I think a student can play sports at our high school if he or she passes every class. That’s it. Just make a grade of D in every class, and you can play sports. â•…â•…My son and daughter know our family rule is no grades of C or lower. I check their grades every day with the computer. If an average in any class is a C or lower, you miss practices and games until the grades are all back to B or better. We have very few grade problems because they know what will happen. So I would like to suggest that the schools require more of students who play sports. Maybe begin by saying no grade average of D or F at any time in any class or you are ineligible until all grades are C or better. The students need some real standards to live by. Thank you for listening to me. Speaker 12:â•…I have a different topic to discuss. I admit that I never liked school very much. I was just so eager to graduate from high school and get a job that I never really concentrated on school. I did graduate, but I had some friends who dropped out when they were sixteen or seventeen years old. Some of them got jobs and made a fair living. Others never did amount to much. So I always hear that education is more important now than ever, but we still let students drop out of high school. Why is that? â•…â•…Can’t we at least make sure that every student has a high-school diploma? Aren’t there some vocational-school options for students who would do better with that? Aren’t there some different types of schools 141

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for the students who can’t do well in regular school? I just can’t see letting teenagers go through life without a high-school education. What chance for any success will they have? Speaker 13:â•…I could talk about schools for hours. I was a teacher and a principal and then a school-district superintendent. I did all of that for thirty-eight years. That never happens these days. The retirement plan lets people retire after thirty years or so. Lots of people retire as soon as they are allowed to. I hate to see that happen because we lose all of that experience and knowledge. So my suggestion is that we create some incentives for people to keep teaching. Maybe we let people teach parttime. Two people could split one teaching job, for example. The people who retire take so much wisdom with them. Let’s find ways to hold on to that wisdom. Speaker 14:â•…Moving to a younger age group, my concern is that so many college students never consider becoming teachers. They don’t see any money in teaching. In other jobs they could buy shares of stock in companies they worked for, or an employer might fund a retirement plan. Not if you are a teacher. So how are we going to replace all of the experienced teachers who retire with capable young people who are eager to become teachers? â•…â•… Here’s my idea: Create partnerships between colleges and schools so college students are doing volunteer work in schools. If you are a freshman or sophomore in college and you have some great school-volunteer-work experiences, you could start to see yourself as a teacher. â•…â•… Then let’s figure out how to keep new teachers from giving up on teaching after four or five years. I know a lot of people who were twentysix or twenty-seven years old and decided that teaching just was not what they expected, so it was better to quit with enough time to build another career than to keep coming back to teach each year and never feeling like it could work. Maybe the experienced or retired teachers could help the newer teachers. Speaker 15:â•…I really appreciate how smart everyone who has spoken is. These are intelligent people with very sophisticated ideas. Me? Well, I prefer to be blunt. There is something really wrong with our schools. Really wrong. My son graduated from high school last year. He can barely read. How did he graduate? Who lied about his grades? How many other students get passed along like this? 142


â•…â•…I should have been more involved. I should have noticed. He never failed a year. He never got suspended for causing problems. He got some friends to do his homework for him. He cheated on tests. I know all of that now. I’m making him go to night school and really earn another diploma. How can something like this happen? How can a student get a diploma that he can barely read? Moderator:â•…We have had fifteen very interesting comments from people who signed up to speak. Now, for anyone else who arrived late or who had not signed up to speak, this is your time. Just come right up to the microphone, please, and line up. Speaker 16:â•…I’m glad that the state leaders are here. I’m glad that the person from the federal Department of Education is here. I just want to ask all of you officials to really think about what you’ve heard tonight. Nobody asked for Congress to solve our problems. Nobody asked for the governor to solve our problems. We expressed our ideas, and we explained our concerns. If left alone, we can figure out the solutions. There are simple ways to solve problems. â•…â•… So, please don’t get all involved in our schools. The local people can take care of the schools just fine. When you state and federal people get involved, and I know that you mean well, things just get more complicated. Truth is, you could probably learn a lot from us. Come back and spend a few days in our schools, then let’s talk, but please don’t leave here and go back to your offices and make things complicated for all of us here in the communities where the schools are. Speaker 17:â•… Looks like I’m the last person in line to talk. Here’s my thought: What can we do to get more use out of school buildings? They are empty half of the days of every year. Can’t the building, or parts of it, be used for some community purpose? If we got double duty out of our school buildings, maybe some money could be saved. Could schools have community-college evening programs, for example, or community recreational programs, or activities for families? I just hate to see us pay $20 million or more for a building that is only used part of the time. Moderator:â•… Thanks very much to everyone who participated tonight, and to everyone else who attended. The transcript, plus the audio and video, will be on the Internet soon. Our guests will stay after we adjourn, so feel free to visit personally. Thanks to everyone, and travel safely. 143

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As the crowd lingered to speak, it was obvious that the guests had not heard what they expected to hear. The federal-government visitor was heard saying to a state legislator, “Are those really the major concerns of people here? That is not what the federal government is working on. That’s probably not what you are working on in the legislature.” The state legislator replied, “Well, we hear comments like that, but we have budgets and policies to deal with. The citizens are sincere and they care, but their concerns can be limited. The state has to deal with big issues, and you deal with big issues. We’d never get much done if we concentrated on the little issues mentioned tonight. It’s the whole education system that needs to be reformed, not just these tiny parts of the system.” The little issues matter. The little issues, the interpersonal issues that happen in classrooms, are the pulse of education. Paraphrasing former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Tip O’Neill, who said that “all politics is local,” we can say about schools that “all education is local.” The essential locality of education is the classroom—not the state government, and certainly not the federal government. Let us imagine the third regional conference designed to get input from citizens. The reader will write the comments of the moderator and of the speakers this time. What are people thinking? What are people concerned about? What matters most to these people about education? What do they think works best or needs to work better? Please think and write, but use other paper if this book does not belong to you. Moderator: Speaker 1: Speaker 2: Speaker 3: Speaker 4: Speaker 5: Speaker 6: Speaker 7: Speaker 8: Speaker 9: Speaker 10: Speaker 11: Speaker 12: 144


Speaker 13: Speaker 14: Speaker 15: The regional meetings were filled with genuine, authentic, sincere comments, ideas, questions, and concerns. The topics that people discussed were, for the most part, not what presidents, governors, or social crusaders discuss when they present their lofty political agendas for school re-form. The participants at these regional events spoke of practical, realistic, day-to-day concerns that related to the actual experiences of students and teachers working moment to moment in the real world of schools. State education officials, state legislators, and the federal education official concluded that the comments they’d heard were not about the topics that state or federal authorities consider as they deal with education from the higher levels of the political power hierarchy. Were the comments out of touch with the education hierarchy in the state capital or the nation’s capital? Or are the political power hierarchies in state capitals and the nation’s capital out of touch with the practical classroom realities of school? Do the students, educators, and parents serve the political hierarchy, or does the political hierarchy serve the students, educators, and parents? Consider the “achievement gap,” a term that implies that if educational results for one demographic group of students are not identical to the educational results for another demographic group of students, some unacceptable wrong has been imposed on the students in the group with a lower result. Presidents, governors, state and federal education officials, journalists, and social crusaders have expressed outrage at the existence of an achievement gap. Such voices call for sweeping re-form of education so achievement gaps are eliminated. Of course, those people rarely or never do the actual work in a classroom where academic achievement occurs. A teacher might see the issue of an achievement gap from a different perspective. The teacher does not grade the tests of each demographic group and assign a group average grade to each member of the group. The teacher grades each test individually. The teacher thinks of how each student did on the test individually. The teacher thinks of whether each student showed improvement versus that student’s prior results. The only real achievement gap that can be closed is each individual student’s gap between current results and what the student is capable of achieving. 145

