I have often wondered if there is any correlation between the prevailing ethnicity of a school’s student body and the ethnicity of the school’s principal in large urban public school systems.  I am currently engaged in doctoral coursework, studying existing perceptions of stakeholders around principal selection and race in New York City Public Schools.  #exclud_ed  #bble

As difficult as it might be to believe, we all carry biases with us.  They affect our relationships and guide our intentions almost as though our minds were on autopilot.  Being aware of your blind spot and helping others to recognize and mediate their own biases can help organizations move beyond some potentially harmful interactions and outcomes.

Almost six years of my work as a school administrator was focused on reclaiming students who were considered “the most difficult to serve” by New York City Public Schools.  My team and I earned impressive outcomes and learned a great deal about what motivates students and how traditional curricula is a disservice to many learners.  I engage with schools systems around this critical and pervasive issue.

Some time ago I read a brilliant book by Annegret Staiger (Learning Difference).  I was surprised to learn of the educational origins/adaptation of the term “at-risk” as an insurance industry reference and immediately felt immense shame and regret in referring to learners in this way.  How are these students the same or different from others?  How can we codify their unique strengths from an asset-based stance as opposed to a deficit-based stance?

According to an Office Team survey, 62% of HR Managers say that work place bullying happens.  As a victim of this practice myself, I developed a solution (bullyworkzone.org) as a way to help others avoid a similar experience.  #BullyFreeWorkZone #bfwz

We categorize things as a way to understand them.  The continued proliferation of white educators from outside of the communities in which they teach, has generated cognitive dissonance for those educators.  As a result of society’s inability to understand these black and brown communities, the “urban education” term provides a way to discretely and acceptably label schools where kids do, say and think in a way their teachers don’t know how to “fix.” Kids are kids, not labels.  #TheUrbanEdMyth

Groupthink (Janis, 1972, 1983) is a negative term referring to the loss of individuality and creative thinking when individuals within a group defer to the thinking of the group (or a leader in the group) rather than their own ideas for how to achieve outcomes that are beneficial for the group.  Teamthink (Neck & Manz, 1994) is proposed as a way that groups can avoid the pitfalls of groupthink by focusing on the mindset of the team members and seeking to establish norms that proactively plan to thwart groupthink, including viewing obstacles as challenges.

For some reason, American schools assume school is about learning content.  And they assume that kids can consume the content because they have already acquired the English language.  Both accounts are silly.  Instruction is and should always be about literacy.  The purpose of content is to engage and provide the learner a reason to learn to be excited about literacy.  Every lesson needs to incorporate opportunities to read, write, speak and listen.  These modalities are not just learners of a second language; they are first-language tools also.