wholehearted leadership in schools matt stephen, ed.d. servant leaders in education helping others...

Wholehearted Leadership in Schools

Matt Stephen, Ed.D.

Servant Leaders in Education

Helping Others Create Their

Best Future

• What – Curriculum

• How– Instructional

Strategies

• Why– Mission

My nomination for the dumbest words ever spoken

“Those who can do;

those who can’t teach”

“Those who can do; those who can’t teach”

“Everyone knows how to teach.

I just taught my kid to ride a bicycle.”

• Everyone is a teacher• Everyone knows how to teach• Everyone has taught a child how to do

something

• So, let’s teach our child to ride a bicycle in a school system…………

In Public Education:Art of Teaching

• Of your 22 second-grade children – 3 have no bike, no biking experience, and no desire to

learn to ride a bike– 5 have no bike but desperately want to learn– 3 have bikes with training wheels– 7 have bikes with flat tires, broken spokes, or rusted

chains– 2 have racing bikes and equipment and they have

been racing for several years

You have 15 minutes per day to work with them and……

In three weeks…

all of your children will be tested on safety rules and biking ability on a challenge

course.

Wholehearted Leadership

Wholehearted Leadership

is total commitment to serving others through building meaningful relationships in

order to help other people grow and develop.

WHL Questions

• What is our mission?

• What are “meaningful” relationships and how do we build them?

• How do we help others grow and develop?

Mission

It is our mission that gets us out of bed each morning to

serve our children.

Whole-hearted

vs.

Half-hearted Mission

Personal Mission• I will strive to improve my servant leadership skills and

expand my circle of influence in order to help people improve their lives. I will do this through constantly abiding by and striving to influence others to follow these three guiding principles: dignity, service and excellence.

• Dignity I will always treat other in a dignified manner, and I will always maintain my own

dignity. I will be a source of joy and encouragement for everyone with whom I come in contact.

• ServiceI will always provide a service for others. I will strive to take care of other people’s

needs before my own.• ExcellenceI will strive for continuous improvement in all areas of my life. I will not be happy with

the status quo.

Growing up….Who was your favorite teacher?

Why?

Mrs. Abercrombie and Mrs. PierceMrs. Abercrombie and Mrs. Pierce

Meaningful Relationships

What is a relationship?

A connection between two people – does not have to be personal or meaningful.

What is a meaningful relationship?

A meaningful relationship provides aid, help, relevance, meaning, direction, support, nurturing, assistance….. also fulfills a need, desire, want, etc.

School Relationships

The teacher-student relationships is vitalto the success of a student

All other relationships exist to support the t-s relationship

CC

TeacherTeacher

School Leader/Support

School Leader/Support ParentParent

StudentStudent

Community

• Which relationships -if improved- would impact the overall climate of the school?

• 3 Steps to take to ensure these relationships become more meaningful.

Building Relationships

Building Relationships

Building Relationships

Steps for implementing a school-wide relationship-building plan

1. Visit the mission and vision of the school to ensure that they include values and beliefs about relationship-building. The vision and mission are crucial to setting the focus of the school culture.

2. Conduct a needs assessment by collecting data about existing internal and external school relationship pairs. Determine whether other school relationship pairs are successfully supporting the core teacher-student relationships. Data can be gathered simply by asking questions, engaging in conversations, conducting surveys, and/or holding focus groups to examine the quality of current relationships at the school.

3. Determine priority areas of relationship pairs that need immediate attention. After gathering and examining data, priorities can be determined as to which relationships need to be addressed initially.

4. Assign tasks to Professional Learning Communities (PLCs), including community and parents, to research effective strategies for plans of action. Once priorities are determined, action research teams can be activated to investigate relevant and successful strategies for building meaningful relationships.