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Closing the achievement gap of an individual student is possible. Closing the conceptual achievement gap as perceived by politicians is elusive, because its statistical basis is questionable and its impersonal target is vague. Tasha’s personal achievement gap between her current results and the results she is capable of can be closed. The achievement gap between two demographic groups does not identify what to do for any student. Teachers teach individual students, who become a classroom group through scheduling—not through merging into one statistical unit, and not through dividing into multiple demographic statistical subunits. What matters most? Learning. What works best? Great teaching that causes learning. State and federal education officials and political officials probably have good intentions, so what creates the reality gap that causes them to think of the political power hierarchy as the major force in education, while teachers think of classroom instruction as the major force in education? That reality gap is created by distance. If you are in a classroom all day, every day, there is no reality gap. If you are anywhere else, there is a reality gap. For people who seek to improve education but who are not where education happens—the classroom—listening closely and continuously to the people who do work in classrooms is essential. It is that continuous communication, especially listening, that can help everyone in the education adventure always concentrate all effort on what matters most and what works best. That does not mean teachers will always be 100 percent right. State and federal educational officials can provide ideas and suggestions. Truth emerges when ideas collide, so let the teachers’ ideas, concerns, problems, and issues collide with the studies, programs, proposals, and initiatives of state and federal education leaders. If those groups listen to each other and filter all decisions through the Extreme Principle, the results can surpass what teachers could accomplish alone or what the political authorities could autocratically mandate. Despite the unlimited potential of the Extreme Principle, there are problems today that must be confronted, resolved, and corrected. Tomorrow will bring new problems. Our attention now turns to the reality that despite the extreme capabilities of any principle, problems are a fact; however, to every problem there is an equal and opposite solution. One more item: There are voices saying “unfair.” What are these voices claiming is unfair? “The state and federal education officials and 146


political leaders have important, difficult duties. They are not trying to complicate things. They really are trying to help.” When someone is hungry, do you offer water? When someone is thirsty, do you offer food? What matters most to a hungry person? Food. What works best for a thirsty person? Water. Meetings, laws, policies, hearings, and debates about food do not feed the hungry. If meetings, laws, policies, hearings, and debates are ever needed, they will be much more productive and efficient if they are guided by the Extreme Principle. So the issue is not the classroom versus state and federal education officials and politicians. The issue is for everyone in the education arena to cooperatively concentrate on what matters most and what works best. If we move together in the same direction, we will reach our goals. If we move separately in various directions, we will miss every goal.

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imple, but not easy. The Extreme Principle is designed to avoid complexity, inefficiency, and unnecessary interference. The Extreme Principle simply involves an exclusive commitment to doing what matters most and what works best. Determining what matters most and what works best occurs through aggressive and continuous listening. It is all quite simple to explain and understand, but it is not effortlessly easy to implement. Before classes began one day in April 2010, a high-school junior noticed that I was writing some notes, and she politely asked, “Are those for your next book?” I answered yes, and she asked, “What’s the book about?” She was listening intently as I replied, “A simple way to solve problems.” Her next comment had an abundance of seventeen-year-old enthusiasm as she sincerely said, “I would read a book about a simple way to solve problems.” Her statement suggests that the problems she has encountered in life usually have not had a simple solution system, but that such a system is quite desirable. The Extreme Principle reveals that such a system is quite available. Many problems are complex. Some problems may seem to endure in an apparent evasion of solutions. Because many problems are not simple, a practical perspective that acknowledges that problems do occur and that some problems are quite complex is realistic. Consider a person who needs to lose twenty-five pounds and another person who needs to lose fifty pounds. From metabolism to life149

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style, there will be individual differences between these two people. Is losing fifty pounds twice as complicated as losing twenty-five pounds? For both people it will be true that burning more calories than are consumed will result in weight loss. That reality is a simple fact and a simple calculation. The problem is not complex—the problem is the blunt fact of being overweight. The solution is not complex—burn more calories than you consume. Getting advice is not difficult—listen to fitness experts and to diet/nutrition experts. The challenge will be to do what must be done. What matters most? Losing the weight. What works best? Burning more calories than you consume. The challenge is the minute-to-minute implementation. What prevents progress? To every solution there can apparently be an equal and opposite obstacle. That obstacle for the person seeking to lose weight might be the habit of eating too much, the habit of avoiding exercise, the excuse that “I could never lose weight,” or an idea that “it’s just not worth the effort. I’d rather enjoy the junk I eat because I work hard, and that is my reward.” If losing weight matters most, the actions to lose weight will be taken. What works best in losing weight is 100 percent known and is a simple calculation of calories burned versus calories consumed. The total commitment to what matters most is essential, or the companion commitment to doing what works best might get inadequate attention and limited effort. The chances of solving problems vastly increase when people have a total commitment to what matters most and what works best, rather than doing one and not the other or doing both incompletely. The principal of a high school could have 150 direct reports, more or less, depending on the size of the school. In a high school of 2,000 students and 110 teachers, plus custodians, cafeteria workers, secretaries, counselors, librarians, instructional assistants, and other staff members, 150 workers at the school could have questions, ideas, concerns, problems, or issues that could be reported directly to the principal or that could be resolved only with the principal’s eventual involvement. That same principal might have 5–10 percent of students causing 90 percent of the serious discipline incidents at the school. Some of those discipline matters must include the principal in the investigation and/or resolution of the incidents. 150


That same principal needs to visit classrooms; needs to attend school events; needs to respond to many e-mails; needs to attend meetings; needs to know as many students as possible; needs to participate in cafeteria supervision and bus supervision; needs to manage all personnel matters; needs to supervise the overall management of the building and campus; must respond to directives from his or her superior in the chain of command; would like to acknowledge good work done by students; and must assure compliance with all accounting procedures and other record-keeping requirements. How can anyone listen to all of the possible input associated with all of those 2,150 people at the high school and complete all duties associated with school administration, management, and leadership? How does the principal solve all of the problems that could be communicated by listening to those 2,150 people, plus school-district officials, parents/guardians, community members, and state or federal education authorities? To answer those questions, we will visit a high-school principal who is determined to lead by listening. The principal himself has made this statement on the school’s morning televised announcements: Good Monday morning. I hope that everyone has a great day at school today. You probably have a lot on your minds, and that’s why I’m inviting you to participate in conversations with me tomorrow before school, during lunch, or after school. Before school, we’ll meet in room 73 from 7:45 to 8:15. At lunch, I’ll be in the cafeteria, so just ask me to join you at your table, or come up to me and we’ll talk there. And after school, we’ll meet in the library from 3:30 to 4:00. Bring your ideas, your questions, your complaints, and your compliments, and let’s listen to each other. The goals are to solve problems and to create opportunities. Of course, you can talk with me whenever we see each other, but times like the ones tomorrow can give us a good chance to thoroughly communicate and listen to each other. Have a great day, Jefferson Central High School. Learn. Learn more. Keep learning.

Thomas Madison was hopeful that the invitation to meet with him would get a favorable response. What would be a measurement of success? If one percent of the people at school attended the Tuesday-morning listening session, would that indicate success? If one great idea was heard at the listening session, would that indicate success? If the listening session was merely the first step toward creating an atmosphere of continuous 151

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listening, would that indicate success? Mr. Madison did not have a precise quantitative measurement of success, but he knew that failure would be obvious if the listening session attracted no participants or very few participants. The actual result was not failure, but it also became apparent that listening is the first of many steps in the process of implementing the Extreme Principle. Mr. Madison became aware of why some people had questioned his plan to listen. “All you will hear is problem after problem and complaint after complaint,” cautioned one assistant principal. “People will show up and say something awful about the school or the people who work here or some rule we have, and then each one will expect you to do nothing but deal with his or her complaint. I know your intention is good. I just wonder if you are maybe giving the people who are never satisfied with anything a chance to dominate another meeting with their pessimism and poison.” Mr. Madison knew that the assistant principal’s seventeen years as an assistant principal had provided her with a very realistic perspective; however, Mr. Madison remained optimistic that when leaders listen, problems can be prevented or solved, and ideas get expressed that otherwise might never be heard by people who could help put good ideas into action. If listening had risks, not listening had more risks. Mr. Madison was ready to listen. At 7:45 a.m. on Tuesday, several people at Jefferson Central High School were ready to speak and be heard. Classroom 73 was Ms. Rhoney’s room, where juniors and seniors mastered all writing, speaking, and analysis skills related to English, speech and debate. Because her classroom was always a vibrant place where ideas were created, Ms. Rhoney was glad to provide a place for Mr. Madison’s gathering. Ms. Rhoney arrived at her usual 7:15 a.m., and by 7:40 three students were ready to meet with Mr. Madison, who arrived right at 7:45. Mr. Madison:â•… Hi. I’m Mr. Madison. I’m the principal. I’m sorry that I don’t know your names, so please tell me. Ms. Rhoney:â•…Mr. Madison, these three young scholars are speech and debate experts. They are in my speech and debate class. You are now meeting three of our school’s finest, Jason Richmond, Jared Danfield, and Susan Mitchell. Mr. Madison:â•…It’s my pleasure to meet you. Please tell me what’s on your minds. I’m here to listen. 152


