Category Archives: public education

July 21, 2011 · 6:02 am

HOPE, TITLE IX, AND THE QUEST FOR A WORLD CUP TITLE

It never really occurred to me that the U.S. would lose to Japan in the World Cup Soccer Final last Sunday.  Our women’s team was magical.  They came from behind against Brazil and won on penalty kicks and the rest seemed pre-ordained.  All that was missing was Al Michaels roaring into the microphone: “Do you believe in miracles?!!!”  and the jingoistic chant of “USA!…USA!…USA!…”.

So I decided I would write a post about the amazing skill and passion and audacity and focus and persistence and fitness and resilience and talent of this extraordinary team.  I decided I would write about how they flew to Germany and somehow captured the heart of a nation back home.  How, while most of us were bellyaching about the NFL lock-out, our girls were quietly kicking butt.  How they lifted one of the most coveted trophies in international sports: the World Cup.

But then they lost.  Japan came from behind and won on penalty kicks and the tables were turned.

So much for my blog post about winning the World Cup.

Then I noticed something else about our team. I saw how incredibly positive they were– how gracious, even in the face of heartbreak and defeat.  There were no tears.   There was no scape-goating or drama.  Just classy American athletes at a time when “classy” and “American athletes” have long since become an oxymoron.

That’s when I realized that we are all beneficiaries of Title IX.

That 1972 federal law which created new opportunities for women in athletics was based on the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.  (Incidentally, so was the line of cases and laws that defined student rights in special education, school finance schemes, bilingual education, and of course, school desegregation).

“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subject to discrimination under any education program or activities receiving Federal financial assistance.”

Title IX represented a vision of opportunity and equal treatment that has, forty years later, inspired our daughters to excel in every walk of life.  And not just our  daughters because many of those Japanese athletes grew up watching Mia Hamm and now play professional soccer here in the US.

Engraved in the golden walls of the World Cup is (at least metaphorically) a kind of promise– that when you provide every person with legitimate opportunities to fully develop their natural gift, the boundless potential of the entire human family comes closer to fruition.

The fight for educational equity in the United States is far from over.   There are huge populations of students “left behind” in the achievement chasm.  There are also critical subgroups suffering in silence who are worthy of advocacy at least as passionate as that which produced Title IX:  namely, those who are poor, or homeless, or our gay and lesbian students, or our immigrant children, or kids who are victims of bullying. And now we know what happens when we let all of our kids compete.

The US Team was lead by a goalie named Hope.  That is fitting.  And she would be the first to tell us that you don’t win a world championship on hope, but rather, on focussed energy and effort and commitment.  That lesson wasn’t lost on the hundreds of thousands of young girls no doubt watching their new idols on Sunday and dreaming  of a world cup campaign of their own.

That is the legacy of Title IX which we all inherited–  a promise to our children that they can play too.  As equals. That is what makes the quest for the World Cup worthy of your journey.  And mine.

Cross-posted on LeaderTalk

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April 26, 2010 · 3:19 am

TOOKIE’S REDEMPTION

The death penalty is barbaric.  I read today that in the middle east they are going to execute a guy for too many spiritual musings on his television show.  He got in a little too deep with the mystics.

But how is it any better here in America? In 2005, the state of California executed Tookie Williams.  He was one of the founders of the Crips and along his journey towards becoming an educator and author of children’s stories and a living model for staying out of gangs… San Quentin finally pulled the trigger.

Somehow, I don’t feel any safer that Tookie Williams was executed.  In fact, as a citizen of California, I felt complicit in his execution because we the people decide these things.

Then I read in the San Diego Union Tribune this morning that the state’s system for the “death penalty” is essentially broken.  That Tookie Williams was one of only 13 death row inmates actually executed since 1978.  Apparently far more people die on death row from natural causes– which I actually feel better about.  Except for the fact that the state spends $137.7 million dollars a year to sustain it’s “death penalty” option.  By contrast, to manage cases toward a verdict of “life without parole” costs only $11.5 million dollars a year.  So the seldom-actually-used death penalty in California costs 10 times what it costs to sentence an inmate to “life without parole”.

You know where I am going with this?

One of my students at USD posted a great piece on our class blog in which she examined the overall prison system in comparison to public education.

Over the last twenty years, state spending on prisons has increased by 40% while spending on higher education has decreased by 30 percent (Williams, 2007).  Today in California, 11 percent of the state budget goes to prisons while only 7.5 percent goes towards higher education.

