EXCELLENCE & ETHICS

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  Homeboy Solutions

  Kyle Baker posted in Character Blog at 1:26 pm on May 16, 2012 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Creative Solutions, Gang violence, Homeboy Industries, Los Angeles, Poverty, Urban

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  Post by Kyle Baker, Program Coordinator at the Institute for Excellence & Ethics.

  You can follow Kyle’s daily adventures here.

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  What a difference a week makes.

   

  Last Wednesday at 4:00 AM, I was on my way to the Kansas City airport, preparing for a day walking through airports and onto planes.

  This morning at 4:00 AM, I was cooking breakfast for 50+ homeless men and preparing to walk the infamous Skid Row section of Los Angeles this afternoon.

  Last week I was wrapping up my most recent trip to Kansas, where I met with educators on a variety of topics and facilitated three Excellence & Ethics Impact Academies, retreat-style workshops designed to guide participants into reflection on how they can develop into Impact Leaders and equip them with tools and skills needed to do so.  (You can view our workshop materials from these Impact Academies by clicking here.)

  This week, I’ve seen countless Impact Leaders in action.  Along with eleven other Carroll College students and alumni, I am in Los Angeles this on a Headlights Service Immersion trip (read more about this trip here).  The objectives of this trip are to join together in order to serve people and communities in need and to learn of their stories and about the challenges they face.

  Earlier this week we were able to visit Homeboy Industries, a comprehensive gang intervention program that has transformed entire neighborhoods if not the entire city of Los Angeles (it certainly has transformed the way we think about the creation of opportunities for gang members).  Homeboy Industries abides by two slogans that are referenced consistently:

  “Jobs not jails,” and “Nothing stops a bullet like a job.”

  It might be easy to cast off such brash statements…until you see Homeboy Industries in action.  On Monday, we visited a silk-screen shop, a bakery, and a café (complete with some of the best organic, sustainably grown food and coffee I’ve had in a very long time) that are run by Homeboy Industries.  Fast Company CoExist recently profiled Homeboy Industries, so you can read more about them by clicking here, but here are the essentials:

  In the 1980’s, a Jesuit priest named Fr. Greg Boyle was placed at the Dolores Mission parish in the Boyle Heights region in Los Angeles.  Sharing a name with the neighborhood was pure coincidence, but his placement there was not.  After working in Bolivia, Fr. Greg asked his provincial (supervisor) if he could be placed at the poorest parish they had.  Since this was quite a rare request, the provincial was more than happy to place him in Boyle Heights, a region of LA that in the late 1980’s was entrenched in a full blown gang war.  By accounts we’ve heard this week, there were up to 18 actively warring gangs in the area at that time and there were often 2-3 homicides per week, most of them gang related.

  Upon arriving in the neighborhood, Fr. Greg set out to learn about the challenges that the neighborhood was facing and work together with community members, primarily women in the neighborhood, to develop and implement creative solutions.  Homeboy Industries is only one of the many profound examples of how the creative solutions that have been developed have had a significant positive impact on this neighborhood, but for now I will focus on Homeboy in order to illustrate how they’ve moved to address critical issues facing current and former gang members.

  Fr. Greg and his team quickly saw that one of the root causes of long-term gang membership was lack of any other valid option for many people in the area, especially if they dropped out of school and/or got involved in gang activity from a young age.  Take a look at the table below to see some of these challenges they identified and how Homeboy Industries works to provide solutions:

  Challenge	Solution
  Gangs warring over territory.	Homeboy intentionally hires people from different gangs and puts them in situations where they must work together in order to keep their job.
  Gang-affiliated tattoos can be a barrier to employment and/or a risk to life.	Homeboy Industries provides free tattoo removal services to anyone that walks in the door(In 20 days this February, 840 people took advantage of this service).
  Low employability skills.	Homeboy provides a wealth of 100% free, no-obligation courses ranging from Excel 101 to resume building to yoga which are open to anyone at any time.
  Mental health and substance abuse issues (often undiagnosed/untreated).	100% free, no-obligation counseling services available.
  Legal issues.	100% free, no-obligation legal services are available for area ranging from immigration status to parking tickets to custody issues.
  Lack of food/proper nutrition.	The cafeteria in the Homeboy Industries office has an open door policy; anyone can walk in and have something to eat or drink at any time during office hours, including you or me as well as someone who does not have the means to get the proper food/nutrition they need in order to pursue a job and/or work productively.
  Lack of employers willing to give entry-level jobs to the people who come to Homeboy Industries looking for them (usually people who are associated with gangs, have dealt drugs, been incarcerated, etc.).	Homeboy created several business which employ “Homies,” including a silk-screen shop, bakery, a café, and the Homeboy Industries office itself.
  Long-term dependence on social-services.	Participation in Homeboy is an 18 month rehabilitation process, which includes mental health services, career counseling, classes, performance reviews, etc.  After 16 months, participants meet with a team of case managers, job developers, etc. to build and implement a self-sufficiency plan.

   

  As we toured Homeboy Industries, our tour guide Gabriel explained that these solutions were a process, and that they take time.

