Top 3 takeaways from my first year in admin.

Just finished my first year as director of this little alternative school we call The Depot. Here are my top three takeaways:

1) A year ago, I had been 100% sold on Daniel Pink's model of motivation--that if you just increase autonomy, opportunity for mastery, and purpose, people will be naturally self-motivated. I was excited to see it in action when I started last September at this little Big Picture school, but by halfway through my first year, I changed my mind.

I'm not saying the model is wrong, but at least in the simplistic way we were applying it, it's incomplete. We need to scaffold the independent learning process and make sure they have the foundational skills they need. My new working model for motivation incorporates Pink, but within a broader framework. It has led to some new supports this year, a new assessment system, increased data tracking and a new incentive and support structure in the works for next year.


2) Speaking of support, the second biggest thing I've learned is how much I need other people. I've always been kind of a self-sufficient type. OK, maybe that's an understatement. But this year it became very evident, very quickly that I could absolutely not do this alone.

I'm still learning this lesson. I'm learning to reach out for assistance when we have students we don't have the resources to serve, for advice when I'm faced with a tough disciplinary situation, and for help when I'm getting overwhelmed. Delegation is something I'm working on, as well as supporting my staff so they can support our students. But I'm also very much aware of the support and encouragement they and others provide me. Without them, I'd never have made it. Together, we had a very successful year. 


3) The last big takeaway is another work-in-progress. I have a lot to learn about balancing demanding and understanding. At the end of the year, I gave the students a survey that asked them to identify the worst thing about the Depot. Four of them wrote, "Bill," and half of them said they didn't feel like they could come to me with their concerns.

Maybe they were students who'd been disciplined or pushed harder than they wanted to be, but it may also represent a real failure on my part. I'm a perfectionist, and that comes out in the way I relate to others. I need to make sure I do as much smiling as I do keeping a "stiff upper lip." As I'm raising the bar, I need to be constantly holding out my hand.

My wife and I watched Lean On Me last night, the classic film about high school principal, Joe Clark. His radical, authoritative approach turned an inner city school around in the 80s. I met his son, J. J. Clark (UCONN's track coach), at the gym the other day, and he recommended the movie. I'm so glad he did. I saw lots of parallels with the Depot this year, and I was impressed by the way Principal Clark balanced discipline with showing care and concern. I walked away with another reminder of my need to work on being more understanding and caring, even as we continue to increase structure and standards.

It's interesting, now that I've got them all down here in print, that these three takeaways have a theme: they're all about support--providing it, seeking it, and balancing it with demands. I'm not surprised that this theme rose up like this, because I'm convinced support is the central issue in education today. I used to think the problem with American education was a faulty model. Now, I'm convinced is just a lack of sufficient support for kids who need it.

I want to be part of that change.

A rubric for the new year

At school, we set clear goals with students, establish clear criteria for success, and track progress with rubrics. Why don't I use this approach at home?

It's kind of funny to think about. Imagine pulling out a rubric during dinner time to score your younger children on their table manners, or pulling out a "relationship rubric" to talk to your teens about their relationships with their significant others (or to your wife about your own relationship).

But this is exactly the sort of thing we're trying to do at The Depot--using rubrics and setting goals for improving our students' noncognitive skills. We're trying to be intentional and objective about helping our students grow in important ways. Why should home be any different?


Some people really don't like rubrics at all. Maybe they feel like they are artificial. Maybe they feel like that's not how humans operate.

And maybe I don't talk about specific goals and criteria for success with my own kids when I discuss life skills with them, but maybe I should. Having clear expectations, rules, criteria for success, and feedback is essential to improvement, whether you're improving your basketball skills, your fitness, or your relationship skills.

Of course we don't want to make this all about scores or constant judgement, but using data doesn't have to be the way. It can be a powerful tool for avoiding natural cognitive biases that cloud our view of how we're actually doing. It's about being willing to look at things as they really are, and improving.


