Teachernomics
  • OUR NEW BOOK: Otherful
  • Blog
  • Home
  • About
  • CONTACT

NOBODY influences 
LIKE A TEACHER

Be a Marathon Fan

11/3/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
Teaching is hard work, and to do it well, staff have to not just work hard, but work inspired.
-Amy Fast, Ed.D.
​

Be not afraid of greatness. 
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. 

-Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare
Have you ever watched a marathon in person? 

I remember my first time watching the New York City marathon. I was standing near a bodega in Williamsburg, waiting for a friend to pass. It was a cool, overcast day in early November and I was drinking a cup of Starbucks coffee, bemused by the scene in front of me. Hordes of people that I don’t know and will never see again were lumbering by, numbered and panting. Meanwhile, people like me, standing in our pathetic jeans and scarves were there to just watch them strive.

Those humans flying by were not running away from danger nor running towards tacos: they were just running. Running to run.  

There is a majesty in normal slobs pushing themselves for no reason. The people in these events aren’t professional athletes. These are everyday people doing something extraordinary and difficult and amazing. 

Something strange and magical happens to you when you witness a marathon in person. Watching them run, you become a part of something much larger than a race. You clap for these complete strangers that you will never see again, willing some of your energy to leave you and transfer to them, helping them finish. Your hands start to turn red from the clapping. You start yelling the names that people have written on their own jerseys, constructing background stories for each of them. There’s Matt the programmer who has raised money on behalf of his sister with cancer. There’s Laura the paralegal who has lost 40 lbs in the last 18 months and is proving something to herself and her family. Tamikwa is running with her med school friends. Andy is a single dad with his son’s name on his jersey.  

Your eyes widen and start to tear a bit. You think: These people are heroes! You make eye contact with one of them and you automatically yell, “You got this!” In that moment, they’re not just running for themselves. They’re running for you, for the people standing next to you, for everyone-- for all humans everywhere, ever.
​
I’ve come to find that almost everyone who has ever watched a marathon in person ends up feeling this for at least a moment or two. I’m talking about feeling a sense of awe in the face of other humans’ amazingness.

When Leaders Are In Awe of Their People

This is how great teachers see their students-- and it’s how great principals and department chairs see their teachers. Great leaders traffic in the greatness of OTHER people: they never forget that their most essential job is to uncover and develop it in their teams. Great leaders look for greatness in the people around them-- and, because they look for it, they find it.
As a school leader, it’s tempting-- hell, it can be fun-- to fantasize about hiring fresh runners in the race at your school. Some of your teachers are just plain tired and set in their ways, you can’t help but think. “If I just had some people with fresh legs and open minds, I could make this school really WORK,” you imagine.

But that’s the trap. This is a marathon you are all running every day-- and it wears everyone down at some point. You ever notice that everyone is tired at school most of the time? Your job as the leader is to help people find those wells of strength that even your people doubt that they have. Critically, you have to believe that strength is there, yourself.

Your most important job as a superintendent, principal, or a leader at a school is to attract, inspire, develop, and maintain great educators and their work. Point to a school that is really doing great work-- truly kicking butt and changing students’ lives-- and you will likely find at least one leader who is simply in awe of her educators.  

Sure, she loves the students. But she bleeds for her teachers and staff.

She’s their biggest fan. She paints her face in her staff’s colors, even when it isn’t game day. She’s been collecting her players’ trading cards since day one. She keeps and treasures the statistics of her team’s forgotten efforts and unsung wins. And she’s there at mile 18, standing next to a table covered with cups of water that she set up with her own hands. She has proud tears streaming down her face and has a hoarse throat from yelling “YOU GOT THIS!” Her job is to be a super fan of her people and, by golly, they all know it.

You have to marry that faith in your teachers’ and administrators’ greatness with a desire to honestly see it and support it. And you gotta let ‘em know, over and over. THEY GOT THIS!
This is their race, coach. You aren’t running it for them. And you never can.

Haven’t Got Time To Read About A Dang Marathon? Just Read This:
Each person who reports to you at school is an amazing human-- just like each of the students are. Try to be in awe of your teachers. Pay attention to those little details that reveal how great your people are. Open yourself to how hard they are trying and you will become aware of talents and strengths you didn’t know they had. If they believe you really see greatness in them, they will run farther, faster, harder, and happier for you (and the school and the kids) than they ever thought they could. 
 
Try This:
  1. Pay warm attention to your teachers and administrators. Put your judgements aside whenever you can; your critiques often drown out your ability to notice the hard work your folks are doing.
  2. Be relentless in trying to find the majesty of your people's struggles. Never quit on looking for their skills and talents-- and use that to help them see it in themselves. Help convince them of how strong they are and can be. It's your most important job.
  3. Figure out how you can help THEM achieve what they are doing. Channel your inner JFK: ask not what your teachers can do for you; ask what you can do for your teachers.


Why This Can Seem Like Absolute Horse Manure:
Some of your teachers and fellow administrators are slackers and jerks. It’s true. There are folks who don’t want to walk 10 feet for you or the kids, let alone run a marathon. It can be hard to root for lazy, manipulative people. But even those folks can change for a champion. Try hard to see what’s great underneath all of that resistance and those mind games. You have to believe there is a great runner in there. You might be surprised to find a real star who has been hidden for years. Your belief in their greatness is the greatest thing you can give them.

-------

​"Be a Marathon Fan" is an excerpt from Mike Kleba and Dr. Ryan O'Hara's upcoming book "Otherful: How to Change the World (and Your School) Through Others." Due out in early 2020, "Otherful" is an earnest and irreverent collection of short and shareable essays about leadership, collaboration, efficiency, and authenticity.
0 Comments

Data Driven Education

10/9/2019

1 Comment

 
Picture
The more the data banks record about each one of us,
​the less we exist.

-Marshall McLuhan, The Medium Is the Massage (1967)
Things that cannot be described by numbers should not be described by numbers.

As we attempt to quantify every part of schooling and learning with measurable indicators, be wary.  A lot of the most important, actionable “data” from a classroom cannot be tortured into an integer, benchmark, zone, indicator, or anything else that looks good in a report.

That’s why the professional commentary from a teacher/hall aide/specialist/bus driver/custodian is the most important data.  Like the lookouts in the mountains of Aeschylus’ Oresteia or Lassie scratching at the well, your people who are working with and around students have the best data-- their observations, thoughts, and intuitions.  

Across fields, from the military to medicine to meteorology, the best leaders know that numbers only capture a slice of what is actually happening.  Making “data” the supreme indicator of what’s happening at your school makes everything else less meaningful and actionable.  

There are few people more dangerous (or useless) in a school than a leader whose perfectly organized spreadsheets have made them comfortably numb.​

The above excerpt is from Teachernomics' upcoming book "OTHERFULL," an earnest and irreverent guidebook on leadership for great superintendents, principals, and other school leaders.
OTHERFULL, by Mike Kleba & Ryan O'Hara. ©2019.









​the best
"data" is in the stories
your people tell

Picture
An international speaker, author, artist, and entrepreneur, Mike Kleba has been a public high school English teacher and theatre director for 20 years. He serves as co-organizer of the NYEdTech Meetup (the nation's largest) and sits on the SXSW EDU Advisory Board. Interested in courage and vulnerability, he’s run the NYC Marathon, gone hang-gliding in Brazil and bungee jumping in New Zealand, and has climbed  Mt. Kilimanjaro

1 Comment

Powerful Lessons Anthony Bourdain Taught Us About Teaching

3/1/2019

0 Comments

 

How being OtherFull changes everything

Picture
To begin, I have no idea how to talk about suicide.

​I‘m sure that I’m not alone in feeling that way when it comes to talking about this and other don’t-embarrass-us topics like sex, race, gender, death, and poverty. Look, we can claim we’re all getting woke in the 21st Century. But for some things, it’s still very much the Victorian era here in the home of the free and the brave.

I’ve had my share of brushes with suicide. A good friend of mine killed himself in high school; a dear friend has lost a parent to it. And, like probably every single teacher you know, I’ve seen a more than a few of my students and grads leave a bewildered wake of anguished family and friends behind. It’s an awful, awful business.

I’m not here to talk about suicide — but I’m not sure I can talk about Anthony Bourdain without mentioning it. His loss hit me personally, like it did to so many others. His work inspired me to start writing about the power of teaching more than a decade ago. Bourdain’s death sucks. For those who knew the man, worked with him, shared their lives with him, for his family and his dear friends, we can only offer our weak condolences. To all those left behind by suicide, I wish whatever healing, truth, and peace they can find.

I wanted to write a few words about why I think Bourdain was such a powerful influence on so many people. Why so many people felt an intimate connection with this self-admitted crusty old soul. Why people the world over gravitated to his storytelling, his humanity, and his passion. Why they wanted to literally do what he did, eat what he ate, listen to what he listened to, watch what he watched, and read what he read.

For me, it’s simple. Anthony Bourdain was an amazing teacher.

I can’t claim to know about him as a man in his personal life, but his influence on millions through the page and screen reveals his keen understanding of how to teach like a master. Here are three things Tony did — and that you, dear reader, if you have any desire to teach, lead, or influence, should do too.

Picture
Anthony Bourdain in Lagos. Image from CNN.

1.  Bourdain met people where they are

“If I’m an advocate for anything, it’s to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. Walk in someone else’s shoes or at least eat their food. It’s a plus for everybody.” -Anthony Bourdain

Great teachers must first be great learners.

Becoming a visitor in another town, country, or culture is an act of humility, especially if you do it with a true dedication to discovery. Leaving your own dialed-in comforts and boundaries forces you from your easily-overlooked dictatorial power. You have to leave having your bed the way you like it, your bathroom routine, your coffee style, your “I’m the master of my own world, damn it, and I like it the way I like it” world every human craves. Every one of us loves to be King (or Queen or whatever-title-ya-like) of our own realm.


Many of us travel in bubbles in which we try to recreate our home lives around us. We don’t go to be changed. We go to be handled. To be fêted and fawned upon.

We say things like:
“They don’t even have HAMBURGERS?!”
“This beer is fking WARM”
“where’s the air conditioning?”
and
“A barefoot lady cooking in the kitchen?! Umm…NO.”

​As travelers, so many of us suck.


​Hell, I’ve taken high school students from Long Island on tours to three different continents and more than a dozen countries. Those kids will turn down the best morcilla you’ve ever had in your life in order to stuff their faces with vending machine Pringles and Coke. Unless it’s instagramable, they couldn’t give a rat’s arse about going into that 1000 year old church or taking that tango class. And before we laugh: how often do we go out of our way to go somewhere to be uncomfortable on purpose? 



​great teachers  relentlessly try to see the world through their students' eyes

When you travel to discover, with the notion that you aren’t the middle of the whole universe, you become a learner. The people and their culture become your teachers — and you get the keys to their locked doors. That’s when you get to the good stuff and experience the real people.

And that’s how great teachers get it done: great teachers see their students as their teachers. Teachers College at Columbia University’s Chris Emdin in his electric book For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood…And the Rest of Y’all Too talks about what he calls “Reality Pedagogy.” Emdin highlights the paradigm-shifting power of teachers who study their students’ “neoindigenous” culture with respect and curiosity. “…the brilliance of neoindigenous youth cannot be appreciated by educators who are conditioned to perceive anything outside their own ways of knowing and being as not having value.”

Great teachers pay attention to their students and relentlessly try to see the world through their students’ eyes. They are always prepared to leave their own point of view to learn. That kind of “travel” is humanizing, liberating, and transformative.
Picture
image from The New Yorker article “Anthony Bourdain’s Moveable Feast”

2. Bourdain ate what other people ate

“I was in Liberia, and I think it was a tribal situation. They were eating out of one bowl full of unrecognizable protein. It was hot, very poor hygiene, definitely iffy. To be polite, I joined in. I had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen.” When the inevitable occurred, “it was really touch and go,” Bourdain [says] with solicitous understatement, so as not to trouble a delicate stomach. “I was crawling around praying for the better part of 48 hours. It was bad.”
-excerpt from “Anthony Bourdain Will ‘Try Anything Once’ — but He Isn’t Calling in Sick”

I was a picky eater when I was kid. Butter noodles, pizza, and fries or die!

