The Pragmatic Leader: Eric Nadelstern

Our final guest speaker of the Master of Art's in Educational Leadership and Societal Change Distinguished Speaker’s Series at Soka University of America flew in from New York City.  Eric Nadelstern is the writer of 10 Lessons from New York City Schools: What Really Works to Improve Education and current Professor of Practice in Educational Leadership at Teachers College.  Former Deputy Chancellor of the Division of School Support and Instruction in New York, he developed a creative reform effort called the Autonomy Zone where schools are given the freedom to choose their own methodologies.  With thirty plus years of experience, Eric had several successes and mistakes to share. 

On the first day, Eric talked about his parents who were Holocaust survivors and how he had grown up in a Jewish hub of the city.  His career started out as a speech and ESL teacher during President Nixon’s administration.  He had taught eight years at the oldest high school in the country, Marshalltown.  Early in his career, he became disillusioned with the New York City Department of Education and their management of schools.  Seeking to make a difference, he opened up his own school, International High School, before leaving in 2000 to become the New York City’s Deputy Chancellor.  In hearing his story and how he talked about education reform, I got an immediate sense that Eric was a no-nonsense type of person who could talk about the business of education really well. His leadership style was pragmatic and he made decisions based on what he thought would have the most impact for student success even if it meant closing down schools or firing staff.  Throughout our discussions, I had a hard time figuring out where to place him.  Did he care about students?  Yes definitely.  But was his tactics harsh? Perhaps.  I kept trying to figure out where his values lied and kept asking questions about it.

In Eric’s second session, we were asked to design our own Out-of-the-Box School.  Eric wanted to know, Can failed schools reinvent themselves?  My group designed an outdoor wilderness school called the Center of Creative Coexistence for at-risk youth.  Since our school was so out of the box (out of your mind!), we had to think about what classrooms would look like, whether they were on the center or on the periphery, and if the school would be coed or one gender.  Eric immediately liked the direction of our school and asked about disciplinary practices as well as whether coed or one gender education really made a difference.  Over and over, Eric challenged us to think about the implementation piece of educational reform and shared stories that showed reform never goes as planned. 

Eric Nadelstern’s 10 Lessons from New York City Schools

1. Invest in leadership
2. Devolve resources, authority, and responsibility at your school
3. Make everyone responsible for student performance
4. Reward success, enact consequences
5. Create small schools
6. Reduce teacher load
7. Focus relentlessly on student learning
8. Partner with a private/non-profit sector
9. Reform the central office
10. Be Bold

Toward the end of our time with Eric, we started to discuss educational reform and the purpose it should serve.  We went into a discussion about human nature: whether humans are prone to act in their own self-interest or if they have an altruistic nature that can reign supreme?  Eric believed in the former, saying, “unless we are actively thinking about this, then we will revert back to tribalism.”  Regardless of whether I agreed, I felt that Eric's personal and professional experiences had all taught us key lessons for life and for our careers. One of my classmates ended the discussion with a quotation from the founder of Soka University of America, Daisaku Ikeda: “For what purpose should one cultivate wisdom? May you always ask yourself this question.”  Applying this question to large scale reform, I feel policymakers should always ask for what purpose should a policy serve.  If they answer, "the happiness of the learner," then we are moving in a better direction than before. 

As Eric departed and as we bid farewell to the three and half week Distinguished Speaker's Series, I reflected on what I had learned from each educational leader: the Heart-Led Leader and  former Columbine High School Principal, Frank DeAngelis; the Data-Driven Leader and National Principal of the Year, Jayne Ellspermann; the Political Leader and former Assistant Secretary of Education, Thelma Melendez; the Community Leader and former Board member of Chicago Public Schools, Carlos Azcoitia; the Professional Leader and founder of Learning Forward, Stephanie Hirsh; and finally, the Pragmatic Leader and former Deputy Chancellor of New York City Schools, Eric Nadelstern.  Each had come from a unique background and each had a different story to share, but their commitment to education was uniform.  I truly believe the course and all the speakers will forever remain etched into my educational memory. 

The Professional Leader: Stephanie Hirsh

The fifth guest speaker in Soka University of America's Distinguished Speaker's Series, Stephanie Hirsh, is a fellow Texan and the Executive Director of Learning Forward, an organization committed to professional development for educators.  Stephanie has almost thirty years of experience in the professional development field.   She started her career in my hometown, Richardson Independent School District.  We immediately developed a good rapport discussing my elementary school, Hamilton Park, and high school, Richardson High.