  He told us that several years ago “G” (which is what Fr. Greg is commonly referred to as here) had given him a chance, and that he’d left his old way of life behind and seized the opportunity.  He worked for Homeboy Industries for a period of time, then gota job with the railroad making over $45,000 per year (to put that into perspective, according to the principal of Dolores Mission Catholic School, only about 5% of the households in this area bring in over $20,000 per year).  However, he had a “relapse” (what this consisted of he did not share with us, he only referenced “his addictions”) and lost his job, his family, and his home.  He described coming back to see G:

  “G gave me a hug, he told me I had no reason to be ashamed, and that I was exactly who God created me to be.  Then he told me to work on myself for a little bit, and come back when I was ready.  So I came to see him in December, and in January he gave me another opportunity with this job.  Now my personal goals are to keep working on myself so I can get enrolled in school and become a counselor to help other people.”

  When we met Fr. Greg on Monday afternoon, he was quick to tell us that they hadn’t “fixed” anything, a message that is shared by many in this area.  However everyone here is  just as quick to point out the reductions in murder and other violent crime, thousands of “Homies” who now have jobs, men (including Gabriel) and women who are taking classes not only in Word, but also parenting and relationship-building.  They are proud and should be of the work they have joined together to put in for their community.

  Indeed, as another Jesuit, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin once wrote, we must trust in the “long slow work,” and not get frustrated if “success” by our desired definition and metrics is not initially achieved.  Instead, we must (1) remain focused on the goal we’ve set out to achieve (In the case of Homeboy, end the violence that has plagued the lives of the people in this neighborhood), (2) develop many ideas for diverse and wide-reaching solutions, (3) refine these ideas until they are shaped into implementation-worthy plans, and then (4) communicate the plan to everyone involved and put it into action with fierce determination as well as the unbridled humility required to reflect, regroup, and begin anew when a plan needs further development.

  

   

  Although Fr. Greg and others working in this area (and in other places) may feel as if they’ve only just begun to work toward a solution, spending this week surrounded by true Impact Leaders has been a great reminder that creative solutions are as much about process as about product, and that even if we haven’t achieved our final goal, there are always opportunities to plan and problems-solve further.

  By my assessment using Creative Solutions Rubric, I’d give Homeboy Industries three thumbs up.

  

   

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  The Excellence & Ethics Tools mentioned in this post, the Creative Solutions System and the Creative Solutions Rubric, are available in:

  Unit 6.1 of the Power2Achieve Foundations Curriculum.

  Excellence & Ethics Professional Development Toolkit 6.1.

  Impact Academy workshops for educators, students, and community leaders.

  For more information, email Kyle Baker at kbaker@excellenceandethics.org

  

   

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  The Web of Impact

  Kyle Baker posted in Character Blog at 2:24 am on April 19, 2012 | 3 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: impact (2), mindfulness (2), Power2Achieve (8)

  Post by Kyle Baker, Program Coordinator at the Institute for Excellence & Ethics.

  You can follow Kyle’s daily adventures here.

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  After nearly a month of traveling to different regions of the country to work with educators and students, last night I flew into Helena, Montana for a few days on the ground.  This morning when I woke up, I drove to Whitehall, a small southwestern Montana town of just over 1,000 residents.  As I pulled into town, I used my iPhone to access Google Maps so that I could find directions to St. Teresa’s Catholic Church.

  I parked my car between two neatly painted white lines in the parish parking lot, and walked into the church just as a funeral Mass began in celebration of the life of Betty Hogan, whom I had never met.

  So why was I at the funeral of someone I’d never met, in a town I’d never been…and what does all of this have to do with a “Web of Impact”?

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  From 2001 until graduating in 2006, I attended Carroll College in Helena, Montana, where I played on the football team.  My time as a student-athlete (a term that has come under fire recently, but which I take very seriously) at Carroll was filled with many wonderful and challenging experiences, and marked by great development as a student, an athlete, and a person; it was one of the truly formative periods of my life.

  While there, my offensive line coach was a man known to many as “Hogie.”  Hogie is the kind of person who epitomizes the term “duties as otherwise assigned.”  In addition to serving as a football coach, he also oversees the strength and conditioning program, is the master of the equipment room, and the king of one-liners.  Most people I’ve met over the years who have been associated in any way with football in Montana have a “Hogie-story,” and somewhere tucked away in a box I even have a binder full of “Hogie-isms” I collected during 5 years of film-study sessions.

  After a person tells you their favorite Hogie-story, they’re quite likely to comment just as quickly on what a good, hard working, and caring man Hogie is.  No matter how early I would arrive for our winter conditioning workouts (which usually began prior to 6:00am), Hogie’s car would already be in the parking lot.  The door to his office was constantly open, inviting conversations on everything from game plans to relationships to what was for lunch that day in the dining hall.  On Saturday afternoons after a game, as everyone poured out of the locker room to celebrate a victory with their families, Hogie could be found washing the game uniforms because he believed that champions should never have grass stains on their uniforms.  This is a man who takes his jobs very seriously, because he knows their purpose, even if sometimes that purpose goes unnoticed by others.

  The man many know as Hogie is Coach Jim Hogan, son of Betty Hogan, who passed away last week after a long battle with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

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  Funerals have always been a strange thing to me, perhaps because as a child I didn’t have many experiences of dealing with the death of friends and loved ones.  I do remember attending the funeral of a friend’s father (Gary McKenna, my youth football coach, who first taught me to love the game of football, about the hard work required to play it well, and about the relationships that could be developed through teamwork and competition).  I remember being overwhelmed by the sadness that permeated the building, and I remember hoping that people wouldn’t be so sad when I died.

  Of course this sadness is natural; we grieve for the loss of those we love and can no longer spend time with, we wonder if we should have called or written more, and we are confronted by the truth of our own mortality…but many times, as was the case today in Whitehall, joy is also present.  Joy for a life well lived, and for love well shared.

