How to Apologize

One of the mistakes we are prone to make when challenged by parents, staff, or board members is to become defensive.  This is an unfortunate tendency of fallen humans dating back to the Garden of Eden.  Our sinful pride and our fragile self-images propel us to make excuses, to explain away, or to protect ourselves. 

While it is right to defend ourselves against false accusations and misinformation, too often we become defensive rather than listening to what may be valid criticism of ourselves or of our schools.  Young teachers and administrators are particularly prone to make the mistake of being defensive, which inevitably damages their credibility.

When wrong—simply admit it, correct the problem, and move on.  A major U.S. company recently made a very big mistake with its customers.  Rather than ignoring the mistake or attempting to explain it away, the CEO made an unequivocal public apology:

This is an apology for the way we previously handled …  Our ’solution’ to the problem was stupid, thoughtless and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.

How refreshing!  This is an apology that customers appreciate and that reinforces loyalty.  It is also professional, honest, and mature.

When you make a mistake in your leadership or the school has failed in living up to its high principles and mission—admit it.  In biblical language—confess and repent.  You’ll be surprised what doing so will do for you, your leadership, and your school!

The Charters are Coming!

How to Position Our Schools for Long-Term Success Despite Prolonged High Unemployment and New Competition

Dr. Barrett Mosbacker, PublisherOver the last year or so  200 Christian schools have closed their doors.  Many who have not closed have lost students and laid off staff.  More will close this year.  Although a few Christian schools are thriving, most are not.

This may not be a short term problem.   There are at least three long-term challenges facing the Christian school movement:

1) Prolonged high unemployment

2) Federal funding for more charter schools and distance learning programs

3) New research that seems to show that distance learning can be as or more effective than traditional instruction

Prolonged High Unemployment

In a recent Wall Street Journal article (August 25, 2009), Deborah Solomon warns:

The administration, in its mid-year budget review, painted a picture of a nation that … is in for a prolonged period of economic weakness, joblessness and unsustainable government spending …

The administration now foresees unemployment hitting 10% at some point over the next year and a half, with the jobless rate averaging 9.3% in 2009 and 9.8% in 2010 … "We do predict unemployment will reach 10% for some months and some quarters," …

In a measure of the dire state the nation's fiscal picture, the level of U.S. public debt when measured as a percentage of economic output is projected to reach its highest levels since World War II. The administration is projecting that public debt will hit 66.3% of gross domestic product in 2010, more than any other time since the 1940s, when it peaked at more than 121% of GDP.

Funding for Charter Schools and Distance Learning

In an article published by eSchool News, the authors report that:

… stimulus could spur more virtual charter schools 'Race to the Top' program favors states that encourage charter schools -- including those that offer online instruction …

As states compete for more than $4 billion in federal "Race to the Top" stimulus grants, Education Secretary Arne Duncan has made it clear that states willing to embrace charter schools and other favored innovations will get preference. That, in turn, could prompt a rise in the number of virtual charter schools and other charters that open across the country …

Duncan recently wrote in an opinion piece, declaring that states with limitations on charter school will decrease their odds of getting Race to the Top grants …

At the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools Conference this summer, Duncan called the charter movement "one of the most profound changes in American education--bringing new options to underserved communities and introducing competition and innovation into the education system." …

Todd Ziebarth, vice president of policy for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, thinks Duncan will want to reward states that are strong in all the elements, forcing states like Washington back to the table on charters …

Virtual charter schools are growing in popularity across the country … Indiana is opening its first statewide online charter school this year, and five organizations have filed petitions with Georgia's Charter School Commission to open virtual charter schools in the state, hoping to capitalize on the popularity of the state's sole online charter school, the Georgia Virtual Academy …The academy has nearly 4,500 students enrolled in just two years of operation and a growing waiting list …

Duncan has been putting states on notice for months that he wants them to embrace charter schools, and that their failure to do so could mean they lose out on federal money …

Tennessee lawmakers passed a bill expanding charter schools in the state after hearing Tennessee could lose out on the money if they kept blocking an expansion of charter schools.

Illinois lawmakers decided in July to allow 60 more charter schools to answer President Obama's challenge after a campaign in that state by the state network of charter schools.

Research Appears to Support Effectiveness of Distance Learning Programs, Adding Credibility

An article in the New York Times reports that a recent 93-page report on online education, conducted by SRI International for the Department of Education, has a starchy academic title, but a most intriguing conclusion:

“On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.” …

The analysis for the Department of Education found that, on average, students doing some or all of the course online would rank in the 59th percentile in tested performance, compared with the average classroom student scoring in the 50th percentile. That is a modest but statistically meaningful difference.

“The study’s major significance lies in demonstrating that online learning today is not just better than nothing — it actually tends to be better than conventional instruction,” said Barbara Means, the study’s lead author and an educational psychologist at SRI International.

This hardly means that we’ll be saying good-bye to classrooms. But the report does suggest that online education could be set to expand sharply over the next few years, as evidence mounts of its value.

What does this mean for our schools? 

It means that our schools are likely to be squeezed from two sides—an anemic economy with high unemployment (and potentially high inflation) and more vigorous competition from charter schools and distance learning options.

So what do we do?

I make no pretense of having all of the answers but I would like to suggest the following ideas.

Don’t Panic

Every challenge has a reciprocal opportunity.  Although poorly managed and relatively weak Christian schools may not survive, those with strong, creative, and decisive leadership will not only survive but thrive—provided they adapt to the changing educational landscape. 

Focus on Excellence and Value

Although this may seem to be counter-intuitive, being “affordable” is not the solution—being excellent and providing a high marginal value for parents is.  We must be able to answer two questions for the vast majority of our parents who, unfortunately, do not grasp or fully appreciate the value of a biblical worldview:

“Why should I spend $x for a Christian education when the charter school is free and offers an education characterized by high academic standards and traditional Judeo-Christian “values”?

Or,

“Why should I spend $x for a Christian education when I could home school my child and supplement his/her instruction with distance learning?

Those are fair questions and they must be answered in concrete terms.  Simply answering by recounting the benefits of teaching a biblical worldview will not be an adequate answer for many parents. 

Do not misunderstand—teaching our students to have the mind of Christ IS the central mission of our Christian schools.  But that mission is always within the academic context.  Christian education is an academic enterprise with an unapologetic and energetic focus on providing students a Christ honoring world-class and globally aware education.

Whether we like it or not, most of our parents don’t understand the mission of developing a biblical worldview.  And if they don’t understand or appreciate it they will not make significant sacrifices for it, everything else being relatively equal.

In other words, for most of our parents, the development of a biblical worldview is an ethereal concept subservient to more “practical” considerations like education quality, admission to top colleges, the breadth and depth of extra-curricular programs, a safe and nurturing environment, etc.

Why don’t they understand and appreciate the goal of developing a biblical worldview? I believe there are at least three reasons:

1) Because they have never experienced its life changing impact.  Most of our parents were educated in public schools and public universities.  They don’t get it—at least at first.  They have no experiential context to draw upon.

2) Most of our pulpits do not explicitly endorse the value of a Christian education as an intellectual enterprise.  Christian education is not promoted as a theological or kingdom imperative.

3) The prevalence of theological ignorance and pietism.  As a rule, pietism minimizes the life of the mind while emphasizing the emotional/experiential component of the Christian life.

We must place emphasis on ensuring that we are delivering an excellent educational product and understand that doing so is intrinsic to providing a Christian education that honors Christ and prepares his disciples to serve him in this world.  We are NOT providing excellence in education AND a Christian education.  Christian education by definition must be excellent education. 

The good news is that many parents will learn to understand and appreciate the development of a Christian worldview once they experience it through the lives of their children.  Those who enroll for other reasons, e.g., academic quality, grow in their understanding and commitment to a Christian philosophy of education—but most do not start with that understanding or commitment. 

Excellence is in and of itself a holy goal when done for God’s glory.  It is also a practical means to encourage parents to enroll their children in our schools and to sacrifice to keep them enrolled.  Over time, these parents become strong advocates of Christian education for ALL of the right reasons.

Excellence Starts with an Excellent Faculty

I am not going to beat around the bush.  We must do whatever it takes, provided it is biblical, to ensure that every classroom is staffed with a highly competent Christian teacher.  We must dismiss, ethically and graciously, those who are unable or unwilling to learn and grow and who are merely adequate.  We must stop the educational malpractice of having students educated by mediocre teachers using “grace” as a pretext for an unwillingness to make hard decisions.  We do not have the right nor the liberty to make our students bear the educational cost of sitting under the instruction of ineffective or mediocre teachers.  Period.

I am absolutely convinced that the most important thing we can do to honor our Lord, serve our families, and strengthen our schools is to hire, train, and retain only excellent Christian teachers.  The same general principle holds true for every employee we hire or keep but quality instruction in each classroom must be our first priority.

Parents will make great sacrifices to have their children in a school where they know that their children will receive dynamic, creative, loving, and effective instruction year after year from mature Christian teachers.  They will—and I think rightly so—look for other educational options if this is not their experience.

For more information on hiring and training teachers, see my previous article “Rethinking Staff Development: “This Too Shall Pass.”

Distance Learning

Our schools need to consider how to leverage new technologies, particularly distance learning, to enhance and expand their curriculum and market.  For more information on this topic see my previous article “Can We Keep Up with the Competition?”

Think Ahead—Anticipate

It sounds like a cliché but we need to be less reactive and more proactive as leaders.  We need to look over the horizon in order to position our schools to take advantage of new opportunities and to meet new challenges. 

Case in point.  As I read the Wall Street Journal and witnessed the unraveling of the economy one of my first thoughts was, “How will this affect our parents and school?”  I quickly came to the conclusion that the rising unemployment rate would translate into lower retention rates, fewer new applications, and the increased aging of our accounts receivables.  With those thoughts in mind we quickly made the following decisions prior to the creation of the budget and prior to reenrollment deadlines:

1. We increased the total funds available for financial aid.
2. We froze all salaries.
3. We postponed a major capital campaign.
4. We intentionally “over-enrolled” our classes where possible—exceeding our stated enrollment caps.  We did so anticipating future attrition, which would bring the numbers back down to normal levels while simultaneously ensuring full enrollments.  Sure enough, that is precisely what happened.  In fact, in God’s providence, we have a record enrollment this year.
5. We continued to expand and develop our programs.  Cutting back on quality is NOT the right response.  We added a digital photography elective this year and an environmental studies course last year.  We are moving aggressively ahead with the development of our distance learning program and we are inviting world-class scholars and leaders to the campus.  We are also expanding our dual-enrollment program.
6. We continue to place top priority on the qualify of instruction in our classrooms as reflected in multi-year intensive training programs, teacher mentoring, and thorough evaluations.
7. We continue to invest in mapping the entire curriculum.
8. New technology is being added on both campuses including additional SMART boards for the elementary campus and server technologies that will enable us to move much closer to a “paperless” environment.
9. We are beginning to review the potential of digital textbooks as an effective and less costly option to standard printed textbooks.
10. We are expanding our efforts in Alumni development.
11. And  more…..

I share this information with you to illustrate that hard economic times is precisely the time to focus on quality and value while simultaneously working to reduce cost. Rather than reacting to the situation, we must plan aggressively for the future always asking, “how can we be more effective?”  “How can we provide greater value for our parents?”

Excellent Communication

We sometimes assume too much.  We assume that parents understand Christian education.  We assume that they know about our programs and the enhancements that we have made. 

The truth is that most parents are focused on their children and those things that immediately affect them. They are barely aware of “other” things going on in the school. 

It is important, however, that parents be aware of all school-related matters from the more dire, e.g., how the school is responding to the H1N1 virus to the new initiatives underway that will help their children.

It is an old advertising adage that it takes seven times for a message to “click”.  That means that we must communicate often using multiple venues and media.  Email, newsletters, meetings, Facebook, Twitter, one-on-one lunch meetings, the school’s website, etc……  Be creative but repeat repeat repeat! 

A Bias for Yes

I like to give my business to those who go out of their way to provide good customer service.  I am willing to pay more for good service.  So are most of our parents. 

The danger that we face is that we can create policies or respond in a way that demonstrates that “our convenience” “our policies” are more important than the needs and/or wishes of our paying customers—and they are customers! 

We strive to have a “Bias for Yes.”  “Yes we Can!” (Sorry, I couldn’t resist!)  “Yes we will.”  “Yes, we will seriously consider that.” 

Obviously we can’t always say yes.  I have had to turn down a number of requests from parents this year.  But I only do so when it is absolutely necessary to comply with important policies designed to enhance our service to parents/students or to protect them. 

We don’t say no because doing so is more convenient for us!

Concluding Remarks

The educational marketplace is more dynamic and competitive than it has ever been.  This new market reality combined with current economic difficulties create significant challenges and opportunities for our schools.  Although we cannot change the external environment we can and must adapt our internal practices and programs.  Adapting is the only way many of our schools will survive, let alone thrive.

How Not to Be Offended When Criticized

This is a follow-up article to “How To Deal Effectively with Conflict and Difficult People.”

Dr. Barrett Mosbacker, PublisherOne of my favorite movies is Star Wars.  It has a compelling story, good actors, and excellent special effects. 

My favorite character in Star Wars is not the hero Luke Skywalker nor the heroine Princess Leia Organa; my favorite is a short creature called Yoda.  At a little more than a foot tall, Yoda is a greenish brown fuzzy creature.  He is also a Jedi Master who teaches Luke Skywalker the Force. He's very wise, but talks seemingly backwards, verb first and noun last.  He teaches Luke to be a Jedi and drops pearls of wisdom such as "do or do not, there is no try."

