by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader

In his post, “Control or Cooperation”, Mel Riddile created a significant amount of discussion when he declared that there are two viable relationships for the administrative and teaching staffs.  From his perspective, school leaders can choose either to demand control with a subsequent loss of cooperation or pursue additional cooperation while accepting a lesser degree of control.  Riddile argues that the latter is the far better direction for educational success.  An important group shares his view.  A recent article by Nick Anderson in the Washington Post, “Survey: Supportive leadership helps retain top teachers” reports that when 40,000 teachers were asked to assess what was more important to them increased pay or more administrative support the results were surprisingly lopsided.  Two out of every three of those surveyed believed that the positive assistance of administrators was more important than the amount of money in their paycheck.  This preference for backing over bucks reinforces Riddile’s assessment.

Two More Important “C” Words           

While I strongly agree with Riddile, I also believe there are two other words that need to be brought into the conversation.  Those words are “coordination” and “communication”.   One of the greatest obstacles to synchronizing the work of the administrative and teaching teams is the fact that the two groups operate on inherently different timetables.   This disconnect is especially true at schools that are on “block” schedules.  The different days are usually designated by two colors such as “green” and “blue”.  The problem is quite simple—while the “color” of the day is critical to the teacher it is of little relevance to an administrator. For the vast majority of classroom teachers a green day is very different from a blue one.  Weeks in advance lesson plans are developed, tests are scheduled, and assignments are made with the specific dates in mind.

A Cold Front Collides With a Warm One

This different view of the school day needs to be taken into consideration by the administrative team.  Earlier this year a teacher complained to me that when he looked at his school calendar he noticed that within the first twelve weeks there were four different days when the bell schedule was to be changed resulting in the loss of two to three hours of class time.  While all of the dates had a valid reason for the adjustment the problem was that all four occurred on the same color day.  Later he realized that both the fall pep rally and class meetings were on the same block day as the other four.  When he brought this problem to the attention of an assistant principal he was told that it was too late to change.   This example brings us back to the original premise:  attaining cooperation also requires coordination and communication.

Establishing the school calendar may be the responsibility of the administrative team but they are not the group most directly affected by those decisions.  Consequently, they need to aggressively solicit the input of the teaching staff.   When there is a complaint they need to listen and learn.  If no change can be made the reasons need to be given in detail along with a promise to avoid such problems in the future. 

How important are issues like the one just described?  Polling of tens of thousands of teachers made it very clear that the vast majority view the positive support of the administrative team as more important than an increase in the money in their pocket.  Could there be a clearer mandate for making every effort to improve cooperation through communication and coordination at all levels?