Making a Changemaker: Five Ways to Help Kids Find Their Cause

NPR’s Planet Money recently ran a story about Madeline Messer, a 12 year old girl who wrote an op ed piece for the Washington Post about how unfair it was that she had to pay extra to play her favorite video game with a female character. She researched more than 50 games and found that very few of them had female characters available as the free starter character. In conducting her research and writing her letter, Madeline actively engaged in the public discourse about gender and equity.

I remember being about the same age and writing to my US Senator about the lack of movies being made for children. I think that year there were no G rated movies. Senator Lugar’s office wrote back to me. I remember thinking at that moment that what I thought mattered.

These early experiences small, like mine, or larger like Madeline’s provide first forays into our civic spaces. There are easy things we can do to help our children find their voice and follow their interests into the public sphere.

1. First and foremost eat dinner together and use it as a time to discuss your children’s interests. Where appropriate help them see how their interests fit into a larger community. For instance, a child who loves to skateboard will be interested to know about efforts to create a skate park or curtail skateboarding in a favorite place. Growing up, the dinner table was where I learned about the issues my parents cared about; why my mother helped start a recycling campaign in our city and why my father took a leave from his job to help manage a gubernatorial campaign.
2. In age appropriate ways discuss what is going on in your community,state, nation, even the world. Obviously, not every current event is right for young children, and yet we do our children a disservice in completely insulating them from the world around them. With young children, seek out good news, developments in science and technology, events and topics that are happening close to home. Share these with your children.There are a number of age appropriate news sources that can serve as a basis for what you discuss. When children have a question about something they have overheard, ask them what they know. Answer their questions simply and with age appropriate information. Correct misconceptions and share with them what you think. As they grow older, your conversations will deepen.
3. Model civic engagement for your children. Our children are always watching us. What we do is as instructive to them as what we say to them. Whether you are involved in protecting your local watershed, helping to choose a new pastor at your church, serving on a board of directors, or preserving a historic building, speak openly with your children about your involvement and why it matters to you.
4. Talk about politics and our system of government. While civic engagement is broader than partisan politics, our system of government works best when we are actively involved in the important discussions of the time.  Local, state and national election cycles provide us with wonderful opportunities to help our children get beyond the impossible to ignore campaign advertising and understand the underlying issues. The ability to think critically and deeply about campaign topics are important skills to cultivate. Encouraging our children to listen respectfully to the opinions of others while developing their own opinions takes practice. As they get older, encourage them to write to their representatives and their local news sources.
5. Take your children with you out into public spaces. Volunteering in local service organizations, participating in groups like Girl Scouts, attending rallies, town hall meetings and other events are all opportunities for us as parents to help our children see themselves as active participants in their communities. The Chester County Community Foundation website is just one of many resources for finding family friendly volunteer opportunities. The spring and fall are full of family friendly events. Every weekend any number of worthy causes sponsors walks, runs, and swims to raise awareness and money for everything from Multiple Sclerosis, to Breast Cancer, to AIDS, to Autism. These events need walkers, runners, AND volunteers. One way to connect with an event is to choose something that touches a friend or family member. Another way is to give your children a few choices and let them pick what you as a family will do together.

It's not enough to vote and pay taxes; democracies need citizens actively engaged in public discourse in all areas. Our children have a stake in a healthy, functioning civil society. Helping children see themselves as agents of change, as actors in their communities encourages their growth into a sense of responsibility for their communities and their neighbors. Giving them opportunities to talk with us and have early civic experiences with us, fosters their understanding of how to be generally informed and how to choose specific areas for their particular involvement.

This is a repost from A Well-Lit Path: A Blog from Westtown School's Parent Partnering Program

The first two lessons from six months as interim Principal

I am an oldest child. I have a habit of taking charge. In many respects this is a good trait for a Principal. There were times when a decision was needed...when everyone in a meeting was waiting for a sense of direction or an understanding of next steps. There were other times when I wish I had waited to step in or had asked a few more questions or sought out other's opinions before I waded in. Twice I know I muddied the water by responding and deciding rather than making sure I had the best information. In both cases, apologizing and working with all those involved helped to bring a good resolution.