5. Write a school-wide plan for building meaningful relationships.

6. Implement the plan.

7. Evaluate the strategies and activities and determine how to sustain improvements.

From Student to Teacher:A Love Poem

There is a room of which I knowthat always has a fire aglow.In it sits a chair all plush.The sounds within are all a hush. There are blankets to make me cozy and warmand a bolted door to keep out harm.The book on the table contains a happy ending.It makes my time well-worth spending. 

There is a cup of hot chocolate by the chair,

and the smell of fresh baked bread in the air.

How long I stay, I need not worry

because time slows down, there is no hurry. 

This room is in my mind.

The times I enter it are few.

I am mostly in this room I find

when I am close to you. 

Growing and Developing Others

We guide students to their

best future

Enlarging Process

–See their potential

–Cast a vision for their future

–Tap into their passion

–Address character flaws

–Focus on their strengths

John C. Maxwell: Becoming a Person of Influence

How do we “enlarge” our children?

– How do we see their potential?– How do we cast a vision for their future?– How do we tap into their passions?– How do we address character flaws?– How do we focus on their strengths?

Target your most

“unlovely” child

and “enlarge” him/her this year.

Who is Shannon Wright?

The Westside Middle School massacre was an incident of a school shooting that occurred on March 24, 1998, in Jonesboro, Arkansas. A total of 5 people were killed: 4 female students and a teacher. Ten were injured: 9 students and 1 teacher. The perpetrators were two students, 13-year old Mitchell Johnson and 11-year old Andrew Golden. They were shooting in an ambush style from the woods in camouflaged clothes.

The funeral for Shannon Wright, 32, the English teacher who was fatally shot while trying to shield her students from gunfire, was held at the church she attended in Bono, a small town outside of Jonesboro. She leaves behind a husband and a 2-year-old son.

“To Each Of Us, A Mrs. Wright”News, Commentary And Analysis From Dan Rather

(CBS)  There is little comfort in the news from Jonesboro, Arkansas, this day.

Two boys are accused of a gun attack at their middle school, where four students and one teacher died in the violence. In Jonesboro, as in any community touched by tragedy, the questions resound - and many of them will never be answered to anyone's satisfaction. How did this happen? What could we have done to stop it? What could we have done to PREVENT it?

And yet we take this time to pay tribute to one among the dead. Her name was Shannon Wright. According to police reports and the testimony of witnesses, Mrs. Wright, a sixth-grade English teacher at the Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, saw one of the shooters aiming at a girl student. Mrs. Wright interceded, protecting the child - and was killed instead. The girl has told others she has no doubt: Mrs. Wright saved her life, at the expense of her own.

Shannon Wright is being remembered today as a hero. She is also being remembered as a teacher. Somebody who wanted all her life to do exactly what she was doing, and where she was doing it. Teacher at Westside Middle School: that was her dream job, and she was living her dream.

It would be facile to say that to save a child's life is exactly what every teacher is supposed to do - and nobody wants America's teachers to NEED to go anywhere near such lengths in the pursuit of their professions.

Most of the debate you will hear for the next several days will focus on the violence, not the teaching: How to keep violence out of the classroom, how to keep our schools safe.

That is unquestionably the first, most pressing issue in thiscase.

And yet the symbolism keeps coming back to this reporter. Shannon Wright saved a student's life. Shannon Wright was a teacher. And to be a teacher is to give a young person the tools with which to build a life. This reporter feels strongly about such things, not only because I studied at a teachers college, but also because I feel so strongly the debt I owe to my own teachers.

They never took a bullet for me. They were never called on to do so. It would be exaggerating to say they SAVED my life. And yet - they helped me make something of my life. Most American teachers are trying to do exactly that, every day, whether or not anybody ever notices.

Can you wonder that that's what Shannon Wright wanted to do with HER life? She was a hero - before she took that bullet.

She was a hero –

before she took that bullet.

Matt Stephen, Ed.D.

mattstephen@servantleadersineducation.com

www.servantledersineducation.com

www.facebook.com/servantleadersineducation