The Dock School Leader Podcast

It’s easy to forget that the Christian school movement is not all that old. Some of the founders still live among us. On the other hand, when we stop to count it up, we’re somewhere close to the transition to the third or fourth generation of school leaders. The point is, we’re far enough along to be in the range when it’s common to forget and lose. Ken Kauffman cares deeply about stewarding what we have received. He brings long experience in the world of Christian education. In particular, Ken has done a good deal of traveling and interviewing in researching the history of Christian education. Rehearsing and pondering our history is part of our training as stewards.
This talk pairs a bit of vision with a lot of story. Stories of resistance and confusion. Stories of respectful appeal and patient suffering leading to such things as the transformation of a blue-eyed, blond-haired volcano of a lady (she would sit at meetings blowing smoke in the faces of the Amish leaders). She was on the board of public education and a key player standing in the way of church schools. Listen on to hear how that changed. Christian Light hopes to one day publish these stories in a book. Till then, Ken is taking opportunity to tell the stories.
How strong is your conviction for Christian education? Is it primarily motived by what you reject or by what you aspire to? Is your vision propelled by preservation, rejection, or aspiration? Ken ponders these questions before launching into the storytelling.
Ken offers four things he wants to highlight with these stories.
God’s strong hand, especially evident where God’s people are in obedience
Respectful appeal compared to resistance
The costliness of starting schools
Giving honor to whom honor is due
 
Links
This talk was first published as “Anabaptist Schools: A Suffering History” https://www.thedockforlearning.org/content/anabaptist-schools-a-suffering-history
Events: https://www.thedockforlearning.org/event
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This isn’t the first time we’ve heard about shepherding in relation to staff care. It’s a powerful metaphor. In this slightly shorter episode, Daniel Horst focuses on what this kind of care and leadership looks like in working with new teachers. He speaks with a deep concern for helping bring new teachers through the dangers and snares of the first years in the classroom and make it a journey of joy. Daniel is in his seventies now with many years of experience serving on school boards. He also brings the perspective of someone who has had several children enter the classroom.
In an interactive time leading up to the part of the presentation that you will hear, Daniel worked with the attendees to diagnose what contributes to what we might call, “New Teacher Syndrome.” Here’s what they came up with.
New teachers are disoriented by all the “first times” of doing things
They’re inexperienced (it might be their first job, and generally they have no parenting experience)
They are now loaded with responsibility
They tend to have unrealistic expectations for themselves and their students
They bring a potent mix of inspiration and apprehension
 
Daniel responds by outlining two main responses or roles. He paints a picture where the new teacher lives at the intersection of the care of a mentor and the oversight of an attentive administrator or school board. Here’s Daniel.
The Mentor role
Mentor: someone who is for them (build the relationship first, make them feel like a valued part of the team
Work on one goal at a time
Be there as often as you can, it’s hard to fix things that you can’t see; support them in meeting deadlines
Listen, listen, listen
Track progress, reflect their gains
Show them your weaknesses
Don’t micromanage, let them make some mistakes
Bite-sized feedback, positive first and one or two pieces of constructive criticism
 
The School Board or Administrator role
Stay connected to the new teacher,
Orient them
Provide or support them in developing daily plans and class routines
Assign reasonable workloads
Be a buffer for parents’ criticism
 
