Balanced Leadership

Growing up with two parents who were both very doting on my 4 siblings and myself, there was a thread that I witnessed as I got over. That was their ability to bring two very key components to raising a family.

-Compassion
-Firm Discipline

Too often parents can lean to one side over the other. It's easy to look at a child's irresistibly cute face and as a result overlook the mischief they just got themselves into. Or, it sometimes happens that parents are overly critical and punitive in their approach to a child's behaviors that they lack the compassion children need in their formative years.

Thankfully my parents were able to see through our cute faces and to our devious hearts enough to warn us when we were headed down the wrong path, correct us through punishments and then love on us compassionately during and after the punishment process. This balance of the two components served us well as we grew into adulthood.

Being an Instructional Coach, Specialist and Program Director over the last 5 years has taught me to exercise this same level of balance. How?

Well in my first few years of leadership, serving as a Coordinator over a Charter's Math Program and in that same vein operating as the Instructional Specialist/Coach, naturally it was my pleasure to be at their beckon call ready to do whatever it took to make their job easier. If they needed someone to come help them wipe down desks that were delivered the day before "Meet the Teacher", then I was there with my Clorox wipes.

When I moved into a District Specialist position, I was placed at a campus that had run through it's course of Specialists and possibly grown some residual resentment towards me (rightfully so) due to the high mobility they'd experienced. With teachers apprehensive about whether I would "stick around" or even care enough to sincerely support them, I made it my priority to simply be in their proximity asking the same question every hour, "Is there anything I can do to help you?" Sometimes this meant grabbing additional base ten blocks for them while they were in the middle of their lesson, from the hallway manipulative closets. I was more than happy to do it. Service was my mission.

While servant leadership is the soul of a good leader, it is equally pertinent that a leader be grounded in research based practices and deeply convicted on matters that serve as the basis for their practice. In this case, Education. And more specifically in my case, Mathematics. As a leader responsible for bringing in a viable curriculum, vetting and creating assessments, planning and disseminating professional developments and modeling best practices, it was critical that my theoretical concepts be rooted in research and serve the needs of the teachers and students. I had no room for opinion (this is what I like/think is best) nor the attitude "this is how I used to do it".

It was my professional service to stay abreast to what was moving pedagogy forward and best serving the growing diversity of student needs. When a teacher would approach me about a school of thought or practice they wanted to start/continue, I could NOT in good faith just jump on board with their methodology. I had to vet it through the lens of research, best practice and educational pedagogy. If I was inclined to lean more heavily towards my servant leadership style, I would be jumping on board every question, desire, and request that crossed my path and doing students a grave dis-service. However, if I leaned more heavily towards my studies, I would become this rigid, dictatorial leader whom teachers would grow to abhor.

Balanced leadership raises the whole program, the total teacher, serves the entire child. It combines the willing heart and soul of a person with the sound doctrine needed to practice and serve a group with fidelity and exactness.

Now, when people in my profession approach me with an ideal, although my heart of service is inclined to be there to support them in any way I can...the deeper heart of me calls out and reminds me that in order to best serve the needs of students in a preventative manner, I must vet the inquiry through the lens of research. John VandeWalle has been the guru for Mathematical Pedagogy for years and his desire to 'help teachers help kids' has been my go-to because he not only helps teachers make sense of math but his work is grounded in foundational mathematics education.

As coaches/Specialists, it is educational malpractice to simply serve. We must be the backbone of our craft by seeking to know what our teachers don't know. To researching the mathematical ideals behind our standards and the implementation that best supports student development. Although Pinterest and Teacher pay Teachers are great places for teachers to not "reinvent the wheel", we must be the vetting tool that helps teachers understand the fundamentals first so they know exactly what to "shop" for. Although there are plenty of free (and not so free) digital resources out there that mix gaming with math practice, we must be the beacons that filter what's first developmentally appropriate before we look solely at what's "fun" and engaging. This is balanced leadership at it's best!