Stop Fake Work in Education

Creating Real Work Cultures That Drive Student Success

Gaylan Nielson, Betty Burks

• Publisher: Corwin
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781544381329
• eBook ISBN: 9781544381312
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Administration

Don't do more work—do the right work.

Educators at all levels have increasing demands keeping them working harder than ever, but they are often working hard on things that don't really help them reach the loftiest of goals—student success. This "Fake Work" can mire the most dedicated educator in exhaustion, burnout, and a lack of confidence that improvement is possible. 

Nielson and Burks show leaders and their teams how to stop doing Fake Work, by providing tools for gaining focus, building high-performance teams, and identifying and driving the right work with the right behaviors. When you offer your team a better way of working, planning, and collaborating, you turn Fake Work into Real Work—and stagnancy into dynamic change. This data-driven, research-based guide shows you

• An overall approach to addressing your culture—the foundational elements that supports the change that sets you up for maximum performance.
• A simple, three-part model—strategy, alignment, execution—for shedding Fake Work
• Road maps for aligning organizational strategies and actions
• Tools for gaining focus, building teams, and cultivating productive behaviors
• Real educators' stories
• Exercises, reflection questions, charts, checklists, and more

School change remains elusive when the path to success is murky. Clear the way for principals, teachers and students by turning Fake Work into Real Work—and uncertainty into true success.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series
• Half Title
• Acknowledgements
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Illustration List
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors
• Introduction
• Section I The Foundational Principles of Fake Work and Real Work—and Knowing the Difference
• 1 Fake Work: A Road to Nowhere
• Section II Understanding the Causes of Fake Work: How It Damages the Work Environment
• 2 Exploring the Origins of Fake Work in Education
• 3 The Culture of Fake Work and Four Causes That Enable Dysfunctionality
• 4 Fake Work Results From Poor Strategies, Weak Priorities, and the Failure to Align
• 5 Two Causes That Undermine Executing and Sustaining Strategic Implementation
• Section III The Paths to Real Work: A Step-by-Step Process for Strategy, Alignment, and Execution
• Prologue: Five Fundamentals for Doing Real Work
• Path 1 Create a High-Performance Educational Culture
• Path 2 Think Strategically
• Path 3 Plan Strategically
• Path 4 Focus on Your Real Work Priorities
• Path 5 Align Cultures, Leaders, Teams, and Schools
• Path 6 Execute the Real Work
• Path 7 Sustain the Real Work
• Epilogue And Then There Was Transformation
• References
• References
• Index
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