Books on the shelving
and books on the table;
Reading great books at night
long as I'm able;
Books in the winter, fall, summer and spring:
These are a few of my favourite things.

All right, so I'm not a songwriter. But I am a bibliophile--a lover of books. My single favourite thing to do, outside of being with my family, is reading.

"When you sell a man a book you don't sell just twelve ounces of paper and the ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night - there's all heaven and earth in a good book."
—Christopher Morley

As a young boy, the hall light was always on outside my bedroom door. For years I would read, long after my bedroom lamp was turned off, by putting a book on the floor where the hall light shone, and reading while hanging over the side of the bed.

"I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library."
— Jorge Luis Borges

I grew up in a rather poor family. Money to purchase books was sparse. Consequently I grew to love the local library. There a treasure trove of adventure and fun awaited me. In my teen years (when computers were virtually non-existent and Al Gore hadn't invented the internet), one either read or watched television. We couldn't afford a TV either, so I visited the library two to three times a week. I filled up my ten-cent library card so often, I should have run a tab.

"I find television very educational. Every time someone switches it on I go into another room and read a good book."
— Groucho Marx

Curiously, the young woman I met and eventually married is the daughter of a bookstore owner. My late father-in-law, Jake Martin, ran a bookstore in Ottawa for over 50 years. As a young professor, my very first academic publication was a book review. While my students considered me to be a pretty good teacher, my first love was research--because then I could read widely and even get paid for it. What I consider to be my highest academic achievement was the writing of my first book.

"Books tap the wisdom of our species—the greatest minds, the best teachers—from all over the world and from all our history. And they're patient."
— Carl Sagan

We read to our children every night from age two on. Both were themselves reading by the time they entered kindergarten. They continue to love books and have goodly personal libraries.

"There may be no more pleasing picture in the world than that of a child peering into a book—the past and the future entrancing each other."
— Roger Rosenblatt

To say the least, I was thrilled to be at Abbotsford Middle School this week where the formal announcement was made of the Love of Reading grant of $100,000 over three years by Indigo/Chapters. 100,000 smackers to spend on the library. That amounts to about 20 times the budget that their library technician, Sheri Kling (pictured above), would normally have to spend over that period. I imagined Sheri, with Uncle Scrooge's money bin in tow, heading for the nearest bookstore.

"Books, to the reading child, are so much more than books—they are dreams and knowledge, they are a future, and a past."
— Esther Meynell

Congratulations to Abby Middle principal Ian Levings, his wonderful teaching staff and support staff, for winning this lucrative and prestigious grant. Props as well to Chapters for this fabulous reading initiative. And best wishes to Sheri as she immerses herself in that most edifying experience--buying books! I'm green with envy!!

"Just the knowledge that a good book is awaiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier."
— Kathleen Norris

The late and revered Steve Jobs, himself a university dropout, said this about teachers unions in 1995: The (teachers) unions are the worst thing that ever happened to education because it's not a meritocracy. It turns into a bureaucracy, which is exactly what has happened. The teachers can't teach, and administrators run the place, and nobody can be fired. It's terrible." He advocated a voucher system to bring competition into education.

On the other hand, the guru of policy governance John Carver is supposed to have said that school boards were the worst governing bodies of all.

What am I doing in this business?

I want to take a break from my study of trustees as effective leaders for a moment to say a word about families. My reasons for this come, first of all, from the opportunity to speak yesterday to the Probus Club of Abbotsford, and secondly, because of an editorial I read in this week's Maclean's magazine.

Often sponsored by Rotary International, Probus Clubs cater to the interests of retired or semi-retired professional or businesspeople. They asked me to speak about living positively and with enthusiasm. I suggested to them that one key to doing this is to create a mission and vision.

My own mission and vision are formed by my Judeo-Christian heritage. I believe passionately in the family unit as the key building block of society. I am equally convinced that we are called by God to pursue justice and to love mercy. Both of these convictions inform my worldview, my decision-making, even my choice of vocations, and how I use my resources.

My belief in doing everything possible to help build strong family units was reinforced by the material I mentioned from Maclean's (October 17, 2011, p. 4), from which this excerpt is drawn:

Marriage may not matter as much as it once did to young couples. But it matters a lot to society at large.

Married couples are a foundation of the economy. They earn, save and spend more than their unmarried counterparts. They are happier. And a mountain of evidence shows stable two-parent families are good for kids. Children who grow up in a married family are far more likely to succeed in school, find employment and avoid problems later in life than those raised in other situations, however loving.