In another instance, I didn't like the direction a faculty member was heading with a process to support students.

image Credit: Marketoonist Business Cartoons ~ For Sale for Commercial Purposes ~ Free to Use in Blogs with attribution and link ~

Rather than meeting and asking the person to rethink and consider the implications of his assumptions, I sent an email and simply took over. Understandably, this person felt undermined and angry. In retrospect, I should have had the discussion first. I might still have had to intervene, but I would have given this person the opportunity to provide the solution himself.  We both wanted to support our students. As Principal I had a different perspective, that of parents and their expectations for what the school should provide, and what I thought was realistic. My colleague had concerns about job creep and increasing demands on teacher time.

Besides stepping in when I should wait, I found it all too tempting to send an email

rather than speak to someone in person--while I was Principal my inbox doubled over its previous volume. Opting for email was especially true when I anticipated meeting resistance or displeasure with what I had to say. So my second lesson from this six months is to choose face to face or a phone call (not voicemail!). This summer I have made a point of walking out of my office to find people to respond to their emails or to ask a question that needs more than a yes or no answer. I know that this won't always be possible in the crush of the school year, but if I practice now, it will be easier to do when its harder to do.

Week 23: Being a Student Driven Principal #SAVMP --scattered thoughts on a Sunday evening

This week Amber Teaman asked us to consider the challenges of keeping teachers and other adults in a teaching community focused on doing what is best for our students. Recently, we adopted a new schedule. The three prime directives of this schedule were that it serve the needs of students first, that the middle and upper school schedules align enough to allow for student (and therefore teacher) cross over, and that it increase time for extended projects and deeper learning. In other words, the schedule needed to serve students needs to take as wide a variety of courses as possible, to take the courses that best fit their readiness to learn -- 8th graders taking language and math courses in the high school program--, and that time for student exploration be hardwired into the day. The unintended but not unexpected consequences included less meeting time during the day for adult committees and fewer free periods for teachers.The daily period changes were accompanied by a switch from trimesters to semesters. Through the process I observed the correlation between an individual teacher's general unhappiness with the old schedule and now with the new schedule and the number of times sentences about the schedule would began with "I need in order to . . . " or "this doesn't work for me because . . . ."

I believe my colleagues are genuinely motivated to teach because they see themselves as serving their students. Those that don't have this approach generally don't last in today's climate in independent schools.  Naturally, we want to do and teach what we enjoy. If we aren't already knowledgeable we want to be learning something new that interests us. We want to work with students in ways that play to our individual strengths. And as a Principal/principle I want to align my faculties' strengths with the needs of my students and the tasks that need to be accomplished (clubs, sports, advising, academics, dorms, leadership roles, athletics) within the complexity of a school. Having said this, there are any number of things in a school that are good for our students, good for the school and not always good for a teacher. Perhaps, I am over focused on this prompt in job descriptions and the day to day work -- this is probably a reflection of where I am in the cycle of the year.

Let me try and step up to a thousand feet at least.

I intended to write about school change to benefit students and put their needs first. Maybe, I shouldn't have started with the schedule ! :) For the past year I have had the same chart over my desk that Amber placed at the top of her blog. As an administrator I have had to work hardest at avoiding both confusion and false starts. Either the vision isn't clearly articulated or in the end the action plan needs better delineation. Both run into the same problem in the end. Only a clearly articulated vision and a carefully planned set of action steps will overcome inertia and TTWADI. When presenting student centered initiatives, I have found it useful to remind us of where we have been and how the work we have already done has led us to this place -- to lean into the direction we are heading and remind us of why we are doing the work before us, no matter how challenging (or exhilarating!!). This helps with establishing the vision. That work always has our students at the core. I am reminded of a workshop led by Heidi Hayes Jacobs in which she had us imagine students sitting next to us as we mapped our curriculum and then she invited real students into the room. Lately, I have been adding students to faculty committees to remind us always that the decisions we make affect our students; why not invite their voices where appropriate (they are sure to share them inappropriately otherwise).

Week 20: The Art of Delegation #SAVMP

This week in SAVMP we are considering the importance of delegating tasks to succeeding as an administrator and insuring that our schools thrive. This topic resonates on several levels, the first of which is mere survival. Two weeks into my term as Interim Principal, people ask me how I am getting along. At the end of my first week I was thrilled to remember I had managed to get to the gym three times! At the end of the second week I was struck by how spatially constrained I was by the demands of my new responsibilities. Before, I was observing classes in all three divisions across all of the campus. I tended to meet people in their classrooms and offices, now people come to find me. Instead of working with teachers as people working on the craft of teaching, I find myself talking with upper school teachers about upper school students and upper school department chairs about course offerings and staff needs. One significant and anticipated shift has been in the time speaking with parents. Hearing their concerns, celebrating with them their children's achievements, and solving problems with them has become the  prime focus of my work. Some of this last work should never be delegated -- it properly belongs to the principal.

