Problems of Practice in Action: Leadership Reenactment as a Board Development Tool
Almost all board members care deeply about the schools for which they serve. Yet developing a real understanding of the complexities of what a Head of School and the senior leadership is contending with in any nuanced kind of way can be difficult. What if there were a way to help board members experience – with leadership – some of the challenges of leading a school?
Emily Charton, Head of The Rashi School, and I talked about one way to go about doing so. What if the board were actually able to watch the senior leadership team in action? What if they were to reenact a recent senior leadership discussion in front of the board, like a fishbowl setting of sorts? Emily found the idea intriguing and set about making it happen.
Emily and her team had been doing a deep dive into the academic program. They did a major math curriculum review with an outside partner from Harvard, and given where they landed, they needed to find more time in the schedule for math. The question was: where would that time come from? Emily’s first step was to engage the faculty on their ideas regarding scheduling that surfaced observations, questions, and ideas about how time is spent at Rashi.
After sorting through the results of this first faculty meeting, Emily brough the the middle school faculty together for some blue sky thinking. What were options? There was lots of conversation about how time was spent. Might there be shorter transition time between classes? Were advisory sessions being used well? Could the timing of the start or end of the school day change? What about Minyan or Kabbalat Shabbat (Jewish moments of community and prayer)?
After some analysis, Emily’s team found that at the middle school level, between Hebrew and Spanish, students were spending roughly 20% of their time in world languages. On the surface, that seemed like a likely source of finding some minutes. But Hebrew represents more than simply a language at Rashi. Conversations were rich and went to the heart of the school’s identity, who they are serving, and where middle schoolers go after Rashi.
Emily took the data from the first faculty meeting and the middle school blue sky meeting. She presented that information to the board at their March board meeting to steep them in what her faculty and leadership team were grappling with. She gave the board context for what they would soon observe.
One goal for this problem of practice reenactment was for the board to observe the leadership team in action and to gain insight on how they actively work together. Additionally, the board was charged with listening for ideas or points of view that caused excitement or concern, as well as to generate questions that would push the leadership team forward.
In preparation for this reenactment, Emily had drafted a “light script” for her team to follow. The Director of Finance and Operations, the Director of Development, and the Director of Enrollment Management regularly attend board meetings, but the leaders on the educational side of the house had never been to a board meeting. The team did one run through the Friday before the board meeting, leaning on the script for organization of thoughts and conversation flow. But as Emily points out, when they arrived at the board meeting, the group barely used the outline. They were simply reenacting and pushing forward the conversations that they had already been having.
Emily described the activity: “We sat in a circle and talked about the middle school schedule. We talked about the need for more math instructional time. We talked about how proud we are of our educators for their engagement in the faculty sessions, and that they're clearly on board with some of the changes. And then I raised a question about Hebrew. So the problem of practice is that right now, Hebrew is mandatory. It's mandatory from Pre K to Grade 8. If you are a child in the middle school who needs the learning center or pull out support, you do that instead of taking Spanish, which doesn’t sit well with me. We talked about the 20% time in language, and how if we gained those three periods back from either Hebrew or Spanish, that we all of a sudden had ‘found time.’ One period could go to math, one to science, one to an individual student’s ‘what I need block’; but the philosophical concern is that if we make Hebrew optional, particularly in Grade 7 during b’nei mitzvah seasion – even though Rashi’s goal is modern conversational Hebrew and not liturgical – what would this mean? What does it say as a Jewish Day School if we say that Hebrew is no longer mandatory when you are a sixth or seventh and eighth grader?”
“I wanted my board to hear our leadership team discuss the pros and cons of the optionality for Hebrew and Spanish educationally, as well as what it might mean messaging wise, philosophically, and Jewishly. This raises other questions, like, if the kids are taking Jewish Studies, is that enough to continue to develop their Jewish identity? This is when the Rabbi (a member of the leadership team) added her voice to say Hebrew and Jewish Studies build Jewish identity and connection to Israel. Then the Development Director stepped in to say if we're going to change the Hebrew program we may lose some of our alumni family donors, or this might actually be more appealing to some of our donors who care more about the idea of academic excellence and thinking about the fact that we want more math. That could mean our kids might attend stronger secondary schools of their choice. Then our Director of Enrollment said that if we want an entry point to be sixth grade and you've got a public school kid who's never said a lick of Hebrew, what do we do? We don't have enough resources to offer mechina (an entry level Hebrew course). We don't have an additional Hebrew teacher. We don't have the operational budget to hire one. How are we going to have sixth grade be an onboard year if Hebrew is mandatory and we cannot teach it successfully?”
“I wanted the board to hear all the ways that we are thinking about the problem of practice, how intricate it is and that we know it is a very difficult decision. But I also needed them to hear it, not just from me. I wanted them to hear it from our school Rabbi and hear it from the other members of the senior leadership team, and although it was probably only 60% of the conversation that they witnessed in this reenactment, I knew it would be enough.”
Emily described the response of the board. “There were a lot of comments. The first couple of comments were about how neat it was for the trustees to see our working relationship and how neat it was for them to see the relationships that I had built with the team, which was definitely a goal. I wanted them to see my leadership style, how all voices are included, and what collaboration looks like.”
“And I needed them to hear from those three educators that they never hear from, particularly because I'm changing two of the roles. One of them is moving next year into becoming Assistant Head for Learning and Teaching PreK to Grade 8, and I wanted her voice to be elevated because she’s going to play a bigger role for the school next year.”
“All of those goals were accomplished. The board complimented my team, said we were awesome, and that felt great. And then when we turned to the conversation about Hebrew potentially being optional, it was just fascinating, right? You've got some board members opining that Hebrew is not negotiable. And then you have another trustee saying, when we consider where these kids go, two thirds of the children are entering into high schools that don't have Hebrew as a language. So if we're thinking about them in an academic sense or an identity sense, they would have to get their Hebrew from elsewhere next year anyway. What are you taking away from somebody if they're going to choose for it to go away in the academic setting anyway? And then, the flip side of that is that you've got, as one trustee pointed out, a third, a third, a third. (One third of the graduating 8th graders go to Jewish high school, one third to independent school, and one third to public.) But you're making a kid make that choice now in fifth grade, when they sign up for their sixth grade classes.”
“If they’re going to Gann Academy, they probably should keep Hebrew. If a child goes to BB&N, or Rivers, or Concord Academy, and they haven’t taken Spanish yet, they may have to be in level 1 Spanish and lose out on the track to AP language. To hear all of the levers that could or could not be pulled was fascinating.”
Emily and her team have found a way to get the additional math minutes in for next year without touching Hebrew or Spanish, but as this is Emily’s first year as head, she and her team have more program assessment ahead that may open the questions about language down the road.
Emily found the reenactment exercise so useful that she’s now thinking that she will make it an annual part of their March board meeting.