Books

What do you want to know? How are you going to learn it? (Hint: Try a book discussion!)

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Photo by Tom Hermans on Unsplash

What do you want to know? 

  • What is that 1 thing about your content, your pedagogy, your students, or your well-being that you’d really like to grow in? Is it student motivation? Project-based learning? Using AI in school? Making the most of independent reading? Engaging English language learners? 
  • How could engaging with that 1 thing help you help yourself, your colleagues, and your students flourish even more?

How are you going to learn what you want to know? Here’s a 4-step process you can use that includes a book discussion—I love reading!

  1. Pick 1 your 1 thing. 
  2. Find 1 colleague at your school or elsewhere who is also interested in that topic. You might be able to find more than 1 colleague!
  3. Collaboratively work with your colleagues to pick 1 book to read, but first do some research on good books to read. You and your colleagues can do this by reading book reviews, seeing what ACSD offers, or talking with others. 
  4. Purchase the book. Then with your colleague, read, discuss, and apply a chapter every week or two. 

Over the years, I’ve enjoyed doing many in-person book discussions with groups of colleagues from my school. This school year I learned it also works to do a book discussion online with just 1 person. And because there were only 2 of us, each discussion took less time. We did it in 30 minutes every 2 weeks, while my colleague was eating her lunch!  

What did our 30-minute book discussion look like? We used the time to… 

  • Report on ways we’d implemented things we’d learned in the past 2 weeks. 
  • Discuss what we found interesting from the chapter we’d read for this meeting.
  • Brainstorm how we could implement ideas from the new reading.
  • Pray for each other.

Source

The 1 thing my colleague was interested in was how to help students displaying traits suggesting Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). So, I contacted a friend who had been a learning resource specialist and asked her for a recommendation, which was Decoding Autism and Leading the Way to Successful Inclusion by Barbara Boroson (an educational specialist, and also the parent of a child with ASD). 

What did my colleague and I learn? A lot of empathy as well as strategies for helping children with ASD deal with their challenges so they can acquire the content and skills they need to flourish. 

The author goes chapter by chapter through anxiety, executive function, sensation, communication and socialization, engagement and content acquisition, and finally behavior. The first half of each chapter is devoted to explaining what the issue is, and how a student with ASD experiences it. The second half offers tips for helping the student deal with the issue in the classroom. 

Why was behavior addressed last (when that’s what we wanted to address first)? Because accommodating student needs minimizes behavior issues! 

My colleague was so excited about what she learned that she is scheduled to share it with the rest of the elementary teachers at her school at a meeting! And now she wants to learn more about teaching reading: What’s the controversy about? How can we best help students? 

So just like last time, I contacted a friend who serves as an elementary principal. She said her staff was reading Shifting the Balance: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Balanced Literacy Classroom. We look forward to starting that discussion soon!

Source

How about you? What do you want to learn in order to help yourself, your colleagues, and your students flourish even more? How will you learn it, share it, use it? 

My suggestion? Try a book discussion! Find one or more colleagues who want to learn with you. Reach out to someone who can recommend a helpful book. Read, discuss, and implement your reading together over time. Even if it’s only 30 minutes every 2 weeks in a virtual discussion with 1 person–you can still experience transformational learning! 

Get flourishing!

Kim
P.S. Here are a few books I highly recommend: 

(1) The Will to Learn: Cultivating Student Motivation without Losing Your Own

(2) How to Differentiate Instruction in Academically Diverse Classrooms

(3) AI for Educators: Learning Strategies, Teacher Efficiencies, and a Vision for an Artificial Intelligence Future

(4) Book Love: Developing Depth, Stamina, and Passion in Adolescent Readers

(5)The ELL Teacher’s Toolbox: Hundreds of Practical Ideas to Support Your Students

International Christian school educators, should we be teaching our secondary students about AI?

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Teach your secondary students about AI! Why?

(1) Because it is a part of the creation God has given us stewardship over, and it is a tool that can help us exercise more effective stewardship and flourish as God’s image bearers. 

(2) Because it is a part of our current world and will be an ever-increasing part of the future world, the one we are preparing students for.

(3) Because it can act as an assistant, saving us time so we can focus on priorities that AI can’t do and catalyzing our best efforts.

(4) Because our students are learning about it and formulating their own responses—if we aren’t modeling responsible, ethical, creative, just responses, they may be fumbling on their own or falling under influences that are irresponsible, unethical, deadening, and unjust.

(5) Because teaching our secondary students about AI is a best practice. In AI for Educators: Learning Strategies, Teacher Efficiencies, and a Vision for an Artificial Intelligence Future, Matt Miller says, “For our students’ sake, to prepare them for the future, we can’t look at the world through ‘today glasses.’ We must use our ‘tomorrow glasses’” (Loc 96).  

Where do we start? I started out by thinking deeply about ChatGPT when it first came out (see my blog posts here and here). Then I experimented with ChatGPT (you can sign up for a free account here). Think of ChatGPT as having your own research assistant. Here are some ways I’ve used it recently: 

(A) For I-need-to-know-questions: The bread package was left open and the bread got hard. How can I soften it again? 

(B) For answers to questions kids ask: Why do we call it a garbage can when it is much bigger than a can? (After I got the answer, I asked my AI assistant to level the answer for a 5-year-old. It did it!)  

(C) For examples that can be used in blog posts: What are 10 examples of collaboration in important scientific advances?

(D) For support for students with learning needs at a small school without a specialist: Write a social story for a child with Autism Spectrum Disorder illustrating the importance of coming into the classroom quietly. (I learned about social stories while discussing the book Decoding Autism with another teacher, and we were really impressed with their effectiveness, but wondered where we’d get them. Then I had this brainstorm!)

