What would be the benefits of ALL students being taught and coached to develop leadership skills? Maureen Chapman and James Simons, authors of, “Leaders of the Class,” share the needs, benefits, and processes for students to leverage motivation, perseverance, communication, and collaboration. Consider how to build stronger, healthier relationships with students as they discover their potential as purposeful, impactful leaders.
Educators grow their own leadership skills as they develop other’s leadership.
Visit Maureen and James’ website here.
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Podcast Transcript:
[00:00:00.000] – Steve [Intro]
Welcome to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast. As instructional coaches and school leaders, you are tasked with guiding continuous teacher growth to create student success. This podcast looks to support you with strategies from experienced guests, as well as my own insights that I’ve gathered over the years. I’m thrilled to have you with us. Thanks for tuning in.
[00:00:29.720] – Steve
“Leader-full” Classrooms and Schools. Do you believe that leadership can be taught, modeled, coached, and developed? Do you believe that all students and teachers should be building their leadership skills and mindsets? Do you believe we all benefit from a leadership culture? Our podcast guests today hold those beliefs. Maureen Chapman and James Simon are the co-directors at CORE Creative Partners and the authors of Leaders of the Class. They both bring years of school-based experience to their work supporting educators in building their own and their students’ potential as purposeful, impactful leaders. Welcome Maureen and James. Thank you.
[00:01:16.460] – James
Thank you, Steve. Happy to be here today.
[00:01:16.460] – Maureen
Thank you so much. We’re so happy to be here, Steve.
[00:01:18.700] – Steve
Glad you’re here. I’m wondering, for a starter, in the experiences that you’ve both had as teachers and as school leaders, what do you think it is that pointed you in the direction of all – and I want to… that’s be my focus word throughout our conversation today, this idea of “all” students developing leadership potential.
[00:01:42.420] – James
That’s a great question, Steve. I would say In my personal experience, I had moments as a kid where I was tapped on the shoulder and recognized as a leader, an opportunity to have a role in a school play or be a captain on a sports team. And I also just felt a sense of belonging in school. I really enjoyed school. I tended to find success through academic work. And becoming an educator was an opportunity to widen my perspective and realize, oh, that is not everyone’s experience. I remember my first year as an English teacher sitting on the floor with essays just sprawled out all over the rug, and my wife was looking at some of the scores, and she said, “Oh, my gosh, you’re mean!” Like me, she had tended to see academic success in school and just assumed, yeah, these are the kinds of grades that come back on essays. I had to say to her, “No, when you’re working with 100 kids, there’s some kids at any given moment who are thriving, some kids who are doing all right, and some kids who are really struggling.” And so I think early on, that was helpful learning for me.
[00:03:06.100] – James
And then more and more in my work, I found I was gravitating towards those kids who are not finding a sense of belonging, who are not experiencing the success that they deserved. Early in my career, I switched to become a dean of students, and then I was later a principal. And in those roles, I was the ambulance driver. When there was a crisis, when there needed to be someone showing up rapidly to the scene, that was me. I had the privilege of sitting with individual students, sitting with families when they were really struggling in different ways. I quickly realized the more I got to know these individuals, just how profound their potential was. Time and time again, I would be experiencing this cognitive dissonance where I was in the staff room hearing teachers talk about some demon child who is making it impossible for anyone to learn. Then 10 minutes later, I would be sitting in my office with this child and seeing the spark in their eye and hearing how smart, how caring, how charismatic these individuals were. I would think, whoa, you could be leading the world if you just believed that you had that potential, and if those around you believed that you had the potential, and with that belief, I know you’re capable of building the skills that would back up that belief.
[00:04:45.410] – James
There’s no reason that you shouldn’t be the star of the play, the captain of the team, the student who is in the front row with their hand just miles high in the sky. And so I think that is a big part of what drew me to this work of how can I help every kid see in themselves what I am seeing in them.
[00:05:09.400] – Steve
You’ve given me a whole bunch of questions, but I want to catch Maureen’s response to that first.