I lived in a small world, indeed. That is, until I went to Kenya as 21 year old privileged white boy at the end of college. At that point, I’d never had curry, Chinese food, or even that alien green paste called “guacamole.” I was a wise-cracking idiot, joking about the “Ebola stew” that was put in front of me at our first meal. The school leader of my trip, a missionary Catholic priest named Father Don, put me in my place. “Mike, you are embarrassing me, our hosts, and yourself. These people are PROUD of who they are and the food they put on the table. You look and sound like a child.” My face turned purple. It did the trick: not only did I knock off the bad comedy, I started to eat everything. I ate it all: antelope, ugali, goat— and I suddenly transformed from a tourist to a traveler. I was no longer eating — I was discovering. And many trips, tours, and experiences later, I’ve never been the same.
Look, we live in a Risk Manager’s World (sounds like the name of the worst amusement park ever). In education, everyone is afraid of live shooters, low test grades, and lawyers. But great teachers know that the real danger is an unwillingness to try new things. We have to tell our students “What you like is an important part of who you are — but it can become a prison.” Curiosity is the required special sauce for learning, the most powerful cure to the disease of stagnancy, ignorance, and boredom. To grow, you have to eat stuff that you don’t want to — just to see what happens. Failure will happen-- but so will growth.
​

When we truly encourage curiosity, we help our students see other worlds and, in turn, learn more about their own world. It takes courage. We must help others be brave in their curiosity. Lots of learning requires discomfort and risk. Sometimes you get sick. And it’s almost always worth it.

"What you like" is an important part of who you are — 

​but it can become a prison if you aren't curious

Picture
Anthony Bourdain in Oman. Image from CNN.

3. Bourdain let other people tell their own stories

“A journalist has to have an agenda — who-what-why-where — and I don’t want to ask those questions,” Bourdain said in a 2016 Eater interview. “That’s a prison to me. I’m not here to ask you specific questions, I’m here to ask general questions. What’s your life like? Tell me a story.”

​When Tony traveled to a far away place to eat some exotic food, he was clearly not there to simply have a meal or two. He was there to hear the stories. To listen. “It’s not about what I eat,” Bourdain would say. “It’s who I eat with.” He seemed to relish the chance to explore the culture, politics, and the people of the places he visited. In the end, the food was a pretense. It was a reason to be somewhere to hear the stories of other people.


I’m not certain, but it seems to me that Bourdain knew the greatest paradox of teaching: you can’t teach anyone much of anything. Teachers certainly don’t teach subjects or skills. They teach people how to learn — and they do this best by modeling. Your job, when you teach, is to walk the walk: to be a “lead learner.” You have to listen. You want to move the world? Be movable.



​you want to move the world? 
​
​be movable

The power in Bourdain’s sincerity speaks to the greatest power a teacher can wield: genuine and passionate interest in other people. Teachernomics' cofounder Ryan O'Hara and I call it being “otherfull” and we are writing a series of essay about it. We can think of few people who presented a better professional example of it than Anthony Bourdain. Because he started with respecting that other people’s stories were important, almost everyone opened their doors to him. They wanted to teach and learn from him.

Imagine a world in which every teacher — and every leader — was driven by being otherfull. A world in which we relished other people’s stories and let them impact us as much as we want to impact them.

I hate that Anthony Bourdain is gone and the way he left — but, man, let’s remember the way he lived and learned. You want to have an influence? You want people to follow you, learn from you? Get out of the center of everything. Be curious. Listen. Pay attention. Lose those reservations.


Sources not already linked above:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/08/how-anthony-bourdain-built-a-career-as-a-celebrity-chef.html
https://abcnews.go.com/US/anthony-bourdain-dream-job-appetite-life-reporters-notebook/story?id=55747428
https://www.wpxi.com/living/from-the-archives-anthony-bourdain-on-having-aposthe-best-job-in-the-worldapos/765564559
https://www.eater.com/2017/6/11/15771544/anthony-bourdain-oman-parts-unknown
0 Comments

Albert Einstein, a Bucket, and Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon

1/1/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
Map by photogrammetry expert Kevin Reinhardt.

​You already have everything you need to become an amazing leader

Isaac Newton believed a lot could be learned from spinning a bucket filled with water.

Of course, Newton believed something could be learned from anything. Everything. A piece of glass in sunlight taught him about light frequencies. Marbles taught him about thermodynamics. An apple taught him about gravity.
PictureLong before Pink Floyd, Newton rocked the rainbow. NEWTON, Sir Isaac (1642–1727, knighted 1705). Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica. PHOTO BY APIC/GETTY IMAGES
Newton’s experiments grew out his curiosity about the world around him. Centuries later, scientists and science-haters alike still use his work to explain big ideas in simple ways. His willingness to try new things helped him invent calculus and physics, which you shouldn’t hold against him.

And while we all know Isaac Newton, many of us have never heard of his experiment that inspired a young Albert Einstein to create a theory that would change the world. In fact, it was another thinker named Ernst Mach (after whom the speed of sound is named) who put Newton’s experiment in Einstein’s lap to help him erect E=mc2. Don’t know what that most famous formula in the world even means? Don’t worry. Almost nobody knows what the hell it means. But this might help. Have fun with that later.
​
For now, all you have to think about is Newton’s bucket of water — and how it can help you unlock the secrets of the greatest influencers, teachers, and leaders in human history.

Picture

​You never feel the world spinning.

It’s an essential understanding that leaders must have: there are always important things going on that we are not seeing, hearing, or feeling. ​

Newton's bucket

Isaac Newton did it like this, and you can try it at home: find a bucket with a handle. Attach a rope to the middle of the handle and fill the bucket with water. Now, hold the rope in one hand and rotate the bucket with the other hand, and watch what the water does. As the bucket spins, the water slowly begins to spin, too. The water near the edges begins to move more and more rapidly, slowly beginning to creep up the walls of the bucket while the water in the middle moves more slowly. It’s good to do this alone and not drunk, if possible.
​
Newton, like you, recognized that the water moved because the bucket moved. While this observation takes little imagination, Newton’s further thoughts about it do. Pretend you live inside the bucket and have no reference but the bucket (let’s imagine that the bucket is your whole world, kind of like how American football fans act during Super Bowl week). You would have no understanding of why the water started to climb up the walls of the of bucket, any more than you can “feel” the world spinning under your feet right now.