Stephanie started our time together by asking us, “What was our best professional learning experience?”  As we went around the room, it was difficult for some to come up with an answer.  We, like many teachers, in the U.S. did not have a good experience with professional development (PD). Stephanie discussed how this was one of the critical issues in her field.  She then talked about the different challenges to PD and ways to overcome them.  Stephanie said that there are PD resisters and PD omnivores.  One of my classmates, she explained, was a PD omnivore: they took every course available within their school district.  Stephanie explained the best professional development can challenge people’s assumptions about what it means to be a teacher.  In her experience, she sees professional development ultimately needs to address two things: the individual needs of the teacher and the collective responsibility of furthering student success. 

During our time together, Stephanie introduced us to online learning communities that provide techniques and opportunities for educators to discuss and share resources.  Exemplars of collaborative work among teachers for student success were shared, such as teachingchannel.org.  Stephanie was also very interested in getting our input on a tool she called rapid prototyping of solutions.  We looked at one problem in education and analyzed proposed solutions.  My group looked at aligning re-licensure with professional learning opportunities in different states.

Stephanie Hirsh’s Take Home Points and Resources:

1. The Mirage Report by the The New Teacher Project
2. Reclaiming our Democracy by Sam Harris
3. Professional development has a potential for supporting growth but it can get co-opted or have inconsistencies that can negatively impact others. 
4. How do you develop a system that respects the specific areas individuals want to grow in and also help all teachers get better?
5. There are PD omnivores and there are PD resisters
6. PD is a way to create equity for all students
7. How do you ensure fidelity of ideas? How do you ensure quality?
8. There is a benefit to learning from things in the past
9. What do we want to collectively work together on? From whom do we want to learn?
10. When teachers share collective responsibility for the learning of their students then the experience of our students will improve nationally.

 Before leaving, Stephanie gave us some insight on how professional learning organizations are trying to make big changes by looking for disruptor ideas.   She had us each write down #whywelearn and think about ways we could disrupt or reinvent our current school system.  While our time was short with Stephanie, we were able to see the potential of professional learning for educators and get a glimpse at the original purpose of professional learning communities.  I believe these are tools that can make a difference in a teacher’s life, a student’s life, and the entire system.

The Community Leader: Carlos Azcoitia

     To start of our third week of the Distinguished Speakers Series, Carlos Azcoitia, from Chicago Public Schools and John Spry Community School, gave us a visit.  With a Cuban heritage and a Basque surname, we quickly got an introduction into Carlos’ philosophy: becoming a culturally proficient leader with a vision of a school as a community can lead to societal change.  We had to get started right away!

Carlos took us through a journey of self-discovery, learning how culture, language, and identity tie in with schooling and, most importantly, community. Bringing a wealth of experience, including serving as Deputy Chief of Education for Chicago Public Schools, Carlos shared his lessons learned over his thirty plus year career.  We started off Day 1 with Carlos stating that “identity is very important and everyone has an identity.”  He explained he was Cuban by ethnicity, but had finished high school in Puerto Rico.  In Chicago, his career started out as an elementary principal in a neighborhood school of a Mexican American community before moving up as a Superintendent and later, Deputy Chief of Education.  He decided after serving as Deputy Chief of Education to return back to the front lines of education and develop a PreK through high school, John Spry Community School.  John Spry has a nearly constant 100% graduation rate.

Carlos continued the day by sharing the principles of a community school.  He emphasized that having a strong understanding of cultural heritage is vital for academic identities.  He provided us with a handout on the five essential elements of a culturally proficient professional:

Assesses culture

Values diversity

Manages the dynamics of difference

Adapts to diversity

Institutionalizes cultural knowledge

Carlos also discussed the integration between school, community, and family, emphasizing that in order to understand one’s self, it is important to know one’s history.  To underscore this point, we conducted a poem exercise called I AM FROM.  In this activity, we wrote down a few sentences that described our origins.  Through exchanging our poems, we were able to get a new sense of where each person had come from.  Our dynamic instructor also spoke to us about the essence of a good leader and the important skill of interpersonal relationships.  He talked about building bridges and being boundary expanders.  Carlos reiterated that power in an organization is the capacity generated by relationships.  In his article, Community Schools and the Immigrant Debate: Revisiting History, he wrote, “Schools cannot escape their interdependence with outside factors that influence whether students learn.”  Emphasizing the interdependence of the community with the school is an important endeavor in the quest for societal change.  

Carlos’ Take Home Points:

1. Leadership transcends ethnicity 
2. Schools are collective endeavors based on individual successes
3. Education is a community enterprise
4. Commit to create a future distinct from the past
5. Build the social fabric and transform isolation into the whole
6. Leadership is listening
7. When that “PhD” or “Doctor” front is not there, then you can be much more creative
8. Happy individuals find their way to make their job palatable or find a way out
9. Need to be psychologically active in what we do because it shows enthusiasm
10. If complaining every day, then you must go somewhere else

    In the last session with Carlos, our class delved into the principles of action and the community school utopia.  Drawing from Theresa Amabile’s theory of creativity and Peter Block’s The Structure of Belonging, Carlos shared key ideas on the power of the small group, organizing gatherings, and the leader’s role.  We debated whether community schools actually furthered racial segregation in the U.S. or whether it could serve to strengthen the racial, ethnic, and linguistic diversity of American society.  Carlos believes that by expanding boundaries, community schools get stronger.   The community model ultimately is a hopeful start to breaking down those barriers and reaching out to the Other. 

The Political Leader: Thelma Melendez de Santa Ana

Our third guest speaker of the series, Thelma Melendez de Santa Ana, is the current Los Angeles Unified School District’s Chief Executive Officer and former Assistant Secretary of Education.  Due to her outstanding career, Thelma had a wealth of knowledge and stories to share with us.  Her encounters with presidents and the insider scoop on how education policy and positions occur are some of the highlights of our time with her. 

In our first session, Thelma told us she was going to provide us with tools to share about the self.  She called it, The Leadership Story: Who I Am.  The tool, done right, should show (1) how one teaches, (2) how one leads, and (3) who they are.  Thelma opened up to us about her own story.  She first showed us a photograph of her kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Silverman, and herself reading.  Thelma showed this photograph to illustrte one source of her motivation for the field of education, her Ocupassion as she calls it.  This Ocupassion has motivated her and motivates others.  Stories, she illustrated to us, are powerful images that can rise people to action.  She then showed us an old logo of UCLA and how she wanted to attend UCLA as a high school senior but was told it wasn’t a possibility for her by her counselor.  As I heard these stories, I could see my own stories: I had a third grade reading specialist, Mrs. Black, who tutored me every week when I was behind a grade level; and, I had a high school counselor who also didn't believe I could go to university.   Thelma described these stories can be powerful motivators and can serve as the inspiration of our work.  

Continuing to share about the power of stories, Thelma discussed how she had been writing a blog about her experiences teaching.  She had written about one mute boy whose family had very little.  A local couple had read about the boy on her blog and decided they wanted to donate a bicycle to the boy.  She then showed us a photo of bell peppers that were given to her from a couple in the Santa Ana school district where she served as superintendent. 

After Thelma’s presentation, we conducted an activity that helped us to illustrate our own story.   We were to ask to write down what is the change you want to make in the world, specific experiences that have shaped our story, and a personal story that will help others understand why we want to make that change.  I wrote down the following:

The change I want to make in the world is to promote diversity between different people of ethnicity and language, to build a more harmonious world with the natural environment, to help ensure our forests survive far into the future, that current generations appreciate and have genuine experiences with the natural environment, that schools foster these beliefs, and that I stay true to my convictions even if it means resisting the path of success.

Thelma shared with us that our experiences lead us down certain paths and that our story includes all of those twists and turns we make in our lives.   She shared writing down our stories helps to motivate people little by little. 

Thelma’s Take Home Points:

1. "We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community...Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and for our own” Cesar Chavez
2. Why do I want to be a leader and why would people want to follow me?
3. Marshall Ganz’ three stories:
4. Story of self: Why am I called to do this work?
5. Story of us: Why is my cause your cause too?
6. Story of now: Why is inaction no longer an option?
7. “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance” Robert F. Kennedy
8. The four C’s of education: courage, collaboration, capacity, and commitment.

After discussing our stories, Thelma shared with us her own story of getting nominated as assistant secretary of education, how her nomination was a surprise, and how she had to keep it quiet. While Thelma’s political ties were clearly important aids in her career’s success and some of the discourse Thelma choose to engage with seems to further tighten the business tie to education, her tools for motivating others are prevalent.