[00:05:16.600] – Maureen
Yeah. James and I met by teaching on the same middle school team. Then we also both found ourselves later in formal leadership roles. I think this idea that everyone’s a leader is a little bit of distance when you think about the captain of the team or the star of the play, because that’s one person. But what does it mean for everyone to feel like a leader? I taught required middle school Latin, so I had 90 middle school students who are wondering why in the world this terrible thing had happened to them. [laughter] And some of them didn’t think it was a terrible thing. Some kids came first day of school, Percy Jackson under their arm, super excited. And then my job was to not let the other kids feel like, oh, this class is only for them, and to really have them believe me when I said, we are all going to be Latin stars in here. In this room, we’re going to bring out our inner nerd, and we’re going to do the thing. And so that looks different ways for different kids for them to know that I believed in them and that I wanted to hear their answer, and I wanted them to know so that we were only successful if we were all successful.
[00:06:28.960] – Maureen
And when I became as a school leader myself, I think what I came to appreciate about my own areas for growth was a lot of the own personal emotions that would get in the way when I was supposed to have a hard conversation, if I was supposed to share that something was upsetting me, if I was supposed to just, not even in an upset way, but just to give feedback after a classroom observation. I was so worried that somebody wouldn’t like me or that I would become too emotional in those conversations. It was helping me relate to what students are experiencing in the classroom all the time when they’re worried to raise their hand and take the academic risks they need to take in order to make the mistake and grow and learn. For me, those particular sorts of leadership skills to have the hard conversation, it just felt debilitating at times. I know I need to have this conversation, and I’m just a knot in my stomach dreading it. I didn’t have any training on that. And James and I really supported each other. And I think we had different areas of strength or comfort.
[00:07:36.860] – Maureen
But that was something he really helped me practice and just do. And so I would gain the experience and realize, no, I’m still safe or no, this person actually on the other side, I’m not trusting them enough to engage in this conversation with me. It was something that I needed to grow in. And so I think part of what’s really important to me in this book and in this work is building the emotional intelligence and those sorts of skills you need to have the conversations you need to have to feel better and to repair relationships or to serve kids or to serve the others in the world that you want to serve with your leadership. Why are we waiting until people are adults to get into it when those emotions in particular are so present and what make us so human. And also we see it again and again in coaching that people can really feel debilitated by just stuck in an emotion that is unpleasant and just feeling maybe ashamed of having them rather than knowing what to do. I think building some of those skills through the academic work so kids can be successful, I think also sets them up to have the impact in the way that their leadership is hopefully going to let them shine and the things that they care about shine as they get older.
[00:08:51.200] – Steve
I want to check my thinking with you. As I’m listening to the two of you, it’s striking me that our traditional school approach, our traditional classroom approach, has too few opportunities for too few students to practice, exhibit, and learn leadership.
[00:09:18.080] – James
I would agree with that. I’ve been in so many classes where the teacher will say, “Who wants to bring down the attendance sheet?” The number of hands that go up in the air is comical. It just illustrates how few opportunities there are for kids to take a meaningful role, to help out in some way. We are motivated to contribute to our social group, and particularly during adolescence. Through evolution, we survived because of our social impulses. We stuck together so we could find food and find protection. During adolescence, that impulse that has served all humans so well for thousands and thousands of years becomes even greater. You’re no longer this adorable baby that everyone’s going to protect just because of how Pixar cute you are. Suddenly, you need to demonstrate your worth to the group. When you’re sitting with a group of young people, they want to help out, they want to lead, but there are so few opportunities. So yes, when we are talking about student leadership, we are talking about student engagement. A culture of leadership is a culture where everyone is doing something. We’re not just listening. We’re not just filling in blanks in a worksheet.
[00:10:53.120] – James
We are communicating. We are collaborating. We are moving around the room making meaning. And so, yes, it is about leadership, but it is also about academics. It is about an academic setting where we are all engaged and active learners.
[00:11:13.500] – Steve
So it is leader-full.
[00:11:15.720] – James
That’s right, yeah.
[00:11:18.800] – Steve
Maureen, I’m hearing the SEL, executive functioning directions that schools are taking or wanting to take would connect with the leadership development?
