Centering On the Best

This concept of centering on the best people may seem new and unfamiliar, yet it is one of the crucial differences between the best educators and the rest. Nurture the superstar students you have, and work to cultivate others. Keep your best, most well rounded students at the forefront when you make decisions. Your classes will be better off and your job will be more enjoyable!

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Before making any decision or attempting to bring about any change, great teachers ask themselves one central question: What will the best people think?

Understanding High Achievers

High achievers hold themselves to lofty standards. They expect to succeed at everything they do and work exceedingly hard to do so. That is one reason they are so good. When high achievers have their shortcomings pointed out by someone else, they emotionally deflate. They are used to expecting tremendous things of themselves and they hate to let others down. High achievers put so much of themselves into what they do that any criticism, no matter how minor, can become a personal affront. Furthermore, if our assessment of their work does nothing but point out minor flaws in their achievements, they may take fewer risks the next time around.

If you ask high achievers about their own performance, they will be much more critical than you would ever dream of being.
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No matter how much we push them, they are much harder on themselves. They don’t want to settle for less than their best. They don’t want to be told that a first draft is “fine,” even though it might be far better than another student’s third revision. On the other hand, they don’t want to be ignored. Great teachers understand how to give these students the kind of attention that keeps them moving forward under their own steam.

Perceptions Can Become Reality

As educators, we understand that perceptions can become reality. People who say, “This is the worst group of kids,” soon start to believe it. Eventually, they start to treat them that way and, unfortunately, the students will start to behave accordingly.

Respecting the students and the power of praise

Effective teachers treat everyone with respect, every day. Even the best teachers may not like all of their students, but they act as if they do. And great teachers understand the power of praise.

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It’s not difficult to treat some people with respect, or even to treat most people with respect. It’s even possible to treat all people with respect quite a bit of the time. The real challenge is to treat everyone with respect every day. Each of us can remember at least one occasion in our professional lives when someone in a leadership role treated us inappropriately. No matter how long ago it was, or how often that person treated us well, we remember. The same thing is true in our schools. If just once in a month, or even once in a year, we choose to make a sarcastic comment or cutting remark to a student or colleague, we might as well have carved it in stone. They may pretend to have forgotten that moment, but they will never forget. What’s more, anyone else who witnessed it will probably remember, too.

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To be effective, praise must be authentic, specific, immediate, clean, and private. 

Breadth of Vision

In studying and writing about leading educational change, I have made some interesting discoveries. For one thing, I have found that the greatest challenge is to get everyone—or almost everyone—on board. It might seem that simple logic would prevail. Demonstrate that a proposed change will benefit students, and we can then put it in motion with full support and willing participation. However, as we all know, that’s not what happens. Some people are quick to jump on any new bandwagon. (With all due respect and affection, I sometimes refer to them as, “The Lunatic Fringe.”) Others will more carefully probe and examine a proposal, try it out gradually, and in the end accept it wholeheartedly. But some stubbornly resist change of any kind. They work—or fight—to defeat it, even when it’s clearly better for students. Why does this happen? I have concluded that it all comes down to breadth of vision.

How Broad Is Your Vision?

Great Teachers!

Great Expectations

The variable is not what teachers expect of students. Many teachers of all skill levels have high expectations for students. The variable—and what really matters—is what teachers expect of themselves. Great teachers have high expectations for students but even higher expectations for themselves. Poor teachers have high expectations for students but much lower expectations for themselves. Not only that, they have unrealistically high expectations for everyone else as well. They expect the principal to be perfect, every parent to be flawless, and every one of their peers to hold them in incredibly high regard.

Perception can become reality

As educators, we understand that perceptions can become reality. People who say, “This is the worst group of kids,” soon start to believe it. Eventually, they start to treat them that way and, unfortunately, the students will start to behave accordingly.

Sarcasm and Yelling

When is sarcasm appropriate in the classroom?

You know the answer: Never. Then let’s never use it in our classrooms.

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Who decides how many arguments you get into in a week?