Luke learns much from Master Yoda who teaches him the danger of the dark side of the Force.  One of my favorite scenes is when Yoda asks Luke, referring to the dark side, “Are you afraid?”

Luke:"I'm not afraid."
Yoda:"You will be!"

I’m not Yoda but my question to you is, “Have you ever been offended by the criticism of others?”  Have your decisions been questioned, your competence questioned, or your motives impugned? Have you ever been or felt shunned because of decisions that you have made as a teacher or administrator?  If not, in the words of the Jedi Master himself, “You will be!” 

Over the years I’ve encountered my share of criticism—both fair and unfair.  As we enter a new school year I thought this might be a good time to share some thoughts with you about how we can more effectively deal with this unpleasant reality of leadership.

Accept the Inevitable

Anyone with any level of responsibility is going to be criticized.  Consider Moses. 

Despite the fact that he gave up the riches and comforts of the King’s Court to suffer with his people and risked his own life to rescue them from slavery, as soon as the People of Israel were uncomfortable and inconvenienced, they turned on him:

And the people quarreled with Moses and said, "Would that we had perished when our brothers perished before the LORD! Why have you brought the assembly of the LORD into this wilderness, that we should die here, both we and our cattle?  And why have you made us come up out of Egypt to bring us to this evil place? It is no place for grain or figs or vines or pomegranates, and there is no water to drink.

Talking about being unappreciated and having your leadership questioned!  A typical “What have you done for me lately?” response!

The first step in dealing effectively with criticism is to recognize that, like conflict, criticism, is inevitable.  Criticism comes with the territory.  Needless to say, given the sensitive nature of the things we deal with and the hard truth that we are not perfect, we WILL be criticized.  There is no escape; one might as well accept it and learn how to deal with it graciously and effectively.

Trying to avoid criticism and conflict is like spitting in the wind—despite our best efforts it is going to hit us in the face!  Rather than diving for cover, pointing fingers at others, or feeling sorry for ourselves, it is wiser to accept the inevitability of criticism and to seek by God’s grace to use it for the good.

Grow Alligator Skin

Unless we have been personally offensive to someone, the criticism we receive is usually not directed to our persons.  The criticism, although voiced to us because of the role we fill, is not usually intended a personal attack.

Simply put, to lead effectively we must develop alligator skin.  The way we react to criticism can block communication and opportunities to work together. Hurt feelings and resentment do not foster a positive or cooperative environment. At its worst, such reactions can have long-lasting negative effects on our relationships and  are corrosive to the school’s culture.

Keep in mind that the criticism we are hearing is most often directed at a real or perceived deficiency in how something was handled—the lesson, the conversation, the disciplinary action, the policy, etc.  Learning to distinguish a personal attack from a critique, even if expressed in anger, goes a long way to making it easier to deal appropriately with it.  Learning not to let the criticism get under our skin, learning to control our emotions, learning to maintain a calm reasoned composure in the face of sharp criticism, and learning to preserve relationships and unity after the criticism will go a long way to fostering peace of mind and peace within our schools.  In short, love people but have a tough hide!

Look at the Beam in Our Eye

It’s ironic; we don’t like to be criticized  but we are quick to criticize the criticizer!  I believe there are three reasons why we respond poorly to criticism:

1) Human pride:  We don’t like to admit that we made a mistake or worse, that we sinned.  It is much easier to criticize those (usually behind their backs) who criticize us than to admit that we were wrong.

2) Insecurity:  Most of us have spent a life-time trying to prove ourselves worthy—in school, in athletics, in appearance, in career success, in possessions.  You name it—we constantly feel the pressure to “measure up.”  Criticism implies that we don’t and that can be threatening to our sense of self-worth.

3) Our sense of justice:  We naturally and appropriately react when we believe that the criticism is unjust. 

The antidote is to ask the Lord to grant us the grace to readily acknowledge our own sins and weaknesses, to deeply believe that our worth is anchored in the fact our intrinsic worth is grounded in God’s estimate of us, and to respond appropriately to injustice. 

In other words, a little (or a lot depending on the circumstances) humility goes a long way to softening the sting of criticism.  If I readily admit that I am not perfect, that I sin, that I am not always wise, that I don’t always make the right decisions, and that I am merely a  hardworking administrator with clay feet, then criticism will not be nearly so threatening or demeaning.

Be Willing to Take It--Graciously

But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Mat 5:39-48)

Matthew Henry provides a wonderful commentary for this passage:

See how it is cleared by the command of the Lord Jesus, who teaches us another lesson: “But I say unto you, I, who come to be the great Peace-Maker, the general Reconciler, who loved you when you were strangers and enemies, I say, Love your enemies,” Mat_5:44.

Though men are ever so bad themselves, and carry it ever so basely towards us, yet that does not discharge us from the great debt we owe them, of love to our kind, love to our kin. We cannot but find ourselves very prone to wish the hurt, or at least very coldly to desire the good, of those that hate us, and have been abusive to us; but that which is at the bottom hereof is a root of bitterness, which must be plucked up, and a remnant of corrupt nature which grace must conquer. Note, it is the great duty of Christians to love their enemies; we cannot have complacency in one that is openly wicked and profane, nor put a confidence in one that we know to be deceitful; nor are we to love all alike; but we must pay respect to the human nature, and so far honor all men: we must take notice, with pleasure, of that even in our enemies which is amiable and commendable; ingenuousness, good temper, learning, and moral virtue, kindness to others, profession of religion, etc., and love that, though they are our enemies. We must have a compassion for them, and a good will toward them. We are here told:

1. That we must speak well of them: Bless them that curse you. When we speak to them, we must answer their revilings with courteous and friendly words, and not render railing for railing; behind their backs we must commend that in them which is commendable, and when we have said all the good we can of them, not be forward to say any thing more. See 1Pe_3:9. They, in whose tongues is the law of kindness, can give good words to those who give bad words to them.

2. That we must do well to them: “Do good to them that hate you, and that will be a better proof of love than good words. Be ready to do them all the real kindness that you can, and glad of an opportunity to do it, in their bodies, estates, names, families; and especially to do good to their souls.” It was said of Archbishop Cranmer, that the way to make him a friend was to do him an ill turn; so many did he serve who had disobliged him.

3. We must pray for them: Pray for them that despitefully use you, and persecute you. Note:

(1.) It is no new thing for the most excellent saints to be hated, and cursed, and persecuted, and despitefully used, by wicked people; Christ himself was so treated.

(2.) That when at any time we meet with such usage, we have an opportunity of showing our conformity both to the precept and to the example of Christ, by praying for them who thus abuse us. If we cannot otherwise testify our love to them, yet this way we may without ostentation, and it is such a way as surely we durst not dissemble in. We must pray that God will forgive them, that they may never fare the worse for any thing they have done against us, and that he would make them to be at peace with us; and this is one way of making them so.

Easier said then done!  In fact, we can’t do it without the grace of God. Pray and cultivate the grace to respond as Jesus instructs.  Be willing to take it—graciously. 

Be Quick to Listen

As I outlined in my prior article on conflict, we must LISTEN!  Have you ever found yourself “hearing” but not really listening?  Have you found yourself preparing your “defense" rather than considering the merits of what is being said?

Doing so is both unbiblical and disrespectful of the one voicing his or her concerns.  King Solomon and the Apostle James remind us:

Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. (Jas 1:19-20)

A rebuke goes deeper into a man of understanding than a hundred blows into a fool. (Pro 17:10)

Steven Covey, in “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” put it this way, “seek first to understand and then to be understood.”  This requires that we honestly listen to the criticism.  Here are some questions to ask as you listen:

• What can I/we learn from this?
• What can we do better/differently?
• Where is the wheat in the chaff?
• How can I minister to this individual? How can I be helpful?  How can I encourage him or her?
• What can I do to foster a positive relationship?
• How should I follow-up this conversation?

Don’t Discount the Message Because of the Messenger

Some people simply have more credibility than others.  Our tendency, with some justification, is to discount the chronic complainer, the “high maintenance” parent or employee, or to miss the message because of the inappropriate communication or behavior of the messenger.

Don’t.  It is important to look for the nugget of truth that may lay beneath the harsh or emotional criticism.  Listen to the content of what is being communicated, not the way it is being delivered.

This also applies to the “anonymous” letter.  In years past I would typically ignore anonymous letters.  My reaction was, “if they don’t have the moral courage to sign their name, I don’t have time to read it!”  Rather smug, don’t you think?

I have changed my perspective on anonymous communications.  I still give less weight to anonymous letters but I do read them and I do look for that nugget of truth that--notwithstanding the moral cowardice demonstrated by an anonymous letter—nevertheless still needs to be addressed.

Be Forgetful

I have a bad memory, which usually frustrates me, especially when I forget names. However, a bad memory can be a blessing!  

What I mean is this: hear it, deal with it, forget it!  Don’t rehearse the offense in your mind, don’t nurture the anger or hurt feelings, and don’t talk about it.  Deal with any legitimate issues being brought to your attention, even if that is your own failings, work to address the problem(s), and then move on.  Nothing is gained by allowing discouragement or bitterness to take root.  We have more important things to do than nurse our wounds.

Putting it All Together

 

No one likes to be criticized and when we are it is easy to be offended.  It is, however, possible to deal with criticism without being offended—at least not for long-by applying the following principles:

• Criticism is Inevitable-Expect and Accept It
• Grow Alligator Skin
• Look at the Beam in Our Eye
• Be Willing to Take it Graciously
• Be Quick to Listen
• Don’t Discount the Message because of the Messenger
• Be Forgetful

Our Most Important Lesson

The way we respond to criticism may be one of the most powerful lessons we ever teach.  We can give wonderful speeches and inspiring devotionals but the demonstration of the Fruit of the Spirit when dealing with criticism may be what the Lord uses to minister and instruct others.  If actions speak louder than words then how we deal with those who are criticizing us is more important than our pronouncements.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. (Gal 5:22-23)

I encourage you to share your suggestions on dealing with criticism with our readers by leaving a comment to this article.

Educational Leadership, Relationships, and the Eternal Value of Christian Schooling

The following is an excellent book review on “Schools as Communities: Educational Leadership, Relationships, and the Eternal Value of Christian Schooling.”  Click on the image to see the book on Amazon.

This is a book that you should seriously consider reading.  (Disclaimer: I am a contributor author, Barrett Mosbacker).

The review was published in The ICCTE Journal. 

Reviewed by Dr. David W. Robinson, Adjunct Professor, D.Mgt. program, George Fox University.

“Where there is no vision, the people perish…” Proverbs 29:18a (KJV)

Anyone who has engaged in the calling of Christian education knows that it can be — and usually is — one of the most exciting, delightful, fulfilling, and joyous ministries that a believer can know. Its golden days are a real “foretaste of glory divine,” its opportunities for those who truly love the possibilities of the mind and heart of Christ in the lives of our students are the very aroma of the Lord in our work. Lives are changed; parents are supportive; administrators are helpful; the board is productive. Sacrifices are engaged willingly, trials are gladly borne. We go home at the end of the day, and can hardly wait to return in the morning…

And anyone who has engaged in the calling of Christian education also knows that it can be — and usually is — one of the most daunting, exhausting, demoralizing, and frustrating ministries that same believer can know. Golden days can morph into drabness from one year to the next, or even overnight; its opportunities can suddenly vanish, with the mind and heart of Christ being trampled underfoot by institutional change, upheavals in leadership, financial uncertainty, or divisions and offenses within the school community…and suddenly, the aroma of Christ is seemingly nowhere to be found. Lives are no longer transformed; parents are arguing among themselves or sniping the administration/board; administrators run for the bomb shelter; the board seems unable to resolve the issues. Sacrifices now seem imposed, with trials producing grumbling, not grace. We go home at the end of the day, and are tempted to circulate our résumés…

Strange to say, this roller coaster ride is well known to all too many Christian school teachers, administrators, parents, students, and board members. The shift can happen over time, or even overnight. The results are commonly tragic (and predictable) if resolution and healing are not accomplished in time: high rates of teacher turnover; a loss of students and their families; the demoralization of the remaining students, faculty and staff; friction between boards and administrative leadership that leads to recriminations, or even terminations; and so on.

And so the question is: How can Christian schools resolve the chasm between the experiences of the first and second paragraphs above, prevent the sort of divisions and offenses within the educational body that the scriptures warn about, embody healthy and continuous educational improvement, and become the dwelling places of shalom and agapé that will transform the lives of all who are touched by that community?

This is a daunting question, cutting to the heart of what every generation of Christian educators and academic leaders must face, ready or not. In the case of Schools as Communities, it is addressed by James L. Drexler and the excellent group of nearly two dozen scholar-practitioners that he assembled for this volume. As the title states, the main theme of the work is that of community. All eighteen of the essays are represent separate explorations of particular subsets of the main challenge of fostering koinonia within the imperative for continuous school improvement in the service of Christ and our students. This is a worthy but highly ambitious task; frankly, as I read it, I wondered how well Drexler and his collaborators would carry it off.

Drexler and company proceeded by dividing the task into four main sections:

• “Building Community: Foundational Principles”
• “Building Community Among Faculty and Staff”
• “Building Community for Students”; and
• “Building Community with Others.”

