1) Your School Must Be For All Kids 100 Percent of the Time
If you start making decisions based on avoiding conflict, the students lose. This is what sustained me through one of my most difficult decisions. I asked the school district to let our school health center offer birth control after four girls became pregnant in one semester. For this group of kids, the health center at King was their primary health care provider. Although we offer birth control to our students, we are not the birth control school; we are the school that cares about all of its kids. This decision was the right one, and it cemented for all time the central values of King.

Whether or not you agree with schools providing students with birth control, McCarthy’s first sentence here is incredibly important.  So important, it bears repeating: “If you start making decisions based on avoiding conflict, the students lose.”  Most of us, I’m sure, dislike conflict.  I know I do, but McCarthy is reminding us that sometimes conflict is needed to provide the best possible experience for our students.  Put another way, all of our students are worth fighting for.  In the context of Lutheran education, that makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?  Jesus set the ultimate example of not backing down to avoid conflict in His life, death, and resurrection for all of us.

9) Consensus is Overrated
Twenty percent of people will be against anything. When you realize this, you avoid compromising what really should be done because you stop watering things down. If you always try to reach consensus, you are being led by the 20 percent.

This is a crucial leadership lesson that I think many administrators miss out on.  No matter what you do, or what changes you propose, there will always be a minority (sometimes very vocal) in opposition.  A successful administrator needs to drive on in the face of this to accomplish their vision for their school instead of looking for ways to make everyone happy.  Obviously, administrators need to be responsive to the concerns of their faculties and staffs, but they need to be able to distinguish between the general sort of opposition to change McCarthy is highlighting and actual problems with their plans that need to be addressed.

I feel that this article by McCarthy is one that every Lutheran principal and administrator should be asked to read.  Go ahead and pass it on.  I’d love to hear your thoughts about what McCarthy has to say.

What is the big deal about a paper company? Bigger question what does a paper company have to do with education? As most of you know I am working on my master for educational administration.  While going through my first few classes I have found a new philosophy on education.  Education is on the wrong path and has been for a long time. We are doing harm to our children, my education has let me down.  We have known about the major different learning styles for a long time, being Cognitive or Psychomotor, or the newer differentiated learning. But, is that enough?  NO!  There are many more talented writers and bloggers out there that can talk about how we are training our children for jobs not even created and what is the newest technique for implementing the latest internet tool.  I read over 30 blogs a day with great information and encourage you to find some good Blogs on topics you enjoy to learn.  I sit in webinars and listen to educational presentations in real world and Virtual (Second Life).

SO WHAT AM I TALKING ABOUT?  WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH PAPER COMPANY?

If you go on the primatech website and you click on about us and then you click on the logo in the upper left hand corner you get a secret website.  Now they don’t try to hide the secret website but the possibilities are there for education.  So how does this relate still?  Are you still confused? How is Education suppose to change to have hidden websites?

Well, Primatech isn’t a real company, it is a company on the show Heroes, and this is how it fits into education. Heroes has taken an all in your face attitude to promote its show. You have the show on tv, you have the normal show website (plus fan website), you have interaction by creating your own Hero for their graphic novels on line, and now you have a website based on their company that is a front for their secret job. This is what we need to do in education, we need to be using everything and anything to educate our children.  How will you educate your child? How will you promote the word of God?