The water would just start moving up the wall and you’d be like “what the f@#$ is happening to the water?!” You wouldn’t be able to explain it — unless you understood that there was a whole world outside the bucket. You wouldn’t even know that you were spinning unless you were aware of some relative point outside your world.
Newton recognized this but didn’t do much with it aside from talk about motion and inertia. Ernst Mach, centuries later, used Newton’s experiment to do an even crazier experiment. You don’t even need a bucket for this one.

everything is connected

Picture
Go out into a field some clear night, somewhere you can actually see the stars. Look straight up into the sky and start to spin around, as if you were a bucket in the 17th century. Notice two things: the stars appear to be “circling around you” with the ones over top your head going slower than the stars closer to the horizon. Also notice that your arms begin to pull away from your body.

Notice too that you are alone, spinning in a field in the middle of the night. This is what has become of your life. Maybe this is a good thing?

​Mach theorized your arms floating upward were somehow related to the stars spinning, in the same way that Newton thought the water spun because the bucket spun. Put simply, your arms lifting from your body as a result of centrifugal force are directly connected to your understanding that the stars are spinning. You can’t see the stars spin like that unless you also experience centrifugal force. Einstein, thrilled by this notion, explained it by saying that “a particle’s inertia is due to some interaction of that particle with all the other masses in the universe.” The big point: everything ever is somehow connected to everything else.

You might already be interested in this idea. You might be a fan of the Butterfly Effect, in which a butterfly flapping its wings in Beijing causes a tornado in Wichita. You might be a Moneyball baseball fan who sees every piece of meaningless-looking data as a yet-to-be-understood number that could help you predict the next World Series winner. Maybe you are political and believe this is why globalism is inevitable and that all humans are of the same family. You might find spiritual comfort in this insight as well, seeing it as proof that there is a reason for randomness, tragedy, and the inexplicable.
​
You might also be a believer in the idea that Kevin Bacon really is only six degrees away from every actor in every film ever.

Stop explaining, start contexting

Me? I see it as the framework for how to influence how people think. People don’t understand new ideas because they are forced to. They don’t start a new habit because someone explains something to them. As a public school teacher for 20 years, I’ve learned that people don’t learn because they are taught.

People begin to think differently when someone or something finds a way to make an idea relevant to them. People don’t just accept new ideas.

We can’t learn anything new unless we can connect it to what we already know. This is a fundamental law of learning. There is no conventional teaching anywhere. There is only assisted learning. It’s a subtle but powerful distinction.

When someone helps us connect new dots, we’ll try just about anything. We will buy new products, join new churches, change careers, fight a war we were against, vote for candidates we think are clowns, have sex with people we used to ignore, and/or learn the basics of physics.

When you know how to use the context of people’s worlds to help them understand things on their own terms, you can get people to understand nearly anything. Whatever a person knows, it can be used to help him begin to think about what he doesn’t know. Every person’s life is an un-completed map with roads leading to new ideas. Understand how to build context for those you hope to influence, and you can expand anyone’s thinking. If you believe that everything is connected, then finding the right context becomes inevitable.
Picture

PEOPLE DON’T JUST ACCEPT NEW IDEAS.

​People begin to think differently when someone or something finds a way to make an idea relevant to them. 

When you study the great thought leaders in the history of the world, you find that they aren’t explainers, they aren’t coercers, they aren’t even leaders.
​
They are the ones who are relentlessly concerned with how other people see and understand the world. They know that connections are waiting to be unearthed; they believe that every single person’s point of view is an opportunity.

They are Contexters.
​

Picture
Mike Kleba has been teaching high school English and Theatre for nearly 20 years. Co-founder of Teachernomics.com, Kleba has spoken on stages around the world about the importance and power of teachers in leadership. He believes that humanity’s most important asset is the imagination.

0 Comments

Want Enduring Influence? Act Like a Theatre Director

10/10/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture

"Theatre is the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being."
​ -Oscar Wilde

Theatre is the world’s oldest art form. Long before humans were building pyramids, painting the walls of caves, or making hand axes from stone, we were performing stories for our fellow hunters, the other mothers in our family groups, or our children.

You have actually been doing theatre since you developed consciousness- perhaps before. You taught yourself language, how to manipulate people to pick you up and comfort you, and how to sneeze exactly like your mother, all in the acting school of your own childhood. It is humanity’s primal art — and some non-human animals do it too. Both Plato and Aristotle talked about the universal prevalence of “mimesis,” a word that shares a root with mimic, imitation, and mime. Everything we do, make, or say is some version of something we are replicating. All of our stories grow from this.



In the land of story, the storyteller is king. Or queen.

Subsequently, stories are the most powerful tool in the human toolbox. They are omnipresent and all encompassing. Nothing that happens in the human experience doesn’t have stories told about it. Everything we have ever understood can be understood through a story. Fiction or history, journalism or joke, a story is the basic building block of human thought and influence. All stories are a kind of theatre.

The word "theatre" comes from a Greek word that means “the place where we observe the world.” Consequently, the seemingly common role of directing theatre is, in fact, extraordinary. Singular. Theatre direction works with the deepest and most complete machinery of humanity’s first storytelling. The entirety of the job is as ancient as our DNA and as common as laundry.
A theatre director’s purpose is to use a story to shape how other people see everything.

So, whether you are an author, philosopher, theologian, politician, CEO, advertiser, filmmaker, teacher, marketer, instagram influencer, celebrity chef, or parent, you are a theatre director. You must commit to building a culture of collaboration if you want to have any real and lasting influence.
In my 15 odd years of directing theatre, I’ve come to learn that there are powerful leadership principles at work in the job. Beyonce, Steve Jobs, Oprah, Colin Powell, Yo-Yo Ma, to Anthony Bourdain, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and Warren Buffet apply most, if not all, of these principles. If you lead anything or wish to influence a group of people, follow these simple moves.
7 "Theatre Director Leadership" Principles
1. Believe that every person has talent and ability. Let all of your team or followers always see that belief in your actions, words, and philosophy.