  Today as I sat in St. Teresa’s and listened to readings and reflections on life and death, I realized that I wasn’t just there to support my mentor and friend as well as his grieving family, but that I was also there to share my gratitude for the profound impact that Betty Hogan had on my life.

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  I don’t imagine that when Betty was 12 or 22 or 72, she ever imagined that her thoughts, her words, and her actions would someday affect a kid she would never even meet in any significant way, but they did.  Through the impact she had on the life of her son Jim…the values she instilled in him, the life-lessons she guided him through, and even the way she tended to his basic human needs for food, water, shelter, and affection as a child…she had a powerful and lasting impact on my own life, because her son Jim has made a significant impact on me, and has helped me become the man I am today: Far from perfect, but trying every day to learn to be a good person, to work hard, to not take things so seriously that I miss the chance to share a smile or a laugh, to be fiercely loyal, to be genuine, and to love the people around me.  In the 11 years we’ve known each other, Coach Hogan has done so many things to help and support me I’ve lost count, and I am certain there have been many more that I’ll never learn of.

  His thoughts, words, and actions…the life of Jim Hogan, has had a profound, formative, and lasting impact on me.

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  The most fascinating thing about this is that the influence of so many others who have had an impact on his life makes up part of an expansive Web of Impact.  You and I are part of this web too, just as is the person in the factory that built my car, the person who carried my iPhone from the delivery truck to the store, the person who designed Google Maps so I wouldn’t get lost (well, at least not as often), the person who painted the lines in the lot where I parked, and the usher who greeted me with a smile and a “good-morning” as I walked into St Teresa’s.   Just like I don’t imagine that Betty Hogan ever thought,“I bet if I teach my son Jim to work hard and be a good person, he will teach the same things to a football player he coaches someday,” I don’t know that the people who performed the jobs I just described thought about how their actions would affect me today…the impact they would have on me….but what if they did?

  And what if I did? What if I thought more about what kind of impact I was making…what if we all did?  What increase in sense of purpose would we have?  In our sense of self-worth?  In our understanding of community?  In the joy with which we experience both the profound and the seemingly mundane?  What if we thought more intentionally about the impact we wanted to make with our lives, and what if we reflected deeply on this more regularly?  Because you see, our thoughts, our words, our actions…they really do matter, and they matter in incredibly more vast and complex ways than we can ever imagine or comprehend.  And one of the great gifts of this life is that we get to choose the kind of impact we make, because we get to choose how we think about the world and about the people around us, we get to choose what we say and how we say it, and we get to choose how and when we act. (And as Spiderman always wisely reminds us, this great gift of power comes with great responsibility).

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  A few weeks ago, I got to speak with nearly 400 high school and middle school students about “Impact” at the Southwest Kansas Student Leadership Conference, hosted at Garden City Community College. (My participation in this event was made possible through a generous conference sponsorship from United Wireless of Kansas).  Throughout the conference, students reflected on their own unique skills, talents, and interests, and on how those could be put to use in order to make a positive impact on peoples’ lives, in their schools, in their families, in their workplaces, and in their communities, both now and in their future.

  Next month, more students and educators will have the opportunity to contemplate this idea of being a part of a Web of Impact; to reflect on what they want their own impact to be and to learn to develop personal competencies that will help them make a positive with their life.

  Through the Kansas PCEP Project, a federally funded initiative that for the last four years has worked to create a sustainable character development movement in high schools across the state of Kansas, students, educators, school board members, and community members have been invited to participate in three Excellence & Ethics Impact Academies which will take place around the state. These Excellence & Ethics Impact Academies provide participants with a unique opportunity to reflect deeply at their own experiences, to identify their goals, and to consider how their unique skills, interests, and opportunities can be built upon in order to make a positive and lasting impact with their lives.

  And these opportunities are important, not only for our schools, and our communities…but for our collective future…because what we think, what we say, and what we do matters.

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  Whether we realize it or not, each of us makes an impact on the people we interact with and on the world around us…and if we all spent a little more time being still with that information; thinking about all the people who have made an impact on us, and considering what kind of impact we will choose to make with our own lives, our individual lives are likely to be lived with more depth and richness, and perhaps our collective impact will begin to solve some of the more global problems we’re confronted with today as a society.

  Just like Mrs. Hogan may never have known the significant impact her life had on me, we may not ever directly see tangible evidence  that every thought we think, every word we utter, or every action we take will have…but one thing that we do know is that the Web of Impact is real…and we are all part of it.

  

   
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  What are you progressing toward today?

  Kyle Baker posted in Character Blog at 1:57 pm on February 29, 2012 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: challenges, goals, process, progress

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  Posted by Kyle Baker, Program Coordinator for the Institute for Excellence & Ethics.

  You can follow his daily adventures here.

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  An essential step in goal achievement is the identification of your desired destination…what you’re aiming for…where you’re heading.

  Regardless of who I work with, from students in elementary schools to competitive athletes, from people learning basic job skills to organizational leaders at the top of their fields, from teachers to college seniors, true identification of a desired destination (aka a goal) can prove to be an incredibly challenging task.  I’m not talking about things like “get good grades” or “exercise more”…but those specific, measurable goals that we want to achieve as individuals, teams, and organizations because they really mean something to us.

  It can be scary.  Sometimes it can feel selfish.  It demands honesty, humility, and vulnerability.  It requires accepting the fact that it will take hard work to achieve…and that even with hard work, you still may not get there.  At some point, the question of “Why exactly do I want to do this again?” will come up, and sometimes you may not be able to find an answer.