I have survived this first stretch because I have delegated . . . .and trusted. The only way to step in mid-year is to rely on the staff in place and ask lots of questions. My favorites right now are "what do you need from me," "what does the principal typically do," and "how might you handle this?"  I know my team as colleagues but the specific tasks they perform, the projects they carry forward, the processes they administer are all new to me. My predecessor, Eric Mayer, worked hard to leave me with a strong team. He told me to trust them and I do.

Given the scope of the exciting and energizing work we (the high school) have before us the rest of the year, delegation is the only way forward. Part of delegation includes rethinking how the work gets done and trusting colleagues to do it. In decisions affecting the entire division, our faculty prefers to work as a committee of the whole and yet, over the next several months we have to divide into teams. These teams will each be responsible for a piece of the work, the rest of the faculty will have to trust that the recommendations and plans brought forward are what we will do and not concepts to be de-constructed and then re-structured by the committee of the whole. With four teams meeting at the same time, I can only be in one place at a time. I have to trust that the clerks (in a Quaker school a clerk is the team leader/committee chair) of the teams will carry out the charges/tasks before them with all the creativity and thoughtfulness I know they each possess. This is a different sort of delegation. It requires a trust among colleagues and an openness to the leadership of others.

Because schools have relatively flat structures identifying authentic leadership opportunities becomes critical to developing teacher leaders. Delegation at Westtown works because over the past decade we built a culture of collaboration and have developed more and more avenues for teachers to assume leadership roles as committee clerks, as mentors, as peer coaches. In all of these situations I enjoy the opportunities to listen to these leaders, ask questions, help remove road blocks when I can, redirect when necessary and always support. It brings me great personal satisfaction to see in action the younger men and women who have grown and are growing into leaders within our school.

Interim - Not just a stop gap

Starting tomorrow (1/6/2014) and continuing through June 30, 2014 I am the Upper School Interim Principal. Our previous principal, Eric Mayer, has assumed his new job as Head of School at St Stephen's in Rome. Last summer in anticipation of his departure, in good Quaker order we convened a search committee and conducted a nationwide search. With great excitement, Chris Benbow was selected and accepted the job as our next Upper School Principal. He needed to finish out his current year at The William's School. I am filling the gap.

Many of the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year have to be set aside. Fortunately, my predecessor and mentor is coming out of retirement to take on most of my responsibilities as Director of Teaching and Learning (DT&L). He will oversee the Visual Arts and Performing Arts curricular reviews. He will participate in the remaining 360 faculty evaluations scheduled for the year. He will take over leadership of the Professional Development Committee, shepherd through the second year of our sabbatical process, and support our first year teacher induction program. Finally, (and most dear to my heart) he will take charge of my five interns.

People I haven't seen since the interim announcement congratulate me, my extended family sees this as a plum, even a temporary promotion (principal makes more sense than Director of Teaching and Learning) . My immediate family and friends know I don't see it that way -- I see it as moving down the hall to a different office, switching administrative assistants, and trading one set of responsibilities and opportunities for another. Furthermore, I know that the challenge to create space for thinking, creating, and planning will multiple exponentially. Part of my role as DT&L was to meet with each of our principals and create space through our conversations for them to take in the bigger picture. Being principal brings with it the unpredictability of students and their parents. Equally, as principal I will be directly responsible for a large faculty rather than the eleven folks who currently report to me. This brings with it another level complexity. In honesty, this dailiness and what one colleague calls the firefighter nature of being a principal is what concerns me the most. At the same time, the opportunity to be in relationship with more of Westtown's constituents is one of the draws to my move down the hall.

I suspect that there are some on the Upper School faculty who are hoping that with an interim, we will take a collective deep breath and hold off on further transformations-- just teach our classes and consolidate the changes already made. Indeed how much change can a six month interim reasonably expect to effect. And yet, when our Head of School asked me what I was excited about in taking on this work, I realized it was the ability to better drive the Upper School initiatives I was supporting in my DT&L role. The next six months will see the actualization of four projects in the works for quite a while. Two will be trans-formative, the other two will require systemic disruptions to the way we have "always" done things.

