Figure 1.1 Breakthrough Leadership
By contrast, in the Spanish flu example, the Allied forces were seen as expendable, and their well-being was sacrificed by their leadership to further other priorities. Moreover, the truth of the pandemic underway was hidden to the detriment of these same soldiers, and up to fifty million other victims, ultimately including the commander-in-chief, President Wilson.
Similarly, consider the news, as reported to NPR by Jim Zarroli on April 13, 2020, that “a Smithfield Foods plant in Sioux Falls . . . has become the latest meat processing facility to shut down as COVID-19 sickens plant workers.” Zarroli reports that “one of the country’s largest pork-producing plants closed indefinitely after nearly 300 of its employees tested positive for COVID-19. And the company’s CEO warned that the coronavirus pandemic is pushing the nation’s meat supply ‘perilously close’ to the edge.”
The backstory of this closure, and many more to come, is the poor and unclean working conditions of this company’s impoverished workforce. As we write this chapter, another plant in Iowa is closing down (Jackson, 2020). The employees, in turn, haven’t enough funds or health insurance coverage to forgo a day’s or week’s pay. Working, and thereby chancing infection of their colleagues, seems the only way forward for these employees (Grabell, 2020).
The “smallest cog” has led to the closure of one of the largest and oldest meatpacking companies worldwide, which in turn affects the entire supply chain and availability of food for us all. If we don’t pay attention to the health, education, and well-being of the least among us, even the most powerful will be affected:
We are dependent on one another. Some feel they can escape COVID-19, but they can’t escape destruction of our planet. Impacts of climate change were already dictating movements of people. Maybe some have a fantasy that they will pay their way on a rocket ship. We always were codependent as humans, and locking down Florida doesn’t mean they can escape that. It isn’t the “others” that are the problem. It further highlights our interdependence. (David Osher, personal communication, April 1, 2020)
Beating the Odds, or Changing Them?
As this book demonstrates in the coming chapters, educational leaders have often beaten the odds stacked against even the poorest schools and their students. Their successes with “those children” were alternatively admired, extolled, or sidelined in the “turnaround” section of the educational literature, much the way Black history is relegated to the month of February in the United States. More recently, however, there is a greater spotlight on both the undeniable and the aching needs of perhaps a majority of our students and the extraordinary lessons of perseverance, adaptability, and courageous convictions the professionals who succeed with them have to share with colleagues, who are, by necessity, now thrust into the role of “transformational leaders” (Allen et al., 2015; Klocko et al., 2019, p. 9; Northouse, 2013).
▸ If we had been asked to move to distance learning under other circumstances it would have taken twenty years to do what we have done in three weeks. (Atkins, personal communication, April 9, 2020)
The opportunity to addresses systemic issues that advance equitable outcomes for all of our children is before us. Yet many will prefer going back to what they know, especially if it worked for them, their children, their clients, or their constituents: “Everyone who is happy with what they have now wants no change, and those who don’t have what they want rarely have a voice” (John Malloy, personal communication, April 14, 2020).
Best Practices Pre-COVID-19
The possible ways forward can be found within the following pages of this book. Best practices for equitable outcomes in schools as they existed before COVID-19 are described in coming pages as a baseline. Many of these insights, guiding principles, and strategies remain relevant no matter the context.
Adaptive Changes Post-COVID
How schools are managing this crisis by adapting to the new constraints are described as well (using online technologies and decoupling seat time from student requirements, for example), as are plans for moving some of these adaptations into mainstream practice when the pandemic is over. Yet, as Michael Fullan (personal communication, April 10, 2020) cautions: “If the post-COVID opportunity is one in which technology dominates, it will have been a wasted crisis.”
Ultimately, advancing equity or learning through new efficiencies and delivery methods, or tighter collaboration among professional teams, will be of benefit. Yet this alone will not bring about the sea change required to dismantle centuries of structural inequities now being exposed at the surface level.
Breakthrough Opportunities Post-COVID
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. (Franklin D. Roosevelt)
Deeper questions are also addressed in coming chapters about the value of grades, “catching up” when actually everyone is “behind,” and how to act on our collective understanding that students’ most common complaint about school is that it’s “boring” (Michael Fullan, personal communication, April 10, 2020). This sentiment has been fueled by a testing regimen that has consistently disadvantaged certain groups of students, that is not currently valid for any student, and whose future value can be more carefully considered at this juncture.
▸ A modern education should be preparing students for transfer—to be able to apply their learning within, and across, disciplines. We currently focus excessively on “covering” content and preparing students for multiple-choice, standardized tests. Those are narrow and impoverished educational goals. Instead, we should be preparing today’s learners to deal with unpredictable opportunities and challenges . . . now more than ever. (Jay McTighe, personal communication, May 11, 2020)
Both processes for advancing these conversations toward action, and examples of such visionary actions underway in schools and districts, await the reader. We now have a once-in-a-century opportunity to create a “cure” for inequity. This will be neither an easily attained nor a foregone conclusion to the story. The history of the underserved gaining access to true decision-making power, even over their own lives, is fraught. The use of breakthrough leadership is meant to provide both the best practices underway to address current inequities and a powerful guiding light for changing the conditions leading to them.
Many have heard the story of the wise old man and the mischievous boys. One day, a mischievous group of boys were idly looking for something to do when they saw an old man sitting on a park bench. He had the reputation of being the wisest man in town. The boys plotted to prove the old man unwise. They caught a bird that had been trapped in a bush. They said to one another, “Let’s hide it behind our back, take it to the old man, and ask him if it is alive or dead. If he says it is dead, we will show him the living bird. It he says it is alive, we will smother it until it is dead. Either way, we will prove him wrong.” So, the mischievous boys approached the wise old man, and told him they had a bird behind their back. They asked him, “Is the bird dead or alive?” The wise old man responded, “His life is in your hands.”
We have an opportunity to address a crisis beyond COVID-19 that can’t be ignored or explained away. The decision to act is in our collective hands. The possibilities and opportunities to transform schools to meet the needs of every student stand before us.
References
Allen, N., Grigsby, B., & Peters, M. L. (2015).