2. 
Honor all acts of bravery and creativity, even ones that annoy you. This is the secret to creating a culture of curiosity and imagination.

3. 
Share/hand over as many real responsibilities with team members as you can. This is the secret to creating a culture of ownership and investment.

4. 
Carry yourself always as an artist and learner in progress. You have more experience than those you lead — often, that is your only leg up on them.

5. Physical safety is the most important boundary in which you are authoritarian as a leader — be clear, without jokes or apology. When boundaries are crossed, be transparent and unequivocal — but 
avoid guilt, shame, or social punishments for anyone in your organization, company, or community.

6. Be aware that 
your own biases can derail your goals. Your social values, beliefs about gender/race/age/ethnicity, “appropriateness,” sex, violence, etc. are your own — and sometimes they should stay that way.

​7. Judge team members’ work and behavior — 
never the people themselves. Maintain this separation! Model this for your team.
0 Comments

3 Reasons To Take Down Your Mission Statement

3/20/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture

Great leadership is the  single greatest force in human history.

There are a few simple things I’ve come to believe to about leadership. For example, most leaders suck. Many of them prefer people who agree with them. Most are hard to persuade because of their ego, confidence, or simple need for confirmation bias. Most would rather see you fail than see themselves fail.

In these ways, leaders are like most of us. Isn’t my criticism in the first paragraph applicable to almost everyone you know? Even you? Definitely me.

Now, gentle readers, do not be dismayed. I like people. I like leaders. I even like NY Giants fans. (I mean, not all of them. But some of them.) Humans suck for lots of reasons I simply don’t have time for in this 4 minute read.

But just because we all suck doesn’t mean that we can’t get a little better. And nothing in our human experiment is more important than improving leadership. 

Great leadership is the single greatest force in human history. There’s nothing more valuable nor influential. In a world of families, villages, towns, states, countries, corporations, religions, schools… great leaders drive culture. ​

This is because leadership is the business of people.
At the heart of great leadership is great teaching. Why? Because great teaching, at it’s most fundamental, is about uncovering and developing greatness in others. 

And so this one is for you leaders out there who really want to make a difference. 
So what’s my problem with Mission Statements?
I’ve been a critic of Mission Statements Written On Walls* for a long time. (*NOTE: I’m not a critic of Mission Statements themselves. Especially the act of writing them — it can be a remarkably useful way to bring a team together and focus on shared values, visions, etc.)

My problem is with posting them up on your wall at your workplace or website. Yeah, I know it seems like a good idea to put the Mission Statement on the wall. It's easy to imagine that seeing it on the wall inspires your own people and attracts new partners and clients.

I actually think it does the opposite. Here's why.


Three Reasons To Take That Mission Statement Down

1. It provides cover to a**holes. 
When you put a Mission Statement on the wall, no one has to change anything. No one has to act out the Mission Statement because, well, everyone is already doing it. The default IS the Mission Statement. The work is already done. Any of the weak members of your company/team/whatever can just point to the wall and say “that’s what I’m doing” no matter what they are actually doing. Don’t make it easy for those folks — they’re the last people you want to help on your team. They're why we can't have nice things.

2. It’s inefficient and unconfident.
None of you customers or clients will believe your mission statement unless your organization/company actually proves the mission through action. Writing it on the wall says "we're worried you might not know what we believe unless we write it up on the wall." Believe in your culture. Trust your people. Empower your people to BE the Mission Statement. 

3. It turns your mission into a compliance order. 
Every time you or your organization doesn’t measure up to your Mission Statement, your employees/members look at it and see the moral hypocrisy of your leadership. Every leader is a hypocrite at some point or another. You simply cannot be aspirational without falling short from time to time. Posting your Mission Statement can incentivize you and your people to care more about complying with the Mission Statement rather than embodying it. It makes people into lawyers on behalf of the Mission Statement (“well, you can see how we were really trying find a good solution during that colossal f**k up”) or to be harsh critics on the attack (“yeah, we believe in equality so much that so-and-so has been a jerk to every sales team member”).
This is not a new idea
As revolutionary as it might sound, ripping down that Mission Statement isn’t even a new idea. We have tons of aphorisms in our culture that speak to how it doesn't matter what you say-- it's what you do:

“If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and eats like a duck…”
“You know a fruit by it’s tree”
“
You wouldn’t have won if we’d beaten you”

When I was a kid, we used to sing this song at Bible school: “They’ll know that we are Christians by our love.” Look, I wasn’t the best kid at Bible school. But I liked the singing part. And I liked that song.
​

People will know your Mission Statement by how you walk, talk, and eat. No matter what you have written on your wall, they are watching and judging you. Everyone else already knows what you believe. They read it on you every time they interact with you.


​Everyone you 
interact
​with already knows your Mission Statement

​But, look, maybe you can't give up posting that Mission Statement. You love your stencils or fonts or whatever. You paid a lot of money for it, maybe. I get it. If you simply can’t help but put a Mission Statement on the wall of your office or website or whatever, here’s what I suggest:

​
Our Mission Statement:
​
​We ASPIRE to be judged by how we act. Let us know how we’re doing
.


Picture
Mike Kleba has been teaching high school English and Theatre for nearly 20 years. Co-founder of Teachernomics.com, Kleba has spoken on stages around the world about the importance and power of teachers in leadership. He believes that humanity’s most important asset is the imagination.

0 Comments

mikey's mixtapes: sxswedu 2018

2/4/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
I’ve always loved a good mixtape.

In the movie “High Fidelity,” the character Rob (played by John Cusack) explains “the making of a good compilation tape is a very subtle art. Many do’s and don’ts. First of all, you’re using someone else’s poetry to express how you feel. This is a delicate thing.”
​
As anyone who’s ever received a killer mixtape knows: a mixtape can not only introduce you to new music, it can change how you hear the songs you already know.