So I have new/old goals for the rest of the year:

• To ask lots of questions
• To bring my full attention to the person/people sitting with me in my office
• To do this work before me with integrity
• To lead our faculty through to realization of the school's initiatives
• To challenge our faculty to be stewards of our students and the world they live in.
• And to happily hand off this work to our new principal in July!

Living in Quadrant 2 -- Time Management #SAVMP

For our Senior Administrators Virtual Mentor Program (SAVMP) prompt this week we were asked to think about time management. Fellow SAVMP participant Amber Teaman wrote eloquently and shared a helpful graphic that got me thinking about my days ( from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey).

One of the reasons it caught my eye was the location of email and a niggling guilty sense that I had chosen to not answer the email of someone recently. I hate the feeling of firing off an email and hearing . . . nothing. Any yet, this particular person was not a current parent of a Westtown student, not a potential parent, not a colleague, not a member of my family or a close friend. For all of these I try and reply within 24 hours.  Nor was it someone asking for a reciprocating sort of information common among independent school teachers and administrators. It was just the email I could ignore -- along with the daily announcement from Diigo, the New York Times, the Smithsonian, and our school's spam filter. Email is our chief means of communicating basic information, and like all other sorts of information, basic information has exploded in volume.

What really struck me about quadrant two was the relationship building bullet. On Friday, I had a series of meetings -- see quadrant one. But all of those meetings were with individuals, all were in the interest of building relationships and encouraging the capacity of those individuals in the chair across from me. I met with three interns, two of my independent seminar students, and a stressed out advisee. I also carved out time to complete a project (see quadrant 1). However, this project was related to continuing my relationship with our young alums. Meeting with teachers and students, observing teachers in their classrooms and working with them through their evaluations fill my days and weeks. However, I give over little time to the other areas of quadrant 2.

One of my first blogs was about closing my computer when people come to speak to me, this week I want to experiment with leaving my email turned off for some of the time I have carved out to work at my desk and while I am doing that I want to create space for quadrant two's  planning and values clarification even as I tackle the two projects with deadlines fast approaching!

Critical Conversations #SAVMP

This week's prompts for our #SAVMP blogging were questions about encouraging Critical Conversations.

• How do we create a culture where "pushback" is encouraged?
• How do we know when to stick with the minority over the majority?
• How do you create a team that will give you honest feedback?
  
  

It put me in mind of Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals. Certainly, Lincoln created a team where group think was never going to be a problem! At schools, I suspect leadership teams are not put together the way that Lincoln's cabinet was. Certainly at Westtown, leadership positions were not awarded as favors to political allies (or rivals), as rewards for roles played in one's election or for one's ability to hold a difficult border state in the Union. Indeed, at schools leadership teams are constructed one hire at a time and evolve with each new hire.

For me, these three SAVMP questions of the week turn me back upon myself and my own aversion to providing difficult feedback, to having difficult conversations with colleagues. When I first stepped into my new role, I knew this would be my greatest challenge. I participated in our school's peer coaching program and asked for a specific colleague as coach with the intention of leaning into this discomfort. Over the school year my coach and I worked through Difficult Conversations. He helped me explore the reasons for my dis-ease and we role played several different sorts of conversations. We also kept a log of the conversations I was having with colleagues and how they fell on a continuum from easy to difficult and challenging. What I found was that I need to always keep four things in mind when approaching any conversation I anticipate might be difficult: assume the best from the person I am speaking with, remember that the needs of our students come first, and that the well-being of our school comes second only to that of our students. Finally, and not least, never forget there is a person sitting across from me in this conversation. Not surprisingly, I generally have to remind myself of these givens before I have a difficult conversation. 

But this isn't what the original prompt was about, Creating a culture for promoting critical conversations is  about both leadership teams and faculty teams; about encouraging the realization that truth can come from any corner of the room and that not all truth is easy or convenient. In debriefing our relatively new 360 faculty evaluation process, teachers evaluated in the second year of the program reported that they had felt uncomfortable receiving difficult feedback and recommendations for growth from a peer. They had all enjoyed being commended by peers and having their successes celebrated. But they felt the more challenging recommendations for growth should be handled by a supervisor.  I believe the true power in this process is that the message is delivered by a peer. I believe that we all need to become if not comfortable at the very least adept at offering and receiving the criticism of our peers as well as their commendations. I know I am in the minority in this position (though it is shared by my evaluation clerks and Head of School). Needless to say, the peer evaluation teams will continue to give recommendations for growth that will sometimes be challenging.  In this way, I believe that teachers create a culture in which they both support and challenge each other to be excellent educators. I think an extension of this process will be a willingness to engage critically with any discussion before us and a willingness to give honest feedback. If we learn to do this with peers, we will be better able to do it with grade, division, and school wide initiatives. This is a learning edge for all of us, most especially me. 