Image by Freepik

You might be thinking, “Okay–I can see why and how I could start to explore using AI. But I have questions:

  1. Why be the one to introduce kids to all the potential harm and cheating AI can generate? 
  2. Even if I wanted to, just how do I get started? 
  3. Why use it in my classroom?
  4. What does using AI look like?
  5. How will using it help me personally?”

All good questions. Let me respond to each: 

Question 1: “Why be the one to introduce kids to all the potential harm and cheating AI can generate?” Please keep in mind that we’re not the ones introducing students to AI. I’m pretty sure that most students have heard of it. If not yet, then soon. The tech savvy ones are using it. Shouldn’t we be part of that? Giving them information, examples, and a model of how intelligent, godly, faithful adults deal with new technology? Otherwise we’ll just be putting out fires, handing out punishments for misuses when we haven’t given guidance on proper uses.

Question 2: “Even if I wanted to, just how do I get started?” You can get started with AI by…

  • Helping students understand what AI is and how it helps us grow, create, love our neighbors, and steward creation—and how it could also threaten and stunt all those things. 
  • Using 1 or more of these 8 short (20 minutes or less) AI literacy lessons for grades 6-12 from Common Sense. 
  • Using the 12-step continuum below from Matt Miller’s book and website to generate student discussion:

AI in the Classroom: What’s Cheating? What’s OK? (Ditch That Textbook)

Question 3: “Why use it in my classroom?” Use AI in the classroom to further student learning and better prepare students for their future. Imagine graduating students with no experience of using AI into a workforce where even entry-level workers have an AI research assistant and secretary at their service. I don’t remember the source for this statement, but it really resonated with me as a writer: AI will not take jobs away from writers, but writers who use AI will take jobs away from writers who don’t use AI.   

Question 4: “What does using AI look like?” Miller shares frequent examples, and one of my favorites is adding it to the “Think-Pair-Share” protocol:

  • Students think about a question on their own (in a quick write or in their minds), discuss with a partner (pair) what they’ve thought about. 
  • Then, before sharing out to the whole group, they add the steps of individually going to AI with additional questions and coming back together to discuss what they’ve discovered. 

Here are more examples Miller gives: 

(A) Ask AI for advice: What are good ways to study for the test tomorrow?

(B) Anticipate AI’s response: How do you think AI will answer, “How did World War 2 shape the world today?” Then generate the answer, and note anything the AI omitted or added. 

(C) Take several AI responses and make a better product: Give me 3 definitions of Krebs cycle. Then create your own.)

(D) Get a different perspective with AI: Ask AI what someone from a different place, time, or group would think of an argument, issue, or topic you’ve been studying.

(E) Deepen learning by using AI to reformulate your answer to a question you’ve been studying: Write a rap using given vocabulary words or concepts.

Note: When you start having your students use AI in the classroom, you will want to develop with them classroom rules for ethical use. For example, check out the poster for Classroom AI Rules that Vicki Davis uses. Miller models this kind of transparency in his book, ending each chapter with a disclosure of the percentage that was generated by himself vs AI, and then giving the portions that were AI generated–usually definitions and lists, which AI brainstormed and Miller chose from, added to, and expanded on.

Image by pch.vector on Freepik

Question 5: “How will using it help me personally?” Using ChatGPT can save you time. Who doesn’t want more time? ChatGPT has saved me time by generating sentences for student practice, summarizing texts for English language learners, and generating model writing. Miller notes other ways ChatGPT can save you time, including: 

  • Creating lesson plans, discussion prompts, and review questions and activities.
  • Helping you with writing report card comments, parent emails, letters of recommendation.   

You can use the time ChatGPT saves you to plan that really cool unit you’ve been wanting to work on, get some regular exercise, subscribe to a professional journal, go on a date with your spouse, and read a book. Why not buy yourself back that time? 

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

If you’re interested in learning more about AI (how to think about it and how to use it for yourself and for your students), check out the website for Matt Miller’s book, AI for Educators: Learning Strategies, Teacher Efficiencies, and a Vision for an Artificial Intelligence Future. On the website you’ll find a summary and support materials for each chapter of the book. If you find that helpful, consider reading the book. And here are some more related resources: 

(1) 2 Reasons to Write in an AI World: What I taught middle school student writers. 

(2) 5 Fun, Ethical Uses of AI I’ve Shared with Students: An article with some good specific ideas you might want to try.

(3) 9 Questions for English Teachers in a World with AI: My reflections on ChatGPT.

(4) AI Literacy Lessons for Grades 6-12: 8 short, basic lessons, less than 20 minutes long each.  

(5) The Cool Cat Teacher Blog, by Vicki Davis, IT teacher, Christian, winner of educational awards. Her whole blog is full of good articles (the classroom poster is hers).

(6) Navigating a World of Generative AI: Suggestions for Educators, Next Level Lab, Harvard School of Education.   

Bottom line: Teach your secondary students about AI!

Get flourishing!

Kim

International Christian school leaders, how do you feel about doing 1:1 meetings?

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Photo by Memento Media on Unsplash

“The best leaders recognize that 1:1s are not an add-on to the job; 1:1s ARE the job of a leader” (Glad We Met: The Art and Science of 1:1 Meetings, loc 336).

1:1s? Really? These meetings are actually the job of the leader? Steven Rogelberg, author of Glad We Met, says, “Yes!” He notes that “well-executed 1:1s should wind up saving you time by creating better alignment in your team, higher performing directs, and fewer spontaneous interruptions to your workday as they are saved for the scheduled 1:1″ (loc 339).

Overall for me, Glad We Met is a useful reminder that 1:1s are an effective way to help others flourish personally and professionally. Says Rogelberg, “While 1:1s are meant to address directs’ practical needs, they must also be conducted in a way that meets directs’ personal needs. Doing so ensures that directs feel included, respected, valued, heard, understood, and supported” (loc 1853).

