Episode 4: Faithful and Flourishing School District Employees and Stakeholders

Discover the secret sauce that makes an educational district employee and stakeholder not just good, but truly exceptional. Join me, Phil Stover, as we traverse the landscape of public education, pinpointing nine key traits that mark the difference between the ordinary and the extraordinary. From the diligence of food service workers to the strategic thinkers on the school board, this episode is a treasure trove of insights into the knowledge, competence, judgment, wisdom and more that drives our education system forward. Whether you're a teacher, administrator, or play any role in this vital sector, you'll walk away with a deeper understanding of what it takes to excel and the impact it has on our communities.

This is no mere lecture; it's an invitation to a conversation that resonates with anyone invested in the future of our schools. As we release the fourth installment of 'Dancing in the Mind Fields,' I'm eager to hear from you—your experiences, your questions, and your stories. Engage with us, share your thoughts, and become part of a dialogue that enriches us all. So, grab your headphones, subscribe to stay in the loop, and let's untangle the complexities of public education together, because here, every perspective matters and every voice counts.

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phil@riovistagroup.com

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Dancing in the Mind Fields and Instituto de Estudios de Historia Mexicana are subsidiaries of Rio Vista Group LLC

Enjoy listening to the podcasts and let's all keep on dancing!

Transcript

Dancing in the Mind Fields

Season One Episode Four

Faithful and Flourishing School District Employees and Stakeholders

Greetings from sunny Chihuahua, Mexico. This is your host, Phil Stover. I welcome each of you to the fourth episode of the first season of my new podcast, “Dancing in the Mind Fields.” Feedback from this series of podcasts, along with the website and Facebook group page, will allow us to discuss the joys and challenges of the forces for and against public education in the United States.

I have enjoyed the opportunity to informally and formally observe, interact, work with, and assess employees at all levels and in virtually every position in districts from Apalachicola to Anchorage. I offer the listener my conclusions about which characteristics, traits, and competencies I believe are helpful in creating a fruitful and flourishing district employee. 

I chose the words “fruitful” and “flourishing” carefully. In their use, I suggest that a fruitful employee is effective, productive, and valuable in the work assigned to the person, whether as a board member, food service worker, or subject area coordinator. By “flourishing,” I suggest that the person is personally thriving, fulfilled, and content in their work. 

As a consultant, I often provided feedback during times of stress and discontinuity in a district. My ability to help a district often depended on the accuracy of the feedback (both data-driven and observed) that I provided. I often had to make assessments in a short period of time. I worked very hard to do so well. Of course, sometimes I missed the mark.  

My listener, in that spirit of cautious incertitude, I offer you feedback on the nine characteristics I observed in those employees who seemed to be both “fruitful” and “flourishing” in their work. I would simply add that I believe that a community of such employees makes for the same characteristics in their teams, departments, schools, and in district governance.

I would acknowledge these are not strictly laboratory-determined conclusions. They are based on my lived observations. I simply suggest that the degree to which they are each present in individual employees and stakeholders, the more fruitful, and flourishing they and their districts collectively will be in reaching their teaching and learning goals. Here we go, in no particular order - 

1. Knowledge: An advanced understanding of an individual’s responsibilities and requirements. This must be combined with a foundational understanding of the complicated nature, not just of the specific task, but also of the public school environment, including collective and individual staff, students, stakeholders, and resource management. Sometimes, we limit the importance of knowledge to that of academic discipline. Virtually every employee in a district must also have a knowledge of school law, school finances, the nature and culture of the local community, and the limits within which one may exercise their responsibility. To summarize, knowledge used well and added to experience may often  produce our second characteristic – competence. 

​2. Competence: Differs from knowledge in that it requires a necessary learned skill level to be proficient in performing the task at hand. Proficiency is the ability to use knowledge and skill to demonstrate the competence necessary to succeed at the tasks required in a specific job category. The teacher who has subject or content mastery but does not know how to effectively adapt and deliver that knowledge to both the classroom and an individual student will not teach at an optimal level. The relationship between competence and standards is an important discussion point regarding student learning. At times, we fail to realize that the same discourse related to the performance of district adults is equally valid. Competence is much more than “time on task” whether the subject being measured is a student or employee. Confidence in one’s competency then is a freeing mechanism that may lead to our third characteristic – judgment. 