The answer, of course, is that we do. We never win an argument with a student. As soon as it starts, we have lost. If their peers are watching, they cannot afford to give in. We would like to win the argument, but they have to win the argument. (Plus, I have always felt that in all student–teacher interactions, there needs to be at least one adult, and I would prefer that it be the teacher.)

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Outside of a true emergency (“Watch out for the acid!”) when is an appropriate time and place for yelling?

Again, we know the answer is never. The students we are most tempted to yell at have been yelled at so much, why on earth would we think this would be effective with them? Therefore, we do not yell at students.

Effective teachers choose wisely from their bag of tricks.

The Power of Expectations

How do the best teachers approach classroom management? What do they do differently? Here’s the answer in a nutshell: Great teachers focus on expectations. Other teachers focus on rules. The least effective teachers focus on the consequences of breaking the rules.

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The teacher may have predetermined and stated consequences for misbehavior, but these are clearly secondary to the expectations. The key is to set expectations and then establish relationships so that students want to meet these expectations. Great teachers don’t focus on “What am I going to do if students misbehave?” They expect good behavior, and generally that’s what they get.

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Students are experts at cost-benefit analysis: If I skip one hour of class, I’ll have to go to two hours of detention. Is it worth it? (How many of my buddies will be in detention?)

It's People, Not Programs

Outstanding educators know that if a school has great teachers, it is a great school. Teachers are a school’s keystone of greatness. More importantly, all of their audiences take the same view. If my third-grade daughter has a great teacher, I think highly of her school. Otherwise, I see her school as less-than-stellar no matter how many awards she wins, no matter how many students earn top test scores, and no matter how many plaques adorn the main office. Students share this perspective. If a high school sophomore has four great teachers (out of four!) each day, then believe me, that sophomore will think the school is great. As the quality of teachers drops, so does a student’s opinion of the school. All the way from kindergarten through college, the quality of the teachers determines our perceptions of the quality of the school.

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School improvement is actually a very simple concept. However, like many simple concepts, it is not easy to accomplish. There are really two ways to improve a school significantly: get better teachers, and improve the current teachers.

We can spend a great deal of time and energy looking for programs that will solve our problems, but too often, these programs do not bring the improvement or growth we seek. Instead, we must focus on what really matters. It is never about programs; it is always about people. This does not mean that no program can encourage or support improvement of people within our school. Each of us can think of many innovations that were touted as the answer in education. Too often, we expect them to solve all our woes. When they do not, we see them as the problem. However, no program inherently leads to that improvement. Believe me, if there were such a program, it would already be in place in our schools. It is people, not programs, that determine the quality of a school.
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It’s Not What You Do, It’s How You Do It
All teachers are aware that the students in their schools have individual needs. Educators must be equally aware that faculty members also vary in their individual abilities and approaches. Whether the arena is classroom management or instructional techniques, effective educators focus on the people, not on the programs. They see programs as solutions only when the programs bring out the best in their teachers.
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Banning lectures from our classrooms won’t improve our schools. The person, not the practice, needs to change. And, as we mentioned in Chapter 1, the first step may be the hardest: The teacher must recognize the need to improve.

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Great teachers never forget that it is people, not programs, that determine the quality of a school.

Value of Examining What Effective Teachers Do

We often hear that we can learn from anyone. From effective people, we learn what to do; from ineffective people, we learn what not to do. Although this advice contains a grain of truth, think about it: How much can we really learn from our ineffective colleagues about being an effective teacher or leader? We already know plenty about what not to do. Good teachers already know not to use sarcasm, not to yell at kids, not to argue with teens in front of their friends. We don’t need to visit an ineffective teacher’s classroom to learn this. But we can always reap good ideas from successful educators.

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Educators who want to promote good teaching find value in examining what effective teachers do that other teachers do not.
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One challenge in any profession is the ability to self-reflect accurately. Those who know how they come across to others and how others receive their behavior work more effectively. We all struggle to achieve this self-awareness, but all too often, we fall short. In the studies of principals described earlier, practically all of the principals thought they were doing a good job, but only some of them were right.