Throughout his book, Rogelberg gives helpful guidance. He consistently addresses questions readers want answers to. Just check out his chapter titles, including: 

  • Do I Really Need to Do 1:1s?
  • Won’t Team Members Be Fearful of 1:1s?
  • Can’t I Just Meet When I Have Something I Need to Say?
  • How Should I Schedule 1:1s—Same Day, Clustered, or Spread Out?
  • Do These Meetings Need an Agenda?
  • Is There a General Model for Conducting 1:1s?
  • How Do I Start and End 1:1s—And the Middle Stuff Too?

He provides helpful tools, for example:

  • Quiz to Determine Your Overall 1:1 Meeting Skills 
  • Preparation Checklist for 1:1 Facilitation
  • Checklist for Effectively Giving Feedback & Establishing Accountability in 1:1s
  • Creating an Organization-Wide System for 1:1s

And he offers helpful insights, including:

  1. “Find the Right Cadence. The most common 1:1 cadences are weekly, biweekly, and monthly. Avoid having an ad hoc (as-needed) approach to the cadence of your 1:1s. Research supports weekly 1:1s as the best option in most cases” (loc 691).
  2. “…the biggest predictor of 1:1 value I have found in my research is the direct report’s active participation, as measured by the amount of time they talk during the meeting, relative to the manager. The ideal balance appears to be the direct speaking anywhere between 50% and 90% of the time” (loc 1567).
  3. “After the meeting ends, it is critical for both you and your directs to follow through on the action items they committed to. Breaking commitments hurts trust, hurts the working relationship, and makes it harder to have effective 1:1s in the future” (loc 2425).

What about you? How do you feel about 1:1 meetings? How could you use 1:1s to help others flourish personally and professionally? How interested might you be in reading Glad We Met: The Art and Science of 1:1 Meetings?

Here are some meeting-related blog posts:

Bottom line: Use 1:1 meetings to help others flourish personally and professionally!

Get flourishing!

Michael

What mindsets do you want to use to get flourishing in your current context?

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Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

Use mindsets that help you get flourishing in your current context! Why?

  • Because using context-appropriate mindsets help you get flourishing.
  • Because by using context-appropriate mindsets, you increase the likelihood that you’ll see challenges as opportunities and that you’ll take risks and carry out experiments as you pursue your purpose.
  • Because by not using context-appropriate mindsets, you increase the likelihood that you’ll see challenges as stressors, that you’ll use inappropriate or less helpful mindsets, and that you’ll seek comfort rather than pursue new opportunities that entail taking risks.
  • Because using context-appropriate mindsets is a best practice.

What mindsets could you use to get flourishing? Mindsets that come to mind for me include:

The mindsets you choose must take into account your current context—so, what’s your current context like? Your geographical context might be in Asia or Europe. Your cultural context might be egalitarian or hierarchical. Your work context might be inspiring or ho-hum, and your economic context might be prosperous or poor. Your context might be familiar, unfamiliar, or somewhere in between; and no matter the context, it is affected by sin, and with varying degrees of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA).

What mindsets do you want to use to get flourishing in your current context? My context is new in terms of location (North America) and role (coach/consultant working remotely), so I’m intentionally using a combination of open mindset, growth mindset, and promotion mindset to get flourishing.

  • I need to be open to new cultural experiences.
  • I need to grow so that I can be helpful as a coach/consultant.
  • And I need to take some risks in order to promote my purpose of helping international Christian school students, staff, and leaders flourish in Jesus.

If a key feature of my context was uncertainty, I’d consider using the 6 mindsets suggested in The Imperfectionists: Strategic Mindsets for Uncertain Times:

  1. Curiosity mindset (not a closed mindset).
  2. Imperfectionist mindset (not a perfectionist mindset).
  3. Dragonfly-eye (aka multiple-lens) mindset (not a single-lens mindset).
  4. Occurrent (aka real-time experimental) mindset (not a rely-on-past-data-or-projections mindset).
  5. Collective-intelligence mindset (not a we-already-have-all-the-smarts-we-need mindset).
  6. Show-and-tell mindset (not a just-logic-and-facts mindset).

Source

Robert McLean and Charles Conn (authors of The Imperfectionists) provide help and hope for those pursuing their purpose in uncertain times. I found the following 3 quotations to be insightful:

(1) “… in times of rapid change, you should be curious, embrace risk and not avoid it, you should be suspicious of experts, you should think about how to run your own experiments, you should consider ways to source ideas from entirely different fields, and you should convince your colleagues that you have the right answer with rich and visual storytelling that speaks to their values rather than to logic alone” (loc 416). 

(2) “Curious questions can be irritating when you’re under pressure. But when companies stifle curiosity, they are shutting off opportunities to search, question, and experiment” (loc 686).

(3) “If tomorrow’s strategic and operating environment is going to be like today’s, there isn’t a strong case for experimenting. But if rapid change and high uncertainty are part of an industry’s structure and dynamics (what we face in nearly every situation today), then experimenting is imperative to developing the case for action” (loc 592).

The authors conclude, “All real-life strategic problem solving is a wager on an uncertain world. Fortified with a good understanding of your problem’s structure, stakes, and odds, and armed with the six mindsets, we hope you are well equipped to overcome risk aversion and confidently step into uncertainty as a full-fledged imperfectionist” (loc 3696).

To learn more, explore this article, this video, and this podcast.

Bottom line: Intentionally and consistently use mindsets that help you flourish in your current context. 

Here are some related resources:

What about you? What mindsets could you use to get flourishing? What’s your current context like? What mindsets do you want to use to get flourishing in your current context?

Get flourishing!

Michael

P.S. What kind of leadership mindset do you need in your current context?

What 7 things should you give up on right now?

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Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Give up. That’s right. Give up. Actually quit. Just give up on those things that are holding you back from flourishing. That’s what Byron Morrison says in his book Maybe You Should Give Up: 7 Ways to Get Out of Your Own Way and Take Control of Your Life. 