There is only so much that a school district, a local school, or a teacher can do to aid this process. But one thing that we must never forget--parents are ultimately responsible for their children's education, indeed, their well-being in all aspects of life. Therefore, we must listen to parents when they express their views on educational matters. This is why I believe that the District Parent Advisory Council should have a role in school district decision-making. There are times when I might think that there is a better alternative for children than what their parents do. But if parents have all the facts at their command to make a valid decision (e.g., a one- versus two-week spring break), and vote overwhelmingly in a certain direction, I won't be the one who decides otherwise. Not all of my trustee colleagues believe this.

Secondly, in the Judeo-Christian heritage, justice is defined as having a particular care for those most open to exploitation, the vulnerable and the marginalized, those willing to put forth effort but not always able to do so. In our society such individuals are often overlooked, even shunned. 90% of all Down Syndrome unborn babies are aborted. I believe that every person, no matter what their challenge or lack thereof, is a full-orbed person and a full-fledged member of society who deserves to be educated to be all that they were meant to be.

For that reason I strongly support all programs that push resources in this direction; e.g, special education, ESL, Strong Start, and making schools safe and pleasant places to be. Many students come from homes with no books. We must build strong libraries and push literacy. Many families could never afford music or swimming lessons. But we can make them part of the curriculum. Fine Arts, technical programs, sports academies--all are ways to provide children, and particularly less fortunate children, with opportunities they would never otherwise have to be happy and productive citizens.

I had a trustee colleague who was dead against things like ski trips for students, complaining that they had no educational value. Nonsense. They teach lifelong skills and the value of fitness. They provide an alternative to what is available on the street. They keep kids in school. Such programs are a vital part of the bigger picture, my overarching vision as a trustee and former professor--education for a life worth living.

I've been reflecting on my personal slogan for this campaign about what effective trustees do--We know how to listen; we know how to lead. In approaching two individuals to consider running in this election--Stan Petersen and Freddy Latham--my discussion with them amounted to unpacking that slogan. It is because of my satisfaction with their answers in these two vital areas that I am confident to recommend them to you, along with my good friend and colleague, Preet Rai (see the John"s Picks section of this website).

My concern with these two areas--listening and leading--comes out of my many years as a leader myself, and as a student of management theory and practice. I have concluded that there are three things more than any other that can make or break an organization.

One of them, the effective management of change, is an area where Abbotsford boards of education over my 24 years as a trustee have distinguished themselves. We have been provincial leaders in a number of areas of educational delivery, and have seen steady improvements in student outcomes as a result.

The second is listening. There are those who would say that the current Board of Education has not excelled in this area, as I indicated in an earlier post regarding the Spring Break controversy. In the final analysis, that is for the voters to decide. But listening problems, and communication problems generally, are virtually always at the top of employee complaints in surveys that are done of organizational life. Empathetic listening does not come naturally to all people. It is hard work, but absolutely vital to organizational success.

And the third, of course, is leadership. Theories of leadership have evolved over the centuries, and even in the last forty years, with servant-leadership being a popular modern view. I have my own idea of what that means in practice, and would like to share it with you in my next post.

In both the 2009/10 and 2010/11 school years, the Board of Education has debated whether we should continue to deviate from the standard provincial school calendar and give our students a two-week rather than one-week Spring Break. Any such deviation requires a survey of parents. Both times, the results were overwhelmingly in favour of two weeks--over 90% of respondents.

Yet a majority of trustees both years were in favour of reverting to one week, parental preference to the contrary notwithstanding. My colleague Preet Rai and I felt that if families were ultimately responsible for their children's education, that such a response required that we support two weeks. Eventually two trustees caved in to public pressure and reluctantly voted for the longer break.

After the initial debate in 2010, I wrote a guest column in the Abbotsford News outlining my views on the subject. That column follows:
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Being a school trustee is a bit like playing professional hockey in Columbus or Miami--no matter how well you’re doing, few notice. Even the people who deliver the goods in the classroom, our teachers, often don’t know the trustees’ names much less what they actually do besides run for office every three years.

But that all changed in April when four trustees decided that our students would be better served if instead of receiving a few minutes of extra instruction per day, that they would spend an extra full week in class in lieu of having a longer spring break. I stopped counting the email messages I received when they passed one hundred and gave up trying to answer them at about seventy-five.

As one of the minority who voted for the two-week break in April, I was motivated to test the assumption that the potential for student achievement would be better realized via a full week in class rather than extra minutes per school day. While a decided amateur in the field of education research, I did take a dive into the educational literature to see if the allegations being used to justify the return to one week had actually been studied.