So… I've made you a few mixtapes. I know, I know. We barely know each other. But check it out: instead of songs, I’ve curated a list of SXSW EDU 2018 conference sessions. My goal? To introduce you to some of the hottest innovators in education right now: Teacher Leaders.

I’ll be featuring working preK-12 teachers who are running companies, leading policies, innovating products, and sparking movements, all while they’re holding down a teaching gig. These Teacher Leaders are coming to Austin from every corner of the country– including of course, Texas. Heck, we’ve even got a Canadian teacher bringing some.

The making of a good mixtape is a very subtle art. many do's and don'ts.

Every Tuesday this February, the folks at SXSW EDU will be dropping one of my mixtapes. Each mixtape will focus on an educational trend or movement that’s popping on the national stage at SXSW EDU. Our mixtapes will include a blog post and a curated list of teacher-led sessions, as well as when and where to catch those sessions.
​
Collect all four!
Mikey’s Mixtapes for SXSW EDU 2018

Mixtape #1: Justice League Teachers
Sessions on equity, race, justice, and inclusion


Including the timely “Let’s Teach About Race,” a panel that will feature elementary school teachers Akiea Gross and Yvonne Tackie mixing it up with a professor and edtech product specialist.

02/13 Mixtape #2: Let the Teacher Drive
Sessions about teacher leadership/partnership in schools, industry, and policy


With featured session “Human Skills for Digital Natives,” presented by middle & high school science teacher JP Connolly and WNYC podcast host & writer Manoush Zomorodi.

02/20 Mixtape #3: Teacher Toy Story
Sessions featuring gaming, design learning, and the maker movement

Including “Toy Hacking, Robotics for the Rest of Us,” led by creative elementary school teachers Sara Boucher and Cicely Day.

02/27 Mixtape #4: The First Ones In
Sessions about teachers as edtech champions & the most important power users in the game

Including the visionary panel “Students Can Build the VR/AR Worlds of the Future,” featuring high school teachers Jordan Budisantoso and Mark Suter.

This article originally appeared on the SXSWedu blog.
Picture
Mike Kleba has been teaching high school English and Theatre for nearly 20 years. He’s taken a year sabbatical from the classroom to help lead DegreeCast, a startup that is building a tool designed to make higher ed search more practical and delightful. Co-founder of Teachernomics.com, Kleba has spoken on stages around the world about the importance and power of teachers in leadership. He believes that humanity’s most important asset is the imagination.

0 Comments

Taking Kids To Spain

1/8/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
Spilling in reds, oranges, and blues, the Spanish sun splashes graffiti on the medieval flagstones. They stand there, the children, in their Nikes and Adidas, Uggs and slip-ons. Looking up, their eyes try to adjust to the unforgiving contrasts of light and dark.

“These vaults, the crotch vaulting- look at it, amazing- are the work of unknown craftsman from the 14 and 1500's...” The voice of our guide, Salome, echoes into nothingness, quickly replaced by the muffled chatter of the students. “You are standing in a place that represented the place between heaven and earth for the people of this town. Hundreds of years ago, if you'd been a peasant, you would have been in awe.”

The high school kids appear split into groups on this, in classic adolescent fashion. Some are bored and tired, barely aware of where they are. Others are fighting the ennui, trying to make sense of any of it. And then others: transfixed, mouth agape, eyes filled with wonder.

how do you think they got up there, dude?


              ---


​and I ask myself:
how did nick get to this moment of wonder?

I make eye contact with one of them, a boy named Nick. It's been a long trip from NY to Spain and we've been here for days. I raise my eyebrows with a “what do you think?” expression. He looks at me and says, “Wow, Mr. Kleba, I had no idea. It's incredible. How did they do all this?” 

The right response to him is, of course, "How do YOU think they got those stones up there, dude?" The ensuing conversation would be lovely and productive.  But I pause.

I look back up to the towering heights of the stone arches, questions of my own echoing in my head. Nick's reaction is the holy grail in education, the sublime moment. Normally at school, he's distracted and out of it, watching the clock. I've had him in class. But right now, he is wide open, ready to learn, thrilled by the idea of understanding more. He's prime meat.  In the cool dark of this cathedral, he is so bloody teachable. At this moment, he could learn just about anything.

And I ask myself: how did he get to this moment of wonder? What series of events led to this kid's specific experience? Why is he in the zone while others are not?
Picture
​Getting a person to the place where she is willing to learn is the single most important job of a teacher. Sure, we've got to keep the buggers in their seats, patrol them for petty crimes, and drag them through mazes of mandated tests, forms, and procedures. But, mostly, it's about getting them into the zone.

The best teacher you ever had-- think about him or her for a moment-- was a master at getting you in the zone. You never liked math until you had Ms. Murphy. Social studies made no sense until Mr. Psota breathed life into it. Chemistry was an inscrutable cloud until Mr. Ferris helped you pilot it.

In the zone, you found yourself more interested in learning. You let your wonder free. You forgot about the burdens of everything and became engaged in the matter at hand. You suddenly cared about how or why something worked.

Nick got in the zone because a bunch of teachers, working outside of the typical parameters, did a lot of stuff to help get him there.

  1. TRAVEL. He had to leave the world of comfort and stability back home. Getting out of the unfamiliar was required. Strange language, strange food, strange bed-- all of it had an impact.
  2. INVESTMENT. He needed to be invested in the trouble of it all-- paying a lot money to travel helped with that, but so did the work of packing and traveling he put in.  
  3. GREAT MATERIAL. He had to be confronted with something worth learning, something bigger than himself. Something with undeniable value and meaning in of itself.
  4. CREATIVE TEACHERS.  He needed teachers who could create and facilitate zone moments.
We only went to Spain so that Nick, and others like him, could get into the zone. The best thing we did was carefully pluck the kid out of the routine of his life and give him a way to appreciate something.
Picture

​​We are having the wrong conversations about education.  We want a more perfect education system-- and it's crazy.  We are spending too much money and time keeping kids in systems. Our education culture is stilted in its repetitive, construct-based model. We don't need better curricula-- we need better teachers. Frankly, we don't even need better testing-- we need better opportunities for the kids.  
We can't address what's not working in education by taking all the kids on field trips- that's not the point.  But creating conditions for kids to experience beautiful, inspiring, and challenging moments should be our prime focus.  And, culturally, politically, and economically, we aren't even talking about how to do it.  

