The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
I said the word “frickin” in a meeting, as in, “I am so frickin’ sick of this.” I’m not proud of it. But I’ve always believed there is no point in writing unless you write to tell the truth, so there it is. It happened and I’m telling you about it so that I can work through it.
It happened on a particularly rough week. It was the day after I had had one of those days (we all have them) of not only back-to-back very public commitments, but like “I have to apologize and leave early/come late to everything because I am triple booked.” I facilitated a panel, had a billion conferences with students about essays, led a meeting planning for a conference, ran to a first year faculty check in across the street. It was also about three days before I was about to come down with the worst case of laryngitis of my life while in the middle of a school accreditation visit in Memphis. I don’t know about you, but when my immune system is down, all systems are down. I say all of this because I think all of us know we don’t all bring our best selves to every moment and every situation.
What was it about? General angst about the 24-25 crop of north campus PLCs.The feedback revolved around a few things:
- Why didn’t I get my first choice?
- I don’t wanna and/or I shouldn’t have to.
The second question is tough for me to address, because I get that we are all so busy and pulled. This is why I am committed to only scheduling PLC meetings during already-contracted/scheduled school meeting times (e.g., Wed after school or PD days). The first question honestly really confused me. My assumption was that all faculty knew in putting three choices that my goal would be to get everyone in one of their top 3 options out of the 15 or so being offered. My assumption was that we are all in the business of doing this sort of thing with students all the time. “You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit” or something like that. An amazing group of faculty/admin leaders had proposed topics/formats for PLCs. While not all groups would end up “making” (because I would never put a faculty member in a group they didn’t choose at all), my goal was to preserve as many of these diverse opportunities as possible. After all, it’s often hard to know how good or bad or helpful a thing will be before you start it. And I am convinced that smaller groups for this sort of thing are better than large.
This is our third year of PLCs, and I have never had such backlash. It shocked me because I had received such positive feedback on the sign up form: “what great options!” “thanks for organizing!” I wracked my brain. What was different? Was it that lower school had opted for grade level PLCs this year? But teachers could have proposed their own grade level PLC if they wanted and they didn’t! Then it hit me. This was the first year I shared the entire spreadsheet of every group and who was in each group with all faculty and not just the leaders. The word from a few was that faculty were perusing the lists and getting mad seeing who got into the PLC that they wanted. “Why them and not me?”
This blog blast is about building positive relationships, and I can’t over-emphasize the irony enough with this massive fail. After all, PLCs were all about centering positive collegial relationships, and here they were making everybody mad.
I don’t think I need to rehash my general philosophy to professional growth here because I do it every time I get a chance, but if anyone is new to the school, my jam is (1) teachers are professionals and we hire awesome people so the best work I can do is foster connections between them so they can share their wisdom with each other (2) teachers are busy and want stuff that is practical and topically choice-driven (3) teachers (like the kids we teach) need multiple pathways to meaning-making: some gravitate toward talk, some prefer writing, some prefer movement and active engagement in the thing, etc. All of these “teacher” statements aren’t patronizing or pie-in-the-sky. They represent my truth as a teacher at this school as well.
As a result, after a few years in this role of pushing faculty share opportunities, mini conferences, blogs, podcasts, and generally putting a big old microphone to teacher voices I pushed hard for Professional Learning Communities (PLCs). After all, sometimes less is more and it takes a minute or two for me to really trust a small group and get into the rhythm of collaboration and growth together. I had received word that some faculty were feeling overwhelmed and “whip-lashed” with the sheer number of topics and resources that were being thrown out. A consistent PLC would offer practitioners a small group of humans interested in a similar topic to revisit six time throughout the course of an entire school year during normally scheduled faculty meeting times. My favorite idea in this creation was the $100 per group to use for food/snacks/whatever. We connect best, I believe with a blend of informality and formality; systems and spontaneity; food for the body and food for the mind.