So let me ask you, “What are some things you’re glad you’ve given up on?”  My list includes:

  • Thinking I can be in shape without regular exercise—I now regularly stretch, lift weights, and walk. Feeling better!
  • Tolerating not fully using my strengths—I’m glad in my work as coach/consultant, I can fully use my strengths. Wonderful!
  • Using traditional work hours—I now use flexible work hours, monitoring my energy and my results, instead of monitoring time. Love it!

Going forward, what are 7 things you should give up on that are getting in the way of you flourishing? To prime the pump, here are the 7 things Morrison says we should give up on:

(1) “[B]eing reactive” (p. 3). He notes that “once you’ve given up on being reactive, and you’ve recognized that you and you alone are responsible for creating results in your life, you’ll be empowered to take the action you didn’t think you were capable of before” (p. 31).

(2) “[L]etting fear control you” (p. 31). “Fear reinforces all of the mental barriers in your head, creating stories that cause you to procrastinate, overthink and doubt yourself, which in turn stop you from doing the things you know you should be doing to live or create the life you want” (p. 32). Morrison discusses 3 big fears (failure, success, and rejection/judgment) and how reframing can help us overcome them. 

(3) “[S]hort-term thinking” (p. 53) that negatively impact the long-term—“the small decisions you make today can and will impact your future for years to come. And most of the small decisions we make today are designed to make us feel good in the short-term—often at the expense of success in the long-term” (p. 55).

(4) “[F]ixating on the future as either a scary place where everything will go wrong or a heavenly place that will solve all your problems for you” (p. 72). Morrison adds, “If you want to find joy in your achievements and appreciate the journey, then you have to give up on fixating on the future. That’s the only way you will be able to fully enjoy the present” (p. 86).

(5) “[C]omparing yourself to others” (p. 87). Morrison encourages the reader to “make a decision about what’s actually important in the life you want to live, and from today, start living it. Because when you give up on comparing yourself to others and their achievements, that’s when you’ll finally be able to build a life that you are happy with” (p. 108).

(6) “[B]eing so hard on yourself” (p. 111) which “manifests in four major ways: trying to be perfect, dismissing your progress, judging your worth only by your success and taking criticism personally” (p. 113).

(7) “[P]utting off happiness” (p. 131). Says Morrison, “Don’t set yourself up for a life-long regret. Give up on putting off your happiness by being the best version of yourself you can be and live life with intention right now” (p. 147).

Which of Morrison’s 7 things might you want to include in your list of 7 things to give up on? I want to consider giving up on #4 (fixating on the future) and #7 (putting off happiness).

Photo by RDNE Stock project

Keep thinking about 7 things you should give up on. To further prime the pump, here are 29 more things to give up on:

(A) Give up 4 negative mindsets: fixed, closed, prevention, and inward (see Success Mindsets).

(B) Give up on tolerating 5 hindrances to flourishing: passionless purpose, fragile ill-being, unhealthy relationships, transformationless learning, and unhelpful resources (see 5 Elements of Flourishing).

(C) Give up 7 negative habits: being reactive, working without goals, focusing on unimportant things, using an “I win/you lose” approach, seeking first to be understood, working alone, and neglecting self-care (see The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People).

(D) Give up on 8 obstacles to a flourishing workplace culture: fractious teams, life-draining work, mediocre staff, stagnation, unrewarding compensation, uninspiring leadership, unsustainable strategy, and unhealthy communication (see The 8 Drivers of a Flourishing Workplace Culture).

(E) Give up on 5 things that cause team dysfunction: absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results (see The Five Dysfunctions of a Team).

So, what are 7 things you should give up on right now that are getting in the way of you flourishing? Here’s my list:

(1) Fixating on the future. I want to be more present in the moment so that I have more joy in my journey and in my progress. 

(2) Putting off happiness. Again, I need to be more present in the moment.

(3) Using a closed mindset when I’m stressed—it isn’t OK, it frustrates people, and it doesn’t help me have healthy relationships.

(4) Unhelpful resources. Instead, I’ve begun creating the helpful resources: 

(5) Working alone. As an introvert who works remotely, I enjoy alone time. I find working by myself helpful—however, working alone does not produce synergy. Time to do more collaborating!

(6) Life-draining work. I want to find ways to do more life-giving work.

(7) Thinking I can handle 60-minute morning meetings. This makes my morning too crowded, so I’m now working to limit meetings to 45 minutes.

Photo by Prateek Katyal

What are you going to do? I’m giving up on using a closed mindset when I’m stressed.

Here are some resources related to giving up, stopping, quitting:

What about you? How do you feel about giving up? What are some things you’re glad you’ve given up on? Which of Morrison’s 7 things might you want to give up on? What are 7 things you should give up on right now that are getting in the way of you flourishing? What are you going to do?

Get flourishing!

Michael

Leaders, how can you ignite staff commitment?

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If you want to ignite commitment and retain staff, use employalty. Coined by author Joe Mull, “Employalty is a portmanteau of the words ’employer,’ ‘loyalty,’ and ‘humanity.’ Employalty is the commitment employers make to consistently deliver a humane, person-centered employee experience, because that’s what leads people to the highest levels of commitment at work” (Employalty, loc 182). 

Employalty is the answer to the question, “‘What can I do so that these employees think, Man, they treat me so well here that I’d be a fool to go anywhere else?’” (Employalty, loc 123).

In Employalty: How to Ignite Commitment and Keep Top Talent in the New Age of Work, Mull uses engaging stories and intriguing research to help the reader understand that “[c]ommitment appears when employees get to do their Ideal Job, doing Meaningful Work, for a Great Boss” (loc 316). He defines Ideal Job, Meaningful Work and Great Boss as follows:

  • Ideal Job means that employees experience effective compensation, a reasonable workload, and flexibility.
  • Meaningful Job means employees experience purpose, using their strengths, and belonging.
  • Great Boss means employees experience coaching, trust, and advocacy from their supervisor.