We will spend  $7,000 per student at El Milagro, but it will cost $90,000 to keep inmates incarcerated on death row!

Seems like we have our priorities ass backwards again.  And it seems like an easy fix.  It will be far easier to sustain and improve public education if we dismantle the costly and barbaric business of capital punishment.

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April 3, 2010 · 5:54 pm

BLAZED

Delaware and Tennessee were evidently the big winners in the Race to the Top dough.  Delaware, which was ranked No. 1 on the competition’s 500-point grading scale, will win about $100 million, while Tennessee, which came in second, will get something like $500 million.  That’s cool for them.  But I read their plans.  I studied the language.  They talk about:

Expectations, accountability, student achievement, test results, teacher evaluation, teacher quality, academic standards, standardized testing, labor and management and consensus and shared decision making…

Then I wondered…

Wasn’t  Race to the Top money awarded  to encourage school reform?  Real Innovation?  A billion dollars worth of fresh thinking?  Transformation? Transcendent change?

Isn’t it true that if you keep doing the same things over and over again… even if you call it something new… you’ll get the same results?

Tennessee’s Education commissioner, Timothy Webb said:  “We believe that if you take all of the technology out of the classroom, … but you leave the highly effective teacher interacting with students, the students will grow.  All those other things are great to have, but we know without a shadow of a doubt that we have to invest in great teachers.”

I get his point and they are not proposing to remove technology from their classrooms ( at least, I don’t think)… but the premise here is that teachers alone are enough to create extraordinary schools.  We know you can’t have extraordinary schools without them.  But what about a “highly effective teacher interacting with students” and using the tools that our students will actually need when they finally escape the gravitational pull of a K-12 public education system and go into the world to invent a new future?

Or at least try to keep up with the one we have.

Arne Duncan, our Secretary of Education said when awarding Tennessee and Delaware the RTTT  prize money:  “We now have two states that will blaze the path for the future of education reform.”  And I hope they do.

But if you are going to”blaze” a new path you have to first get off of the old path.

For less than the $500 million dollars that President Obama invests in racing to the top in Tennessee… there are schools that will be blazing!

El Milagro.

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Filed under California charter schools, charter schools, El Milagro, innovation and change, President Obama, public education, school reform, standardized testing, technology in schools

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March 22, 2010 · 3:38 am

TWO AMERICAS, ONE STORM

NOTE:  It’s been kind of hard to keep up with my weekly blog entries lately… so thanks for staying with this site for the last few weeks. I am working on final edits for my second book (“Fighting For Ms. Rios”… and managing the blog for my class at University of San Diego (check out some excellent posts from my students there).  We are also making advance preparations to launch a little revolution… which will itself be the subject of the next few posts.  Stay tuned!

There is another “Achievement Gap” in America and it is gathering on the near horizon like a storm cloud. Mark my words. That storm will come and we will see our future as a nation engulfed in another predictable catastrophe that didn’t have to happen.

I want Arne Duncan and our President to hear me. I am not in Washington DC or the halls of the state senate in Sacramento. I am at El Milagro and we are fending off foul weather.

Here’s a gap that’s deep and growing deeper by the day:

It starts in schools that struggle to keep pace. For whatever reason. Maybe it is the leadership, maybe it’s the teachers, maybe it’s the kids or the parents or the books or the pedagogy or the water or the facilities or the lack of light. In the end, it doesn’t matter. Because schools that don’t keep pace with AYP have to circle the wagons and teach harder. More reading. More math. Then more reading still. More math still.

And while reading and math crowd out the rest of the curriculum– as schools eliminate science and social studies and the arts and physical education to make way for more focussed/rigorous/aligned instruction in basic skills (aka “test prep”)– something big goes missing:

Creative thinking, innovation, critical thinking, problem solving, application, play, self-discovery. Joy. Learning.

…the skills our kids need to compete for jobs. For economic growth. For America. For global survival.

So in communities where kids struggle against artificial goals enshrined by NCLB… they fall further and further behind in the very skills and attributes that prepare them for the 21st century workplace. Basic skills are critical… but Facebook and Google and Apple and Amazon did not become giants on the strength of the standardized test scores of their employees. They rise or fall on their ingenuity.

High performing schools and districts and communities have the luxury of ignoring the inherent threats of high stakes testing. They don’t have to panic and fire their music teachers. They can sing and dance. They can prolong their analysis of world events and enter the local science fair. The can critique good art and celebrate the natural giftedness of their students. They can provide a comprehensive and enriched curriculum for all.