  I know this not only from a research perspective, but because I experience these challenges myself…we all do.

   

  Goal achievement doesn’t just happen.  It’s a process.

  
  

   

  Progress through process.

   

  So….What are you progressing toward today?

   

  “Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.”

  -Khalil Gibran

   

  

   
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  Lighting the Fire

  Kyle Baker posted in Character Blog, Excellence & Ethics in Business, Power2Achieve Community at 5:16 pm on February 8, 2012 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: mission, passion, purpose

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  Posted by Kyle Baker, Program Coordinator at the Institute for Excellence & Ethics.

  You can follow his daily adventures here.

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  Last week, I was sitting in one of my favorite Syracuse haunts, Recess Coffee House, when a group of four nestled into the plush chairs across the room.  It quickly became apparent that the group was comprised of three freshman college students and a “mentor.”   By the content of their conversation (so maybe sometimes I can actually hear through my earbuds…so?) and the body language of the students, it appeared that they were assigned to meet with this mentor through some type of academic support program (in other words, they didn’t seem too thrilled to be there).

  After some brief small-talk, the mentor quickly moved to what must have been the topic for the day’s discussion by posing the following question to the group:

  “So, where do you see yourself heading after you graduate from college?”

  Needless to say, he didn’t gather much of a response from such a bold prompt.

  As I sat there responding to emails and checking calendar dates, I had to laugh.  Only minutes before I had been with Matt Davidson discussing a similar question: “What will our work at IEE look like in 2012?”

  In everything from grandiose life ambitions to more typical daily decisions, it can often feel as if we’re constantly seeking clarity of direction and purpose.  This certainly is true for me; I’ve often joked that I stick to water, coffee, and espresso because a decision like what kind of Gatorade to purchase can cause my knees to buckle…(anyone who’s ever made a road trip with me can attest that the process isn’t pretty).

  But developing our sense of passion, purpose, and mission is much more important than deciding on a drink flavor.  In fact, an emerging collection of cross-disciplinary research is teaching us that having a clear sense of what drives you as an individual and/or organization is essential for health, happiness, productivity, and social change. (See the January/February issue of the always excellent Harvard Business Review for an insightful analysis of current research in this area).

  Recently I was blessed with the opportunity to lead a retreat for college students where we focused on a line that St. Ignatius of Loyola, a prolific thinker and writer, often included at the bottom of the letters he would pen to his friends and colleagues around the world:

  “Go forth, and set the world on fire.”

  The question that stems from this line is a big one:  “How do I do that?”

  The answer waits for us in reflection on what helps us light the unique fire within each of us, or as Howard Thurman put it, “what makes us come fully alive.”  This reflection includes thinking about our dreams, openly and honestly identifying what can help us achieve them as well as what may prevent us from doing so, and learning to articulate who we are and who we want to become.

  Following the retreat (you can view the slides that were used during the retreat here) I received feedback from students indicating that for many of them the retreat represented the first time they’ve reflected deeply upon these themes.

  Perhaps just as interesting (and deeply moving) were the emails I received from those that were on the retreat in supporting roles along different points in their journey:  A person preparing to retire later in the month from a job that by his own accord had “defined his identity” for several decades; a person who shared that he was “at the theoretical midpoint of life this year” and beginning to reflect upon “what my epitaph will say (which is the sentence carved in stone),” and a person just beginning her career who summarized the experience by saying “the issue of where is my life headed is a BIG anxiety button for this generation of so many options and possibilities.”

  These are big questions whose answers are constantly evolving, but even though they can be scary and complex, working to discover our passion, purpose, and mission through exercises such as the Blueprint for Life, the Character SWOT Analysis (both featured in Power2Achieve Unit 8.1), and writing (then living) “Your Sentence,” (presented in Daniel Pink’s bestseller Drive and featured in Power2Achieve Unit 5.1) is essential, as is creating opportunities for our students and members of our organizations to do so. (As you’ll see in the retreat slides, these served as the pillar exercises for our retreat…and the sentences the participants came up with filled me with a great sense of hope for our future.)

   

  So “Go forth, and set the world on fire”…but before you set out to do so, be sure to spend some time thinking about what lights your own fire.

   

  

   
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  Power2Achieve Schools Receive State's Top Honor

  Kyle Baker posted in Character Blog, IEE & Partners' News, Power2Achieve Community at 6:48 pm on January 30, 2012 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Academics, award, AYP, ethics, excellence, Graduation, Kansas, performance (2), Power2Achieve (8)

  Post by Kyle Baker, Program Coordinator for the Institute for Excellence & Ethics.

   

  Northern Heights High School (Allen, KS), Clifton-Clyde Senior High School (Clyde, KS), and Weskan High School (Weskan Township, KS) have received the highest honor the state of Kansas bestows on K-12 schools, the Governor’s Award, which recognizes the top performing schools in the state.

  In order to receive this award, high schools must:

  • Achieve the Kansas “Standard of Excellence” in both reading and mathematics.
  • Made AYP (Annual Yearly Progress) in reading, math, and graduation rate.
  • Be among the top 5 percent of schools in reading and mathematics on state assessments.

   

  These three schools all currently utilize the Power2Achieve Foundations classroom curriculum through the their participation in the Kansas PCEP grant project (coordinated by Sue Kidd).