3. Judgment: Having the good sense to make good decisions given the situation's specific context. Good judgment considers the potential implications on others of a given action, comment, or decision and responds and perhaps refrains accordingly. Knowing what to say or do is often ineffective unless the appropriate when, how, and expected result of an action, decision, or comment is considered as well. For example, in a school district climate, one may need to learn the distinction between being an advocate and an activist for one’s personal priorities, when interacting with either students or fellow employees. Once again, the how, when, and correctly anticipating the result become super important. An understanding of all three is vital to the expression of sound judgment. 

Judgment also has a secondary meaning that may be equally important in a school district's complex and diverse community. This attribute is the ability to hear or receive from fellow employees, students, or stakeholders the worldview, thoughts, opinions, or beliefs with which you may strongly disagree without the need to pass judgment on what you hear.         
Sociologist Wade Davis once wisely said, “The world in which you were born is just one model of reality. Other cultures are not failed attempts at being you; they are unique manifestations of the human spirit.” Reserving judgment is often more prudent than disseminating your disapproval, especially when broadcasted at the wrong place and time.  A preponderance of good judgment in decision making, together with an equal preponderance of withholding judgment, seasoned with knowledge and competence may lead to our fourth variable, that of wisdom.

4. Wisdom: An ability to make good decisions based on applying the challenges and learnings gained from life experience, especially in the presence of competing points of view and when there may be negative consequences, especially on the students. It is important to maintain the ability to introspect and understand one’s own unique limitations and apply the same to each unique situation. Wisdom comes to the forefront when one has power. Knowing how, when, and if to exercise power is an aspect of wisdom. Wisdom in an environment like a public school district is knowing that people and students surround you who have differing ideas from your own, and you respond by wanting to learn from each of them, even if doing so proves your prior certitude to be something less than correct. Failure to commit to learning from those who are not you may produce what Nobel Prize winner, Daniel Kahneman deemed “angry science,” a nasty world” of “critiques, replies, and rejoinders” that don’t ultimately change anyone’s mind. 

Perchance wisdom leads to the realization, again in Kahneman’s words that “When you ask people, why do you believe what you believe? They answer by giving reasons for their beliefs. Subjectively, we experience that reasons are prior to the beliefs that can be deduced from them. But we know that the power of reasons is an illusion. The belief will not change when the reasons are defeated. The causality is reversed. People believe the reasons because they believe in the conclusion.” Demonstrating wisdom and a desire to learn from the other may contribute to the development of the fifth critical variable in my model, that of trust.   

 5. Trust: Incorporates two aspects, that of being trustworthy and having the ability to trust others. Both are equally important. Being trustworthy requires one to respond consistently to those variables that arise under differing circumstances. The ability to trust involves the capacity to take risks when circumstances might indicate otherwise.  Bryk and Schneider have written an entire book on the importance of trust in a school district. They deem trust “a core resource for improvement in schools.” They also remind us of the early twentieth-century education guru John Dewey, who advised that “a good elementary school is more akin to a family than a factory.” Managing change is often predicated on creating and modeling trust, whether in the emotionally charged environment of a family or a school district. Trust is a vital attribute to be used carefully. Once lost, it can rarely be found. I do believe that it is easier to trust when “all your eggs” of identity and security are not committed to one basket called “the district.” That involves being engaged in being grounded in something other than the district. Being grounded is our sixth variable in being a fruitful and flourishing district employee. 

​6. Grounding: Whenever, as a consultant or as a district employee, I would end a meeting that I had chaired, I would encourage each attendee to “stay grounded” in something other than the district. My experience tells me that somewhere, sometime in almost everyone’s tenure working in a school district, an employee, stakeholder, or even a student will experience disappointment, disillusionment, or disagreement. In such a complex environment, such is almost inevitable. I would never dare to suggest in what they should be grounded, but it needs to be something other than the district. 

