Storms Don’t Ask If You Are Ready: How Humility & Teamwork Can Turn Your Toughest Seasons into Your Proudest Growth
By: Michelle E. Simpson, 4K-12 Principal & Director of Curriculum and Instruction, South Shore School District
Every school leader has their story - the sink-or-swim moments when they are faced with a series of difficult challenges they never predicted or asked for. The moments when they have to decide if they are going to leave the profession, just survive, or somehow lead their team to strive for excellence despite the challenges. Challenges make for great stories in retrospect; yet in the midst of what can seem like a never-ending onslaught of them, it is easy to question if weathering the storm is worthwhile.
My district has and continues to face its share of storms. Some are small and easy to weather, while others make us question our choice of career. We have learned that in the world of educational leadership, the one thing that is certain is that storms will continue to come. As leaders, we will never have it all figured out. What IS possible is to build a culture and system that ensures student growth even in hard times. There is no magical formula that eliminates every challenge, but there are key structures that you can put in place to ensure that you have a collaborative culture focused on learning and student growth through your district’s toughest seasons.
Build Your Team
We have all worked in systems with amazing educators who have had a powerful impact on students. Many of us have also worked with staff whose negativity and adult-centered mindset have hindered both the students’ learning and the school’s culture. As leaders, one of the most powerful and important factors in our control is building the right team. This includes inviting the right people to join and investing in the development of those who are already on the team. It also means that we support individuals in recognizing when to leave when it is evident they are no longer the right fit. Hiring for student-centeredness, positive energy, and a humble, growth-oriented mindset changes the game. This attitude and desire for excellence must be present at all levels of the organization, from the Board of Education, to the superintendent and administrators, to the teachers and all support staff.
Collaborative Culture Focused on Learning
True staff collaboration is essential for student learning but is often easier to talk about than to put into practice. As a leader of a small school, I have experienced firsthand the challenges of establishing a structure in which collaborative teams thrive. The natural propensity among educators in a small, rural school, where there is often only one teacher per grade level or content area, is to work in congenial silos. That said, the most powerful move we have made as a district was establishing effective collaborative teams. This cannot be done overnight. We intentionally took the time to put structures in place that we knew would be necessary for success. Once the groundwork was laid and we made the leap into collaborative teams, we held to that commitment even when it was clunky. We made mistakes. We reflected. We made adjustments and refined our process. Three years later, collaborative teams play a vital role in our students’ learning, despite the enduring challenges we may face.
Regardless of your school's size and the challenges you face, impactful collaborative teams are possible. When you know something is essential for student learning, you reach a point where you just have to jump in, commit the time and energy to making it happen, and pledge to continually reflect and improve. A system that produces results for kids is worth it.
A Focus on Staff Learning
Our best results for students occur when collaborative staff learning builds our collective capacity. Most educators have experienced the conference effect: a single member or small group of staff attends a conference and is excited about what they learned, bringing that back to the school only to have it fizzle out in the struggle to build that same level of excitement among the rest of the staff. This often results in discarded initiatives. Fortunately, professional development does not need to be complicated to be effective. We see the biggest growth in student achievement when our staff, as a team, builds and applies their collective learning around focused instructional practices aligned with our unified student achievement goals.
Secure Accountability
A culture of accountability is about more than holding people to excellence. There is a hidden power in results. When data and evidence show teachers that what they are doing is making a difference, that is when the magic starts to happen. After working hard for an outcome, they become fueled by the success. This energy breathes life into the next steps.
Compassionate Leadership
We have the opportunity to choose how we lead, and compassion is often not the easy choice. The job of an educational leader is hard. There are times when it feels as though the entire job is navigating one heavy challenge after another. These challenges would be so much easier if it were not for the human aspect. Compassionate leadership does not mean lowered expectations; rather, it is the constant balance of holding ourselves and those we work with to high standards that lead to student results while empathetically providing the support that keeps those high standards sustainable.
When you have a strong team with the right mindset working within a system grounded in collaboration, some of your proudest growth can take place in the midst of your hardest challenges.
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