I have always felt grateful for the many teachers who shaped my education. They inspired me to be curious about the world and hungry to always learn more. Several of those teachers influenced my behaviors and mindsets in ways I am sure they are unaware. However, when I recently started reading the book, The New Jim …
You may want to sit down for this. I am a liberal.
Yes, for those of you following my social media, my posts for the last several years were not an exercise in sarcasm, but my inability to resist sharing my impassioned and sometimes inflamed feelings about the current public narrative. Those same posts have undoubtedly memorialized my liberal tendencies. However, very little about which I’ve …
Continue reading You may want to sit down for this. I am a liberal.
Mentally Decluttering
As I’ve mentioned in the past, establishing or revising goals on my life list has been an annual exercise for me for years. Like a lot of people, maintaining a life list not only fuels my drive to continually learn and experience new things, it nurtures my purpose. However, it struck me recently that my …
New Year Commitment
Every year, numerous organizations come up with their list of words and phrases that deserve to be retired from the public lexicon. When I started my journey to learn about equity and racism, I became aware of a whole new lexicon around race, gender, socio-economic status and so on that I had not fully embraced …
Autonomy
I recently watched a Ted Talk by author Daniel Pink in which he discussed intrinsic motivation. During the talk, Pink identified several factors that nurture or diminish intrinsic motivation. However the one that stood out the most was “autonomy.” According to Pink, “to be fully motivated, you must be able to control what you do, …
We’re back to buffalo
We’re taught that lying is bad from an early age. Yet as adults, it seems that not everyone fully adheres to the principle of honesty and integrity. The least offensive lie is one that is made in error. A mistake. Leaving out important facts is often used to commit a lie of omission. Refusing …
Sometimes winning isn’t
Let’s face it. We all like to win. And we hate to lose. That is because from an early age, we are conditioned to believe winning is good and losing is bad. As a verb, “lose” means to be deprived of something. As an adjective, “losing” refers to suffering or defeat. Of course, we cannot …
Self-Care for (School) Leaders (and anyone reading this)
School administrators regularly engage with students, staff and families who are in crisis, are experiencing depression, anxiety or a host of other mental health ailments. However, the pandemic and recent social unrest have secured trauma and mental health a place at the top of the leaderboard. As a result, it is more important than ever …
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What is your “it?”
I was recently talking with some colleagues about climate and culture, and how to build or maintain it when so many people are working remotely. Climate refers to how people feel about their job or their work, their sense of purpose in an organization, and their happiness or satisfaction. Between climate and culture, climate is …
Admit mistakes before someone exaggerates the story.
I’ve learned a ton about leadership by making mistakes. One in particular was around twenty years ago. I was very early into my career as a school administrator and the district was working to pass a high stakes referendum. As a member of the administrative team, one of the volunteer/community service roles I had was …
Continue reading Admit mistakes before someone exaggerates the story.
