We have said goodbye to summer and hello to fall and the hard work of leading a school is surfacing  again and becoming more apparent as the fresh “eyes” of summer break wanes, and the reality of the difficult task it is to educate every child, every day, is weighing on every educational leader's mind across America.


For the first time in 32 years, I am not feeling that emotional weight and stress, as I decided to retire last year, and search for what I like to call legacy work. For 50 years, I have been getting up to go to school in the morning and for the first time in my life, I am watching the school buses go by instead of riding one, greeting children off of one, or disciplining some kid on one. I wanted to share with the schoolbriefing learning community some tips on how to prepare yourself, your school, your successor, and your community for the transition, if you are considering opting for early retirement, semi-retirement or traditional retirement.


The Boy Scout motto always seems to apply to all parts of our life, “Be prepared!” If you are considering retirement the first thing to do, is be  prepared. Our state retirement system has an excellent online document that provides information about what you should be doing some two years out from your decision. Financial advisors and others have provided a ton of information about how to financially prepare for retirement. As servant leaders, those who have changed the lives of others on a daily basis, preparation for retirement is certainly financial, but for us more of a true mental and emotional preparation.


A friend when she found out that I was leaving the principalship gave me a book that provides retirement wisdom that you won't get from your financial advisor, How to retire Happy, Wild, and Free! by Ernie J. Zelinski. Zelinski suggests that retirement is the wrong word and that we should call it disengagement from a full-time career,  “self-actualization” or “self-realization” rather than “retirement”  What I like to think of as re-creating, re-purposing, re-living!


Zelinski focuses on the social/emotional side of the decision to retire and provides excellent thoughtful insight and maintains that there are four fundamentals for attaining personal fulfillment during retirement:

1. Finding who you truly are and being this person
   
   
2. Recreating your life through personal interests and creative pursuits, possibly through a new part-time career
   
   
3. Making optimum use of your extra leisure time
   
   
4. Maintaining physical, mental, and spiritual well-being.
   
   

Once you make the decision to retire, some important details have to be taken care of to ensure a smooth transition for your school community, school staff, your successor, and yourself. William Bridges in his book Transitions, tells us that it is not the change that is hard, in this case the retirement, but the transitions- how will those routines that we engage in be affected,? how do we perceive our worth?, how will our social situation change?, who we will become now?


When I made the personal decision to retire, I didn't find a lot of advice for leaders in how to bring others through the transition, but I learned some things to do and some things not to do that I hope will be helpful to those listeners who are considering retirement or as one of my Grandparent's at Grandparent’s Day told me “You are not retiring, you are just re-treading!”


One of the first things to care for is your school community. How will you announce your retirement to the greater school community, inform your superintendent, so he or she can inform the school board?  Be prepared for many comments from community members like “You are too young to retire!” What are you going to do now? It will never be the same!”


Our response is like it is with all situations that happen at school, we focus on our strengths and talk about the great teachers and staff, the wonderful leadership capacity that has been built and systems put in place to ensure a successful school in the first place.  Community members will want to know if you get to be involved in the interview process and participate in the selection(I was not, which I liked and just had to show the candidates around school and get a brief “feeling” about the candidates demeanor as they walked through the school and met kids and staff. )The bottom line is that you don't have to know what you are doing next, because you don't.  At church, a woman said to me, “You’re too young to retire!” And I told her that her husband did the same thing 15 years ago, he took a severance from a company that was bought out and opened his own very successful business and is still working today.” The idea of retirement for those not in the boomer generation is about putting people out to pasture and that your legacy is done. However, the movement with the boomer generation is one of finding out what is next, what will my encore work be? A great website called Encore.org provides good information and assists those choosing to disengage from a full-time career to “find passion, purpose, and a paycheck in the second-half of life.”