So the Gap widens. Can you see it? Low achieving schools, with their disproportionately large number of low income students, English language learners and other children of color, pressured to turn their fate around, are forced to abandon the very skills their students need the most– the ability to create a new world. While their counterparts in high performing schools think and invent and find their wings.

That white and asian children consistently outperform Latino and African American children in reading and math on standardized tests is a problem. But that is not the only problem. And it certainly isn’t the most urgent.

There are two Americas. For the past 50 years public education has been a primary force to eliminate the distinctions between rich and poor; between our many ethnic and racial differences. But we are the unwitting force now dividing the chasm anew. Two Americas. One storm. One nation falling like a house of cards.

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March 7, 2010 · 7:09 pm

A RABBLE OF INNOVATORS ON THE FAST COMPANY LAWN

This week, the publication Fast Company released its annual survey it calls the Top 50 Most Innovative Companies in the world.

Here is the top 10:

#1 Facebook

#2 Amazon

#3 Apple

#4 Google

#5 Huawei

#6 First Solar

#7 PG&E

#8 Novartis

#9 Walmart

#10 HP

That’s just the Top 10.  Disney is #20.  Cisco (#17) and Twitter (#50) are on the Top 50 too.  So is Grey New York (#24), the advertising genius that makes the commercials with the E-Trade baby.  Nike (#13) , Netflix (#12), and the Indian Premier League that televises international cricket matches(#22)– all on the list.

So how do you get on the list?  Fast Company says:

Even in these tough times, surprising and extraordinary efforts are under way in businesses across the globe. From politics to technology, energy, and transportation; from marketing to retail, health care, and design, each company on the list illustrates the power and potential of innovative ideas and creative execution.

There you have it.  Innovative ideas and creative execution.

I noticed that El Milagro was not on the list.  I noticed, in fact, that there are no schools on the list.  Not the KIPP schools or High Tech High or Kaplan University.  In fact, I noticed “education” wasn’t even mentioned in the quote above.  Education is rarely mentioned in the same breath as “innovation”.

Politics… technology… energy… transportation… marketing… retail… health care… design… that is where Fast Company goes for examples of innovative organizations.  And rightly so.

This past week there were protests across the state of California and around the nation to shine the light on inevitable  budget cuts in schools.  I stood on the lawn of the capital building in Sacramento and watched.  There was a rabble of a couple thousand activists with hand made placards and signs and hippies playing percussion instruments trying to resurrect some of the energy of the 60’s.  Good luck.  I assumed that many in the crowd were educators who had called in for a sub in order to be out on the lawn protesting about the loss of funding to public education.  $100 per sub.

In the comments section of the Fast Company blog on their 50 Most Innovative Companies I was struck by this quote:

“In times of economic crisis, chaos, and rising strains on system designs, innovative organizations have the edge.”

And this one:

“Changes create movement. Movement create action. Action creates Innovation.”

And finally… this one:

“Innovation is not the result but the way we act. The result is a consequence of our acts. If you keep doing it the same way, we will get always the same results. The companies that are shaping and will shape the future are the ones that are not afraid to try different things, different actions. Those actions are the ones that will shape our future.”

Instead of innovating, the rabble was chanting on the Capitol lawn while the governor was off speaking to the Charter Schools Conference.  But no worries. Even though he missed their presentation, he can pick it up on Hulu (#11) and enjoy it at his leisure… maybe over a bowl of Fritos (#28).

For our own part, at El Milagro we are going to navigate through the crisis and get on next year’s list of the Top 50 Most Innovative Organizations.

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February 20, 2010 · 7:35 pm

E-BAY’S LEGACY, AN ACT OF WAR

Meg Whitman once ran E-bay and now she is running for Governor of California. Her platform: she plans on creating jobs, cutting spending and fixing the education system.

Her fix for the education system?  More testing, more “accountability”, and converting failing schools into charter schools. E-bay must have gotten her best creative years.

I wonder, by the way,  what happens to failing charter schools on the Meg Whitman plan.  I wonder what she thinks charter schools actually are.  I wonder why every candidate running for public office wants to “fix” public schools… and if they can really see what is broken.

She says:

For years, California politicians have talked about building better schools. Few improvements have come despite billions of additional spending. Enough talk, we need action. We will lead the charge to put more control in the hands of local educators and parents.  We will put more dollars directly into the classroom instead of costly bureaucrats. If a school fails to improve after three years, under my plan it will automatically convert to a charter school. It’s time California schools make the grade. The future of our state depends on it.

