I then went on to offer two general ways a Christian school can engage in the discipleship of its students. The first way is what I deemed holistic discipleship. Holistic discipleship is the integration of faith into the thoughts and activities of everyday life: habits, meals, learning, and leisure, for example. Holistic discipleship in a Christian school can include Bible studies and prayer meetings, but more often, it occurs organically. One teacher may choose to end her literature class in prayer after an intense debate. Another teacher might catch a student after class to keep the conversation going about the relationship between science and faith. And so on. 

The second way I suggested a Christian school can engage in discipleship is through training students to think through a Christian grid, or worldview. We all approach knowledge and questions with particular assumptions and presuppositions about how the world works. Our students are no different. Likely formed through popular culture and social media, students have grown up within the milieu of a secular society and naturally see the world through this lens. Teachers can disciple their students to think Christianly about the world by drawing attention to secular worldview assumptions that often go unchallenged and going on to lay out a compelling biblical alternative. 

But are these two approaches to discipleship sufficient? Are there additional ways? What about the idea of spiritual formation and the impact it could have on the Christian school’s approach to discipleship? In this article, I will explore the use of spiritual disciplines in the context of discipleship and take a special look at the spiritual discipline of study.

Transformation Through the Disciplines

In his classic book Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster argues that spiritual disciplines are the gateway to spiritual transformation. Interestingly, in my first article on discipleship, I mentioned nothing of being transformed spiritually. And yet, is this not central to the aim of discipleship? If growing as a disciple is being conformed to the image of Christ, it will be nothing less than the utter transformation of a person into someone new.

Foster believes spiritual transformation happens first and foremost through receiving the free gift of righteousness. But he goes on to caution that this grace is received, not through passive antinomianism, but through active “sowing to the spirit” (Gal. 6:8). He writes, “Once we clearly understand that God’s grace is unearned and unearnable, and if we expect to grow, we must take up a consciously chosen course of action involving both individual and group life. That is the purpose of the spiritual disciplines” (7).

In a similar way, Dallas Willard begins his book Spirit of the Disciplines with the statement that modern Christianity has failed to take human transformation seriously. Therefore, the church must clarify and exemplify realistic methods of human transformation, thereby showing “how ordinary individuals…can become, through the grace of Christ, a love-filled, effective, and powerful community” (ix). Willard goes on to contend that the church today largely misunderstands how experiences and actions enable us to receive the grace of God. His solution: pursue a life of spiritual disciplines.

It seems to me that Foster and Willard are on to something. If the goal of discipleship is to help someone follow Jesus and grow in conformity to his image, we need to equip disciples with practical ways they can do that will lead to the transformation we desire. Just as a soccer coach has a collection of drills and exercises to strengthen the skill of his players and overtime to develop them into better soccer players, it seems that the would-be disciple-maker would possess a similar collection. And yet so often today, students growing up in Christian homes proceed through their young adult years without this training.

Types of Disciplines

So what are the disciplines that lead to spiritual transformation and which ones can be promoted in a Christian school context? Richard Foster divides the disciplines into three groups: inward disciplines, outward disciplines, and corporate disciplines. 

Inward disciplines focus on cultivating one’s inward life through prayerful contemplation and reflection. These practices include meditation, prayer, fasting, and study. Outward disciplines, on the contrary, are oriented toward one’s interaction with the external, often physical world. These practices include simplicity, solitude, submission, and service. Finally, the corporate disciplines underscore the practices that occur in community with others: confession, worship, guidance, and celebration. 

Interestingly, Dallas Willard groups the spiritual disciplines into only two categories: disciplines of abstinence and disciplines of engagement. Disciplines of abstinence are the practices we employ to gain control over “…the satisfaction of what we generally regard as normal and legitimate desires” (159). He is careful to point out that these desires are not necessarily sinful in and of themselves. But in our sinful human condition, it is these desires that often run “…a rebellious and harmful course.” The goal is to bring these desires back into coordination of a life aligned with Christ. Willard’s list of the disciplines of abstinence include solitude, silence, fasting, frugality, chastity, secrecy, and sacrifice. 

Conversely, the disciplines of engagement are those that realign our desires and practices with proper engagement with God. While disciplines of abstinence counteract tendencies of commission (the things we ought not do), disciplines of engagement counteract tendencies of omission (the things we ought to do). Willard’s list here includes study, worship, celebration, service, prayer, fellowship, confession, and submission (158).

Whether you prefer Foster’s groupings or Willard’s, the upshot is that there is an arsenal of disciplines at the disciple’s disposal for growing in Christ. While these disciplines take effort and intentionality, when pursued in and through the power of the Holy Spirit, they contain the elements for real spiritual transformation. For those new to the topic, let me clarify that Foster and Willard do not necessarily recommend implementing a spiritual regimen of all these disciplines at once. Rather, they are providing a menu of strategies that encompass a fully-orbed view of a person, and how every facet of what it means to be human can be placed under the transformative lordship of Christ.

The Discipline of Study

It is worth exploring the different ways a Christian school can implement these disciplines for the spiritual growth of their students, but I do not want to be misinterpreted to suggest that all these disciplines should be implemented. Again, we need to draw distinctions between the discipleship approaches of the church and school, and the home as well.

But I do want to suggest that schools are uniquely able to facilitate the spiritual discipline of study. In education today, the act of study is associated with the preparation for an upcoming examination, usually with high-stakes consequences. Thus, study is a word infused with connotations of labor, stress, and deadlines.

But Foster encourages us to step back and think of study as a broader approach to engaging the objective world and, in doing so, to be transformed. It is a discipline that facilitates a state of rest and peacefulness as one contemplates truths that are unchanging, good, and often beautiful. This is quite the opposite of our modern view of study!

Foster frames his chapter on study with Paul’s words to the Philippian church: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Phil. 4:8). In the Book of Romans, we see Paul’s vision for this discipline, namely, that believers will be “transformed by the renewal of their minds” (Rom. 12:2).

How does this happen? The idea is that as we focus on truth, we align our beliefs and belief processes to the objective structures of knowledge. The things we focus on conform our habits and thinking to the order of the thing studied. The more we fill our minds with God’s goodness, truth, and beauty, the more oriented toward him we become in our intellectual and cognitive disposition. Conversely, the more we saturate ourselves with the opposite, the more oriented we will be toward the cares of the world.

This is one reason why gaining control over one’s consumption of shows and social media is so important. It is temping to think that we can watch whatever we want to and it will have no effect on us. Or that endless scrolling of social media is a harmless activity. But the reality is that these behaviors can and will change us, literally rewiring our brains, as the science has shown, and changing us over time.

What to Study

So what should we study in order to experience spiritual formation for ourselves and for our students? Here are five suggestions:

The Bible: I am sure you saw this coming. The study of God’s Word should be the primary source we engage in this discipline. We want to teach students to study scriptural passages, not merely as a scholarly pursuit, but as an endeavor to connect personally with God. On this note, Willard writes, “Our prayer as we study meditatively is always that God would meet with us and speak specifically to us, for ultimately the Word of God is God speaking (177).

Experiential Classics: In our individualistic culture, we often assume that growing spiritually is a solo journey. We view spiritual growth as a single path that a traveler journeys down alone. But the better metaphor is not a path, but a pilgrimage. Pilgrims travel together. The reality is that there is a nearly endless list of Christ followers who have been transformed spiritually and have written about their experience. From Augustine’s Confessions to Thomas a Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ to Brother Lawrence’s The Practice of the Presence of God, we can select texts to add to the curriculum that form our students spiritually as they study these works.

Nature: The intentional study of God’s creation is one of the most life-giving and peaceful experiences I have come across. In a world that champions the conquering of nature for pragmatic ends, we can help students reconnect the natural world with the spiritual through slowing down and observing the beauty and order of nature. The addition of Nature Study as a scheduled part of the school week is a strategic way to help students grow spiritually as they respond with wonder and worship.

Relationships: While the first three suggestions for study are rather conventional, Foster suggests we can grow spiritually by learning to study the relational interactions around us. How do we speak to one another? How do we use our words and interactions? Are we participating in healthy friendships or discouraging ones? By training students to study and reflect on their relationships, they can grow in their understanding of how these relationships are influencing their spiritual walks.

Culture: While it is true that the heart of the spiritual discipline of study is to align our beliefs and belief processes with objective reality, it is important to be reflective about one’s surrounding culture. We often inhabit our world like fish who are fully submersed in water, yet, if asked, haven’t the slightest clue what H20 is. As with worldview thinking, we can facilitate moments for our students to study the culture they live in and thereby grow in discernment of various cultural elements, from moral values to entertainment.

To conclude this article, Christian schools can contribute to the growth of their students as disciples of Christ by encouraging and, in some occasions, facilitating spiritual disciplines. A central component of being a disciple of Christ is being spiritually formed over time. But this sort of transformation does not happen by accident, even if it ultimately a gracious gift of God. As Paul writes, “For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life” (Gal. 6:8). May we help our students reap eternal life through providing daily opportunities for them to practice the sort of disciplines that are the pathways to real and lasting spiritual transformation.

The post Discipleship in the School, Part 2: Spiritual Formation appeared first on .

Like most good questions, we must begin by defining our terms. What is discipleship?

According to Mark Dever, a pastor in the Washington D.C. area, we can define discipleship simply as helping someone follow Jesus. As an expanded definition, he writes that discipleship is “…deliberately doing spiritual good to someone so that he or she will be more like Christ” (Discipling, p. 13). Greg Ogden, a pastor who served for many years in the Chicago suburbs, defines discipleship as “walking alongside other disciples in order to encourage, equip, and challenge one another in love to grow toward maturity in Christ” (Discipleship Essentials, p. 17). Taking these two definitions together, the heart of discipleship is encouraging others in their pursuit of Christ. Disciple-makers possess an others-focused mentality and a Christ-centered end goal.

It seems fairly intuitive to me that discipleship, as defined above, happens in Christian schools. Christian teachers who care about young people growing in wisdom and virtue will naturally care about them growing in their faith as well. And yet, it must be stated that the school is not the church. There is an important distinction between these two institutions, which will impact, and potentially limit, the forms discipleship can take in these contexts.

So I move on to the second half of my question: how does discipleship happen in a Christian school?

A Holistic Approach

To begin, I want to differentiate between what I call focused discipleship and holistic discipleship. Focused discipleship is what we most likely think of when we picture discipleship taking place. Two men drinking coffee in Starbucks, having a Bible study and challenging one another to submit their whole lives to Christ. Women getting together to pray and exhort one another with scriptural truths. In these situations, the meetings are intentional, focused, and usually for a particular duration of time. There may be a set agenda for these meetings or there might not be, but the time has been intentionally set apart by the participants to grow toward maturity in Christ.

The alternative to focused discipleship is holistic discipleship. This approach can be less easy to nail down. In holistic discipleship, believers are doing life together as they integrate faith, habits, meals, learning, and leisure into everyday life. Holistic discipleship includes elements of focused discipleship–prayer meetings, Bible studies, 1-on-1 conversations–but it encompasses these gatherings within a broader context of extended relationship.

It seems to me that there is great potential for holistic discipleship at Christian schools. With the amount of time teachers and students spend together each day, the opportunities for faith integration into daily life are practically limitless. With intentionality, teachers can inspire and lead their students to integrate their walk with Christ into speech, habits, routines, interactions, school work, class discussions, assignments, conversations, recess, and meals on a daily basis.

Incorporating Worldview Thinking

So one way discipleship can happen in Christian schools is through this holistic approach. Another potentially more tangible way is through the intentional formation of a Christian worldview.

In Wisdom and Eloquence (Crossway, 2006), Robert LittleJohn and Chuck Evans explore in their chapter entitled “Worldview and the Liberal Arts” what it looks like for a school to teach and learn Christianly. They begin by defining the term “worldview.” Typically, when we think of worldview, we envision holding the correct or biblical positions on key issues of the day. For example, we want to help students develop a biblical worldview on the topic of abortion, forming the conviction that life in the womb is sacred and worthy of protection.

However, the authors argue, worldview is not reducible to positions or even values. It runs much deeper than what propositions we believe or why we believe them. Worldview is a fundamental aspect of our sense of being that orients us toward a particular vision of the good life (44). It is essentially an inner honing device formed over time by our culture and upbringing. As a result, parents and teachers cannot simply teach a Christian worldview through didactic instruction as useful as this can be. Rather, it is passed on, or “caught,” through enculturating and embodied practices. These can include specific routines like attending worship services and prayer meetings as well as more mundane practices like singing, eating, discussing, gardening, and playing. In this way, harnessing the enculturating power of wordview formation is another avenue for schools to disciple students in a holistic manner.

Holistic Discipleship in the Classroom

In the classroom, holistic discipleship begins when teachers integrate their Christian faith into all subjects, not restricting their faith to explicitly religious moments, such as chapel or Bible class. Teachers welcome their students into a life of discipleship when they lead classes and promote classroom cultures in which there is no distinction between the sacred and the secular. In this way, studying literature, science, math, and history becomes an avenue for exploring God’s created world. Empowering students to use their creative capacities to cultivate beauty is a way of living out their identity as image-bearers of God. When teachers make these connections between faith and learning explicit, students are led forward in their journey of following Christ with their whole lives, beginning with their minds.

