A Few Hopes for Today’s Teens

Yesterday in chapel, which happened to take place in the gym, with Syd Birrell playing the keyboard and Geoff Bemrose leading us with his guitar, I started the year with the following message:  (this is a shorter version) 

When I ask you, students and staff, what you love most about our school, the answer includes this one word at some point or another – community.

This morning I am going to focus on two aspects of community that require some work. The first is friendships. I personally work hard at my friendships, always have. One of my favourite sayings is that “You cannot make old friends”, and my hope is that some of you will one day come to realize that you have become old friends.

I love good research, and one of the most fascinating research projects comes from Harvard’s research about how people make a good life.  Dr Robert Waldinger, the Director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development and the author of a new book called The Good Life, has been studying the same people through eight decades, consulting with their parents and children.  This is the longest study of what keeps people happy and healthy through life.  Spoiler alert – this research study proves that happiness does not come from fame or money or achievement. Here is the most important finding: good relationships keep us happy and healthy. That’s it.

So in the spirit of asking good questions, here it is – if people could change one thing in their lives to be happier, what does the data say they should choose to do?  People should invest in their relationships with other people.  And this applies to a wide breadth of interactions in our daily lives, from close friends, partners, and teachers, to anyone including staff we interact with in the halls, the dining hall or even the person we run into delivering packages to the front office. We get little hits of wellbeing in all these different kinds of relationships.  

When we have stress which may impact our physical and mental health, we need a deeper connection, like a good friend who can listen to our rant – research shows that that friendship can help alleviate the pressure. I truly believe we only need one friend, with whom we feel comfortable and connected, and we can feel the benefits from that connection.

This morning I remind you of the need to put effort into your friendships. The easiest strategy is to replace screen time with people time.  Or, one of my best friends, Maureen who lives in Halifax, texted me on the weekend with another idea.  She read a wellness article in the New York Times called the 7-Day Happiness Challenge and Day Two is about an eight minute phone call. So Sunday night, as Kevin and I drove home from Kawartha Nordic where we had an awesome afternoon ski, we got on the phone with Maureen, and although we could talk for hours, we agreed to eight minutes. When we hung up, I was so happy to have had this connection. Apparently, a study of 240 adults in 2021 found that when participants received brief phone calls a few times a week, their levels of depression, loneliness and anxiety were rapidly reduced compared with people who didn’t receive a call.  So my first message is to connect with your friends – make a call.

Second, I want to address one of the nuances of learning and living in community. 

When I was a kid, my brothers and I fought. One time, after he had been bugging me and bugging me, I leaned over and kicked him in the gut. It is actually the only time I have done something like that, so it sticks out for me.  (And apparently it stood out for him as well, as he told that story at my wedding as a warning to Kevin that ‘She’s nice but she can kick’). Anyway, I see that kick in a similar way to today’s cancel culture.  When we call-out behaviour, we react harshly; we cancel others; we don’t invite them into solving problems.  Sometimes it’s because the issues are small, or subtle, or sneaky, or trying to be funny, or maybe unintentional…but the impact, not the intention, is what is important.  

Harvard’s centre for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging has a Guide to calling-in and calling-out behaviour.  As we foster spaces of belonging, we must recognize, name, and address when individuals or groups with marginalized identities are experiencing harm, such as bias or discrimination. The concepts of “calling-out” or “calling-in” have become helpful ways of thinking about how to bring attention to this type of harm. 

To be clear – I expect you to deal differently with serious instances of disrespect, in which case you should turn to adults for support.  I know you know we have a process in our School Life Guide for dealing with respect, consent, bullying and harrassment. I am talking now about the micro-aggressions.  Knowing the difference between these concepts can help us reflect, and then act, in ways we feel will best promote constructive change.

So as we start 2023, and as we come near to the end of a global pandemic and with rising extremism, I have a few hopes for you.

We have made a commitment as a school to be global – this year we have 44 countries represented. And we have made a commitment to celebrate diversity and be inclusive, in our houses, classes, values, and in our day-to-day lives. And it turns out that being inclusive also requires daily practice.  My hope is that we actively understand instances of microaggressions, and the difference between intent and impact, and the difference between calling-out behaviour and calling-in conversations.