Excellent Teachers Don't Just Happen

In his book the Intentional Teacher, Peter Gow writes that there are three characteristics teachers must have to be great educators: Affection for Children, Joy in Learning, and Commitment to Student Success (Gow pp 19-26). Teacher's Joy in Learning is the focus of my work at Westtown School. Whether they are fresh out of college or seasoned educators, excellent teachers are committed to their own learning and to seeing positive results from what they learn in their classrooms.

Successful professional development for teachers begins with a thoughtful and ongoing induction program. Spring 2012 we formalized a new three year induction program for all new teachers whether they are just starting out their careers or are seasoned teachers accepting a new position at Westtown School. Feedback from previous years had helped us refine our new teacher orientation program and mentor program. Good mentors are critical to new teacher success. Every new teacher at Westtown has a mentor. This seems so central to our process that I was taken aback when a colleague was telling me about his son who is in the second year of his Teach for America assignment in New York City. When he asked his son about his mentors, his son told him he had none and his supervisor had made it very clear that all questions should come back to him, the supervisor. He should not be asking other teachers  for help or advice. My colleague's son said he feels very alone in his class with his students.

At Westtown, mentors serve as guides to school culture, provide practical answers to questions, and facilitate understanding of all the various technologies and processes at our school. In the first year, this is invaluable work. A single, known, wise friend insures new teachers never feel alone. Through out the year, mentors meet as a group to compare notes and see how best to support their mentees. Mentor relationships continue into the second year. Different teachers will want different things from their mentors in the second year. Generally, the differences fall out along lines of still new to teaching folks and those with more years of teaching. Increasingly we are finding that teachers want peers to observe them teach, read through lesson plans, and offer feedback on what the mentor sees of the teacher's practice.

In their third year at Westtown all teachers have a peer coach. The difference between mentor and coach is subtle but critical. A mentor is someone who has answers, who knows how to find the answers, who serves as a guide. A coach assumes that with help the coachee will  find the answers for him or herself, will achieve his or her own goals. Coaching is a process of active listening and thoughtful questioning.  By their very nature coaches and mentors are leaders within the school. Our school culture is becoming one in which everyone is invested in realizing educational excellence across the school. Mentors, mentees, coaches and coachees see themselves as sharing responsibility for creating an excellent educational experience for all of our students.

Alongside this culture of peer support and development we have increased the support and feedback department chairs, the Athletic Director, Dean of Students, and divisional principals provide to new hires. Every new hire should expect to receive constructive feedback from her supervisors after the first month, the first quarter, the first semester, and the end of the first year. In this way, new teacher success, support and evaluation is treated as a top priority by school administrators. We believed in these new people when we hired them now we must insure their success.

Our induction program is resource, time, and people intensive. This investment in new teachers up front guarantees success and longevity in the lives of our students. Young teachers make a commitment to careers in education at Westtown, more experienced teachers see Westtown as a place to build their professional lives. Parents and students know that excellence is the expectation and not taken for granted. Anyone who really doesn't have what it takes is counseled out in the first year. The second and third years are all about striving for excellence and establishing patterns of continuous learning and commitment to student success.

Developing Leadership--one inspired colleague at a time #savmp

At Westtown School we have embraced a peer coaching model for individual teacher development. While not every teacher aspires to be a school dean, principal, department chair, every teacher has the potential for true leadership in her classroom or with her colleagues. Our peer coaching program helps to develop these individual talents -- including those of leadership. My own trajectory to my current role as Westtown's Director of Teaching and Learning has benefited from such mentoring by supervisors and coaching by colleagues. Early in my teaching career I was encouraged by my history department chair to take on a new course in a subject area I hadn't really ever studied -- Chinese History. Furthermore, he told me to trust my instincts and adapt that traditionally political history course to my existing background in social and women's history. His confidence in me liberated me to experiment throughout the year and to know that I could share ideas with him and other members of the department. That was one of the most exciting and rewarding years of teaching I had experienced to that point. Over my 19 years of teaching my own experiences as coach, coachee and mentor to new teachers has confirmed for me that school transformation takes place one teacher at a time, that leadership can come from any one of my colleagues, that visionary school leadership means nurturing leaders from within the faculty, that teachers as leaders in striving for excellence in education makes for a strong school. 