While each Christian tradition has their own framework and vocabulary for expressing the heart of discipleship, the end goal is the same: helping believers be conformed to the image of Christ. When teachers approach their subjects through the lens of faith, invite their students to think and interact with an idea from a biblical perspective, pointing to the truths of the gospel, and at times including prayer or scripture in their lessons, they are playing a key role in the disciple-making process.

A Paradigm for Thinking Christianly

So how does a teacher ensure she is not only thinking Christianly, but passing it on to her students? LittleJohn and Evans suggest that all people, regardless of faith, interpret life through a particular grid or framework. While there are a myriad of ways to succinctly articular a biblical “grid” through which life is interpreted, as we think about educating students, we will be most successful if the grid we use is clear, coherent, and concrete. For this reason, I recommend the Creation-Fall-Redemption-Consummation paradigm:

Creation: God created the world good and perfect in order to bring glory to himself. He designated human beings with the specific vocation of bearing his image as the steward and caretakers of his good creation.

Fall: Human beings, endowed with free will, chose to pursue their own desires over God, thereby introducing sin and destruction into the world. This fall impacted not only the soul of humanity, but all of creation and even social institutions. There is not a single aspect of reality–relationships, nature, government, churches, schools, relationships–that is left untainted by sin.

Redemption: God commissioned Jesus, the eternal son of God, to become human and bear the punishment of sin that humans deserve. Through trusting in the sufficiency of Christ’s death on the cross, humans can find forgiveness for their sin, eternal life, and membership in the everlasting family of God. As God’s kingdom breaks in, Christians can serve as agents of reconciliation, sharing the good news and living out their identity as the people of God.

Consummation: While Christ has come and redemption is possible now, believers await with the hope the day when Christ returns and makes everything right. God’s kingdom will be consummated, evil will vanquished, and the people of God will flourishing on a restored earth for eternity. 

This grid is likely familiar to you and for good reason. While imperfect, this fourfold approach to the story of scripture simply yet powerfully explains the message of the gospel. Additionally, it is broad enough to provide the scope for all of life’s experiences and, relevant to schools–academic subjects, to be understood through this grid. As one example, when studying the history of colonialism in the British Empire, students observe the patriotism and duty exhibited amongst the British as they establish colonies across the globe. Using the gospel grid above, a teacher can lead a discussion in which the benefits of a widespread Empire are properly assessed while also underscoring that no human institution can provide the sort of lasting peace and security we all desire. Only when Christ returns will all be made right.

Discipling Students in a Secular Worldview

While the grid above may be familiar, there is another grid you may not have heard of that could be even more familiar nonetheless. It is the grid for secular thinking. If teachers are going to helping their students follow Jesus through the formation of a biblical worldview, they need to be aware of the counter worldview that is ubiquitous in our world today. This is the secular worldview and here are its tenets:

Existence: There is no transcendent purpose or story behind reality that is beyond reality itself. People, animals, plants, and objects exist as a brute fact. It is up to humans themselves to weave together their own tapestry of meaning. 

Individualism: Each human exists as an individual, endowed with the autonomy to think and live however they please. While humans often flourish in communities, the individual self can come and go as it pleases in order to live out its authentic identity.

Identity: Humans are not only individuals physically-speaking. Each human possesses a sacred inner identity that is unique to the person. This identity is fundamentally good and must be respected by fellow humans. External forces, such as religions, moral philosophies, social systems, and governments, are not to encroach upon this identity. 

Happiness: If there is an objective purpose for human existence, it is to be happy. Happiness is not necessarily related to any particular moral or religious vision. Given the brevity of life and the simplicity of biology, happiness is fundamentally about pleasure and well-being. The moral imperative, if there is one, is to do what makes you happy, and pursue the very best life possible, be it through wealth, status, professional achievement, or experiences. 

The reality is that most of our students have been formed by culture to think according to this grid. Therefore, a central way Christian schools can support the discipleship of their students is through bringing this grid to their attention and regularly referring back to the Christian alternative.

Conclusion

In this article, I have been thinking through how discipleship happens in a Christian school. The school is not the church, and we should not, therefore, expect these discipleship approaches to look identical. And yet, discipleship is not a complicated concept. It is the task of helping others follow Jesus. In Christian schools, teachers can take advantage of the life-on-life opportunities they have as they spend multiple hours with their students each day. This opens the door for what I have been calling holistic discipleship, the sort of encouragement to follow Jesus in all facets of life, be it in the classroom, during mealtime, or at recess. In addition, teachers can disciple their students specifically in their thinking through approaching the curriculum through a biblical lens. As schools train students to “submit every thought captive to Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5), they will prepare them to not only grow in wisdom and virtue, but Lord-willing, maturity in Christ.

The post Discipleship in the School, Part 1: An Introduction appeared first on .

If our educational renewal movement consistently graduated students well on their way to practical wisdom, that fact alone would entail a remarkable positive inheritance. I might go so far as to say that, even if our educational methods bore no better fruit in standardized test scores or excellent artistry in language, mathematics, or the fine and performing arts, still it all would have been worth it if our graduates were more prudent. Part of the reason for this is that no man is an island, and so, regardless of other attainments, the influence of these prudent citizens on the world at large is nothing short of incalculable. Prudence is the quintessential virtue of true leadership.

Much ink has been spilled on the liberal arts as the proper training for a free human being. A free society relies on men and women leaders who are able to reason persuasively with both verbal and mathematical precision, in order to lead us to human flourishing. As Aristotle asserts,

That is why we think Pericles and people of that sort to be practically wise–because they have theoretical knowledge of what is good for themselves and for human beings, and we think household-managers and politicians are like that. (Reeve, Aristotle on Practical Wisdom, 56; VI.5 translation)

In actual fact, it is not the liberal arts simply, but the liberal arts facing prudential matters that prepare a person for leadership. Study of the liberal arts can tend toward the arcane, mystic and purely academic. The best students of abstract intellectual matters are not always the best leaders. 

Aristotle’s inclusion of both household-managers and politicians justifies our exploration of prudence as a leadership trait generally. When he says that “political wisdom and practical wisdom are the same state of mind, but to be them is not the same,” (VI.8, Revised Oxford Trans.) he further clarifies that political wisdom is that type of practical wisdom concerned with the city, just as economic or household management is that practical wisdom concerned with the household. This doesn’t negate the fact that a person could have individual practical wisdom but not the leadership varieties, because of lacking particular knowledge of that sphere. But it does mean that practical wisdom expands up into all types of leadership spheres, making the essence of practical wisdom itself highly desirable. 

After all, our graduates will lead in various ways after their Christian classical education, whether it be as parents themselves, church and small group leaders, coaches, business managers and executives, and perhaps even politicians. Our world needs more prudent leaders, just as it does more prudent individuals. 

In this article we will explore practical wisdom in dialogue with Jim Collin’s idea of Level 5 leadership from his book Good to Great. Then we will note some practical implications for training prudent leaders through the school experience today.

Level 5 Leadership and Prudence

In his masterfully researched Good to Great, Jim Collins and his team of researchers set out to discover what separated enduringly great businesses (measured “objectively” by publicly available stock valuation) from comparison companies. According to his own admission Collins “gave the research team explicit instructions to downplay the role of top executives so that [they] could avoid the simplistic ‘credit the leader’ or ‘blame the leader’ thinking common today.” In spite of this, the presence of what they came to call “Level 5 Leadership” in all the Good to Great companies at the time of transition kept staring them in the face, the more so since the traits they saw were so paradoxical and unexpected. 

Collins describes the Level 5 executive as a person who “builds enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will” (20). He goes on to describe it this way:

Level 5 leaders are a study in duality: modest and willful, humble and fearless. To quickly grasp this concept, think of United States President Abraham Lincoln (one of the few Level 5 presidents in United States history), who never let his ego get in the way of his primary ambition for the larger cause of an enduring great nation. Yet those who mistook Mr. Lincoln’s personal modesty, shy nature, and awkward manner as signs of weakness found themselves terribly mistaken, to the scale of 250,000 and 360,000 Union lives, including Lincoln’s own. (22)

Lincoln provides an inspiring example of this “professional will” combined with “personal humility.” These leaders are not the superstar executives that led the company to a brief period of high profitability during their tenure as CEO, but then left it in the lurch at their departure. 

Collins lists a hierarchy of five levels of leadership that we can profitably set in dialogue with Aristotle’s intellectual virtue of prudence:

• Level 1 – Highly Capable Individual: Makes productive contributions through talent, knowledge, skills, and good work habits.

• Level 2 – Contributing Team Member: Contributes individual capabilities to the achievement of group objectives and works effectively with others in a group setting.

• Level 3 – Competent Manager: Organizes people and resources toward the effective and efficient pursuit of predetermined objectives.

• Level 4 – Effective Leader: Catalyzes commitment to and vigorous pursuit of a clear and compelling vision, stimulating higher performance standards.

• Level 5 – Level 5 Executive: Builds enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. (Jim Collins, Good to Great, 20) 

First, the highly capable individual has established good habits or virtues that productively make use of the talent, skills and knowledge that he has. This individual level of prudence calculates correctly that it will be beneficial to himself to work well and be known as a good worker, as that will provide him with the good things of life.

Second, the contributing team member has what Aristotle calls “consideration” or “judgment” (gnome; see Nicomachean Ethics VI.11), discerning correctly what is fair in working together with a team. This fair-mindedness relies on a perception or comprehension of each person’s rights and responsibilities. 

Third, the competent manager receives objectives or goals from and is able to use his cleverness (a morally neutral category related to practical wisdom in Aristotle; see VI.13) to organize people and resources toward meeting those goals. Moreover, this manager does so in a way that coordinates those combined efforts well and is in this sense political. We now see the forerunners of prudence approaching something like it in applied political leadership. 

Fourth, the effective leader adds still another element of practical wisdom, in that the leader first perceives and then articulates “a clear and compelling vision”–something that Aristotle would have called understanding the proper ends or goals of human flourishing and then having the art of persuasion to communicate it to others. The effective leader not only has the cleverness to chart out a path to these goals, but discerns the end from the beginning because he has high standards of excellence (virtue) within himself that enable this perception. 

Fifth, the level 5 leader adds on to these the crowning achievement of practical and political wisdom, because he has subsumed his own personal benefit within the good of the community or organization as a whole. Collins hesitates to use the term servant leadership because of how it might degenerate into mere niceness in our imaginations, but the conclusion is unavoidable:

Level 5 leaders channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company. It’s not that Level 5 leaders have no ego or self-interest. Indeed, they are incredibly ambitious–but their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not themselves. (21)

Christians should not be surprised by this finding, resonating as it does with the model of self-sacrificial leadership attested in scripture.

The sacrificial leadership described in Collins’s Good to Great also has a firmness of will, reminiscent of Charlotte Mason’s Way of the Will, which we have already had occasion to mention. The prudent leader may take time to deliberate well and correctly, but once his mind is made up about the best course of action, his will is iron. This iron will can coexist with a heart of humility partly because his knowledge is so firm and clear. He sincerely knows why, how and what is best for himself and others precisely because of his practical wisdom. 

A Pathway for Prudent Leaders

There are several practical take-aways for Christian classical schools that accept prudence as one of their aims. The first comes from the possibility of taking these 5 levels as a scope & sequence of sorts for leadership development in our schools. It might be fair to criticize the value of group work and teamwork in class projects from the vantage point of simple academic attainments. But if, as we are contending, school should act as a training ground for prudent decision-making in life, then the back-and-forth negotiations and power dynamics of persons are possible life lessons in and of themselves. Mentoring students up the levels of leadership could function as one strand in the curriculum governing this type of learning activity. 

It is worth pausing to note that it is important to differentiate this from simple rhetorical skill. Often in rhetorical training, it is the speech or paper that is graded or ranked, regardless of the rightness or wrongness of the viewpoint taken. This isolation of the simple product of persuasion makes sense when we are focusing on developing the art of rhetoric only, but if we expand the vision to prudent leadership, then we can see that the speech functions holistically within a vision & strategy, a web of relationships, a set of challenges, and a perception of the resources, needs, and trade-offs of various pathways. While real-life experience leading is the most accurate training ground for this, proxies involving actual leadership of other students can help. 

It is for this reason that student leadership within a house system or student council can be a proper classical educational feature. Not because schools should function like democracies, but because of our educational goals. These leadership opportunities mimic real-world complexity than games or assignments since they involve real human beings and definite choices for their good or ill within a timeframe and constraints. Of course, if we were merely talking about strategy, it might be that our modern strategy games (whether board games, video games, or computer games) might afford the best training. Chess is a good example of this, originating as it did almost 1500 years ago in India, and its venerable history of mimicking military tactics. A little bit of such things throughout youth might be of value to future prudent leader, but because all the particulars of an actual leadership situation matter, becoming a grandmaster will be unlikely to transfer to level 5 leadership.

In fact, this case helps to illustrate one of the key differences between artistic training and an education for prudence. While artistry of any sort benefits from an abundance of focused practice within the discipline, game, or subject matter, too much specialization might actually be a hindrance to prudent leadership. As David Epstein illustrates in his book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, a wide array of experiences often equips us with a better intuition, vision, and creativity for making decisions in the complex situations we face. 

In this sense too, the liberal arts were made for prudence, not only because they prepare a person with practical skills to lead (writing, discussing, speaking, calculation, charting, etc.), but also because they help us encounter the world in all its variety and prevent us from focusing too narrowly on one subject or aspect of things. Prudent leaders are generalists, who have encountered the world in all its complexity: people, products, research, and relationships, to name just a few aspects. They draw from all this varied data to make complex calculations about the best course of action and they regularly lead others to human goods. 