Districts are wonderful environments in which to work, but they can also cause great harm if an employee has their entire sense of self grounded therein. I once created a tenet for my own work that said, “The trees that are the most grounded are those with the deepest roots in the richest soil through which they draw sustenance, sufficiency, sustainability, and support. In the largest forest, each tree stands or falls alone depending on how well it is grounded.” This belief is a crucial component behind my seventh characteristic, that of sustaining a strong internal locus of control. 

7. Internal Locus of Control: A psychological construct that indicates a person who believes they have control over and are responsible for the outcome of a majority of their own lived experiences. When that is neither possible nor reality, they then strive to exert self-control over their own point-in-time emotional, rational, and physical response to those overwhelming circumstances. Both of these aspects of internal locus of control are vital to success in such a complicated and complex environment as a school district, especially a large urban or hierarchically top-down district. 

This concept has been applied to student learning and achievement for many years. Many studies have been done on student learning and locus of control (both internal and external). According to Stephen Nowicki, a proponent of this trait, internal locus of control in students is a causal factor in improving student achievement, not the result. 

Much less attention has been paid to the impact of a strongly internal locus control on the adults in the room, typically the district employees and stakeholders, including parents. Whether you are the superintendent, a maintenance planner, an auditor, or a resource teacher, you can almost be assured that not everything will always go your way. You may make mistakes. At some point of time, in employment in, or engagement with a school district, some external force will seek to impose its will on you. This can result in a sense of hopelessness, powerlessness, and even failure. 

When that happens, then your reaction to that imposition is the next very important variable. Those external driving forces, whether inside or outside the district may get you down, but don’t let them keep you down. If you made a serious mistake, admit it. If you are judged unfairly, bear up under that burden and maintain courage, even when your future in the district may be in doubt. Indeed, courage is the eighth trait necessary for being successfully engaged in public education.

8. Courage: This attribute describes a readiness to move forward, sideways, backwards, or to stand still (whichever is best) in the face of difficult, challenging, or occasionally, dangerous situations. We are often best served when courage and wisdom go hand-in-hand. Public school work is often difficult, almost always challenging, and rarely, yet occasionally dangerous. Raymond Lindquist is quoted as advising that “Courage is the power to let go of the familiar.” I like that a lot. A learning environment is one that encourages courage – letting go of the safe and familiar, to move to that which is unfamiliar and new. That is the mission of every public school in serving both its students, employees, and stakeholders. While it may not be self-apparent, I believe it is important to recognize that courage and grace go hand-in-hand. 

9. Grace: I look at grace as being the ability and readiness to grant unmerited favor, kindness, or patience to someone who has not yet earned or deserved it. It is a giving of oneself without concern about possible personal loss in so-doing. I think the key word here is “unmerited.” To be kind to someone who has been kind to you may not be so difficult. Being kind to someone who has been angry, mean-spirited, or hostile with you is indeed an act of grace. Public education is a place of many competing priorities. It is a place that needs a little more grace when dealing with those who hold differing values and priorities than your own. Oh, and sometimes when it comes to dancing, we might say a particular person moves with a particular grace. So let it be with you.  

Rather than being intrinsic to being human, I believe each attribute is in its own way, learned. While many districts provide knowledge-based training, few if any, provide  guidance or training in the other eight. Given that reality, I  do believe it is possible to offer training in the growth of these nine characteristics in the lives of district employees, especially when they are consistently modeled by district leaders. 

They certainly are valuable traits in learning to dance in the mind fields of public education. I am sure there are other traits that are important as well, but from my notes, reflections, and observations, I offer you, my listener these nine as reflective of important traits in the lives of fruitful and flourishing adults serving and yes, dancing in the mind fields of public education.

Thanks for tuning in to this, the fourth of our first season of podcasts. Please subscribe to us on your favorite podcast channel and email us how we are doing at phil@thedistrictmatters.com. You can also contact us on our website at riovistagroup.com or join our Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/groups/dancinginthemindfields/. Everyone, have a good day and let’s all keep on dancing!