Links
This talk was first published as “Shepherding the New Teacher” https://www.thedockforlearning.org/content/shepherding-the-new-teacher-daniel-r-horst
Events: https://www.thedockforlearning.org/event
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Jonathan Erb, the speaker in today’s episode has 16 years of teaching experience, half in Anabaptists schools and half in a Russian Baptist school. His work with the Russian Baptists involved helping them to establish a school similar to that of North American Anabaptists. This required Jonathan to translate his knowledge and experience into a new context. He’s now working as a school rep for Christian Light in the West, which includes helping at teacher training events and administering a week-long teachers’ camp.
What does it mean to be Anabaptist school? Jonathan recognizes the daunting breadth and variation across the groups of people that see themselves as inhabiting the Anabaptist tradition. I’m summarizing the introduction here. Jonathan cares about contributing to a discussion about Anabaptist education. He is not offering his perspective as definitive. You should hold onto any ideas you have as you consider the question: What distinguishes an Anabaptist school? Bring your ideas and questions into this talk and let it provoke you to further reflection and dialogue.
Jonathan is forthright that the attributes he expounds are ideals as he sees them. It’s difficult if not impossible to neatly set the borders of Anabaptism and decide who’s in and who’s out. It’s still more difficult for us to see the whole picture of what God is doing in the world and how we as Anabaptists fit in. In the face of these challenges, Jonathan lays out the central issue of forming schools that have the attributes of Jesus. To the extent that we can accomplish this we honor the best in our Anabaptist heritage and more importantly, we take seriously our heritage as part of the people of God.
Jonathan also notes that trying to answer this question historically is made more difficult by the fact that few of the early Anabaptists had their own schools. He begins with a quick survey of how they did educate their children.
 
Links
This talk was first published as “Attributes of An Anabaptist School” https://www.thedockforlearning.org/content/attributes-of-an-anabaptist-school-by-jonathan-erb
Events: https://www.thedockforlearning.org/event
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Perhaps one of the greatest needs in our schools is godly, competent, and visionary administrators. Administrators have a great gift to offer to their schools, their families, their churches, etc., is if they are willing to pay the price of developing into godly men and women. Drawing from Ezekiel, Steven develops a biblical basis for the work of an administrator. Administrators are called to build up the wall and stand in the gap.
What does that look like? What must administrators do that no one else can do with the same positive impact? For those of you who are lead teachers, principals, or administrators, what tasks are you uniquely positioned to perform? And what potential can you uncover for your school by performing those tasks with competence?
Steven emphasizes three things that administrators must do:
Lead himself
Define the environment
Connect the stakeholders
 
Steven explains and illustrates these tasks.
For the first one, have a look below to see the lists referenced in the talk.
In addressing the administrator’s need to define the environment, Steven describes the reality that administrators set the culture directly or indirectly. They are never exempt from this role. They either proactively model and shape a culture or else a culture develops in response to their lack of initiative. He offers three components that are helpful in defining an environment where teachers love to teach.
Caring for our people
Asking the important questions (There are lots of examples in the talk.)
Dealing with problems
 
Due to running out of time in the original talk, there’s very little here on connecting stakeholders. To hear Steven talk more about this, you can listen to his earlier episode on this podcast, Why Administrators? One of the big ideas here is that the administrator stands at the intersection of all the parties involved in school, including parents, teachers, board members, and students. Thus, the clarity and leadership or lack thereof provided by the administrator has widespread influence on the school. You can uncover great potential for your school by bringing stakeholders together into strong partnerships. Perhaps more than anyone else, administrators have the responsibility to steward the vision and embody the values of the school.
 
Lists for leading ourselves
2 Pt. 1:5-8
Oswald Sanders, natural leadership vs. spiritual leadership
self confident / confident in God
makes own decisions / seeks to know God’s will
ambitious / self effacing
originates own methods / taught by God
Bill Hybels
Is my calling sure
Is my vision clear
Is my passion hot
Is my character submitted to Christ
Is my pride subdued
Are my fears at bay
Are interior issues undermining my leadership
Are my ears open to the Spirit’s whisper
Is my pace stable
Are my gifts developing
Is my heart for God increasing
Is my capacity for loving deepening
What are my big rocks/roles? What do I want in relationship to those realities? How will it impact my schedule?
 