Let’s smooth this liberal arts pathway with lessons for level 5 leadership at our schools.

The post Counsels of the Wise, Part 7: Leadership, Liberal Arts, and Prudence appeared first on .

Keller had a gift for making complex things simple for ordinary people to understand. This made him a great teacher. It did not matter whether he was distilling the philosophical theology of Jonathan Edwards or the secularization analysis of Charles Taylor. He communicated these ideas with fairness and clarity, all in a conversational, winsome tone. 

This, of course, was all part of his strategy. Keller spent the bulk of his life ministering in New York City, arguably the hub of secularism in the United States. He knew he was dealing with an educated, achievement-oriented audience that was, at the same time, critical toward Christianity. To minister to them effectively, he would need to disrupt their assumptions about faith in the modern world. This meant not only knowing Scripture, but knowing New Yorkers. He would need to live where they live, see what they see, and hear what they hear. Then he would need to translate the message of the gospel accordingly, a process called “contextualization,” for which Keller would become a master in a class of his own.

As a classical educator, I cannot help but see parallels to my own work. I am trying to pass on the hallmark contributions of a tradition to the next generation. This includes intellectual skills, such as the liberal arts, yes, but even deeper, the affections of the heart and longings of the soul. I am trying to form students to be wise, virtuous, and eloquent followers of Christ. To do such work requires an element of disruption–disruption against modern assumptions about education, secular assumptions about knowledge, and cultural assumptions about identity. To share this vision requires seeking to understand parents and students in my community and translating the value of a classical liberal arts education for those who have ears to hear. 

In this article, I will highlight parallels between the late Dr. Timothy Keller’s ministry and the values of classical education. Having recently finished reading Collin Hansen’s newly published Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation (Zondervan, 2023), I have observed aspects of Keller’s approach that are deeply relevant for classical educators today. While I have no knowledge that Keller himself was a proponent of classical education, I can imagine he would appreciate the values we share.

A Love for Reading  

I begin with the fact that Tim Keller was a bibliophile. He simply loved to read. By the age of three, Keller was reading on his own. Growing up, he delighted in reading entry after entry in the encyclopedia, enjoying history and non-fiction as well. His family had a collection of Rudyard Kipling’s works that he would read along with seminal works from the Bronte sisters. 

Keller studied religion at Bucknell, a liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, and began doing parachurch ministry with InterVarsity. Here he developed a heart for evangelism and helping non-believers see the truth and veracity of the Christian faith. During this time, Keller experienced the teaching of a professor who would become a lifelong mentor to him: Ed Clowney, the first president of Westminster Theological Seminary. 

As part of an InterVarsity outreach, Clowney once gave a series of evangelistic talks, interacting with the existentialist philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus (Hansen 23). In this way, Clowney illustrated what Tim Keller would later add to his own skillset: interacting with the leading intellectual ideas of the day through a biblical, gospel-shaped lens. Around this same time, InterVarsity Press published Colin Brown’s Philosophy and the Christian Faith, along with similiar types of books, covering the writings of Thomas Aquinas, Rene Descartes, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Georg W. F. Hegel, Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Karl Barth, and Francis Schaeffer. As Hansen puts it, “For a precocious student such as Keller, the high-level philosophical engagement of these InterVarsity authors showed him you could be intellectually serious and also a Christian” (25).

This first parallel I observe between Keller and classical education is about a love for the written word, supplied through both Christian and secular authors. All truth is God’s truth, and humanity across cultures receives a common grace from the Lord to discover this truth and inscribe it into books. Keller’s love for reading books, along with newspaper articles, journals, magazines, plays, and short stories, enabled him to speak so knowledgeably and connect so naturally with a wide audience.

The Power of Imagination

It is hard to write an article on Tim Keller without mentioning the Inklings, a group of Oxford literary enthusiasts who would meet to discuss and share their work with one another. Keller read the Inklings, especially C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, along with their forerunners G.K. Chesterton and George MacDonald. 

Through the works of the Inklings, especially The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Keller encountered the power of story and imagination for shaping one’s faith. Lewis famously described the Christian story as the “true myth” in that it is the underlying story behind all stories and myths. The only difference is that it is actually true. The biblical storyline of creation-fall-redemption-restoration is present across cultural literary traditions, and the fulfillment of these stories is the gospel of Jesus Christ. In this way, all stories worth their salt borrow in some way from the story. 

Similarly, Tolkien’s idea of a “eucatastrophe” points to the gospel notion of an unexpected turn of events for the better. This, of course, is what makes fairy tales so great. Just when things look like they can only get darker, the hero comes in to save the day. Just when it appears all is lost, the beast is transformed, the ugly duckling becomes a swan, and the princess awakes. In the gospel, this is precisely what happens through the person and work of Christ. Hansen writes, “Lewis gave Keller a model for wide reading and clear thinking. Lewis challenged Keller to deploy vivid illustrations for public apologetics in defense of Christian claims to truth and beauty…Tolkien gave him ways to talk about work, to talk about hope, to talk about the stories we all hope will come true someday” (53).

I have yet very few classical educators who have not read (and loved) the Inklings. My explanation for this is that classicists love stories. Stories touch our hearts and seize our imaginations in a way that didactic instruction simply fails to do. They embody perennial ideas and unchanging values in characters and plots that we cannot forget. Stories point us to truths about reality that are more certain than empirical facts and more tested than results from the lab.

As Keller found ministering to New Yorkers who needed to be re-enchanted with the gospel, telling stories and using vivid illustrations utilize the imagination to grasp the greatest story of them all. He himself said, “The gospel story is the story of wonder from which all other fairy tales and stories of wonder take their cues” (57). This is the power of Christian imagination.

Learning in Community

Through the Inklings, Keller came to appreciate the role of imagination for the Christian. But going back to his days of evangelism and apologetics in college, leading people to faith in Christ, especially through overcoming doubt, was a lifelong passion. To support this process, Keller discovered the importance of learning in community, a third parallel I see with classical educators.

While Tim never visited L’Abri, the famous retreat center for intellectual pilgrims nestled in the Swiss Alps, he did spend time with R.C. Sproul at the Ligonier Valley Study Center in Pennsylvania. The vision for Sproul’s center, modeled after Francis Schaeffer’s L’Abri, was to provide an affordable and hospitable space for college students to think, pray, study, and work with their hands. The goals was the cultivated integration of faith and reason. Emerging during the 1960’s and 70’s, these centers were safe havens for counter-culture seekers and doubters. Students could come to study under the guidance of Christian pastors and professors, and encounter a case for faith that resonated with them through an appeal to modern art, literature, and philosophy. 

The idea of seeking wisdom in the context of doing life together resonates for many classical educators. While classical schools range in size, make-up, and resources, there is an underlying value for pursuing deep relationships. There is this sense, when teaching in a classical classroom, that we are pursuing truth together. Yes, the teacher may come to the table with some expertise to share, but really, teacher and student mutually submit themselves to the authority and transcendence of objective truth, goodness, and beauty. In this communal pursuit, fellow pilgrims on the journey learn as much about one another as they do about what they are studying. When done properly, the tension of faith and doubt is honored, not eliminated, and tough questions about life, faith, suffering, and purpose come to the surface. Hansen writes, “Tim sought to replicate this kind of community inside the church–hospitable and evangelistic, intellectual and earthy (64).

Faith in a Secular Age

A final parallel between Tim Keller and classical educators is the desire to be orthodox yet modern. Both Keller and classicists embrace the resources of church history as assets, not impediments, for leading lives of faith in the 21st century. This includes particular creeds, doctrines, and traditions. At the same time, both Keller and classicists seek to be modern, believing whole-heartedly that God is at work in the church and culture today. The calling of a Christian is neither to flee from culture nor to succumb to it, but rather, to care for it.

The phrase “orthodox yet modern” itself comes from Herman Bavinck, a Dutch neo-Calvinist who greatly influenced Keller. As a Presbyterian and reformed theologian, Keller subscribed to the reformed tradition of theology, reading the likes of John Calvin, John Owen, Jonathan Edwards, and Abraham Kuyper. Central to the neo-Calvinist view is the idea that faith extends across culture. As Hansen puts it, “Believers cannot withdraw from the modern world but must engage every aspect, from art to business to politics to family to education, with a distinct worldview built on a historic Christian faith” (66).

Abraham Kuyper, the pioneer of neo-Calvinism, famously declared, “No single piece of our mental world is to be sealed off from the rest and there is not a square inch in the whole domain of human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’” In this quotation, we see parallels to our own classical, Christian approach to the liberal arts. If Christ is indeed sovereign over all creation, then he is sovereign over all disciplines. Whether one is studying the humane or natural sciences, knowledge discovered by way of grace common to the believer and unbeliever alike, is ultimately knowledge whose source is Christ.

This idea of common grace, paradigmatically observed in Romans 1, means that all people possess some seed of knowledge of God in their hearts. Those that deny the existence of God simply suppress this knowledge. Thus, the job of the apologist is not to offer proofs for the existence of God, but rather to demonstrate how Christianity explains what unbelievers “know with their hearts but deny with their lips” (91). This occurs through identifying inconsistencies in the worldview of an unbeliever, an approach called presuppositional apologetics.

How the Trivium Can Help

For classical educators, we are preparing students through the Trivium to study the truth (grammar), reason about the truth (dialectic), and speak the truth (rhetoric). But in a secular society that no longer takes its cues from the Enlightenment, appeals to objective truth are no longer effective. Our postmodern culture has freed itself from modernistic appeals to universal rationality and empirical evidence. People believe all sorts of things that cannot be proved by modern science–human rights, convictions about justice, personal identity, and longings for meaning–to name a few. We therefore ned to help people see, through the arts of the Trivium, that their intuitions about these metaphysical realities require a foundation that is also metaphysical. This is the need for transcendence.

What Tim Keller has shed especially clear pastoral light on is that the empty promises of secular modernity are equally empty in secular postmodernity. Truth is indeed not knowable by human reason alone. But it becomes available when received as a gracious gift from God. To be known and loved– not by how much one knows or how well one loves, but by a creator who ultimately knows and loves– this is the message our world needs to hear today. The task of the classical educator, then, is to wield the liberal arts to reveal this reality and go on to proclaim “the true myth,” the ultimate story, and invite others into the new community, marked not by good people or bad people, but by what Keller calls, “new people.” 

Conclusion

In this article, I have sough to demonstrate parallels between the ministry of Tim Keller and the work of classical educators today. So many of the tactics Tim Keller used in his ministry align with our own work of helping students encounter the living God through a faith integrated with all domains of knowledge and fueled through the power of imagination. May the legacy of Keller continue as we seek to raise up disciples of Christ who love God with their minds, and proclaim the gospel in a secular time in which people are so desperately looking for good, perhaps surprising, news.

The post Proclaiming the “True Myth”: Tim Keller’s Ministry and Classical Education  appeared first on .

If you are new to this blog, you will notice that we typically focus on wisdom and modern research for the classroom or homeschool. As classical Christian educators who have been profoundly influenced by the educational philosophy of Charlotte Mason, we believe that children are born whole persons and their schooling should reflect this reality. 

Unfortunately, so often today, precisely the opposite occurs. In our post-industrial revolution world, modern education has become a training ground for our children as mere test-takers and future wage-earners. Siren songs of college readiness, job preparation, and high-wage incomes have replaced the classical vision for a formative education in the good, true, and beautiful.

Interestingly, the classroom is not the only area of education that has been negatively impacted by industrialist assumptions. Likewise, children are not the only victims of this mindset. Educational institutions are complex entities with multiple departments and a variety of constituents. The underlying philosophy of an institution will inform and shape the parts through the whole, and in turn, the whole through the parts. It is therefore of upmost importance for school leaders to regularly take inventory of these parts, evaluating the missional alignment of what is said and done across departments and roles.

In this article, I want to hone in specifically on practices relating to fundraising, what is sometimes called the development shop of a school. Whether the funds are used to meet an operational gap or strategic initiative, schools rely on the generosity of donors to advance their missions and achieve their future visions. While the classroom is, and must remain, the central focus of any educational institution, it is the contention of this author that the development shop, too, is in need of an educational renaissance.

Philanthropy on the Rise

What kind of a renaissance is needed?

Interestingly, it is not a rebirth in generosity, at least for now. Despite economic challenges caused by the pandemic and rising inflation, giving is up more than ever before, especially in the United States. In a recent Forbes article, the author observes three particularly positive trends in philanthropy.

First, charitable gifts increased to $471 billion in 2020, a 5% increase from 2019, despite a 2.3% decrease in GDP. This upward trend has not changed since the nation transitioned out of the pandemic. Second, donors are growing more sophisticated in how they give. More and more Americans are using private foundations, charitable trusts, and donor-advised funds as giving vehicles. This sophistication has elevated the overall generosity, tax savings, and specificity of giving for donors. In other words, donors are not just giving bigger gifts; they are giving better gifts. Finally, there is a demographic mindset shift in the next generation. On average, more millennials than boomers view themselves as philanthropists, leading them to make decisions about their time, money, and resources through a charitable lens.