Can we afford to take kids to Spain?  No, definitely not in this economy.  But can we afford not to?

Picture
Mike Kleba has been teaching high school English and Theatre for nearly 20 years. He’s taken a year sabbatical from the classroom to help lead DegreeCast. Co-founder of Teachernomics.com, Kleba has spoken on stages around the world about the importance and power of teachers in leadership. He believes that humanity’s most important asset is the imagination.

This piece originally appeared on iBlogAmerica hosted by blogspot.
All photos are mine, collected on a student tour in Spain, 2012.

0 Comments

4 Reasons Why Leaders Who Act Like Teachers Win

10/4/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
Everyone can remember her favorite teacher. For some, it was a fifth grade teacher who read books aloud to the class. For others it was a softball coach, a mentor at a new job, or professor at university.

This teacher changed you — made you rethink the world and your place in it. The best teachers don’t just improve a person’s understanding — they change a person from the inside out.

We live in a world where everyone is trying to get a leadership edge. Your company wants to get more attention and convert people into followers/customers/clients. No profession has more experience in capturing and converting followers than teachers.
My nearly 20 years working in schools has allowed me expert access to what makes great teachers such leadership rockstars. You want to be a leader that your team/clients believe in? Engage like a teacher.

the secret to  great leadership?
Engage like a teacher.

1. Be a Contexter.
Every message has context. Simon Sinek told you to know your “Why.” I’m telling you to know your “Who, When, and Where.” I call it Contexting.

You need to be a communication monster when you are a leader. Build your messaging around who you are talking to, their background knowledge, what they care about/are afraid of, where they are, and when they are. It’s not about you. It’s about them.

People aren’t empty vessels waiting to be the recipients of your genius. Have respect for the fact that everyone hears/sees things in a different way. If they don’t understand you, they won’t pay attention to you.

2. Take full responsibility for miscommunication.
People get so caught up in what broke down in a miscommunication. “Whose fault was it?” people ask. Who cares? Even if it isn’t your fault when you were misunderstood, it’s your job to fix it.

Miscommunication is one of the greatest creators of problems in human history. This is true in markets, too. Be the adult in the room. Deal with it.

3. Listen because you mean it.
​Respect and loyalty are plants in a garden. They take time to develop and are easy to kill. If you act like you give a shit but you actually don’t, your listeners will figure it out. And then they’ll not only bail, they won’t want to come back.

You want to build an audience/employee team without loyalty? Fine. Watch them leave when the next shiny object floats by. Pay attention to them — their needs, their worries, their dreams — and they’ll resist leaving you.

4. Your greatest success is achieved through others.
Teachers know: you can’t do anything TO your students. You can only achieve things THROUGH your students.

Your clients need to believe that their success is of critical importance to you — not simply a collateral consequence after you get them to sign a contract. Same with your employees: when the people who work for you believe that you actually care about their success, they’ll work harder and longer for you and with you.

Remember: your people are the ones who “graduate” — not you.

Great teachers aren’t selfless. They are “otherfull.” Make your work about building greatness in others.

Isn’t that what great leadership is all about?
0 Comments

A Tambourine Might Be the Best Design Teacher I Ever Had

7/28/2017

0 Comments

 
I wanted to research an instrument’s history for my students. Instead, I found the ancient design secret of great tools.
Picture
Bob Dylan had just spent a few music-filled nights on the wet the purple, glittered, and littered streets of New Orleans when he wrote one of the greatest songs of the 20th Century.

It was the spring of 1964 and Dylan had been on a cross country road trip with a few friends, seeing America and writing songs, including one that would become his enduring hit “Mr. Tambourine Man.” Critics would speculate that the song was inspired by the cajun and jazz music of the Mardi Gras krewes that Dylan would have undoubtedly heard in NOLA. 

A year and a half later after Dylan recorded it, the genre of Folk Rock was born when The Byrds exploded at the top of the US and UK pop charts with their cover of Dylan’s selfsame “Mr. Tambourine Man.” Music historians contend that The Byrd’s version impacted music for decades, including work by The Beatles, The Animals, Tom Petty, The Smiths, Fleetwood Mac, the Black Keys,
and that damn-him-for-being-good Harry Styles. The song has literally shaped music history.

What Instrument Turns Anyone Into a Musician?

When I began researching the tambourine, my goal was to find the definitive roots of this amazing instrument. It was sparked by a typically random classroom tangent in my IB theatre class.

​Somebody was musing about how some instruments take years of practice to sound good (violin, accordion) while others make a decent sound even when played by someone who sucks at music (triangle, bongo). Another kid brought up the tambourine and said it was actually “like, an ancient instrument.” She added that there was a Bible story about a prophet who played the tambourine.
Picture
Listen to Bessie Griffin. You will not be sorry.
Picture
I have always loved the tambourine — I love it in everything from Motown to rock to gospel to folk — I even like synth tam. It’s the secret sauce that brings in the soul, taking songs to new emotional levels. I love that anyone can play it. And, I loved the idea that it had ancient roots. I wanted to know more.
The internet, being what it is, took me right to Bob Dylan’s song and the story I tell at the start of this article. It then funneled me to tambourine sales and how-to books on playing the tam, then images of ancient Macedonian statues and Medieval tapestries featuring tambourines. I stumbled upon Armenian thumb rolling techniques and a Simpson’s supervillain. I learned that Mozart was one of the first European classical composers to shake it in his works. And the intertubes reminded me of a character from a book I taught years ago in 10th grade Honors English: Jonathan Safran Foer’s all-clad-in-white Oskar in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. 

I began to realize something remarkable: the tambourine is f*cking everywhere. In the history of the world, it’s as common as religion and prostitution.

