A recent tweet about my “crew” brings me to this Post. I did not know that I had a crew until someone pointed it out in a tweet. The tweeter made reference to the @tomwhitby crew discussion – 1) Admins stink. 2) Teachers are holy. 3) ???? 4) Profit! I really did not fully understand points 3 & 4, but, based on 1 & 2, I believe this person felt that I always knock Administrators and praise teachers.
If that is the perception of the flavor of my tweets, I am misrepresenting my beliefs and I should apologize to a number of people. I firmly believe that, if education is to improve, it will be because a number of great educational leaders will lead us from where we are today, to where we should be tomorrow. I do not believe we should throw everything out and begin from scratch. Many of these leaders reside in the ranks of today’s educational administrators. In my not-so humble opinion there is a difference between leaders and administrators.
My perspective on this comes from a career in education as a teacher who has worked with a number of Administrators. My personal,professional experience has spanned over three school Districts and two Colleges. I entered the teaching profession as enrollments were declining and schools were reducing their staffs to accommodate the shrinking size of their baby-boomer, student bodies. Many teachers lost their jobs and did not re-enter the profession. With each reduction I was lucky enough to land on my feet and secure positions in other schools.
In 34 years I worked under many administrators; Eight Superintendents, nine Principals, sixteen assistant Principals, ten department Chairs. Recalling these numbers for the purpose of this post brought to mind many good people and many others who did not exactly advance education. Those I had great respect for included: Two of the eight Superintendents, three of the nine principals, two of the sixteen assistant Principals and three of the ten chairs. My respect for those administrators came from their ability to understand and enable teachers on the staff to be successful. It was apparent to me that for many reasons, the great administrators came in much smaller numbers. Too many of the less supportive people floated to the top. I am haunted by the thought of those 13 AP’s moving up.
During my career I have always been involved with Professional Development. Many of the teachers that I worked with looked to improve their teaching methods and learn about new tools. This is not to say that there weren’t teachers who were unwilling to learn and grow. I really believe that I have addressed those teachers in many of my tweets. I also spent Five years on the Board of Directors of the New York State Association of Computers and Technology in Education. I worked with many progressive administrators leading their schools into the future with technology. That was highlighted by their teachers giving wonderful presentations of accomplishments with Tech and Teaching. Presentations which would not be possible without administrative support.
Teachers, however, are at the bottom of the power structure. The only group lower than teachers in regard to power would be the students. If real change is to come, it might be suggested by the lower levels, but it must be directed to happen from the top. Superintendents and Principals are in a much better position to promote lasting change in the educational system. Their attitudes and leadership will direct buildings and districts. Teachers or students, although influential, do not have that power.
And then there was the Superintendent from Rhode Island announcing that her entire teaching staff was being terminated. The teachers refused to work longer hours and more days without additional money. They also refused to eat their lunches in the student cafeteria with the students. This particular superintendent did not provide the leadership needed for improvement. If the teaching methods were not working during the regular work week, why would a superintendent expect that, an increase in the number of hours and days using those same methods, would improve a dropout rate? What other ideas had this superintendent implemented for professional development? Did she promote best practices? Was there a mentor program in place? How supportive was she of her staff?
What made it worse for me was that our head Educational leader, Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, immediately supported the action and said that more actions like this may follow. This was underscored by the President of the United States reaffirming that statement within days.
What motivates people to become teachers is usually a need to affect change. I see many students enter the profession with passion and energy to change the world. They are smart and willing to work. If, after a period of time as a teacher, these qualities are less obvious, they may not have disappeared, but rather may have gone dormant for a number of reasons, lack of leadership being one. These qualities do still exist. They may need to be awakened by a caring and knowledgeable leader who looks to build and not tear things down. Teachers should teach, and Administrators should lead. Politicians should do whatever it is they do, but that would not be anything involving Education, unless it is their own. The only way to improve education is to lead us to improvement. Tearing down the system and starting over wastes resources, money, and people.
With this as a backdrop to my tweet, I apologize to all of those administrators who are supporting their staffs and encouraging learning. I believe teachers who are not doing their best to advance themselves professionally are doing wrong by themselves, and their students. They should be held accountable. I do not apologize for promoting collaboration and discussion to involve those who need to be changed. I believe teachers need to support change by directing and supporting their administrators in the best ways to teach kids how to learn. I believe social media allows all parties to collaborate and exchange ideas to benefit all educators. I believe anyone willing to be in my crew gets an extra ration of RUM.
My Island View 
First, I would like to praise all of the administrators on Twitter who are genuinely interested in bringing themselves and their staffs into the 21st Century.
We must realize that we are part of a team. The “we” being our students, their parents, teachers, support staff in schools (the entire staff custodial, secretarial, transportation…) as well as administrators.
There are good and not so good in all categories. We must accentuate the positive and make our schools true learning environments. “No man/woman is an island.” It does take a village to raise children.
We must all work together for the common good of our children.
Well said…leaders and administrators/managers exist in all professions and but the difference is noticeably obvious when you walk into a school building.
