Continuity is needed for a school to be great
{Read Part One, Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four in this series.} There is a very real motivation for schools – public and private -- to launch major new initiatives every few years. Some matches directly with the short tenures of much school leadership. Others are just the well-understood human desire for what is new and better, even if what exists is held in high regard. Any community enjoys fresh momentum and the sense that they are getting better, and even more so when it involves the welfare of our children.
I don’t view this common dynamic as opposed to greatness for a school, but it does highlight a very real danger to both greatness in the long run and simple quality and reliability in the short run. In community, we don’t just appreciate improvement from the new and fresh. We also build up discontents and grievances with the people we’re relating to.
If values of mutual respect, humility and desire for quality relationships aren’t strong in the fabric of our school community, there will often be a great temptation to consider people as expendable. The current version bothers me, so let’s bring on a new try at having the right person relating to my child.
Certainly, our expectations and accountability should be high for teachers and, in fact, everyone on staff in a school because there is hardly a person around who doesn’t directly affect students and parents. The balance, though, is that without continuity of faculty especially and leadership secondarily, there won’t be time or opportunity for values of greatness to sprout, much less mature, take root, begin to produce fruit, and eventually yield a bountiful harvest.
Really great and new ideas can enter a community’s consciousness. Stagnation is certainly no sign of greatness. But we aren’t making widgets; we’re educating children. Lessons are a start, but they have to go deep, and the real growth comes in formation. Habits, values, minds and hearts are being formed.
Consider the positive and negative sides of this. On the positive side of what it takes to go that deep, we know that even the most solid and strategic professional development training won’t make a teacher a new person. Over time, though, teachers are hired according to vision and values, teachers influence each other toward the good of the students, leaders motivate and support teachers in the habits of the heart which are true to the DNA of this school, parents expect and reinforce the culture and outcomes which are fitting with the high ideals held in community, and the students themselves share some traditions which are just fun and others which are deeply meaningful to the sort of community this school is. Certainly new people – teachers, leaders, parents and students – are continually added to a healthy school community, but fruit basket turnovers or constant dribbling away of teachers and leaders isn’t the way with a school seeking greatness. Shared values held deeply by real people are nurtured in the culture of relationship.
And on the negative side, if people are expendable according to personal pique, corrosive campaigns of character assassination, or just the raw exercise of power based on personal preference, the only values truly nurtured are self-preservation and personal aggrandizement. It may seem odd to associate with the greatness of a school, but virtues like patience and forgiveness have to be rock solid commitments if the people and relationships needed for a great school are going to grow. These coexist quite well with a shared passion for excellence and a common willingness to be accountable for being good and growing better at what you do.
I’ve never seen a great school with high turnover; the connection is almost oxymoronic. Maybe you find a school with great expectations and superior funding and dynamic ideas, but for greatness to show in culture and the formation of children, folks have to want to stick around. Folks have to be encouraged as they stick around that there is a community to which they belong. It takes time, but early in a school’s life, you can get a feel for where it might be going and growing. I have seen schools just ten years old that looked like they had great odds for greatness. Five years may be pushing it in looking for the real thing because, given some of the right conditions, you can keep up hype and spin for well more than five years. A decade of this, though, will make most anyone sick of hearing the same lies or eating the same cotton candy and expecting it to be dinner.
Conversely, I’ve never seen a school with a history of leadership turmoil and turnover which even hinted at more than doing a few good things almost at random. A broken clock – analog at least – will be right twice a day, but it’s just tricking you. It’s not telling you the truth, and following it, you won’t be on time.
Continuity, then, is a necessary milestone on the path to greatness for a school. In some ways, though, this is just an extension of values commitments held securely by those who comprise the school community. Success seen as kids fulfilling variegated gifts and potentials, humility so relationships can make it through the rough spots, commitment to things greater than yourself like truth, and vision for a peculiar sort of community are all part of greatness, and each plays its part in encouraging continuity.
DR. BOYD CHITWOOD IS THE SUPERINTENDENT OF MINGO VALLEY CHRISTIAN IN TULSA, OKLAHOMA. FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT MINGO VALLEY, CLICK HERE.