What I've been Reading

Over the course of a year, in addition to articles and blogs that I read and follow, I try to get in as much book reading as I can. Here are some of the books that I've enjoyed this year:

I was curious about the book, Leaders Make the Future, after hearing speakers reference it at the last Southern Association of Independent Schools (SAIS) conference. In this book, Bob Johanson, from the Institute for the Future, looks at what his institute believes are the five external forces that will make us rethink how we lead our organizations. Because we used a similar way to look at our strategic planning process at Greensboro Day School, I was engaged right from the start. Whether we acknowledge them or not, the external forces Johanson shares are causing schools to rethink how they teach, what they teach, and how they help students to become tomorrow’s leaders. You can learn more about the work of the IFTF at: http://www.iftf.org/home/

I was immediately attracted to The Connected Educator, Learning and Leading in a Digital Age, because we are a 1:1 laptop school, and being connected is a critical part of our 6-12 program. Helping our teachers learn how to safely utilize the internet and use personal learning networks and blogs to expand their professional learning communities parallels the kind of networks we expect our students to develop. The authors, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Lani Ritter Hall go into great detail about the power of diverse learning environments, connected learning communities, and how to improve teacher professional growth and development.

If you are an independent school educator and you’ve not yet read the NAIS Trendbook, you’re missing out on building a context for the challenges independent schools are facing today and will be facing in the very near future. We used it as a platform for our last administrative retreat when we looked at the potential threats and opportunities we face in the attraction and retention of students.

The Vendee Globe race comes around every four years and challenges solo sailors to sail 60-foot boats non-stop and unaided around the world. While 3,000 mountaineers have climbed Mt. Everest, only 50 sailors have ever completed this race, and the dropout rate averages 50% due primarily to equipment failure from the skippers pushing the boats too hard. The race is currently underway and you can see how the sailors are doing here.  Note that seven have already had to drop out.

Rich Wilson, a competitor in the 2008 Vendee Globe recounts his harrowing experience in his book, Race, France to France, Leave Antarctica to Starboard. His story is one of true courage and heroism as he rounds both major capes, and sails the southern ocean where the International Space Station houses the next closest human. I have a particular love for this book, as I raced competitively on San Francisco Bay and have a deep respect for the extreme difficulty of accomplishing what these sailors attempt.

Our school is taking on a three year ethical development program with the Institute for Global Ethics and we are reading How Good People Make Tough Choices and Moral Courage by Rushworth Kidder. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading both of these books because they eloquently outline why it’s so frequently difficult to make choices about the right thing to do. Kidder points out that very few of the choices we make are right vs. wrong decisions, which are rather easy to make. The tough ones are the right vs. right choices we have to make almost daily. These choices include those that bring into conflict loyalty and truth, the rights and needs of the individual and the community, short-term and long-term consequences, justice and mercy. Both of these books make us examine our values and offer a method that we can learn and teach our students for making good choices. The writing is deep and thorough providing terrific guidance in decision making for all of us.

Michelle Bostian, our LS counselor, is heading up our work, and you can learn more about what we are doing by visiting our Bengal Talk blog.

As you can imagine, my bed stand is stacked high with more books to read!

How to Avoid the Artificial Maturity Trap

This posting is from from the Leading Blog: a blog that reviews recently published books.

 

Children today are overexposed to information far earlier than they are ready and underexposed to real-life experiences far later than they are ready producing a kind of artificial maturity. Tim Elmore writes in Artificial Maturity, that “it looks so real because kids know so much, but it’s virtual because they have experienced so little.” He continues:

Today, because information is so prevalent, our kids assume they have [experiential knowledge] when they only have [informational knowledge]. With an abundance of knowledge, their confidence can soar, but it’s based on a virtual foundation. Without experience, it’s easier for knowledge to produce judgmental attitudes, bullying, and arrogance.

With all of this information kids think they are mature. And unfortunately, we do too. That’s part of the problem. How often have we seen a “smart” child and thought, “They are sure mature for their age.” Intelligence and maturity are not the same thing. (Of course, we see this same issue in “adults” too.) Elmore writes, “Except in rare cases, their knowledge has only entertained them. It has not produced anything real.”

Elmore provides reasons for why artificial maturity has become so widespread, but his real focus is what we can do about it. To transform artificial maturity into authentic maturity, we must concentrate on four areas says Elmore:

Emotional Intelligence. Mature, healthy people manage their emotions. This means developing self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management.

Character and a Sense of Ethics. Mature, healthy people live by a set of values and principles. They don’t merely react to what is going on around them. They have self-discipline, emotional security, core values, and a clear sense of identity.

Strength Discovery. Mature, healthy people who become the best versions of themselves are one’s who’ve stopped trying to do everything and focused on what they do very well. This means developing their natural talents and gifts, knowledge base, heartfelt passions, and acquired skills.

Leadership Perspective. Mature, healthy people live lives that don’t just revolve around themselves. They invest their lives in something beyond themselves. A leadership perspective involves a personal vision, responsibility, compassion, and initiative.

Developing maturity is centered on four key areas:

• Provide autonomy and responsibility simultaneously
• Provide information and accountability simultaneously
• Provide experiences to accompany teens' technology-savvy lifestyles
• Provide community-service opportunities to balance self-service time

In addition, Elmore believes there are four debts we owe our kids: clarity (fosters focused direction), transparency (fosters validation and vulnerability), consistency (fosters trust and assurance), and boundaries (fosters security).

There is far too much information in this book to cover it here, but here are a few more ideas from Elmore:

• Start inserting age-appropriate responsibility into your children’s lives right away. Avoid indulging and overprotecting them and creating hyperinflated egos. We are doing a disservice to young people if we remove their chance to fail.

• Enable them to take control of their lives; to boss their calendars. Hold them accountable and responsible for the choices they’ve made and don’t bail them out. Let them see that failure isn’t final and poor judgment is not necessarily poor character.

• Connect them to people (adults) outside their peer group. This generation doesn’t need you for information (they can get that without you), but they do need you for interpretation. They need mentors to help them make sense of the information and the world around them.

• Communicate that there is meaning even in the small, mundane tasks. Give them a sense of the big picture and how all the little things they do fit into the big picture of history, or of the organization, or of their community.

Authentic maturity is a leadership issue. Elmore concludes, “Our kids have what it takes inside of them, if we’ll just take them seriously and equip them for the future. As they enter adolescence, we must begin to treat them as young adults and train them to be both autonomous and responsible. Then, I dare you to stand back and watch them amaze you.”

Artificial Maturity is an excellent book to help us understand maturity—what it is and how it is developed. Not only is it helpful for developing it in children but the issues raised are good to reflect on for our own development