A lesson in confronting the brutal facts...

I am usually excited on Fridays, but this past Friday I wasn’t excited, I was anxious and exhausted. I had planned to write a little bit every evening after work so that I wouldn’t be overwhelmed writing my final papers, but that plan was short-lived. Besides preparing and teaching my 3 classes daily, hosting tutorial after school, managing freshman discipline-which was at an all-time high, conducting classroom observations, leading one-on-ones, attending my own one-on-one with my principal, I had to prepare to present my portion of this week’s PD. There just wasn’t enough time to complete it all! Friday arrived and my schedule was packed as usual. I arrived to work early and completed sub plans for all of my classes even though I was only going to be out for one class. Around 7:45 AM I went and sat in the PD room. Mistake #1. My principal had explicitly informed us that we were to meet in the front office at 7:50. But I wanted to continue reading the last 7 pages of the student handbook that was pre-work for our meeting and the PD room provided the privacy that I needed. I told myself I would still make it to the front office by 7:50 AM. Within those short 5 minutes though, each member, one by one, joined me in the PD room as I hurriedly made edits for the handbook. The only person missing was my principal. It was now 7:50, but instead of getting up and heading to the front office, I remained in my seat. Mistake #2. Why? Because the rest of the team was there! Surely if it was time to go one of them would know, right? Wrong! There was no valid reason for remaining in the PD room with the remainder of the team. Our directions were to meet in the front office at 7:50 so why did we unofficially decide to alter the meet up location to the PD room? Around 8:03 I thought it odd that we were still all in the PD room. I peered nervously down the hallway and into the front office. There was still no sign of my principal, so I walked the 50 feet to front office and inquired about her whereabouts. “She left for a meeting and won’t be back until 10:30” said her secretary. My principal had left without us! Mistake #3. I rushed back to the PD room, collected my things and informed the one member of the team still there that our principal had already left. I then called the remaining two members who had left the PD room to run errands, informing them of the same. I couldn’t get there fast enough! When I arrived at the coffee shop, my principal was sitting working alone at a table. She seemed calm enough, but I was frazzled. I was late, I still had 7 pages of the student handbook to read, and I had no power cord for my laptop which was at 30%. The rest of the team arrived shortly thereafter but now it was a whopping 38 minutes after our scheduled start time. My principal, indicated this, as she commenced the warm up activity, but still appeared mostly unbothered. As she launched into the first item on the agenda though, the assistant principal received a text that there was no coverage for a teacher that was out supervising a field lesson. He had overlooked coverage and was trying to rectify the situation. The dean of students was distracted by an email from a direct report, the dean of instruction for literacy couldn’t get her internet to work and thus could not access any of the documents for the meeting, and I couldn’t find the folder on the drive and my computer was slowly dying! Things were spiraling out of control and in that moment that I felt my principal’s energy change. She became visibly frustrated. She asked everyone to close their laptops and addressed the issue head on. We arrived late, we were unprepared, and we were distracted. She held us accountable, yet provided opportunity for us to speak, to vent, to share how overwhelmed we all were and then she adjusted the meeting’s agenda to accommodate the needs of the team and what needed to be addressed. Until then, my principal could have been Jim Collins’ personal spokesperson for his book Good to Great. She often spoke of Admiral Stockdale’ s ability to survive the harshest of conditions, and frequently recited the mantra “confronting the brutal facts.” But on Friday this all had new meaning, when she actually modeled the difficult task of confronting the brutal facts. She walked the walk, she didn’t just talk the talk. She could have easily ignored our shortcomings and continued on with the meeting, or even reprimand us and continue, but what she did was exactly what Jim Collins says good companies do to move from good to great, she did not stick her head in the sand, she addressed the issue, listened, and planned a new course of action tailored to the needs of her team, all the while maintaining a high bar. I respect her even more now for this, and plan to do the same when I too am a school leader.