Jason:â•…It’s the homework. There’s too much of it. I know the teachers have to assign homework, but so much of it is busywork. Why do thirty math problems when five would be enough? Some students have jobs or sports or other stuff, and there’s just no time for all of the homework. Jared:â•… Here’s my question: Why do we have to take all of those tests every year? It’s such a waste of time. We have some reading and math tests every year. I’ve asked teachers, and all they tell me is that the government requires the tests. Well, if the tests don’t do any good, can’t you tell the government to quit making us take the tests? Then we have a week of tests every April or May. That’s another waste. The questions on those tests are so dumb. Who writes that stuff? Do those tests really tell you anything? Does anything get done with those tests, or is it just something we have to do for no real reason? Susan:â•…I’m involved with the orchestra and the speech team, and I do some of the theater shows at school. We work so hard on all of that. Our orchestra concerts take forever to rehearse for. Speech tournaments are on Saturdays. We leave so early, like at six in the morning. We might get back late, like seven or eight at night. Then when we put on one of the shows in the theater, it takes months of work. I really like doing all of that stuff. I just wish we got some attention. I don’t play sports. I never have. The sports teams get all of the attention, but they don’t work more than we do. I don’t mean to be rude, but do you and the assistant principals ever come to orchestra concerts and theater presentations, like you go to football games or basketball games? Ms. Rhoney:â•…Mr. Madison, I told you these students did some sharp thinking. While you heard from them, several other students have joined us. That’s great. I don’t know everyone’s name, but please introduce yourself and speak up. Oh, good, two more teachers are here. Mr. Madison, you’ll hear plenty today. Mr. Madison:â•… That’s the idea. Susan, you are right. I should attend more of those other events. I’ll put the next orchestra concert on my schedule, and I’ll be sure to see at least one theater show this year. Jared, about those tests—well, the truth is that we do get a lot of useful information about each student and about the entire school. The counselors use the test results to work with individual students. The tests do take a lot of time. Maybe there is a way to do fewer tests. Maybe we could determine which tests really help and which ones are not as helpful. Every test has a reason, but maybe so many tests have been added year after 153

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year that the number now is higher than we expected. Jason, there’s not much I can tell you about homework except that each teacher decides for his or her classes. I’d suggest that you take a week and carefully monitor how you use your time. Is any time getting lost on video games, on too much computer social networking, or on other things like that which can take many hours a day if you are not careful? Now, who else has something today? Ms. Brown:â•…It’s so interesting to hear these ideas and questions. I’ve taught here for twelve years, and I don’t remember anything like this. Here’s my topic—well, topics. First, so many students miss so many classes. You check the attendance records, and it will shock you. Between students being sick, arriving late, leaving early, or going on some trip the school has approved, there is never a day when all of my students are in each class. They miss the instruction, and makeup work never really makes up for missing what we do in class. Then, for reasons I cannot understand, the school has these occasional fund-raising events or blood drives or club meetings during the schoolday, so we are letting students miss class. Mr. Madison, how can I teach my students 100 percent of what they need to learn if I see them only 90 percent of the schooldays? â•…â•…My other topic is, well, it’s how affectionate some of the students are in the hallways. Why do we have to tolerate their public displays of affection? Shouldn’t we require some self-control? How can a student go from passion in the hall between classes to brilliant schoolwork in the next class? Why should everyone else have to be in an environment where affection is allowed everywhere? No one teacher can stop this. The administrators will need to lead the way on this. Ms. Bristol:â•… Good morning to everyone. Here’s my idea, Mr. Madison: let’s reduce the duration of the sports seasons. Why is football from July to November? Why is basketball from October through March, plus all of the unofficial practices or workouts the rest of the year? Enough. Two or three months of football or of any sport is plenty. Let’s quit listening to the complaints of college coaches who think that the purpose of high schools is to prepare people for college sports. Sports are just one part of high school, but we seem to give sports all the time they need. We never interrupt a sports practice or game, but we sure do interrupt classes every day. Mr. Madison:â•… You would be amazed at how many phone calls I get from groups in the community that want to come put on programs at school during the instructional day. We say no to almost all of those. 154


Most of the events during the schoolday that take students out of class are activities that teachers organize. One teacher plans a field trip, and every other teacher who has the same students in class will not see those students on field-trip day. It’s a trade-off: one teacher gets a big event for his or her classes, but other teachers feel the impact. Maybe we need to discuss this at a faculty meeting. â•…â•…As for sports, I get call after call on that topic. The state highschool sports organization sets up the calendar and has authority over the length of seasons. The seasons are long and keep getting longer, but people get really agitated if their team has to give up one practice or one game. It’s logical to think that eight games would be enough for a football season, but the person who tries to reduce the season will never hear the end of the criticism. Each family has to decide how they will set priorities for their sons and daughters. I am concerned about the students who play a sport or two, have a part-time job, and just squeeze classes plus homework into the time that is left over. Maybe our school’s athletic director could discuss the sports schedules at a faculty meeting. Shawn:â•…Mr. Madison, I have a question. What’s with the computers at this school? They are so old and so slow. Could we get some new stuff like what all of us have at home or have in our pockets or use in our cars? Our teachers give us these huge textbooks to read. Nobody reads books except electronically. Everything my friends and I do is electronic. I think we would learn a lot more with more computers and technology stuff than what we usually have to do. I’d even help. I can fix any computer. I could even show teachers how to use the new machines that all of us use all the time. Can we do that, Mr. Madison? Mr. Madison:â•…Interesting idea. The students could teach the teachers about technology. What would you tell your teachers first? Shawn:â•… That’s easy. I’d tell them that books I read on a screen get read more than other books. Send me my reading homework electronically, and I’ll notice it. Tell me to read chapter 23 in the textbook, and that will never happen. Tasha:â•…I like computers, but, well, some books are meant to be books— you know, something you actually hold, where you turn pages. If we could have a choice, that would be neat. Shawn likes the computer screen. I like to actually turn the pages of a book. Let’s have both. Isn’t that how things really work? I mean, you can get books in any format you want—well, except at school, I guess. 155

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Mr. Madison:â•… There is a lot that technology can help us accomplish, but— Voice on PA:â•…Mr. Madison, are you in this classroom? Mr. Madison:â•… Yes. Voice on PA:â•… You are needed now in the bus-arrival area. Transportation just called about an incident on a bus. Mr. Madison:â•…I’m on my way. Now, Ms. Rhoney, can you get the names, please, of everyone who was here this morning? I want to thank everyone for being here. I’ll e-mail each of you individually with some additional responses to your questions and ideas. I hope we can continue meetings like this. I’ll make sure that from this point on, meetings like this do not get interrupted. Thanks again. Have a good day.