Remember when Reagan was President and his education commission unleashed “A Nation At Risk?” They were convinced the education system was broken too. They said:

“Our Nation is at risk . . . . The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people . . . . If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war . . . . We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament . . . .”

An act of war?

But what if this notion of failing public schools is a myth?  a complete fabrication?   A distraction from the real root cause of America’s great divide?

If a house burns to the ground, do we blame the architect for the building materials used to construct the house?  Or do we recognize that the real root cause of the destruction… is fire!

If Meg Whitman wants to “fix” California’s schools, she needs to first “fix” the government and then “fix” the economy.  There is a reason why schools in low income areas are consistently outperformed by schools in high income areas: children in low income areas tend to be less ready for school, have less access to health care, be more susceptible to childhood obesity and type II diabetes, enjoy less parent support, have less learning resources and less access to technology.  For starters.  And they have no voice.

And while politicians like to call those ” excuses”… I wonder what would happen if the severe gap in economic prosperity was diminished.  What if all kids enjoyed the exact same benefits and life conditions whether they lived in Compton or Malibu?  What would our education system  look like then?

Politicians can’t fix schools– not with all of the standardized testing schemes in the world. Especially if they aren’t broken.  And there are plenty that aren’t broken.  Yet.

But those same politicians do have an opportunity to significantly improve the quality of life for children.

To tell you the truth, I don’t think Meg Whitman plans on doing that as Governor of California.  I don’t think her fellow politicians in Washington DC plan on improving the quality of life for children either.  Even though my students would benefit mightily from having access to health care, our senators and congressmen can’t seem to get that done.  They are dysfunctional.  They appear to be paralyzed by their own political systems and structures and culture.  They are influenced and driven by a collective greed that blinds them to their opportunity to rescue America’s children… if not their schools.

Bill Moyers wrote:

No wonder people have lost faith in politicians, parties and in our leadership. The power of money drives cynicism deep into the heart of every level of government. Everything, and everyone, comes with a price tag attached: from a seat at the table in the White House to a seat in Congress, to the fate of health care reform, our environment, and efforts to restrain Wall Street’s greed and prevent another financial catastrophe.

The house is burning and the people positioned to extinguish the flames, are instead blaming the builders.  I propose we re-think the the myth:

“If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre governmental performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”

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Filed under California budget, California charter schools, childhood obesity, children at risk, health care, public education, school reform

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January 31, 2010 · 6:27 am

STAMPEDE TO THE TOP: A RACE TO RUIN

Several things happened this week that gave me pause:

First I saw on CNN the story about a little fourth grader in Texas who hung himself in the school restroom.  The child psychologists all attributed his death to depression and the economy and the pressure he likely felt as he made his way through school.  But he was nine.  And while depression may be on the rise (like obesity and diabetes and other childhood illnesses) it hardly explains such an extreme response.

I wondered…  what was it about his school that added to his hopelessness?  Or what could have been different for him?  Were his talents and interests nurtured?  Or had he been reduced to a test score and a proficiency level?

Then I started my class at USD on Tuesday.  I am teaching a course on Education Reform.  In an attempt to introduce the students to El Milagro, I shared an I-Photo slide show of our kids over the years.  It captured the spirit of children dancing and singing and celebrating.  Talented.  Diverse.  Exultant.  But there were no pictures from this school year.

So I wondered… what kind of climate have we created for the children of El Milagro lately?  Is it a refuge from the stress of their struggling families? Or have we pushed ourselves too far out on that assessment ledge… and in the name of someone else’s definition of accountability… hung our toes over the brink?

Then I listened to President Obama talk about his vision of education in the State of the Union.  In it he said:

“This year, we have broken through the stalemate between left and right by launching a national competition to improve our schools. The idea here is simple: instead of rewarding failure, we only reward success. Instead of funding the status quo, we only invest in reform – reform that raises student achievement, inspires students to excel in math and science, and turns around failing schools that steal the future of too many young Americans, from rural communities to inner-cities.”

I wondered… isn’t that a frighteningly narrow definition of “school success?”

So then I started reading Yong Zhao’s book entitled  “Catching Up or Leading the Way “ where he states that China is going the opposite direction as the US right now.  That they value outputs and student achievement for sure, but they value the inputs too.  Zhao urges American educators (of which he is one) to rethink the preoccupation with testing and national standards:

“America is at a crossroads. We have two choices.  We can destroy our strengths in order to catch up with others on test scores, or we can build on our strengths and remain a leader in innovation and creativity.  The current push for more standardization, centralization, high-stakes testing, and test-based accountability is rushing us down the first path.  What will truly keep America strong and Americans prosperous is the other path because it cherishes individual talents, cultivates creativity, celebrates diversity, and inspires curiosity.”

I wondered…What are we doing for our children?  Are we handing them musical instruments to play their hearts out on, inviting them to dance, coaching their teams, encouraging community service, investing in their health, encouraging them to think, inspiring them to invent and innovate, handing them a camera to capture their youthful energy in photographs?  Or are we drilling them on test taking skills?

The Race to the Top may actually be a stampede over the edge of the cliff.

I wondered… what have we learned from that tragedy in Texas?

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Filed under El Milagro, gifted children, innovation and change, President Obama, public education, school reform

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January 6, 2010 · 10:14 pm

ZERO IN-TOLERANCE

The airport security line at San Diego’s Lindbergh Field was as long as I have ever seen it yesterday.  It stretched from the central hallway of Terminal One, past the baggage claim area, up the escalator, across the footbridge to the southeast parking and halfway down I-5 to National City.

Well maybe not that far.

But it was the expected overreaction to one Nigerian douchebag who tried to launch a rocket from his briefs to bring down the very airplane he was sitting on, and instead lit himself up like a silvery flare. Overreaction is a political calculation designed to confuse systemic bravado with actual security.  It’s what we do. And so we stand in line.

It is the same mindset that has fueled the sweeping logic of “zero tolerance” in public schools all across America.  After a series of tragic assaults from Santana to Columbine, administrators and legislators decided to actively pursue a policy of zero tolerance for weapons or violence– or even just persistently obnoxious behavior.  So kids that brought a loaded “glock” to school got themselves expelled.  As did kids who brought unloaded guns.  Or long knives.  Or swiss army knives. Or butter knives for their box lunch.  Or the nail file that their mom had given them.  And pretty soon zero tolerance reached to laser pointers and paint brushes and swizzle sticks.

There is no doubt that the first job of educators is to keep children safe, but zero tolerance polices have become so draconian, that the number of suspensions and expulsions have skyrocketed in virtually every urban center of America.  (An article in District Administration: The Magazine of School District Management states that while current Secretary of Education Arne Duncan headed the Chicago schools, expulsions ballooned from 32 to 3,000 in the ten years between 1995 and 2005!).  Many of the students who were “zero tolerated” out of the schoolhouse door… never made it back. And this is because such a disproportionate number of zero tolerance suspensions and expulsions  are children of color and kids who lack the resources to solicit proper legal representation.  And since public school students are often treated as if they are protected by a different constitution than the adults who are supposedly protecting them, violations of their due process rights are sometimes not even called into question.  After all, that is zero tolerance.

So what have we accomplished with metal detectors and security guards and armed teachers and district policies void of not only tolerance– but also judgment?  For sure, some juvenile offenders have been caught or found out or at least deterred.  But on the whole, we have made school campuses much less safe.  Instead of safe havens, we have created green zones.  Bunkers.

Just as the “war on terror” is partly a war on terror and partly a war against individual freedoms, enforcing zero tolerance has too often violated students’ individual rights in the name of campus security.  The consequence of which is mistrust and oppositional behavior.  And sometimes more violence.

Jim Freeman, the project director of the “Stop the Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track“ Project in Washington, D.C., works with urban districts to change these kinds of codes and policies. The stated mission of Freeman’s organization is:

“To end the use of school policies that push young people out of school and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems. Through research and analysis of school discipline data and policies, communication strategies, and policy advocacy, we are eliminating the needless exclusion of young people from their schools through the use of suspensions, expulsions, and arrests.”

Freeman cites a landmark study in 2006 by the American Psychological Association that alerted districts that the zero tolerance logic was flawed.

“While the standard claim was that zero-tolerance policies would improve school safety, the schools were no safer than before zero tolerance.  What the report showed was that zero-tolerance policies turned schools into inhospitable environments that didn’t promote school safety.”

A recent article by Ron Schachter suggests that a degree of both compassion and discretion have returned.  There are alternatives to suspension and expulsion.  There are better ways to pre-empt student behaviors that could lead to more serious consequences. Those alternatives are having huge positive effects in major urban districts including LA Unified and Denver Public Schools: decreasing office referrals, suspensions, expulsions, and arrests, while increasing academic achievement.