To various degrees I try to track my own stuff, like cholesterol, fitness, meditation, and reading. I recently discovered I had high cholesterol, so I started a series of experiments to see what might bring it down. I started with a baseline data point (here's our current paleo-primal winter meal plan), then I cut back on a bit saturated fats for a month. This meant skipping my coconut milk breakfast smoothies and cooking in vegetable oil instead of bacon grease. Then I got another blood test. Then I started up my old supplement regime again for a month, and retested. The results are in the figure on the right.

This month I'm drinking red wine every day. Since I saw a drop with the saturated fat reduction (the middle point on the graph), I'll kick it up a notch next month and try the Mediterranean diet (here's the tentative meal plan).


What if we had similar measurements for relationship variables and subjective well-being (actually, there are a bunch of ways we could measure these) and then came up with specific strategies to improve them?

Maybe it would look something like this: Hey, honey, how about we take this relationship test and then try something new, like going out every week, and take the test again later to see if things improve?

Or how about this: By the way, son, I've noticed you've been working towards some serious fitness and professional goals. Have you thought about setting any personal or relationship goals? Are you interested in some ideas about how you could track them?



I know there must be a balance between contentment and striving. There's a time to be content with who you are and where you are, and just be. But as long as we're talking about improvement, I know I need to be more intentional about it, whether at work or home. If there's something wrong with this approach at home, then why am I doing it at school, and if it works at school, then why am I not I doing it at home?

I don't plan on developing any relationship rubrics for myself or my kids right away, but I do plan on working towards more intentionality in helping everyone around me, including myself, improve. And maybe a little rubric for that wouldn't hurt.

Instead of a resolution, here's a rubric for the new year:

Just getting started	Developing	Meets expectations	Exceeds expectations
Bill offers to help his kids and wife establish new personal goals and tracking systems. He begins to work on a new tracking system for one of his own personal goals.	Bill offers to help his kids and wife establish new personal goals and tracking systems, and follows up with them during the year. He also establishes a new tracking system for one of his own personal goals.	Bill helps one of his kids and/or his wife establish new personal goals and tracking system, and follows through with them all year. He also establishes a new tracking system for one of his own personal goals.	Bill helps his kids and wife establish new personal goals and tracking systems, and follows through with them all year. He also establishes two new tracking systems for his own personal and relationship goals.

How to know it's time for a change

"For the last eight years, I've had an internal struggle: between wanting to improve myself, and wanting to be content." -Leo Babuta 

And so have I. And though I was pretty happy with my latest approximation of a solution--that contentment is appropriate in some circumstances but not in others (like when being chased by a lion), I realized I lacked an easy way to determine when to choose contentment and when to opt for change.

And this is key, because when I'm not sure whether I need to change or not, or I have a vague sense it's needed, but not sure how to do it or if it will work, then that causes anxiety. The feeling that I am not where I need to be causes anxiety. And it's not a good anxiety.

If it's clear that I need to change and I'm working on it, it's OK to be a bit anxious, like when I'm running from a lion. But if the anxiety is not necessary, then I want nothing to do with it.

So here's my first approximation at a change matrix: a strategy for determining when I should just sit tight and when I should start running.

Basically, I need to ask myself two questions:

1) How likely is it that this plan for change would succeed? Can I really pull it off? What are my chances for getting a new job, running a successful mastery-based classroom, getting six-pack abs, learning to keep bees, or learning to speak Chinese?

2) How certain am I that the benefits will outweigh the costs? And here I need to consider investment costs, opportunity costs, and collateral damage that the change may cause. I may have to put in some long weeks if I decide to pursue my administrators certificate (and I sure did), and I may miss out on time with my family (and I did), I may not be able to eat pasta and bread if I want six-pack abs (and I don't), and I may not get through the same amount of content if I switch to mastery-learning in biology. And the costs could get more serious than this.

And the oversimplified idea is this: If I can't be sure the benefits will outweigh the costs and that I have a decent likelihood of success, then I'm better off just forgetting about the idea and being content where I am--practice mindfulness and learn to enjoy the moment. If there's a high likelihood of success, it'll probably be worth doing more research to find out more about the costs and benefits. And if you are sure it would be a good thing, but it's just not likely right now, then start laying the groundwork for change in the future.

Just a start, but an important first step for a change addict who routinely defaults to "Change it now!"