As Mr. Madison hurried through the crowded hallways toward the bus arrival area, he thought of the concern expressed about classes being interrupted. His listening meeting had been interrupted because of an urgent call to help solve a problem on a bus. There had to be a better way. The transportation office should be able to do more than just ask for help. Assistant principals or a school law-enforcement officer could deal with the bus problem. If Mr. Madison was going to listen to people, he had to reduce the interruptions that limit listening, but there are times when only the school’s principal can resolve a matter. How can listening be protected? When Mr. Madison arrived at the bus area he spoke with the bus driver, who explained that two students had been confrontational on the bus. Their loud argument led to threats and then to fighting. To complicate this, some other students used their cell phones to film the fight, and it could easily end up on the Internet. Another student had used her cell phone to call her mother about the fight, and that would mean phone calls to the school or families coming to the school to find out what happened. The two students who’d fought had been court involved already, but the court system had released them to their families and ordered the students to attend school. This fight could put them back in court. With the help of a school law-enforcement officer, Mr. Madison brought the two students to the office and put the two students in separate rooms. Mr. Madison had a secretary contact the parent or guardian of each student with a clear statement that they were needed at school now. A school law156


enforcement officer notified the juvenile-justice liaison of the incident and promised a full report within the limits of confidentiality. While waiting for the families to arrive, Mr. Madison had each student write a detailed account of what had happened on the bus and of anything else that related to this incident. Mr. Madison walked throughout the entire school, as he did each day at the start of first-period class. He went into a few classrooms, a computer lab, and the library. He listened to the interactions of teachers and students. He refused to let the fight on the bus control his day, shape his attitude, or define the school. Back in the office, Mr. Madison read the written statements of the two students. He also checked the computer records to learn about their grades and to see if there were other discipline problems in the past. He quickly checked with the school counselors who had worked with these students. The students were seventeen years old, were each at least one year behind in earning credits to graduate, had been suspended from high school several times for fighting, and were court involved. Mr. Madison was thinking that school just was not working for these students, and that they had shown no intention of working at school. The mother of one student and grandmother of the other student arrived at school. Mr. Madison, two school counselors, a school law-enforcement officer, the mother and her daughter, and the grandmother and her granddaughter met in one room all together. There would be some listening, but no excuses or blame or name-calling or vulgarity would be allowed. The results became quite obvious after Mr. Madison heard what everyone had to say. He summarized what he had heard. “Olivia and Rebecca, it is obvious that neither of you made any effort to prevent this fight. It is also obvious that you were completely unprepared for school today. You have no books, paper, pencil, homework, or anything else for any class. Your discipline records are long, and your grades are low. At age seventeen, you need so many credits to graduate that you would be nineteen or twenty years old at your high-school graduation. Your families agree that something else has to be done. Fighting means a ten-day suspension from school. Those ten days begin now, but those ten days will be served at the school district’s supervised-suspension facility. You report at seven each morning, and you stay until seven each evening. Your families have agreed to this based on my separate discussion with them when we stepped out of the room a few minutes ago. Our 157

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law-enforcement officers have reported your probation violations to the court. You will have a court hearing soon to deal with fighting at school that violated the terms of your probations. Any violation of your ten-day supervised suspension will be reported to the court. Also, I will recommend to our school superintendent and school board that you never return to this school, that instead you complete high school at the alternative school. If you actually do the work, the program at that school could enable you to graduate at age eighteen, but it will be one very demanding year or so. Your families will take you now to the supervised-suspension program at the school district’s central office. Promise yourselves and your families that you will make this plan work.” Mr. Madison had listened to Olivia, Rebecca, their families, their school counselors, and a law-enforcement officer, and he had read the records of the students’ academic work and discipline incidents. He made his decisions, informed everyone, and followed school-district policies in everything he did. It was time-consuming and it drained his mind, soul, and energy. It was part of his job. Now he would visit classrooms where the vast majority of people were doing what they were supposed to be doing; they also deserved Mr. Madison’s time, effort, and support. Mr. Madison visited ninth-grade English and tenth-grade English. He then stayed a long time in an eleventh-grade English class to listen as groups of students debated whether Henry David Thoreau or Ralph Waldo Emerson had more impact on the transcendentalist writing and thinking efforts. What Mr. Madison heard from those students was a combination of insight, wisdom, curiosity, and knowledge. This was the complete opposite of what Mr. Madison had heard during the investigation and resolution of the fight earlier in the same day. How could one school have such polar extremes? How could one school provide every resource and experience needed by a student body that ranged from delinquents to scholars? Listening to the students analyze the ideas of Thoreau and Emerson gave Mr. Madison one possible answer. The issue is not Thoreau or Emerson. The intellectual adventure is to maximize what can be learned from Thoreau and Emerson. What a court-involved seventeen-year-old needs is different from what a seventeen-year-old who could be accepted by Ivy League universities needs. Listening to both and listening to people who know both can help a high-school principal determine what can be done to most effectively serve both. 158


Mr. Madison met later that day with all of the guidance counselors at his school. The first topic was how many more students at this school were in the category of “make low grades; have earned few credits toward graduation; cause frequent discipline problems; are court involved or are at risk of such misbehavior and illegal action that court involvement could occur; and have almost no possibility of completing enough classes to graduate from high school.” Each counselor knew of several students who were, to some degree, in this category. Mr. Madison and the counselors agreed that within one week they would meet again and review a complete list of all students who were in the category of “unlikely to graduate and likely to get in more disciplinary trouble”; however, the emphasis would be to individually identify a graduation-advantage plan for each student. Much attention would be given to answering these questions for each student: What matters most? What works best? The hope was that these students would finally realize and finally believe that graduating from high school was to their advantage. The counselors identified seventy-two sophomores and juniors who were, to be blunt, very unlikely to graduate from high school. The factors included low grades, few credits earned, inconsistent attendance at school, frequent discipline incidents, and being one or two years behind schedule. The six counselors each met with twelve of the seventy-two students and created individualized graduation-advantage plans. Each student’s questions, fears, complaints, excuses, lies, dreams, and strengths were explored. The graduation-advantage plan included every resource available at the school for sixty of the students. The other twelve students needed more alternatives than one comprehensive high school could provide. Those twelve students needed to transfer to the school district’s alternative high school. Mr. Madison was encouraged that by listening to students, listening to the school counselors, and listening to those debates in the eleventhgrade English classes, he had helped manage an effort that could result in seventy-two high-school graduates instead of seventy-two high-school dropouts. Would all seventy-two of the students complete their graduation-advantage plans? All seventy-two would have that opportunity. Mr. Madison promised himself that he would listen often to updated information about those seventy-two students. He would celebrate their achievements and find solutions when problems arose. For seventy-two 159

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teenagers, what mattered most was their high-school graduation—at least it mattered to Mr. Madison and the counselors. The students had each said that it mattered to them. Now if everyone did what worked best, the results truly could be seventy-two graduates. Mr. Madison began thinking about the scholars at his high school. Far too often he heard people say, “Oh, they are smart. They’ll be fine.” He knew that the high-achieving students needed guidance, challenges, expanded opportunities, and an occasional push. He met with the counselors to set up three meetings before first-period class on three days in the near future so students in tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades who had straight A grades in high school could voluntarily meet with Mr. Madison and the counselors to discuss what academic experiences at high school could be provided to enhance their learning results. The discussion with the eleventh-graders was especially fascinating to Mr. Madison because he had taught eleventh-grade classes earlier in his career. Only two of the seventeen students had any discipline incidents in their high-school years beyond being tardy to classes. Many of the seventeen students were involved in school service, community service, music, theater, clubs, and sports. Some of those seventeen students were officers in student organizations. Listening to their perspectives on school was more enlightening than any professional-development training that Thomas Madison could recall. In fact, almost all of the professionaldevelopment sessions, training, conferences, and presentations that Mr. Madison had endured during his career had been awful and were worthy only of being forgotten. The thoughts of these students were worth remembering forever. Interestingly, some of the comments made by the students who were very unlikely to graduate and some of the comments made by the straight-A students had similarities. Mr. Madison had heard students in both groups offer thoughts such as these. “School is pretty boring—well, classes are boring. It’s the same stuff. It’s just school.” “Some teachers care. Other teachers, well, they just show up. Actually, some of them don’t really show up that much. They are absent, or they just give us dumb stuff to do so we’ll be quiet while they do something else.” “By the time we are sixteen years old, school is just a routine. There’s nothing new. Staying for two more years is, you know, it’s just to put in 160