Mull begins by introducing the need for employalty and then systematically works through his definitions of Ideal Job, Meaningful Work, and Great Boss. To give you an idea of what he writes and why I found the book helpful, here are some quotations:

(1) Ideal Job:

(1.1) Compensation: “…executives must think of employees not as costs, but as assets” (loc 1229).

(1.2) Workload: “Too little work, and people lack challenge…. Too much work, which has been the case for so many for so long, and people become threadbare. A manageable workload is about striking a balance. Think Goldilocks: not too much, and not too little, but just right” (loc 1530).

(1.3) Flexibility: “…you can no longer focus on hiring the best person for the job. To attract talent and inspire commitment, you must create the best job for the person. One of the most powerful ways to do this in your organization is to prioritize flexibility for employees” (loc 1663).

(2) Meaningful Work:

(2.1) Purpose: “Your organization’s mission must be specific, transformational, and rooted in emotion” (loc 1900).

(2.2) Strengths: “The more hours a day adults believe they use their strengths, the more they report having ample energy, feeling well-rested, being happy, smiling or laughing a lot, learning something interesting, and being treated with respect” (loc 2137).

(2.3) Belonging: “What’s clear is that employees are abandoning noxious cultures of competition, exclusion, gossip, infighting, and tribalism” (loc 2443).

(3) Great Boss:

(3.1) Coaching: “Coaching draws out employees’ strengths, gives them purpose, accelerates belonging, develops trust” (loc 2687).

(3.2) Trust: “In organizations where employees enjoy high amounts of trust from their leaders, workers report 74 percent less stress, 106 percent more energy at work, 50 percent higher productivity, 13 percent fewer sick days, 76 percent more engagement, 29 percent more satisfaction with their lives, and 40 percent less burnout” (loc 2817).

(3.3) Advocacy: “Great Bosses do what it takes to give people what they need to thrive in their role” (loc 2975).

Mull concludes with a challenge: “How many people truly love what they do or where they work? How many people dread going to work each day, return home miserable, and suffer that experience again and again? Imagine the incredible social, physical, and mental health improvements that would take place across society if we made work work for more people. You have that power. And now you have the instruction manual. It’s time to get to work” (loc 3413).

Employalty reminds leaders to provide the work conditions staff need to flourish, to focus on getting staff flourishing. Mull’s model provides a useful diagnostic tool for identifying how to improve work conditions. Try it—what could you do to improve your staff’s daily experience, to help your staff flourish?

  • Ideal Job: compensation, workload, flexibility
  • Meaningful Work: purpose, strength, belonging
  • Great Boss: coaching, trust, advocacy

What about you? To what extent do you want to ignite commitment and retain staff? How do you feel about employalty? What could you do to improve your staff’s daily experience, to help your staff flourish?

Get flourishing!

Michael
P.S. To learn about other frameworks that can help you get others flourishing, read this.

Summer Reading #4: The Culture Map

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Source

What if we in international Christian schools intentionally taught and modeled content and skills to equip students to work effectively with people from a variety of cultures?

Wait–isn’t that what we do? Well, there are a number of related things most international Christian schools do: 

  • Provide an environment in which students rub shoulders with people from a variety of cultures.
  • Expect students and staff to function, with a little guidance, in a Western/US educational culture, regardless of their home culture.
  • Offer language classes in the host country’s language.
  • Provide cultural enrichment (food, games, traditions, music, celebrations) from the host culture, and sometimes from other cultures represented in the community.
  • State goals about equipping students to communicate and collaborate cross-culturally.
  • Try to have respectful, kind, trustworthy interactions among staff and students.

These things are good. But in a number of ways, they fall short of equipping students to work effectively with people from a variety of cultures. For example:

  • Respect, kindness, and trust are shown in different ways in different cultures.
  • The majority culture—frequently US—can receive less analysis and become the default “right” way while other cultures’ differences from the default are viewed as less desirable.
  • Students can become bilingual and bi-cultural—comfortable in the host culture and the school’s default culture—and remain uncomfortable in any other situation.
  • Staff can write off problems in relationships as personality conflicts when they may be experiencing a cultural conflict and missing the opportunity to be the living curriculum for cross-cultural communication and collaboration.       

What if international Christian schools intentionally provided training in how cultures differ and in how to skillfully navigate those differences in order to effectively communicate and work with people from other cultures? What if our students graduated with not just an interest in other cultures, but with confidence in the knowledge, skills, and experience they have to flourish and help others flourish in cross-cultural settings (including those they have not yet experienced)? 

What would that knowledge and skills look? The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of International Business by Erin Meyer is a great place to start. The author is an American married to a Frenchman and with experience in training international business people in working effectively with people from different cultures. 

Meyer posits 8 scales that help explain how a culture works (see below), and she regales the reader with real stories of conflicts resulting from cultures being at different places on each scale. (Check out Anglo-Dutch Translation Guide below for examples of how miscommunication can happen when 2 cultures approach delivering negative feedback differently!)

Here is a brief explanation of Meyer’s 8 scales:

(1) Communicating: In a low-context culture like the US, good communication is precise, simple, and clear, and repetition is okay. In a high-context culture like Japan, good communication is nuanced, messages are often implied, and repetition can be insulting.

(2) Evaluating: When a culture gives direct negative feedback (like the Netherlands), it is blunt, honest, and may be given in a group setting. When a culture gives indirect negative feedback (like Indonesia) it is soft, subtle, and done in private. 

(3) Persuading: A principles-first (or deductive) culture like France values a thorough explanation of the theory before proceeding to application, while an applications-first (inductive) culture like the US prefers the practical and concrete. Interestingly, Asia is not even on this scale, but represents an entirely different approach which Meyer calls “holistic.” These cultures need to know the context first.   

(4) Leading: In egalitarian cultures like Sweden, there is little distance between subordinates and the boss who is a “facilitator among equals” (loc 1811). In hierarchical cultures like Korea, there is a big distance between the boss and subordinates, and status is important.

(5) Deciding: Consensual cultures like Japan make decisions by agreement in groups. In top-down cultures like China, the boss makes decisions.

(6) Trusting: In task-based cultures like the US, trust is based on reliability on the job, and it changes easily. In relationship-based cultures like Brazil, trust is built outside of work, over time.

(7) Disagreeing: Confrontational cultures like Russia see disagreement and debate as productive and appropriate—attacking an idea is not attacking the person who expressed it. Cultures that avoid confrontation like Thailand value group harmony above all.

(8) Scheduling: A linear-time culture like Germany values promptness, organization, and doing steps in order without interruption. A flexible-time culture like India values fluidity and adaptability in order to take advantage of opportunities.

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Meyer’s stories memorably illustrate how conflicts along each of these scales develop: 

  • A French woman receives American feedback which sandwiches the real criticism between positive comments, and she’s ecstatic that her manager likes 2 things about what she does. Meanwhile, her manager is considering letting her go because she’s not changing the one thing he asked her to do. 
  • A Dutch manager makes his Chinese group feel devalued by riding his bicycle to work and wearing a polo shirt. 
  • An American sends a follow-up email to a meeting and loses the contract from a Saudi who feels distrusted and demeaned.

The list goes on. Each of the 8 scales is also illustrated with a graph plotting 20+ countries along the scale from one extreme to the other:

(To see all of the scales, check out this article.)

What might teaching, modeling, and practicing this content and skills look like? First, understanding, articulating, and using it at the leadership and staff level. Then with students. It could be as simple as using this tool to plot the cultures represented on a team or in a class ($3.95 for 24 hours of access). Next, label and refine, from the perspective of effective cross-cultural communication, what your school already does. 

We can articulate the concept of high/low-context cultures, identify countries along the scale represented in the staff or class, and work to provide clear, simple documentation of agendas, policies/procedures, assignments, and more. 

For example, a key place to start is with high/low-context communication. Low-context communication is important in cross-cultural settings because we don’t all share the same understandings, so being precise, simple, and clear makes sure we are all on the same page. 

Meanwhile, we should express the reason: Because when working with people from diverse cultures, it is important to use low-context communication in order to raise the probability that we all have the same understanding.

Who would this help? I’m thinking of…

  • A student I’ve had whose parents came from 2 different cultures (Colombia and Japan), grew up in a 3rd (USA) before enrolling in an international Christian school in Japan (which is sort of a 4th culture).
  • The 6th grader in my first year of teaching who said her goal was to work for the UN; years later we connected on social media, and she’s doing exactly that.
  • Students who go on to work in multinational companies, who marry cross-culturally, who volunteer to help resettle refugees, who worship in multicultural settings, and so many more.

Cross-cultural communication and collaboration are significant skills in our interconnected world. Wouldn’t it be great if we could give our international Christian school students a leg up on the experiences they already have by intentionally teaching and modeling specific content and skills to help them do it even better? I found The Culture Map a fascinating read for thinking about cultural values and how to navigate the conflicts that inevitably surface when they collide.

Here are some related resources:

What about you? To what extent does your school intentionally equip students to communicate and collaborate cross-culturally? What might happen if your school more intentionally equipped students in cross-cultural communication and collaboration? How might teaching, modeling, and practicing content from Erin Meyer’s The Culture Map help? Now what?

Get flourishing!

Kim

International Christian school leaders, how important is it for you to increase your self-awareness?

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Increase your self-awareness! Why? 

  • Because increased self-awareness helps you flourish. 
  • Because increased self-awareness helps you experience increased passionate purpose, resilient well-being, healthy relationships, and transformative learning.
  • Because a lack of self-awareness can lead to passionless purpose, not feeling good about yourself, others not feeling good about you (aka annoyed with you), and stagnation. Please note: self-delusion, the opposite of self-awareness, is a no good, very bad thing.
  • Because increasing self-awareness is a best practice. 

I just finished reading Tasha Eurich’s Insight: The Surprising Truth About How Others See Us, How We See Ourselves, and Why the Answers Matter More Than We Think. It’s a fascinating book full of intriguing stories, keen insights, and useful tools—like the Candor Challenge, Dinner of Truth, and 3R Model. The author makes increasing self-awareness actually doable!

Throughout the book, Eurich emphasizes the significance of self-awareness, for example: “There is strong scientific evidence that people who know themselves and how others see them are happier. They make smarter decisions. They have better personal and professional relationships. They raise more mature children…They’re more creative, more confident, and better communicators…They’re better performers at work who get more promotions. They’re more effective leaders with more enthusiastic employees” (loc 153). I want this!

And throughout the book, the author also emphasizes the harmful effects of insufficient self-awareness, for example, “un-self-aware professionals don’t just feel less fulfilled in their careers—when they get stuck, they tend to have trouble figuring out what their next phase should even be” (loc 163). I don’t want this!

She organizes Insight into the following 4 sections:

(1) Roadblocks and Building Blocks: While blindspots and the cult of self hinder self-awareness, the 7 Pillars of Insight help—meaning, being aware of your personal values, passions, aspirations, fit, patterns, reactions, and impact (see loc 723).

(2) Internal Self-Awareness: Myths and Truths: “Internal self-awareness has to do with seeing yourself clearly. It’s an inward understanding of your values, passions, aspirations, ideal environment, patterns, reactions, and impact on others. People who are high in internal self-awareness tend to make choices that are consistent with who they really are, allowing them to lead happier and more satisfying lives” (loc 211).

