Trust Matters
eBook - ePub

Trust Matters

Leadership for Successful Schools

Megan Tschannen-Moran

Share book
  1. English
  2. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Trust Matters

Leadership for Successful Schools

Megan Tschannen-Moran

Book details
Book preview
Table of contents
Citations

About This Book

Make your school soar by escalating trust between teachers, students, and families

Trust is an essential element in all healthy relationships, and the relationships that exist in your school are no different. How can your school leaders or teachers cultivate trust? How can your institution maintain trust once it is established? These are the questions addressed and answered in Trust Matters: Leadership for Successful Schools, 2nd Edition. The book delves into the helpful research that has been conducted on the topic of trust in school. Although rich with research data, Trust Matters also contains practical advice and strategies ready to be implemented. This second edition expands upon the role of trust between teachers and students, teachers and administrators, and schools and families.

Trust Matters: Leadership for Successful Schools also covers a range of sub-topics relevant to trust in school. All chapters in the text have questions for reflection and discussion. Engaging chapters such as "Teachers Trust One Another" and "Fostering Trust with Students" have thought-provoking trust-building questions and activities you can use in the classroom or in faculty meetings. This valuable resource:

  • Examines ways to cultivate trust
  • Shares techniques and practices that help maintain trust
  • Advises leaders of ways to include families in the school's circle of trust
  • Addresses the by-products of betrayed trust and how to restore it

With suspicion being the new norm within schools today, Trust Matters is the book your school needs to help it rise above. It shows just how much trust matters in all school relationships—administrator to teacher; teacher to student; school to family—and in all successful institutions.

Frequently asked questions

How do I cancel my subscription?
Simply head over to the account section in settings and click on “Cancel Subscription” - it’s as simple as that. After you cancel, your membership will stay active for the remainder of the time you’ve paid for. Learn more here.
Can/how do I download books?
At the moment all of our mobile-responsive ePub books are available to download via the app. Most of our PDFs are also available to download and we're working on making the final remaining ones downloadable now. Learn more here.
What is the difference between the pricing plans?
Both plans give you full access to the library and all of Perlego’s features. The only differences are the price and subscription period: With the annual plan you’ll save around 30% compared to 12 months on the monthly plan.
What is Perlego?
We are an online textbook subscription service, where you can get access to an entire online library for less than the price of a single book per month. With over 1 million books across 1000+ topics, we’ve got you covered! Learn more here.
Do you support text-to-speech?
Look out for the read-aloud symbol on your next book to see if you can listen to it. The read-aloud tool reads text aloud for you, highlighting the text as it is being read. You can pause it, speed it up and slow it down. Learn more here.
Is Trust Matters an online PDF/ePUB?
Yes, you can access Trust Matters by Megan Tschannen-Moran in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Pedagogía & Administración de la educación. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Publisher
Jossey-Bass
Year
2014
ISBN
9781118837955

CHAPTER 1
A MATTER OF TRUST

I don’t ask for much, I only want trust,
And you know it don’t come easy.
—RINGO STARR © STARTLING MUSIC LTD
Sometimes even principals with the best of intentions don’t get it right. Sometimes they are unable to lead their school into becoming the kind of productive working community that they imagined and hoped for. When these well-intentioned principals fail to earn the trust of their faculty and their larger school community, their vision is doomed to frustration and failure. Consider the stories of Gloria and Fred, two principals each leading a school in the same urban district.