Nevertheless, our culture continues to face challenges generated from ideologies of individualism and consumerism. As religious belief remains on the decline in the West, the focus shifts more and more to the self-actualization of the individual. This leads to an inward focus and dependence on one’s self for finding lasting happiness rather than viewing God as our greatest source of happiness and meaning. In addition, the consumeristic mindset continues to place things before people, leading society to objectify humans as mere sellers and buyers in a transactional process.

With these societal shifts in view, let me suggest that an educational renaissance in the development shop will have three prominent features, relating to:

1. God’s Provision
2. Donor Engagement
3. Leadership Transparency

God’s Provision

In Giving and Getting in the Kingdom (Moody Publishers, 2012), R. Mark Dillon suggests there are two prevailing attitudes about God’s financial provision.

The first attitude is a pietist waiting upon the Lord with no practical action. This approach is famously illustrated by George Mueller, a German-born pastor who later moved to Bristol, England, and opened an orphanage. Mueller would regularly pray for his orphanage’s needs but refused to share them publicly, waiting instead for the Lord to provide miraculously (which He did time and time again).

The second attitude, illustrated by Chicago evangelist D.L. Moody, is a business-savvy call to action. Ever the entrepreneur, Moody would identify an evangelistic or societal need, cast vision, and enlist financial support. Through this approach, Moody inspired countless to give to the kingdom and, in doing so, support the saving of a multitude of souls.

Summarizing these two attitudes, Dillon writes,

The danger of Mueller’s approach is that what seems to be childlike faith in God for His provision may be missing an opportunity to call God’s people to obedience and generosity. The inherent danger in creating a vision and boldly calling God’s people to fund it, as in Moody’s approach, is the human tendency to stray from discerning God’s leading into merely fulfilling personal or corporate ambition and perhaps missing the elements of dependent prayer and humble gratitude (44).

To avoid these two pitfalls, schools must adopt a biblical mindset of God’s provision, which embraces the paradox of divine action and human responsibility. Development officers must begin, saturate, and culminate their fundraising efforts in prayer, while faithfully taking steps to see what doors God might open. The reality is that neither Mueller nor Moody receives the credit for the gifts that came in to bless their ministries during their years of service. God does. We can prayerfully depend upon the Lord and faithfully share publicly our schools’ needs when we realize that God is the ultimate source of every gift.

Donor Engagement

It is common to approach fundraising as a game of numbers. Maximize the number of mailed letters, email campaigns, golf outings, and first time gifts, and you have a successful development shop. 

But what Jason Lewis argues in The War for Fundraising Talent and How Small Shops Can Win (Gatekeeper Press, 2017) is that deep relationships and meaningful partnerships are the key to successful fundraising. And yet, so many development shops are reluctant to do this. It is easier to keep donors at arm-length and ask through impersonal methods. But what talented and seasoned fundraisers have learned through years of practice is that it is all about relationships and shared passion for a vision. Through intentional engagement with donors, having meaningful conversations, and communicating with respect and gratitude, the partnership can go deeper, become more meaningful, and last for a lifetime.

As schools engage donors in a meaningful way, the goal is to prevent these relationships from becoming merely transactional. An authentic partnership occurs when both schools and donors believe they can give and receive from one another. Here I think of Paul’s gratitude for Phoebe at the church in Rome. Paul refers to Phoebe as a “sister,” “deacon,” and “benefactor” (Rom. 16:1-2). It is clear that the relationship Phoebe experienced with the church, including the apostle Paul, went beyond the financials. It was spiritually uplifting, relationally deep, and mutually beneficial.

Leadership Transparency

Finally, an educational renaissance in the development shop must include leadership transparency. School leaders need to cast a compelling vision for the future and be honest about current challenges. R. Mark Dillon writes,

Sometimes people assume that being the messenger on behalf of the organization to the giver requires knowing all the answers and defending your institution at every turn. Nothing could be more antithetical to a genuine relationship than refusal to acknowledge shortcomings or gaps in our knowledge.

R. Mark Dillon, Giving and Getting in the Kingdom (Moody Publishers, 2012), 95

Certainly there are times when one must explain with fortitude certain institutional decisions. It is important to help donors understand the complexity of particular issues as well as the thought process that went into reaching a decision. At the same time, no institution is immune from criticism. No leader has all the answers. School leaders can build trust with donors by being honest, preparing informative reports, and admitting when there are weaknesses. If a donor brings up a criticism, explore it together. Find it out what reality of the school it likely touches. If a donor asks a question and you do not have a response, acknowledge the fact and commit to finding the answer.

Conclusion

While there is much more to be said about an educational renaissance for the development shop, I hope this article can be the start of a new conversation. We are all recipients of the generosity of others, and the principles of God’s provision, engagement, and transparency are applicable. As school leaders, we can push back against the reigning ideologies of individualism and consumerism by adopting a biblical view of God’s provision and understanding that how we are interact with all people in our organizations reflects what we truly believe about them as persons made in the image of God.

New to Educational Renaissance?

Subscribe to our blog and check out our podcast, webinars, and bookstore to access all the resources you need, including our latest book:

The post An Educational Renaissance for the Development Shop appeared first on .

For example, a teacher responsible for teaching The Great Gatsby must consider how the book will be taught, what she will focus on, and how she intends for students to develop and grow through the study. Each day, she walks into a room full of students in need of direction for approaching the text. This requires leadership.

In modern educational circles, we often speak, not of leadership, but of “classroom management.” Unfortunately, this phrase is embedded with faulty assumptions about who students are, what the purpose of learning is, and how we are to manage them toward some desirable end. As a result, classroom management techniques are problematic in two key ways.

First, classroom management techniques are often behavioristic. In other words, they seek to address the behavior of students through systems of external rewards and consequences, rather than aiming to form the whole person of the child, especially the heart. Strategies are deployed to artificially motivate behaviors of respect, obedience, service, and even kindness in a way disconnected from the child’s internal moral development. Is this child growing in a love and understanding of the idea of respect for authority? How is the child becoming more servant-hearted in her disposition? These questions are not usually asked in typical classroom management conversations.

Second, classroom management techniques are often task-oriented rather than people-oriented. This makes sense since the phrase emerged during the post-industrial revolution in which the effective and efficient completion of tasks was prized above all else. Now, at its best, modern business management theory is people-oriented, but most managers too easily slip into the mindset of “How do I get this employee to perform this task?” rather than “How do I lead this employee on a path toward growth and increasing expertise?” The latter focuses on the development of the talent and skill of people, not simply whether they are hitting the deadlines. 

To equip teachers to grow as true leaders of their students, in this article I will recommend three recently published leadership books that contain relevant ideas for classroom leadership. These resources will help teachers see their true leadership role and therefore embrace the responsibility for them to invest deeply in the lives of their students. While teachers will need to push through some of the business-focused examples of these resources, the underlying ideas are both relevant and applicable for classroom leadership today.

Multipliers by Liz Wiseman 

The first book I want to recommend is Multipliers (HarperCollins, 2017) by researcher Liz Wiseman. In this book, Wiseman sets out to show how leaders can make people under their supervision smarter, rather than targeting mere compliance. Early on, she differentiates between two managers, the Genius Maker and the Genius (9). The genius maker grows people’s intelligence by “extracting the smarts and maximum effort from each member on the team.” This type of leader talks only about 10% of the time, thereby making space for others to grow through active participation in coming up with solutions to a problem. 

In contrast, the genius is self-oriented. He is smart and successful, and everyone in the room knows who has the best ideas. He may facilitate “conversations” but soon these turn into opportunities for him to share his correct views with others. After all, he is the genius. Why not just listen to him? The result is that people do not have the permission to think for themselves or the legitimate responsibility to make decisions. It all goes back to what the genius thinks is right. 

For Wiseman, the genius maker is a multiplier of of intelligence while the genius is actually a diminisher. At heart, multipliers “invoke each person’s unique intelligence and create an atmosphere of genius–innovation, productive effort, and collective intelligence” (10). The upshot is that these leaders not only access people’s current capability, they stretch it. People actually report getting smarter under the supervision of multipliers. The fundamental assumption of a multiplier is “People are smart and will figure this out” whereas the assumption of the diminisher is “They will never figure this out without me” (20). 

Teachers can become multipliers of intelligence in their classrooms by resisting the urge to be the residential genius. Although they are older, smarter, and more experienced, these assets can be leveraged to empower their students toward growing their own abilities, rather than making it all about the teacher.

Diagnostic Questions for Teachers:

• Do you empower students in your classroom to make major contributions to class culture, discussions, learning, and skill demonstration? 
• Is there room in your classroom for students to make mistakes as you stretch them to attempt difficult assignments?
• Do you ask your students to explain complex concepts to their peers rather than yourself?
• Does your approach to grading grow student intellectual confidence or does it foster dependence on your own intelligence?

Boundaries for Leaders by Dr. Henry Cloud

Boundaries for Leaders (HarperCollins, 2013) is written by clinical psychologist Dr. Henry Cloud, an author recognized for his work on cultivating healthy relationships. In Chapter 1, he writes, “This book is about what leaders need to do in order for people to accomplish a vision” (2). The key word here for Cloud is people. He will go on to argue that people perform their best work in healthy work cultures that take into consideration the psychological well-being of both employer and employee. By setting good boundaries in place and leading in a way that people’s brains can follow, Cloud contends, good results will come. 

Cloud writes that boundaries are made up of two things: what you create and what you allow (15). A boundary is a property line, marking out who is responsible and for what. When someone is given real ownership of something, anything that happens under their supervision only happens because they created it or allowed it. 

In top-performing classrooms, teachers teach in a way that makes it possible for their students’ brains to function as they were designed (25). This happens through setting good boundaries. Cloud writes, “Show me a person, team, or a company that gets results, and I will show you the leadership boundaries that make it possible” (26).

As a psychologist, the author is aware of how the human brain works and what leaders can do to maximize brain health and productivity. In turn, teachers can use these insights as they seek to pass on knowledge, skills, and virtues to their students.

For example, it is helpful for a teacher to understand that the brain relies on three essential properties to achieve a particular task, be it the following of a classroom procedure or the completion of an assignment:

1. Attention: the ability to focus on relevant stimuli, and block out what is not relevant (“Do this”)
2. Inhibition: the ability to “not do” certain actions that could be distracting, irrelevant, or eve destructive (“Don’t do this”)
3. Working Memory: the ability to retain and access relevant information for reasoning, decision-making, and taking future actions (“Remember and build on this relevant information”)

As teachers design their lessons and think through what they want their students to accomplish for the day, it is beneficial to think through these three neurological elements for the completion of a task. When we ignore one or more of these elements, we risk short-circuiting our students optimal use of the way God designed their brains.

Diagnostic Questions for Teachers:

• What student behaviors in your classroom have you created or allowed?
• How do your lessons promote student attention on what is most important for the curricular objective?
• What procedures and expectations have you established and maintained to ensure that what is not important or destructive is not allowed in?
• How are you building your students’ working memory of key information to help them complete assignments with greater success? 

The Motive by Patrick Lencioni 

The Motive (Wiley, 2020), written especially for CEOs, explores the underlying motivation of a good leader. Author Patrick Lencioni, well-known for his book Five Dysfunctions of a Team, illustrates through a leadership parable that one’s motivation for leading will dictate what one prioritizes and how he or she spends her time.

In the parable, two types of leadership motivation are at play (135). Reward-centered leadership rests on the fundamental assumption that the leader, having been selected for the role, has arrived and therefore possesses the freedom to design her job around what she most enjoys. It is the belief that the leader’s work should be pleasant and enjoyable because the leadership position is the reward. She therefore has the freedom to avoid mundane, unpleasant, or uncomfortable work if she so pleases, which she does.

In contrast, responsibility-centered leadership assumes that leadership is all about responsibility and service. It is the belief that being a leader is responsible; therefore, the experience of leading should be difficult and challenging (though certainly not without elements of gratification). 

To be clear, Lencioni writes that no leader perfectly embodies one form of motivation or the other. But one of these motives will be predominant and leaders need to be self-aware of what drives them. Reward-centered leaders often resist and avoid doing the difficult things that only they can do for the team they are leading. As a result, the whole organization suffers.

When it comes to leading a classroom, there are all sorts of things that a teacher would prefer not to do: address difficult student behavior, call a parent with bad news to share, have “family talks” with the whole class about negative classroom culture issues, or give a low grade on an assignment. But to be the best leaders they can, teachers need to lean into these responsibilities and thereby discharge their role teacher well.

Diagnostic Questions for Teachers

• What is your motivation for becoming a teacher?
• What are the 3-5 things you can do for your class that no one else can do? 
• How are you caring for your class culture, especially rooting out dysfunctional behavior and forming healthy interpersonal dynamics?
• What kind of feedback do you give your students on their behavior and work? 
• When was the last time you had a difficult conversation with a student in which you addressed unhealthy behavior?
• When was the last time you complained about a student’s or parent’s behavior? What steps do you need to take to address it?
• How often are you reminding your students of the big picture of their education, your particular curriculum, and the core values of your classroom?

Conclusion

Teachers are the leaders of their classrooms, responsible for casting vision for their students, supporting them in their work, and cultivating healthy classroom cultures. Rather than deploying classroom management techniques which can be overly behavioristic and task-oriented, teachers should embrace their role as leaders and focus on developing their people. By helping teachers become better leaders, we will see dynamic classrooms, better learning results, and, most importantly, thriving students.