time. We aren’t really doing anything. Why not let us move on? Can we at least leave after lunch and go take a college class or work at a job?” “School is so old. Everything is out of date. It’s all books and old stuff. That’s not what our future is, so why make us do all of this old stuff?” “Some students get treated better than others. If the teachers and principals and counselors know you and like you, things work out for you.” “We like seeing our friends. The rest of it—well, some people do the work, and some people don’t. And school starts too early in the morning.” The juniors who had made straight As for two and a half years of high school were students whom Mr. Madison recognized by sight, but he knew few of their names. It seemed strange, actually wrong, that Mr. Madison knew the names of and had spent time with the twenty-five or so worstbehaved and academically worst-performing students in each grade level, yet he barely knew these eleventh-grade scholars. That had to change. The purity and sincerity of the comments made by the juniors were matched by the wisdom of their insights. Sure, nothing could be done about a few of their complaints—school could not start later in the morning so students could sleep in, and school could not be dismissed earlier so students could get to clubs, sports, or part-time jobs sooner. Still, listening to their comments revealed to Mr. Madison what these students thought mattered most about school and what these students thought worked best at school. A collection of their comments is below. Martin:â•…I really don’t mind having homework. I got used to it back in elementary school and middle school. What I really hate are the stupid homework assignments, the busywork that wastes my time. I’d rather have some work that is really difficult, but interesting, instead of the dumb stuff night after night that is busywork. Why do teachers give us busywork? Jennifer:â•…Can you do something about all of the stealing at school? I hear of problems every day. Cars get broken into. Lockers get broken into. Someone gets into your book bag and steals money or your calculator. Some of the students who steal don’t care about school, but I know some other students who steal just for the excitement or to be cool. It would help the rest of us feel safer if you could do something about all of the stealing. Anne:â•…I need some ideas for college, but all we do is some silly online college survey. What’s that supposed to tell us? Some ordinary list of 161

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questions is not going to end up with any, you know, real information I can use. Don’t we have some people here who can tell me what I need to know about college? I asked my school counselor one day, and she said she was too busy that day with some difficult situation. Well, do I have to cause problems to get some attention? I’d rather not get in trouble. I’d rather get into college, but I need some help. Matthew:â•… This school is too crowded. I’ve heard teachers say that the building holds seventeen hundred students, but we have two thousand students. Some of my classes are packed. No disrespect, Mr. Madison, but the offices seem to have plenty of room. The classrooms and the halls are packed. Lauren:â•… Here’s my question: All of us are smart, and we work hard. We never cause any trouble at school. What’s done for us? In a business if you do great work, you can earn a bonus on top of your salary. Well, if good grades are the salary we earn, where’s our bonus for everything we do for the school? Amanda:â•…I really like school. I see my friends, and most of my teachers are good. I’m in a few clubs, and I play on the soccer team. My concern is that every year I have one teacher who can’t teach. I know it’s none of my business, but, you know, I get one chance at high school. When I take a class and learn nothing, I feel cheated. Today my math teacher said we were so far ahead of her other pre-calculus class that today would be a free day. I used the time and did work for other classes. Still, shouldn’t my teacher have taught us? Who cares if we are ahead of her other classes? Why make us wait for them? By the way, if they are behind us they are really behind. We don’t move very far or very fast in that class. Michael:â•… Two things: I really wish there were some way that students who are not great athletes could do something with sports. I like soccer and baseball, but I could never make those teams. But a lot of the students on those teams make awful grades. Why give them the spots on the teams and have nothing for anyone else who likes sports, but is not a great athlete? One more thing: It always works out that I have three or four tests on the same day. Can’t the teachers spread that out, instead of putting everything on the same day? Meredith:â•…We need more time for lunch. This place is too big, and lunch takes so long. There’s never enough time. Can’t we change the schedule just a little? 162


Wesley:â•… There are some classes I would like to take, but my schedule is full with all of the college-prep classes I need. I like art. I like computers. I’d like to learn another language besides English and French, but my schedule is full. There must be some way to change the schedule so we can take some interesting classes whether they are the college-prep classes or not. Carol:â•…Why do the same people get to do everything? The same people do the morning announcements and are presidents of stuff and win the big awards. I’m not the top ranked in the class, but I’m a good student. Does anyone notice the sixteenth-ranked student? The athletes get so much attention. I’m smart and I never get in trouble, so I get nothing.

Mr. Madison thought he could work all day, every day, and not solve all of these problems. Then he had an idea. “OK, it is fascinating to hear your concerns and your points of view. I need to know something else. If I could take one action that mattered most to all of you, what would it be? Please discuss that while I step into the hall and see how everything is out there. I’d really appreciate it if you could give me one top priority that all of you agree on.” Mr. Madison eagerly returned and looked at the young scholars. They were ready with their answer. Michael spoke for the group. “We came up with two answers: make everything fair, and give us more choices instead of forcing everything on us.” Mr. Madison replied, “Very interesting ideas. Who figured out a way for a high school of two thousand students and way over one hundred adults to make everything fair and to give everyone more input?” Michael again spoke for the group. “Actually, that’s easy. Just ask Mr. Clay. He runs his classes that way. He’s a tough teacher, but he is fair and he listens to our ideas. Just get everyone to use Mr. Clay’s approach.” It was time for class. Mr. Madison concluded this meeting. “Thanks very much for your ideas. Please keep in touch with me. Whenever we see each other, let me know how school is going for you. Have a great day. We’ll plan to meet again in a month, but keep in touch often.” Mr. Madison knew that Mr. Clay was an outstanding teacher. It was time to learn more about Mr. Clay’s methods. Mr. Madison had to admit that he rarely visited Mr. Clay’s classroom because he never heard of problems in that classroom. Mr. Madison wondered if the most capable teachers had perspectives similar to the students who made the best 163

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grades—since they didn’t cause problems and they fulfilled their responsibilities, they rarely got noticed, while people who did cause problems and were irresponsible got noticed all the time. Would teachers agree that school needed to treat everyone with more fairness and include more input from everyone? Mr. Madison arranged to meet with Mr. Clay during Mr. Clay’s planning period. He got straight to the point. “Mr. Clay, I met recently with juniors who have made all A grades during high school. I listened closely to their ideas, concerns, and complaints about school. I asked for their highest priority. They said to make school fairer for every student and to include students more in the decisions or other choices that impact them. Then they told me that you are the expert in having a classroom like that. Things are fair, students are involved in decisions, and you give them choices. So, explain to me how you do all of that, please.” Mr. Clay smiled as he began answering the question. “If you are looking for some formula, it does not exist. If you are looking for a specific list of ten things to do to be fair and democratic, well, that does not exist. I know that principals like to find exact plans and programs to implement, but teaching is almost never that exact. We work with people more than we work with plans or programs. That’s the best advice I can offer. Teaching is about people, real people who usually respond eagerly when you pay attention to them, listen to them, involve them, try their suggestions, challenge them, encourage them, are fair with them, evenly enforce rules, provide rewards when possible, and take disciplinary action when necessary.” “Fascinating, Mr. Clay. The overall idea is really fascinating, but what exactly is done? At any given time or any day at school, what exactly are you doing?” Mr. Clay paused before answering. He intended to be polite, yet he needed to be quite clear. “Mr. Madison, the point is that great teaching is not an exact process of mixing precise ingredients according to a scientific recipe. Teaching is about people and learning. Teaching is not an assembly-line process. I know that every administrator in every school is supposed to be able to tell the school-district chain of command all of the details about the annual school-improvement plan. One year I was on our committee that wrote the school-improvement plan. It was sixty-seven pages of charts and graphs and programs and interventions, but it had almost no impact. Well, it did create a lot of monthly meetings to monitor 164


implementation; but did any student benefit in any way from that schoolimprovement plan? Did any teacher benefit from it? Did you? Or was it something the school district’s central office and the state government required so they could show the school board and the governor how busy everyone was reforming schools? Come on, Mr. Madison, you know what matters most. It’s not charts and meetings. It’s students and learning.” “But what do I tell my boss?” Mr. Madison asked. “I can’t just say we’re all about students and learning. She expects me to show all the plans and programs and new interventions.” “Well, Mr. Madison, if you can’t say that our school is all about students and learning, then something is really wrong.” Mr. Clay paused to let that sink in. Mr. Clay continued. “It’s not any one action or lesson or anything else. Sometimes it’s what you do in those moments when you really don’t have to do anything. It’s before first-period class, and the students are arriving. You can sit at your computer and do something, or you can talk with those students. You know that a student had some soccer games at a weekend tournament out of town, so you ask about those games. You know that a student has a part-time job at a restaurant, so you ask how business at the restaurant was this weekend. Then later, in class, there is some topic that comes up, and you can relate it to where the student went to play soccer, or you can relate it to the most important characteristics of a good employee at a restaurant.” Mr. Madison was puzzled. “You talk with students before first-period class. That’s all it takes? You ask them about soccer or about their jobs, and that’s all it takes? If we got every teacher to have conversations with their students about what they are interested in, then grades would go up and misbehaviors would go down?” Mr. Clay had given this a lot of thought, so he could answer the question easily. “No, not just with that; it takes so much more than that. It is all day, every day. It is talking to students as they leave each class and as they arrive for each class. It is going to the cafeteria during lunch and talking with the students. It is having early duty in the hallways and making the time count as you ask students if they are ready for class or you tell them how well they did in class yesterday. It is e-mailing or calling their parents or guardians when they do well in class, in addition to when they need to do better. It is, well, it is realizing that the students are real people.” 165