More and more districts are recognizing that their zero tolerance policies do not connect kids to their school.  If instead, children are provided opportunities to reflect on their mistakes, to “right their wrongs”, and to insure their classmates and teachers that they can be trusted…  tremendous growth is possible.  Offenders give back.  Restorative Justice.

Think about that as you wait in line for TSA to complete their full body scan on your next flight to Sacramento.

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December 27, 2009 · 9:29 pm

MORE THAN JUST THESE THINGS, OUR LIVES CHANGE WITHOUT HAIKU- LOST IS HUMAN TOUCH

The Huffington Post includes a list of 12 common items that have become obsolete this decade. Check ’em out.  If newspapers, and landline phones, and calling, and cameras with film, and fax machines, and wires and CD’s and dial-up internet and telephones and encyclopedias and the yellow pages and catalogs and hand-written letters may have all become obsolete… what in if anything, became obsolete in our public schools during the same time period?

Plenty.

Here are 12 things that have become obsolete in public schools during the past NCLB decade:

• Critical Thinking

• Hands-on Science

• Field trips

• Morning Recess

• Grades based on Teacher Judgment

• Creative Writing

• Physical Fitness

• Bilingual Education

• Haiku

• Fine Arts

• Tolerance

• Extracurricular Activities

You can keep up with what’s obsolete in your school by checking your local newspaper.  If you can find one.

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December 21, 2009 · 6:23 am

THE THIN LINE THAT SEPARATES A ROUTINE FROM A RUT…

In the daily rhythms of the classroom, there is a thin line between a routine and a rut.

The very best teachers have mastered the art of daily routines:  those practices and systems that frame all good instruction.  Like dancers, the routines provide a foundation– a consistent flow– so that improvisation, expertly timed, can flourish; so that creative energy can be saved for the more nuanced moves. There can be more artistry and risk taking.

When the daily routine is mastered– it becomes invisible. Like good magic.

The organizational structure, the daily tasks, the consistent action, the behaviors kids can count on—the culture of “this is how we do things here”–  these are the powerful routines that precede learning.

During the diligent and precise planning that goes into an instructional day you can be sure of this: something will have to flex.  Some “best-laid” plan will be modified to account for the unexpected nature of classroom life and the disruptions and surprises and hiccups that accompany the sometimes-messy business of teaching and learning.   The lesson plan, dashed in light pencil on an etch-a-sketch, is a moving and movable target.  But not the routines.  Those, you can take to the bank.

Every day that kids come into class they can count on some routines:

• We complete quick-writes immediately after watching CNN for Kids.

• We take the roll and report our absences.

• We review the learning goal before each lesson…

• We post that learning goal on the board– in the same place we always post it.

• We “Take out our dashboards and update our reading minutes.”

• We switch to the next learning center (only) when the music cues us… like gymnasts moving to the next event—and …

• We leave each center as organized and clean as we found it.

• We walk as a class to lunch.

• We pick up the trash around our desks before we are excused.

• We squirt some Purell on our hands before we touch the computer keyboards.

• We stretch before we run the track.

• We post the schedule for computer time… and everybody gets a turn.

And there are dozens more.  At least.

To be sure, there are days when the routines are interrupted: the rainy days daze and delays or the extended assembly that eliminates our guided reading groups altogether.   Or the fire drill for which there is no convenient time.  But for the most part, the daily routines run like well-kept clocks.  Like the tides and phases of the gibbous moon.  Predictable. Reliable. Essential.

But not even strong routines can survive complacency. Routines become a rut when enthusiasm wanes and attention wanders.  The optimism, the creative energy, the expectations, the will to excel, the unshakeable resolve, the passion that was so easily summoned in the days before the year began, too often dissipates and dies in the doldrums.  Even for the very best of teachers.

A rut is what happens when the work becomes humdrum; dull, monotonous, unproductive and hard to change.  Best practices devolved into bad habits.  Bad teaching.

There is a thin line between a routine and a rut and often the two extremes are only kept separate by a wall of fire.

I wonder if school leadership is the ability to keep that fire burning.  I wonder if I can create the same spark by lighting a match or rubbing two sticks together.  I wonder if I should stoke the coals, or roll back over and go to sleep.

Simultaneously Posted at Leadertalk.

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