[00:11:34.540] – Maureen
Absolutely. I think it’s a really astute observation. This work has been around since ancient times. We hear from forever, people considering moral development or character development or whole child development or college and career readiness and civic readiness and whatever you want to call it. But the stuff that makes us able to show up in the world the way we want to show up, to do hard things, including the academic hard things that every kid has the right to become a powerful learner so they can make the impact. But to be able to face those hard things requires you to draw upon your inner stuff. And that is so worthy. And academics are just one arena in which we can encounter hard stuff that gives us the opportunity to reflect upon who we are and how we’re bringing ourselves to hard things. So many schools, especially in the pandemic, sprung up with social emotional learning programs, and then they were trying really hard. I mean, just people working so hard to get 30 minutes once a week. So we could do this off the shelf curriculum so we can try to do something to help kids.
[00:12:53.270] – Maureen
This is how James and I came to found this consultancy. Our consultancy is named CORE, Creative Partners, and CORE is Latin for heart. We’re trying to make an impact and move the needle a bit on contributing to a culture in which people love school. I think that these SEL programs are also trying to get at that. I think the way that we want to contribute in service of that need is how to do it in your classroom where we spend most of the minutes anyway, and how to provide teachers who are… I always wanted to be a teacher. My dad’s teacher, my sister’s a teacher. This profession means everything to me. To see how much suffering there was for teachers who wanted to do that work when kids were really struggling and are really struggling, but feeling overwhelmed, that things were disconnected, they’re happening outside of the classroom. They didn’t write it. It’s not graded. Everyone knows it’s a joke, or it’s not enough. We wanted to offer something that made sense in the secondary classroom because the primary school classroom is just developmentally different with SEL, and it’s more about that morning circle and that discrete lesson on being a good friend, et cetera.
[00:14:07.060] – Maureen
In secondary, where you’re supposed to weave it in, how do you do that in a way that doesn’t take too long? You’ll have to have time to do all your academics, but it does give the space to sequentially build those skills through the year so that by the end of the year, it is really a student-led classroom where students are really feeling and seeing the growth that only happens when you do not too much at once. If you’re doing everything all at once, it almost feels like nothing’s important and you’re not moving in any way. So this book really offers a sequenced set of units. You could just do one of them. You could pick one. It’s really flexible. But if you did them in sequence, they naturally build so that students can really see their growth over time, and they’re tracking that growth in little quick ways. They can look back and say, wow, this is what I thought at the start of the year. And here’s how I’m seeing myself now as a leader in this room. I’m not the only leader, but I’m also believing in my peers as leader and intentionally building those beliefs so that students are safe with each other.
[00:15:09.820] – Steve
As I work through the book, you talk about four foundational leadership skills and four foundational conditions. I’m wondering if one of you would give us a run-through of the foundational practices and the foundational conditions. Which one should go first? In that sequence, which goes first?
[00:15:33.560] – James
Let me first share the practices, and then Maureen, you can fill in the conditions and anything else I’ve inevitably missed. The book presents a framework for building the skills that students need for motivation, perseverance, communication, and collaboration in the secondary classroom. And so there’s a unit related to each of those competencies. And in each unit, there is a specific practice, as you named, Steve, and also a specific condition that the class in particular is focusing on. Ideally, a teacher is pairing these units with their academic units and finding logical places to integrate the leadership routine teams that will help students gradually build their skills over time. So the four practices are, in motivation, students focus on the skills of reflecting and setting goals.
[00:16:47.140] – Steve
Two biggies. Those are both really big issues.
[00:16:50.000] – James
They are really big ones. And there’s a lot of research about how hard it is for us to just sit quietly with our thoughts, to really tune into what our bodies are telling us. There is so much noise around us. There is music and podcasts and videos and food. If we’re looking to be distracted from how we’re feeling and what we’re thinking, there are a million ways to do so. And so we really build in deliberate practice in reflecting. So you’ve engaged in some academic endeavor. Let’s take a minute and reflect, how did that go? What were your strengths during that time? What were your struggles. And we really believe in the same way that you would build up one’s reading skills. You wouldn’t say, you’re learning to read, go read for 45 minutes. Similarly, reflection should be in short, manageable bites. And over time, someone may finally have capacity to sit down and eat a full meal of reflection. But early on, it’s like, let’s just do some quick hits. And so early on, we’re reflecting on our motivation, and we’re setting a goal related to the academic work. And then through the subsequent units, individuals keep practicing those skills of reflection and goal setting tied to very specific academic endeavors.
[00:18:34.420] – James
And then in the second unit, perseverance, the leadership practice is experimenting with strategies. So now we’ve decided what is motivating us to pursue success in this class. But when something gets in the way of us and our goals, what are we going to try? And so classes co-construct strategy banks and individuals decide hat are the strategies they want to experiment with? And so kids are really empowered to be driving their own learning. It isn’t the teacher saying, whenever you’re distracted, do this. It is the whole community saying, what would work for you? What do you want to try? Let’s see how that goes. And then let’s track our data to see what is working, what isn’t, what do we want to keep, what do we want to throw out, what do we want to change? Those first two practices are really based in a level of collaboration and sharing, but also our individual pursuits. This is my goal. This is my strategy. In the back half of the framework, it is much more about, now that I’ve built these skills of self-awareness and of self-management, how can I contribute to this team? And so the third big unit is communication.
[00:19:55.280] – James
And here, individuals are practicing exchanging feedback with their peers, with their teacher. And then in the culminate and collaborate unit, students get together on an authentic, academic, collaborative task, and they practice the final routine, which is advocating for self and others.
[00:20:20.400] – Maureen
And then with the conditions, we can’t just expect to go through the motions. There are units you can follow step by step in the book. But if we’re not thinking deeply really about the conditions of our room, we aren’t going to be ready for that to actually go well. So the conditions that need to be in place, and it’s actually something really useful if you’re working with a coach or you’re working with a grade-level team, maybe your middle school eighth grade team is trying this together, and there are special directions on what to adjust if you’re doing this with the whole team. So kids aren’t like, “We already did this.” But it really is useful to process those conditions upfront as a whole, but then any each unit to really focus on one. So one is, as I reference, the safety to take risks. Students need us – and if you talk to kids, they’ll tell you what they need from you, which is to address it. If somebody does so little, it’s roll their eyes at them because they’re so invested in their peers’ perception of them. And so if anybody might do something that impacts their sense of status and you don’t address it, they’re going to shut down.
[00:21:26.950] – Maureen
So we need to feel safe enough in secondary years to to give the wrong answer, et cetera. We need belief in self and others. If we don’t believe that that teacher cares about me or thinks I can do it, and you can spot that quickly, oftentimes, if the belief isn’t there. And that’s often just a reflection of our own belief in ourselves as being able to reach the kid that seems so hard. If we feel threatened that it might make us look like a bad teacher, we might subconsciously put it to the student’s fault. It’s not productive. How do we just keep coming back to a belief believing stance and demonstrate that belief in each other. And then another one is motivating work. Is the work feeling worthy of doing? Are there ways I can tie the work to things I care about? And then the last one is opportunities to lead. If students are sitting and listening all the time, when are they supposed to develop leadership skills? They’ve got to get into groups, talk to each other, have new ideas, be heard, see things changing because of what they’re saying. So in the units, there are structures where before the unit, there is a prep the unit section where teachers, they do things like rotate the roles or change the objective on the board, but they’re also reflecting on their own experiences with those things.
[00:22:43.100] – Maureen
Do I believe…Why do I believe in myself as a leader? How do I believe in my students? And then they’re also looking at the unit ahead to see what are those key points in the unit I have planned where students will get to encounter this leadership competency. So if it’s communicate, what are the communications coming up? And if you’re doing that with a coach, maybe there is a chance to add more than you had planned. Or what are the opportunities for students to persevere? Where does this unit get hard enough that kids will get frustrated, which should happen when we’re becoming powerful learners? Where are those key difficult points where I’m going to then offer that reflection to go with it? How did you persevere through this, et cetera? Those talking points or those prep the unit sections offer some good questions that are helpful to process with the team if you’re lucky enough to have a coach or a team. And then there are team discussion questions at the end, too, which allow you to either just try those exercises students did as a team, and they’ll learn a lot about each other, or do a quick case study on a student who is really struggling with motivation or perseverance.
[00:23:49.080] – Maureen
And then it just guides you through some steps of how you can really use that as a useful way to think about it. Because we offer some scaffolds knowing that from our instructional coaching, some kids will need more. They’re not just going to magically now be the most motivated kid ever. And we have four or five things that we’ll usually try. But it’s so useful to talk it out in your school with other people who know you and know your kids and where you feel the safety to take the risk to say, “This didn’t go well, and what else can I try?”
[00:24:19.880] – Steve
As I’m listening, actually, I wrote the phrase down and it jumped in my head, but I’m almost hearing leading myself is the piece that the learners, that you have learners dealing with. Generally, you think about leading others, but I’m hearing leading myself in there. Does that make sense?
[00:24:43.420] – Maureen
Are you thinking about that for the teacher as well when you’re saying that?
[00:24:46.960] – Steve
Now you’re moving it to another level. I’m almost always sure that as a teacher, whatever it is I’m teaching, I’m learning more than the students are, so that’s there for sure. But as I was listening to the two of you walk through the elements, I’m seeing a learner becoming empowered him or herself, which is what I would call leading myself. Then because of that, I’m in a role for my leadership to be shared with others.
[00:25:16.080] – Maureen
Absolutely. Some of the things that you just come back to when you do different leadership research is you do have to love yourself to persevere through – to look in the face of your mistakes and your academic failures and to say, okay, what’s next? You can only do that with a healthy dose of self-love and self-compassion. And so we hope that this book contributes to a sense of identity development in these years that is a healthy balance of, I can keep doing better, and I’m already enough. And then you can have that confidence to lead yourself and know that you can do that safely with others because you are on your own trajectory, reaching your beautiful leadership potential.
[00:26:08.980] – James
Yeah. I would add, I’ve worked with many kids who struggled to find motivation in the academic setting. Sometimes it’s tempting to go, this kid is just not motivated, or even this kid’s lazy. So often that child is very motivated just in a different setting. They’re home taking care of their sibling or their home home playing a video game till 2:00 in the morning. I’ve worked with a lot of kids who love gaming. And part of that is because you’re the main character when you’re playing a video game. And so many kids come to school and they feel like what they call a non-player character, an NPC. You’re just in the background. You’re sitting there and the teacher is the main character. And so you’re absolutely right. This framework is an invitation for you to go, this is my game. I’m the one holding the controller and making the shots. The same, as Maureen mentions, goes for teachers. Some of the reasons that SEL curricula don’t always take off is because teachers don’t feel ownership. They take it off the shelf and they go, okay, I got 30 minutes. I’m going to read this script in a robotic voice, and go…
[00:27:27.210] – James
Sometimes you’ll hear teachers go, “They want me to tell you.” As soon as you hear it, you’re going to say, hey, you’re in the curriculum, you know you’re in trouble. With this curriculum, we offer a framework, we offer routines, and then we empower the teacher to lead that curriculum. You decide, where would this routine go? How often do you want to use it? What would it look, sound, and feel like for you? Like the student, you are the leader of your game. So yeah, I think that’s a really insightful observation that you’re making.
[00:28:03.220] – Maureen
And which of my stories about myself with perseverance through learning this subject do I want to insert? It really offers a chance for teachers to select from their own class and their own lives what will go in there. So it is really coming through in an authentic voice, and it takes a little more time for the teacher, but I think it’s really enjoyable for them to do that because we hold these stories and we don’t always see a spot for them to come through. But taking that story-based leadership stance is such a common theme in leadership. The right story can carry a lot of weight in building the momentum in the room so that you can step aside and the kids will pick it up from there. So, yeah, the adult as the lead learner in the room and the lead leader, as we often call them, we hope that this book is also rewarding for them, not only in their own individual thought process about themselves as leaders, but also in the relationship that will become stronger with their students and that the work will be more rewarding because it’s this space where these kinds of deeper and really important conversations come out appropriately.
[00:29:13.560] – Steve
The other thing that’s striking me as I’ve been listening to you and got a chance to walk through your book – a lot of schools I work with have a profile of a graduate that sounds really great, but I’m hard-pressed often to find what people are doing about it. I get the sense that if I were to sit down with the school’s profile of a graduate and your book, I’d find a lot of alignment, providing a way for teachers to focus on that particular element or many of the elements of a portrait.