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Mr. Madison was quite impacted by that statement. “Tell me more. I know that the students are real people, but how does that relate to what we do at school?” “Well, when I taught middle school it was obvious that the students were very curious and very energetic. Some middle-school teachers tried to get their students to sit still, be quiet, and fill out worksheets. That rarely works. The teachers who got the best results applied the inherent curiosity and energy of the middle-school students. It’s similar with high-school students. They really need people to take them seriously and include them in making decisions. They need to be heard. They know that they will not get everything they ask for, but they really appreciate being heard or asked or listened to. The listening can build an atmosphere of commitment and partnership. It’s no different with adults. We like to be heard. We like for our ideas to be taken seriously, even when our requests are not accommodated. At least they are part of the process of decisions being made.” As a principal who had attended countless professional-development sessions about solving problems at schools, Mr. Madison had never attended a session where he was told that schools would improve if teachers listened to students or if administrators listened to teachers. He had attended many sessions about some new program or law or re-form that included meetings, paperwork, and bureaucratic processes. Was Mr. Clay serious about his method? Why had those students said that Mr. Clay was the teacher to talk to about getting great results from students? Mr. Madison asked about classes. “The students said your classes were great. What do you do in your classes?” That was so easy for Mr. Clay to answer. “Number one, I know what the students are supposed to learn. Two, I have ideas about what can get that learning to happen. Three, I listen, watch, think, innovate, and find the ways that work best each year with the students I am teaching now. No two students are identical. No two groups of students are identical. It’s really interesting to me to figure out what works best with each student and each class.” Mr. Madison had to ask about paperwork. “Teachers have papers to grade and computer work to do and meetings to attend and all the stuff you are required to keep up with. How do you keep that from getting in the way?” “The papers need to be graded well and returned within two days. I like grading papers. It’s a chance to provide individual instruction. The other tasks are time-consuming, but I get here an hour or so before first166


period class, and I stay two hours after the last-period class. Those tasks are not my favorite parts of teaching, but they just have to be done, so I do them as the price I pay to do what I really care about most, which is the actual teaching.” This conversation reminded Mr. Madison of a discussion he’d had years ago, before he became principal. A custodian spoke to him in the cafeteria. “You’re a good assistant principal. I’ve seen several and you’re the best. You don’t just stand here, you talk to the students. They know you care. When you get your own school, keep doing that. Don’t get stuck in the office and just sit at the computer. It’s the time you spend with people that makes the difference for your school. Offices and computers can wait. People need you right now.” Perhaps the administrative tasks of meetings, paperwork, computer work, central-office directives, and state-government bureaucratic procedures were controlling Mr. Madison. Couldn’t he get those tasks done, but spend most of his time during the school instructional day on people, with people, and for people? What mattered most and what worked best—paperwork and meetings, or learning, people, listening, and never letting anything become more important than learning and people? Perhaps it was time for Mr. Madison to remind himself about what mattered most and what worked best, so he could be the principal he’d promised himself he would be. Schools have problems. The process of solving those problems should not become a new problem. Complex, bureaucratic, impersonal processes are themselves problems due to their inefficiency and due to their nature. If the problem is that more sixteen-year-old high-school students are illiterate, the solution is not a complex, bureaucratic, impersonal literacytask-force report of 172 pages and zero impact on improving the reading ability of Anthony or Melinda. Ask Mr. Clay for a solution, and the answer he gives will do Anthony and Melinda much more good than a typical task-force report. Ask Anthony’s and Melinda’s current teachers and past teachers. Ask Anthony’s and Melinda’s families. Ask Anthony and Melinda. There’s a real task force that could actually complete the task forcefully: teachers who know the students, parents/guardians of the students, and the students. Are perfect results guaranteed? No. Will the results surpass the complex, bureaucratic, impersonal process? What do you think? 167

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Schools have problems. Schools also have many people working each day to directly, personally, and effectively solve problems. Effective school leadership includes listening to people who know the problems personally, are creating the solutions already, are able to help create more solutions, and who continually emphasize a relentless concentration on the commitment to what matters most and what works best. A complete dedication to what matters most and what works best can help solve problems. Listening helps make that happen. Do some problems defy the power of listening? A fifteen-year-old ninth-grader named Mark lives with his grandmother because his mother is in jail and his father has not been seen or heard from for twelve years. The student reads at a sixth-grade level. The student is court involved due to two shoplifting incidents. During the first month of ninth grade, the student was suspended from school twice, with one case of theft and one incident of fighting. The student has a grade of F in each class. The student is defiant and disruptive in most classes. This student has many problems. Much listening combined with much action will be needed to begin solving these problems. The educators at Mark’s school can take many actions, but Mark’s family and the court system must help. Some community agencies may need to be involved. There is no simple solution to the complex problems this student faces now or has endured for years, but the simple process of people listening to each other could be the starting point for creating a comprehensive plan to improve the education and the life of this student. When school-district officials, state-government officials, or federalgovernment officials make sophisticated statements about reforming education or setting world-class standards for schools, they do not include Mark in their thinking. They have not met Mark. They will never meet Mark. Yet they tell the educators who work with Mark what they are to accomplish and how they are to accomplish it. That is a mistake. People who make decisions must listen to people who will implement the decisions or the results are limited, the employees are frustrated, and unnecessary complications occur. Listening helps an organization change “we could have told you that would never work” to “the plan we discussed and agreed on is off to a great start.” Actions that are based on listening work better than actions that did not include preliminary listening. Not every comment that is listened to is 168


helpful, honest, or sincere. Listening does not guarantee a perfect solution, but no listening guarantees an imperfect solution. It would be unfortunate if people in leadership positions convinced themselves that listening to people of lower rank in the organization was a sign of weakness. Listening is a sign of enlightened awareness that no one person has complete knowledge. Listen. Listen more. Keep listening. Solving problems is not easy, but it is possible. Listening is a simple and essential part of the problemsolving process. When we listen to each other, we can mutually identify what matters most and what works best. That process builds mutual commitment to doing what matters most and what works best. The results that come from that process surpass what any impersonal, bureaucratic re-form of education can accomplish. We turn our attention now to additional application of the Extreme Principle, in school settings and beyond schools.

