This book includes real stories about young Black and Latino males, which provides a perspective for a predominantly white workforce in education. We need to know more about our students, and they need to know more about us.
Robert’s book begins with the five factors that impact male Black and Latino students, and educators need to be incredibly aware of them:
Invisibilization
Marginalization
Pre-criminalization
Stereotype threat
Colorism
He challenges educators with a how-to chapter on culturally aware teaching practices. We should be doing a book study on this book in every school.
Robert writes from the heart. By weaving in his own experiences, the book emerges as a powerful testimony to the work that can be done.
PS — If you have a topic you want us to cover or need recommendations on books to read in a particular area of leadership, just send us a tweet or an email.
And, let us know if you want to join our next MasterClass on Candid and Compassionate Feedback. If you want to see real growth in your school, click here to reserve your seat or here for more information.
Lastly, join us in the Principals’ Club, designed to take your PLN to a PLC so that we can support one another in our growth as leaders. We hope to see you there.
Don’t miss this vblog on books you need to read to lead better and grow faster. We recommend three titles that are must reads on the topic of learning and growing as a leader.
PS — If you have a topic you want us to cover or need recommendations on books to read in a particular area of leadership, just send us a tweet or an email.
And, let us know if you want to join our next MasterClass on Candid and Compassionate Feedback. If you want to see real growth in your school, click here to reserve your seat or here for more information. Lastly, join us in the Principals’ Club, designed to take your PLN to a PLC so that we can support one another in our growth as leaders. We hope to see you there.
Don’t miss this vblog on books you need to read to lead better and grow faster. We recommend three titles that are must reads on the topic of hacking excellence for educators.
PS — If you have a topic you want us to cover or need recommendations on books to read in a particular area of leadership, just send us a tweet or an email.
And, let us know if you want to join our next MasterClass on Candid and Compassionate Feedback. If you want to see real growth in your school, click here to reserve your seat or here for more information.
Lastly, join us in the Principals’ Club, designed to take your PLN to a PLC so that we can support one another in our growth as leaders. We hope to see you there.
PS — If you have a topic you want us to cover or need recommendations on books to read in a particular area of leadership, just send us a tweet or an email.
And, let us know if you want to join our next MasterClass on Candid and Compassionate Feedback. If you want to see real growth in your school, click here to reserve your seat or here for more information.
Hope is not a passive act of wishful thinking. There are tips, tools, and tactics that leaders use when people need hope. Let’s be clear, humans always need hope. Following the H.O.P.E. model below will help you to lead better with hope at the forefront.
Breaking the Model Down
Humor
Humor is medicinal. Laughing actually “reverses hormonal changes brought on by cortisol and other stress-related chemicals.” Your body can boost your mental state through increased endorphins, serotonin, and dopamine simply by listening to a fun story or telling a joke. Remember, this type of humor is for people to have an outlet to lighten the burden they feel, not to minimize or reduce the seriousness of the situation.
Optimism
Optimism is a way of thinking. It doesn’t mean that you see everything through rose-colored glasses. It just means that you believe that taking action to make improvements is better than self-pity. An optimistic outlook actually helps with sleep, resilience, and even life expectancy. All things that people need in times of trouble.
Sometimes the worst part of a stressful situation is that it zaps all of our energy. The time in which you need to be at your best, you find yourself overly fatigued, unable to rest, and incredibly anxious. Worse yet, in order to be an effective leader who is able to find proper ways to instill a bit of humor, to remain genuinely positive, and to offer optimism for those you lead, you need to be in a resourceful state-of-mind, which requires an immense amount of energy.
Humor, optimism, positivity, and energy are four aspects of hope that we all need these days. As leaders, especially in schools, we can serve people using a dose of each, remembering that it starts with remaining hopeful ourselves.
So, what steps can you take today?
Throughout the month we offered 3-Minute Challenges to take the necessary action steps to lead with hope.
You don’t have to be a comedian or even a great joke teller to take the following three steps in using humor as a tool to create hope on your team.
Reflect: Think about the weight of the situation that you’re trying to lighten so that hope is in sight for your team. Allowing the heaviness to sink in provides the needed recognition regarding the weight that you want to lift. The burden of the pandemic is an example for educators who are working to plan what school will be in the fall.
Identify: Identify something humorous that you came across recently–this can be something that happened to you or that you did (even a silly mistake you made). Think about, for example, something funny that one of your kids said. “This 5th grade car parade is better than my graduation. All I got to do was sit on a stage in an itchy shirt and sing a song that I didn’t even like.”
Do: Tell the story at the start of a meeting or when the time seems right. Have others share a funny story as well. Be sensitive about the context of your humor, but note that humor heals and laughter lightens.
How well do you infuse appropriate humor into your work culture?
Optimism is something that conditioning so that we can better pivot from uncertainty and doubt to assuredness and hope. The following challenge is meant to help you become more optimistic in the midst of clouds and obstacles, even when they won’t go away.
Reflect: Think of a situation in which you were recently involved where you felt a lack of control or simply overwhelmed. We often experience these moments quickly, and they have the potential to hijack our entire emotional state.
Identify: What were the specific aspects of the situation that caused you the stress or anxiety? Take a step back and identify the bigger purpose behind why you engaged in those aspects in the first place.
Do: Next time you start to feel stressed, remember the overarching purpose or goal that you set as you dig into the weeds of the scenario. The minutiae is what bothers us but our why will always put things into perspective.
How well do you lead with an optimistic viewpoint?