Links
[Book] Seven Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen Covey
[Book] Seven Laws of the Learner – Bruce Wilkinson
[Book] Spiritual Leadership: Principles of Excellence for Every Believer – J. Oswald Sanders
This talk was first published as The Administrator's Job Description - Teachers Week 2012
Events: https://www.thedockforlearning.org/event
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Along with our last episode on school structure, this week focus on curriculum are well-suited to planning for the upcoming school year. From working on your school’s scope and sequence to helping teachers focus their energy, Linford Horst offers a valuable mix of perspective and advice. Linford has many years of teaching experience at Horizon Mennonite School where he has also served as principle. See the show notes for an outline of his points.
Pressure points
Packed curriculum
Progressivism
Nationalism
Family dynamics
Inexperienced teachers
Blossoming teachers
Foundations/anchors
We do not need to start a revolution
Church, home, and school must share responsibility
We are not performance oriented
Commit as much time to teacher development as curriculum development
Effectiveness is more important than efficiency
Practical steps
Making a scope and sequence for your school
Determining the 20% core in which a teacher will invest 80% of their energy
Combining grades into one class
Learning how to integrate the curriculum 
 
Links
This talk was first published as “Rethinking Our Curriculum Structure” https://www.thedockforlearning.org/content/rethinking-our-curriculum-structure
Events: https://www.thedockforlearning.org/event
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Summer is a great time to think about something like school structure. Anthony Hurst is our speaker on this week’s episode. Anthony taught for many years and more recently has been interacting with dozens of schools as a rep for Christian Light and as a speaker at educational events. He brings a wealth of experience to the subject of structure in a school.
 
Anthony begins by distinguishing between healthy and unhealthy motives for school structure and challenges us to focus our school structure on serving our students and patrons and not projecting a lofty self-image. Our structure needs the guidance of clear vision, says Anthony. And not just the vision of one person but that of the community.
Structure provides consistency across staff changes and grade changes and across time. Structure provides a sense of security. It offers some protection to us on our bad days and keeps us from falling to the level of our flaws.
In the conclusion of his talk, Anthony also touches on some specific elements of structure that will help you get started evaluating the quality of the structure at your school.
Links
This talk was first published as “Intentional School Structure” https://www.thedockforlearning.org/content/intentional-school-structure
Educational Events: https://www.thedockforlearning.org/event
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Carson Baer lives in British Columbia and approaches his talk about new teachers as an ordained church leader and as a board member. He cares deeply about school and the tremendous significance of teachers.
Carson offers inspiration and direction for school leaders in the sometime overwhelming work of staffing a school. There are many good teachers who have never taught because no one has done the hard work of finding, developing, and evaluating them. There are many potential teachers who have taught one or maybe two difficult years without solid support and concluded that teaching is not for them. This doesn’t have to be the case at your school. 
This talk is addressed to school boards but comes packed with excellent questions for school leaders in any capacity.
What is school all about anyway and why do teachers matter so much?
What does it take to get ahead of teacher turnover?
What are the stages of the hiring process and what is involved in each one?
Finding
Onboarding
Developing/Evaluating
And more.
This was presented as an interactive session and this recording includes some of that interaction where the audio was intelligible.
As Carson has recognized, the task of finding and developing a new teacher can be daunting. It’s particularly discouraging if you have to repeat the process every year or two for every role. Faith Builders has been working for years to help provide training for teachers to better equip them and encourage them to stay in the classroom long-term. We are working on a new program to provide on-the-job training for newer teachers as another means of supporting school leaders in developing new teachers. This is scheduled to begin the summer of 2027. Email fbrg@fbep.org for more information.
 