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J

ane Harper was an assistant principal at Jefferson Central High School. She had taught at another high school in the same school district for eleven years, and then for three years she’d been a middle-school assistant principal. She’d then had a job for one year at the school district’s central office, but being away from students had convinced her to get back into a school quickly. This was her first year as a high-school assistant principal, so she had a formal meeting with her principal, Thomas Madison, once each week in addition to their many discussions every day. At this week’s formal meeting, Ms. Harper had several questions, which had been developing as she had begun doing official observations in classrooms. “I’m disappointed with, and concerned about, the range of teaching effectiveness. The good teachers ask me how they can become great. The great teachers ask me how they can become perfect. The average teachers ask me if they did well enough to not get in trouble. The bad teachers never ask anything, but they make it obvious that they wish I would go away. What explains that range of effectiveness and that range of work ethic?” Thomas thought for a moment. “I wonder about that. Did some teachers have a better teacher-preparation program in college? Did some teachers learn more in graduate school? Do some teachers just have a natural connection with students? Does work ethic come from prior life experiences? Then, once people start teaching, what prevents anyone from learning more? There are great teachers right here who can tell or show anyone what works in their classrooms. We do all we can to require im171

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provement by the average and below-average teachers, but it could take several hours each day just working with those teachers to really address that problem. We rarely have that much time.” Jane was increasingly bothered by this. “How are we supposed to have a great school if we don’t have the time to develop a great teacher in every classroom? The bad teachers have the discipline problems. They send their disruptive students to the office. We spend our time dealing with those students, and that leaves little time to work with the teacher—who, if he or she taught better, would not have to send so many students, or any students, to the office. The good teachers rarely have discipline problems. This seems to be a losing battle.” Thomas had an idea. “You have told me of four teachers who concern you most. You have also said that you could work with each of those four. OK. Do that. Get in their classrooms. Work with them on lesson plans. Work with them on their students who cause the most problems. For the next two weeks, working with those four teachers is your top priority. What matters most for you in the next two weeks is beginning the process of turning around what is being done in those four classrooms. Create, with each of those teachers, the teaching activities that will get results. Visit their classes daily. Encourage them. Correct them. Help them. Will that work?” Jane was thrilled. “It has to work. These teachers can do the job, but for some reason it is not getting done now. We’ll figure out what can work in each of those classrooms. Thanks, Mr. Madison.” “You are welcome. I’ll take care of the discipline reports that come to you in the next two weeks whenever you need me to. You get those classrooms turned around. Nothing matters more than that.” After two weeks, the results were quite favorable in three of the four classrooms. Those three teachers were appreciative of the time, ideas, guidance, help, and involvement of Ms. Harper. More work would be needed, but these three teachers and their students were accomplishing more than ever. Ms. Harper began to think that what mattered most in her assistantprincipal duties was getting into classrooms. The fourth teacher was not as responsive to Ms. Harper’s help, but that did not change the importance of improving the unacceptable work done in that classroom. Ms. Harper would find a way. Thomas Madison and Jane Harper worked at a high school with some teachers who had won local and state awards as outstanding teach172


ers. Some other teachers at their school were equally deserving of similar awards. Jane continued to wonder why all teachers did not rise to the level of award-winning greatness. Yes, some awards were given to people who most diplomatically played political games, but Jane believed that most recognition given to award-winning teachers was earned. Those superior teachers were not keeping their methods to themselves as secrets. They knew what worked best in their classrooms, and they would be honored to share those insights with anyone who asked. Ms. Harper really wanted to believe that for people who worked in schools, what mattered most was for students to learn. She had to admit that there were some people with jobs at schools for whom paychecks and health insurance were what mattered most. Those people would not change what mattered most for Jane or for her school, but the attitude of those people did remind Jane that what worked best to get the desired job performance from each employee would vary from person to person. Jane’s school did not have an athletic director; rather, there was an activities director who had full-time teaching duties plus overall managerial responsibility for all extracurricular activities. Jane was the administrator to whom the activities director reported. Jane asked the activities director, Katie Bell, for advice. “Katie, when a coach or a club sponsor is just not getting the job done, what works best to fix that?” Katie had a good answer. “That problem does happen, but, to be honest, we more often have the opposite problem. A teacher will put in so much time on the sport she coaches or the club he sponsors that the time given to teaching suffers. Now, to answer your question, the most severe action is to have a different person do the job next year. These coaching and sponsoring positions are for one year only. People tend to think they own the positions and they are theirs forever. Not true. But it rarely comes to that. We select people carefully, making sure that the person chosen is capable and is eager. We monitor results. I go to sports practices and club events. The job is either being done well or it isn’t.” “I understand that,” Jane replied with some frustration. “What I don’t understand is why anyone would coach a sport or sponsor a club and be satisfied with ‘good enough,’ or even good, when great is possible. What really bothers me is teachers who do better work with the sports they coach or the clubs they sponsor than the classes they teach.” 173

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“I can help with that. When I started teaching, I was also the assistant coach of the girls’ soccer team. Then I became the soccer head coach, plus I sponsored two clubs. The extra money was great. The soccer team won a lot of games. The clubs had terrific activities. My teaching was OK, but not great. One of the students on the soccer team was in a class I taught. Something happened in class one day, and she said, ‘that would never be allowed in soccer.’ I had to wonder why my classroom was not as well managed as my soccer team. It was my fault. I fixed it fast. From that point on, I made sure that the standards I set for myself and my students in the classroom were higher than what I required in sports or clubs. Sports and clubs are exciting and enjoyable, but they are not what matters most. We have to be careful, or we could confuse the students about the real priorities for school and for their work at school.” “Thanks, Katie. Those are really good ideas. I appreciate your time and your perspective.” As Jane Harper left school that day, she had two obligations to complete before she would eventually get home. First, she had to stop at her bank. Second, she had a meeting at her church as part of a committee that was considering a major construction project that could cost $4 million. The bank manager, Celeste Taylor, was always friendly to Jane. In fact, Celeste was always friendly to everyone at the bank. “Jane, how are you? What can we help you with today?” Celeste asked as she paused in her walk from the bank’s safety-deposit-box area to her office. “Celeste, how are you? Oh, I just need to cash a check. But if you have a minute, I’d like your advice.” “Sure, Jane. Come into my office. What’s on your mind?” “Well, you run a great bank. I do all of my banking with your bank, and I usually come to this branch. All of the branch locations of your bank do the job well, but something is different here. You and everyone else just seem to try harder. I’m looking for ideas from you that I can use at school. I really want everyone at school to emphasize what matters most. It’s obvious that students and their learning are the top priority. At least it should be obvious. What can you tell me about how well your bank works that I could use at school?” “Great question, Jane. I think about questions like that all the time. For this bank location, I tell everyone that what matters most is doing more for each customer than the customer expects. We speak to people 174


when they walk in. We make sure that no customer has a long wait. We call customers if we ever notice anything unusual with their accounts. We tell people about new types of accounts that could be good for them. We know that money is important to our customers, but it’s not just the money. It’s the people. We are in the money business, but we’re really in the people-and-their-money business.” Jane had another question. “So what matters most is taking care of people. I understand that. What works best to get every employee to take great care of every customer?” Celeste knew that answer. “It’s not so difficult. It is not easy, but it can be done. We hire capable people. We constantly build the skills and the knowledge of our employees. We do reward great work. Our thought is that we get more of what we reward. Most employees want to succeed. We want all employees to succeed. Our bank president tells the manager of each branch to reward great work and to inform the president of each reward, so he can express his appreciation. It might be tickets to a movie or a sporting event or a concert. It might be a shirt with the bank name and the words ‘great worker’ on it. It might be a letter in your file to help build the case for a promotion. We make sure to notice and to acknowledge great work. Your teachers probably do that for students, don’t they?” “Some do. There is a lot of great work done at our school by students and by teachers. It’s so easy to get caught up in all of the problems that you forget to spend time on people who do what they are supposed to do. I’ll have to work harder on that.” Celeste had one more thought. “It’s not always working harder. You already work hard. It’s what our bank calls ‘compound work.’ It’s like compound interest. You know, put a thousand dollars in a savings account, and it earns interest. Now, keep the thousand dollars in the account, plus the interest, so you earn more interest on the original thousand dollars and on all interest. We work that way. Compound work means you set priorities based on how to best multiply your work. When I’m friendly to customers and they keep coming back, it multiplies. If they tell friends who then become our bank’s customers, it multiplies more. Whenever possible, I use my time to do compound work that has multiple benefits.” Jane had to get to her church meeting. “Celeste, as always you are so helpful. You gave me a lot of great ideas. I’ll find ways to do compound work at school. Thanks so much.” After cashing the check, Jane left the 175

