Leadership

Barbara McSwain
Jun 30, 2008

Winston Churchill said it best, "The key to your impact as a leader is your own sincerity. Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped with it yourself. Before you can move their tears, your own must flow. To convince them, you must yourself believe."

Headlines from the ASCD Smart Brief recently read, "U.S. students fall short in Math and Science." Sean Cavanaugh further stated that the "new results from the 2006 Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, released today, show U.S. students ranking lower, on average, than their peers in 16 other countries in science out of 30 developed nations taking part in the exam. The top-scoring American students' averages were statistically worse than those for 23 of those nations, and equal to only those of Spain and Portugal. Just four countries, Italy, Greece, Turkey, and Mexico scored lower than the United States.

With doom and gloom in the news, my question becomes one of leadership. Principals face retention issues with personnel, achievement levels of students and, in many cases, decreasing budgets. Lee Iacocca's recent book, Where Have All the Leaders Gone?, made me ponder the description of a great leader, not only world class but also great.

Kevin and Jackie Frieberg wrote about leaders with passion, guts and glory in Executive Excellence. One of the leaders they cited was Capt. D. Michael Abrashoff, U. S. Navy. The Friebergs suggested that, "perhaps it was bold and courageous leadership that encouraged Captain D. Michael Abrashoff to deviate from U.S. Navy policies and in the process inspire 300 sailors with the passion needed to create the most combat-ready Navy warship in the Pacific Fleet, the USS Benfold. In 1998 under the command of this gutsy leader, the Benfold offered huge payoffs to the Navy and returned $600,000 of its $2.4 million maintenance budget, $800,000 of its $3 million repair budget, and became the most sought-after ship assignments in the Pacific Fleet. This gutsy leader believes that improving his little 300-person piece of society is as much a part of the bottom line as operational efficiency. As a result, passionate people feel compelled to perform at peak levels, and retention rates soar. On average only 54 percent of sailors stay in the Navy after a second tour, but on the Benfold 100 percent of the sailors sign on for more."  

If we look at Capt. Abrashoff more closely, we can see an analogy within a school district or a school. Often we think that we cannot make a difference in the whole scheme on U.S. test scores because we are a small pebble. If we could take a more courageous approach and begin to see how we can retain the teachers within our building and improve achievement within our school/district, we would soon discover success breeds success!

In the Learning-Focused math training teachers are encouraged to develop math units based on state standards and built around problem solving. Learning-Focused encourages teachers to add additional Extended Thinking to every essential unit.  

Learning-Focused has developed new science materials to enhance science instruction and raise achievement in your school/district - inquiry science lessons/units with multiple opportunities for student to problem solve, to explore and to use extended thinking skills. Toolbox is available online to develop math/science unit/lesson plans.  

The Learning-Focused reading materials guide teachers in the use of comprehension skills across content areas. The Learning-Focused writing materials encourage writing across content areas to improve transition from short term to long term memory. All of these tools enable students to achieve at higher levels.  

Teachers and students deserve strong leadership to guide them in making focused instructional decisions. Through courageous, gutsy leadership with monitoring for achievement we can raise the achievement levels of all students!