MEANING WELL

When Gloria Davies learned that she had been assigned to Lincoln School, one of the lowest-performing elementary schools in her district, she was determined to turn that school around. She believed that the primarily low-income students at Lincoln, many of whom lived in a nearby housing project, deserved a better education than they were getting. She wanted to implement a new, more powerful, and rigorous curriculum, especially in reading. She wanted to get teachers fired up to make the changes that were required to turn the school around. And she planned to fire any teachers who failed to get fired up on behalf of their students. This is what she believed she owed to the students. Gloria often asserted, “I don’t work for the teachers, I work for the students and their families.”
Midway through her third year at Lincoln, however, the school had failed to make the gains she had hoped for. Gloria was mired in an intense power struggle with the faculty at Lincoln. She had been frustrated by union rules and procedures that had limited her authority. Faculty members had filed numerous grievances against her for what they perceived as manipulative and heavy-handed tactics. Building council meetings, a mechanism for shared decision making mandated by the district, had been reduced to a war of the rule books, each side quoting chapter and verse from the district contract or the union guidelines to bolster its position. Although Gloria had been successful in removing one untenured teacher, her attempts to remove veteran teachers had been met with resistance and rebellion that went well beyond the targeted teachers. Morale was perilously low, and student achievement scores had remained stubbornly poor. To protect herself, Gloria often confined herself to her office and was rarely seen around the school, except to make unscheduled observations of teachers she was trying to remove. Sadly, Gloria’s dreams of turning around this failing school had not materialized, in large part because her methods had cost her the trust of her faculty and led to resentment, power struggles, and sabotage.
Fred Martin, principal of Fremont Elementary, a few miles from Lincoln, was a friendly man with a warm smile and an easygoing disposition. He was generally well liked by the teachers, students, and parents in his community, and he was sympathetic to the difficult circumstances that many of his low-income students faced. He was equally sympathetic to the stresses inherent in teaching in an urban context. Fred considered himself a progressive principal, and he delegated many important and controversial decisions to the building council. He viewed his low-key role with the council as one of empowering teachers as decision makers in the school. He saw himself as fair minded and could usually see both sides of a conflict. Consequently, he was reluctant to make a decision that would be perceived as favoring one side or another. He was disappointed that his students had done so poorly on the state assessments but felt that policymakers should be made to understand the challenges that he and his teachers faced.
Fred’s discomfort with and avoidance of conflict had not made for an absence of strife at Fremont. On the contrary, without direct efforts to address conflict productively, discord and disagreements had escalated. Teachers felt angry and unsupported by Fred when they sent misbehaving students to him for discipline and perceived him as giving those students little more than a fatherly chat. Teachers in conflict with one another were left to their own devices to resolve their differences. When they went to Fred, he wanted to avoid taking sides and so avoided making any kind of judgment at all. Instead he referred them to the building council or told them simply that they were going to need to work things out. As a result, long-standing grudges between teachers had simmered for years. Bitterness between the teachers and the teacher’s aides, many of whom were parents hired from the neighborhood, had become an entrenched part of the school culture. Teachers perceived the aides as being lazy and unwilling to do the job they were hired to do, whereas the aides found the teachers unwelcoming, demanding, and rude. In the meantime, student achievement had failed to significantly improve, despite the increasing pressure of state and district accountability measures.
Though well intentioned, neither Gloria nor Fred had been successful at shaping a constructive school environment. What was missing in both circumstances was trust. Because these principals were not regarded as trustworthy by their teachers, neither had positive results to show for his or her efforts. On the one hand, Gloria, the overzealous reformer, had been too impatient for change to foster the kinds of relationships she would have needed to enroll her faculty in the effort to make the inspiring vision she had for the school a reality. Her heavy-handed tactics were seen as betrayals by her teachers. Fred, on the other hand, in trying to keep the peace by avoiding conflict, lost the trust of his faculty through benign neglect. His attempts to keep everybody happy resulted in general malaise and a perpetual undercurrent of unresolved tension in the school. Although teachers liked Fred and felt they could count on his sympathetic concern, they could not count on him to take action on their behalf because of his fear of making anyone angry. His teachers were left feeling vulnerable and unprotected.
The stories of these two principals demonstrate contrasting approaches in how principals respond to resistance to change among their faculty—they either overly assert their authority or they withdraw from the fray. Both responses damage trust, and both hamper a principal’s ability to lead. Gloria focused too narrowly on the task of school improvement and neglected the relationships that she needed for cultivating a shared vision and fostering the collective effort required for improved outcomes. Although she was correct in thinking that her primary responsibility was to educate her students and not to promote the comfort and ease of her teachers, she failed to grasp that principals necessarily get their work done through other people. Fred, in contrast, focused too much on relationships at the expense of the task. But because the task involved protecting the well-being of members of the school community, Fred’s avoidance of conflict had damaged the very relationships he sought to enhance. By withdrawing, Fred failed to offer the leadership, structure, and support needed to provide the students in his care with a quality education.
Both Fred and Gloria can been seen as having demonstrated problems of responsibility (Martin, 2002). Gloria took too much responsibility for the change initiative in her school and so prevented teachers from getting on board with and taking ownership of the process. In vigorously asserting her authority, Gloria made her point all too well that teachers were not in charge and did not have a say in the decisions that vitally affected their work life. Her actions had violated the sense of care that teachers expected from their principal, causing them to question her integrity. Their trust in her had been damaged. Fred, in contrast, took on too little responsibility, handing decisions over to teachers that they did not have the expertise to make. He did not support them adequately through mentoring and training to acquire the skills to contribute to the decision making necessary to run the school. He did not demonstrate the competence and reliability necessary to build trust. So although he was generally well liked, he was not seen as trustworthy by his faculty and the wider school community.
The problems these two principals evidence are not unusual. New principals, like Gloria, often feel the need to enter a school setting and create change. Inexperienced principals tend to be unsure of their authority; as a result, a common mistake among novice school leaders is to be overly forceful in establishing their authority within the school. Barth (1981) observed, “Most people I know who are beginning principals enter their new roles as advocates, friends, helpers, supporters, often former colleagues of teachers. By December of their first year they have become adversaries, requirers, forcers, judges, and setters of limits” (p. 148). This approach can be counterproductive when trying to develop a high-trust school. Building trust requires patience and planning, but novice principals tend to have an impatient “get it done yesterday” attitude.
Fred, however, apparently lacked important leadership skills, such as the ability to resolve conflict, and had had insufficient professional development and training to hone these skills. Perhaps he also lacked the courage and the stamina to face the sometimes uncomfortable aspects of school leadership and especially school change. In the face of resistance, he withdrew. Although empowering teachers to participate in real decision making within the school can be an effective means of reaching higher-quality decisions, Fred failed to provide the leadership and training to help his teachers be successful at shared leadership. The teachers and students in his school needed more than a sympathetic ear to help resolve their conflicts. They needed someone who could structure a process that would lead to productive solutions.