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bank with her cash and with ideas. The time at the bank was already proving to be an example of compound work. Jane was very glad that she had asked for advice and that she had listened closely to the advice. The church committee meeting was attended by fourteen very sincere people who cared deeply about the church, and yet had very different ideas about the costs and the benefits of a $4 million construction project to renovate and expand the church building. The differences of opinion were genuine, respectful, and deep. From “do nothing” to “do a bigger project than the $4 million plan,” the fourteen people had fourteen different ideas. Jane asked herself, “What matters most? Is it the cost of the project, the square footage, the programs that can be provided with new facilities, or something else?” She decided to ask the question of everyone, and to have everyone write down their answers. The pause for silent thinking and writing was calming and productive. When the fourteen written answers were read aloud, there were two very clear priorities: avoid debt and modernize the building. It had been very helpful for everyone to think clearly and then listen to each other. The size of the building seemed much less important than updating the facility and getting the most out of the existing square footage. If any additional space was needed, it had to be provided with no debt. The committee now knew that what mattered most was to modernize the building without incurring any debt. What would work best to make this happen? An architect and an engineer, two church members on the committee, could offer some general concepts about modernizing the building. A public-relations expert on the committee had much experience with fund-raising efforts for universities, charities, and political campaigns. The committee was making progress by emphasizing what mattered most and by identifying what worked best. When Jane arrived at her home, she had some options. The exercise bicycle was one possibility. Catching up on housecleaning was another possibility. Calling her husband, who was out of town at a business conference, was essential. So, with her hands-free phone device, she talked to her husband while she rode the exercise bike. Would Celeste put this in the compound-work category? Jane did, because the time communicating with her husband was related to their devotion to each other, as they continuously strengthened their lifelong bond. Also, the exercise would help Jane melt away some tensions of the day and create fitness to be applied at 176


school tomorrow. At school, at a bank, at a church meeting, and at home, the Extreme Principle—what matters most and what works best—can be identified and applied. The reader is asked now to think of many parts of his or her life and to apply the Extreme Principle. The list below is provided to help start the thinking. What Matters Most

What Works Best

1.â•‡Family 2.â•‡ Job 3.â•‡Friends 4.â•‡ Health 5.â•‡ Volunteer Service 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. Read what you wrote. Think about what you wrote. Listen closely to what your words are telling you. What matters most? What works best? Those two questions are the essential components of the Extreme Principle. Listening to and implementing the answers to those questions can provide magnificent results that are extremely principled and extremely beneficial. 177

Epilogue

Teach for a Day

“I

had no idea. Absolutely no idea. It’s been seven years since I taught a class. I have to admit it is not what I remember.” “That was exhausting. It was nonstop. I taught middle school for twenty-three years, but this is not the same as back then. How did so much change in ten years? Or did I just forget what it took to be a good teacher?” “When did cell phones become such a problem? When I taught fifteen years ago, no students had cell phones. At the high school where I was substitute teaching today, every student seemed to have a cell phone. They know the rules. Phones are off and put away during school. Well, they see a substitute teacher and I guess that means it’s cell-phone time. I had to call the office twice to get an assistant principal to come deal with students and their cell phones. It’s never like this at Central Office.” “The teachers are so young, and the students are, too. I’m fifty-two, and it’s been eleven years since I taught or was a principal. I try to get into the schools often, but the central-office job keeps me at my desk most days. We have teachers who are thirty years younger than I am. The ninth-graders I taught today are thirty-eight years younger than I am. I really appreciate what the experienced teachers who can still relate to the students are doing.” “I think the teacher I was there for today had no idea she would be absent. There were no lesson plans except for the emergency materials. I used those and then created some more activities. I made it work, but for 179

Epilogue

a substitute teacher who had very little experience in education it would have been very difficult. No wonder some substitute teachers are very selective about where they work or whom they work for.” “All of the classes I taught today were working in the computer lab. We had a great lesson to follow, but the challenge was four or five students in each class who wasted time, who slept, who looked at websites that had nothing to do with our work, who talked, or who kept asking to leave. This generation likes computers. Why couldn’t those students take advantage of this technology and learn?” “I was impressed with the quality of the lesson plans and with the cooperation of most students. What concerned me was the hallways. When did vulgarity replace English as the official high-school language?” “All of my classes today had tests for me to supervise. I had to watch two classes constantly, or their eyes would roam to cheat. I can’t imagine how long it will take the teacher to grade those 129 tests, with two essay questions on each.” “I was in an elementary school today. I talked to the school counselor during lunch. I just wondered about the involvement of parents and guardians. She told me that the question now is parents, guardians, and grandparents. The number of students who, for various reasons, are being reared by their grandparents or by one grandparent is up. That is really difficult. It was not like that when I began my teaching career twentythree years ago.” “I went to the high-school library during lunch. There were thirty or so students in there working on school assignments. That impressed me. I asked one of them about it, and he said the cafeteria was too crowded, so he comes to the library and then eats the lunch he brings in his next class. I would never allow food in class, but maybe a crowded cafeteria is a problem that could really bother a student.” “The middle school where I substitute-taught today is a brand new building. They have everything teachers and students could dream of. The middle school I went to last month is ancient. That really is unfair—to give one group the newest of everything, while another group is decades behind.” “I never spent much time in a faculty workroom or faculty lounge when I was a teacher. There was too much complaining, and the gossip always bothered me. Of course, there were some useful conversations. 180

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Anyway, on the substitute-teaching days I make sure to visit with people in the faculty workroom. You hear what people really think.” “These days are amazing. I love being in the classroom with students. It’s a tough job, and it’s tougher each year. We ask teachers to do miracles. Still, teaching is the best work in our profession. Direct interaction with students is better than any office work. Sometimes I wish I could teach again, but I can’t afford it. The school administration pays more, and my family needs the money. But the classroom—that’s the best place in any school.” “I had a great discussion today with two teachers who asked, ‘Just what do the people at Central Office do all day?’ and ‘We take papers home to grade. Do you have work to take home each night?’ I’m sure they are convinced that they have more demands placed on them than I do, but they did seem to realize more about the paperwork that the state and federal governments mandate. Even if we comply with the information requests electronically, it is one time-consuming task after another. Both of the teachers said they would rather teach than do my job.” “The principal taught my classes yesterday. He left me a very positive note. We talked this morning, and he said I deserve a Nobel Peace Prize for the work I do with my second-period class. He said that several of those students are sent to the office repeatedly from other classes, but never from my class. He wants to know what I’m doing right. I told him that I make sure what we do in class connects with the real-life, wholesome interests of the students. I get them to commit to class because we apply what they are already committed to. If they love cars, they do the science of cars, not just the textbook science. The principal asked me to tell the entire faculty about this at our next meeting.” The awareness levels increased. Central-office workers and school administrators became more aware of the classroom reality. Teachers and their colleagues in school administration or central-office management became more aware of the challenges faced by everyone in the school district. A clearer image of what mattered most emerged. A more harmonious agreement on what worked best and what did not work also emerged. The Extreme Principle was guiding this school district toward a very targeted, relentless, concentrated commitment to what matters most and what works best. Shared experiences could energize a school and a school district more than any political, bureaucratic, imposed re-form of education could. 181

Epilogue

Listen to each other. Agree on what matters most. Agree on what works best. Listen to each other again and again. You will learn together. You will cause learning of, by, and for students. Doing that is extremely possible and extremely important. Doing anything less is extremely unacceptable because the Extreme Principle is available, costs no money, and gets results. Re-form of education does not work. Listening, so that what matters most is agreed on and what works best is done, does work. Reform education by doing what matters most and by doing what works best. The Extreme Principle provides real reform because it is real, rather than bureaucratic, contrived, compromised, mandated, or political. Get real. Get extreme. Get results. How? By listening. Why? So you do what matters most and so you do what works best.

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About the Author

Keen J. Babbage has twenty-five years of experience as a teacher and administrator in middle school, high school, college, and graduate school. He is the author of 911: The School Administrator’s Guide to Crisis Management (1996), Meetings for School-Based Decision Making (1997), HighImpact Teaching: Overcoming Student Apathy (1998), Extreme Teaching (2002), Extreme Learning (2004), Extreme Students (2005), Results-Driven Teaching: Teach So Well That Every Student Learns (2006), Extreme Economics (2007, 2009), What Only Teachers Know about Education (2008), and Extreme Writing (2010).

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The Extreme Principle: What Matters Most, What Works Best

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The Extreme Principle: What Matters Most, What Works Best

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Coping: The Psychology of What Works

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