One of the hardest things about leadership is that the job is never finished, and healthy organizations never stop changing.

I love the team of teachers we have at SLA. If I had my druthers, we’d keep this group of people together for many, many years to come.

The world doesn’t work that way. People move on. And I knew that before I ever started SLA. My hope is that teachers don’t leave SLA to go be teachers somewhere else – unless they have to leave Philadelphia because of life changes and such. It is my hope that some of the amazing, amazing teachers we have at SLA want to stay in the classroom — and in the SLA classroom — for the rest of their career. But I’ve always known that being at SLA, being part of starting the school, and now being part of a school that has a place in the national debate about education would allow all of us at SLA a window into a world outside our classrooms – and for some folks, that would mean wanting an opportunity to have an impact beyond the work they do at SLA.

For some, that means doing the kind of work that Gamal Sherif does with the Center for Teaching Quality or the work that Matt VanKouwenberg does with local organizations around creating better science and engineering curriculum or doing what Matt Kay does by starting the Philly Youth Poetry Movement… the list goes on. For the teacher-activists who want to stay at SLA, that means I have to create the time and space for them to do that kind of work… and it is the right thing to do for any number of reasons – they give back to the world in powerful ways, it enriches their practice which in turn makes them better teachers at SLA, and by honoring the other interests teachers have, I stand a better chance of keeping them around SLA for longer – and that’s decidedly in the best interests of the school.

For others, it means that they will do an Advisory cycle (four years) or two and then leave to start their own schools or work in ed-policy or teach teachers, etc… supporting the people who want to leave is harder. It requires caring about teachers as people, even when that care, that support, comes at the short-term expense of SLA.

That’s hard. Sometimes exceedingly so.

But the ethic of care is a funny thing. It means that you have to do act in the best interests of those you care for… even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard. But to try to keep someone from leaving SLA when you can see that they are ready for a different path would be to dishonor the very relationships that allow the kids to trust us to work in their best interests. And I remember a time in my own career when people tried to tell me I wasn’t ready to move on to my next challenges, because of their own fears and choices and visions… and I decided back then that I wouldn’t do that to others. That I would work to be humble enough, honest enough, mature enough to know when I had to support the teachers who were so vital to what we do at SLA, even when that support meant letting them leave with my blessing.

So with that… I ask people to support Zac Chase, SLA teacher extraordinaire, as he makes his bid to afford Harvard Graduate School of Education next year. Zac is as fine an English teacher as I have ever known – he is a better English teacher than I was – and his energy and intelligence and passion for teaching kids has made SLA a better school from the day he stepped foot in the school. Harvard GSE has accepted him, but they haven’t given him the financial support he needs – or that I think he deserves. So he has started Chasing Harvard – an attempt to crowd-source his financial aid and create transparent graduate school experience in the process.

The easiest thing to do would be for me to counsel him not to do this… that it is too hard… that the loans would be too big… and that he’s happy and successful at SLA, and hey, he can always try again. But to do that would be to dishonor the spirit of SLA and the ethic of care. And to do that would be, in time, to poison the relationship and to cheapen the work he – and we – have done. And so while there is a selfish part of me that wants Zac back next year, I support his attempt to Chase Harvard, and I know that if he is back at SLA it won’t be for lack of trying to take this next step… which means if he does end up back at SLA it will be with the knowledge that, for now, it will remain where he needs to be.

And if Chasing Harvard works, I will have lost an incredible English teacher at SLA, but we all will have gained a powerful and profound ally on the policy side of things. And that is in my own enlightened self-interest, too.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad