Gratitude Sandwich

Despite repeated warnings, conversations and emails, many teachers were not submitting lesson plans, entering grades or reporting to duty. It was time to communicate to the staff page 23 of the staff handbook:

In the event it becomes necessary to discipline an employee, the following steps of discipline may occur at the discretion of the School:

1. Verbal warning. 


2. Written warning. 


3. Final warning and/or probation. 


4. Termination. 


This was going to be a somber staff meeting. I sat there listening to remainder of the leadership team devise a plan for delivery of this morbid message on a Friday afternoon of the longest, roughest week ever, and thought that we should at least sandwich the delivery. “Let’s do something positive in the beginning” I pitched to the team. My counterpart, the dean of instruction for literacy pitched a warm-up activity she had designed incorporating data she had gathered around student articulation of data goals by subject. She would have teachers form a human bar graph predicting the percentage of their students that were able to articulate goals from their data conference. She had purchased a gift card and planned to award it to the department with the highest percentage, but the data was abysmal with the highest percentage being 53%. It didn’t appear to be much of a celebration considering that the staff was going to be slammed with a discipline plan. I felt like I was watching an accident that I had been witness to a thousand times, about to occur, only this time I had the power to prevent it. “I still think that we need to do something more positive as a warm up” I said. My principal was open to other ideas, but needed something finalized as we were running out of time. Since I was adamant about the warm up being more positive, she assigned me that responsibility and continued on with the agenda. I decided to align with the character development theme of gratitude and created an exercise where staff members partnered up and wrote three things they were grateful for about each other on an index card. The energy lightened in the room as each dyad shared their gratitude list. People began to smile, laugh, blush, and one person even cried tears of joy. People felt appreciated, including my principal. When it was time to review page 23, both the delivery and reception went smoothly. I then initiated staff shout-outs to end the meeting on a positive note.

  It was particularly important to me to avoid perpetuating the vicious cycle of condescension in the name of accountability after being an onlooker for so long. It gave me hope that I could do this work on my terms, in my own way.

 "Real leadership doesn't require a choice between doing your job and honoring the human beings you serve; you can do both!" ~Robin R. Jackson