A friend recently shared this article from Jake Trotter writing about the University of Texas football program.

The story focuses on Head Coach Tom Herman – a highly regarded coach who had great success at the University of Houston but then struggled in his first season at the University of Texas.  After an embarrassing opening loss to Maryland to start the season the coaching staff  “lasered in even more on implementing their culture, while easing their attention on the X’s and O’s. Getting the team to play hard trumped expanding the playbook.”

So what does an article about college football have to do with schools?

Well, actually a lot.  This approach by Herman is just what we are often talking about in our schools.  We want classes to be about getting to know and understand children, not just about delivering curriculum.  We need schools to be human enterprises that have guidelines and expectations and focused not on results in the traditional sense of tests scores, but more broadly on human capital.  And we want school districts that focus on building culture so great things can happen, not just trying to make great things happen immediately – potentially with long-term consequences.

I really liked Herman’s notation that “there’s a big difference between being compliant and committed.”  This is so true in our system.  Whether it is my work with our school principals, our school principals work with our teachers or our teachers work with our students, we want people to buy-in to being part of something bigger, and not just do the minimum to feel they have completed a task. Of these three challenges, the greatest is in the classroom.  I get to hire our principals, and we also get to hire our teachers – so we can select ones with a mindset aligned to our culture.  In our classrooms, we work with all our students – there is no selecting ones who might “fit” better than others.   The challenge of commitment over compliance is one I see teachers take on everyday.

So as we allow students greater choice in what they learn and how they show their learning, as we give teachers the autonomy to make the curriculum come alive in a variety of ways, and as we allow schools to each have their own signature – and not just be school franchises – we look for the culture that allows commitment to flourish.

Like the state of the University of Texas Football Program, this quest is imperfect in our schools.  I look back over the last week at some decisions that I know people are complying with, and not necessarily committed to.  But this is the goal – a culture of commitment at all levels in our school system.

Read Full Post »