  In addition to utilizing Power2Achieve Foundations, each of these schools has also received multiple Culture of Excellence & Ethics Toolkit professional development workshops for the school’s entire faculty/staff, has used the Culture of Excellence & Ethics Assessment (CEEA) to assess the culture and climate of their school, and have learned to use that data to guide improvement strategies through IEE’s Using CEEA Data for School Improvement professional development workshop.

  These services were also provided through the Kansas PCEP project and the Toolkit workshops were delivered by IEE’s outstanding team of trainers in Kansas:  Kansas PCEP coach DeAnne Heersche and Excellence & Ethics Certified Trainers Jara Wilson, Audrey Neuschafer, Noalee McDonald-Augustine, Susan Johnson, and Mary Ghetto.

  Silver Lake Junior/Senior High School (Silver Lake, KS), another Governor’s Award winner, utilizes the CEEA survey (also made possible by the Kansas PCEP project).

  The recognition of these four school’s as Governor’s Award winners continues to confirm the positive impact a comprehensive implementation of Power2Achieve Foundations, Culture of Excellence & Ethics Toolkits, and the Culture of Excellence & Ethics Assessment produces in schools.

  You can read more about the Kansas Governor’s Award on the Kansas State Department of Education’s website here.

   

  Congratulations to Northern Heights High School, Clifton-Clyde Senior High School, Weskan High School, and Silver Lake Junior/High School!

  

   
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  Russell Middle School's Tier 1 Attitude-Effort-Improvement Intervention

  Kyle Baker posted in Character Blog at 8:38 pm on January 10, 2012 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Attitude (2), Effort (2), improvement (2), PBIS, RTI, Toolkit (2)

  Post by Kyle Baker, Program Coordinator for the Institute for Excellence & Ethics.

  Last week, I facilitated an Excellence & Ethics Toolkit Workshop on “Utilizing Effective Goal Achievement Strategies” for the faculty, staff, and administration at Russell Middle School in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

  Russell Middle School has a passionate faculty & staff committed to giving their students the best educational experience possible (this is reflected in Russell’s distinction as a Colorado Trailblazer School to Watch and a Colorado State School of Character).  Given this fact, the school leadership team had little doubt that the faculty and staff would quickly and powerfully integrate tools such as the Goal Achievement Process, the Goal Map, and the Attitude-Effort-Improvement Rubric (AEI Rubric) following Wednesday’s Toolkit professional development workshop, however they decided that they wanted to implement a school-wide, Tier-1 intervention as well.

  The school leadership team identified the objectives of the intervention they wanted to plan by choosing to adopt the Excellence & Ethics competencies addressed in the Toolkit as the stated goals for their students:

  • Benchmark current state (baseline starting point) and establish desired state (end goal).
  • Balance tactical (short-term) and strategic (long-term) goals.
  • Apply strategies to overcome obstacles to goals achievement.
  • Develop the attitude and effort needed to revise and continuously improve.

  The leadership team then decided to incorporate another goal as well: To increase the frequency and quality of planner use by students.  This objective strengthened the intervention strategy by authentically aligning it with the school’s ongoing PBIS initiative while also encouraging students to make better use of a powerful tool that they already had access to.

  Prior to this intervention, planner use was encouraged and reinforced by many teachers, but the only coordinated school-wide use of the planner was as a hall pass, and as one teacher told us, “ Those planners are an awfully expensive bathroom pass.”

  After identifying the goals for the intervention, the school leadership team and I worked to envision what steps the students would need to take in order to achieve them.

  The leadership team determined that they would work to achieve the goals they identified by having the students:

  1.  Set 1 academic and 1 citizenship (using the Russell ROCKS citizenship rubric as the guide) every month.

  2.  Record their goals on the month overview page in their student planners.

  3.  Chart their current Attitude and Effort in relation to the academic and citizenship goal they identified using the Attitude-Effort-Improvement Rubric (better known as the AEI Rubric).

  4.  Revisit their goals and AEI chart at least once during the month in order to have a MMR (Measure, Monitor, Revise if necessary) point.

  Of course, identifying the things we want students to do doesn’t solve the seemingly endless logistical challenges that curb well-intentioned initiatives and interventions every day in schools across the country.

  What’s the #1 way to stop such a derailment from occurring?  By practicing the same long lost art we encourage our students to:  Thinking before acting.

  And so we set out to think about the systematic process that would be required to have 700 students set goals, monitor progress, and evaluate their attitude and effort over time.

  The leadership team made several decisions (that students would use the form pictured below and that those forms would go in each student’s portfolio, etc.), but they also decided to leave several decisions up the 6 PLCs that the faculty & staff are grouped together in.

  This move empowered the individual teams to take ownership of the intervention by making their own decisions about who would get the forms into the portfolios, when (and by whom) mid-month check-ins would take place, what dates at the beginning of each month students would set new goals, how the need for Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions would be identified, and what other kinds of intervention reinforcement would occur.

  Something important to note here:  The initial decisions made by the school leadership team happened BEFORE the Toolkit workshop ever began.  That’s right, before the teachers ever poured their first cup of coffee or checked their email on the morning of their second semester professional development day, the school leadership team had already put in work to identify goals, set up the intervention framework, and define the decisions that each PLC would need to make.

  During the afternoon of the Toolkit workshop, each PLC met for 45 minutes to make their own plan for implementing the intervention.  At the conclusion of these PLC meetings, the entire faculty and staff came together to share their ideas, ask their peers questions that came up in their discussions, and use their collective expertise to solve problems that may have otherwise prevented the intervention from being successful.