The post 3 Leadership Books for Teachers appeared first on .

• Unclogging toilets and mopping up sewage in the restrooms of your new facility
• Setting up hundreds of chairs for an event on your own because you know you can’t ask any more of your teachers or volunteers
• Subbing for Calculus one day and Kindergarten the next, outside of your comfort zone and with unclear lesson plans
• Kindly mediating an hour and a half long meeting with a teacher and an unhappy set of parents who will likely leave the school
• Trying to keep track of complicated budgets for various areas of the school, when you’ve got no background in accounting
• Picking up a screaming and flailing child from the hall and carrying him into your office, providing counseling to calm the child down, then calling the parents to follow up on a strategy for discipline
• Planning events and coordinating the speaking roles of many different parties: teachers, board members, parents and your own boss, the Head of School
• Calmly and gratefully receiving constant criticisms and proposed “solutions” from well-meaning teachers, parents, board members and colleagues, who only see part of the picture you see and who don’t understand the time and resource constraints the school is under
• Calling sets of parents who have applied to your school to navigate a tricky conversation sharing feedback from admission testing for their child who is not prepared to enter on grade level
• Feeling the need to innovate new programs even while you know you don’t have enough time to do everything you’ve already committed to doing well
• Experiencing the pressure to be an expert in 50 different areas of academics and the business of running a school, and knowing you actually have expertise in just a handful
• Dealing with the frustrations of people not following your rules or instructions, whether it’s students, parents, or even teachers, meaning you have to take time out of your schedule to tackle another potentially challenging interpersonal conversation
• Never knowing exactly what sort of crisis you’re headed for today when you turn the keys in the ignition and drive off to school in the morning, but knowing from experience that some sort of crisis is more than likely

Serving as a Principal at a classical Christian school is not for the faint of heart. 

In the list above, I’ve tried to highlight some of the elements of a principal’s regular duties that are often left off of your typical job description. If you’re skeptical about the above list, I can assure you that these are all autobiographical to one extent or another, and that I could have gone on with other categories of tasks, equally as difficult, unexpected, stressful and emotionally fraught.

A few years into my tenure as a school administrator I remember attending a session at a private school conference where the presenter shared that the increase in salary and benefits accorded mid-level leaders at private schools often does not match up well with the increased stresses, challenges, time commitment and responsibilities. 

Now I’m not writing this article to dissuade aspiring academic leaders at classical Christian schools. We are in desperate need of more men and women who are competent and willing to embrace the role. Nor even am I writing for the indulgence of a good, old-fashioned pity party for us principals (as tempting as that is…). 

Instead, at the instigation of my current Head of School, I think it’s valuable to explore some of the costs of being a principal or other mid-level academic leader at a small to midsize classical Christian school (say, under 250 students), or else a Head of School at a small school (under 125). This role has a unique set of challenges, and just as Jesus warned of the costs of discipleship, it is my hope that by clarifying the costs of principal leadership at a classical Christian school, more aspiring leaders will be able to willingly take up this specific cross with eyes wide-open and the mental and emotional resources to do so successfully. 

Before we begin, I would note a caveat. Your mileage may vary: not all school situations are alike, and so some of the aspects I mentioned above might be successfully carried by someone else on staff. But at the same time there might be other job requirements I won’t mention. I have used specifics to paint a general picture, not to detail an actual job description. 

So, you think you want to be a principal… Have you considered that being a principal is…

1) a dirty, messy and physically exhausting job,

2) an emotionally draining job that requires you to maintain a relentless optimism and joyful mood in the midst of disheartening circumstances,

3) a multifaceted job requiring a range of competencies and a dizzying variety of challenges,

4) a leadership nightmare because you are always navigating several different audiences, and

5) an ideal job for a teacher and philosopher who can maintain equanimity in an active life? 

Let’s tackle each of these five aspects of the job of principal in term. Hopefully, this list will deter the faint of heart and those who are not suited to the demands of the position. But more than that, hopefully, it will help other aspiring principals prepare themselves for such a noble task. As Paul says of the role of overseer in 1 Timothy 3:1, so I say, “If anyone aspires to the office of principal, he desires a noble task. But not one for the faint of heart or unqualified. Let each one test himself to see whether he has what it takes.”

If you’re still reading this article and you are neither a principal nor an aspiring principal, I would encourage you to read on. Parents and teachers can benefit from understanding better the demands that are placed on those who are leading them. This can give them compassion when their administrator (inevitably) fails them in some way. I know that I have been helped and encouraged to shoulder the challenges of my role by kind and thoughtful teachers and parents who looked beyond their own concerns and showed appreciation for me and an understanding of my circumstances.

In a similar way, board members and heads of school might be sobered to recognize the complexities and day-to-day realities of the mid-level administrator. Inspired and multi-competent leadership at this level might not be the only inciting factor in a school’s improvement and growth to maturity, but it’s a major one. A principal who can successfully tackle the physical, emotional, many-hat-wearing, and philosophical leadership demands of the role can propel a school on to excellence. This implies that such persons should be appropriately trained, sought out, empowered and supported.

All of us at Educational Renaissance have served in mid-level principal or academic leadership roles at schools, so we have a special concern for how this role can function as a lever for genuine classical renewal and excellence at a school. Without further ado, we count the costs of principal leadership.

So, you think you want to be a principal…

1) Have you considered that being a principal is a dirty, messy and physically demanding job?

If you think going into school administration might release you from the demands of teaching and give you the luxury of a desk job, think again. 

While it may seem like teaching keeps you on your feet all day, and the principal can sit behind her desk for hours on end, this image doesn’t adequately reflect the role at a small classical Christian school. 

The fact is that many, if not most, classical Christian schools cannot afford the full custodial staff of established schools. This makes the principal’s job dirtier and messier than your typical office job. There may be exceptions where the church a school is renting from has a competent and well-run custodial and facilities staff. But in general, aspiring principals should expect that addressing toilet issues and vomit cleanup are part of the J-O-B. 

Event set up and tear-down also require moving chairs and tables, purchasing food and drinks, napkins and plasticware. Even if you engage other employees and volunteers, principals often have the privilege and the responsibility to lead the way in this sort of manual labor and cleanup. 

In addition, a principal’s day should be active if she is to be successful in her role of leading teachers, parents, students and staff. The sheer weight of meetings can take a physical toll, if you’re doing your job right. I schedule bi-weekly check in meetings with every teacher or staff member who reports to me, and I think this meeting cadence is necessary for keeping everyone engaged and coaching them to their full potential. Likewise, if your school is growing, you should be interviewing every set of new parents before you admit them to your school. You should also connect with every set of parents once a year before re-enrollment, either through in person meetings or on the phone if you want to proactively engage parents and solve issues before they become a family’s reason for leaving the school. 

Then consider all the ad hoc meetings, meetings with coaches, fine arts directors, club leaders, community leaders and vendors for various services the school needs. The principal needs physical stamina simply to keep up with the pace of meetings. 

In addition to these meetings, the principal should be regularly walking around the school and visiting the classrooms of teachers. A rigorous schedule of observing teachers is the quickest and most effective way to increase the quality of teaching and learning that I know of. I am regularly held accountable for a certain number of observations a week. This discipline more than any other contributes to classical Christian excellence in a school. 

The energy demands of this sort of role alone are considerable. If you are currently a principal or are considering becoming one in the near future, make it a priority to care for your physical wellbeing through a healthy diet, a full night’s sleep and regular exercise. And as you face the temptation to cave on any of these due to the pressures and stresses of the role, refuse to give in and play the long game on your effectiveness. 

2) Have you considered that being a principal is an emotionally draining job that requires you to maintain a relentless optimism and joyful mood in the midst of disheartening circumstances?

If your school is anything like the schools I have worked at, it is full of human beings. And the fact of the matter is that human beings sin. They talk behind one another’s backs. They grumble and complain. They don’t always live up the high ideals of classical virtue and communal cooperation. 

And many of these problems will come knocking on your door if you are the principal. Even if you don’t have to solve every issue that rears its ugly head, you will know about more problems in your school than you care to. You must bear the weight of disappointment and, to a certain extent, anxiety for the possible negative effects of these issues on the future of your school. You may not be suffering persecution like the apostle Paul, but sometimes being a principal makes me think of the end of Paul’s rant in 2nd Corinthians 11 about his sufferings, 

“And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant?” (2 Cor 11:28-29 ESV)

A mentor of mine once compared school leadership to the role of a priest in the Old Testament. You must be able to bear the sins and heartaches of the community and lift them up to God, not spit back at the community the hurt and pain and disappointment. You must find a way to be joyful and optimistic, even in those moments when it feels like the institution that you’ve been pouring out blood, sweat and tears to build is tearing itself apart. You need to be able to maintain your equilibrium with student discipline problems, teachers crying in your office, and background drama about this or that initiative or decision. 

A few tips for doing this well include having clear boundaries as a school leader. Have a regular practice of what Cal Newport calls Shutdown Complete. Close your laptop at the end of the day and stop responding to email unless there is a real emergency. And no, that issue that a parent emailed you about late at night is not a real emergency. Seriously consider not getting your work email on your phone, as I do. Don’t try to solve every issue or problem. Know what you can control and what you can’t. Have realistic expectations. 

Your classical Christian school is not going to be a utopia that brings Christ’s kingdom fully to earth before Jesus comes again. Don’t put all your hope in the institution. I believe in institution-building and the power of classical Christian schools, but we must remember that arguably no Christian institution has stayed faithful to its calling for more than several generations. Human institutions, no matter how fine, do not last forever. 

On the other hand, the human beings you work with each day, the students and parents, teachers and fellow staff, are eternal beings. C.S. Lewis’ description in “Weight of Glory” helps me keep my perspective in the midst of these emotional demands:

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.”

3) Have you considered that being a principal is a multifaceted job requiring a range of competencies and a dizzying variety of challenges?

The principal at a small classical Christian school must be a generalist. There are too many aspects of the business of running a school that will neglected, if you focus most of your attention on any one. Spend all your time on improving the curriculum, and you will blow out the budget AND your teachers will have problems with student discipline. Spend all your time on classroom discipline and order, and the lack of extracurriculars and sports will hamper your growth. Spend all your time on planning events for parents, and your teachers will be worn out and disengaged. Take my advice and spread your time wisely between the things I mentioned, and your school still may struggle because you have no marketing and admissions strategy.

In order to function well as a principal, you must be ready and willing to learn about aspects of the business of running a school. Whether it’s heading up the marketing and admissions of the school, as I do, or tackling budgeting and payroll, insurance, fundraising, or event planning, you’re likely going to have to figure out how to be competent at other major functions of the business of a modern school. It’s pointless to protest and say, “Medieval schoolmasters didn’t have to learn how to manage a website and run online ads for Open Houses.” We’re not in the Middle Ages anymore and running a school in our society is complex.

It may help to think of a flourishing classical Christian school on the analogy of a symphony rather than a solo performance. School communities have many aspects that must be in harmony and must grow and develop in harmony. The principal (and head of school) are not solo musicians who light up the stage in their area of competence and skill. They are more like conductors who keep time for everyone and bring different sections of instrument in at the right time for their special moment. Schools grow and improve because many things are going well in many different areas of the school. 

Principals can’t just play to their strengths. They must operate in their weaknesses until the school has grown to the point that they can raise up other leaders who will outshine them. When you don’t have a marketing director, you still have to do marketing. And in fact, you will never be able to afford a marketing director, until you have done improved your marketing to a certain point. It’s a painful but true irony that these core functions of the school need attention most, when you have the least resources to give them. 

The best analogy for this that I have treasured over the years is the plate spinning routine of Henrik Bothe. Watch the whole video if you are an administrator at a small school, and everything about the experience of the school year will suddenly make sense.

4) Have you considered that being a principal is a leadership nightmare because you are always navigating several different audiences?

Let me explain what I mean. In most businesses, it’s clear who the customer is and the product is fairly simple. In the business of private schools, the parent is the customer, but your chief relationship is with their child. The child’s education is the product but it’s a challenging project with a long time horizon and inevitable ups and downs that you can’t entirely control. This creates a unique communication dynamic to say the least. Add to this the ethos of a Christian school, and many of the leadership challenges that churches have suddenly enter into the mix. Add in the specifics of classical education with all the variety of expectations that parents will have of that term, and now most of the things you can say are liable to misunderstanding from a number of fronts. Lastly, consider that your customers are paying a price tag for their children’s education, when most parents pay nothing to send their kids to government schools. They are understandably going to be pickier and more demanding about all aspects of the school.

As my Head of School often says at prospective parent interviews, “We deal with people’s money, their religion and their kids.” If that isn’t a situation fraught with rhetorical peril, I don’t know what is. Emphasize too much a particular denominational distinctive at your Christian school and half your audience might grow concerned. Talk up the discipline and rigor of classical education, and some parents may ask where the joy and love of learning have gone. Tell them about the joy and play-learning, the discovery centers and discussions, and some will ask why their child’s test scores aren’t high enough and why they keep hearing about this other student misbehaving in class.

One of the main lessons I learned in my first few years as an administrator is the need to understand and sympathize with the parent’s perspective. When I was just a teacher, I was so focused on exploring the philosophy of classical education and on my own experiences of teaching that I couldn’t envision things through a parent’s eyes. A principal must be able to toggle back and forth between his teacher hat and his parent hat. 