To lead at your best and grow in your role, you can’t just rely on your regular thinking; you must actually think about your thinking, putting metacognition at the forefront of everyday problem-solving scenarios.
Reflect: Think about the words you use when you talk to yourself during tough times. Are they negative or positive? Do you see opportunities or do you default to road blocks.
Identify: Words are powerful. Make a list of the defeating words that you use when a problematic situation arises. Be mindful that we rarely recognize how often we engage in negative thinking. The slightest daily issue can cause negative self-talk.
Do: In a great article by Margaret Wehrenberg, she teaches us to use two powerful words: Until Now. For one day, evaluate your self-talk and when you find yourself engaging in defeating thoughts or negative self-talk, simply add, Until Now at the end of the sentence. I wasn’t able to… _______, until now.
3 Books You Need to Read to Provide More Hope for Yourself and Others — #readthisseries
Don’t miss this vblog on books you need to read to lead better and grow faster. We recommend three titles that are must reads on the topic of hope–providing hope for both yourself and the people you serve.
What an expert has to say about leading with hope:
We truly enjoyed having Tom on our onethingseries podcast. He provides incredible insight on how effective leaders don’t sidestep reality. His views on vision, trustworthiness, and compassion are powerful and can be used effectively through his simple steps. Tom also introduced us to a new concept he called “esteemable.” It’s a powerful way to view ourselves, others, and situations. Listen here for more.
TheSchoolHouse302 is about getting to simple and maximizing effective research-based strategies that empower individuals to lead better and grow faster.
Please let us know how our leadership posts are working for you, what you are reading to improve yourself, and your thoughts on leadership and growth here on our blog and Twitter. Follow our #onethingseries podcast on iTunes and our #readthisseries on YouTube.
Our final two ingredients for leading with H.O.P.E. are positivity and energy. You’ll often find that these two magical components are linked together as positive energy, but we keep them separate to emphasize a clear distinction between them so that you can harness the power of both through an understanding of your relationship with each.
Needless to say, a positive mindset is a characteristic that we must possess if we want to be effective as leaders. But, don’t mistake positivity for an unrealistic outlook on the world. Worse yet, don’t paint reality to be more dismal than it truly is. Falling into either is too easy. The latter created by fear–our minds revert to the worst case scenario. And in an odd way, these misjudgements make us feel safe, providing an odd sense that impossibility equals less responsibility.
However, that’s the exact opposite of leading with positivity. Circumstances and situations are to be managed so that we can still reach our ultimate goal no matter what happens. We need to “trim our sail” to prevent the ship from capsizing in the storm. Gaining clarity about the situation and identifying clear next steps to move forward in a productive way are how we harness positivity within ourselves and others.
The connection that positivity has to energy lives within our self-talk. At its simplest form, a positive mindset begins with the way we address ourselves, which either produces an abundance of energy or takes it away in an instant.
The worst part of a stressful situation is that it zaps our energy. Stress creates a blockage in the brain. Our primal fight or flight response to a problem produces a surge in our cortisol levels that can put us in an unhealthy and unproductive state-of-mind. As difficult as it may be, this is the exact moment to look for an opportunity to learn and grow. It’s during these unwanted times that we need to be at our best, not fatigued, unable to rest, or anxious. When discomfort meets paralysis, we need to push past the negative thoughts that distract us from the sources of energy that we need to lead well.
Take the following challenge to evaluate your self-talk and maximize your ability to create positive thoughts and unprecedented levels of energy as a leader.
We can never underestimate how our view of the world impacts our daily performance. Our own self-talk regarding ourselves, others, and situations must be closely monitored so that we are in a resourceful and productive space. To lead at your best and grow in your role, you can’t just rely on your regular thinking; you must actually think about your thinking, putting metacognition at the forefront of everyday problem-solving scenarios.
Reflect: Think about the words you use when you talk to yourself during tough times. Are they negative or positive? Do you see opportunities or do you default to road blocks.
Identify: Words are powerful. Make a list of the defeating words that you use when a problematic situation arises. Be mindful that we rarely recognize how often we engage in negative thinking. The slightest daily issue can cause negative self-talk.
Do: In a great article by Margaret Wehrenberg, she teaches us to use two powerful words: Until Now. For one day, evaluate your self-talk and when you find yourself engaging in defeating thoughts or negative self-talk, simply add, Until Now at the end of the sentence. I wasn’t able to… _______, until now.
Pro Tip: Create a Power Talk List to counter the negative things that you might say to yourself. Consider your daily work out as an example. Almost everyone we know has a desire to feel healthy and look good. Yet, often, when we’ve had a long day, especially mentally, we find yourself saying something like, “I’m too tired to exercise, I’ll do it tomorrow.” But, immediately replace that with another phrase to help you maintain the standards that you set for yourself. “I’ve worked hard today and I’m tired. Awesome. I am going to reinvigorate myself with a long run.” Or, “I thought I felt too tired to go for a run, until now!” Don’t allow yourself to think negatively by identifying something, like exercise, as a chore. The things that cost us the most energy are likely the ones that produce the highest levels of it as a result of doing them. Thinking positively about them produces energy when we need it most. Put exercise at the top of your Power Talk List and write down several other instances where you might need a boost of positive self-talk when you’re feeling low.
Reach out and share your story with us.
Stay tuned for more challenges, reflection questions, leadership models, podcasts, and more by following theschoolhouse302.com. It’s our job to curate, synthesize, and communicate so that you can lead better and grow faster. In a world plagued by nothing but noise, we help you by getting to simple.
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