  So what was the result?  On Friday, January 6^th, I watched as 700 students–every single student in the building–learned about effective goal setting and the importance of attitude and effort in relation to improvement toward their desired goal (a process that will be conducted during the first week of every month for the rest of the school year).

  The intervention the Russell faculty, staff, and administration has put into action is a powerful example of how different initiatives and frameworks within a school (PLCs, RTI, PBIS, Character Education, 21^st Century Skills, etc.) can come together to empower students to not only set their own goals, but to achieve them.

  Watching the students identify their goals and think about their attitude and effort was exciting for me as one of the designers of the Tools they are using and as a person who believes that it’s possible to unleash nearly limitless potential in every individual student, but my guess is that my initial excitement will pale in comparison to the excitement we will all share when we begin to see the progress students make and the goals they are able to achieve in the course of the coming months.

  

  

  

   
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  Cultivating Mindfulness to Build Performance Capacity

  Kyle Baker posted in Character Blog at 6:10 pm on December 7, 2011 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: building capacity, leadership (2), mindfulness (2), performance (2)

  In recent years, a flurry of research in the areas of human development, leadership, and organizational behavior has shown us that practices of reflection and renewal have more significant impact on the performance capacity of individuals and organizations than we are often willing to acknowledge, even if we are aware of what the data tells us (that people who are healthier, happier, connected to community, and purpose-driven perform at dramatically higher levels than those to which these attributes do not apply).

  This lack of acknowledgement (and resulting action) doesn’t typically stem from a desire of organizational leaders to see their employees suffer and their profits reduced, but rather from increased pressure they themselves feel to do more with less.

  However given the facts, leaders that don’t dedicate time, space, and resources to developing opportunities for members of their organization to reflect and renew aren’t just acting in ignorance, they’re acting irresponsibly.  In a climate in which organizations have been driven to expect fewer people to do more with reduced resources, rates of burnout, depression, and talent-turnover will likely continue to skyrocket unless opportunities for reflection and renewal are intentionally woven into the life of the organization.

  We must realize that ‘mindfulness’ is an essential skill that doesn’t just exist, but rather must be thoughtfully cultivated at both the individual and organizational level in order to build performance capacity.

  This week I am in Lawrence, Kansas, working with trainers from educational resource centers around the state to certify them as Excellence & Ethics Trainers (enabling them to deliver trainings on Power2Achieve Foundations, Excellence & Ethics Toolkits, and the Culture of Excellence & Ethics Assessment to schools, organizations, and individuals across the state of Kansas).  I’ve worked with this awesome group of people before, so I know that because of their dedication to their professional craft and their families, their plates are exceptionally full, but their passion for building a culture of excellence & ethics had brought them together to deepen their understanding of our approach in order to enhance their future work.

  Given a finite amount of time to facilitate a significant amount of learning and planning, I felt (self-inflicted) pressure to jam a lot of work into a small amount of time, but rather than accepting that  the only option was to use every moment to force more information onto those I was training, I decided to bet that the renewal that would occur through a guided reflection activity would not only make our time together more enjoyable, but also more productive both in the short and long term.

  After beginning the second day of our certification workshop with some assorted housekeeping items, I announced that before continuing any further with the formal training, we’d be doing some morning reflection.

  We began our morning reflection with the 5 steps outlined below:

  

  On the top half of their chart paper, each person spent a few minutes with the Excellence & Ethics Blueprint for Life Tool, listing thoughts from each of the areas identified by the orange boxes.

  

  We then spent a few moments reflecting on the Excellence & Ethics Character SWOT Analysis Tool, and then on the bottom half of the chart paper each person identified strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that would impact their ability to reach the goals they had identified above.

  

  When each person had finished their Character SWOT Analysis, we taped the pieces of chart paper in a row on the wall.  We stood together for a few moments in front of our unique goals and desires, the strengths and opportunities we each wanted to build upon, and the weaknesses and threats we wanted to work on, and then we spent a minute in silence reflecting on how we could support & challenge ourselves and others so that we might do our best work and become our best selves.

   

  If the hard-yet-enjoyable work that occurred during the rest of our day together can be used as an indicator, it would appear that the science that illustrates the benefits of reflection and renewal are right on point.

   

  

   
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  What's Your Media Diet?

  Kyle Baker posted in Character Blog at 4:21 pm on October 28, 2011 | 2 Permalink | Reply
  

  Note: The title of this post is not a rhetorical one. I am genuinely interested in learning more about your own “media diet.” Please share your reflections on your media diet as a comment on this post using the reply function, or email me directly at kbaker@excellenceandethics.org. If you email me, I won’t publicly share anything you write without your permission to do so.

  Recently I’ve found myself being asked about my media diet with increasing frequency. There are all kinds of ways to define “media diet,” but what I’m most interested in are the “staples.”  In other words, “What online media and tools do you consume (read/use) on a regular basis?”

  The Atlantic has been exploring this question with people of interest in recent months (see their Media Diet interviews on the Atlantic Wire by clicking here). With access to information increasing at a seemingly impossible rate, the question “What are you reading right now?” has evolved into a different type of beast altogether. While I count myself among the many who still cherish the practice of regularly reading print media (although considering the rapid changes that have already occurred, it’s much of a stretch to envision a child in the not-so-distant future pointing at a book on a shelf and asking “What’s that?”), much of my media consumption occurs within the digital landscape. If we were to sit down and assess the platforms in which our media consumption occurs, how much of that consumption would include online sources like websites, Facebook, Twitter, email, blogs, wikis, etc…?

