Leading Schools with Courage and Humility
“We have lost the wonder of walking together, we have lost the delight of dreaming together, so that this wealth, moved by hope, can take us forward; we need to walk together, we need to meet, and we need to dream.”
In this time of societal upheaval in many parts of the globe, most of our institutions and schools in particular are caught up in a maelstrom, in what feels like untethered and relentless turmoil. Schools are treading along a precipice, looking for handholds and footholds in a treacherous journey not of their own making. Since most educators didn’t sign up to be black diamond alpine guides, they need help, from both external and internal sources, to navigate the myriad challenges of their daily school lives.
As Jennifer D. Klein writes in her new book, Taming the Turbulence in Educational Leadership, the era we’re living in calls for an eclectic and nuanced set of leadership skills and proficiencies. She writes, “leaders everywhere are worried about losing their jobs over doing what they know their learners need and deserve.” Effective school leaders have always been part “seer,” part “salesperson,” part “spiritual guide,” and part “troubadour.” As if on an amphitheatre stage, they deftly juggle these apparently contradictory roles to create the secret sauce of learning leadership, in service of a school’s mission. Their arenas are these unique places called “school” to which parents entrust their most prized possessions each day: their children. Whether public or private, corporate or independent, local or international, schools are meant to be havens of safety and rich learning, and school leaders are their guides and compassionate keepers.
These days, however, schools everywhere are under relentless attack. They’ve been deluged by politically-motivated culture wars which have increased demands to teach certain content in a particular way. Teachers and school leaders literally read the daily news to see if their lesson plans need to be altered or if books need to be pulled from library shelves to comply with the political whims of the day. Attacks from parents, politicians, and community members are all too commonplace.
This dystopian landscape is causing a global exodus from the teaching profession. Teachers and school leaders place huge value on their autonomy to lead their classrooms and schools in the manner they deem appropriate to meet the needs of their students. Take that autonomy away and question the core tenets of a school’s mission, values, and guiding principles, and we’ve got an untenable situation for all too many educators and school communities.
In times of turmoil such as these, Margaret Wheatley has provided sage perspectives and effective tools that help leaders navigate even the darkest of times. In a recent seminar, Wheatley encouraged leaders to see our schools as “islands of sanity,” robust communities that intentionally nurture healthy, life-giving practices even when surrounded by craziness. One such practice, based in Buddhist philosophy, is called “Take your Seat,” in which we simply pause, breathe, ground ourselves, focus our attention on positive intentions, and then proceed. It’s simple, powerful, efficient, and effective. Once grounded, we can channel our full energy and attend to the challenging matters at hand.
School leaders need to be sense-makers and brave guides. If schools’ most essential role is to prepare students for an unknown future, and we don’t have a crystal ball to consult, then we have to backwards plan from somewhat fuzzy predictions. Since schools thrive in atmospheres of relative clarity, their purpose, core values, guiding principles, and norms of behavior need to be designed to create an atmosphere of safety and trust essential to educating young people. When a school’s very reason for existence is questioned, attacked and compromised, educators rightly seek cover, and teachers expect their administrators to protect them.
Psychologist Rob Evans (“Why a School Doesn’t Run or Change Like a Business”) wrote, “Schools are much more like families and religious institutions than like corporations and other professional organizations.” School leaders are often seen as monarchs, priests, or additional parents, with all the complicated tensions that such positions of power can carry. Rather than exploit that power in a top-down manner, school leaders are well advised to look for ways to share it. A mentor of mine, Seth Kreisberg, wrote extensively about empowerment and the transformative impact of seeing leadership as “power with” rather than the more typical “power over.” Vanguard schools intentionally cultivating student autonomy empower learners to decide how, when, and what they learn, offering opportunities for innovation, entrepreneurship, and mastery. For this impactful shift to occur, school leaders and teachers need to intentionally share some of their positional power and don the roles of mentors and guides.
This shift is a difficult one for many educators because they fear the consequences of sharing power: potentially losing their grip, depleting their status, inviting further public critique, and sparking mayhem. Perhaps more to the point, ego and fear can prevent adults from empowering their students. In defensive mode, lizard brains can take over and vision can become stunted, precisely when an expanded aperture would help educators navigate and open themselves to needed change.
Wrapping up my fourth decade in this profession, it’s clear to me that educators who wish to do the right thing are often stuck. They are stuck in the paradigms and archetypes in which they and generations before them were steeped, a lens that sees the world in reductionist, binary terms. Humans in general, and educators in particular, need help shifting from entrenched dualistic, polarized viewpoints to expanded, triangulated perspectives. We humans tend to commit to ideas early and hold onto them for dear life. I'm not sure why, but fear is probably a factor–fear of admitting a mistake, revealing weakness, or being wrong. We tend to pummel others, and ourselves, for shifting a point of view when, in fact, that's exactly what we should do with new insights or information.
Like other living species on the planet, we either adapt to changing conditions or we die. As much as we humans try to keep our worlds constant and predictable so that we feel some comfort or respite from constant newness, in both our work and leisure lives, we'd do better to courageously embrace new elements as opportunities for learning, growth, and wholeness. The same goes for conflict and strife. If we welcome disagreements and multiple viewpoints as chances to stretch and enrich our thinking, we learn to surf the waves of discord rather than getting pummeled by them.