[00:29:56.120] – Maureen
Yes, we definitely see that, and we really value value cohesion. I think that’s why we want to put these skills cohesively into a classroom. But when we partner with a school, we really do pay attention to their particular language and match it up. It’s usually not hard. Leader is usually somewhere or any of the words of these units. But how do we just make sure the language is landing cohesively? And so then we also do have little measures, whether it’s a student report or an observation report. There are little assessments, too, where you could track progress toward, here’s how we know whether we’re doing a good job of having kids believe in themselves as leaders. In one school, we did a three-year project and just ask kids that question as question one, are you a leader? Why or why not? You can just see who’s saying yes and who’s saying no, and is that changing? It just gives you something a little bit more specific where we often don’t have anything specific when we’re talking about the profile of a learner and then our graduate, and then it’s just floating around sounding good. People are all, I’m sure teachers are spotting it for what it is if it’s not really living.
[00:31:05.560] – Maureen
This helps us – if we want to do a good job, if we take this stance, everyone wants to do a good job. Kids want to do a good job if we show them what we’re looking for. Teachers want to do a good job in building that vision, too. This gives you some really specific things you can try and feel like, okay, we’re making progress. I’m doing the thing, and it’s feeling good, and it makes sense in my class.
[00:31:26.000] – James
I’ll just add, we have a lot of experience with College and future planning support. We each oversaw in the school where we worked, the College and Future Planning counselor. Maureen developed and oversaw an advisory strand that was a 5 through 12 curriculum preparing individuals for what awaits after 12th grade. She also launched a senior internship program. And in our consultancy, we partner with many schools to support their own College and Future readiness programs. And it’s very important to us that what is happening every day leading up to graduation connects to what is going to be happening every day after graduation. As Maureen was talking, I was just remembering a student that we both worked very closely with who was so shut down in school. The number of disciplinary hearings I attended with him, the number of dropout prevention programs that the two of us sat in on, the number of just in the hall conversations of what do you need are just too many to count. I remember a few years after he graduated, he came back in a police officer’s uniform with this big grin on his face, and he said, “I love this work.”
[00:32:56.600] – James
I was just like, I knew it. I knew there was a spot somewhere in there. I’ve reflected a lot about what more could have we done so that it did not take this individual so long to realize he has a place in this world. He is good and he can contribute to increasing the amount of goodness in the world. And there’s so many ways to contribute. And I really do believe a framework like this helps us ignite that spark for each individual just sooner. So you don’t have to wait years and years and years for someone to come back and say, I finally found my place. I found my people. I found my purpose. We want them to be finding it every day every grade level in every class.
[00:33:48.320] – Steve
You caught my attention when you first used that big word, “all” with the students and leadership. It’s been great having this conversation with you, having that reinforced. Before we close out, anything else about the book, Leaders of the Class, that you didn’t get a chance to lay out here to folks, or the work that you’re doing in your core creative partners that you’d like folks to know about?
[00:34:20.920] – James
Yeah, so I’ll jump in. We are Boston-based, but we travel all over, and we love being in different regions, different districts, different schools, and just learning from educators because everything we hear and see when we’re working with educators helps us support others in different settings more effectively. We do workshop series and PLCs and keynotes and consulting projects. Basically, we just look to see where is support needed. We really believe in this framework as a way to provide that support. You can adopt the whole framework. You can pick one routine. There are so many entry points. We would love for people to read the book, “Leaders of the Class” from SolutionTree. We would love for people to practice those routines and share with us how it’s going. You can reach us. Our website is corecreativepartners.com. Each of our emails are james@corcreativepartners.com or maureen@corcreativepartners.com. We’re always so thrilled to hear from fellow educators.
[00:35:27.900] – Maureen
I am obsessed with getting messages. I always have been. Find me on LinkedIn, email me. I promise I’ll write you back. We would love to hear if you’ve got the book, and if you have thoughts or you’re trying stuff out, we would be so grateful.
[00:35:39.760] – Steve
Terrific. Thanks so much, guys.
[00:35:41.140] – Maureen
Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Steve. We really enjoyed the conversation.
[00:35:47.420] – Steve [Outro]
Thanks for listening, folks. I’d love to hear what you’re pondering. You can find me on Twitter or LinkedIn at Steve Barkley, or send me your questions and find my videos and blogs at barkleypd.com.