My hope this year is that you reflect on when it’s important and effective to call someone in, and when we do, we acknowledge we all make mistakes. We also help someone discover why their behavior, even if it was unintentional, is harmful, and how to change it. And we do call-in with compassion and patience. 

I saw a quotation that said this – we tend to judge others by their behaviour, and ourselves by our intentions.  My hope is that we presume good intentions.

In an increasingly diverse world, I hope we always focus on how we will negotiate our relationships.  Of course I am proud of Lakefield College School.  Here, you are learning to be with others in your houses and your advisor groups; you are surrounded by amazing adults on campus who invest time in navigating social interactions.  Here, you are learning to listen in Harkness discussions, and learning to disagree, respectfully. Here, you are also learning one of the hardest lessons – be it in business, in leadership, and in life – and that is to seek points of agreement.

My hope is that we are a community who practices “calling-in” with kindness and curiosity, so we can maintain an emotionally safe community.  The feeling of inclusion and belonging of everyone is important at The Grove.  

So please, may we invest in our community by 

1. Making a call and 2. Calling-in.  

And remember – the good life is built with good relationships.

What is Lakefield College School really like?

After two long years of safety protocols and zoom meetings, I took advantage of a warm Friday afternoon and wandered out of my office. Our Leadership Team agreed that this would be a year of consolidation and connectivity, and we all made a promise to get off of our laptops and be more present. 

So here is what happens at Lakefield College School on a Friday evening. I wasn’t sure if I would watch some pick up soccer or basketball, or if I would head down to the waterfront to catch a game of volleyball or a rambunctious game of spike ball, or if I would just see who is hanging out in the lake or on the dock.  There are usually multiple speakers around campus with different kinds of music playing here and there.  Seeing – and hearing! – our teens outside enjoying time together before dinner always makes me smile.

But last Friday, I experienced a first – Addy Ross called me over to where her family was gathered on Muskoka chairs by the soccer field. If you ever need a pick-me-up, get to know Addy Ross.  At just three years old, she has her finger on the pulse of our campus, notices everything, and calls out everyone by name.   Seeing her screaming my name while waving her arms for me to come over filled me with joy.  She made my whole being smile.  Turns out, Addy was particularly excited because her Dad, Adam Ross, our Athletics Director, bought Moose Tracks ice cream – plus sugar cones! – to celebrate the first week of school and she invited me to join them.

As I sat eating ice cream with the Ross family children playing all around us, Heather Ross, one of our Outdoor Education Teachers, commented on the students on the soccer field. These were mostly our new students who had arrived the day before, and yet she was calling them out by name, and I was totally impressed.  How, after only one day, did she already know our students’ names?  Her eyes lit up as she explained her secret – the best way to learn new student names was to be in charge of the swim test.  She had spent the day at the lake and met every one of them as they were tested.  So, over the course of the hour, as we sat watching the sun set and the little ones getting out their evening energy, Heather and Adam pointed out various students playing soccer, noting where they were from, which House they were in, and who had siblings that I might know.  Their passion for knowing our students was genuine and quite inspirational.

Then Adam stood up, scooped Addy under his arm, and announced that he had to run to town for a few minutes so he could go to a meeting at the Curling Club in Lakefield.  He was hoping they would welcome our students to play. Remember – this is Friday night, and he was squeezing in time to create this opportunity for our students.  Again, I was moved by his generous spirit, his focus on partnerships with our local community and his initiative to ensure our students would have more options to be active this winter.

So that’s a glimpse into life at Lakefield College School. Families live on campus. Teens are outdoors in the evenings, playing with each other with no phones in sight.  Teachers go above and beyond to know students and create opportunities so they can experience more.  And a 53 year old Head of School gets to hang out with a three year old girl, marvel in her joyful approach to life, and see her ability to create a feeling of belonging.

A Commitment to Prioritizing Anti-racism in Our Community

Earlier this week, I updated the school community with a message on Lakefield’s response to the call for anti-racist action by the Black Lives Matter movement.