The biggest difference is that in a building with a leader in charge the attitude is “what can be done” and there is an obvious positive attitude in most people.
The building with an administrator/manager the overwhelming attitude is “what can’t we doe” and there is an undercurrent of negativity that just permeates what is done.
Leaders tend to support innovation, while administrators try to not rock the boat and just punch their resume.
Give me a leader to work for, they are tough to work for because they expect so much more from everyone, but you don’t mind because it feels like you are making a difference.
Here is to leadership and how social networking pushes leaders hip to be leaders. Are we talking Spiced or just Grog?
Being a leader in any career means to understand needs, and provide opportunities to solve problems, constantly.
It’s common to see administrators who have never been educators, which makes difficult to them to understand how things should work.
But I think improvement has to be a goal, no matter what kind of administrator you have around you.
Well said Tom. I think there are great leaders and I think there are great teachers. Unfortunately, there are not enough of either. I believe teachers can improve their skills through PD, PLNs, etc., but by looking at the high number of poor administrators you talked about in your own experiences, my guess is there are not an adequate number of leaders needed to support the needed teacher improvement. My point is that until we get more high-quality leaders, we will not get more high-quality teachers. It will take a combination of improving people in both areas.
Where I disagree is your statement about tearing down the system…I think we have wasted millions of dollars over the years trying to reform schools. The school system doesn’t need reformed, because it will morph back to the system it has always been. The system needs transformed. We need to develop a system that meets the needs of all students and provides the most qualified teachers to all students. I believe there are teachers out there that are mediocre and all the training in the world is not going to improve their skills enough to make the impact on students that the best teachers have. With technology today, we should be able to provide learning opportunities for all students in the U.S. with only the best teachers.
I think our focus needs to be on improving the skills of our teachers/admin. while simultaneously changing the system we currently have from the factory model developed in 1895. The world has changed and it is time for schools to change as well.
I am always puzzled when reformers look at the work done by a great educational leader and then try to emulate its results by following the curriculum she uses. Education is all about relationships and begins with the human ones before connecting students to all the relationships between disciplines and topics. Understanding this central truth is the main reason homeschoolers (usually) get amazing results and educational factories don’t.
We won’t engineer or test our way to better education. We can only get there with love and vision.
My respect for the intelligence and dedication of teachers only occurred after I started working in schools. It’s really easy to assume the worst about teachers, especially if we’ve had bad experiences with a teacher or teachers when we were students.
I also see the alleged school reform coming from Washington as just more blaming of teachers. Now that I’ve been a teacher for a couple of years, I have some idea of what I think school reform should look like if it’s to be effective:
http://daisybrain.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/a-teachers-perspective-on-school-reform/
I always thought you got away with your posts because none of the admin were saavy enuf to read them and that was what made it safe for u! Quite an eye full in this. I have seen resistance in both teachers and admin. It is always a few who do the work and the rest who admire it and continue on as before. I don’t see any plans for getting the remaining teachers hooked on tech. Schools will have to wait til the older staff retire, imho
Mr. Whitby,
I’m a litlle nervous about having to deal with poor administrators now that I have read the statistics about your own expierences. I guess I was naive to think that the people who had gotten to those high posistions were there because they had shown great leadership, and would continue to lead.
I do however like the point you made about the situation in Rhode Island, and how tearing down the system wastes money, people, and resources!They should have tried to work with the faculty already their to try and improve their dropout rate with new methods and better technology instead of scrapping everything!
Dear Tom,
Thank you for your post, and all your contributions to my learning.
The notion of power, that you bring up, is an important one. Just tonight I am reading about the different kinds of power present in the political frame of organizations. Kanter, in “Frontiers of Management”, describes power as a connectedness, an ability to find information and then delegate roles to other qualified people. In contrast is the notion of powerlessness, which is described as a rules-based bossiness that stifles autonomy and ultimately leads to frustration and failure.
This thinking seems to support what you are saying here, that great leadership will look to people who are capable of doing things well and then provide them with the tools and the AUTONOMY do get the job done. Education reform today seems to align much more closely with the powerlessness described by Kanter; too often, teachers are “led” by administrators (like the ones you describe and didn’t admire) who don’t know the answers, don’t know where to look, and fundamentally distrust teachers to do a good job. No wonder the teachers are frustrated and students are failing.
The hope in all of this seems to be that the connections that educators are making, like the ones that you facilitate everyday, put power into the hands of the teachers and administrators who want to “quickly make it possible to accomplish more and pass on more resources and information.”
Educational leaders need to know the landscape, delegate well and with trust and support teachers as they do their work. Clearly, this did not seem to be happening in the incidence in Delaware. Thanks again for your post.
@emilymccarren
Hi there Tom! My name’s Holly Longenecker and I’m a student at the University of South Alabama. I’m taking a course called educational media and I’ve been assigned to read your blog. I’ll be leaving several comments and then summarizing what I’ve gotten from your blog on my own. You can check out my blog at http://www.longeneckerhollyedm310.blogspot.com.
I appreciate your enthusiasm and can’t wait to come back again to see what you have to say.