The Dock School Leader Podcast

Sustaining a Passion for Christian Education

What makes education distinctly Christian? Is this more a question of what it is or what it isn’t? But whatever we make of those questions, how do educators remain passionate about their mundane, sometimes thankless, often discouraging role in carrying this work forward? Anthony Hurst, who has over 25 years of experience in Christian Day Schools and currently works as school representative for Christian Light, offers valuable insight on these perennial questions.
School leaders, you’ve likely experienced just how quickly your own vision and motivation can fade. You are also in a prime position to renew the passion of the teams that you lead. Join Anthony in reflecting on what keeps the fire burning. As you listen to his ideas and insights, take note of memories and experiences this brings to mind.
How could you and your team tap into the experiences of the past year to renew your commitment for the next one?
 
Links
This recording was first published on The Dock as Why I am Passionate About Christian Education: https://thedockforlearning.org/lecture/why-i-am-passionate-about-christian-education/ 
More Recordings from Pacific School Leadership Institute 2021: https://thedockforlearning.org/series/psli/pacific-school-leadership-institute-2021/
More Information about Pacific School Leaders Institute: https://psli.info/

Child Development Orientation

How do children develop? How do we give them the best chance of healthy development? The fact of the ocean of ink spilled on this question has not lessened the actual wonder of this process or the reality of its mystery.
 
In a presentation filled with stories and examples, Brandon Mullet explores the basic needs of children. Brandon speaks as an administrator, teacher, and parent.
 
He discusses themes such as:
Laboring for what is right and fulfilling for children without regard for own reputation and recognition
Ministering sacrificially to children
Walking with Christ so we can minister in his love
Letting children know that we love them and enjoy them and like being with them
 
This presentation was given over 25 years ago which highlights the reality that these issues are timeless. May you find them illuminating and orienting as you head into the summer and engage with the children in your life as well as reflecting on this past school year.
Links
Child Development Workshop 1998: https://thedockforlearning.org/series/child-development-workshop/ 
Opening comic: https://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/1962/02/04
This was first published on The Dock as "Child Development: Biblical Orientation:" https://thedockforlearning.org/lecture/child-development-biblical-orientation/ 

A Teacher’s Root System

How are your teachers’ root systems? If you have the opportunity, ask an arborist talk about root systems and about the tree planting and care process. From root hairs to mycorrhizae, it’s a fascinating world. But one that is mostly invisible to us and that tends to fall prey to our drive to control and manipulate what is visible to us. Melvin Lehman employs the metaphor of roots as he reflects on nearly four decades of teaching.
 
He did his first teaching back in the early days of the Christian school movement when he observed much rapid planting driven by the need to quickly fill the empty spaces in all the new classrooms. We have better opportunities for cultivating strong and healthy roots today. But of course, this is not automatic and there are plenty of pressing reasons for ignoring our root systems. As a school leader, you are in a position to model the development of healthy roots and to care for those of your team. Without them, as Melvin says, we will be unable to access and appropriate the resources around them, however rich and abundant they may be.
 
Here are some of the main recommendations that Melvin makes in his talk:
Develop of the discipline of meditation and prayer
Be wholesome (and holy)
Accept new or challenging assignments
Read widely and with a plan
Teach in diverse situations
Pursue stimulating and productive hobbies
Master new and essential skills
Surround yourself with stimulating and challenging people
Take advanced courses of study
This episode was first published on The Dock as "Intentional Growth:" https://thedockforlearning.org/lecture/intentional-growth-melvin-lehman/ More from Teachers Week 2012: https://thedockforlearning.org/series/fbep-teachers-week/teachers-week-2012/ 

