Megan Tschannen-Moran - Trust Matters: Leadership for Successful Schools

It has been awhile since I read the first edition of Trust Matters, but I remember the influence that Megan Tschannen-Morans skillful blend of story and analysis had upon my thinking and its subsequent contribution to my own work. This second edition is even better! Like the first, it is insightful, peppered with wisdom, born of experience, and shaped by intellectual endeavor. Much of this book focuses on the key roles of school leaders in responding to issues of betrayal, repair of broken trust, and the need to build bridges with parents and community in contexts of unprecedented levels of governmental and public scrutiny; and underpinning the messages, prompts for reflection at the end of each chapter give the same powerful message that trust and trustworthiness are key components in teachers and schools capacities to enhance student learning and achievement. For its humanity, closeness to practice, and evidence-based improvement messages, this book is a must-read for all educators.

Christopher Day, professor of education, University of Nottingham

For Bob, Bryn, and Evan from whom I have learned the most important lessons about Trust and for Michelle, Andrs, Jennie, Erika, and Theo who have enriched those lessons with beautiful demonstrations of the Power of Love

SECOND EDITION

MEGAN TSCHANNEN-MORAN

Cover design by Adrian Morgan

Cover image: Thomas Winz | Getty

Copyright 2014 by Megan Tschannen-Moran. All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tschannen-Moran, Megan, date

Trust matters: leadership for successful schools/Megan Tschannen-Moran.Second edition.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-118-83437-4 (pbk.); ISBN 978-1-118-83798-6 (pdf); ISBN 978-1-118-83795-5 (epub)

1. School supervisionUnited StatesCase studies. 2. Teacher-principal relationshipsUnited StatesCase studies. 3. Educational leadershipUnited StatesCase studies. I. Title.

LB2806.4.T77 2014

371.203dc23

2013043616

Once upon a record-breaking cold Chicago morning, my husband, Bob, then a young inner-city pastor, got a call from a church member with a disability saying that she would like to go to church. Being kind-hearted, with an indomitable spirit, Bob was determined to get her to church despite the obstacles. He had to borrow a car, start it, and warm it up in subzero temperatures. With persistence, he was able to get the car started and running. Presently, however, the engine light came on and the smell of smoke ignited an alarming realization: the oil was frozen in the oil pan. Without lubrication, the engine had overheated and diedresulting in a costly repair to replace the engine.

This incident has much to teach us about trying to run a school without trust. Trust serves as a lubricant of organizational functioning; without it, schools are likely to experience the overheated friction of conflict as well as a lack of progress toward their admirable goals. There is no way to lead schools successfully without building, establishing, and maintaining trust within and across the many and varied constituencies they serve. With trust, schools are much more likely to benefit from the collaborative and productive efforts of their faculty and staff, which in turn help generate the results for students that educators yearn for.

Schools once enjoyed the implicit trust of their community and school leaders felt they could take for granted the trust of both their internal and external constituencies. School leadership was, by and large, a high-status, low-stress job. Now, too often, it is the reverse. We live in an era in which all of our social institutions and their leaders have come under unprecedented scrutiny. As a result, trust has become increasingly difficult for leaders to earn and maintain in our complex and rapidly changing world. This trend away from trust poses a special challenge for school leaders because trust is so vital for schools in fulfilling their fundamental mission of teaching students to be engaged and productive citizens. Understanding the nature and meaning of trust in schools has, therefore, taken on added urgency and importance. School leaders need to appreciate and cultivate the dynamics of trust to reap its benefits for greater student achievement as well as for improved organizational adaptability and productivity.

Without trust, schools are unlikely to be successful in their efforts to improve and to realize their core purpose. I have written this book to offer school leaders practical, hands-on advice on not only how to establish and maintain trust but also how to repair trust if and when it has been damaged. To illustrate how the dynamics of trust play out in schools, I have integrated into this book the case studies of three principals: one who succeeded in cultivating the trust of her faculty, and two who, although well intentioned, were unsuccessful in harnessing the vital resource of trust, and whose schools therefore suffered impaired effectiveness. Through these case studies, I hope to show the role school leaders play in fostering high-trust relationships among teachers, students, and parents. Although the names used in these stories are pseudonyms, the case studies themselves are based on real principals and interviews with teachers who worked in their schools. Each of the three principals led an elementary school with a population of primarily low-income and minority students; the three schools were within a few miles of one another in the same urban school district. But the similarities ended there. The approaches they took to school leadershipand, subsequently, the relationships they built with their faculty and staff memberswere very different. These cases provide vivid examples of the ways in which even well-meaning school leaders can end up engendering the distrust of their faculty and the high cost that is inevitably paid when that occurs: morale plummets, productivity declines, and schools lose good people.