Obviously, one of the most important people to care for is your school staff or school family. These are people that you have hired, coached, lived with and breathed with and know just about everything about! You have led them through the death of loved ones, a beloved teacher, dealing with difficult students and parents, relationship difficulties with each other, budget cuts, higher class sizes, you name it and now they are looking to you with some jealousy and a feeling of being a traitor. How can a leader who has established a close culture and relationship with his or her school lead through this transition while still ensuring a successful learning environment for everyone? Well, the only answer I have is to demonstrate leadership. Like all situations you will display graciousness, continue to do “business as usual”, work hard to the end right along side everyone else. You must listen with understanding and allay concerns about the fear of the unknown. Mostly, you have to help those who are being “left behind” recognize their own leadership, the systems that are already established, and how they are going to ensure the mission and vision of the school continues with the new leader.


To begin addressing some of the worry and fears about my leaving,  I scheduled meetings with all staff members for a half-hour and asked them to think about, What is one thing that you value that we have built at our school and must remain? What is one thing that is right, but needs some work? What is an aspiration that has not been fulfilled? I gathered this information and shared it with my successor and shared it with my staff so they could hear all of the important things that we had done together and how they were valued by everyone. Collaborative planning, team decision-making, a collegial and accountable culture, being treated as a professional, providing confidence to become a better teacher-leader were some of the top hits. For some support staff, concerns were about where they would be placed next year? Would I be part of that decision? Teachers wondered about grade placement worries and concerns? This helped me focus on the fears that people had and it allowed everyone to stay in the moment and focus on their students and the learning. One teacher told me later, “We are okay, because you are okay.”


Successfully transitioning your successor into a building where you have led for almost 20 years is another area of major focus . We prepared an entrance plan together and I scheduled visits to our school on several occasions with meet and greet time with parents and students at night, day visits to school, with schedules that ensured she observed in all grade level classrooms, kids eating at lunch, playing at recess, participating in gym, art, music, and media center learning, entry and dismissal procedures. Some visits were more formal where I would escort her and others-  I just sent her off on her own to begin the building of relationships with children and staff members. I ensured that she had a campus tour and met the “important” central office staff and a tour of our community. These informal times to chat were invaluable to address her own thoughts and ideas and for me to begin my own grieving of leaving a place that I had poured my heart into.


I created a Google document called The ABC's of the principalship and every time I thought of something about the work of the principal I put it on the document-budget, professional learning community, fire drills, Grandparent's Day, etc. Then, at several meetings after school was out, we went through the list and she was able to take notes on each item leaving her with documented information about the many systems, activities, events, and essential management procedures already in place.  I provided a year book, a staff list and my talented technology teacher created a humorous video introducing all staff members that we showed at a full staff meeting to welcome her as our new leader.  Finally, I left information for her about the parameters regarding contacting me. I ensured that she knew that she could email and call anytime she had a question or wondered about how things were done before. I encouraged her to write an introduction plan that included meeting with staff before school started, outlining her expectations as a learner, not out to make big changes, but “learn along side everyone.”  I   prepared her the best I could for what she didn't know and would experience like every principal leader does when they take a new job.  I made a nameplate for her and put it up on the office wall and wrote her a personal letter welcoming her to the job.  


Finally, leading a school and dealing with the thought of leaving is exhausting and more emotionally draining as you are moving toward retirement. Remember Bridges in his book Transitions tells us that you have to “grieve your endings, before you can start new beginnings.” My best advice to care for yourself is to let people celebrate with you, relish every moment you are with kids, with staff members, being feted and honored at parties and gatherings. To be the leader that always lets everyone know that everything is going to be alright on the outside is hard when you are going through some very emotional dilemmas on the inside. It didn't truly emotionally hit me until I packed my office, put everything in my van, turned in my keys, and drove away from school for the last time. The tears came and I let them flow. This is a life changing event that leads one to now what? What is my purpose now? How will I feed my inner drive to be successful as a person after this body of work is over?


I learned quickly that what you need to do is to give yourself the whole summer to just relax. As one of my mentor's said, “Let the next stages of life reveal  to you.” Instead of my usual brief vacation in July, I could take a late vacation with my wife a week before school started, I began working on opening a consulting business and learning about mentoring and coaching beginning principals as part of my legacy work. Time to just be and think about how I was going to recreate my life. I watched Dewitt Jones excellent video “Celebrate What is Right with The world.” and remembered the strong line “Stay open to the possibilities.”


How is life today at the end of September my first fall out of retirement? Well, I am learning about this new season of life. I love not having to rush in the morning and be a slave to an alarm clock, I love not having to solve other people's problems, just my own, I found out that summer goes on forever, I wonder about why so many cars are driving around and why people are not working? I enjoy going to the post office during the week and not having to wait in line on Saturday! I am more aware and look at everything with “fresh eyes.” I find out that Steak and Shake has Happy Hourl, every day from 2 to 4 pm and am and that everything is half-off! I am more mindful and “present” for my family and friends, my blood pressure and stress level is down significantly and I am slowly building my consulting business and “staying open to the possibilities.” I am choosing new pursuits carefully, volunteer work and other interests. Be careful, set boundaries for yourself as others will want you to take on leadership roles at church, in your community, and even at home! My wife and I met to discuss and outline what the new rules at home would be-who cooks on what days, who does the laundry, who is responsible for the vacumming, what jobs will get done around the house. My spouse is still working in a full-time career while I am “enjoying” a part-time career. We are learning together about this new stage of life.


Zelinski in his book says that “Retirement is the time to live your life in the manner you have dreamed of living. It is the time to get in touch with your inner life. It is the time to reflect upon your values and discover what is important to you. Above all, it is the time when you have more time to devote to yourself, to do what you want to do.


If you are considering dis-engaging from your full time career as a building leader, I hope that I have provided some helpful suggestions. Now get back to work and hug a kid, enjoy the lightbulb of learning going off, celebrate with a new teacher who learned a new teaching strategy. I miss those moments most of all!

In the beginning of the school year, the building of a classroom learning community is one of the highest priorities for any teacher besides establishing clear procedures and routines with students. One of the best resources for learning how to build this community is found in the book Reaching All by Creating Tribes Learning Communities by Jeanne Gibbs.  Social Studies lessons for all of September should be solely devoted to the strategies and excellent methods found in this book. 

One of the essential parts of establishing a classroom learning community is holding Community Group time.  This is a time each morning and at the end of the day, when the classroom family meets to discuss goals for the day, issues that have arisen as a classroom community, areas that students could be supported, and of course celebrations!  Gibbs clearly outlines how to establish these meetings, the procedures necessary to develop protocols for holding students accountable and ideas of how to firmly establish Community Group as part of the classroom routine. 

I knew that I had firmly established a caring classroom community when one morning in one of my second grade classes, a student, during our Community Group time shared with us that her parents had announced the night before they were getting a divorce.  I was speechless and in shock that this little one would share such an intimate detail of her life.  I didn't need to do or say anything.  The children instantly rallied around her and had words of encouragement and empathy and questions that out of the mouth of young ones were appropriate, but not something I would have ever asked in front of a group.  As a classroom family, we showed that we cared for one another, we had learned empathy, and we could trust each other.   Community Group time let us know the emotional state of each classroom member each morning so we knew how to help, respond and tend to the emotional needs of each member.

As the principal of a large elementary with over 80 staff members, the ability for me to intimately know what each staff members’ emotional “story” carried into school each day was difficult.  I ensured on a daily basis that I had touched base with each person at least with an informal hi or hello or check-in.  Each night, I would review my school family member list to discover who I may have missed  to ensure the next day I made a personal contact.  Often these brief discussions would lead to revelations of celebration or concern.  I got the benefit of learning about the emotional “stories” of my staff, but it didn't allow for others in our school family to share in the successes and trials and tribulations that those who served the children were feeling.

In order to make this large community more intimate, at every staff meeting, I always took time for celebrations.  This was my version of a Community Group with adults, where school family members could share life celebrations, worries, student successes, etc.  Knowing the “stories” that people were carrying around inside made all of us more aware of each others struggles, helped us be more empathetic and caring and developed and nurtured a feeling of family with each other.  Yes, members shared the birth of grandbabies, weddings of kids, graduations, and student achievement in classrooms, but death experiences were shared, separations, and illnesses.  We intimately shared our life stories in order to support one another, love one another, nurture and care for one another.

This summer at the MEMSPA Summer Leadership Institute, Dr. Nancy Colflesh at a session on Developing Professional Learning Communities shared a protocol on Sharing Small Success Stories.  The protocol establishes opportunities to share small successes in a collaborative fashion in a public way, which encourages people to “Share Their Story!”  As a leader, you can frame this however you want by giving thinking topics and/or framing the conversation before hand.  Nancy gives outstanding follow up questions that focus the sharing on the learning and impact on the participant.  You can find the Sharing Small Success Stories Protocol at the end of this article.

How can you ensure that you are building a school learning community that cares for one another, shows empathy, is collaborative, and that allows for the emotional “story” that each person carries around to be shared and attended to? 

• Buy Gibbs book and model some of the classroom learning community strategies with your staff
• Ensure that you connect emotionally with your staff and find out each person's “story” as often as possible
• Ensure that you are showing empathy through understanding by listening and sharing your own story through your weekly memo or at staff meetings.
• Implement sharing stories through the use of the Success Stories protocol
• What other ideas have you implemented to build a strong school learning community?  Let me know, and I will share with other members.

Knowing each of our staff members personally and intimately allows us to support each member appropriately so in turn, they may ensure the academic achievement of students.

Tip of the week:

One of the fun ways to build community with each other as a school family is to establish personality strengths or types within the school culture.  You may have used right brain/left brain tests, Myers-Briggs type tests or finding out the colors of your staff.  All of these personality tests help us to learn more about each other, what we bring to school each day, how we are different, and how we can learn to work and play together even better.

One of my favorite personality activities is based on Dr. Gary Smalley's animal personality protocol Are you a Lion, Beaver, Otter, or Golden Retriever?  The test is simple to implement and the one included is based from his book Making Love Last Forever, Ch. 10:  Understanding Personality Types:  A Key to Lovability. 

 

Make copies of the attached test and personality information sheets for all staff members.  At a meeting, give them the inventory and have them fill it out according to the directions and score it.  Then have them determine which animal they are most like.  Many in the group may be Beaver-Retrievers or Otter-Lions, etc.  Have some fun with this and have the animal type personality's meet up with each other and/or have them stand up and show which personality trait they most fall into.  You will be surprised as many staff members will say, “Yeah, I knew you were an otter” or “You are definitely a beaver!”  You can take pictures of the different animal personality type groups and post them in the staff lounge, etc.

You will hear from those on staff for a long time about who their otter and beaver friends are!  Just for the record, I am definitely an Otter with some strong Lion and Golden Retriever.  Thank goodness, my assistant was a solid Beaver and could ensure that all of the t's were crossed and the i's dotted!  She kept me on task!  To this day, she refers to herself as my BFF(Beaver Friend Forever!).  Until next time, happy trails to you!

“Four years of public school teaching—and ten years as a principal—convinces me the nature of relationships among adults who inhabit a school has more to do with a school's quality and character, with the accomplishments of its pupils and the professionalism of its teachers than any other factor.”  --Roland Barth(2001)

 

Happy first day of school!  Ah, the enthusiasm, the excitement, the exhaustion!  One of our goals as principals is to maintain that first day of school feeling.  How do we keep the momentum, the joy, the excitement about saying goodbye to summer and hello to fall?  How do we keep kids running to us instead of running away from us? 

Think back when you were a classroom teacher.  What was the most important thing that you developed, nurtured, culled, and ensured was always at the top of your mind?  RELATIONSHIPS!  The building of a caring community of learners!  Before we could expect achievement of any type in the classroom, we had to ensure a nurturing, caring culture!  The same goes for our school!  No doubt your focus these first weeks will be learning children's names, hugging and high fiving, developing great kid relationships, but one of our biggest jobs is to develop and maintain an exemplary adult learning culture.

I stumbled upon our friend Roland Barth's quote the other day and it reminded me once again about the importance of developing staff school culture in order for a principal to ensure the smooth implementation of any new change initiatives, programs, and/or curriculum development.  How we as adults feel about our work, how we treat each other, how we care for one another, have to be tended to and nurtured to a high level.  A statement from one of my educational leadership books has stayed with me for well over twenty years, that the culture of the place had more to do with high student achievement than anything else.

