From Bad to Better to Good to Great to Greater to Master

I just started reading “Never Underestimate Your Teachers” by Robyn Jackson, and through the first chapter I’ve made several notes that led to further reflection and thinking. The highlights of those highlights with my expanded thoughts are below. The central theme of the book thus far is that there are actions and mindsets any leader can adopt to help any teacher reach mastery.

1. “Why shouldn’t masterful teaching be the goal - the attainable goal - of every teacher in the profession?... Great instructional leadership means rejecting the idea of masterful teaching as a gift endowed to a select few.” - Page 3

If we as school leaders relegate great teaching to nature, then we unintentionally undermine our own position and duties; if we fancy ourselves as leaders dedicated to the concept of every student learning and making progress, then we must assume that every teacher has the capability of improving and reaching mastery with our supports. Just as it’s wrong for a math teacher to justify poor student performance by saying they just have a bunch of students who are bad at math, a school leader cannot justify poor teaching with the same logic.

2. “Our biggest leadership challenge if not that we don’t know what to do to increase student success; our biggest challenge is that we must get our teachers to do it.” - Page 5

Knowing what to do is not enough. Knowing how to communicate what you know is not enough. We need to know a lot, how to best communicate what we know depending on the audience and circumstances, and how to follow up on that communication in an infinite number of ways depending on how the initial communication is received.

 

 

 

3. “...help bad ones become good, good ones become great, and great ones become even greater.” -Page 6

I’ve been thinking about this quote for a couple of days now since I read it, and I’m thinking that it will become part of my personal mission statement. If I’m not helping people get better no matter where they are, then what am I doing? Why am I here?

4. “It is critical to provide teachers with differentiated leadership as it is to provide students with differentiated instruction.” - Page 19

Don’t just throw darts at the board and hope one hits; be intentional with what you’re doing. Know who you’re working with, and diagnose what’s needed before trying to remedy it. Know strengths and weaknesses in order to get the most return on whatever investment you’re going to make. One size fits all never lives up to its billing whether its baseball hats, leadership strategies, or learning of any kind.