Drexler doesn’t leave community without conceptual support, however; he explicitly adds supportive themes of grace, scriptural priority (“the weightier issues of the Law,” prophetically stated by the Lord in Matthew 23:23), and cultural relevance/engagement to the content of the book (xiv-xviii). Nor is the work merely theoretical; each chapter concludes with a call to praxis entitled “Now What? Application to Practice”. Its purpose is to help the reader understand how the contents of each chapter might be used in their school setting and their own ministry of leadership. Finally, each chapter has a references section that provides useful sources and online links for the reader to extend his or her ongoing exploration of educational leadership and community.

In Part One, foundational principles are explored in essays examining the primacy of grace in Christian school settings (Bruce Hekman); mercy, justice and social change as imperatives of transformational Christian education (Vernard T. Gant); the life of the leader and his or her grace-filled life as an embodiment of the Lord’s grace (Jeff Hall); and godly risk taking on the part of the school leader (Stephen R. Kaufmann and Kevin J. Eames).

Hekman encourages the Christian school to embody true grace to its students, eschewing both “sloppy grace” and formal legalism as it becomes a real community in pursuit of a profoundly Christian educational mission. In Gant’s contribution, the Christian school is viewed from the vantage point of God’s call to mercy and justice. Rather than harboring bias or prejudice, for example with respect to lower SES students and their families, our schools ought to be seeking opportunities to reform all aspects of their operations — from their curriculum to their service programs to the “habits of the heart.” As we seek to serve the Lord in our schools, we should turn away from the all-too-prevalent paternalism within our educational work, from the majoring-on-minors that so easily entangles us, and strive for a deeply Christ-like way of life (cf. Galatians 3:26-28). Faithful educational leadership will seek real community with all people, and not merely those within comfortable shouting distance.

Hall’s article shifts the focus to the educational leader, to the very life and calling of the one who shepherds a school. The love of Christ must compel leaders to love those who are collaborators in their school community, so that they are effective models of His grace to those who work in that setting. The first section rounds out with Kaufmann and Eames’ very interesting chapter on educational leadership and risk taking. Christ’s call to His people often involves radical, transformational living; a Christian school that seeks to follow Him faithfully will find itself pressing against social conventions and embedded attitudes among its own constituencies. The authors argue that Christian school leaders should look for opportunities “to engage students in culturally relevant ideas and activities,” even when they involve the risk of controversy and discomfort (76).

Part Two shifts focus to the question of community building with the faculty and staff. Gordon Brown addresses the important question of leadership models and decision making. His survey covers an impressive amount of ground in short order, with discussions of models that concentrate on the leader, models that emphasize the instructional enterprise, and models that focus on community transformation. Kevin J. Eames then shifts our gaze to organizational theory, and the ironic fact that organizations do not organize themselves. Eames draws our attention to the fact that older hierarchical, top-down, and linear organizational models have been supplanted in recent decades by approaches based on systems theory. He builds a convincing case for a biblical basis for systems theory in Christian education; all that I need point out is that anyone who links Herman Dooyeweerd’s extraordinarily important framework of domains, modalities, and sphere sovereignty to organizational theory and praxis is on the trail of something big. Really big. (Yes, that is your warm invitation to further study.)

Neil Neilson then introduces us to the notion that tensions within Christian educational enterprises are common, inescapable in this age, and actually should be “welcomed as friends” (cf. James 1:2-8), since these “liberating dichotomies” actually spur our growth and development, both personally and institutionally. He lists six provocative oppositions, and makes a good case for their role in stirring up our leadership and vision in response. Jack Beckman then takes up the baton, looking at the vital issue of professional development as a means of community building within our schools. I view such work as a vital outworking of “the equipping of the saints” (Ephesians 4:11-13), one that Beckman clearly advocates for school leaders.

In Part Three, Drexler’s team moves to the central question of community formation with and for our students. Barrett Mosbacker summarizes the challenges facing our schools in a very informative chapter on strategic stewardship. I found myself agreeing strongly with his comments about the need for an understanding of the economic underpinnings of stewardship and development work in our Christian schools, an area that is regularly bedeviled with sentiment, pietism, and even presumption masquerading as “faith.” Mosbacker’s essay is a call to arms, a medicine that can bring healing in such things; our school community will be strengthened as its leadership adopts a more focused approach in its strategic financial vision. Derek J. Keenan then shifts our attention to the question of curricular leadership. His essay calls us to consider curricular formation to be a wonderful opportunity for gathering all the stakeholders in our educational community around the challenge of creating a dynamic, holistic, Christ-honoring course system for our students. Our curriculum ought to be a profound expression of our deeply-held values, our commitments to the Lord, the world, and each other; Keenan encourages us to act on these beliefs, and to make them real in our schools.

From this platform, it is a natural progression to shift from reaching inwards — building community at home — to reaching outwards. Daphne Wharton Haddad and Susan Schneider Hasseler follow Keenan’s essay by discussing the need to construct culturally inclusive communities in Christian education. For far too long, our “outreach” to our world has reflected a paternalistic “tolerance” (“I put up with you because it makes me feel good.”) rather than a truly transformational way of living. (“We are one in the Lord, and we all have things to teach and learn from each other.” Romans 1:11-12; Galatians 3:26-28; and Romans 12:2…enough said!) Haddad and Hasseler’s call is to reform all aspects of our school community, from relationships to curriculum to classroom practice, to produce a true model of the Lord’s kingdom.

In chapter twelve, Matthew Lucas gives a framework for the very important — and very misunderstood — process of assessment. Too many in Christian school leadership map “assessment” to standardized testing alone. Lucas posits that we must move to a much broader, multi-modal approach to truly assess the effectiveness of what we are doing in our schools. All of this must be done in a way that reflects a Christian worldview in all aspects; a willy-nilly adoption of the techniques of the world without deep reflection on the values of the Lord’s kingdom will actually harm our work, giving us a “form of godliness, but denying the power thereof” (2 Timothy 3:5a; KJV). James L. Drexler follows Lucas by addressing the question of discipline and community building within our Christian schools. Drexler points out the plethora of books on this topic, and then espouses a biblical approach for the development of godly discipline. A proper anthropology allows us to avoid mere sentimentality, and also to avoid a purely legalistic/punitive view of school discipline. The scriptures do provide us with guidelines for a redemptive approach to such matters — 2 Timothy 3:16-17 comes to mind immediately, as an example — and Drexler advocates such a stance. In a community that “cares enough to confront,” many discipline issues can be prevented entirely, or can be dealt with locally and privately, as the Lord instructed us in Matthew 18. For the balance of issues, the agapé community can escalate properly through a sequence of corrective steps, always seeking to give a student the opportunity to truly repent and experience restoration to the community.

Part Three concludes with David L. Roth and Jon Keith’s examination of changing the culture in Christian schools. Anyone familiar with Christian education is aware of the problem; as the traditional Spanish proverb put it quite succinctly, “Que no haya novedad.” Or in modern English, “Let no new thing arise.” (Even more loosely: “All change is bad.”) Resistance to change, regardless of how faithful or promising it is, is a fact of organizational life. Educational leaders who assume that their vision of new opportunities will automatically be accepted by their constituencies is cruising for a bruising; a reading of the life of Moses alone would cure any romanticism on this topic. Roth and Keith advance Jesus Christ as the model for generating change in our schools, and advocate that school leaders take key elements of His leadership as a template for their own practice.

Schools as Communities concludes with Part Four, a survey of our relationships with others. Whether we know it or not, the constituencies that a Christian school addresses include those who may be far outside of our immediate school setting. In chapter fifteen, Bruce Young makes the case for collaboration in Christian education. No community can exist without working together to achieve common goals and a mission shared by all. Drawing on Urie Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model, Young usefully restructures that multi-level model (once again, via Dooyeweerd’s pioneering schema) to produce a biblical framework for envisioning the larger perspectives of our work within the kingdom of God, and under his sovereign reign.

James C. Marsh then moves to the very significant question of the relationship between the educational leader and his or her board. Any leader who doesn’t realize fully the critical nature of this connection is a leader who will probably not last very long in that position. Marsh points out that statistics bear out the fact that there is trouble in paradise: according to a 2005 study, some 70% of all school leaders are fired, and do not leave voluntarily. There is no optimistic reading of this number; clearly “churn and burn” has become the model for many Christian schools. The author surveys the three main models of Christian school governance, and then outlines a number of recommendations for a redemptive, rewarding relationship between school leadership and its board. Only in this way, says Marsh, can we have any hope of reversing the current dreary attrition in Christian school administration.

Scot Headley and Stephen Cathers follow Marsh in their essay on continual school improvement. Drawing an important distinction between assessment and evaluation, Headley and Cathers seek to enhance educational community by the creation of a culture of quality, reflection, and ongoing reformation involving all members of a school. Their school evaluation cycle (Planning, Action, Assessment, and Reflection, 350) is a concise and very useful model for practicing excellence in all realms while simultaneously maintaining close relationships throughout the process. I see this as a very well-focused embodiment of the biblical principle that the apostle Paul stated when he advised Timothy, “Be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone may see your progress. Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save [that is, ‘benefit and bless’] both yourself and your hearers.” (I Timothy 4:15-16, NIV) In other words, our schools can only progress towards the standards of our Lord in these things if it constantly watches its life and teaching, thus blessing all the members of its community.

In the final chapter, Brian Fikkert reminds us that our schools should be places of shalom, seeking to produce students who fully and radically embody a biblical world and life view. To do this, they will need to be lovingly and wisely trained in how to engage every dimension of the world around them in the name of the Lord’s kingdom. There are significant challenges to every aspect of traditional Christian school operations here, but also prospects for very significant blessings in the lives of every member of a Christian school community as a result. James L. Drexler then concludes quite fittingly on how all these things, wisely and lovingly accomplished in our school communities, can redound to the glory of God, and the praise of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Early in this review, I mentioned the fact that I was curious to see how well Drexler and company delivered on the ambitious promise of the full title of Schools as Communities. I don’t think that anyone could be more sympathetic to their stated aim, but I also have seen enough of educational tomes to be a bit skeptical of whether or not this volume would delight more than it would disappoint. I am pleased to say that my doubts were unjustified, and that my hopes were fulfilled. Schools as Communities does a fine job of treating its subject from a number of vectors, giving its reader a well-balanced view of the challenges and possibilities for leaders in Christian school community building. Even those new to this world — for example, prospective Christian board members, or parents, or staff members — will find this book to be very useful as a guide to the issues and possible answers that they face.

Christian colleges and universities will also find it to be useful as a candidate textbook for undergraduate studies in education, and as an adjunctive textbook (at least) in graduate schools. Certainly graduate and doctoral programs will use this as a survey-level point of departure for further studies, but Schools as Communities will function quite well in that application. The resources listed are a treasure trove for the student, and will provide the researcher with a number of leads for improving their own professional library — always a good thing!

In conclusion, Schools as Communities turned out to be a genuine delight: a pleasure to read, well grounded in scriptural principle, current theory and practice, and embodying the very sort of Christian community that it advocates. What could be better? Consider this to be an enthusiastic recommendation by a person who is not usually impressed by many educational books, even those done in the name of the Lord….

When Change is Bad

I found this article articulates what many teachers feel—in public and Christian schools.  Too often, with the best of intentions, we throw a hodgepodge of ideas at our staff, what I call du jour training/idea of the year.  See my previous post: Rethinking Staff Development: “This Too Shall Pass.”

Solutions Are the Problem in Education

By Mary Kennedy

There used to be a saying that if you were not part of the solution, you were part of the problem. The implication was that we all, collectively, were creating the problem, and that the solution required all of us to change together.

But in education, solutions are a big part of our problem. School people are swamped by a deluge of solutions. They suffer from reform fatigue.

A few years ago, I visited teachers in several districts spread across the nation. I was struck by the variety of interruptions they experienced in their classrooms, and by how many of these had begun as good intentions. Here’s one example: A science teacher took part in a National Geographic Society project that gave his students a chance to collect samples from a local waterway and contribute them to a national database. Sounds like a great idea, right? His class got to participate in a national science study. But the timing of the project caused the teacher to interrupt his ongoing science unit. When the project was finished, students had forgotten where they were in their regular curriculum.

National Geographic is hardly alone in wanting to help educators. The number of associations, institutions, government agencies, and volunteers of all kind who want to solve educational problems has grown so large that teachers are now surrounded by helpful voices and besieged by ideas too numerous to attend to. Instead of strengthening teaching, this multitude of innovations and reforms distracts both teachers and students from their central tasks, making it difficult to concentrate, to stay on task, and to sustain a coherent direction.

Moreover, these improvements often contradict one another. Consider two ideas currently on the table for evaluating teaching practice. On one hand, we have lesson study, a highly structured undertaking that requires months of collective effort and careful thought. On the other, we have walk-throughs, quick and unstructured events that can be conducted by one person in under five minutes. These ideas seem to make entirely different assumptions about how we can learn about teaching, yet they are both popular right now.

There have always been zealous education reformers, of course. But the number and variety of helpful ideas is now so great that the solutions themselves have become a problem.

It is easy to brainstorm about alternatives in education, but hard to anticipate their unintended consequences. Take, for instance, pullout programs. These well-intentioned entitlement programs, introduced in the 1960s, pull students out of their regular classrooms for special instruction. The timing of the pullout has to fit the pullout teacher’s schedule, which means that the original teacher must adjust her instructional schedule to accommodate this movement. Since both teachers may be teaching similar content, they also need to coordinate their instruction, something that takes time. And that is not all: Every time a student is pulled from a regular classroom, and every time that student returns to the regular classroom, the ongoing instruction is interrupted. Students are distracted, and so is the teacher. Lesson continuity and coherence are at risk.

