Sustaining Change In Schools - How to Overcome Differences and Focus on Quality

Do you believe that students learn more from what we as adults do than from what we say? If so, do you struggle to align day-to-day educational practices with your community's stated goals for learning? You may be surprised at how many successful programs and services already exist in your school district just waiting to be identified. Our democracy depends on strong public schools that produce successful lifelong learners. And strong public schools depend on strong partnerships between schools and communities. This guide describes how these partnerships can be created and sustained from the classroom to the boardroom by following these five steps:

Understanding and aligning the personality of your school district with the overall personality of your community.

Asking quality questions that promote a commitment to a common purpose.

Making quality a habit by creating organizational structures that celebrate differences within acceptable community standards.

Focusing on success as a means of renewing schools from within rather than imposing solutions from the outside.

Managing tasks so that your stakeholders learn to appreciate different personalities as a necessary part of your problem-solving process.

Central office administrators, school board members, principals, and teacher leaders will find these five practical steps useful in creating and sustaining quality schools.

The Real Colors Homeowner's Guide

Do you find that in spite of a healthy ego, you sometimes come up just short of the finish line in friendship or work situations? Do you ever find yourself slightly out of step with those around you? Do you feel uneasy in a crowd, awkward in one-on-one conversations, or somehow at a loss for words under pressure? How well do you know yourself - your strengths and your liabilities? We all have days where everything seems to click as well as days where nothing seems right. But often we don't know why. The Real Colors Homeowner's Guide is designed to help you discover more about yourself - what makes you feel comfortable or uncomfortable, what causes you to feel the way you do in various situations. While you are a unique individual, there are some behaviors and values that you seem to repeat on a regular basis. There may be certain words, phrases, or actions that bring you joy and others that bring on fear or anger. Sometimes you may know exactly what triggered these reactions, and other times they remain a mystery. If you have attended a Real Colors workshop, you know that there are ways in which you can learn to appreciate your personality strengths and to move beyond those behaviors and attitudes that in the past may have caused you pain or aggravation. Most people tell me that they leave a Colors workshop enthused about how much they have learned about their personal attitudes and behaviors and how much more they can celebrate differences in other people. But they also report wishing that they had some means of following up and practicing their newly learned skills in real life situations. The Real Colors Homeowner's Guide is designed to fill that need. Using a metaphor of a four-room house, the guide explores the Colors in terms of what I call the Four Ps:

Purpose		(Blue) an idealistic way of viewing the world in terms of "why people and events are important?"
Parameters		(Gold) a practical approach to managing daily events by "relying on routines and procedures that have proven effective in the past."
Principles		(Green) a way of looking at the world from the perspective of logical connections that explain "how things work."
Priorities		(Orange) seeing the world in terms of the bottom line, "Will this make a difference?"

You are asked to see your personality as consisting of all four Colors or rooms, one of which you tend to use more than the other three. You are guided through an inventory of the "stuff" that you have collected in your home - some of it that you chose and some that parents and other adults may have pushed on you throughout your childhood and adolescent years. You will learn how to clean house, to use all of the rooms available to you, and to fill your rooms with the "stuff" that makes you happy.

Real Relationships

Do you sometimes find it difficult to relate to people at work or in social situations? Do you feel more comfortable in a crowd than in one-on-one encounters? Do you and your spouse or significant other find yourselves wondering how you can be so much in love yet so angry or unhappy with one another? All of us experience times when things don't go our way, but you can build more wins into your life. And they don't have to come at other people's expense. In the Homeowner's Guide you discovered more about yourself - what makes you feel comfortable or uncomfortable, what causes you to feel the way you do in various situations. By learning what triggered certain reactions in your life, you learned how you can take responsibility for who you are by "cleaning your house" of the guilt and fear that collects in most our lives throughout childhood and adolescence. The Real Relationships book is designed to take your Real Colors experience to the next level. When you understand some of the factors that make you tick as well as those that motivate other people, you are ready to apply this knowledge to building more meaningful relationships in your day-to-day life. Real Relationships take you from a place of understanding yourself and others to a place of developing deeper human partnerships. Relationships come in many forms:

Partnerships with coworkers		Friends
· Employer - employee		Dating
· Service provider - customer		Marriage
· Teacher - student

How deep these relationships run depends on two people, and you are one of those two people. In Real Relationships you learn how to build, assess, and improve meaningful relationships and how to end those that are not healthy.

Following the Homeowner's Guide metaphor of a four-room house, you invite a guest to join you at your table - to become a part of your world and, hopefully, to invite you to be a part of his/her world. Again, this book explores the Colors in terms of the Four Ps:

Purpose		(Blue) an idealistic way of viewing the world in terms of "why people and events are important?"
Parameters		(Gold) a practical approach to managing daily events by "relying on routines and procedures that have proven effective in the past."
Principles		(Green) a way of looking at the world from the perspective of logical connections that explain "how things work."
Priorities		(Orange) seeing the world in terms of the bottom line, "Will this make a difference?"

First you learn to measure the ingredients that go into a relationship recipe and how to see your relationship cup as half full rather than half empty. Then you learn how to move relationship building from a recipe to a free flowing menu of meaningful events. Join me at the table - and bring a friend.

Real Parenting

Are you looking for ideas that will deepen your parent-child relationship? Are you approaching parenting for the first time or simply entering a new phase of the parenting experience? Are you concerned about the direction of your relationship with your children? If you have read the Homeowner's Guide or Real Relationships, you know that the Four Ps do not offer a quick fix. They simply offer a way for you to step back from the sometimes confusing events of your day-to-day life so that you can assess where you are, how you got here, and where you want to be tomorrow. The Real Parenting book allows you to take a look at the Four Ps from a slightly different perspective - that of the parent-child relationship.

Purpose		(Blue) an idealistic way of viewing the world in terms of "why people and events are important?"
Parameters		(Gold) a practical approach to managing daily events by "relying on routines and procedures that have proven effective in the past."
Principles		(Green) a way of looking at the world from the perspective of logical connections that explain "how things work."
Priorities		(Orange) seeing the world in terms of the bottom line, "Will this make a difference?"

Most parents carry some sort of ideal picture of what they want for their children - sometimes to replicate the "good" things they remember from their own childhood and sometimes to avoid what they didn't like about those years. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) life seldom proceeds according to the script that we have written. But you can be prepared to cope with the twists and turns that accompany parenthood.

In Real Parenting you will learn to use an architect's approach to childrearing rather than an artist's approach. As a parent you are not creating your masterpiece through your children. You are helping them create a "home" that suits their personality. You have experiences that can guide their decisions according to the values that you have helped to shape. But your children are the people who must ultimately live in this home - not you.

Parenting is one of the most selfless and yet rewarding experiences that any human being can have. In Real Parenting you will learn how to create a common language with your children through the Four Ps, how to ask "architectural" questions that place appropriate levels of decision making responsibility on your children, how to deal with plans, schematics, and building codes that affect your children beyond the boundaries of your immediate family, and how to assess contractors (teachers, coaches, scout leaders, etc.) who can help you and your children build and maintain the home that you have designed.

Parenting is not easy and is never painless. And this Real Parenting book is not intended to "fix" that reality. But it does give you strategies for performing your parental responsibilities in a capable, caring, and responsible manner. Are you ready to see parenting from a new perspective? Come join me at the drafting table - and bring your children with you.