DOING WELL

Although these two scenarios are not uncommon, principals need not follow either path. Brenda Thompson was principal of Brookside Elementary, a school serving a student body similar to those at Lincoln and Fremont, in the same urban district. Through trustworthy leadership, Brenda earned the confidence of her faculty. By balancing a strong sense of care for her school’s students and teachers with high performance expectations, Brenda fostered a school-wide culture of trust. Responsibility for school improvement was shared. By working hard herself, Brenda set an example and was able to command an extra measure of effort from her teachers. These efforts were rewarded with above-average performance from Brookside students on measures of student achievement.
Brenda’s care for her faculty and students was evidenced in her accessibility. Brenda was rarely in her office during the school day, preferring to spend her time in the hallways, classrooms, and cafeteria. She spent lunch recess on the playground. She was available to assist teachers and students as they engaged in problem solving around the difficulties they faced. She was a trusted adviser who listened well, offering thoughtful and useful suggestions that demonstrated her expertise as an educator. She didn’t blame teachers or make them feel incompetent for having a problem or not knowing what to do. Further, her caring extended beyond the walls of the school; teachers, students, and parents sought her out for help with their lives outside of school as well. Brenda’s tone of caring was echoed in faculty members’ care for one another and for their students. The impetus for school improvement stemmed from this caring atmosphere: caring fueled the enormous effort needed to sustain a positive school environment in this challenging context.
Brenda understood that the work of schools happens primarily through relationships, so she invested time and resources in nurturing those relationships. There were a number of annual traditions that fostered good rapport, not just among faculty members but among students and their families as well. The academic year would begin with an ice cream social at which students and their families could meet teachers and support staff in an informal and fun setting before buckling down to the serious work of school. Another important community-building tradition at the school was an annual fall sleepover called Camp Night, when students and their parents, in mixed grade-level groups, participated in enjoyable, hands-on learning experiences; had a meal provided by the Parent Teacher Association (PTA); and slept at the school. Brenda also made use of a local high-ropes course twice a year for a challenging team-building experience with the third through fifth graders and their teachers—and parents were also invited along for the fun. Brenda joined right in, wearing jeans and hiking boots—which, for the students, were an amusing contrast to her typical heels and professional dress. Brenda structured time for the faculty to work together and share ideas and resources, providing common planning time on most days. The school was not free of conflict, but the strong sense of community supported the constructive resolution of the inevitable differences.
We can learn much about the vital role of trustworthy school leadership from the stories of these three principals. They are real principals, and the voices of the teachers throughout the book are taken from actual interviews. The short vignettes scattered throughout the chapters come from encounters with teachers and parents as well as exchanges with my students over the years I have been teaching and writing on this topic.
Principals and other school leaders need to earn the trust of the stakeholders in their school community if they are to be successful. They need to understand how trust is built and how it is lost. Getting smarter about trust will help school leaders foster more successful schools.

TRUST AND SCHOOLS

When we turn a nostalgic eye toward schools in an earlier era, it seems that there was once a time when a school enjoyed the implicit trust of its communities. School leaders were highly respected and largely unquestioned members of the community. Teachers were regarded as having valuable professional knowledge about how children learn and what is best for them. When a child was punished at school, parents accepted and reinforced the judgment of school officials. If t...

Table of contents