As a part of our holistic approach to teacher development and by extension leadership development we ask teachers to write goals for themselves each year. While our school has strategic goals and we ask teachers to attend to these as they think about and write their goals, the emphasis is on individual direction in recognition of its power to unleash great creative energy. Just as good teachers try and connect student passion, interest and strengths with their learning so too should teachers as they set their own learning. The goals teachers write become the focus of the relationship between peer coach and coachee.

My work as an administrator is to nurture teacher talents and connect their strengths with those of others. The more that I can hand off tasks to others better suited than me to lead a study, develop a new program, clerk a particular committee, the better I am doing my job as a school leader. Then my task becomes providing support, a sounding board, and occasional guidance to these many leaders within our school. With so many practicing leadership in so many roles we become a community well practiced in leading, collaborating and knowing when to trust someone else to take the lead.

Leading inspite of myself #SAVMP

I am the oldest of three siblings . Birth order does matter. I have an engrained take charge reflex. Sometimes taking charge is not the right course of action! Sometimes leaders do have to take charge. Certainly, this was my experience as a first time department chair. Our department had experienced a challenging personnel situation the previous year and had lost our ability to work together for the benefit of our students. In this case, I was clear that there were issues we needed to tackle and work on together. I set an agenda for the year, first rebuild trust and relationships, second agree on standards for reading and grading essays, third develop our student's capstone research project. By the end of the year we had regained our collegiality and trust and done real work to strengthen our program. Then we got to the second year. What was the agenda going to be?At first, I again tried to set an arc for us for the year. But as I listened to my colleagues gamely work through what I thought was the next important thing to tackle, it became clear that group didn't all agree that this topic was where we needed to focus our energy and talent.  In listening and reflecting back what I was hearing we arrived at a new sense of where our students and our program most needed our focus. In this case, re redesigned our course offerings.


As I have taken on other leadership roles within Westtown School, I find myself doing an interesting dance along this continuum from taking charge to listening and facilitating. On my bulletin board I have a Canada Fisheries and Oceans navigation chart of the Benjamin Islands (#2207-1), a tapestry my daughter brought me from Tibet, a papyrus our exchange student brought us from his home in Egypt, a chart on managing complex change, and two reminders. One is a quote from Peter Drucker that I first heard while attending the 2011 Hathaway Brown Innovation Summit, the other is an expression common among, though not exclusive to Friends(Quakers) "Way Opens". The Drucker quote is "The task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths making our weaknesses irrelevant." This was particularly apropos for the Innovation Summit as the workshop leader was Ronald Fry at Case Western helping us learn about and employ Appreciative Inquiry in our work as change agents at our various schools. Both of the reminders push me towards facilitated leadership. They both also encourage me to ask a few questions of my work:

• Does this task/project/problem advance the mission of our school?
• Does this task/project/problem build on existing strengths (conversely am I overly focused on fixing a problem)
• Do I have the right people around the table?
• What are my blinders and assumptions that might get in the way of the best way forward?
• Is there someone else on staff who might want to do this work, might be better skilled for this task, feel passionately about assuming the leadership for this?

My dual responsibilities for faculty professional development and curricular review and innovation are predicated on a growth oriented model for staff and program in the service of our students. With 110 teachers on staff, all at various stages of their professional lives from teachers with 30+years of experience to fresh from college interns, a collaborative approach to leadership is a necessity to my ability to thrive. As such I have two more reminders hanging on my walls. Both were created by lower school students working with  visiting artists. Both are greater and more stunning than the sum of their parts. What you see of the lizards is only a portion of the six foot piece of drift wood stretched across my wall with 19 basking lizards. The rain forest water color is the work of first graders. An art teacher colleague pointed out to me that very young children understand instinctively how to best fill a space -- an understanding lost before adolescence and not regained without effort. Both works of art provide daily reminders to look for and cultivate leaders from within my faculty for all of our professional development and curricular development programs: peer coaches, new faculty mentors, 360 evaluation team clerks and members, curricular review facilitators and the list goes on and on. Its thrilling to have lived through this transformation from a one person Dean of Faculty and three divisional principals to one in which we all see ourselves as leaders sometimes and team members always.