Читать книгу A Summing Up - Robert Eaker - Страница 9

FOREWORD

Gamble, Carouse, and Explore

By Douglas Reeves

Do not play intellectual poker with Bob Eaker. Just when you’ve been suckered into his good-ol’-boy routine, he is quoting W. Somerset Maugham, Shakespeare, and Voltaire. Maugham, from whom the title of this book is inspired, in one of his most famous short stories, relates the tale of the father who admonishes his son not to gamble, carouse, or explore the wider world. The son, of course, defies all three commands and, confounding the father, wins at the table, finds love, and learns lessons from exploration that his father could never have taught him. So, in the spirit of Maugham, I offer the following foreword to this wonderful book: gamble, carouse, and explore.

Gamble

Take a chance on Bob Eaker’s lessons. I’m not asking you to buy in, and I’m not asking you to believe. Every leadership decision, as world champion poker player Annie Duke (2018) has demonstrated, is a combination of strategy and chance. You may not yet believe in his work on Professional Learning Communities at Work® (PLCs), but take a chance. Even though the probabilities are strongly in your favor, Eaker would be the first to admit that you may run into resistance, defiance, and roadblocks. Do it anyway. As Duke (2018) would say, go all in for your students and staff. In this context, gambling is neither a vice nor an addiction but rather the result of the calculated risks that leaders take every day. In our world of education, the risk-to-reward ratio is clear. The risks are criticism and resistance; the rewards are the lives of children. It’s not a difficult calculation to make.

Carouse

Fall in love, as Rick and Becky DuFour did with each other, and as Eaker has done, with generations of students, teachers, and leaders. Just as gambling can be entirely rational, falling in love can be entirely irrational, but it is precisely this irrational passion—loving students and colleagues even when they are not very lovable—that Eaker calls us to embrace.

In chapter 8, Eaker addresses the imperative of passionate persistence. All the research and strategies in the world are not a replacement for passionate persistence. Therefore, like Maugham’s hero, defy rationality and passionately pursue those values that drive you, and fall in love with the futures that your students and colleagues have, even when your students and colleagues don’t necessarily believe in those futures.

Explore

We hear the voice of authority in Maugham’s story: stay close, don’t stray, don’t take risks, don’t explore. But Eaker takes us beyond our comfort zones. Along with Rick and Becky DuFour, Eaker asks us to consider how we can improve, from our first years in the profession to the twilight of our careers. My best days as a researcher are when I hear teachers in their thirty-ninth year of work seek, in the context of their PLC, to make their fortieth year even better. I watch new teachers take risks in trying professional practices that were omitted in their undergraduate training. I watch twenty-year veterans defy conventions of tradition to have dramatic impacts on student achievement. I watch leaders who are inclined toward safety and convention explore new ways to engage students, faculty, and staff. Read this book and follow their example.

So, take it from Bob Eaker and W. Somerset Maugham: gamble, carouse, and explore. The journey in the pages ahead will be richly rewarding.