Douglas Reeves - Fearless Schools: Building Trust and Resilience for Learning, Teaching, and Leading

Praise for

FEARLESS

Schools

In this illuminating book, Doug Reeves addresses a critical issue in education: trust. Marshaling research from across many fields, he forcefully demonstrates that trust is the coin of the realm that makes learning possible, not only for students but for teachers, administrators, and trustees as well. Trust removes fear and turns missteps and mistakes into opportunities for growth. This is a book to be both devoured and savored. David Chojnacki, Executive Director Emeritus, Near East South Asia Association of Schools

No one cuts to the heart of an issue like Doug Reeves. If you want to know how to build trust and preserve it over the long haul, this is the book for you. We see the complete range of circumstances and the specifics of how trusted leaders act in dealing with innovation, commitments, decision-making, and resistance. Also included are the mistakes and myths that can sabotage a well-intentioned culture builder. Then the theme of trust and learning from mistakes is carried into two other vital areas: personal resilience and wise classroom practice. The final touch is integrating these strategies with our best knowledge for leading change and systems thinking. The prose is, in turn, graceful and pointed, funny and poignant. Fearless Schools is filled with wisdom and stories that keep us on the reading and learning journey like a novel you cant put down. Jon Saphier, CEO, Research for Better Teaching

The students, teachers, and leaders who left us prior to the pandemic are not the same people who have returned to our schools. Many have been changed by the pain of the pandemic and the trauma that our school communities have endured. We will not overcome and achieve without building a foundation of trust, strong relationships, and the cultivation of fearless organizations. In Fearless Schools: Building Trust and Resilience for Learning, Teaching, and Leading , Dr. Doug Reeves shares a brilliant framework that places relationships and connections at the heart of this work. It is an exceptional guide for healing and growth in education. Dr. Rosa Perez-Isiah, Author: Beyond Conversations About Race

Fearless Schools: Building Trust and Resilience for Learning, Teaching, and Leading 2021 by Creative Leadership Solutions, LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without the consent of the author except in critical articles or reviews. Contact the publisher for information.

Paperback ISBN 978-1-954744-20-2

Hardcover ISBN 978-1-954744-21-9

eBook ISBN 978-1-954744-22-6

Library of Congress Control Number 2021908028

Distributed by Epigraph Books, Rhinebeck, New York

Book and cover design by Colin Rolfe

Front cover background photo by Susan Gold

Creative Leadership Press

100 Beacon Street

Boston, MA 02116

(617) 952-8542

service@creativeleadership.net

For the Reverend Doctor Robert Allan Hill,

a fearless leader and faithful friend.

Acknowlegments

Footnotes and reference lists are wholly inadequate to describe the debt of authors to their sources. Harvard Professor Amy Edmondson is a pioneer in global research on psychological safety. She shares her research and work with many publications, including her extraordinary book, The Fearless Organization . It should be required reading for leaders at every level. Dr. Carol Kauffman, founder of the Institute of Coaching, an affiliate of McLean Hospital and part of the Harvard Medical School, provides a rich international perspective on best (and worst) practices in leadership coaching. She brings scholarship and rigor to a field that often lacks both of those qualities. Dr. John Hattie is perhaps the most influential educational researcher on the planet and also, in his Kiwi vernacular, a fine mate. Kim Marshalls Marshall Memo provides an indispensable source of research from more research sources than most people could read in a lifetime.

My colleagues at Creative Leadership Solutions devote themselves to taking on the toughest educational challenges, and they do so with a wonderful combination of intensity, intellectual curiosity, and good humor. They take their work, but not themselves, seriouslyI am lucky indeed to have them as colleagues and friends. They include Alan Crawford, Alexandra Guilamo, Ann McCarty Perez, Bill Sternberg, Brian McNulty, Christine Smith, David Aguado, David Gleason, Emily Freeland, Gregory VanHorn, Jo Peters, Joshua Faden, Karen Power, Kate Anderson-Foley, Ken Williams, Lisa Almeida, Lauren Mahoney, Linda OKonek, Majalise Tolan, Maryellen Hinken, Mike Wasta, Pam VanHorn, Pete Ondish, Stacy Scott, Tony Flach, and Washington Collado.

The production team for this book included Creative Leadership Solutions internal editor Allison Amy Wedellwith publisher Paul Cohen, book designer Colin Rolfe, and editor Dory Mayo of Epigraph Publishing Servicewhose expert advice and thoughtful encouragement made the manuscript clearer and more effective than had it been left to my own devices.

Bob Hill, to whom this book is dedicated, shepherds his global flock through the darkest times of the pandemic and other calamities, global and personal. When the world is fearful, he is fearless. In our darkest hours, he encourages those in despair, gives hope to the hopeless, and always leaves us with the confidence of a brighter day ahead. Every week, he reminds his listeners in Marsh Chapel in Boston and around the world that our mission is not only half a world away, but also half a block away. He carries on the tradition of the Irish-American poet Finely Peter Dunne to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, reminding us that to whom much is given, much is required. Whether he is serving as a Boston University Dean; a professor preparing the next generation of religious and secular leaders; a prolific writer whose erudite words instruct the reader one moment, to be moved to tears in the next; a visitor to the sick, bereaved, and dying; or a faithful Methodist fighting for justice within his own denominationDean Hill is the person that his students aspire to be when they grow up. On top of all that, he is a true, courageous, and loyal friend.

Douglas Reeves

Boston, Massachusetts

April 2021

Contents

Preface

A s this book goes to press, the world is slowly emerging from the global pandemic of 20202021 and its attendant economic and educational calamities. The personal cost of this crisis to families is beyond estimation. In the United States alone, it exceeds 500,000 in lost livesadding illness, family disruption, isolation, depression, and trauma to the incalculable toll. Elsewhere around the globe the cost in uncounted deaths may never be fully known. Clearly, the sacred responsibility of those who survive is to honor the lost with a new resolve for equity, decency, and fairness that is greater and stronger than ever before. The central challenge to every reader of this book, therefore, is whether we will return to business as usual, thinking, Thank goodness thats over; now we can return to life as it was. Or will we make decisionsfor ourselves, our loved ones, our students, and our communitiesto treasure the value of lessons purchased at an unspeakable price and determine to open schools that are safer, better, and, in a word, fearless ?

We need not wait for historians to debate the lessons of this global crisis. Every educator, leader, parent, grandparent, and student knows that the most important lesson of the pandemic is that relationships matter. That was true before the pandemic, and it is truer now more than ever. No amount of technological sophistication can replace the human need for three-dimensional relationships. To put a fine point on it, screens cant hug. We know that resilience and psychological safety, the essence of this book, stem not from computer-generated formulae but from the teachers, parents, and leaders who say with conviction, I believe in you.