  Some online communities have even developed norms that regularly encourage the sharing of media diets, such as #FF (Follow Friday) on Twitter. In that spirit and in response to recent inquiries about my own media diet, and even more importantly in order to share some resources and start dialog (and hopefully sharing!) here are just a few “staples” that make up part of my daily media diet using the Culture of Excellence & Ethics Focus Areas as a guiding framework.

  

  Build Positive & Productive Relationships (Consider the Perspective of Others)

  The Staple: The New York Times

  The Nutritional Value: Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking platforms would be the easy-out here, but instead I’m going a slightly different route. Reading the Times each morning (at least the online front page) gives me at least some sense of what is going on in the world, around the country, and in the region. My hunger to “learn it all” can be dangerous in the age of access, so the Times (along with several other city/region specific papers) gives me a quick glance at “what’s going on”, enabling me to engage in conversations with people of diverse perspectives and interests.

  Communicating and Collaborating with Efficiency & Effectiveness (Assume Shared Responsibility for Collective Work and Value Contributions Made by Each Team Member)

  The Staple: Dropbox+Google Docs

  The Nutritional Value: Cloud storage and data syncing services like Dropbox have been game changers in almost every professional field. The ability to access documents from multiple locations and share a large volume of data with multiple users is a function that many of us can no longer imagine being able to operate without.

  Google Docs takes the concept of sharing and pushes it into real-time collaboration. I myself have only just scratched the surface of what Google Docs can do, but the experiences I’ve had in which multiple people in different locations are viewing and editing the same document simultaneously have me convinced of the incredible potential truly collaborative online media can provide moving forward.

  Managing Priorities and Reducing Stress (Utilize Time and Manage Workload Effectively – Use Productive Strategies for Reducing Stress and Anxiety)

  The Staple: Action Method by Behance

  The Nutritional Value: I’m busy, and if you’re reading this, my bet is that you are too. Without a system to put the Identify, Prioritize, Organize, Plan process described in the Time Commitment Tool, I would fall apart. My systems and structures for managing my time commitments are fluid; I’m always slightly modifying existing practices and trying new things in order to constantly strive for maximum effectiveness and keep my stress levels healthy and manageable. The element that has been the most significant addition to my productivity arsenal in the past year has been the Action Method. The Action Method suggests we look at everything as a project and break down information related to a project into three categories: References, Action Steps, and Backburner Items.

  With synching between the Action Method’s web interface and mobile app, I have access to information that helps me identify the most urgent work that must be done on each project at any given time.

  Of course, if you do find yourself stressed, resources like this can be infinitely helpful too.

  Committing to High Standards and Continuous Improvement (Develop the Habits for Excellence - Utilize Effective Goal Achievement Strategies)

  The Staple: Twitter

  The Nutritional Value: I resisted Twitter for years. More accurately I was openly critical of its functionality and purpose beyond the vain sharing of personal exploits that should probably not be shared in the first place. After all, who wants to know where so-and-so goes to lunch in such-a-place.

  Well, it turns out Twitter might just be the most powerful professional learning tool available today, particularly in the field of education. Being active on Twitter not only opens up immediate access to interesting information from media sources and individuals, but also allows me to connect with a “PLN”, or “Personal Learning Network” in a variety of ways from sharing resources to engaging in 140-character-or-less discussions to scheduling a coffee meet up, thus engaging me in a community that supports me by informing and inspiring me with the great work others are doing, and inspires me to do work that can help others as well.  Example:  I follow the Twitter account of at least one person from each of the websites listed in this post.

  Oh…and sometimes I choose places to eat while traveling based on recommendations people post on Twitter…so I guess I’m the person that wants to know where people go to lunch.

  Demonstrating Emotional Intelligence, Integrity, and Responsibility (Stand Up to Peer Pressure)

  The Staple: gimme presence

  The Nutritional Value: I’ve always tried to consistently develop reflective practices, but this summer while facilitating a number of workshops on “Standing Up to Peer Pressure” and “Creating a Safe & Bully Free Environment,” it became more apparent to me than ever how important reflection is to developing identity and learning to be in tune to our true authentic self. gimme presence offers a reflective prompt in instant-dose format, offering a quick thought that allows the reader to enter into a moment of mindfulness and develop the habit of becoming what in Jesuit spirituality is referred to as a “Contemplative in Action.”

  Exhibiting Creativity & Innovation, Critical Thinking, and Problem Solving (Solve Problems Efficiently & Effectively)

  The Staple: Brain Pickings

  The Nutritional Value: A resource unlike any other, Brain Pickings is an eclectic collection of…well, all kinds of things really. In fact, on the about section of the Brain Pickings website it’s described as a “LEGO treasure chest.” I can’t think of a single other online resource (I view Twitter, Tumblr, etc. as collections of individual resources) that has introduced me to as many interesting, creative, artistic, and fascinating things as Brain Pickings has, a curation led by Maria Popova in collaboration with other contributors. Exposure to such an eclectic collection of information enables me to constantly, as Apple once prompted us to do, “Think Different.”