In that message, I said, “I believe that the most important thing we should do at this time is to educate ourselves so we can seek to better understand what we can do in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and work towards reducing all forms of racism, globally” and I made “a commitment to prioritizing anti-racism in our community.”

As a follow-up to this message, faculty advisors met on Tuesday with our students to provide a space to talk through their thoughts, questions, and emotions surrounding recent global events and to discuss what the school could be doing better to confront racism and advance equity at LCS. In these small groups, students provided thoughtful input that will shape our work on anti-racism in the months and years to come. They asked to learn more – to incorporate racial injustice more deeply into course curricula, to deepen their understanding of the roots of racist issues, to develop media literacy, and to create more awareness about the challenges that exist within our own community.

And they asked to be active. They want to see student-led action on anti-racism, and they want more spaces, places, and platforms for conversations–places where they can share their own stories, hear others, and have difficult and at times uncomfortable conversations. Next week’s all-school gathering will be dedicated to reflection and activism.

To address the students’ suggestions and to begin the work of confronting racism and advancing equity more generally, I have created a task force on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion that will begin work shortly. The task force will include representation from current staff and students and members of our external community and seek engagement more broadly as their work unfolds.

As an educational institution whose mission is to challenge and enable students to achieve their individual potential, we recognize systemic racism and other forms of inequity as a significant roadblock to the realization of potential. Confronting this roadblock in our classrooms and in our communities will be a key focus moving forward.

Have you ever put a tooth in the microwave?

I believe in asking good questions. It is one of the mantras of our family; it was what drove the CAIS accreditation process; it is what I am thinking about today as I attend the EMA Heads Institute; and one of my summer projects is always to think about – and maybe even answer! – a few questions.  Sometimes, figuring out the questions is more important than figuring out the answers.

Here are my summer questions:

What to read?  I am lugging a hard-cover Harvard University Press book around called In Search of Deeper Learning.  With our new strategic plan’s direction of Authentic Learning, I want to understand: how can we ensure LCS is an inspirational learning community that includes mastery, identity and creativity?  Our Leadership Team is also reading Collins’ new book, Turning the Flywheel, and our summer project is to think about our unique flywheel. (Just so you don’t think I am completely work-obsessed, for fun, I grabbed a Louise Penny book).

How can we be even better?  Our school is thriving on several fronts and has achieved two significant firsts:  we were full as of May 1^st with great students and we received our largest ever single donation.  This is simultaneously amazing and terrifying and raises more questions:  Why have we experienced some success? What if we can’t continue this trend? And what’s next?  I ask the same questions of myself.  I spend time writing out my key moments of the year – both highs and lows, for the school and for myself – and then I see what happens.  I return to the list over the two months and find this exercise valuable.

How can I think about revenue and our unique value proposition?  At the EMA Heads Institute, we began with some big trends about demographics and the economy.  When leaders who have worked with independent schools for decades say they are worried about the industry, I also worry about sustainability.  I always loved Chris Bart’s explanation of strategy – that there are three things and three things only that you need to think about strategy, and then he only has two:  revenue and unique value.  So how do we sharpen our unique value proposition saw? How do we generate more revenue and what are the creative ways to reinvest in our school?

As for the question posed in the title of this blog, it is not one of my summer questions. Kathleen is working at a camp and never fails to come home with funny stories.  As a family, we always laugh at good kid questions, and this, so far, is my favourite.  But it does remind me of the need to listen to student questions and pose questions back to them.   And then listen.  So here is my final question:

How can we prioritize student voice in our programs?  The pressures on teenagers are growing and we need to learn all we can to support, challenge and inspire them.  (As a Leadership Team, we listened to this podcast about adolescents and well-being: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/when-good-intentions-go-bad/id990149481?i=1000443425082.)  What I really love to do is meet with students and listen to their ideas.  I ask them how can we improve our school and learning. Next year, with our new vision statement, I will also ask how they will make the world a better place.

For now, however, as I head into my holidays, I might also spend some time thinking about what happens if you put a tooth in the microwave…

Daring Greatly

When I was thinking about whether or not to take the job as Head of School and Foundation at Lakefield College School, I reread a quotation that inspired me, from the epigraph of Daring Greatly, which is a quote from Theodore Roosevelt:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.  The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again… who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.

At the time, I wondered if I could start a new job, in a new home, hours from my family.  I wanted to take the opportunity to put everything I had learned from my time at CAIS, when I saw 150+ of the best schools in the world, and to lead a school that our family loved through the experiences of our teenagers, but I felt that it was a huge risk, for many reasons that you can imagine.  Eventually, I realized I was compelled by this opportunity to dare greatly.

Good news so far – I am not sure how long it took, because it felt like love at first sight, but in the past year at Lakefield, I have fallen in love with all things Grove.  Our family feels so good about this decision that it hardly feels like a dare at all.

But now that I have just more than a year under my belt, and now that I have worked with our Leadership Team, board, staff and students, and now that we – as a full community! – have developed our Strategic Directions (stay tuned!), I feel that now is the time that this quotation really comes to life.

In the next few years, we need to make some big choices – for example, what will be our signature programs?  Can we grow our school size while retaining our culture and small-school advantage?  What will be the main elements of our new House Model?  Can we be a school with a rigorous academic program AND a caring community with an experiential, outdoor program?  How can we ensure our school is affordable to great families?

There are so many options for us, and we talk a lot about the fact that not one of them is a bad choice.  As a Leadership Team, we agreed that we will need to have courage to make good decisions and that whatever we choose will require us also to champion the choice for a good 3-5 years.  (We will, however, also do ongoing research and reflection, with the courage to switch gears if something is not effective.)

In other words, when I think about what is needed to strengthen the school, I believe that our Leadership Team will have to dare greatly.  The future of Lakefield, as with the future of all schools both public and independent, will require us to do things differently.  The trick for us at the Grove is to embrace what is new all the while retaining – and possibly strengthening – the best of what we are and have been.

At last night’s alumni reception in Calgary – my first Canadian alumni event and the first of many chances to connect with our global community this year – I loved hearing about everyone’s favourite aspects of Lakefield.  I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know a new part of our community – the experiences and stories of our alumni.  It reminded me of Jacob and Kathleen’s stories, and there were so many similarities with what I am hearing from our current students as I tour the houses in the evenings again this year.

But I had two additional questions.  It was important to me to also ask, what might need to change as well as what must never change.

Finding the right combination will be tricky.  In fact, finding the best way to manage our strategic choices will require our entire community of staff, students, parents and alum to fully embrace this concept of daring greatly.

I sincerely hope you will join me in the arena, so together was can make LCS the very best it can be for past, current and future students.

p.s.  On my flight home from Calgary, I started reading Brene Brown’s new book Dare to Lead.  Yesterday, and I kid you not, it was recommended to me by Mike Arsenault in the morning and given to me by Carol Grant-Watt (the new Head of Strathcona-Tweedsmuir) in the evening.  I was clearly meant to read this book!  And then there it is again in the introduction – Brown includes the Roosevelt quotation in this book too.

Lakefield College School Alumni Reception, Calgary 2018

 

Where do we lead?

Last week, our Leadership Team, along with members of the Strategy Task Force, the School Board and the Foundation Board, all met for a day long retreat.  We had a great speaker (Tim Fish, Chief Innovation Officer with NAIS, and author of On the Innovation Journey) and a great facilitator (Susan Wright, who already lead our Joint Governance Review process, so she knows our community well).  In addition to the usual small group discussions and yellow sticky notes (Can you do strategy without them these days?!) we completed a pyramid with the base being areas we want to match, the middle being areas we want to differentiate, and the top being area(s) we want to lead.

I just love that question – where do we want to lead?

I am reminded of the story of the famous artist who created a sculpture of a beautiful horse.  Someone asked the sculptor: “How did you create such a beautiful horse?” The sculptor replied: “It was simple… I took away everything that wasn’t a horse.”

As we go through this strategic plan process, I cannot help but think that we are working away at creating a beautiful sculpture as our core is already within us if we keep researching, thinking, talking and listening.

Later on in the week, after listening to another outstanding chapel speech, I wondered if those moments in chapel might be it.

In chapel talks, we give our students permission to be and express themselves.  We have already seen a wide range of topics, and while each follows a bit of a pattern, each is wildly different.  I think Tim Rutherford summed it up best when he commented: all of the speeches were powerful in their own way, just like our students.  (We are fortunate to have a CFO who is also completely student-centred!)

But what makes chapel talks so unique is not just the opportunity for individuals to express feelings, passion, and appreciation for Lakefield and others.  What makes our chapel talks so powerful is that there is a history of authenticity in a caring community.  This kind of acceptance among teenagers is not easy to achieve; but once teens feel it, they feel the freedom to express their most true selves.

One student captured it this way – a lot of the courage I’ve racked up to be able to share my story comes from watching others before me share their stories and emotions.

Creating an emotionally safe place for teenagers, where they can share their most profound experiences and explain what they have learned and how they have grown, is powerful stuff.  Schools with dedicated resources can develop great arts, athletics and academic programs.  What is far more elusive, even with significant investment, is the feeling part.

It is still early days with our strategy process, and we will be doing focus groups and research teams and more analysis of our findings to date, but we are chipping away, and we are excited to discover our very own beautiful horse.

On Moving and Metaphors

On the first day I came to Lakefield, I was on my own. Kevin and the kids were on a canoe trip in Algonquin with Kevin’s brother and his kids – it’s their 12th year taking this trip – so I had to get to my new home alone.

I rented a UHaul van, which should have been all I needed, given that I wasn’t moving furniture.  When I got to the rental place, I was surprised when the guy told me that he had a 10 foot truck for me.

I said, “Really?  Do you really think I need a ten inch truck?”

And he said, “Honey, if you want a ten inch truck, head down the road to Toys R Us.  I’m giving you a ten foot truck.”

He handed me the keys, and when I found the truck in the parking lot, there was another guy rushing me to drive out quickly.

But I just stood there, staring at what looked to me to be a massive truck.  I had never driven anything like this before.  Was no one going to teach me to drive this thing? So I took a photo and texted my sister, who had just moved a few weeks earlier and also rented a truck.

I asked her, “How do I drive this thing?”

She wrote back, that Tony, her fiancé, drove it and he scraped the side along a bunch of parked cars. Her advice was this – “Whatever you do, stay left.”  That was it.

So I got in and started driving.  To be honest, I found the whole experience somewhat amusing and mostly irresponsible.

Part way home, I realized that something was wrong.  There was no rear view mirror.  How was I supposed to go forward, when I couldn’t see what was behind me?  I’m an English teacher, and I was so struck by this metaphor of me driving to my new life, without looking behind. Fortunately, at some point on the drive to Lakefield, I realized that there were two big, long side mirrors, so what I had to do was learn how to see behind me, just through a different indirect, side perspective.

About half an hour from the school, I realized that I was fine driving this truck forward, but I did not think I could back it up down the driveway to my new house.  So I texted Tim Rutherford, our CFO and Associate Head of School.

He wrote back, “When you arrive, park the truck and text me. I will take it from there.”

So here I am at Lakefield College School, with a few weeks behind me now.  I am asking lots of questions, learning to spend my time in new ways, focusing on the future while learning all I can from the past, and relying on others – many others! – in this amazing community.

p.s.  When I arrived, Tim took this photo of me, which I thought was so thoughtful! Only later did he admit that he took the picture because he was happy to see the “$19.95/day” on the side of the truck!  He was clearly thinking about a different metaphor… so I will add that humour really ensures that we are all enjoying our new adventure together…

p.p.s. I will be updating this blog to the Lakefield branding very soon!  For now, my priority has been getting to know everyone here!  But stay tuned…

Why the LI is powerful

Having attended eight CAIS Leadership Institutes, I am pretty qualified to figure out what made last week’s LI the best one yet. I observed every class at least once, and in some cases, I sat down and participated in discussions. I talked to most people, and asked a lot of questions. Now that I am back and have caught up on my sleep, I have read every feedback form filled out by participants, and this morning, at our Monday Morning Meeting, we discussed the same question – what made this one so good?

My theory might be different from others. What I heard is that the faculty were amazing – they are passionate about their course content and they vary their teaching styles. The speakers were phenomenal, and everyone loved the St. Andrew’s facilities. My team felt that they were better organized and they couldn’t say enough about the SAC team, with particular compliments to Greg Reid for being our On-site Coordinator and to Grace Wyvill for the superb food. Of course, everyone appreciated that Kevin McHenry hosted us at his home.

But what I think made this year’s LI the best one yet, is that we are finally figuring out how to do what our schools know to be true – in order to create powerful learning, you need to establish developmental relationships.

I have recently become acquainted with the work of the Search Institute, and here’s a quick lesson on the developmental relationships framework. There are 20 actions that make a relationship developmental, and you can read all about this on the website, but for now, consider the five categories:

1. Express care
2. Challenge growth
3. Provide support
4. Share power
5. Expand possibilities

So how has CAIS worked on developing close connections? Four highlights:

To graduate, participants need ten modules, which means they spend three summers together, learning and living in a boarding environment. There are deep connections among participants and faculty that extend beyond the classroom. (See this year’s grads below).

Next Step 2016

Our Next Step Program includes a strong faculty, ongoing cohort meetings, mentors, job shadowing, and personalized learning. But a key component of the first summer experience is the “campfire” where they share their Change Projects and give each other positive feedback and ask challenging questions. This year, the conversation lasted until 12:40am.

Our two evenings of speakers included a new component – both the Art of Leadership and the New Leaders speakers stood for a Q and A afterwards. This shifted the evening from a formal presentation to a very authentic connection with the audience. (Watch the speeches here).

Our CAIS team has been working together for a few years, and we know each others’ strengths and how to perform best as a team (and I cannot thank them enough!) I believe we can focus on serving participants to ensure their experience is meaningful and serving our faculty so they can focus on the aspiring leaders.

We know that CAIS schools are exceptional at cultivating relational learning with students;  I believe our CAIS community is doing the same at the Leadership Institute.

p.s. Didn’t get to attend this summer? Watch our slideshow here.

CAIS Summer Leadership Institute Faculty and Graduates 2016

 

 

What defines our CAIS culture?

Our CAIS team members talk a lot about culture in our schools. One of our most popular modules at our Leadership Institute is Faculty Culture, lead by Hal Hannaford; we introduced School Culture Focus Groups on this year’s accreditation reviews; and we always include the latest research on culture in our Top 12s.

I like what Angela Duckworth recently had to say about creating culture:

As [Seattle Seahawks head coach] Pete Carroll said to me, ‘it’s not one thing, it’s a million things.’ But there are some themes. One is language. It’s important to have a vocabulary that’s used within that organization, and not to use synonyms. The second is rituals: you can ritualize things like working on your weaknesses — at the Seahawks, they call it ‘Tell the Truth Monday,’ so it becomes a routine. On Mondays, we look at the things we’re doing wrong. Tuesdays we do something different. I think that’s helpful. The third is that in group psychology, you basically create an identity. When people who work in a very strong culture identify themselves, they often use a noun form, such as a West Pointer. Or at KIPP, the charter school, you call yourself a KIPPster — they will actually say out loud — ‘I’m not just a student, I’m a KIPPster.’ When you break down what a culture is, it’s reinforcing an identity of ‘this is who we are. It’s different from the way other people are, but you’re in this group — not their group.’

So at our staff retreat last month, knowing that we would be hiring a new Executive Assistant, (we are so sad to lose Lynne Turnbull but wish her all the best with her move to Europe!), we tried to capture our culture at CAIS. We wanted to be able to say: “This is who we are”.  Here it is:

• We believe in better. We challenge our schools to be better through PD, accreditation and research; but we also challenge ourselves to be better in everything we do.
• We are direct with each other. There is high integrity, kindness, and trust, but that only comes from feedback: we praise publicly and criticize privately. There are no surprises on our team. When you work in a virtual office, and even when you don’t, you have to speak up with confidence.
• We deliver client service beyond expectations. We are a nimble team and everyone works hard to respond to member needs. We love to hear that members are surprised by what we accomplished for them.
• We listen to our members. Although we also work hard to understand their needs by researching and observing schools, we are at our best when we can say that we heard you say this, so we did that.
• We believe that everyone supports everyone on our team. We are results-oriented, which means that we prioritize our time according to the needs of the organization at the time. We are a small team, so we all have to pitch in on projects when needed.
• We are background people. We understand that when you work for a membership association, your job is to make others look good, especially volunteers.
• We presume good intentions. That’s just a simple rule for us.
• We play to our strengths. We know each other well and strive for a model that leverages our capacity.
• We don’t take ourselves too seriously. We work hard but we also laugh and pursue interests beyond our jobs. We know we are a bit quirky, and we like it that way.
• We are comfortable with the unpredictable. Okay, we try hard to be comfortable with the unpredictable and may have to remind each other of this one! Working as a virtual team can be messy, which is why the previous belief is so important.

Full disclosure: Our strategic advisor suggested we model our approach on Google’s Ten things we know to be true. But at least we didn’t review Google’s until after we worked on our own. I hope your team might do the same!

One last point: The cover of this month’s Harvard Business Review is Managing the 24/7 Workplace, which explores the problems with today’s work environment like ours. We read this with great interest… here’s the conclusion:

What defines our CAIS culture?By valuing all aspects of people’s identities, rewarding work output instead of work time, and taking steps to protect employees’ personal lives, leaders can begin to unravel the ideal-worker myth that has become woven into
the fabric of their organizations. And that will enhance employees’ resilience, their creativity, and their satisfaction on the job.

At a time when people seem to be criticizing the high intensity workplace, our team seems to have it figured out. Always good to have Harvard on your side…

 

CAIS is in the business of asking good questions

This is the season for graduation speeches, and here is another one that I love, by James Ryan, Dean of the Harvard School of Education.  He tells the story of his past speeches – he spoke two years ago on time and last year about sin, so when people asked him what he would speak about at this year’s graduation ceremony, he would reply: That’s a good question. And this became his topic. He lists what he believes are the most important questions, and of the six, my favourite question is this – “Wait. What?”

I have other favourite questions; in fact, I often say CAIS is in the business of asking questions. Now before you ask, “Wait. What?” let me explain.

1. Accreditation

At CAIS, we spent a lot of time determining the best questions to ask in the Internal Evaluation process, and I am proud that our 2015 Accreditation Guidelines include the most relevant questions that the best schools should be discussing, if they want to remain the best schools in Canada. This spring, we spent considerable time talking about the questions to ask during a CAIS Accreditation visit. We have always said that the role of the Visiting Committee is primarily to validate what was written in the school’s Internal Evaluation Report. But what could be even better? (One of my favourite questions…) Two initiatives:

1. a) We believe that great schools have great Boards, so we are now including a Board member on the Sunday of every Accreditation visit to make the governance review a true peer-to-peer process.
2. b) We also believe that great schools focus on culture, so we have introduced a new School Culture Focus Group, led by the CAIS On-site Coordinator, to our review process.

2. Research

You will not believe the quality of this year’s Research Reports.   We have 15 CAIS leaders conducting research on some of the biggest questions facing our industry. These will be shared this fall, but I want to thank Tammy, Glenn, Chad, Denise, Sarah, Helen, Shailau, Danielle, Mary Anne, Jim, Justin, Garth, Glen, William, and Adrian now for their hard work this year. Honestly? We couldn’t be happier with their progress.

3. Learning Community

CAIS is a national learning community. Different national groups come together face-to-face only three times per year (Heads and Chairs in October; National Leaders in April; and Aspiring Leaders in July). This means that we are “Online all the time” exploring – again! – the big questions in education. Over 200 people participated in our Spring Governance webinar series and today we are announcing a new one: CAIS Students will lead a panel on how to support LGBTQ+ students. How can schools be better at supporting students’ questions around gender and sexuality? Now that’s a good question.

When we are best at our jobs, we are focused on the best questions. No “Wait. What?” about that.

p.s. Watch Dean James Ryan’s speech called Good Questions here.