Clarifying Mission, Vision, and Values

Does your school have mission, vision, and values statements? Who knows about them?
We’re probably all familiar with these three terms and in this episode, Merle Burkholder offers simple definitions and provides clear examples of each one to refresh our usage. He also suggests a variety of means to communicate these guiding statements so that they can become second nature for you and your people.
Merle brings many years of experience in church and organizational leadership including his work at Open Hands and Servant Institute. After working through definitions and examples of guiding statements Merle explains four elements of an organization that can be used to measure its health and life-stage from birth to death. It’s a useful grid for evaluating the health of a school. On that note, this episode echoes our last episode on evaluation. Merle proposes that, “People produce what you measure.” Clear guiding statements, particularly core values, give you an effective basis to evaluate your school.
Merle was addressing leaders of different types of organizations. Where Merle discusses the responsibilities of a leadership team and CEO in carrying the vision, I think we can insert the school board and administrator. You might consider going back to episode 14 by Steven Brubaker outlining the role of an administrator who works at the intersection of the various parties involved in a school.
Finally, it is possible for a school team to share a vision that is sufficiently vivid and understood to occasionally take away your breath and consistently guide your decision-making. May this strengthen your gains here or guide your steps in that direction.
Links
Why Administrators? on The Dock School Leader Podcast: https://administratorspodcast.podbean.com/e/why-administrators/ 
This recording was originally published on The Dock as "Clarifying Mission Vision and Values": https://thedockforlearning.org/lecture/clarifying-mission-vision-and-values/ 
More recordings from REACH 2017: https://thedockforlearning.org/series/reach/reach-2017/ 

Evaluating Your School’s Program

How do you know when you have a good year at school? When the people around you talk about having a good year or a bad year, what do they have in mind? As an administrator, it matters that you feel a sense of satisfaction or concern when things are actually going well or going poorly as the case may be. You play a key role in setting the tone for celebrating success and learning from failure. But you need to know what success looks like, and it’s often not enough just to trust your intuition. Further, Mark reminds us that we will never be effective evaluators if we are under the tyranny of only keeping up with what’s urgent. Effective evaluation requires clarity about our desired ends, attentiveness to our current progress, and scrutiny of our chosen methods.
 
Mark Kurtz speaks with a background in both teaching and administrating and also shares the connections that he’s made between raising strawberries and school children. Mark takes us through an overview of the who, what, and where to evaluate, offering a trove of penetrating questions for administrators and school boards.
 
You’ll hear Mark describe the four quadrants used by Steven Covey and others to develop time management skills. If this is new for you, use the link below to find a copy of this diagram and consider keeping it in front of you for the section near the beginning where Mark introduces these concepts and gives a few examples of quadrant one and two activities.
Links
Four Quadrants for Time Management
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People – Steven Covey: https://a.co/d/2D8FvBL 

Naughty Students, Naughty Parents

What were we created for and how does that inform our relationships? In this final episode in our segment on relationships, Jeff Swanson describes four fundamentals that become especially potent when relationships turn problematic:
Love
Listening
Structure
Direct communication
If you know Jeff, you may catch the humor of his title and of his proposition to offer groundbreaking thoughts about relating to children and million-dollar hints for interacting with parents and other teachers. Jeff Swanson has taught in a wide range of school settings for several decades and offers here some of what he’s learned in nurturing strong relationships around the school. Jeff throws in many anecdotes alongside of a very straightforward collection of principles. If you want to love your job and want your teachers to love their jobs five and ten years from now, this will help guide you towards that future.
Links
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie: https://a.co/d/gRnZ9qQ 
This recording was first published on The Dock as "Naughty Students, Naughty Parents, and Naughty Teachers!": https://thedockforlearning.org/lecture/naughty-students-naughty-parents-and-naughty-teachers/ 
More recordings from Teachers Week 2023: https://thedockforlearning.org/series/teachers-week-2023/ 

Why Administrators?

Why have an administrator? What can an administrator do in terms of the relationships around the school? Steve Brubaker makes the case that administrators inhabit and manage the complex meeting place of all the people involved in a school. It’s a position of influence to be used not to lord it over others but to serve them. “Administrators exist to serve the servants,” says Steven. And schools that lack these people are hampered in their efforts to grow.
Specifically, administrators are in a position to nurture growth in these two ways:
Valuing the diversity – each person with whom or for whom we labor is worthwhile, and it is one of the administrator’s primary roles to reveal and maximize that worth.
Promoting the unity – helping all our people speak a common language, doing a lot of listening (which includes creating opportunities for listening), doing a lot of communicating (before, around, and during decision-making), and fostering shared experiences makes this a potent second role for an administrator.
Steven develops both of those roles and also provides practical elaboration on the admin/board relationship and the admin/teacher relationship.
Bonus: (from the discussion time in the original presentation)
How can you go about growing into these responsibilities as an administrator if you’re in a situation where the board currently has those responsibilities?
Patience, build trust
Appeal, ask to be involved/participate rather than trying to change the process
Clarify, discuss job description/expectations
Links
Administrator’s Conference: https://www.fbep.org/attend/events/administrators-conference-and-retreat/ 
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick M. Lencioni: https://a.co/d/2dkE4wu
Doing Good Even Better by Edgar Stoesz: https://a.co/d/ilJRVb2
This recording was originally published on The Dock as "Loving Those We Serve": https://thedockforlearning.org/lecture/loving-those-we-serve/ 
More Recordings from 2017 Administrators Conference and Retreat: https://thedockforlearning.org/series/administrators-conference-and-retreat/ 