Links
This talk was first published on The Dock as “The New Teacher: Finding, Developing, Evaluating” https://www.thedockforlearning.org/content/the-new-teacher-finding-developing-evaluating
Teacher Training Events: https://www.thedockforlearning.org/event
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One generation starts it, the next enjoys it, the third loses it. There’s some truth to this. We’re over three generations into the Christian school movement in North America. Of course, at the level of individual communities this is very uneven. Maybe you’ve just started a school. Regardless of where you are, it’s important that you ask yourself: am I content with a 3 generation Christian school movement? If not, you have some challenging work cut out for you to bridge whatever generation you’re in, to the one following you and the one before you.
This episode has 2 parts: perspective of an older man and the response of a younger man on what it takes to continue a vision for education across generations. How can an older leader effectively hand over his responsibility and a younger leader take it up?
Edwin Eby has served on the CASBI committee and also speaks as a pastor. Mark Miller has experience in the school board and administration at Legacy Christian School in Ohio.
Speaking for the older generation, Edwin emphasizes that each generation must in some sense start over. And while an older person can’t just package his values and vision in a neat bundle and give it to a younger person, he believes that one generation can purchase the values of another through their own labor and investment. This transfer of ownership is vital to the continuity of a vision and leadership. To say this another way, we can’t repeat another’s experience or just assume their sense of responsibility; each man must hold his own baby before he knows the meaning of being a father.
Edwin outlines a process for older men to walk ahead, walk beside, then walk behind leaders in training. For younger men it’s reversed. They first walk behind, then walk beside, and finally walk ahead, taking the lead into the future.
Mark responds by recognizing that owning responsibility and vision as a younger person requires overcoming selfishness and gaining a perspective larger than your own. Become a student of history, both of your organization and the wider history of the world, says Mark. Without this you run a high risk of leading in the wrong direction. In addition to understanding the history of your organization, you need to understand the people you’re leading. You need to know their culture. Once again, this calls for attentiveness and patient learning in a young leader. Mark highlights servant leadership as key to both the effective transfer of leadership and to the fruitfulness of any leader. In addition, there are numerous issues that Mark sees as important for school leaders to tackle including working with homeschooling families, business as mission, and excellence in academics.
 
Links
This talk was first published as “I Must Decrease; You Must Increase”: https://www.thedockforlearning.org/content/i-must-decrease-you-must-increase
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In the last episode, we heard from Gerald Miller about the central role of the family. For this special question and response feature, I sat down with Gerald Miller, administrator at FBCS for a related conversation about the role school leaders have in growing healthy families in their communities. We talked about the current parenting scene, tried to paint a picture of what could be, and thought about the opportunity at hand.
We’re delving into this topic because it’s vitally important and often complicated. Messy, as we often say. How do teachers and school leaders avoid trespassing onto the territory of the parents? What do we do with all the knowledge we gain about families and parents? What do we do with problems in the home? How do we hear and respond to the concerns, frustrations, and aims of parents? In short, how can you as a school leader work to care for the families in your community? What is your role in growing healthy homes?
 
Links
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What if we understood school as part of the heart of the church rather than a useful arm? Would this change the way we did school? What if we saw teachers as working in close collaboration with the ordained leaders of a church, as extensions of that ministry?
The New Testament points to the church established by Christ as the essential basis of the kingdom of God. In this episode, Gerald Miller says, “The church is where the kingdom of God finds its expression. And the local body of believers is the heart of the kingdom.” What does this mean for the school?
Gerald, a long-time teacher and school leader sees the school as a servant of the church. There’s at least two things to emphasize here, the work of education is essential, more like a heart than a hand. Secondly, the work of education is a corporate responsibility and never the exclusive domain of the school. Gerald describes the role of the individuals in a school as raising up young people that love God with everything and serve others and as transmitting the values of the church. In sum, this is a vision of educators working closely alongside of the church.
That’s the first half.
In the second half, Gerald offers basic practical outlines for roles that must work at pulling together if the church and school will be effective partners. He gives valuable advice for each one. Those roles are church leaders, board members, parents, teachers
A key idea you’ll hear in this talk is the critical importance of communication and of investment in people.
 
Links
This talk was first published as “It Takes a Community to Educate a Child” https://www.thedockforlearning.org/content/it-takes-a-community-to-educate-a-child
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