The Leadership Difference

  Trust Is Built After the Meeting Every August, school leaders stand in front of teachers and talk about the year ahead. We talk about high expectations. We talk about attendance. We talk about student behavior. We tell teachers that grades need to mean something. We promise them that we are going to hold students accountable. And somewhere in the room, a veteran teacher is thinking: I've heard this before. That teacher may not be negative. They may not be resistant to change. In fact, they may desperately want to believe us. They've just been through enough school years to know that what is said in August doesn't always survive October. That's a leadership problem. Teachers Are Watching What We Do When we tell teachers to hold students accountable for their work, they are watching to see what happens when a student doesn't do the work. When we say attendance matters, they are watching to see whether chronic tardiness and absenteeism actually result in intervention...