Shake Your Moneymaker: A Brief History of the Tam

Nefertari, wife of Ramesses IIKnown by dozens of names, the tambourine cannot be claimed by any one culture. Pharaoh Queen Nefartari can be seen shimmying with a tambourine-like sistrum in hieroglyphics dating from at least 1250 BCE. The tambourine also appears multiple times in the Bible, played by angels and mortals — and, yes, in the hands of prophet Miriam as she dances it up in the book of Exodus. The ancient Greeks used the tambourine to celebrate and honor the gods. The ancient Chinese Eastern Zhou dynasty had tambourine players, dating tambourine origins in East Asia to more than 2000 years ago. 

Since its invention, the tambourine has spread around the world. It‘s been featured in music from cultures in Azerbaijan to Argentina, from the Islamic Javanese of Indonesia to the Maori of New Zealand, from African American slaves to Russian gypsies. An instrument of celebration and misery, of community and loneliness, the tambourine belongs to the globe.
It’s as if the tambourine was a musical tool that demanded to be invented. 
Picture
Nefertari, wife of Ramesses II

Great Design Releases the Imagination

​As a high school English and Theatre teacher, one of the things I explore with students is the machinery of beauty and economy. It is the through line of the construction of the poetry of Pablo Neruda and the plays of Harold Pinter, as well as the function of tools like the clothespin and bicycle wheel. By blurring the line between “art” and “tools,” I invite my students to think about how great design isn’t just about things looking good. It’s about use, agency, flow, and feel.

Any great tool — the wheel, the knife, the lever — reveals its greatness in its capacity to channel curiosity and new ideas. A great tool is useful to everyone because it meets you exactly at your proficiency level, even if at first you suck at using it. It becomes more useful as you learn to use it.


The tambourine is a brilliant example of this.
A tambourine demands you pick it up and shake it. Put it in front of a three year old and she will not just make sounds. She will explore sounds. This is because a great tool teaches you about yourself and the world.

My research of this jangly drum with cymbals clarified some things I’ve been trying to put into words for years. What has made the tambourine so universal — and so playable — reveals the essential elements of great tool design. I’ve made a short list of design fundamentals that I’ve learned from the tam. Maybe it will be useful to you.


a great tool teaches you about yourself and the world.

I call it “The Tambourine Principle.” ​

It has four parts. Great tools:
  1. Need no instructions. They teach the user how to use them through play and use.
  2. Develop the user’s skill by being adaptable to his/her will and use.
  3. Reward curiosity with delight, satisfaction, and/or understanding.
  4. Grow in value as the user’s imagination grows, the more the tool is used.

Tools like the tambourine give flight to one’s imagination. They are powered by the user’s capacity to try new ideas. These tools (or toys or instruments — call them what you like) don’t just accomplish a job that the user desires.

A great tool changes the person who uses it. Put another way: the greatest tools shape the human mind, not the other way around.

​It’s also why the internet is probably the greatest tool ever invented. Yet.​​​

And, as for Dylan

…once again, his genius has the last laugh. His original “Mr. Tambourine Man” has exactly zero tambourines in it — which kind of sucks for my article. But on second glance, the lyrics are about wonder, curiosity, and the inventive human spirit.
​ 

I don’t know if you buy it, but here’s what I think: “Mr. Tambourine Man” is a tribute to the imaginative power released by a beautifully designed tool.
Picture
0 Comments
<<Previous

    just a Fact:

    Teachers are injecting value into every corner of our society.

    Tweets by @mikekleba

    Mike kleba

    is a teacher, writer, and artist who has been invited to speak and teach across the country and around the world about the topic of educational leadership.

    DR. RYAN O'HARA
    is a principal at a school district on Long Island and was a high school teacher for more than a decade. 

    Archives

    November 2019
    October 2019
    March 2019
    January 2019
    October 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    October 2017
    July 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    November 2016
    September 2016
    July 2016
    March 2016
    July 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014

    Categories

    All
    Albert Einstein
    Amazon
    AMC
    AsapSCIENCE
    Austin
    Bill And Melinda Gates
    Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation
    Bill Withers
    Board Of Directors
    Bozeman Science
    Breaking Bad
    Brooklyn Flea
    Business
    Cathedrals
    Chief Teacher Officers
    Chief Teachers
    Coaching
    College
    Communication
    Contexter
    Control
    Coors Light
    Creativity
    Crime Against Humanity
    Curiosity
    Deborah Phillips
    Digital Natives
    Discovery
    DIY
    Drinking
    Ducks
    Edtech
    EdTech X Europe
    Education
    Embedded Teachers
    Entrepreneurship
    Esquire
    Explaining
    Fashion
    Favorite Teacher
    Field Trip
    FIRST
    FIRST Robotics Competition
    Fishing
    Foundation For Child Development
    Future Of School
    Gaming
    GQ
    Great Teachers
    Hacking
    High School
    Hot Sand
    Hotties
    Instructions
    Jimmy Dean Sausage
    John Cusack
    Leadership
    Lily Rothman
    Lincoln Financial Field
    London
    Long Island
    Los Angeles Times
    Lunchroom
    Mad Men
    Mansplaining
    Marathon
    Margaritas
    Mark Zuckerberg
    Men's Fashion Week 2015
    Mentor
    Mercutio
    Mexico
    Mick Jagger
    Middle School
    Mike Kleba
    Mission Statement
    Movement
    Music
    Nashville
    National Charter School Convention
    NBC
    Neil DeGrasse Tyson
    New Orleans
    New York
    New York Fashion Week
    Nicole Lenzen
    NOLA
    NYT Style
    Oprah
    Otherfull
    Physics
    Point Of View
    Principals
    Public School
    Rebecca Solnit
    Robotics
    Sara LeMar
    Science
    Science Teachers
    Simon Sinek
    Social Justice
    Spain
    Stephen Covey
    Stephen Hawking
    Steve Peroni
    Style
    Superintendents
    Surfing
    Sxswedu
    Tacos
    Teacher-in-residence
    Teachernomics
    Teachers-in-residence
    Teaching
    Teaching Science
    The Atlantic
    The Brian Lehrer Show
    The Imitation Game
    The Theory Of Everything
    TIY
    ToysRUs
    Travel
    Tutorial
    Warren Buffet
    Wikipedia
    WNYC
    Worst Word
    YouTube

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
Photos used under Creative Commons from James St. John, mayrpamintuan, quinn.anya, Kevin Doncaster