Regrettably, no such study seems to have been done. However, I did find a host of material on what does affect student achievement. Perhaps most relevant to the issue of days versus extra minutes are the studies on “time on task.”

There is a strong correlation between educational achievement and the time spent on the education itself. But this can occur in any arrangement of hours and minutes per day. In fact, researchers found that the mere length of a school day or class period at the secondary level was not related to student academic achievement at all. Student learning depends upon the way in which the available time is used.

Researchers have also linked student achievement to class size, the amount of homework assigned (more being better than less), stringent grading standards, style of teaching, and the length of the school day (longer is better).

I bounced all of this off of some veteran educators for their comment. One quote sums up the consensus rather nicely: “My years of professional experience have led me to conclude that it is the quality of instruction and the quality of the student teacher relationship that are the ultimate determiners of student success. In the hands of a poor instructor or an uncaring teacher, all the time in the world makes little difference. 200 days of bad instruction pales in effect compared to 100 days of good!”

This suggests to me that what my trustee colleagues and senior leaders should be now studying is how our district is doing in the areas that we know with certainty affect student achievement--time on task, quality of the teacher-student relationship, high expectations--rather than the one that remains unstudied and is based only on assumptions--minutes per day versus a full week.

In the meantime, I’ve asked for that invitation to the Florida Panthers training camp. No matter how bad we do, it doesn’t really matter and no one cares. And the pay’s better!

For this campaign I have been using as my mantra, "We know how to listen, and we know how to lead." This sums up much of what a trustee does.

To whom do we listen?

Obviously the families of the children of the district. They are ultimately responsible for their children's education. It is not a small thing that they entrust much of this responsibility to the public school system. Therefore, if some families are having a similar challenge, it is our responsibility to ensure that the issue is dealt with satisfactorily. Normally our professional educators do a fine job with such matters.

But once in a while the Board of Education has to get directly involved. This could happen if a dissatisfied family or group of families, having taken their problem through the normal channels, appeals to the board. This does not happen very often.

On infrequent and unhappy occasions, trustees have to consider whether a local school is still viable or if closure is necessary. This requires public hearings, and the acceptance of briefs. I've been through this three times I believe. Way back in the dark ages of the 1980s we considered closing four schools: Barrowtown, King Rd., Mt. Lehman, and the Matsqui primary annex (Ridgedale). The only way we could have kept King Rd. open, with its declining attendance, was to go with two- and even three-way splits in all classes. Hearing this, the parents opted to relocate to Aberdeen. Therefore, King Rd. and the Matsqui annex were closed, with King later being resurrected, initially as an adult training centre, and then as the first of our traditional schools.

Mt. Lehman and Barrowtown mounted very effective campaigns at that time to keep their schools open. The Barrowtown parents more or less went on a major enrollment campaign and doubled the size of the student body, which had fallen to under 50 students. Mt. Lehman also approached other families about enrolling at their school. In addition, at the public hearing they had a number of expert speakers, and even a choir that sang a song written for the purpose.

On another occasion, when South Poplar was teetering on the brink, the families approached us about becoming a traditional school. Now it is bursting at the seams.

Most recently we had to deal with Dunach Elementary, which had excellent programs and high student satisfaction, but was housed in a school that was not fit to use in the long run. In addition, virtually all of the students were from other catchment areas. This latter reality precluded receiving any funds from the Ministry of Education to repair the school. This was one of the few times that we had to go against family wishes and shut the school down.

A second important example is the alteration of the standard school calendar from one week of spring break to two. That deserve a post of its own.

I'm often asked what the role of a school trustee is. To some extent, that depends on who you ask. Many people think that a trustee is intimately involved in the day-to-day operations of the school district. The BC School Act does not require this, but many trustees think that it is a normal, desirable, and even necessary part of the job.

I don't.

The school district is comprised of professionally trained teachers, accountants, human resource specialists, counselors, youth workers, educational assistants, tradespeople, purchasing agents, computer technology specialists, and others who are charged with the responsibility to provide an education for a life worth living, or to create the context within with such an education can occur.

Particularly gifted, trained, and motivated individuals are chosen through a careful process to give leadership to this collaborative and professional enterprise--superintendents, curriculum specialists, principals, the secretary-treasurer and his/her staff, and first-line supervisors.