I’ve also been really helped by the statement of Keith Nix, Head of School at Veritas in Richmond, that school leaders should emphasize more what they are for, rather than what they are against. Polemics have their place, but speaking in terms of what you are for enables you to strike the right note for multiple concerned parties. You can pair together seemingly contradictory goals like ‘joy’ in the classroom and ‘order’, high standards and high support, excellence and intentional care. It’s also important to remember that when you speak at events, you are being heard both by teachers and by parents, by board members and by fellow staff. In some ways the role of a principal is mediator in chief. In another sense you must have the conviction to stake out a direction and say hard truths that neither party may be particularly happy to hear. 

5) Lastly, have you considered that being a principal is an ideal job for a teacher and philosopher who can maintain equanimity in an active life? 

If you’ve read all that I’ve shared so far and are still undeterred, the role of a principal might just be the noble task for you. So, I want to end on a positive note. The particular beauty of a role like principal is how it combines several exciting and challenging tasks. The role begs for a leader with some level of philosophical bent, especially at a classical Christian school. If you are to stake out a direction for the academic programs of the whole school, you should ideally do so from a deep well. But you must also be conversant with practical concerns. You should be idealistic enough to challenge the status quo of modern education and realistic enough to work improvements out gradually with real people in real time. 

You should be a competent teacher, not only because you may need to substitute for kindergarten or seniors, but also because you must teach teachers the art of teaching, the art of resolving conflict well, the practical details of lunchroom expectations, and the grand philosophy of education.

The ideal principal has a hunger to learn and grow and half wishes for a life of contemplation and study but loves the activity of people and planning too much to fully embrace scholarship alone. For the principal the active life of school leadership is cast with a contemplative hue. Practical application and philosophical consideration must be blended well. The principal must love pedagogy and people, building programs and performance evaluations. 

So, you think you want to be a principal? It’s a noble task if you have what it takes!

The post So, You Think You Want to be a Principal… appeared first on .

Aristotle’s intellectual virtue of artistry (Greek: techne) is by its very nature creative and productive. In order for it to flourish in a school culture, it must draw some of its lifeblood from the natural creative and productive impulse of children as human beings. When they see the products and beautiful creations of the masters of these living traditions, then they will naturally want to imitate them (see Comenius, The Great Didactic, 195-196). Drawing from this natural desire will make unnecessary the carrots and sticks of modern education’s manipulative motivational techniques. 

The Example of the Renaissance Guilds

We might be tempted to think that the structure of a system, like a school, has nothing to do with the cultivation of high levels of artistry or genius. We are tempted to think primarily in terms of in-born talent as a fixed entity (see Aristotle and the Growth Mindset • Educational Renaissance), but research on geniuses and elite performers points in another direction. In his book, The Talent Code, Daniel Coyle notes that geniuses “are not scattered uniformly through time and space” but “tend to appear in clusters” (61-62): 

Athens from 440 B.C. to 380 B.C., Florence from 1440 to 1490, and London from 1570-1640. Of these three none is so dazzling or well documented as Florence. In the space of a few generations a city with a population slightly less than that of present day Stillwater, Oklahoma, produced the greatest outpouring of artistic achievement the world has ever known. A solitary genius is easy to understand, but dozens of them, in the space of two generations? How could it happen? (62)

The scholar David Banks proposes a number of possible explanations that we might expect: the prosperity of Florence, its relative peace and freedom, etc. Unfortunately, each one of these is disproved by the historical record. Instead, the flurry of genius-level work is best explained by a social structure and educational process relentlessly focused on deep practice: the craft guilds:

As it turns out, Florence was an epicenter for the rise of a powerful social invention called craft guilds. Guilds (the word means “gold”) were associations of weavers, painters, goldsmiths, and the like who organized themselves to regulate competition and control quality. They had management, dues, and tight policies dictating who could work in the craft. What they did best, however, was grow talent. Guilds were built on the apprenticeship system, in which boys around seven years of age were sent to live with masters for fixed terms of five to ten years. (64)

The apprenticeship process that we have discussed throughout this series, it seems, can have better and worse cultural structures for training students in artistry. On a side note, the hierarchy of excellence seems to foster artistic genius more readily than the democracy of talent. In addition, the experience of apprentices at the bottom of the hierarchy mirrors the recommendations of Comenius for students to begin with the most basic and practical skills of the craft, and not with elaborate theory. As Coyle further explains,

An apprentice worked directly under the tutelage and supervision of the master, who frequently assumed rights as the child’s legal guardian. Apprentices learned the craft from the bottom up, not through lecture or theory but through action: mixing paint, preparing canvases, sharpening chisels. They cooperated and competed within a hierarchy, rising after some years to the status of journeyman and eventually, if they were skilled enough, master. This system created a chain of mentoring: da Vinci studied under Verrocchio, Verrocchio studied under Donatello, Donatello studied under Ghiberti; Michelangelo studied under Ghirlandaio, Ghirlandaio studied under Baldovinetti, and so on, all of them frequently visiting one another’s studios in a cooperative-competitive arrangement that today would be called social networking. (64)

This apprenticeship system can be thrown in stark relief with our common vision of what a “liberal arts education” should look like. Are our teachers masters of the liberal arts? Are our students cooperating and competing within a culture focused on rewarding excellence? Or are they simply hearing lectures on knowledge, taking notes and taking tests? Is their educational experience properly artistic in nature, focused on production in the common, liberal and fine arts? Are they systematically and structurally encouraged to try to solve problems of a production, even if they fail again and again along the way? Or are they motivated by grades, and jumping through the hoops of a rigid system?

In short, apprentices spent thousands of hours solving problems, trying and failing and trying again, within the confines of a world build on the systematic production of excellence. Their life was roughly akin to that of a twelve-year-old intern who spends a decade under the direct supervision of Steven Spielberg, painting sets, sketching storyboards, setting cameras. The notion that such a kid might one day become a great film director would hardly be a surprise: it would be closer to unavoidable (see Ron Howard). (64-65)

The Renaissance Guilds offer us a compelling vision of how the academy could be structured for artistry in a way that transcends the conventions of the modern school.

Adopting an Apprenticeship Model of Grading

This leads us to a first implication for the academy of our better understanding of Apprenticeship in the Arts. Students should be induced to create and produce with excellence, not by the overuse of fear or love, grades, punishments or rewards, but by their natural desire for imitation, creativity and production. Charlotte Mason put it this way: 

These principles are limited by the respect due to the personality [i.e. personhood] of children, which must not be encroached upon whether by the direct use of fear or love, suggestions or influence, or by undue play upon any one natural desire. (vol. 6, p. 80)

For this reason, and to avoid the grade inflation so typical of schools today, at the school where I serve as principal we have adopted an apprenticeship model of grading for our younger students and in artistic subjects for older students . 

This Apprenticeship model attempts to assign accurately a student’s level of mastery of grade-level artistic expectations. Since, as we discussed before, so much of K-12 education consists of training in the arts (if we include all the skill development of the liberal arts as well as the fine and performing arts!), it makes the most sense to assess students’ progression through the traditional vision of apprenticeship. When learning an art, every student begins at the level of novice, where the entire nature of the art and its practice is still new and unknown to the student. Through introduction to the art and early experiences in beginning to imitate a master, the student proceeds to the status of apprentice. At this point the student must still be watched closely by the master as he or she is producing, since the apprentice is liable to make mistakes and therefore still in need of some hand-holding and regular demonstration or correction to help the student practice the art correctly. After the student has gained some facility and can work mostly on his or her own, he has attained the status of journeyman, being able to produce the goods of the art dependably and with a measure of both autonomy and excellence. Finally, when a student displays a high level of artistry, excellence and a seasoned understanding that implies the ability to teach or train others in the craft, he or she has become a master, at least of that subskill. 

Apprenticeship Model Grade Levels

• Novice — a student who is new to the art and unacquainted with the processes that lead to proper production
• Apprentice — a student who is imitating the processes with some measure of success, but is also in need of frequent support and correction by the master
• Journeyman — a student who can produce the beautiful goods of the art with some autonomy and creative artistry
• Master — a student who consistently displays artistry and independent creativity, as well as the mastery that implies the ability to train others in the art

Adopting this sort of grading philosophy and system in a school can help clarify for teachers, students, and parents the actual nature of much of the educational project. When traditional grades are used it is often unclear whether or not students should be graded mainly on the completion of assignments or their effort, as opposed to their understanding and mastery. While no doubt students who work hard should be recognized in some way, when artistry is being judged it can actually be demotivating to students to adopt an A for effort standard. Objective grading honors the facts that students’ consciences are sensitive to and can observe quite clearly in front of their faces: some students produce more excellent and beautiful work than others. 

At the same time, this apprenticeship model avoids the judgmental approach of a traditional, objective grading system, because it creates a story arc of progression from the lower levels. Everyone starts out as a novice in any area of artistry. Very few students will attain mastery of any art or subskill in a given year in which it is introduced. When this expectation is introduced and normalized in a school culture, the rare situations of student mastery can be appropriately recognized and celebrated in a way that encourages all other students to continue to strive for excellence. 

That said, overemphasizing the judgment of grades can also be detrimental and ineffective. So even though it is important to retain the assessment of students’ mastery levels, perhaps the more effective assessments are cultural. When students are being trained to produce in a craft, their work should be displayed before their peers, their parents and the school community. This inspires the natural motivation to do their best and involves the natural judgment process of the community for what artistry looks like. Because of this, academic events, performances and competitions provide the natural clearinghouse for developing a culture of artistry. 

Many of these school events almost go without saying in the school calendar, but their value is often overlooked and neglected. Why do students work so hard for artistry in sports, when they might not for other school activities? Because their artistry is clearly on display and being judged through the natural cooperative-competitive environment of the game or tournament, with spectators watching for their success. In the same way, a classical Christian school can make much of liberal arts through academic events like a Spelling Bee, Speech Meet, or public debate, with rules strictly followed and mandatory participation, and with audiences and judges in attendance. In the same way, when classes perform recitations (i.e. memorized passages of scripture, poems or historical speeches) in front of the entire school and teachers are encouraged to impart a dramatic flair, the training of the rote memory turns into the artistry of rhetoric. 

Viewed in this light, school concerts and plays, competitions and games, art galleries, and displays of student work at events are not nice extras at a school. Instead, these school community activities become earnest teaching and learning moments that apprentice students in the arts and create a culture of craftsmanship in the academy. Academic events should be chosen with care and conducted with reverence for the mission and beating heart of the school. Although a school calendar can become overscheduled, we should remember that such performances, whether high or low stakes, are opportunities for cultivating the natural motivation of students to excel in artistry. Such opportunities are potentially transformative educational experiences and should be viewed as a crucial piece of the curriculum or course of study. 

Understanding the motivational value of proper grading in an apprenticeship model as well as the role of academic events, competitions and performances can go a long way toward creating a culture of artistry and excellence at a school. But we should not be unaware of the deeper spiritual ramifications of this process. 

Apprenticeship in Christian Perspective

First, we need to remember that the creation of beautiful and good things is innately human. God created mankind in his image as the stewards of creation and he commissioned human beings with the cultural mandate: the call to fill the earth and subdue it. This is rightly interpreted as an invitation to all the creative arts, or techne which use the stuff of earth as the raw material for the creating beautiful and good artifacts. (Read Aristotle’s Virtue Theory and a Christian Purpose of Education.) That is precisely what we see happening in Genesis 4. In spite of sin and its disastrous effects displayed in Cain and Abel, we see the progenitors of various common, liberal and fine arts:

Adah gave birth to Jabal; he was the father of those who live in tents and raise livestock. His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all who play stringed instruments and pipes. Zillah also had a son, Tubal-Cain, who forged all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron. (Gen 4:22 ESV)

Thus the apprenticeship model was born. We might note that it was initially passed down in families; apprenticeship and the father-son, mother-daughter relationship went hand in hand. 

So apprenticeship in true, good and beautiful arts is human and therefore part and parcel of a redeemed Christian life. As human beings created in the image of God, our lives are most whole and fruitful when they fulfill the creation mandate through some type of artistry, through culture-making to borrow Andy Crouch’s term.

But secondly, we can note from the traditional and familial nature of apprenticeship, that it often carries with it, by nature, the lifestyle of the master craftsman. All the arts are embodied by their master craftsmen in a way of life, involving their beautiful creation and practice of the art, ideally alongside a full and good life. But let me be clear, this very fact means that apprenticeship in the arts as a means of bringing up children in the discipline and nurture of the Lord (see Eph 6:4) must be embodied as part and parcel of a whole Christian life. 

So if Christian parents apprentice their child to a pagan man who is a master of rhetoric, they should not be surprised if their child eventually takes on the moral and spiritual faults of this man, even if they also gain some of his rhetorical skill. That is how human beings work. In the same way if a young girl is apprenticed to an immoral dance or music teacher, who is immersed in a pluralistic world with its values, it is not impossible that over time the influence of that world will be transferred to her alongside the art. 

This is one of the forgotten premises by which our Christian classical schools attempt to operate. In the modern factory model of education we have forgotten what Jesus said: “A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40 ESV). Disciple – apprentice – student. We have forgotten that these are roughly equivalent terms

Of course, when we follow Quintilian’s lead and partially apprentice children to many different arts (see On the Education of the Orator I.12), we minimize the potentially negative influence of any one teacher, but we do not really depart from this principle. In fact, we might say that at an ideal classical Christian school, a university or wholeness of the arts and sciences, this apprenticeship process under the leadership of a head master, a head magister or teacher, or else a principal or chief teacher (this is what these words original meant), the whole school of teachers pass on a communal way of life together. The culture of the school with all its teachers, curriculum, classes and traditions, apprentices the individual students.

This insight about apprenticeship as resonating with the nature of true Christian classical education is well-summed up in a statement of the school where I serve as Principal, Coram Deo Academy. We say that we apprentice students into the Great Conversation for the purpose of the Great Commission and the Great Commandment. 

To sum up, so far I have indicated by two statements the way in which apprenticeship in artistry, i.e. various arts, established traditions of craftsmanship, whether liberal, common or fine, contributes to the spiritual development of children. Those two ways are, first, through the fulfillment of our human calling in the creation mandate to act as sub-creators of good and beautiful things. This is what it means to fulfill our purpose as human beings, and therefore artistry is part of how we experience the redeemed Christian life. But second is through Christian apprenticeship into the life of good works established for us by Christ the true Master’s life, death and resurrection, the life of those apprenticed to him and characteristic of the family of God. And we should recall again the warning attached to this point, that non-Christian masters, teachers, artisans are by nature liabilities as well as potential sources of the blessing of artistry. 

Entwining the Spiritual and Artistic Goals of the Academy

Because of this, the classical Christian school rightly has a high bar of qualifications for its faculty based on spiritual maturity. The character of the teachers will inevitably have a long term influence on the character of the students. Structurally, then, the leadership of a school should not only develop careful recruiting and hiring processes that are intended to ensure the Christian maturity of its teachers, they should bake into the life of the school some measure of the spiritual practices of the church that aim at developing spiritual maturity. It is not that classical Christian academies should attempt to replace the worship and community of the local church, but by involving the faculty and staff in the rhythm of prayer, worship, and scripture reading, characteristic of the universal church, the discipleship—or, should I say, apprenticeship—of the Christian life become evident in the school culture. 

It is important, in this connection, to fuse our goals for training in artistry through assessment and artistic events, with discipleship in an appropriate and not an artificial way. The cross country coach can lead students in prayer before a race. The Spring Concert can feature the famous poems, spirituals and hymns of Christian worship, artfully performed. Academic events can include brief homiletical exhortation and instruction as part of the program, alongside the competition or performance itself. Assessments, awards and recognition of artistry can be publicly relativized to higher spiritual ends. Excellence in artistry can be deliberately and intentionally pursued soli Deo gloria, with glory to God alone, as J.S. Bach signed his masterful musical compositions. 

Further, the leadership of a school must be careful not to compromise core spiritual commitments for artistic ends, whether in hiring faculty or staff or in the nature of the content or practices. It can be so easy to tolerate that borderline coach or drama teacher, or to skate the line of acceptability in some way. Because, after all, the sports team or play is so important to the kids and their families…. Often this is a false dichotomy, but even when not, we should be willing to sacrifice high quality artistry for gospel purity whenever necessary, remembering Jesus’ words: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36 KJV) The value of intellectual virtues can never outweigh that of spiritual virtues. As Paul says, “For while bodily training is of some value, godliness [i.e. piety] is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come” (1 Tim 4:8 ESV). That said, artistry can be used in support of higher ends; prime examples are musical worship and preaching (derived from two of the traditional liberal arts, music and rhetoric). 

The classical Christian school is the ideal place for this beautiful fusion to occur and be actively trained. Such considerations should color an academy’s vision of their school’s or their students’ future greatness. Kolby Atchison has discussed the application of the Hedgehog Concept from Jim Collins Good to Great to classical Christian schools. Decisions about which arts to pursue and prioritize, when the list of possible arts seems endless, would benefit from careful thought about a school’s Hedgehog Concept: what the school can be the best in the world at will involve the culture, events and arts that are emphasized in the curricular and extracurricular programs. Innovations in a school will often occur here as leaders capitalize on local opportunities and the community’s unique giftings.

After all, we can become like the Renaissance Guilds in every area of artistic excellence possible. Greatness requires focused effort on particular arts. And true Christian artistry focuses us even more narrowly on what will serve Christ in our generational moment. As C.T. Studd wrote in his famous poem, “Only one life, ’twill soon be past, / Only what’s done for Christ will last.”

Earlier Articles in this series:

1. Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Purpose of Education

2. Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Importance of Objectives: 3 Blessings of Bloom’s

3. Breaking Down the Bad of Bloom’s: The False Objectivity of Education as a Modern Social Science

4. When Bloom’s Gets Ugly: Cutting the Heart Out of Education

5. What Bloom’s Left Out: A Comparison with Aristotle’s Intellectual Virtues

6. Aristotle’s Virtue Theory and a Christian Purpose of Education

7. Moral Virtue and the Intellectual Virtue of Artistry or Craftsmanship

8. Practicing in the Dark or the Day: Well-worn Paths or Bushwalking, Artistry and Moral Virtue Continued

9. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 1: Traditions and Divisions

10. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 2: A Pedagogy of Craft

11. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 3: Crafting Lessons in Artistry

12. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 4: Artistry, the Academy and the Working World

Final article in this series:

14. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 6: The Transcendence and Limitations of Artistry

The post Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 5: Structuring the Academy for Christian Artistry appeared first on .

In Good to Great, author Jim Collins argues from longitudinal research that one reason organizations fail to make the jump from good to great is that they never land on their “one big thing.” He calls this “thing” the Hedgehog Concept. Collins defines it as a simple crystalline concept that flows from deep understanding about the intersection of the organization’s superior distinctive, economic engine, and abiding passion (97). Collins writes, “The essence of a Hedgehog Concept is to attain piercing clarity about how to produce the best long-term results, and then exercising relentless discipline to say, ‘No thank you,’ to opportunities that fail the hedgehog test” (Good to Great and the Social Sectors, 17).

In this blog, my final installment in a three-part series on Good to Great (you can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here), I will explore how Christian, classical schools can identify their Hedgehog Concept. Like my other two articles, it is important to remember that much of Collin’s advice is designed for businesses, not schools. Collins himself acknowledged this limitation, which led him to publish an accompanying monograph for social sectors. Nevertheless, in my own thinking, I have discovered that there are quite a few helpful instances of overlap between the business and social sector, including the need for a Hedgehog Concept. In what follows, I will unpack further the notion of a Hedgehog Concept and then offer specific guidance regarding how Christian, classical schools can find theirs. 

Understanding the Hedgehog

There are three key parts to the Hedgehog Concept, all of which work together in a synergistic way. The result is a crystalline center, which becomes the core business. Once the core business is identified, the company must exercise rigorous discipline to resist opportunities that would lead it away from its center.

So what are the three parts? I will take them one at a time.

#1: What can you be the best in the world at?

This may sound like a humorous, if not arrogant, question. But it forces an organization to think deeply about what truly sets it apart in the marketplace. It is not enough to simply identify a list of core competencies. This list may get you a sly, maneuverable fox, but not a hedgehog.

Moreover, this circle is not asking what the organization wants to be the best at. Collins writes, “Every company would like to be the best at something, but few actually understand–with piercing insight and egoless clarity–what they actually have the potential to be the best at and, just as important, what they cannot be the best at” (98). In order to gain this kind of understanding, organizations need to be honest with themselves, confronting the brutal facts about what assets set them apart and what constraints might provide clarity on the direction they should focus.

It is tempting for companies who are doing well–meeting their quarterly goals and so on–to feel that they are on the path the greatness. But Collins warns that this could actually be the curse of competence. To transcend this curse, companies must resist the temptation to become complacent with brief instances of success. To achieve exceptional results over the long-term, companies should take encouragement from short-term results while continuing to strive to find their hedgehog concept, a process that took the good-to-great companies fours years on average to find.

#2: What drives your economic engine?

To identify the second circle within the hedgehog, Collins asks, “If you could pick one and only one ratio–profit per x–to systematically increase over time, what x would have the greatest and most sustainable impact on your economic engine?” (104). 

For example, Walgreens made the jump from good to great when it identified its primary economic denominator as profit per customer visit. This decision led them to redesign their building design, product line, and pricing around maximizing the productivity of each customer visit. For Gillette, another good-to-great company, it would not make sense for its engine to be driven by customer visits because it does not own brick-and-mortar stores. Instead, Gillette concentrated its engine power on product per customer. Gillette focused on gaining customer loyalty through both repeated purchases (e.g. razor cartridges) and high profit purchases (e.g. non-disposable razors) (107). 

For nonprofit organizations, like schools, they cannot locate their economic engine in a profit metric for obvious reasons. But nor is it sufficient to simply focus on other sources of cash flow, which Collins initially thought. What Collins learned in his research is that in the social sector, the economic engine needs to be retooled into a resource engine with three key components: time, money, and brand. The question then becomes: “How can we develop a sustainable resource engine to deliver superior performance results relative to our mission?” (Social Sector, 18).

#3: What are you deeply passionate about?

The final concentric circle in Collins’ hedgehog concept is all about passion. This is the most straightforward and intuitive of the three circles. As organizations find their hedgehog concept, their one big “thing,” it must be something that the people are excited about. Whether it is the product itself or what the company stands for, there must be an inner motivation that drives them. It is this passion that will help companies push through glass ceilings and sustain results over the long-term.

Identifying a Christian, Classical Hedgehog Concept

As we begin to explore what a Christian, classical hedgehog concept might look like, it can be helpful to shift around the order in which we tackle the circles. As a nonprofit, schools should begin with their cause–what they are passionate about and, ultimately, why they exist. When we can get clear on the mission, we can then proceed through the conceptual process.

#1: What is your school deeply passionate about?

For most Christian, classical educators, our passion falls into a few buckets. As educators, we delight in children. We love their joy, curiosity, and enthusiasm. We regularly catch glimmers of who they can become as their personal strengths and interests emerge. We are passionate about coming alongside our students to help them steward the gifts God has given them and to help them flourish as human beings. 

We are also passionate about God’s redemptive work in human history. It is a stunning reality of the gospel that God has enacted a plan to reconcile fallen creation to Himself. Through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, the kingdom of God is breaking into our world, bringing hope and redemption for all peoples of the earth who put their trust in Christ. Christian, classical education is one way we as Christians can participate in impactful work for the kingdom.

Finally, we are passionate about real and deep learning that is rooted in something bigger than, for example, workplace preparation. When we reimagine learning as the pursuit of goodness, truth, and beauty, and the formation of virtue in students, we grow excited about going on this journey ourselves and inviting students with us in this transformative process.

#2: What can your school do better than anyone else?

This is a tricky one. There are lots of ways to answer this question and different classical schools will have slightly different answers depending on their size, history, and context (see the introduction to this article for all the different potential areas of focus). However, from a philosophical and curricular standpoint, there is a unifying thread that necessarily connects truly classical schools no matter what size and location. 

Here are a few examples:

• Learn in a genuine community of inquiry through discussion-based learning
• Facilitate organic student growth, free of checking the boxes of bureaucratic state standards
• Read the classics of western civilization, contemplating and digesting the riches of the tradition
• Prepare future leaders with strong character and rhetorical skills 
• Equip young Christian men and women to lead lives of meaning and purpose

What about sports programs, school musicals, financial accessibility, and academic accolades? These components may be part of a particular strategic plan or initiative, but they are likely not central to the school’s hedgehog concept. For classical schools, leaders need to keep the main thing the main thing: equipping students with the knowledge, virtues, and skills they need to flourish Through a time-tested curriculum, and commitment to preserving the best of the past while gleaning insights of the present, classical schools can set apart themselves from other schools.

#3: What drives the resource engine for your school?

As you may recall, Collins believes there are three components to a nonprofit’s resource engine: time, money, and brand. The goal is to connect this resource engine to the organization’s passion and what it does best. While there is much to be said on this topic, I will comment briefly on money and brand, saving time for another day (ironically).

From a financial perspective, schools receive revenue from, generally speaking, tuition and fundraising. Therefore, schools need to exercise both business acumen and fundraising skill. They need to think carefully about how much it will cost to run the school and create a sustainable financial plan to cover these expenses. Ideally, the school will cover most, if not all, of its operational expenses with hard income (e.g. tuition and fees), freeing up fundraising efforts to fund infrastructure projects and longterm strategic goals.

On the brand component, schools can help power their resource engine by earning a reputation of achieving its mission with excellence. This reputation, which takes time to develop through consistent practices and results, will reinforce what a school can charge for tuition and how much it can raise. In this way, the resource engine works synergistically along with the other circles of the hedgehog concept. The cause of the school’s passion will mobilize donors to give. As the brand improves, emotional goodwill and mindshare will increase, growing the school’s reputation in the community. This in turn will lead to increased enrollment, more alumni, and a wider donor base. This phenomenon of momentum, which takes time over a period of sustained effort, Collins calls the Flywheel Effect.

Conclusion

In order for Christian, classical schools to faithfully serve students over the long-term, they need to identify and commit to their Hedgehog Concept. The concept begins with the emergence of a passion to equip future generations of Christians with the knowledge, skills, and virtues they need to flourish both individually and as members of society. It is then augmented with an understanding of what the school contributes to families in the communities it touches: Christ-centered, liberal arts education. Finally, the school’s Hedgehog Concept is complete when it hones in on a resource engine that connects all three circles so that they reinforce each other for longterm institutional sustainability.