Of course, as we all remember, that fated first Wednesday of PLCs, the hits just kept coming: one in the form of good old Francine. The day of, it looked very clear to me and all the weather people that nothing would really hit until overnight. Still, the requests poured in: “ Can we cancel? People are anxious!” I had sent a “use your best judgment” email to PLC leaders that morning. For me, that should suffice. If my 16 year old daughter had volleyball practice until 6pm that evening, surely didn’t have to officially cancel meetings with adults scheduled until 4:15 or so.
“I’m not the PLC police,” I said about three times in the same meeting I said “freakin”. “You can tell people to do what they want.” Still, I felt a dark cloud of disappointment descend. A few PLC leaders from past iterations had noted how sad they felt when folk didn’t attend their PLC gatherings in past years. “I would lead another one, but I don’t know if I have it in me if my group doesn’t take it seriously.”
Here we were again.
The time hit 3:15 and a few small drops from the sky fell as if taunting me: “See Julie! It’s all a big fail.”
My very brave PLC leader (Matt) did indeed decide to hold his PLC that first day. He, Paul, and I gathered in Matt’s room to watch the clouds from the U shaped table arrangement. He dutifully handed me a copy of our shared book about the impact of grades as well as an interview with the author. We then naturally chatted about a host of unrelated-but-related topics, including but not limited to:
- College essay conferences with students: How did they go? What failed?
- Students upset by our feedback and grade obsession
- General malaise
Our conversation was easy, natural, unforced. It was the best free-flowing variety of a thing I could have hoped for with a PLC. We talked about the things we needed to vent about. We discussed some small solutions. We also let things stay ambiguous when they needed to. We resisted the urge to tie neat bows around the things. There was no agenda. There were no follow up items. There were three professionals wrestling honestly and openly with being an English teacher to adolescents in 2024. Paul shared an amazing essay by Faulkner about ice hockey that began with the sentence: “The vacant ice looked tired, though it shouldn’t have.” I felt the same way about my face, and the state of PLCs, and maybe the world.
We barely talked about the topic of the book. It didn’t matter.
From time to time, we heard the faint echo of Dr. Foley’s voice in lecture-mode. Behind him, like ducks in the rain, trailed a group of folks I rarely see together: Becca Meaders, Thomas Riesenberger, Claudia Bhagat to name a few. Despite the rain and the forecast, the troop made laps under the covered awnings talking about history. Matt’s class window was just fogged up enough and blocked just enough sound I couldn’t make out the contents of their conversation as they passed. I do hope Jim’s PLC members got what they needed just as much as I did that afternoon.
Sometimes I do not know what to make of feedback. I am, by nature, a believer that good leaders listen and incorporate what they hear into everything they do. The problem is that so much of what we do, particularly when it involves a whole campus, is a numbers game. If you can’t please them all, you really should expect a handful of angry or dissatisfied colleagues with just about any initiative. I do not know how many people were excited about their PLC designation, because I didn’t hear from them. I do know that the Wednesday that I said “frickin” I was convinced PLC designs were a disaster, and that I would never again lead them in this configuration. I am not sure I am in that place now.
I know that we are all in flux and in various degrees of health, mentally and physically. I know that sleep and viruses and hormones and filled-to-the-brim calendars impact how I experience feedback and the always-well-intentioned humans that make up our community. I know there will be days when I question whether I am cut out for a job like this, a job I very reluctantly call “leadership” because I have never wanted to read a book on leadership or attend a seminar on leadership and quite honestly I do much better listening and reading and analyzing and questioning than I do asserting my certainty about anything.
I designed PLCs to foster positive relationships. I think I have failed in some cases and succeeded in others. I think, as in everything, I have a whole lot less control than I think I do. I think mostly people aren’t thinking about me or my initiatives at all. We are all generally stuck in a hurricane of our own stormy making; sometimes it strikes with a fury and sometimes it wears itself out through steady drip-drops.