Often the least educationally savvy participants in the process are the trustees. In fact, the most effective trustees with whom I have served since 1983 have had little or no educational training. They have been businesspeople, nurses, real estate salespeople, accountants, lawyers, and bankers. Yes, a couple were former teachers--Edna Clifford and Gerda Fandrich made important contributions--but most have had strengths in understanding money and budgets, governance, leadership, and motivation.

Two other things that characterized these highly effective trustees: they put service before self, and they loved kids.

I draw much inspiration from Martin Luther King Jr., the mighty civil rights leader of my boyhood. The title of this post comes from one of the greatest speeches he (or anyone) ever made. Social justice has been a key value and life goal for me ever since.

Recently the Pope spoke to the German parliament along similar lines:

Allow me to begin my reflections on the foundations of law with a brief story from sacred Scripture. In the First Book of the Kings, it is recounted that God invited the young King Solomon, on his accession to the throne, to make a request. What will the young ruler ask for at this important moment? Success – wealth – long life – destruction of his enemies? He chooses none of these things. Instead, he asks for a listening heart so that he may govern God’s people, and discern between good and evil. Through this story, the Bible wants to tell us what should ultimately matter for a politician. His fundamental criterion and the motivation for his work as a politician must not be success, and certainly not material gain. Politics must be a striving for justice...[S]uccess is subordinated to the criterion of justice, to the will to do what is right, and to the understanding of what is right. (National Post, Sept. 25, 2011).

For many people, the notion of justice has to do with just desserts, for repayment of wrongdoing, and so on, that we would seek it in a court of law. The Abbotsford police building and the provincial courthouse front on Justice Way (as does the parking lot of the school board building). This is what is called retributive justice, but it is only one of the many kinds of justice.

Trustees certainly have to be concerned with retributive justice from time to time. Students are sometimes disciplined for breaking the law (e.g., being in possession of illegal drugs, sexually harassing a fellow student) and we work closely with the APD in dealing with gang activity.

We are also strong supporters of the Abbotsford Restorative Justice Assoc. led by my good friend Tony DeWaal. The Association "is a young and growing organization, vitally concerned with finding innovative ways to impart restorative values and practices to our community. Our vision is to: “Repair the harm…restore relationships… rebuild community.” They have done outstanding work in dealing with troubled students in our district.

But there is a third kind of justice of particular importance to me--distributive justice. Distributive justice has to do with the distribution of benefits (and burdens) in a fair and equitable manner. What is considered fair differs from person to person, political party to political party, and economic system to economic system.

For instance, many people think it is fair that a fourth-line NHL hockey forward, or seventh defenceman, makes $500,000 to $750,000 a year, while a teacher or nurse makes $40,000 to $60,000. Fairness in this case rests on the argument that the market determines what is a fair wage. While Canadians chose Tommy Douglas as the greatest Canadian because he introduced universal health care in Canada, a large number of Americans do not see adequate medical care for all as a human right.

My view of fairness (distributive justice) finds its source in Judeo-Christian teaching, particularly as it is developed in the Old Testament. Justice there is defined as love in action, with a particular regard for those in vulnerable and marginalized conditions. Therefore, when I have to decide how to allocate our scarce resources I always lean first towards the needs of students, and particularly those who are easier to overlook, such as students with learning difficulties, students with special needs, and their families who through no fault of their own are trapped in difficult socio-economic situations.

[Those of you with biblical interests will be familiar with Jesus' brother James' definition of pure religion: Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress..(James 1:27). This is a classic expression of the Judeo-Christian understanding of justice.]

Over the years many school boards have cut back on special education when in a financial crunch.  During one particularly difficult economic time in our district I was advised by a member of the ADTA executive (I assumed that he was speaking for himself) that we should cut out all of these small groupings of students with special needs and use that money to provide financial bonuses to department heads in the secondary schools. I was appalled, of course, and continue to be whenever I hear educators, or anyone else, argue that those in stronger situations should profit at the expense of the vulnerable.

We are the result of people who did not see the world as others saw it. In the midst of sweatshops, they saw workers rights. In the midst of slavery, they saw freedom. We are here because of people who had the extraordinary vision and the courage to stand up and do something about it. To me, what you see in the world is less a matter of the facts that are there, than more being a reflection of who you are. Your attitude about the world says nothing about the world, but speaks to your character.
 
Cory Booker 

The real power of effective leadership is maximizing other people's potential, which inevitably demands ensuring they get the credit. When our ego won't let us build another person up, when everything has to build us up, then the effectiveness of the organization reverts instead to depending on how good we are in the technical aspects of what we do. We have stopped inspiring others to great heights.
 
John Dickson