One of the first things we can do as principals is to assess our current culture.  Christopher Wagner, in a December 2006 article in Principal Leadership, shared the School Culture Triage Survey as a tool that we could use to help us determine the pulse of our adult learning culture.  Your School Improvement team, or a small task force analyzes the information to set goals to affirm the good stuff you are doing building a caring learning culture, and what needs some attention.

The anonymous survey can be given paper and pencil, or could be turned into an electronic survey(a copy can be found doing a Google type search)  and given to your staff.  The survey measures the degree to which three distinct “culture behaviors” are present in a school:

• Professional collaboration-To what degree do teachers and staff act like a Professional Learning Community and meet and work together to solve organizational, instructional, or curricular issues?
• Affiliative and collegial relationships:  To what degree do teachers and staff like each other and work well together, support and nurture one another doing the hard work of educating students each and every day?
• Efficacy or self-determination:  To what degree do teachers and staff demonstrate a personal sense of passion and purpose for the work.

Wagner offers these important tips and suggestions when implementing the survey:

1. Distribute the survey to teachers and administrators only.(I chose to give the survey to all instructional staff.  I did administer the survey electronically and allowed for filtering of teacher, paraprofessional, instructional support staff, etc.)
2. Distribute surveys without the scoring page.  (We are educators:  we look ahead, and it skews the results every time!)
3. Ensure that everyone understands that this is an anonymous survey—no names.
4. Involve teachers (all staff) in the collection and tabulation of the surveys.
5. Share the results with the staff at the next faculty meeting.  During this meeting, many schools select one or two items for improvement.  They often select a task force to develop and implement an action plan. (I delegated this to our School Family Culture Team)
6. Administer the survey again as a follow-up in three or four months to monitor progress.

I have attached to this article a copy of the School Culture Triage Survey and the scoring tool you can copy and use with your staff.  Implementing a survey like this can be a scary proposition.  We don't want to admit that maybe we have a toxic culture in our school.  As leaders, we must demonstrate courage, invite feedback, and honestly evaluate and determine what next steps are necessary to strengthen and nurture a strong caring adult learning culture.  If we just give the survey and do nothing about it, then the relational trust that we are trying to build will erode. By inviting feedback, we demonstrate our willingness to improve and place the focus firmly on what is important; the adults in the building and how they care for each other and thus, care for the children.  Let me know how it works out!  I can cull and provide some great culture building activities and strategies that can strengthen and build each of the three triad areas.  Until we meet again, happy trails to you!

Tip of the Week:  We always steal great ideas from others right?  Well, this gem I stole from Todd Whitaker, the first time I heard him at a MEMSPA annual conference well over ten years ago.  You have to act now however!  What you are going to do is create a special Christmas or holiday card that you will send to each and every one of your staff members' parents, spouse, or significant other.  Here is what you need to do:

• Have your secretary or administrative assistant collect the names and addresses of all of your staff members' parents, or if deceased, spouse or significant other.  Have him or her share that it is confidential and a surprise.
• Have someone who is good at taking pictures (or yourself) take a cute picture of each staff member surrounded by kids that he or she works with.  Keep a checklist so you don't miss anyone!
• Turn this picture into a holiday type card.  There are several computer programs that can do this and you can copy and fold the card yourself at school or use one of the services provided by Walgreens, Snapfish, etc.
• On the front cover will be the cute picture of the staff member surrounded by kids with some type of winter holiday decoration (be mindful of staff member religious affiliations-keep it neutral) On the inside, write this message:

           

            Dear Gladys and Fred,

Just wanted you to know how your child (wife, husband, etc.) touches and changes the lives of children at our school each and every day.  Wishing you a wonderful holiday season.

            Your child’s (spouse's) principal,

            Derek Wheaton

PS Send these out the Thursday or so before the school holiday break so that they arrive while everyone is away recuperating and hear all about it at family gatherings.  Make sure you collect your secretaries information and that he or she gets one. (My secretary made sure that my mom and dad got one as well!)  Trust me, this one special card will be talked about for a long time around your building and you will hear from parents via cards, letters, and phone calls!