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I have been thinking about the phrase “a culture of love.” In education, we talk often about culture. We talk about belonging, psychological safety, relationships, trust, collaboration, and community. We seem far less comfortable using the word love in professional spaces. We should be using it more. I know a culture of love is possible because I am watching and listening to a school community describe itself this way. Not as an aspiration. Not as a slogan printed on a wall.

“Good thinking is as much a matter of disposition as it is of skill.” ~Shari Tishman We spend a great deal of time in education teaching students how to think. We teach them to analyze, compare, question, interpret, evaluate, and draw conclusions. We create lessons that require critical thinking, design assessments that measure it, and develop rubrics to describe what it looks like. We place considerable emphasis on whether students can think critically. I wonder how often we

Some phrases get tossed around casually among friends, in private conversations, or in moments of frustration. Calling a colleague a “pain in the ass” during a professional meeting is not one of them. The problem is not simply that the phrase is crude. The problem is what the phrase communicates. It tells the room that asking questions can make you a problem. It suggests that challenging a process can make you difficult. It turns professional inquiry into a personality flaw.

There are moments in leadership when "just do it" is exactly the right advice. Stop overthinking. Make the call. Take the first step. Move the work forward. There are also moments when "just do it" becomes something entirely different. It becomes an order. Push the initiative through. Get people on board. Make the change happen. Do not spend too much time worrying about resistance. Do not slow down for questions. Do not wait for collective understanding. Just get it done. Tha

For years, education has talked about College and Career Readiness. The phrase is so familiar that most of us probably no longer notice the order. College. Then career. What if we flipped it? Career and College Readiness. At first, that may sound like semantics. I do not think it is. The order of our words often reveals the order of our thinking. For decades, we have increasingly treated college as the expected pathway after high school. In many communities, the question is n

Schools make an assumption that deserves more attention. If we put two qualified adults in the same classroom, collaboration will naturally happen. It sounds reasonable. It is also rarely that simple. Two teachers. A teacher and a teaching assistant. A content specialist and a special educator. A CTE instructor and an academic teacher. An ENL teacher alongside a classroom teacher. Whatever the configuration, adding another adult changes the classroom's potential. It does not

Apparently, I can find a leadership lesson anywhere. This time, it happened in a World War I trench. I have been listening to Angel Down as part of my somewhat ambitious journey to read every winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, including the years when it was still called the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel. If you are equally intrigued by slightly unreasonable literary goals, join me. I could use the company. Somewhere in the listening, one phrase lodged itself in my brai

As a child, I rarely took things at face value. I asked questions. I looked for the exception. I tried to examine an idea from several sides before accepting it. My sentences often began with some version of, “What about this?” or “What if that happened?” or “Okay, but then what happens when...?” The response was not always enthusiastic. I was told more than once that I would be “great on the debate team.” Other times, the question was more pointed: Why did I always have to b

Schools are surrounded by people. Families come through the doors. Community organizations attend events. Businesses sponsor programs. Students sit in classrooms every day. Teachers work side by side. Leaders meet with teams, committees, councils, and stakeholder groups. There is a lot of proximity. Proximity, though, is not the same thing as partnership. I first heard Dr. Amanda Crowell use this idea in the context of business networking, but it immediately landed differentl

For years, we have pushed skills further and further down into the earliest grades. At the same time, we have stuffed the curriculum with more content, more standards, more assessments, and more “must-knows.” We told ourselves that earlier meant better, more meant stronger, and faster meant prepared. When children could not clear the hurdle we built, we labeled them. Behind. Struggling. Below benchmark. At risk. Not proficient. In need of intervention. Sometimes children do n

“Men of genius are thrown together thick as bees, and the honey of intellectual accomplishment is produced.” - March by Geraldine Brooks Most of us know the March family through Little Women. We know the sisters, their ambitions, their conflicts, and the small joys and disappointments that shape their lives. In March, Geraldine Brooks takes a story we believe we know and allows us to experience it through someone else’s eyes. The familiar becomes unfamiliar. The background mo

Today is my birthday, which makes it a natural time to think about what birthdays represent. They are moments to celebrate, but they also offer an opportunity to pause, reflect, take stock, and consider how we want to use the year ahead. In schools, we often measure time by calendars that are not our own. We count marking periods, semesters, school years, testing windows, and graduation dates. Birthdays remind us that growth also happens on a deeply personal timeline. A birth

“Strong women stand up for themselves, and stronger women stand up for others.” ~Leslie Higgins, Ted Lasso (Season 4, Episode 2) Strength is not only measured by how firmly we advocate for ourselves. It is also revealed in how willingly we use our voices, influence, experience, and access to support someone else. Standing up for others can look like speaking their name in a room they have not yet entered, opening a door that once felt closed, challenging an unfair assumption,

Agricultural education is sometimes treated as a specialized opportunity reserved for rural schools, career and technical education programs, or communities surrounded by farmland. In reality, every community is connected to agriculture through its food systems, land use, environmental conditions, local businesses, cultural traditions, workforce needs, and patterns of access. For school and district leaders, fostering agricultural education does not necessarily require buildi

The first article I ever had published was a really big deal to me. This was back in the day, when I was working as a Model Schools Staff Specialist at our "County" BOCES (Board of Cooperative Educational Services). I had written something; someone thought it was worthy of publishing, and there it was. My name. My words. My ideas. In print. When the editor asked for my byline, I included my name, title, and the organization I worked for. The article was published, and when I

Educational leadership rarely comes with the luxury of addressing one issue at a time. There are state mandates to interpret, reports to submit, initiatives to implement, budgets to monitor, meetings to attend, deadlines to meet, and emergencies that arrive without warning. Most days, nearly everything placed in front of us is important. Important and priority are not always the same thing. Something can be important without requiring our immediate attention. Something can be

Fall in Love with the Problem, Briefly “Fall in love with the problem, not the solution” is powerful advice. It reminds us to slow down, remain curious, and understand what is really happening before rushing to fix it. We should not live inside the problem forever. Give the problem your full attention for 90 seconds. Ask what is happening beneath the surface. Consider who is affected, what assumptions you may be making, and whether you are addressing the real issue or simply

Why are there mirrors in a dance studio? The obvious answer is that dancers need to see themselves. They need to check their posture, placement, alignment, timing, and technique. They need to see whether the movement they believe they are making is the movement they are actually making. The mirrors are not there so dancers can simply admire themselves. They are there to provide information. A dancer may feel that an arm is fully extended when it is slightly bent. A turn may f

My parents were watching a video of my daughter’s competition when they noticed something happening far in the background. Across the gymnasium, well behind my daughter, someone threw her arms up and cheered when my daughter’s name was announced. The moment was small enough that I had not noticed it at first, but my parents did. They wanted to know who she was because her joy was unmistakable. It was my friend. She and her athlete live in another state. They compete for anoth

Leadership can become surprisingly sedentary. The meetings pile up. The emails keep coming. Problems arrive at the office door. Before long, leaders can spend most of the day sitting behind a desk, responding to what is directly in front of them while becoming increasingly disconnected from what is happening around them. One of the most valuable leadership practices I developed was also one of the simplest: taking a walk. Whenever the weather permitted, I took a 20-minute wal