(3) External Self-Awareness: Myths and Truths: “External self-awareness is about understanding yourself from the outside in—that is, knowing how other people see you. Because externally self-aware people can accurately see themselves from others’ perspectives, they are able to build stronger and more trusting relationships” (loc 216).

Note: According to Eurich, internal self-awareness and external self-awareness aren’t always related (loc 210). Meaning, just because you know yourself doesn’t mean you know how others see you—a helpful reminder!

(4) The Bigger Picture: This was my favorite section. Eurich explains how to build self-aware teams using 2 things:

  • The 5 Cornerstones of Collective Insight: objectives, progress, processes, assumptions, and  individual contributions (see loc 3319).
  • The 3 Building Blocks of Self-Aware Teams: a leader who serves as the role model, a safe environment in which team members are expected to speak truthfully, and a mechanism to keep the team focused on self-awareness (see  loc 3790).

Note: The 5 Cornerstones in combination with the 3 Building Blocks provide just the framework I need!

Insight was a helpful read—and as a bonus, the author includes the 7-Day Insight Challenge and 14 practical appendices addressing everything from values, to ideal environment, to feedback. The author also provides a free online assessment on self-awareness.

Here are some related resources:

What about you? How do you feel about increasing your self-awareness? What helps you develop self-awareness? What hinders you? How self-aware are you? (Hint: Try the free assessment !) To what extent are you the living curriculum of self-awareness for your school? To what extent do you want to be?

Get flourishing!

Michael

International Christian school leaders, how can you increase your self-awareness?

/ mkessenburg

Leaders, increase your self-awareness!  Why?

(1) Because increasing your self-awareness helps you flourish.

(2) Because increasing your self-awareness helps you maintain and enhance your well-being, regulate your emotions, build relationships, and identify and address your growth areas. 

(3) Because not increasing your self-awareness means remaining where you are (aka stagnating), complete with all your blindspots. Not good.

(4) Because increasing self-awareness is a best practice. Do a Google search on “leaders increase self-awareness” and you get over 119,000,000 results, including The Importance of Self-awareness in Leadership, 7 Strategies To Improve Self-Awareness in Leadership, and 10 Tips for Leaders to Improve Their Self-Awareness,

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How can you increase your self-awareness? In The Self-Aware Leader, John Maxwell offers 12 ways—which also serve as his 12 chapter titles. I’ve listed the chapter titles below, along with a quotation for each chapter:

Chapter 1: Become Good at Leading Yourself: “If you want a better team in a better organization that produces better results, you need to become better at leading yourself” (loc 250).

Chapter 2: Know and Work Within Your Strengths: “Where am I strongest? What are my top three strengths? Where am I weakest? Who on my team can I help using my strengths? Who can I ask to help me where I’m weakest?” (loc 468)

Chapter 3: Put Your Team Ahead of Your Own Career Advancement: “[L]eadership is relational more than positional, and helping the team win is much more important than winning personally” (loc 479).

Chapter 4: Look at Yourself When People Quit: “When leaders are incompetent, they become a distraction to the team. They waste people’s energy. They prevent people from keeping the main thing the main thing. They take the focus from the vision and values of the organization and place it on their own behavior. If the people working for an incompetent leader have a high degree of skill, they will continually worry about the leader messing things up, causing them to expend time and energy fixing messes. If people lack skill or experience, they won’t know what to do to fix things. No matter what, productivity declines, morale suffers, and positive momentum becomes impossible” (loc 660).

Chapter 5: Listen More than Talk: “Do I spend more time talking or listening to my team members? Why? What would happen if I spent more time asking questions and listening? How can I start doing that beginning today?” (loc 814)

Chapter 6: Handle Criticism with Grace: “Where am I defending myself and pretending I have it all together when I should instead be gracefully accepting criticism and striving to improve?” (loc 938)

Chapter 7: Admit Your Mistakes and Learn from Them: “People can either run from mistakes and hurt themselves, or learn from them and help themselves. People who try to avoid failure at all costs never learn and end up repeating the same mistakes over and over again. But those who are willing to learn from their failures never have to repeat them again” (loc 1002).

Chapter 8: Stop Micromanaging People and Start Managing Your Priorities: “Under pressure, do I try to control others on my team? Or do I work to prioritize my own responsibilities so I can be at my best? Where could I empower others more?” (loc 1188)

Chapter 9: Become the Best Learner in the Room: “If you want to lead, you have to learn. If you want to continue to lead, you must continue to learn” (loc 1236).

Chapter 10: Judge Your Leadership by the Success of Your Team: “How successful is my team? In what ways should I take responsibility for their shortcomings, and how can I help them improve? How should I become a better leader?” (loc 1460)

Chapter 11: Take the Longer Road that Leads to Higher Leadership: “Where am I currently taking the shorter or easier road instead of making the more difficult choice that is likely to help my team or make me a better leader in the long run?” (loc 1580)

Chapter 12: Credit Others for Your Success: “If you want to be a successful leader, you will need the support of many people. And if you are wise, you will appreciate and acknowledge them, crediting them for your success” (loc 1618).

While I find each of Maxwell’s 12 ways to increase self-awareness to be helpful, the ones that especially resonated with me include: 

  • Chapter 1: Become Good at Leading Yourself—as Rumi says, “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
  • Chapter 9: Become the Best Learner in the Room—I enjoy learning, and continued learning will help me increase my self-awareness!
  • Chapter 12: Credit Others for Your Success—without God’s help and and the help from those God has brought into my life, I would not be where I am today.

Photo by MART PRODUCTION 

What 1 or more action steps can you take to increase your self-awareness? Steps I’m taking include (1) self-assessing how I’m doing on each of Maxwell’s 12 key points, (2) asking a trusted advisor to do the same, (3) comparing our results, and (4) then implementing 1 or more action steps.

Here are some related blog posts:

What about you? How self-aware are you? Which of Maxwell’s 12 ways to increase self-awareness resonate with you? What 1 or more action steps can you take to increase your self-awareness?

Get flourishing!

Michael

Summer Reading #3: The Will to Learn

/ mkessenburg

Did you become a teacher because you love learning, love kids, and love to see kids learning and flourishing? Do you have moments, seasons, periods, or classes where you would be delighted to see that happening even more than it is? Dave Stuart Junior’s new book The Will to Learn: Cultivating Student Motivation Without Losing Your Own is a resource that can help. 

He says, “Love—the active, earnest, and intelligent pursuit of our neighbors’ good. Is this not what we spend our labors on each day in our classrooms with our students? Schools exist for a single purpose: to promote the long-term flourishing of young people. Specifically, we do this by teaching them to master disciplines that they likely wouldn’t otherwise” (loc 244).  

Stuart delivers an inspiring big picture, a wealth of specific examples of what has worked for real teachers, and a research base that supports his own credibility. For example, he explains 5 key beliefs in students’ hearts that will motivate them as learners (credibility, value, effort, efficacy, belonging–see graphic below) and 10 strategies that a teacher can use to strengthen those beliefs. Each of the strategies includes examples from multiple grade levels and fields.

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Stuart’s 5 beliefs that motivate students are:

  • Credibility: The student believes that you, as her teacher, are good at your job.
  • Value: The student believes that the work he does in your class is worth his time. 
  • Effort & Efficacy: The student believes that with intelligent effort, she can succeed at the work in your class. (These 2 beliefs are grouped together because they are so closely related.)
  • Belonging: The student believes that people like him do the work of your class.

Stuart’s 10 strategies that strengthen the 5 beliefs in students’ hearts are as follows: 

1.  “Track Attempted MGCs” (loc 1491): An MGC–or moment of genuine connection–is an intentional, brief (15-30 seconds) interaction with a student about a personal or academic topic where you “attempt to communicate, earnestly and simply, that you value, know, or respect that student” (loc 1491). 

The significance is in the tracking. Most teachers I know would agree that attempting such moments is a good thing—but no one I know (including me) actually tracks it. Which means our efforts are unevenly spread, and we may spend ourselves on a few students while missing opportunities with others. 

2.  “Improve at One Thing” (loc 1979): Rather than being overwhelmed by all the things we think we need to improve in, the author suggests selecting 1 to focus intently on for 2 or 3 months. This should be one of 8 areas that builds that most foundational quality: credibility. Stuart (A) lists the 8 crucial areas, (B) models how to break the first 2 down into some specific, constituent parts, and (C) provides resources for those parts. 

One resource he provides is a chart on what to do with your body, voice, and word choice in order to convey a “warmly authoritative teacher presence.” The chart articulates at a granular level what I realize I naturally do as a teacher with over 30 years of experience, but it would have been gold to me early in my career (loc 2151).   

3. “Gentle Urgency” (loc 2328): This section includes a practical list of ways to enact non-stressful respect for limited learning time at the beginning, middle, and end of class. Stuart reminds us that “as teachers, our sense of sacred urgency must be balanced by a palpable kindness, calm, peace, and gentleness” (loc 2328). 

4.  “Micro-sermons from an Apologist, Winsome and Sure” (loc 3269): Be the kind of teacher who regularly, naturally, joyfully, and confidently explains the reasons for studying your subject area. This section includes 9 different types of reasons and many specific examples from a variety of classes. Check out this example from a math class!     

5. “A Feast of Knowledge” (loc 3707): Know interesting things about your field, delight in the knowledge, and let students in on the secrets. “We want our students to have knowledge constellations all throughout their minds” (loc 3703).

6. “Valued Within” (loc 4028): Get students to articulate how the skills, concepts, and strategies they’ve learned in your class intersect with their own interests, goals, and values—no easy task. For me, it’s easier to reel off reasons my discipline is important, or even to get students to repeat them.

7. “Woodenize All of It” (loc 4509): Like iconic basketball coach John Wooden, teach—specifically, respectfully, and clearly—every skill needed to succeed in your class. Wooden taught his college players how to put on their socks and shoes in order to not get blisters—”Woodenizing All of It” means teaching kids everything from how to come prepared to class to how to take notes to how to study.

8. “Define Success Wisely, Early, and Often” (loc 4953): One way to do this is by developing a clear, shared, important, attainable vision that is regularly discussed. As Stuart says, “We need to give students regular, robust opportunities to contemplate success in our classes, in school, and in life” (loc 4960).

9. “Unpack Outcomes, Good or Bad” (loc 5198): Get students assessing their outcomes, figuring out what strategies got the results they got, and what they want to keep or change (aka, after action review). This is especially important in the case of what Dave Stuart Jr. calls “effortful failure”—when students believe they’ve tried hard and still not succeeded.

10. “Normalize Struggle” (loc 5844): We as teachers need to shine a light on struggle—our own, famous people’s, classmates’, and everyone’s. Everyone was once a beginner. Beginners struggle. Struggle is part of growth. Growth is what we’re after.  

Here are 2 of my favorite quotations:

  • “In other words, schools are institutions of love—of this earnest seeking and serving of the fullness and wholeness of one another” (loc 256).
  • “We’re after volition in the heart, in the very spirit. We’re after the genuine, thriving, bright will to learn and how to create the kinds of schools and classrooms that align with the realities of the human heart” (loc 389).

How about you? Why did you become a teacher? How motivated are your students? What do you find motivates them? What’s 1 of Stuart’s 5 beliefs that interests you? Which of the 10 strategies to increase student motivation resonate with you? What can you do to increase student motivation?

Get flourishing! 

Kim