Pullout programs are one of many helpful ideas introduced to improve education. Every test, every assembly, and every public-address announcement is a helpful addition that ultimately disrupts instructional continuity. Every change of schedule, from hourly to block scheduling and back to hourly, requires teachers to revise their routines and strategies. Every new policy, from zero tolerance to team-teaching, pulls teachers’ attention away from their teaching and toward solving a logistical problem. Instead of thinking about how to engage students with curriculum content, they must think about how to revise their procedures, schedules, and strategies to accommodate the newest helpful idea.

Remember when we decided that teachers should have telephones in their rooms? The idea was to “professionalize” the job. Well, now that teachers have telephones, parents can call up at any time to leave messages for their children. So when students are struggling with the difference between ¼ and ½, or debating the merits of the Bill of Rights, the phone rings. And it is right there, in the middle of the classroom and in the middle of every lesson.

The problem is this: Both teaching and learning require sustained attention. Not only do students need opportunities to think, but so do their teachers. More than anything, teachers need time to compose their thoughts and make sure that, when they approach a new unit or a new lesson, they have a clear idea of what they want to accomplish.

Students are even more vulnerable to distractions. In my conversations with teachers, I have found that they care more about maintaining the momentum of the lesson than anything else. The central challenge of teaching is finding enough uninterrupted time to get students’ minds wrapped around an idea, and keeping it there until the idea makes sense to them. Disruptions don’t merely take a few moments of class time: After them, teachers often feel that they need to rewind the entire lesson and begin anew.

Yet we live in a time when reforms and fads have become so commonplace that every new board member or superintendent feels a need to make a personal mark on his or her district by introducing something new. As these policymakers come and go, teachers are buffeted by the raft of competing new ideas they leave behind. So routine turnovers in leadership reignite this continuing series of distractions, further reducing teachers’ chances of finding time for reflection and maintaining a stable environment for intellectual work.

No wonder that when the new superintendant comes to town, and the new professional-development program is brought in, teachers go into their classrooms and quietly shut their doors.

Every American teacher feels some level of reform fatigue. If you think you are part of the solution, check again. You may be part of the problem.

Mary Kennedy is a professor in the department of teacher education at Michigan State University, in East Lansing, Mich.  Vol. 28, Issue 37

Rethinking Staff Development: "This Too Shall Pass."

Dr. Barrett Mosbacker, PublisherHere is the hard and sad truth: over the  last several decades Christian schools have invested tens of thousands of hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars on staff
training programs and conferences but with little sustained impact. Despite all of the research, despite recent advances in neuroscience, notwithstanding the wide-spread availability of increasingly affordable and effective technologies, and despite our grandiose pronouncements, our classrooms are virtually indistinguishable from classrooms from the 1920's or 1950's. Only the furniture has changed.

We may have made changes at the margins, but systemic change is hard to find. There are teachers, scattered here and there, who exemplify the best in teaching. And there are a few schools that break the mold and provide paradigms for others to emulate. Sadly, most of these schools are not Christian--they are public or secular private schools. By in large, most Christian schools have hearts of gold while stuck in an industrial model of teaching that has little in common with a rich biblical understanding of the learner or the effective and consistent application of current research and technology.

A harsh indictment I know. It is nevertheless motivated by a deep love for Christian education and an insatiable desire to see our schools standing as beacons of excellence, schools characterized by creative nurturing environments, rigorous learning, thoughtful and informed dialog, problem-based learning, integrated technologies, and authentic assessment.

Why?

Why—despite our best intentions and the investment of substantial time and money—do our schools remain largely unchanged? There are many reasons. One of the most important is the relatively ineffective way we design and implement staff development programs. Most of our training programs go something like this; we have a week of training in which we discuss biblical integration or some other topic du jour. Most of the training is delivered like most teachers teach—didactic presentations, perhaps supplemented by PowerPoint slides. There is nominal interaction and virtually no immediate, real-time practice or application of the concepts covered. There is seldom follow-up or accountability. With the exception of yet another discussion of biblical integration (more on this later) topics and emphasis changes from year-to-year. Teachers sit through the presentations but little changes. School begins; teachers return to their classrooms close their doors and teach just like they always have. We return to our offices to deal with day to day exigencies. Within a month in-service is forgotten. Then, sometime in the spring, we plan for next year's in-service and the cycle begins again, just like the movie Groundhog Day.

Through this process, teachers learn that "this too shall pass." Teachers often view in-service as something to endure or a time to catch up on relationships. For most, it is not an occasion for deep reflection; it is seldom stimulating, and seldom leads to change in the classroom or systemic change in our schools. Each year we pick our in-service topic, throw it against the wall and hope it will stick. It usually doesn't.

I am not cynical but my observations arise from 20 years of attending conferences, conducting in-service training programs, and consulting with other schools. Too many of our teachers reflect the sentiments expressed in the following video:

Rethinking and Redesigning Staff Training

Good teachers are to education what education is to all other professions—the indispensable element, the sunlight and oxygen, the foundation on which everything else is built. They are central to assuring excellence and rigor in the educational experience of every young person in America (Milken, 2000, p. 3).

Our schools are only as good as our teachers. Accordingly, our top priority is to hire, train, and retain the finest Christian teachers in the country. Hiring the right people from the outset is essential. Over the years I have discovered that despite my best efforts, marginal teachers with marginal gifts will only make marginal improvement. Motivated by Christian charity and patience, I have expended enormous energy and devoted countless hours striving to transform mediocre teachers into, if not great, at least effective teachers. With the satisfying exceptions when I have discovered diamonds in the rough, I have  failed. Frogs do not become princes no matter how often and passionately we kiss them!

Although we cannot turn frogs into princes, we can transform teachers with the gift of teaching—the right stuff—into remarkably effective teachers. A few can be transformed into master teachers. This situation is analogous to a good coach. A coach can only do so much with athletes lacking raw talent. However, a good coach can take athletes with natural talent and transform them into MVP's and championship teams. That is our task. For the sake of God's glory, the advancement of His kingdom, and for our students, we can do no less.

Presuming we have made good hires, designing effective training programs is the key to enhancing the effectiveness of our teachers and for creating dynamic world-class schools. There as several components to an effective training program: 1) Designing training for the adult learner, 2) Defining measurable organizational and pedagogical expectations and goals, 3) Accountability, 4) Practicing what we teach, and 5) Establishing multi-year training programs.

Design Training for the Adult Learner

Adults learn differently than students. Their motivations are also different. The following table highlights the differences between student and adult learners. For more information on adult learners, click here.

Source: Honolulu Community College. (2007, February 8, 2007). Faculty Development: Teaching Tips. Retrieved December 22, 2007.

It is particularly important to understand that as adult learners, teachers expect the learning to be immediately useful. Too often our training is theoretical and conceptual rather than immediately applicable.

Although it is essential that teachers have a thorough knowledge of theory, concepts, and research they will not change their teaching unless the application of the learning is demonstrated. We should not assume that teachers will connect the dots—we need to connect the dots between theory and practice for them.

This is the problem with much of our biblical integration training. It is lofty, mission oriented, theological, philosophical and conceptual but is seldom practical or actionable (See more on this below under Practicing What we Teach).

For example, I often ask prospective teachers to give me a specific example of biblical integration in mathematics with two caveats: they may not make reference to a statement like "numbers are orderly because God is a God of order," nor may they make reference to the animals going into the Ark two-by-two or anything similar. With rare exception teachers struggle to provide concrete, specific, theologically coherent examples. They cannot get beyond generalizations to meaningful and applicable integration.

Likewise, I have asked prospective teachers to give me a specific example of biblical integration in history but with the following caveats: they may not make reference to American history and they must go beyond a statement of God's sovereignty. Once again they are often stumped. If they cannot make reference to the Christian influence on American history or to God's sovereignty they have little idea how to integrate biblical truth in history.

I have gone through this exercise with literally hundreds of teachers with the same results. With few exceptions, most Christian teachers do not know how to provide concrete, practical, sophisticated, and actionable integration within academic subjects. Yet, training in biblical integration and the development of a biblical worldview has received more attention and time in staff development than any other single concept. By in large, the same can be said of other topics covered in our staff training programs. Teachers go through the process but little changes for the vast majority of our teachers. How is it that we are so ineffective?

I believe it is because we are not teaching the way adults need to learn, we often do not provide actionable examples, we do not have specific measures of success, and we do not hold teachers accountable for the training. We also do not take time to reflect upon the process most adults follow in deciding whether or not to embrace change. The following table provides a useful summary of the process of change acceptance that most adults go through.

Note also that adults tend to move from no response to seeking alternatives for maximizing the changes. The above responses typically correspond to the change process outlined below, which moves from "I am not concerned about it" (This too shall pass) to "I have ideas that will work even better."

The central question is: "How do we get our teachers to move from "I am not concerned about it" to "I have ideas that will work even better?" I make no pretense of having all of the answers but I offer the following for consideration and dialogue.

Define Measurable Pedagogical and Organizational Expectations and Goals

Early in my corporate career I was taught an invaluable lesson from my boss; I was NEVER EVER TO ASSUME ANYTHING! His language was colorful and he made an ineffaceable impression on me. I do not recall the reason for his instruction (obviously I assumed something that I should not have) but I did learn an invaluable lesson, making assumptions will get one into trouble or at minimum reduce one’s effectiveness. I believe we make the same mistake by assuming that teachers understand our specific expectations of them and goals for our schools. We may be right but we should not assume this to be the case.

It is critical that we clearly state our expectations and that we match our training programs with those expectations. In other words, our training and expectations must be integrated and this integration must be deliberate, not hap hazard. If our training is to move us closer to realizing our goals, our goals must be clearly defined.

What are our goals for our schools? I am not referring to our mission statements or our philosophy of education. Nor am I referring to our strategic goals per se. In this context I am referring to specific expectations for our classrooms and our schools. A statement of clear classroom expectations might look something like the following:

Classroom instruction will be dynamic with high levels of student-to-student and student-to-teacher interaction, quality questioning, Socratic dialogue, use of integrated technology, teaching strategies informed by neuroscience, and thoughtful, specific, and sophisticated biblical integration and at least two authentic assessments per quarter.

To ensure that our teachers understand clearly what is expected them I recently issued a memo outlining specific expectations. This memo was distributed to all teachers, is posted on the school's SharePoint server, and was discussed with all teachers and principals during faculty meetings. Central to our expectations is the goal of creating vibrant, engaging, creative, rigorous classrooms where students are not passive recipients of information but are engaged in the learning process.

Clear expectations also provide a framework for the design of our professional development programs. In other words, once we define the goals for instruction, training is designed to advance those goals. Training has a sustained and coherent focus.

Accountability and Follow-Through

Upon the wise recommendation of Mr. David Balik, our Dean of Faculty and Academic Affairs, we modified the evaluation instrument to match our expectations. The evaluation instrument includes a number of specific expectations tied directly to prior staff training, e.g., use of technology, questioning techniques, etc. This heightens faculty attentiveness and response to training by making it clear that "This shall NOT pass." We expect that the concepts and skills covered during staff training WILL BE IMPLEMENTED IN THE CLASSROOM. Failure to do so is not acceptable.

In other words, we are not offering ideas for consideration during in-service, we are providing training. To make this point clearer, consider an example in another profession, the medical field. Can you imagine a physician attending a training conference on the latest techniques in surgery and then ignoring them on the operating table? Can you imagine your physician going to a professional conference with the attitude that “this too shall pass?” Of course not; true professionals take training to enhance their practice--not to go through the motions. Similarly, can you imagine your tax accountant going to a seminar on changes in the tax code and then choosing to ignore them when preparing your tax return? Doing so would be malpractice and would result in fines, revocation of a license, and possible imprisonment. You could multiply the example indefinitely for pilots, attorneys, engineers, etc.

Why then do we permit professional teachers to ignore their professional training and fail to apply it in their classrooms? Are not the souls and minds of students more precious than the physical well being of a patient or the size of our tax refund?

Practice What We Teach

I have had some wonderful professors in my doctoral graduate program in educational leadership. I learned an immense amount from them and I am grateful and indebted to them for their scholarship and instruction.

Unfortunately, I must admit that more often than not, my professors taught in a manner inconsistent with the learning theories, concepts, and principles they so passionately promoted. By-in-large my learning consisted of reading, taking legal pads full of lecture notes, writing papers, and taking tests—pretty traditional practice and perfectly valid—to a point.

Sadly, I can count on one hand the number of professors of education whose instruction incorporated Socratic dialogue, problem-based learning, concept attainment, authentic assessments, technology integration, cooperative learning, or a host of other techniques that research clearly demonstrates are highly effective.

I have been guilty of the same inconsistency. Too often my in-service instruction consisted of lectures supplemented by PowerPoint slides. There is a place for this style of instruction and it can be effective. Unfortunately, it is difficult to convince teachers to change the way they teach unless we model it for them. We are not credible if we lecture about Socratic dialog but do not ask probing questions, if we lecture and never engage teachers in problem-based learning during in-service, and never provide them an authentic assessment of their own learning.

We must practice what we teach. You will soon find, as I have, that this requires more thought, more time, and is harder than giving a lecture. If nothing else, it makes one more empathetic to the challenges facing our teachers!

I can, however, give two examples of practicing what we teach--not perfectly, but in good faith and with good results. One involves biblical integration and the other technology.

Biblical Integration

Teachers who have been employed in Christian schools for any length of time have been exposed to biblical integration and the goal of helping students develop a biblical worldview ad nauseam. A harsh indictment I know but frankly our experienced teachers are beginning to yawn (quietly) at another lesson, in-service program, workshop, or keynote speech on biblical integration. They get it and are committed to it, but, as illustrated above under Design Training for the Adult Learner, most do not know how to integrate and many do not know that they do not know.

In an effort to address what I see as a significant problem in our schools—teachers who are unable to provide systemic, concrete, specific integration within each discipline—we redesigned our training program using several different approaches. We also provided helpful resources and tools.

First, biblical integration was defined in very specific terms for the faculty. They were given examples of what integration is and is not. For example, it is not icing on a cake—Bible verses applied here or there, it is not devotions before class, it is not prayer before class, it is not chapel services, and it is not simplistic, overly generalized theological concepts superficially overlaid onto an academic concept, skill, or fact. Integration is like yeast; it permeates, it infuses the curriculum content that so that it is inextricable from lesson content.

Second, most teachers have not been well prepared theologically for integration. Without solid theological grounding integration is not possible. Unfortunately, the theological knowledge of most of our teachers is limited to what they have learned from sermons, Sunday School, and through personal devotions. I find that even Christian college graduates are poorly trained for integration.

To address this deficiency, Briarwood Christian School created a Worldview Bibliography. This bibliography was taken from a bibliography available from a Christian college and significantly expanded for our faculty. We purchased most of the books listed on this bibliography and systemically assigned readings from the bibliography prior to in-service and prior to the completion of Biblical Integration Concept worksheets or BICs. Please feel free to download this Worldview Bibliography for your use. Any suggested additions would be greatly appreciated.

Third, Biblical Integration Concept Worksheets or BIC's were created. BICs are simple templates designed to help teachers work through an integrating concept for a particular lesson. This is not a perfect instrument but it does provide a tool to guide teachers in thinking through a lesson and deciding what theological truth(s) are applicable. Two completed BICs provide a good example of how teachers use them: one for math and one in science.

Forth, we provided team practice. During in-service training teachers were shown how to complete the BICs. After this introduction they were divided into discipline specific teams to spend several hours actually completing BICs as a group. During these practice sessions I visited the different groups to answer questions and to offer suggestions. Just as I suspected, most teachers had trouble thinking of specific integration concepts.

It was during one of these break-out sessions, Algebra to be specific, that I had a revelation. Standing at the back of the room, I witnessed a group of godly Christian professionals struggling to integrate theology and algebra. What I suddenly realized was that they were confusing moralizing with integration. Despite previous training, ACSI and CSI conventions, workshops, readings, keynote speeches, etc., they still conceived of integration as trying to teach a moral lesson or a character trait through the academic discipline! In this example our algebra teachers were trying to teach students to be good through algebra!

Fifth, this revelation led to more training and a different approach. In addition to reviewing the BICs, I found photos of a flower, a humming bird, and the Sombrero Galaxy. Important scientific facts were  listed with each photo. Then, rather than lecturing, I broke the entire staff into new teams and ask them to complete the following exercises over several hours.

One: Taking the facts presented and studying the images of the flower, the Sombrero Galaxy, and the humming bird, what does this information teach you about what God values, how God thinks, the nature of His work, His perspective on/approach to function, beauty, and His purposes? This is exegeting natural revelation.

Two: as image bearers, if we are to imitate God, what are the implications of the answers you provided above for the way we think, work, and live? Give specific examples for each occupation listed in the table below. The table is significantly truncated due to space limitations on the blog.

This was not an easy exercise. It required time to contemplate, to think, to extrapolate. It required contemplating and integrating both natural AND special revelation. Simple platitudes passing as a substitute for substantive integration would not work. Critical thinking and application were required.

The exercise also involved elements of problem-based learning, concept attainment, and authentic assessment as well as effective questioning. In other words, although far from perfect, this exercise sought to accomplish at least two things: modeling good instruction that goes beyond didactic instruction and practice in biblical integration.

Sixth, in addition to integrating expectations, training, and evaluation, teachers were required to submit four BICs per quarter. The principals and I reviewed the BICs and provided feedback to the teachers. This added a level of follow through and accountability to ensure that the training affected classroom practice while also providing additional practice.

Technology Integration

Like biblical integration, technology integration is often more conceptual than actual. For most Christian schools technology integration consists of computer labs, computers in the library, and Google and Wikipedia searches by students.

Recently BCS implemented several new technologies including SMART Boards, Video-Conferencing, SharePoint, Edline, and a Rapid Notification System, to name a few. Without getting into the details of the technology, one example of integrating a school expectation/goal with training will be helpful for illustrating how goals should drive training and subsequent accountability.

There were several goals for the purchase of SMART boards for every upper school classroom. SMART boards were to provide an effective means for integrating technology into instruction and to provide teachers with real-world exposure to using technology.
Training consisted of two full days of training by outside experts on using the SMART boards in specific disciplines. This training went well beyond how to use the SMART boards, it focused on how to use the technology for specific disciplines. Follow-up training and support was then provided by our IT staff.

Additionally, we mounted the SMART boards in the center of existing white boards. We did so in order to place them front and center in classrooms making it easier and more natural for teachers to default to the SMART board rather than seeing it as an auxiliary technology or tool. This strategic placement of the SMART boards essentially forced the issue—teachers would have to work hard at deliberately not using this new technology.

Just as importantly, for the first year teachers were required to submit SMART board lessons to the principals and to me for review. This ensured that every teacher was learning to use and integrate the new technology. It could not be ignored. Moreover, I developed and presented all of my in-service training programs on a SMART board to ensure that I was practicing what I teach.

Multi-Year Training Plans

If we are to avoid the flash in the pan training and the “this too shall pass” syndrome, training must have a sustained focus over time. The easiest way to accomplish this is to develop a three-to-five year training plan that builds upon previous training and that is focused on specific classroom expectations and goals.

Designing a multi-year plan is simple. It may look something like the following:

The easiest way to think of multi-year training is to conceive of it like college courses. In year one, teachers participate in 100 level courses, in year two they participate in 200 level courses, and so on. The training builds cumulatively, becoming increasing sophisticated over time with increasing levels of understanding and consistent application. Training becomes meaningful and coherent leading to systemic change.

Teachers are the heart and soul of any school. The quality of what happens in each classroom determines the quality of education that our students experience, the quality of our schools, and the degree to which we are being good stewards of our teachers’ gifts and time. It also determines the degree to which we are being good stewards of the minds and souls of our students.

Second only to making good hires, training is the critical element to ensuring that we provide our students a Christian education of world-class quality—one that prepares them to “take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.”

Where to Begin

For those who may be interested in rethinking and redesigning their staff development programs, I recommend the following steps:

• Define in concrete, specific, measurable terms what excellent teaching looks like in the classroom. Define these in terms of specific expectations.
• Communicate expectations to all staff
• Carefully and candidly assess current areas of weakness in classroom instruction relative to defined expectations. Depending upon the size of your school you may define different weaknesses by division. For example, the relative weaknesses of your elementary teachers may differ from your high school teachers. Training will need to be structured accordingly. In other words, some training sessions will include all faculty, other sessions will be division or subject specific.
• Outline a broad three-year plan of training. This plan should include:
  • Training provided by school staff,
  • Training provided by outside experts who provide onsite training,
  • Training provided through conferences,
  • Training provided through readings,
  • Training provided through online resources (including video-conferencing),
• Define what training will be provided in what year and by whom
• Budget for the training,
• Make sure that the training is practical, that teachers have opportunities to practice the training, to think, and that the training is cumulative, building upon itself rather than being an ad hoc process,
• Revise your evaluation instrument to measure expected behaviors arising from the training,
• Build in additional monitoring and accountability procedures to make sure that the training takes root, and
• Constantly assess the quality of the training.

Response

This article merely scratches the surface of creating effective staff development programs. Please share your insights and best practices.

• What deficiencies do you see in our staff training programs?
• How do teachers respond to typical training?
• What best practices have you discovered?

Technorati Tags: Training,Staff Development,Professionalism,Change,Adult Learning,Organizational Change,Systemic,Biblical Integration,Worldview,Instruction,Evaluation,Accountability

Reference: Milken, L. (2000). A matter of quality: A strategy for assuring the high caliber of America's teachers. Santa Monica, CA: Milken Family Foundation. p. 3

(Copyright © 2008 Barrett L. Mosbacker, Ed.D. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced or distributed without the expressed written permission of the author.)

Posted by Dr. Barrett L. Mosbacker at 1/14/2008 09:32:00 PM

3 comments:

Kris said...

Excellent thoughts. Some questions that come to mind: Is your three-year training program cyclical? Is the average tenure of teachers a factor in determing how long your program lasts?

Friday, January 25, 2008 4:08:00 PM CST

Dr. Barrett L. Mosbacker said...

The issues raised by Kris are important ones. Our current training program is not cyclical per se. Rather, the training program continues to increase in depth and sophistication as teachers consistently and effectively apply new concepts and skills to the classroom. Adjustments to the training are made to enhance its effectiveness as we assess what does and does not work.

New teachers are oriented in the fundamental concepts of our training program and are then trained by principals and our Dean as an integral part of their overall evaluation and staff development program. Our plan is to develop a formal mentoring program where our master teachers, who have been through several years of training, can progressively bring our new teachers up to speed.

This does raise another matter--staff retention. We are blessed with a high retention rate. This should be the goal of every administrator so that the substantial investment in training is not lost and to ensure greater consistency and coherence throughout the academic program. Staff retention is affected by several factors including but not limited to hiring the right teachers—teachers who are committed to the program, providing competitive salaries and benefits, and establishing a highly professional progressive culture where teachers are treated with respect, are supported, have ample training opportunities, and are held to high standards of professional Christian conduct.

 

Friday, January 25, 2008 5:49:00 PM CST

Anonymous said...

Your thoughts are very insightful. I've been working with the staff at the school at which I am currently teaching regarding biblical integration. As you so aptly put it, professional development that stays at the conceptual level is very difficult for teachers to implement. Sounds like your school is steps ahead of many Christian schools. I put together a website of practical ideas for teachers and biblical integration. Your teachers are welcome to use the information there, or add ideas. Thank you for all of your work, and for sharing some of it on the web.

Deborah Carpenter
Highlands International School
La Paz, Bolivia
www.biblicalintegrationideas.com

Are You Spread Too Thin? How to Thrive and Not Merely Survive as a Christian School

(Reposted from Google Blogger)

Dr. Barrett Mosbacker, PublisherI recently read an interesting article by the CEO of Yahoo! titled The Peanut Butter Manifesto. Click here to read the memo. I highly recommend it to you.

For the purposes of this blog article I want to focus on the following statement from the memo because it is instructive for us as school leaders.

"We lack a focused, cohesive vision for our company. We want to do everything and be
everything -- to everyone. We've known this for years, talk about it incessantly, but do nothing to fundamentally address it. We are scared to be left out. We are reactive instead of charting an unwavering course. We are separated into silos that far too frequently don't talk to each other. And when we do talk, it isn't to collaborate on a clearly focused strategy, but rather to argue and fight about ownership, strategies and tactics ...

I've heard our strategy described as spreading peanut butter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world. The result: a thin layer of investment spread across everything we do and thus we focus on nothing in particular."

Spread Too Thin: Strategic Allocation of Limited Resources

The Christian school movement is not particularly healthy. Based on recent statistics that I have seen, the number of Christian schools and overall school enrollments are stagnant or declining.

Although there are external forces beyond our control that affect our schools, many of our problems are self-inflicted. One of our self-inflicted wounds is similar to that articulated by the CEO of Yahoo!--we are often not strategic in the allocation of our tangible and intangible resources and as a consequence we are not offering a substantial marginal value to our current and potential clients. I am referring to our parents a clients because notwithstanding our missions as Christian schools, our parents are essentially paying clients who make economic calculations in deciding whether to enroll or re-enroll their children in our schools.

School Finance 101

If there is one unalterable truth about school resource management, it is this: the laws of economics do not discriminate. The laws of economics apply equally to both religious and non-religious institutions, regardless of their mission. The laws of economics are not religious.

Economic laws, like physical laws, apply universally to all regardless of one’s religion, one’s motives, or one’s hopes and dreams. Economic laws can no more be circumvented than the law of gravity because the laws of economics are as much a creation of God as the laws of physics.

The laws of economics are the laws of God. They are in the same way that the laws of physics are the laws of God … They are the laws of God because it is He that decrees the existence of the entities whose nature it is to obey those laws: had He wanted other laws He would have had to create other things ….Like physical laws they are necessary but only hypothetically necessary. They work positis ponendis. In other words, these laws are formulated in terms of “if then” statements. Economic laws do not tell us what human beings will or will not do, how they will behave, [nor how they ought to be behave]. They tell us rather what will happen if human beings behave in certain ways.... [Emphasis added] (Sadowsky, 2005, p. 3)

Assuming that God will suspend the laws of economics because the school is a ministry, too many Christian school leaders believe they can violate those laws with impunity. With the best of intentions, usually with the goal of making Christian education affordable for everyone, many administrators and boards establish financial policies that violate basic economic principles, good business practices, and common sense.

School leaders have a responsibility to understand and to apply economic laws and sound financial practices to the management of their schools. Failure to do so is a failure to apply the very biblical worldview to school management that is its raison d'être.

The Cost of Excellence

A basic law of economics is that for an organization to survive, let alone thrive, its revenue must equal or exceed its costs. This is just as true for “Pearly Gates Christian School” as it is for IBM. Common sense enough but it is surprising how many intelligent people violate this basic axiom of economics when filling a leadership role in the Christian school. Motivated by the laudable desire to provide a Christian education to as many children as possible, many school leaders abandon common sense. Sadly, such well-meaning intentions threaten the survival of the very ministry they so earnestly believe in.

Artificially low tuition is one example of violating basic economic law. Yet many administrators and boards routinely establish tuition rates below the actual cost to educate and compound the problem by providing multi-child and vocationally-based tuition discounts regardless of parents’ ability to pay. With inadequate revenue, programs are often under funded, limited, and of mediocre quality. Shallow fine arts programs, out-dated and/or underutilized technology, limited foreign language offerings, and limited or non-existent programs for gifted and special needs students are common.

Providing a world-class Christian education cannot be done on the cheap, it is expensive. According to the NCES (2004a), expenditures for public and private education were estimated at $866 billion for 2003–04. Expenditures for elementary and secondary schools alone were estimated to total $514 billion.

Public school per pupil expenditures for the 2001-02 school year averaged $8,259. By comparison, tuition per pupil in ACSI member schools in the same year averaged $4,642, a difference of $3,617/student .

This 44% differential is “funded” by paying below market compensation, through fundraising and/or church subsidies, by offering programs of limited scope and marginal quality, and/or by incurring debt.

Many Christian schoolteachers bear the burden of subsidizing below cost tuition rates through low salaries and poor benefits. Sixty-eight percent of teachers employed in ACSI member schools with at least 10 years of experience earn less than $30,000 per year, (Association of Christian Schools International, 2005). By contrast, statistics from the NCES (2002) show that the average starting salary for teachers with no experience in public charter schools that used a salary schedule was $26,977, compared with $25,888 for public school districts.

Education is a labor-intensive enterprise with labor costs typically representing 65 to 80 percent of a school’s entire operating costs, (William J. Fowler & Monk, 2001). The combination of below cost tuition and high labor costs results in artificially depressed salary levels making staffing the school with highly trained and competent teachers throughout the program difficult, especially at the secondary level.

Low salaries and poor benefits often produce high staff turnover creating discontinuity in the academic program. The applicant pool is small, forcing the administrator to hire the “best available” from a pool of relatively mediocre teachers. The result is poor to average instructional and academic quality, the loss of parental confidence, low student retention rates, especially at the upper school level, and a reputation for mediocre quality.

Many Christian leaders find themselves caught in a vicious and self-defeating cycle. Under funding produces poor quality, which in turn restricts enrollment levels and school revenue. To increase revenue, school leadership needs to raise tuition rates but many current and prospective parents do not believe that the school’s quality justifies the higher cost. Parents choose to leave or not to enroll their children in the school in the first place. In a desperate attempt to stem the loss of students or to stimulate enrollment, tuition continues to be set below actual cost thus perpetuating the cycle.

Supply and Demand

The theory of supply and demand is one of the most basic in economics. Simply stated, supply is the amount of product or service that a business or organization is willing or able to provide at a specified price. Demand is the amount of product or service that a consumer is willing to buy at a specified price, (International Society for Complexity Information and Design, n.d.). Modifying this definition for the Christian school market, the definition may read as follows; supply is the quality of education that a Christian school can provide at a specified tuition level while demand is the amount of tuition that parents are willing to pay for the perceived value of the education provided.  Everything else being equal, demand (enrollment) will be strong when the market (parents) believe that the school provides a quality of education valued at equal to or above the tuition charged. If enrollment is stagnant or declining this is a sign that the market does not perceive the value offered to be equal to the tuition charged.

Common sense enough, but things are a bit more complex than the foregoing definition implies. To grasp more fully the economics of Christian schooling, two other economic principles need to be considered; price elasticity of demand and marginal value. Relax; this is not as bad as it sounds!

Elasticity refers to market sensitivity to price changes. Demand for very price elastic products or services will vary significantly based on price. Relatively small increases or decreases in price will have a significant impact on demand. On the other hand, demand for products and services that are price inelastic is relatively stable even with relatively wide swings in price. For example, farmers face a relatively inelastic market; modest increases or decreases in groceries have only a modest affect on consumer demand for staples. However, airfares are elastic; even slight price increases or decreases in airfare can dramatically affect ticket sales.

There are several factors that affect elasticity of demand (QuickMBA, 2004):

· Availability of substitutes, the more possible substitutes, the greater the elasticity,

· Degree of necessity or luxury: luxury products tend to have greater elasticity. Some products that initially have a low degree of necessity are habit forming and can become "necessities" to some consumers, e.g., the microwave and the cell phone.

· Proportion of the purchaser's budget consumed by the item: products that consume a large portion of the purchaser's budget tend to have greater elasticity.

For the Christian school this means that, other factors being constant, the availability of schooling options in the community will affect the administration’s ability to increase enrollments and what can be charged for tuition. The more options, the more elastic tuition rates will be. Likewise, the fewer alternatives that parents have, the less elastic tuition will be.

The quality of alternative educational options will also affect tuition elasticity. If area public and private schools are considered poor relative to the local Christian school, enrollment in the Christian school may be perceived as more of a necessity than it will be if the community is blessed with a large number of high quality public and private schools. In the latter case, parents have a smorgasbord of quality educational options. If parents perceive the local public schools to be safe, high quality learning environments, they are more likely to consider enrollment in the Christian school to be a discretionary “luxury” purchase. Only the most diehard adherents to a Christian philosophy of education will consider enrollment in the Christian school a necessity. If on the other hand, local schools are perceived to be unsafe and of poor quality, “purchasing” a Christian education is more likely to be considered a necessity, making tuition levels less elastic.

The Archdiocese of Chicago provides a compelling example of this principle. Faced with declining enrollments and a school deficit of $20 million, the Archdiocese commissioned a study to determine how to boost school enrollment. Boffetti (n.d.) reports that researchers discovered that:

Struggling schools, at the very least, needed to fill every available seat with tuition-paying students. Surprisingly, many inner-city parents, both Catholic and non-Catholic alike, did not know that Catholic education would only cost them $1,000 a year, with the diocese picking up the rest of the tab. When they learned the facts, many said they would eagerly pay to get their children out of the awful and dangerous public schools they were in.

 Suburban parents were more sanguine. Parents who believed in the importance of Catholic education already sent their children to Catholic schools. The rest of the parents did not think it would be worth the added expense because they felt that their suburban public school system was at least equal to, if not better than, the Catholic schools in terms of academics and amenities [emphasis added]. In other words, the “Catholic” in Catholic education was not worth an extra $1,000 per year to them. (pp. 7-8)

Marginal Value

A closely related concept to elasticity is marginal value. Simply stated, marginal value is the amount of benefit perceived by purchasing an additional “unit” of a product or service in terms of other goods or services. Several factors influence marginal value: price and perceived value being among the most important. Brimley and Garfield (2002) define the marginal dollar (a way of understanding marginal value) as the dollar that would be better spent for some other good or service. In other words, as applied to the Christian school, marginal value or the marginal dollar can be understood as the calculation that parents make that an incremental increase in tuition, either at the school their children currently attend or at competing schools, is worth more than say a nicer home, car, or vacation. That is, as tuition increases, parents make a calculation that the added cost is or is not producing an incremental value equal to or greater than the increase in cost relative to other educational options and other purchases. If parents do not perceive the quality of education provided to be of more value than other options, parents will choose those options.

The impact of marginal value calculations made by parents is seen in the typical attrition rate from junior to senior high common in many Christian schools. Many parents conclude that the added cost of four years of Christian schooling is not justified relative to the breadth of programs offered by local high schools.

The reflex response by many school leaders is to assume that the way to increase the marginal value of their schools is to keep tuition low. This is certainly an important element in maintaining value. Another approach, however, is to increase the incremental value of the education provided relative to tuition charged by improving quality, expanding programs, hiring better teachers, and enhancing facilities. In other words, value can be increased by giving parents more for their tuition dollars. The balance between quality and cost produces a perceived value; it is perceived value relative to other educational options and other purchases that determines the willingness of parents to purchase a “Pearly Gates Christian School” education for their children.

Strategic Budgeting for Marginal Value

There are many ways to increase a Christian school’s marginal value: three of the most important are:

• Hiring superior teachers,
• Effective integration of technology, and
• Careful stewardship of existing funds.

To accomplish these goals school leadership should engage in strategic budgeting in contrast to default budgeting. Default budgeting is budgeting based on current realities, existing exigencies, and existing allocations. By contrast, strategic budgeting aligns planned expenditures to strategic initiatives designed to enhance marginal value. Leadership allocates funds based on the school’s strategic plan, not merely on existing spending patterns.

Strategic Budgeting: Personnel

For example, because a school is only as good as its teachers, one of the most powerful ways to increase marginal value is to establish a long-term plan to enhance the school’s ability to recruit, hire, and retain superior teachers by offering competitive salaries and benefits. To accomplish this goal, prayerful, strategic, and sometimes hard decisions have to be made concerning the existing allocation of resources. Are there personnel who need to be let go? Are there curriculum offerings that need to be dropped? Are there programs that need to be eliminated or reduced?

Suppose the school offers a home economics course. The administration may have established this course several decades ago because it met a need at the time. This course is assigned a teacher and allocated resources. However, there are only 30 students enrolled out of a total of 500 high school students. Given cultural changes, marginal value would be increased by eliminating this class and allocating the funds for a media literacy or graphics design course. Such a course would serve a greater number of students and would increase the value parents are receiving for their tuition dollar.

Reevaluating the standard salary scale is another example of strategic budgeting. The basic idea is to create salary ranges designed to differentiate pay based on market supply and demand. Under such a plan there may be different compensation ranges for different classifications of teachers, e.g., for scarce specialty teachers and personnel such as advanced math and science teachers or technology specialists.

The idea of creating differentiated salary ranges whereby certain teacher classifications are paid more than others is counterintuitive for most educators. Educated and trained in a system in which teacher salaries are based on experience and credentials, regardless of competence and market conditions, is deeply ingrained in the psychology of school leadership and in the structure of schooling.

However, to put differentiated pay into a larger context, it is helpful to note the following research findings as reported by the Educational Research Service’s report, Teacher Compensation and Teacher Quality (Goldhaber & Eide, 2003).

Current teacher quality and staffing issues have affected some subject areas more than others. For example, studies have shown that teachers of math and science have some of the highest levels of attrition among all teachers. Additionally, some schools face teacher quality issues with the math and science teachers who do remain in the classroom….

The fact that teacher shortage and teacher quality issues affect math and science especially severely can be explained with the teacher labor market and the single-salary schedule. Lakdawalla (2000) found that the returns to technical skills have outpaced the returns to teaching skills. Teachers with math and science skills are most likely to be able to have high-paying technical jobs as viable career alternatives. This means that the opportunity cost for math and science teachers has grown more than the opportunity cost for all other teachers….

We find that the shortage for math teachers is greater than that for history teachers, because the wages of teachers are inflexible. Thus, schools will have more difficulty hiring math teachers with an adequate level of training and also face greater levels of attrition in the current math teacher labor force….

Goldhaber highlights the severity of the problem of finding and retaining highly qualified math and science teachers for most schools…

This leaves schools with difficult choices and challenges. They could procure and devote unprecedented amounts of money toward teacher compensation [or] differentiate salaries by teacher skills…[emphases added]

It is quite likely that schools will have to raise compensation for math and science teachers in order to compete with the private sector and attract individuals with technical expertise in those areas. The above point suggests a need to restructure teacher compensation and move away from the single-salary schedule…and should include concepts such as the supply and demand for particular teacher skills. (pp. 38-52)

When assessing teacher compensation, it must be borne in mind that money is not the primary motivator for teachers. If it were, many would have chosen a different profession. Hiring teachers intrinsically and passionately committed to the ministry of Christian education is critically important to ensuring that teachers are kingdom rather than self focused.

Nevertheless, the “workman is worthy of his hire.” Creating differentiated pay ranges has the benefit of positioning the school to recruit and retain the finest faculty available while not requiring the uniform and universal raising of all salaries. The result is that the school is able to attract advanced science and math teachers while simultaneously avoiding the large tuition increases that would result from adjusting the entire salary scale upward. It also enhances the marginal value of the school by increasing quality and minimizing tuition increases.

Strategic Budgeting: Technology Integration

Leadership can significantly enhance marginal value by enriching the academic program through integrated instructional technology. The key concept is integrated. The vast majority of both ACSI and CSI member schools offer computer classes. Very few integrate the technology into daily instruction.

Technology integration means that technology is an instructional tool, not merely a subject of instruction. Integrated technology is the seamless infusion of technology in both instruction and learning so that technology becomes a ambiguous tool used by both students and teachers. It goes beyond computer labs to the natural incorporation of technology into teaching and learning as naturally as a white board and notebook. Using technology for the sake of using technology is not the objective. The objective is to use technology to enhance teaching and learning when it is the most effective way to teach and to learn. Technology is not the end; it is the means.

The following abridged example of technology integration for a high school class illustrates the concept. Although designed for high school, this lesson could be easily modified for junior high students.

Lesson objective: Students will deepen their understanding of the relationships between social and human capital and the creation of wealth in a first and third world country.

Lesson Content and Assignment:

· The teacher will provide background reading and lectures on social and human capital, biblical concepts of economic justice, fundamental principles of economics, and the impact of educational attainment on the creation of individual and national wealth.

· Students are to use library and Internet-based resources to research economic, demographic, and educational data for both a first and third world country using resources just as the CIA Fact Book, the Library of Congress, the U.S. Census, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, etc.

· Data is to be collected using an Access database. Students will export the data to an Excel spreadsheet. Graphs are to be created depicting important data. Working with the math department, students will run a simple correlation analysis using Excel or a program such as SPSS.

· Students will use Word to write an eight-page research report. The report is to include embedded Excel charts and graphs. The report is to be in MLA format using Endnote for the citation of references and the creation of the reference section. This written report is to provide a discussion of biblical principles of social justice, a summary of research findings, and conclusions regarding the relationship between social and human capital to the creation of wealth in a first and third world country. Students are then to answer the following question: “What does this mean to me?”

· Students will use PowerPoint to present a five-minute summary of their findings.

Assessment:

· Students will be assessed using both a traditional assessment (test) and an authentic assessment. The authentic assessment is the quality of the research, the quality of the written report, the quality of technology use and integration, and the quality of their presentations. The teacher will use a rubric to evaluate the authentic assessment.

A useful middle school example is Was It Murder? The Death of King Tutankhamun: The Boy King. This lesson can be found at the following Internet site: http://www.pekin.net/pekin108/wash/webquest/.

Unfortunately, there is little evidence that Christian schools are integrating technology in a manner even close to the lessons described above. In a national study designed to assess the current level of technology access and integration, defined as Technology Level, in CSI and ACSI schools, Mosbacker (2005) found that the majority of CSI and ACSI schools are not characterized by the level of technology integration required to prepare students with the 21^st century skills needed in an information-rich, global economy.

The majority of the schools are at a relatively low technology level as measured by the CEO STaR Chart definitions. The STaR Chart is one of the most comprehensive categorizations of schools based on their level and use of the technological resources. The CEO Forum’s STaR Chart identifies and defines four school profiles ranging from the school with “Early Technology” to the “Target Technology” school characterized by integrated technology throughout the curriculum. The STaR Chart also matches potential educational outcomes — the potential benefits — to the level of technology and integration in each profile category. Based on technology presence and integration throughout the curriculum, the STaR Chart provides a technology snapshot of a school in each of the profile categories.

Most CSI and ACSI schools provide access to technology, there is little curricular integration.

Consequently, the majority of the schools are at a relatively low technology level with 77% of the schools defined as Low to Mid Technology. Twenty two percent of the schools are classified as High/Advanced Technology schools and only one school is classified as a Target Technology school.

Many parents will immediately perceive an increase in marginal value through the addition of integrated technologies. For this to become a reality, leaders will need to develop strategic budgets that fund the necessary hardware, software, and staff training, the latter being particularly important. Simply adding the funds for technology development without a strategic review of the existing budget may increase total cost unnecessarily. Realizing increases in marginal value will require reassessing current budget allocations and may require eliminating or reducing other expenditures in order to fund technology development without adding significantly to tuition. A combination of strategic budgeting and fundraising for technology purchases can make technology affordable while improving marginal value to parents.

Strategic Budgeting: Strategic Allocations

An important way to increase marginal value is to control cost by the prayerful and careful use of the resources entrusted to our care—stewardship. Jim Collins (2001) provides a poignant example of stewardship from the corporate world.

When we interviewed Ken Iverson, he told us that nearly 100 percent of the success of Nucor was due to its ability to translate its simple concept into disciplined action consistent with the concept. It grew into a $3.5 billion Fortune 500 company with only four layers of management and a corporate staff of fewer than twenty-five people—executive, financial, secretarial, the whole shebang—crammed into a rented office the size of a small dental practice. Cheap veneer furniture adorned the lobby…instead of a corporate dining room, executives hosted visiting dignitaries at Phil’s Diner, a strip mall sandwich shop across the street [emphasis added]. (p. 136)

Twenty-five members of a corporate staff to run a $3.5 billion dollar company is, by any measure, good stewardship! Look around. Has the school incrementally added more and more staff as it has grown? Is it necessary to have such a large staff? Can things be done more efficiently, for example, by utilizing administrative computing system more effectively and through better staff training? One method to assess staffing levels is to compute the total number FTE (full-time equivalent) employees to students. If that ratio is consistently increasing, it may indicate excessive staffing levels.

Being cheap is not equivalent to wise stewardship. Increased value and marginal return on the investment are the marks of wise stewardship. Being “cheap” does not promote excellence nor does it add marginal value. The wise use of resources through the strategic allocation of scarce resources does both. Excellence is promoted by allocating funds to strategic initiatives designed to enhance value and expand programs, e.g., hiring better teachers and/or developing integrated technologies.

Strategic allocation is no more complex than seeking the “biggest bang for the buck.” What will produce the greatest educational return on investment for the dollar spent? The concept of marginal return complements the concepts of marginal utility and marginal value.

Although a financial concept, marginal return, as applied to the present context, can be thought of as the return or impact on the school that is realized for the dollars invested.

For example, if a school has been given an undesignated gift of $50,000, the question is; where will that $50,000 dollars produce the greatest results? Should it be spent on new textbooks? Will buying new computers or science equipment produce a higher educational return for parents than spending the funds for a new bus or designating the funds for financial aid?

It is notoriously difficult to quantify the marginal return in the educational context. Nevertheless, carefully aligning expenditures to a strategic plan will increase the impact (return) for every dollar invested. The problem is that pressing short-term needs or pressure from parents often trumpets the strategic allocation of tuition revenue and financial gifts. Rather than allocating the funds based upon a strategic plan or upon a careful assessment of what will add the most marginal value for parents, many leaders spend the funds to cover short-term needs or to placate the loudest constituency.

Stewardship

If our schools are to survive, much less thrive, we must stop "spreading the peanut butter too thin." We need to think far more strategically. Where should we place our resources? What is the basis for our decision? What programs should we eliminate? What programs should we add? The the marginal value of our schools been stagnant or declining?

These are important questions that we must answer with ruthless honesty.

Technorati Tags: Economics,Marginal Value,Private School,Christian School,Christian School Enrollment,Technology Integration,Staff Pay,Staff Compensation,Teacher Pay,Value,ROI,Excellence,Survive,Thrive

“Tell Me Again, Why are We Doing This?”

New training course provides inexpensive, flexible professional development that boosts teachers’ enthusiasm for life-on-life influence.

We are Christian educators because in our hearts we know that it changes lives—and can ultimately change the culture. It is in this spirit that I want to alert you to a new professional development program that can reenergize your team and reinvigorate their sense of “why we do what we do.”

This new resource is from Dr. Jeff Myers’ Passing the Baton International (PTBI). In the last three years PTBI has equipped the faculty of 500 Christian schools to rediscover the ancient art of discipleship and help students become world-changing leaders.

PTBI just released its training on DVD with a bevy of teaching resources that make it simple—and inexpensive—to offer a full-bodied professional development program worth two CEUs. You can find out more at www.passingthebaton.org

How Passing the Baton Ignites Teachers’ Enthusiasm for Life-on-Life Influence

PTBI says that its new course “provides dynamic, proven professional development to renew teachers’ sense of joy and equip them to reconnect spiritually with students.”

It does this by showing teachers how to mentor, coach and disciple students in a biblical, natural and fun way—whether their interactions with students are 30 minutes or 30 seconds.

The evidence is impressive. PTBI conducted pre-test/post-test studies of 3,000 participants and found that its training makes a statistically significant difference in teachers’ understanding of and preparation for discipleship, as well as their motivation to become disciplers.

Can Passing the Baton Lead to Long-Term Change in How Teachers View Their Mission?

Renny Scott, Headmaster of Christian Heritage School in Dalton, GA is one of many fans of Passing the Baton. “You could feel the difference in the spiritual atmosphere at the start of the school,” he enthuses.

Does this mean that Passing the Baton is a miracle cure? Myers says it depends of the leader’s commitment to life-on-life influence: “This workshop is only a catalyst, but when an enthusiastic leader implements it, the breakthroughs can be incredible.”

Cynthia Greer is one of those enthusiastic leaders. After guiding her faculty at Westbrook Christian School (Rainbow City, AL) through Passing the Baton, she helped her faculty establish goals and plans that she says have “had dramatic results in the lives of students."

A year after hosting the training for his faculty and staff, Dr. S. L. Sherrill did a spiritual formation audit at North Raleigh Christian Academy and was pleasantly surprised to see “mentoring” show up on students’ radar as one of the things they appreciated about their school.

Paula Moore, Early Childhood Director at Providence Christian School in Cape Coral, FL tells of how one teacher got so excited that she called three meetings to discuss how to turn their school into a more encouraging, uplifting place. Paula says, “I personally have three children in our school and can attest to the huge transformation that has taken place.”

How PTBI’s New DVD Course Can Help You

In the past the Passing the Baton workshop was only available with a live speaker in an inflexible one-day format. It was expensive. With the DVD course you have the flexibility to offer Passing the Baton as a one-day training, a two-day retreat, or as a once-a-week program for 12 weeks. And the price is surprisingly affordable (more on that below).

Terry Broberg, principal of Cascade Christian High School in Puyallup, WA has previewed the course and says, “It’s money well spent for anyone who works with young men and women.”

In fact, pilot schools actually seem to prefer the DVD course over Dr. Myers’ live presentations (no offense, Jeff).

What You Get With the Passing the Baton DVD Course

The new course consists of 12 45-minute lessons, each of which includes a 20-minute video segment and follow-up discussion. A simple facilitators guide makes it easy to use on-the-spot (although, ahem, we would never admit that we didn’t prep for it).

The CDROM includes reminder cards and handsome posters for each session. There’s even an attendance-building guide with skits, brochures and bulletin inserts. Come to think of it, this thing would be a cinch to teach as a church-based Bible study.

The cost for the whole package is an easy-on-the-budget $127. Each teacher needs a “participant kit,” but these are reasonably priced at $20 each and include a 72-page study guide, a copy of Jeff’s hardcover Handoff book and a relay baton.

You can save $30 instantly by using the coupon code “baton” when you order on-line at www.passingthebaton.org. The coupon code is good until midnight April 22.

The bottom line: now you can host the Passing the Baton training at your convenience for just over $20 per person and grant your teachers two CEUs from ACSI. That’s as close to a “no brainer” as I’ve seen for a long time.

For years you’ve piled up kindling. It’s time to light the match.

The need to have a strong godly influence on students won’t wait around until the economy gets better. If you think that Passing the Baton could springboard your faculty toward greater influence, you can check out www.passingthebaton.org. Or you can call 423-570-1000 and talk to Sean Bevier who, as a long-time Christian school dean of students, can answer your questions and coach you in how to help your school become a nerve center for developing the next generation of leaders.

Technorati Tags: Leadership,Staff development

How To Deal Effectively with Conflict and Difficult People

Dr. Barrett Mosbacker, PublisherDealing with difficult people can be very uncomfortable!  Despite 20 years of experience, my stress level still rises whenever my administrative assistance informs me that: 

Mr. and Mrs. Jones want to see you.  They are upset about .....

One would think that by now I would have learned to be more sanguine but alas, I still feel my gut tighten in anticipation of an unpleasant conversation.

Although I have not yet learned how to reach a “state of nirvana,” I have learned a few things over the years that may be helpful to you.  I offer the following tips with the prayer that you will find them helpful the next time you face that angry email, phone call, or the unscheduled “do you have a minute?”

Conflict Cannot and Should Not Be Avoided

If two godly men like Paul and Barnabas, who ministered and faced persecution together, could not avoid conflict (Acts 15:39-40) then there should be no illusions about our ability to avoid it. Conflict is inevitable.  It is also an integral part of our ministry to students, parents, and staff.

I often tease parents during our Parent Orientation sessions.  When asking for their prayers I quip:

My job is relatively easy--"I only deal with people's children, money, and religion!

Parents laugh at this statement because they quickly realize just how difficult leading a school can be. Most of them would not want the job for any amount of pay!  Upon reflection, they become a bit more empathetic when assessing the school's response to a given situation.

A Little Humor

As illustrated by my quip, humor is a natural and effective way to reduce tension, demonstrate humility, and foster empathy--provided it is used appropriately and in the right context.  Misused or inappropriate humor can do more harm than good. Well timed and thoughtful humor, on the other hand, can relax a tense situation and put it into perspective.  Consider the following non-school examples (source: How to Use Humor to Diffuse Conflict, by Carla Rieger).

Time Deadline

Our manager was pushing the IT technician to fix a huge computer breakdown in under half a day. The technician was getting frustrated at the unreasonable request, but rather than push back with resistance, he said, "Actually, I only need two hours. The other two I'll be using to cure world hunger." They both laughed and the manager mellowed out.

Smaller Budget

A client kept returning our budget proposal saying it needed to be smaller. No matter how much trimming we did, the client kept pushing for "Smaller, smaller!" I finally took the proposal to a copier and had it reduced to two inches in size. I sent it to the client and said, "This is about as small as I can make it. Tell me what you think." He called me saying it got a huge laugh in his office and that he would now accept the proposal as soon as he could find his magnifying glass.

Again, be careful.  Humor can be very effective but it can backfire if it is poorly timed or inappropriate.

To make an apt answer is a joy to a man, and a word in season, how good it is! (Pro 15:23)

To Disciple and to be Discipled

When I know that I am about to be confronted with an angry or upset parent, or when confronted unexpectedly, I remind myself that every conflict "is an opportunity to disciple or to be discipled."  The objective is not to avoid conflict, it is not to deny that there is a problem, and it is not merely to "tolerate" the other person or the meeting.  Instead, conflict is a providentially appointed opportunity to disciple and minister to others or to be discipled by others (Rom. 8:28). 

When dealing with someone who is upset, don't ask yourself "how can I avoid this situation or how can I get through it as quickly and painlessly as possible."  Instead, ask yourself this,

How can the Lord use me in this situation to minister to Mr. and Mrs. Jones and how can the Lord use upset Mr. and Mrs. Jones to instruct me or to make the school better?

You will be surprised how much easier it is to deal with difficult situations and people when you adopt this biblical attitude.  I remind myself of the following verses when facing a difficult situation:

Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)

Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety. (Proverbs 11:14)

Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy. (Pro 27:5-6)

The upset parent or staff member can be our instructors!  Only pride would keep us from freely acknowledging our need for correction--even if not given in an appropriate manner.

Humility

Relax!  You and I have clay feet.  We make mistakes.  We sin.  Unlike our teenage children, we don't know everything. 

We don't have to pretend otherwise to be effective leaders. In fact, acknowledging our frailties reflects genuine humility, fosters listening, reduces defensiveness, and in general reduces tension.  It also puts us in a state of mind to learn from the situation while fostering respect for those who are upset. 

Admit mistakes.  Do not be defensive.  Own the poor decisions.  Doing so models Christian character, is instructive to those who are upset, and leads to the development of stronger schools.

Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. (Pro 16:18)

Listen!!

Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger. (James 1:19)

This verse reminds me of Steven Covey's statement that one of the Seven Habits of Highly Successful People is that they seek first to understand and then to be understood.  In our pride or defensiveness we often seek to justify more than we seek to understand. We want to defend more than we want to learn.  This attitude is both wrong and counter-productive.

Even if the other person is out of line or just plain wrong, we can often learn something of value from the confrontation.  This requires that we talk less and listen more. 

(Source: Cartoonstock)

Sometimes people just need to vent.  Have you ever been in a meeting where the other party keeps repeating the same grievance over and over?  You got it the first time or certainly by the second rendition but they keep going? 

Take a deep breath (quietly!), be patient, and give them ample time.  Doing so shows respect, gives them time to vent, and may reveal something important to learn.

Speak the Truth--In Love

Humility does not mean that we ignore sin or false accusations.  It is sinful to ignore the truth in order to avoid conflict.  Sometimes we need to confront the parent or the employee with their sinful behavior.  For example, the dad who is acting inappropriately during an athletic event, the teacher who responded disrespectfully to a student, or the parent who was verbally abusive to a teacher must be confronted and corrected.  Ignoring sinful behavior in the school corrupts the school's culture.

HOW we speak the truth, however, is extremely important.  We should be clear and candid but gracious even if we have to confront the sinful behavior of others. 

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ. (Eph. 4:15)

A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. (Pro 15:1)

The wise of heart is called discerning, and sweetness of speech increases persuasiveness. (Pro 16:21)

Turn the Other Cheek, Go the Extra Mile

Remember, LIFE AND MINISTRY ARE NOT ABOUT US!  When we remember that we are to "be living sacrifices" (Rom. 12:1-2) it is easier not to take personal offense when dealing with conflict.  Every action we take and every response we give, or don't give, reflects upon God's glory, His kingdom, the testimony of the Gospel, the reputation of our schools, and our leadership. 

When dealing with angry or unreasonable people, it is helpful to remember Jesus' instruction:

And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Mat 5:41-48)

We can demonstrate going the extra mile in our schools with a strong bias for "yes."  In other words, unless the request violates an important policy or foundational principle our bias should be to say yes.  While it is not always possible to agree, it is possible to agree to requests more often than we like to admit. 

One of the keys to saying "yes" is to avoid the "convenience" trap.  That is, if we are not vigilant we can too quickly say no because saying yes would require sacrifice and inconvenience.  Remember, sacrificial service not convenience, is Christ's example for our lives and ministries.

Take a moment to reflect on the following verses.

But when Herod's birthday came, the daughter of Herodias danced before the company and pleased Herod, so that he promised with an oath to give her whatever she might ask. Prompted by her mother, she said, "Give me the head of John the Baptist here on a platter." And the king was sorry, but because of his oaths and his guests he commanded it to be given. He sent and had John beheaded in the prison, and his head was brought on a platter and given to the girl, and she brought it to her mother.

And his disciples came and took the body and buried it, and they went and told Jesus. Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns.

When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick. Now when it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, "This is a desolate place, and the day is now over; send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves." But Jesus said, "They need not go away; you give them something to eat." (Mat 14:6-16)

Note several things:

1) Jesus has just been told about the beheading of John the Baptist.  His natural human response upon hearing this terrible news is that he sought solitude, perhaps a quiet place to grieve the loss. 

2) Jesus is inconvenienced.  The inconsiderate and insensitive crowd follows Jesus--demanding more of his time and energy--notwithstanding his own desire for solitude. 

3) Jesus does not feel sorry for himself, he does not ignore the needs of those around them, and he does not complain--instead--he gives of himself yet again in order to serve them.  Rather than feeling sorry for himself he has compassion on them!

Responding versus Reacting

 Stop!  Pray! Think!  When confronted by an upset parent or employee, when reading a brusque or mean-spirited email, or when listening to an angry diatribe on the phone, do not immediately react.  Wait.  An immediate  emotionally driven response does not reflect the Fruit of the Spirit and will be counter-productive.

Rather than responding immediately take a moment to say a silent prayer.  Then reflect on the issue before responding to it. 

For example, I will often compose a response to an email and then set it aside for several hours or for a day.  Inevitably I find myself revising the email being careful with the words I choose to ensure that my response is not emotional, is clear and gracious, and deals with the facts, not the emotions surrounding the issue.

I often employ Paul’s “sandwich” style as found in  his Epistles.  You are probably familiar with his style.  He starts out with a compliment or praise, moves to instruction/correction, and closes with praise or positive acknowledgment.  Here is an example from I Corinthians.

Opening:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge-- even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you--(1Co 1:3-6) …

Instruction/Correction:

… But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ … (1Co 3:1) …

Closing:

… The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you. My love be with you all in Christ Jesus. Amen. (1Co 16:23-24)

Follow-up

Do not ignore the matter!  It will not go away.  Whatever the issue—address it.  Dr. Kynerd, our current Chancellor and former Superintendent, has given me very wise advice.  He counsels, “Under promise and over deliver.”  Reflect on the benefits of this statement for a moment.  What are the potential benefits if we under promise, over deliver, and always follow-up?  Conversely, what are the consequences if we over promise and under deliver?

Fruit of the Spirit

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. (Gal 5:22-23)

When dealing with conflict, ask yourself the following questions:

• How will my response reflect love?
• How can I find joy in this situation for myself and for the one who is upset? (“count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. Jas 1:2-3)
• How can I show kindness EVEN if I am being “abused”?
• What good deed/work can I perform in this situation?
• How can I use this situation to demonstrate faithfulness to my Lord, to my calling and to my students, parents, and staff?
• How am I reflecting gentleness in my response as I seek to “speak the truth in love?”
• Am I demonstrating self-control or am I reacting?

Keeping Authorities Informed

With the exception of gifts, people do not like surprises!  If you are dealing with an issue that is likely to come to the attention of a board member, the pastor, or others in positions of authority—inform them in advance of the situation.

I routinely give my board chairman and/or the pastors a “heads-up” on situations that may percolate.  Doing so is a courtesy to them so that they are not caught off guard.  It also fosters trust and gives you the opportunity to seek advice.  There is NO DOWNSIDE to this proactive communication!

Likewise, if there is bad news share it with the school board forthrightly.  Don’t sweep things under the rug, don’t pretend everything is fine if they aren’t.  You owe it to your board and others to keep them fully informed of the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Making the Hard but Necessary Decisions

Sometimes an effective response may be require a parting of the way.  For example, an employee may have to be dismissed or a parent may have to be told that the school can no longer serve him or her.  This should be a last resort measure but it may be necessary. 

Over the years I have had to make the unpleasant decision to terminate an employee or to tell a parent that his behavior is such that the school can no longer effectively serve his family.

Such decisions should only be made after much prayer, hard work, and longsuffering.  The highest levels of integrity must be maintained.  But failure to make these hard decisions is a failure of leadership. 

 When you make these hard decisions remember that you do not have the liberty of defending yourself to others.  With the exception of those with authority over us, we must not share information regarding the circumstances of our decision with others in order to justify ourselves.  We also do not have the liberty of gossiping (sharing something that is true is still gossip!).  The Scriptures are clear—“Love covers a multitude of sins.”  This does not mean that sin is swept under the rug—it means that we protect the reputations of our protagonists even if doing so causes others to question our leadership and decisions.  Again, this is NOT about us.

In Summary

• Conflict cannot and should not be avoided
• Use humor to diffuse anger
• See conflict as an opportunity to disciple and/or to be discipled
• Be humble
• Listen
• Speak the truth in love
• Turn the other cheek, go the extra mile
• Respond—don’t react
• Follow-up
• Demonstrate the Fruit of the Spirit
• Keep the appropriate authorities informed
• Make the hard decisions

Technorati Tags: Challenges,Leadership,Productivity,School Culture,Conflict

Was Chicken Little Right? Is the Sky Falling?

Although he is cute, I have no desire to be Chicken Little! I do not  believe the sky is falling.

I am convinced, however, that storm clouds have formed on the horizon. Want to see what is in those storm clouds? Watch the first episode of the PBS special, Where We Stand: Echoes of Sputnik and a Call to Action.

Referencing this series, Mr. Thorpe writes in Education Week:

With the presidential candidates focused primarily on issues such as ... the 3E’s—economy, environment, and energy—this program will ask an important question: Why is the fourth E—education—not seen as worthy of equal attention?

It is the one systemic investment that ultimately fuels our success (or failure) in almost every national endeavor ... Most of us would probably agree that there is little evidence schools are doing any worse than they did 10, 20, or even 50 years ago. They are probably doing better, in fact.

But the problem lies—just as it did a half-century ago—not in what we are doing, but in what other countries are doing.

Our challenges involve the degree to which those other countries are investing in human capital, the priorities they set, and the results they are getting.

The United States once led the world in math, science, and other critical subjects, as well as in the number of students going on to higher education. Today we are well down in the pack ...

Let anyone dare to compare our education results with those of Finland, South Korea, or Singapore, for instance, and the excuses rain down.

We have a more diverse country! We try to educate all children! They can do that over there because, because, because.

Finally, he warns:

In today’s “flat world,” the geographical accident of where they are born no longer conveys to the children of the United States the advantage they have had for decades. Other countries have learned from us how important it is to invest in their people.

We give lip service to the cliché that “our children are our future,” but most people do not see a 2nd grader, or even a high school student, as having much to do with determining our future strength ... Few of us really look at Susie’s lack of interest in reading or Jose’s success in math as being either a threat to or the hope for the nation’s future. Yet, that is exactly what they are.

Is the sky falling? Maybe not but there is a storm brewing over the distant horizon. Unfortunately, most Americans are blissfully ignorant of the pending threat posed to our national well-being, to our national security, or to our children's futures.

Too many of us are like the Hobbits in Tolkien's classic, The Lord of the Rings. Danger is brewing in Mordor but like the merry Hobbits, too many of us go about running our schools largely ignorant of the rising danger or are unwilling or "too busy" to provide the leadership that is necessary to realign our schools, our standards, and our curriculum to meet the global challenge.

Everything may seem beautiful and peaceful in the village but the threat is real. By the time we are concerned enough to raise our standards to international levels it may be too little too late for many of our students.

As illustrated by the table below, American students rank very low in international comparisons of science achievement. Click here for the Executive Summary of the 2006 PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) report. As pointed out in the report, the problem of low achievement by U.S. students is not restricted to science.

To put the problem in a more tangible form, consider two typical "man on the street interviews," which add a surreal exclamation point to the threat our nation faces from poor academic achievement.

Why People Think Americans are Stupid

How Much do American's Know about Europe?

If you have not done so already, I strongly recommend that you and your staff read The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century. Here is one excerpt from the book to illustrate the international level of educational competition:

India is a country with virtually no natural resources that got very good at doing one thing--mining the brains of its own people ... In 1951, to his enduring credit, Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, setup the first of India's seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) in the eastern city of Kharagpur ...

The IITs became islands of excellence by not allowing the general debasement of the Indian system to lower their exacting standards ... You couldn't bribe your way to get into an IIT ... Arguably, it is harder to get into an IIT than into Harvard or the the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ...

IIT alumnus Vinrod Khosla, who co-founded Sun Microsystems, said: "When I finished IIT Delhi and went to Carnegie Mellon for my Masters, I thought I was cruising all the way because it was so easy relative to the education I got at IIT." pp. 104-5

So How Should We Respond?

• Don't dismiss the problem or the challenge. It is real and is substantiated by a large body of research.
• Don't assume that Christian schools are academically superior. As I have indicated in previous articles, even if our students score high on nationally normed assessments, we are comparing our students against a low standard relative to international achievement.
• Have your teachers and administrators read The World is Flat and other articles that layout the problem.
• Assess the quality of your teaching staff--are your teachers superior? How do you know? If they are not superior, what do you plan to do about it?
• Substantially increase the level of your professional development activities and accountability.
• Reassess your curriculum--is is broad enough, rigorous enough?
• Leverage technology to deepen and enrich your curriculum and to enhance professional development
• Remember that when grounded in God's word and motivated by His glory and a love others, the pursuit of academic excellence is a holy endeavor!

What say you?

Technorati Tags: Globalization,Excellence,Chinese,Competition,India,technology Integration,flat world,staff development,professional development,international standards,Mordor,Lord of the Rings,Dumb Americans,Man on the street interviews