1. “Price, Product, Process: A Conceptual Update” in I&P, Vol. 40, No. 10. Independent School Management.

The post Good to Great: Helping Schools Find Their Hedgehog Concept appeared first on .

Leadership has been studied from many angles in an attempt to delineate all the factors that make great leaders. While there are common threads among all the different schools of thought, a singular definition is elusive. It is easy to tell when leadership is being done well, but how do we replicate the traits, circumstances and contingent factors that went into making any given person an outstanding leader?

Defining leadership, though, isn’t all that hard. A leader brings a group from one place to another in a coordinated way. I like the simple definition of leadership in Rare Leadership, “leading is primarily about guiding the group that does the work” (32). A dear friend of mine, Tasha Chapman, who teaches leadership at Covenant Seminary in St. Louis, shared her image of a leader. She talks about a group needing to cross a river. Getting the whole group across takes leadership through planning, teamwork, vision, inspiration, motivation and timeliness. A leader cannot do all the work if everyone is going to get across the river. Effort must be distributed, yet coordinated. There must be direction (get to the other side) and yet flexibility to meet changing circumstances along the way. Applying this image to the classroom, we can think of a class making it from the first day of class to the last day of class as something like a river crossing. The teacher is the leader who can envision the destination and keeps the group together all along the way.

In this article, we’ll explore several principles of leadership drawing on a number of resources. Most principles of leadership at fairly simple in concept, and yet to apply them well takes practice and coaching. Whether you are a teacher or an administrator, hopefully an overview of these six leadership principles will enable you to grow the leadership quotient in your classroom or school.

1. Clear, Simple Communication

The first principle of leadership is effective communication. There are so many ways in which we mis-communicate, largely because we know what we mean and we assume everyone else knows what we mean, and yet something happens that interferes in the interchange. And yet, communication can be effective when we understand a few basic ideas.

I place clarity and simplicity on two ends of a continuum pertaining to the amount of words we communicate. Often times we attempt to clarify what we mean by throwing more and more words into the mix. So clarity represents one end of the spectrum. Simplicity, on the other hand, is about using a few words as possible. These concepts create a tension for the communicator. I need enough words to be clear to my listener, and yet not so elaborate that I lose simplicity.

This is something I reference in my work on habit training. The second step of habit training is describing the details of the habit. Here the teacher or parent needs to break down the habit into a very simple set of instructions so that the child is able to succeed. I find this principle to be transferrable to all situations, from classroom routines to emergency procedures. Clear, simple communication is the first task of leadership.

For a teacher, minute by minute of every day, communicating with students is job number one. Obviously there are other forms of communication that a teacher must engage in, with fellow teachers, with parents, with administration, etc. Applying the concept of simplicity and clarity works at all levels of communication. Keeping all these different parties in the know leads to the next principle of leadership.

2. Coordinate Your Team

The second principle is a cognate of the first. Keeping your team together and pulling in the same direction is at the heart of leadership. Effective communication only works within a community. This is an idea hinted at by Peter Drucker, who uses the word “communion” to describe a group of people pursuing a common purpose (The Essential Drucker 341). Notice the interesting cognate group: common, communion, community, communication.

This is a source of profound meaning for a teacher. Your class is your community for a year. Building a bond – a communion – with your students is a genuine treasure. Coordinating your team, your class or your school begins with a common purpose.

Simon Sinek, author of Start with Why, writes about the power of expressing your common purpose. He defines the why as “the purpose, cause or belief” that you pursue as an organization. (39) The why can be differentiated from the what and the how. What you do is usually pretty easy to identify. In the classroom, we read books, we solve problems, we take tests, etc. The how is likewise an easy proposition to express. “We use classroom discussions . . .” “We employ a mentorship model of instruction . . .” Both the what and the how, though, aren’t what build a common purpose. Sinek argues we need a why. Clarifying the why can be difficult, because it is often felt and sensed, but hard to articulate. He shares that clarity of the why “comes from absolute conviction in an ideal bigger than oneself.” (134) So what is it that is the highest ideal of your classroom? Finding the why of your classroom, your school, or your team is essential to keeping everyone moving in the same direction. This feeds back into your communication. Why are we preparing for the upcoming performance? Because we are on this mission to achieve our why.

3. Long-range Objectives

Lesson planning is all about connecting the day’s lesson to objectives. Often we are thinking in term of unit objectives, subject competencies and grade-level benchmarks. The teacher as a leader must consider a number of objectives on the horizon and lead the group toward those goals every day, each lesson.

Clarifying long-range objectives is the third principle of leadership. In order to clarify these long-range objectives, one must have perspective. David Allen in his book Getting Things Done describes perspective with the analogy of an airplane at different altitudes. He calls 50,000 feet the altitude of purpose. It considers the question, “Why am I on this planet?” and envisions what your life ought to look like. At 40,000 feet, the question becomes, “what is my vision for the next 5 years?” At 30,000 feet, you set goals that will help you achieve this vision. The first three altitudes envision long-range objectives. The next three levels bring planning closer to the “now.” At 20,000 feet, you identify areas of focus in life, considering your main areas of responsibility. At 10,000 feet, you choose the right projects that help leverage each area of focus. And at 0 feet, or the runway, you are “just doing,” or as Allen calls it, taking the “next action.” (51-53)

I find this framework really helpful for coordinating long-term and short-term objectives. You really don’t need to spend a lot of time at the 30,000 to 50,000 foot altitude. These are ideas that are best considered during a long break or a focused day-retreat. And while many of these are framed around the grownup who has a career and different spheres of responsibility, I think we can envision these things for our students. Why has God put these children on the planet? What will the next five years look like for this group of individuals? What goals in the near span will help them flourish?

The curriculum often dictates the lower levels of planning. The areas of focus tend to be the academic subjects. The right projects might be a science lab or written essay. The next action is today’s assignment. But school is so much more than the domains of knowledge if we are committed to children as whole persons and to creating formational environments. Are there areas of focus, projects and next actions that help a child grow in personal responsibility or kindness toward others?

4. Prioritization

Hand in hand with long-range objectives is prioritization. The day-to-day life of a classroom can be chaotic. You’ve got a student absent one day, there’s a field trip another day, and a fire drill thrown in there during the week. As much as we plan, we can get thrown off that plan quite easily. So, to meet the shifts and changes that come our way, we need to learn how to prioritize based on a clear understanding of our objectives.

The person who has revolutionized my understanding of leadership is Jocko Willink. His book Extreme Ownership stands out as a one-of-a-kind manual of leadership principles. A former Navy Seal who served in the battle of Ramadi, Willink has had to reprioritize in the most extreme circumstances. He writes:

“Just as in combat, priorities can rapidly shift and change. When this happens, communication of that shift to the rest of the team, both up and down the chain of command, is critical. Teams must be careful to avoid target fixation on a single issue. They cannot fail to recognize when the highest priority task shifts to something else. The team must maintain the ability to quickly reprioritize efforts and rapidly adapt to a constantly changing battlefield.”

Extreme Ownership, 162

The battlefield is obviously different than a classroom, and yet target fixation can happen to us as teachers. It’s easy to get overly fixated on low test scores in math, or find yourself inundated with essays to grade. When these dynamics face us as teachers, we need to reconnect with our long-range objectives, communicate effectively and make a call about the most important next action. Your assessment of the situation might lead you to ask a fellow teacher to take your group to lunch so you can do a math workshop with some students. You might need to reconfigure your schedule slightly to make solid progress on grading. But, you might determine that despite low test scores and a backlog of essays to mark, we really need to do some teambuilding as a class to learn about kindness and care for each other. Prioritization comes from a well-considered perspective of long-range goals.

5. Empower Your People

This is a principle of leadership that operates at all levels of the school. The administration should empower the teachers to take initiative to achieve the mission of the school. Similarly, the teacher should empower the students to take hold of the tools that will enable them to achieve forward momentum on their own long-range objectives. This can sound scary, to entrust young ones with power. Aren’t they liable to fail, break something or take advantage of whatever freedoms they are given?

Yet, if we believe that children are born persons, then it is incumbent on us to empower our students. Educating young ones is simultaneously calling them to high standards and providing substantive support. I like the idea John Maxwell encapsulates in The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, when he explains his 20^th law, “Explosive Growth.” The central idea is that good leaders lead leaders. In other words, teachers are not leading followers, their students are actually leaders themselves. Listen to some of the phrases Maxwell uses in his description of “leaders who develop leaders:” “focus on strengths,” “give power away,” “invest time in others.” (210) Empowering your people means leaning into their strengths through the investment of time.

I really like how our third graders at school have been empowered by their teacher. They are responsible for caring for the plants in the school. Each of them learned about their plants – what it’s called, how much water it should have each week, removing dead leaves, etc. Every Thursday you can find these students roaming the school with their water to tend to the plants. They have the privilege to go into any classroom to tend to the plants. I’m fascinated by how little supervision is required of them. They politely ask to water their plant, the go about their business and then return to their teacher. The plants look great, and the students have a sense of pride in the work they’ve done. These students have been empowered to take genuine responsibility. They have been entrusted with something of significance. They are now looked upon as experts about the plant they care for. You can imagine how this empowerment might play out over the course of the next several years. They’ve build trust, responsibility, accomplishment and will be ready for the next level and the next level after that in years to come.

6. Cultivate Humility

Level-five leadership is a concept Jim Collins develops in Good to Great. The kind of leader he is referring to is both driven by the cause or purpose of the business (what Simon Sinek calls the “why”) but also humble. You would see in this kind of person a mix of ambition and quiet reserve. The difference between a level-five leader and other (perhaps more typical) leaders is that a level-five leader is driven by the cause, whereas other kinds of leaders might be driven by personal achievement, financial gain, or competition with others. Collins writes:

“Compared to high-profile leaders with big personalities who make headlines and become celebrities, the good-to-great leaders seem to have come from Mars. Self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy – these leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. They are more like Lincoln and Socrates than Patton or Caesar.” (Good to Great, 12-13)

Good to Great, 12-13

A teacher can be a level-five leader, turning away from the pathway of the “sage on the stage” to a leader of students who are pursuing a cause and a purpose. I am reminded of the most powerful Jedi in the Star Wars universe, Yoda. When we first meet him, he is a humble, bumbling, old swamp dweller. We soon learn that he is powerful in the ways of the Force. He begins to train Luke Skywalker, who departs before his training is complete. Luke is the protagonist, the one who is on the hero’s journey. Yoda, the teacher, is the level-five leader who is driven by the cause of the good side of the force, who must protect and promote the values of the Jedi order. And yet chooses the path of humility to train the hero.

One of the most transformational moments in my career as a teacher came when I realized I was not the one on the hero’s journey. Instead, the hero’s journey is what my students are pursuing. I get to guide them, like Yoda – or Merlin, or Gandalf, or Dumbledore – for a short time along their journey. Cultivating your own humility is not about being pretending to be bashful (false humility) nor about beating yourself up (negative self-talk). Instead, cultivating humility comes through being captivated by a majestic vision or a compelling cause. Your will, your personality, your ambition are all directed not at your own advancement, but in promoting something higher than yourself.

Putting It All Together

Certainly there are more leadership principles than these six, but I find these to be fairly universal when reading books and manuals on leadership. The point is that effective leadership can be broken down into several component parts. And yet the all need to be operating together. The six principles combine into sets. The first two pertain to communication. The second two are about planning. And the final two are about managing. Yet in each of the six principles, something from the others is embedded within it. Take humility, the sixth principle. Notice how true humility comes from a commitment to a compelling vision, which we talked about in principle two with the “why.”

So breaking it down in this way means we have to put it all back together into a singular concept of leadership. The idea here is that a teacher is a leader. A teacher is constantly communicating to students, fellow teachers, administrators, and parents. A teacher is planning from lesson plans to scopes and sequence to curriculum maps, planning is what we do. And a teacher is managing students and projects. If you weren’t already convinced, hopefully this article has helped you to see how much of a leader a teacher actually is.

I close with a concept from Stephen Covey. The seventh habit in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is “sharpen the saw,” which is an analogy for continual improvement. As individuals, we need to take care of ourselves physically, spiritually, and emotionally. The work we do as leaders can dull the blade of the saw, and so we are wise to invest in ourselves for our long-term wellbeing and effectiveness as teachers. As a team of teachers, we need to support one another, offering advice and assisting one another in the accomplishment of our mission to make a lasting impact in the lives of the children given into our care.

If you are an administrator, understanding that your teachers are leaders creates a framework for professional development. The six principles laid out here can be used as training concepts. Your role as an administrator is key to enabling the teachers to be ever mindful of the mission, the cause, and the core values of the school. Utilize some of the training time during the year to promote continual improvement. A spiritual retreat, relational activities or workout sessions can emphasize your own commitment to supporting teachers’ efforts to “sharpen the saw.”

Now let us follow our true leader, the shepherd of our souls, who has purchased our redemption through his blood. As a teacher, he laid down his life for us that we might live. May we as teachers follow in his footsteps.

If you liked this article and want to “sharpen the saw” by learning new techniques for the classroom, check out Kolby’s eBook The Craft of Teaching which applies concepts from Teach Like a Champion 2.0 to the classical classroom.

The post Teachers are Leaders: 6 Principles of Leadership for Schools appeared first on .