Fearless Schools

Building Trust and Resilience for Learning, Teaching, and Leading

Douglas Reeves

• Publisher: Creative Leadership Press
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781954744226
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Administration

What does it take to have fearless schools?It starts with psychological safety-students, teachers, and leaders who know that mistakes are the source of learning, not shame or embarrassment. In order for great learning to take place, we first must build the trust and resilience needed to produce fearless students, teachers, and leaders-and ultimately create fearless schools.

"If we are truly going to make schools inviting places for all students to come to and flourish, then the status quo, the 'normal, ' is not good enough. To build the trust, the collegiality, the aspirational expectations among educators for this to happen-we need to be fearless. Doug Reeves outlines the conditions for such fearlessness: not tolerating mediocrity, confronting reality over wishful thinking, listening and candor, and resilience and learning together from errors. Written with passion, this book invites you to develop the courage to create schools that are fearless such that all (educators and students) are improving, aspiring, and are part of a learning organization." -John Hattie, Emeritus Laureate Professor, Melbourne Graduate School of Education; Chair, Board of the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership

"In Fearless Schools, Dr. Reeves tackles an urgent issue facing our children and the staff members who work with them. Fear of the virus, fear of change, and even fear of interacting with others will create a critical need to address these fears, reduce anxiety, and generally tend to the social and emotional health of children and staff." -Chris Lee Nicastro, PhD, former Commissioner of Education, State of Missouri

 

 

 

Part I:

 

The Trust

Imperative

 

 

 

Everything depends on trust. Personal relationships, the global economy, and our ability to have a sense of purpose and meaning in our lives—all depend upon the fundamental trust equation that our actions, resources, and emotional energy have value (Frei & Moriss, 2020). While we do not depend upon reciprocity for all of our work—the Newtonian dictum that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction—we do expect that our investment of time, energy, resources, and emotions are not in vain, and this first section of the book explores that necessity.

Chapter 1 considers the research on the trust advantage. We will learn how trust not only improves the morale and confidence of students and staff members but also how high-trust organizations have better performance on every measure. This is a global phenomenon, with similar advantages to trust occurring in a wide variety of cultures, languages, and nations. Chapter 2 provides practical guidelines for building trust. Schools and educational systems are hierarchical organizations with governing boards, superintendents, principals, department chairs, and other levels of hierarchy. And hierarchies, no matter how benevolent the leader may be, are breeding grounds for mistrust. Thus, good intentions and personal trustworthiness are helpful but insufficient to build trust in schools and systems. Chapter 3 considers the maintenance of trust and how it requires a consistent effort and rhythm of promises made and promises kept. While leaders will be forgiven for many mistakes if they have credibility, none of their skills in analysis, communication, or planning will matter if they have failed to establish credibility (Kouzes & Posner, 2011). Chapter 4 considers how trust that may take years to build can be destroyed in a moment with exaggerated claims or falsehoods, or with a rash impulse toward punishment.

Chapter 1.

The Trust Advantage

In this chapter—

• Learning

• Morale

• Impact

• Innovation

Fearless organizations are characterized by high levels of trust. In fields as diverse as manufacturing, medical care, software development, and education, fearless organizations have greater productivity and higher levels of employee engagement and innovation (Edmondson, 2018). Trust and psychological safety are better predictors of performance of teams than educational backgrounds and personality types, the criteria often used to select and promote employees. Indeed, the tight-lipped diplomacy that is often associated with an upward career trajectory reinforces the code of silence. That behavior is precisely the opposite of that needed in a psychologically safe environment. What may appear on the outside as diplomacy can be, in fact, a reflection of fear—fear of conflict and fear of error—and these fears undermine learning. In this chapter we will explore why trust is essential for learning at every level, from the individual student to the faculty, leadership team, and governing board. The fearless school has four clear advantages over schools where fear and silence are the rule of the day. These advantages include learning, morale, impact, and innovation.

Learning

A high-trust environment has clear advantages for student learning (Modono, 2017). This does not imply a climate of happy talk in which disagreements are avoided in the pursuit of a positive culture. Rather, respectful but difficult discussions are part of the environment, because divergent thinking and a consideration of alternative points of view are keys to learning for adults and students. Fearless learning requires a culture of curiosity in which the candid acknowledgment of what we don’t know is not a mark of shame or ignorance but a reflection of the deep desire to learn. It’s difficult to imagine Copernicus or Galileo wilting with fear in the face of a multiple-choice test about the cosmos. Our images of great explorers are those of insatiable curiosity, embracing the unknown not with certainty but with a quest for learning.

When viewed from an intellectual standpoint, curiosity is a valued trait; but we have several hundred years of negative stereotypes to overcome in order to make this trait a valuable part of education. The phrase “curiosity killed the cat” can be traced to a play by Ben Johnson in the 16th century (Literary Devices, n.d.), and through the ages the meaning has been consistent: Curiosity, especially about things that are not of immediate relevance to you, can be dangerous. Stay in your lane, be satisfied with your present state of knowledge, and don’t ask unpleasant questions. As the parents of toddlers know, one of the first words our darlings learn, right after “No!” is “Why?” It’s charming the first time, and perhaps the second. But after the 10th time, it becomes irksome, and the exasperated parent replies, in a tone that defies challenge, “Because I said so!” Thus do we extinguish curiosity before children first cross the threshold of the schoolhouse door. Picasso said “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up” (Chase, 2014). So the reason that trust is vital to learning is that in order to learn, we must ask questions; we must try and fail. And in order to ask questions, try, and fail, we must have confidence that our curiosity won’t kill us or, even worse, disappoint our parents.

Morale

Morale is key to success in any organization and is strongly related to peak performance of employees and leaders. Morale is the result of leadership actions, not rhetoric: “You can’t boss your way out of a morale problem” (Mallik et al., 2019). Leaders can neither demand trust nor beg for it; first, they must trust their colleagues and employees. Everyone brings to the workplace memories of every job, from the teenage summer job in which they were berated by a manager, to their previous position in which political gamesmanship was elevated over competence. In hierarchies—and schools and educational systems are hierarchical systems, notwithstanding any claims to democratic rules and commitments to consensus—leaders are separated from those on the front line. Every gap in communication is filled in with assumptions, and these assumptions are colored not just by the present work environment, but by previous ones. This is true of the adults in schools and most especially true of students. Leaders must actively show trust by asking open-ended questions, listening without judgment or debate, and expressing genuine curiosity through follow-up questions.

Leaders can also create a culture of trust in which morale is genuine and enduring by showing respect and allowing creativity to thrive (Schaefer, 2019). Creativity requires not merely the expression of brilliant ideas, but a seemingly endless cy...

Table of contents

• a. Praise for Fearless Schools
• b. Title Page
• c. Copyright Page
• d. Dedication
• e. Acknowledgments
• f. Contents
• g. Preface
• h. Introduction. Being Fearless in a Fearful Time
• i. Part I. The Trust Imperative
• 1. The Trust Advantage
• 2. Building Trust
• 3. Maintaining Trust
• 4. How Trust Is Destroyed
• j. Part II. Resilience
• 5. Physical Resilience
• 6. Emotional Resilience
• 7. Organizational Resilience
• k. Part III. Fearlessness in Practice
• 8. Fearless Classrooms
• 9. Fearless Leadership
• 10. Fearless Change
• 11. Putting It All Together
• l. About the Author
• m. References
• n. Index