To avoid dualistic entrenchment, educational leaders need to be bridge and web builders with those who see the world differently. We need to intentionally lean in together across ideological lines, especially when our instincts are to dive back into our bunkers for perceived safety. Humans usually parrot the comfortable and known credos that led us to join the bunker group in the first place. While often deemed “normal” behavior, this is maladaptive cowardice. Instead, we need to be courageous and humble enough to admit, especially in schools, that we and our bunker group may not know the best answer or even the best question.
Rather than just building bridges from me to you, we would often benefit from considering multiple alternative views. This is true in the classroom, too. With courage and humility, teachers and school leaders need to model and develop peacemaking skills, both in their lesson designs and in everyday human interactions. The proverbial hand across the aisle can happen anywhere, anytime, across cultures, languages, ideologies, and intentions. Summoning courage and humility, we first need to acknowledge and swallow our fear, prepare to be vulnerable, and wonder out loud about how it is that others came to hold their views. Our "weaponry" can be truly empathetic words, used as thoughtful, disarming tools, driven by a desire to first understand, rather than to be understood.
I wonder why we've elevated debate competitions and tidy arguments as the highest forms of intellectual pursuit–the binary “I win, you lose” scenario. We don't have "empathetic listener" or "curious query" forums or showcases in our schools, nor do we usually spotlight or award "collaborative" or "community building" skills, even though these terms are often present in our mission and vision statements. Parker Palmer recently stated in an interview, “I’m irrevocably opposed to any sort of indoctrination in the classroom, and I’m equally opposed to any form of education that ignores the quest for meaning and purpose and ignores the tools of discernment that can help them make considered choices.” What would our schools and leadership teams look like if we actively celebrated the instances that we changed our fundamental perspectives in unexpected ways and learned to invite and appreciate multiple discordant views as learning opportunities?
Context and culture matter when navigating the paradoxical balance of courage and humility in schools, especially when trying to lead with empathy. For example, in an international school in Asia, a teacher confided that he’d been recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease, a neurodegenerative condition that influences balance and movement. While the teacher’s attitude was optimistic and determined, he and the Director had a long conversation about the future. They discussed strategies for maintaining employment, perhaps part time and with assistance so he could continue to support his family financially and still allow his children to graduate from the school while battling the disease. The Director informed the board chair and pitched a plan that would enable the teacher to continue while his symptoms progressed. “We need to inform the community about your diagnosis,” the Director said. As a Korean national, the teacher was aware of the cultural stigmas that the disease carried for some, and he ultimately agreed to go public with the plan, with the strong support of the school’s leadership. It took ample measures of both courage and humility to take this bold step that could easily have raised concerns from parents and students, particularly about perceived fragility and decreased capacity to teach effectively. Leaning into the school’s mission for inclusion and international-mindedness provided directional clarity as leaders navigated this potentially divisive decision.
Art in general–and poetry in particular–can help us discern and triangulate our views by providing a "third thing" upon which two or more people can shift their focus. Especially when trust is low and tensions are high, it is often less threatening to first focus on something neutral together, a third thing. Artistic and poetic works invite us to gaze upon a neutral entity, standing or sitting together, encouraging us to articulate the thoughts, emotions, and interpretations of the piece under focus. As Kim Stafford writes in "Hard Talk," we can then “wade in together, talking recklessly–not silent, not shouting, but fierce in listening, saying ‘How is it for you?’”
Hard Talk
By Kim Stafford
What if understanding is a light
we glimpse beyond the thorny thicket
of difficult conversation? What if polite banter
won’t get us there, and even civil discourse
keeps us here in our old meadow of safety
and ignorance? What if it takes a few bruises
and scratches to reach that light? What if
you and I need to wade in together, talking
recklessly—not silent, not shouting,
but fierce in listening, saying How is it
for you? Tell me about that. I want
to know what I never knew.
I need your suffering to erase
my denial, and my pain
to illuminate your path.
Ready? Let’s begin
In order to allow others’ suffering to erase our denial, and our pain to illuminate another’s path, we need to intentionally live our lives differently, both as educators and as human beings. This calls for an evolving mixture of courage and humility. As Pope Francis said, “we need to walk together, we need to meet, and we need to dream.” We need to mindfully share our power, pause before reacting to discern what’s really going on, triangulate our viewpoints, bridge communities, navigate with empathy, attend to our inner teacher, and lean in together for this wild and wonderful life’s journey.
Portions of this article come from interview conversations and correspondence between Tim Carr and Jennifer D. Klein in 2024, and will appear in her forthcoming book, Taming the Turbulence in Educational Leadership.
Having served as head of several iconic international schools around the world for 20+ years, Tim Carr has been on a quest to discover and share the keys to transformational learning. With an eye towards the future, preparing cadres of students and educators for the unknown, Tim focuses on building and nurturing learning communities with vivid and motivating visions. Believing that our world needs fresh new learning designs to inspire creative innovation, Tim is excited to continue collaborating closely with educators and boards around the world through Joyful Learning Leaders LLC.