Supporting Parents and Selling the Church

If parents are responsible to train their children, what are the children doing in schools? Matt Peachy lays out a case for education that places schools squarely in a position of service to the church and to families. He then outlines some of the ways that this shapes a school, particularly in its relationships with parents and the church.
Matt teaches at the secondary level and has administrative and pastoral experience. Notably, he is also a parent. Matt addresses three core questions in his talk:
Who is responsible for education?
Where do teachers fit?
What kind of people should teachers be?
 
Outline of key sections of Matt’s presentation:
How can we support parents?
See yourself as a servant
Communicate well (Assume that parents want what is best for their children)
Lead your classroom
How do we sell the church?
Recognize your impact
Promote excellence
Emphasize discipleship
What qualities are we looking for in teachers?
Christlikeness
Competency
Commitment
 
For those of you who have been to Faith Builders, there are a few doses of Guys Mills sirens to stir your nostalgia.
Links
This episode was first published on The Dock as “Supporting the Parents:” https://thedockforlearning.org/lecture/supporting-the-parents/
Teachers Week 2019: https://thedockforlearning.org/series/fbep-teachers-week/teachers-week-2019/
Reclaiming the Future of Christian Education by Albert Greene: https://a.co/d/7x2oukN

Caring for Your Families

What’s your greatest advantage as a teacher or leader in a Christian school? Stephen submits that it is the immeasurable gift of most of our children having parents that love them. What are you doing to know and care for those parents and your students, especially the average ones?
Stephen Gingerich speaks with year of experience teaching and administrating in a school in Guatemala that serves both mission and native families. This work carried him deep into serving severely broken families.
School leaders are often busy enough just keeping things at school under control. How will you carry these extra things? First, if I hear Stephen correctly, I think he’s telling us that if we’re too busy to care for our families we’re too busy. Second, Stephen leads us to trusting in God to provide in measure to what he’s called you to carry. Third, I would add that sometimes God supplies the kind of strength and direction that’s needed for leaders to facilitate reorganization, delegation, or other strategic responses to the awareness of overwhelming or unrealistic responsibilities.
I don’t know where this finds you, but I trust that as you follow his leading, God will supply the grace you need to help your school grow in caring for your families. They are precious to our Lord. Let’s renew our commitment to counting it a privilege to serve them.
Six ways to help
Be a model/good example
Be faithful
Be a mentor
Be a servant
Be willing to use our gifts
Be biblical
In sum, let Ephesians four saturate your teaching.
This episode was first published on The Dock as "Connecting With a Variety of Families:" https://thedockforlearning.org/lecture/connecting-with-a-variety-of-families-stephan-gingerich/ Teachers Week 2013: https://thedockforlearning.org/series/fbep-teachers-week/teachers-week-2013/ 

Teacher Trouble - Redemptive Solutions

Just investing in a culture of growth as Gerald described in the last episode won’t solve all problems. Here he is again with a sequel episode exploring redemptive solutions to difficult people problems.
Few people enjoy wading into these situations. Gerald won’t tell you how to begin liking it, but he does outline a number of excellent methods for how to lead responsibly and honorably.
This episode describes how to break down a problem by:
Identifying the issues
Agreeing on the issues
Developing a plan (including specific steps, point person, timing, and contingencies)
Following through
Establishing accountability
These methods will help you gain confidence in bringing clarity as you labor to help teachers stay in the classroom and grow if that’s the right place for them or how to support them in moving forward to another vocation. This is not about toughing up as a leader. It’s about school leaders who are ministers of God’s grace through hard times.
Principles covered in this episode
Leaving things alone does not make problems go away
Name the elephants in the room
Principles of difficult conversations
Know thyself
Grace and truth
Clarity with compassion
You need eyewitnesses, kill assumptions
Act as one
Do what is best for your church’s future and your teacher’s future
Be a part of the solution
Speak no evil
Confidentiality
Links
CASBI: https://casbi.info/