Diving Into The New School Rules

The culture of our schools, organizational structures, and methods of communication and decision making – not educational approaches – are the actual drivers for success and failure.

– Anthony Kim

You ever notice when a book takes the thoughts from you mind you’ve been struggling to communicate and puts them out on the page in front of you?

As a senior in high school I stumbled upon a book in our campus library by George Sheehan called Running and Being. It took the way I felt about long distance running and helped me make sense of my own hormone-laden mind.

It’s only happened a handful of times since. The most recent was last month when I picked up The New School Rules: 6 Vital Practices for Thriving and Responsive Schools by Anthony Kim and Alexis Gonzales-Black.

I’ve read hundreds of books about leadership ideas, curriculum strategies, data analysis, motivation, and the like focusing on public K-12 education. Many have been exceptional and more than a few sparked immediate desire to action.

The New School Rules stands out though because the authors choose to focus on six practices related to organizational decisions that have little to do with teaching and learning. They don’t discuss assessments, curriculum, or feedback. There are no ideas shared around intervention or how to motivate teachers and students. Instead Kim and Gonzales-Black choose to focus on organizational practices they posit are either currently getting in the way of success or need to be implemented in order for schools and school systems to meet the needs of our students and team members.

Over the next seven weeks, I’m going to pull apart each of the 6 identified vital practices:

1. Planning – how to find the right purpose and plan to achieve it
2. Teaming – what makes teams function as powerful, effective groups that lead projects and change
3. Managing Roles – new ways of thinking about who should do the work to unleash expertise, interest, and desire to learn
4. Decision Making – the truth about who gets to decide and how a new model of decision making can speed up experimentation, change, and engagement
5. Sharing Information – the nuance of putting out information and actual communication that leads to a powerful shared purpose
6. The Learning Organization – coming full circle, the importance of school organizations that have a learning culture to model and test the learning culture we want and need for our students

In each post we will look at that particular domain and how we could incorporate the ideas into our daily work as leaders in creating the space for teaching and learning. And I think that very idea is why this book speaks to me. As Marc Lesser taught us in an earlier post, our job as leaders is to think, listen, and provide space. The New School Rules provides us ways of creating that space in a responsive way.

So each Monday morning starting Feb. 17th I’ll post an in-depth look at each chapter starting on the 17th with the introduction. I would love for you to pick up a copy and share thoughts in the comments each week or just share ideas based on what I write.

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Thanks for the time.