  Leading and Serving Others (Demonstrate Personal and Collective Responsibility)

  The Staple: Harvard Business Review

  The Nutritional Value: I’m not aware of another resource as rich and valuable in the area of leadership and professional development as the Harvard Business Review. HBR’s website allows you to access current and archived articles from their printed monthly, but additionally includes an incredible number of blogs and resources on virtually any topic related to leadership, management, organizational culture, and development. Any time the writings of talented researchers and practitioners are gathered in place like they are on HBR’s website, thoughtful and provocative knowledge is bound to be dropped. The articles and blogs from HBR are so applicable to education, it comes as no surprise that the education and business departments at the university work in close collaboration.

  Living a Balanced, Purposeful, and Healthy Life (Identify and Pursue Broad Life Goals)

  The Staple: TED

  The Nutritional Value: It’s a big world out there, so big there’s no way to know it all or do it all…but these beautiful, inspiring, dynamic, though-provoking talks presented as watch-em-over-lunch videos will keep you heading in a positive direction.

   

   

  So….what are the staples of your media diet?

   

   

  
  

  

   
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  Summer reads

  Kyle Baker posted in Character Blog at 1:57 pm on June 9, 2011 | 3 Permalink | Reply
  

  I often tend to catch flack for my reading habits, both for the amount of time I spend with my nose buried between pages and for the lack of fiction in my literary diet. (For those of you out there that like to get after me about this, I’m participating in The Atlantic’s new 1book140 book club and currently reading Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin as a part of that, so hey, I’m trying!)

  Likely due to my bibliophilia, a number of people lately have asked me for book recommendations for summer reading, additions to professional development libraries at schools, etc.  A lot of those requests are for books on “character development.”  If you’re reading this, you likely already know that our approach to character and culture development at IEE covers a diverse range of topics, so it probably won’t surprise you that these book recommendations are all over the map as well.  Each of these five books match up with at least one Power2Achieve unit so they make great companion reads for those implementing Power2Achieve Foundations, and they offer helpful insights that are useful both in and outside of educational contexts.  Some have been mentioned on this blog before, but I think each one would work wonderfully for individual, small group, and large group study, so check them out if you haven’t already!

   

  Do you have other favorites you’d recommend to others?  Please reply to this post and let us know about them!

   

  Here’s my Power2 hit list:

  1.  Drive – Daniel Pink.   Daniel Pink absolutely crushes the topic of motivation in this book.  Not only is there a chapter dedicated how the concepts he presents apply to education, but every piece of the book has to do with why it can be so challenging to engage and motivate students, and what we can do about it as educators.  Pink also maintains a fantastic blog (http://www.danpink.com) , so there’s a continuing ed opportunity as well.  This book is drawn from in units 4.1 and 4.2 amongst other places in Power2Achieve.

  2.  Made to Stick – Chip Heath & Dan Heath:  Another one that someone could easily argue should become mandatory reading for educators.  When I came to work at IEE, this was the very first thing they put in my hand.  Everyone in our organization has read it, and we refer back to sections of it constantly.  When I read it, I immediately saw ways it would have enhanced my teaching, and in terms of concepts to present to students, there is a lot of information that goes right along with Units Power2Achieve 1.1, 2.1, and others.

  3.  Finding the Open Road – Mike Marriner, Brian McAllister, Nathan Gebhard:  I found this book on a shelf in shop in Seattle just after it was published, a date which happened to coincide with my college graduation.  I don’t know that I’ve ever come across  resource as full of such diverse takes on life, purpose, and careers and as accessible to young people as this one.  Basically it’s a book that contains transcripts of interviews done by a group of guys who snag an old RV and hit the road asking for people’s words of wisdom.  There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that if I were to step into any classroom K-20 tomorrow, this would be a book I would draw from.  It aligns wonderfully with Power2Achieve 8.1, and would be a wonderful resource to build a project off of (also, for a book that offers a similar type of “the path less traveled” viewpoint from the position of organizational leadership, check out Let My People Go Surfing by Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard)

  4.  Nobody Left to Hate – Elliot Aronson:  In our experience many books on issues of bullying/hazing/school-violence/etc. tend to be either very dense in terms of research on root causes and intervention methods or light to the point that there is very little action-oriented information presented.  While it doesn’t provide a checklist of strategies to implement, it does offer a well written look into the world of school violence in all its forms, often times presenting information so jolting that it can’t help but impact the way you interact with others when you attach stories and statistics to the real faces of students in a school (for example:  ”In 1999, one out of every five adolescents had seriously considered suicide, and one out of ten had attempted it.”)  This book most closely aligns with Power2Achieve Unit 5.1, but also underscores the urgent need to address topics of reducing stress and anxiety (3.2) and considering the perspective of others in order to build positive relationships amongst peers, between students and educators, and between students and their families.

  5.  Thinkertoys – Michael Michalko:  Another resource unlike any other I’ve ever come across.  In Thinkertoys, Michalko presents a huge array of activities that can help build creativity and critical thinking skills.  What makes this book unique is that he does each strategy its justice by delving into the theories it stems from, allowing the reader to pull out the specific activities themselves quickly or, even better, learn about the theories the activities are built on and then pull them out and put them into action.  This is cited in Unit 6.1 and makes a nice companion to the unit.

  Four other excellent books I’ve read so far this year that to be have a lot to do with “character ed” because they involve the culture and competencies needed for powerful teaching & learning are Bounce by Matthew Syed, Resilient Classrooms by Beth Doll, Steven Zucker, and Katherine Brehm, The Global Achievement Gap by Tony Wagner, and Visual Meetings by David Sibbet.

  

   
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  What shall we teach?

  Kyle Baker posted in Character Blog at 9:51 am on May 2, 2011 | 2 Permalink | Reply
  

  “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

  ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery