The Five Principles of Educator Professionalism: Rebuilding Trust in Schools

[00:01] Announcer:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:13] SPEAKER_00:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome to the program Dr. Nason Lawler. With more than 24 years of experience in the field of education, Nason has served as a high school math and social studies teacher, a baseball coach, an assistant principal, and currently as a lead principal, and he holds a doctorate in education from William Carey University. And in 2023, he was honored by the Mississippi Association of Secondary School Principals as a State Assistant Principal of the Year. And we're here today to talk about his new book, The Five Principles of Educator Professionalism, Rebuilding Trust in Schools.

[00:54] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:57] SPEAKER_00:

Nason, welcome to Principal Center Radio.

[00:59] SPEAKER_01:

Well, thank you for having me, Justin. It's an honor to be here.

[01:02] SPEAKER_00:

Well, I'm excited to talk about the book, and I'm excited that you've written the book to shed some light on a topic that often is a little bit difficult for us to talk about. What do you mean by educator professionalism, and why did it occur to you to write this book? What did you see happening out there in the field?

[01:20] SPEAKER_01:

Well, the answer to your first question I think is fairly straightforward. The definition that I arrive at in the book is to define educator conduct as a person's individual contribution to their school's culture. However, as I'm sure you and your listeners are very familiar with, when you open the door of culture, there are so many aspects to discuss when it comes to the sum total of all the events and conversations that take place in a school community on a daily basis. Uh, how I arrived at that topic, um, probably a combination of several different activities that I was working through in my, uh, responsibilities as an assistant principal, uh, that, uh, just kind of the timing worked out well for me to, uh, explore the topic more and more.

[02:12]

Uh, I'd have to begin with the fact that one of my responsibilities as an assistant principal was to lead the professional development at, uh, Germantown high school. when I served there and so went through a year-long professional development plan where we analyzed and talked through the Mississippi Code of Ethics which is a document that's put out with ten standards of conduct by the Mississippi Department of Education and in that year-long plan of professional development was really struck by the fact that obviously there were a lot of don'ts that were written into that as conducts that should not take place by educators, but also it was well written enough so that there were plenty of positive actions that take place as well as an expectation for educators.

[03:07]

Wonderful conversations with faculty members, And also very fortunate to work with many veterans and younger teachers who did take care to put their best foot forward when it came to their individual conduct. Alongside that effort, I also had the opportunity to lead a book study. within my school and the particular book that we chose was the book Culturize by Jimmy Casas, which is a wonderful book. I'm sure you're familiar with it and so many others are on analyzing school culture, the impact one individual can have on that. And then a third issue I think that probably factors into me arriving at this as a topic to study for a book would be my own personal writing and my blog online.

[04:00]

While I was working through all of these tasks administratively in my day job, I would then be able to think through them on my blog quite often. And so those three factors kind of paralleled each other. And the longer I spent, uh, went to my new school and the new job as a lead principal did another iteration of the code of conduct professional development plan with them, uh, continued to write and, uh, And those three tracks seemed to get closer and closer together. And so with plenty of help from Jimmy and his team at Connected Publishing, I was able to put these ideas into a draft that eventually turned into the book. And, of course, there's a lot of outside activity going on, too, that I think does affect the field of education a good bit.

[04:54]

I think anyone who's in tune to world events and the kind of the tenor among the nation right now would agree that there has been a loss and trust really across all institutions in America. And I don't think education is immune to that. I wouldn't say that we're completely responsible for all of them, but I do know that we do need to own up to our role in that. And one of our responsibilities is to build trust among every member of the school community, whether it's the teachers, that we work with, the students that we teach, the parents and the general community in large. And so I guess as complex as the topic is, it's probably kind of complex also as to how I arrived at that as a topic.

[05:41] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, well, and the subtitle, Rebuilding Trust in Schools, Some school leaders might say, well, we haven't really done anything in our school to violate that trust. Why do we need to worry about this? But as you said, societally, we are experiencing a big dip in trust in institutions, in, I would say, also respect for the education profession. We have fewer people going into education as a first career and more people coming in as career changers. Help me think about approaching this in a proactive way, because this is a topic, you know, especially around professional ethics. It's a topic that we approach almost entirely from the negative direction.

[06:20]

When something bad happens, that's when we start talking about professional ethics. And I was quite surprised, honestly, to hear you say you proactively, you know, spent a year talking about, you know, the positive things people could do and the, you know, the state expectations for professional ethics, you know, How do we think about ethics in a way that doesn't imply that people are dumb and are terrible and going to make mistakes? Because a lot of people would approach that topic and say, what problem are we trying to solve? I don't know how to approach professional ethics other than to say, don't do this, don't do that. Help us think about it as a positive force.

[06:59] SPEAKER_01:

Yes. Well, to be fair, I do include guiding principles within each chapter of of my trust framework that do spell out some of the hard boundaries that all educators I think would agree that we don't want to cross when it comes to safety and interaction through our communications and so many other aspects of the job. But that was one of the things that I first set out. And I'd have to admit, there were quite a few times over the span of two years of writing this different drafts for this book and trying to think through each of these concepts that, you know, why did I choose professionalism as my topic? Because it is so complex. Being able to quantify it in an easily repeatable definition that can then be reinforced through a faculty was not an easy task.

[07:53]

As far as highlighting the positives, I think that's fairly easy when you approach it from the standpoint of what do we do well in a good teacher's classroom. And so the building of relationships, the attention to content and getting it right on a daily basis, the self-discipline that it takes to navigate through literally thousands of interactions on a daily basis and make it through all of them at a 100% rate, that's what most of our rockstar teachers do on a daily basis. And so I think highlighting the positives is the key Going back to that old standard that everyone throws out, if you're going to talk through something that's a difficult conversation to have, highlight the positive first. I felt like it was really important to bring in the element of trust in this conversation on educator ethics, though, because in one area that I talk about quite a good bit in the book is this legal expectation that is understood

[08:56]

each time one of us signs a contract to work in a school, and that's this legal doctrine of in loco parentis. So the translation of that, obviously, our goal is to stand in place for the parent. And so if we're going to do that in a way that we show our community self-discipline, we show parents that we're there with their child's best interest at heart, I feel like you can't help but go into the positives first. And obviously there are negatives, and I'll admit there are hard negatives that we want to confront to make sure that we talk through those don'ts. There's obviously a requirement that we do that. But I do think there are so many other aspects to the job that if we place our focus on those positive aspects and keep that focus there, we're much less likely to make the unforced errors that can be so dangerous to a school community and cause such harm.

[09:56] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, let's talk about some specifics there. So what are some of the professionalism and ethics pitfalls that tend to trip up school districts and schools? And what are the positive kind of antidotes to those pitfalls?

[10:14] SPEAKER_01:

So obviously, if you only take your notices from the news media or, heaven forbid, social media, you're only going to see the worst examples trumpeted constantly. The educator conduct that is illegal in most cases, not just unethical. But I think when it comes down to the problems that can arise, we're human and we do make mistakes from time to time. So the countless number of interactions through a daily basis that can occur in a classroom or among conversations between colleagues with an administrator or anyone else in a different role in a school district to be able to communicate our purpose in such a way that we would like to have communicated back to us in our interactions.

[11:09]

There are so many different negatives that can come up that aren't the illegal or unethical kind. It could be as subtle as a dig at the end of a phone call with a parent where you just feel like you have to have the last word and anything in between all the way up to those illegal acts what I would consider a pitfall that could really harm a school community. Now, obviously, there are some minor ones and they happen a good bit on a daily basis, but you still have that reservoir of trust that loses just a little bit each time we commit one of those unforced errors, or we're just exhausted at the end of a day and we maybe don't show our best version of ourselves. As an alternative to that, what I've offered is a framework to try to promote building trust within everyone inside of a school community and encourage educators to just focus on those five qualities that I've listed as principles of professionalism and obviously teaching and learning, being able to take care of that.

[12:17]

First and foremost, there is a understood commitment to mastering your content. But within that, there's a deep dedication to reflection and trying to build capacity within all of our teachers and everyone else in the school district to support instruction. The administrators aren't the only people in the school building that have a responsibility for instructional leadership. Obviously school safety, we want to remain vigilant to school safety threats. Those threats can take the place of an intruder, but they can also take the place of a belligerent student or possibly a situation at home that a student may be encountering. So I talked through the different aspects of mandatory reporting, whether it's student interaction or suspicions that we sometimes find that we must report on.

[13:13]

Then there's also understanding our communication. How do we interact with everyone? There's official communication that's obviously very important because that's how we document the work that we do on a daily basis. But that indirect communication that's more informal is really how we tell everyone the truth and how we actually feel about ourselves and our work by virtue of our attitude. And then there's listening to everyone. How do we receive the conversations that we're in?

[13:49]

Are we trying to reply? Are we really trying to seek what the speaker is talking about, whether it be a student in our class, a parent who has a concern, or our colleagues? who we're trying to work with. And then obviously we also, when we think about communication, there are a couple of aspects that are really big. Seeking balance to me is something that's probably not something that's always been promoted as a professionalism expectation, but being able to take care of yourself in such a way that those interactions in February are just as meaningful as they would be in July and August when it's a bit easier and we were a bit more rested. And then obviously our morale.

[14:28]

I wind up with taking ownership of our morale and just how responsible we are for how we interact with each other on a daily basis. I talked through in that chapter just how important it is for our morale to be something that we take responsibility for because that is how we interact with the culture of our schools. So that's the five principles that I've kind of laid out as how to keep ourself focused and grounded without losing focus on some of the more important aspects of our work.

[15:06] SPEAKER_00:

Love it. So those five facets of professionalism, you've got teaching and learning, essentially safety, communication, balance, and morale. Let's talk a little bit about morale, if we could, because I don't think there's any school that doesn't have educators who wax and wane a bit in morale throughout the year. You know, we might have things happen that chip away at our morale, or sometimes we just have long days. You know, we've got parent-teacher conferences coming up and, you know, those are days that just, you know, especially if you have some kind of unpleasant interactions on some of those days, they can really weigh on you. Or if there's any kind of conflict in the school community, that can affect morale.

[15:44]

How do you think about morale and how does it connect to professionalism?

[15:50] SPEAKER_01:

So I think, uh, the three biggest areas that I've kind of focused on in my book, uh, one, obviously negativity. Uh, I don't think you can have a conversation about morale without encountering negativity at some point. Uh, sometimes, uh, and I understand when you're doing work that daily on a hourly basis expects you to commit acts of service in the service of other kids or parents, um, It's not going to take you long to come across negatives. And the issue with negatives is not that they're an indictment that a school is bad because there's negatives everywhere. It's just how we approach them. And what do we do with them?

[16:31]

So approaching negatives with a sense of curiosity where we're trying to see, well, what's the root cause of this forces us to do something very difficult. And that's confront the truth quite often. So a culture where we're comfortable telling each other the truth. is one of the ways that I think is really important for us to remove that specter of negativity that can damage everyone and everyone's morale so negatively. But there's also another aspect to lowered morale that I talk about in the book. And that's the fact that there are so many people in our school districts that operate in such separation from each other.

[17:16]

From teacher to teacher, we often talk about the isolation between classrooms. and how it's hard to break down those barriers. But when you're talking about everyone in a school district, quite often some of the people that are making decisions that affect your school or your classroom are making those decisions from a different zip code because they're at the central office. And the understanding that each person plays a very important role the success of the school district is is huge but we've got to understand that that role sometimes can be quite different from that of the classroom teacher or the administrator and it's good to go into those interactions with it again with a sense of curiosity and instead of the immediate reaction to some problem that we may have. And then also, honestly, another aspect of morale that sometimes it's just hard to shake is a lot of people get in those situations, like you mentioned in your question, and they feel helpless.

[18:19]

They feel like there's not a way out in any way. Hopefully it doesn't come to this, but sometimes the change in location might be the only situation that could remedy that. But having a tough conversation is one way to try to confront that feeling of helplessness that can come from a low morale situation, which is not easy, obviously, but it is a better alternative than holding it in for two decades and just becoming more and more bitter about it. I do keep coming back to the concept of trust, though. I do think, and I mentioned this in that chapter on morale, that While every educator does share a responsibility for a positive morale, I do think this is one area where school administrators do share a huge role of responsibility in maintaining that morale.

[19:13]

And I think that comes from conducting ourselves as school leaders in a manner that our colleagues and teachers that work with us see us as trustworthy. And so some of the research that I've come across, some of the reading that I've been doing, talks about the fact that when people leave their job, they don't necessarily leave the tasks and the work that they're doing and the job. They leave their boss. And so quite often that's an interaction where the morale, as it interfaces with the school culture, it doesn't like what it gets back from that leadership. And so that, to me, that's one of the biggest areas of responsibility that we see And quite often the conversation on morale has been one that, well, that person's just being negative and that's on them.

[20:06]

They're just a negative Nellie and they don't really see the need to try to get with the team and do what we're trying to do. It is all of our responsibility, but I do think as school leaders, we do face some responsibility for that.

[20:21] SPEAKER_00:

Well, a lot of great points about morale. And it's interesting to think about the interpersonal side of some people tend to be somewhat negative and need to be reminded to rein that in, which I think you alluded to. And we've probably all dealt with that and have had to have a conversation with someone who just kind of defaults to coming across kind of grouchy and kind of negative. But at the same time, we can't be afraid of the truth when people are not just being grouchy, but they're actually...

[20:49]

raising issues that we're responsible for you know and i think we can all have a good attitude and that still not fix a real problem like sometimes people are negative because the situation is negative and that's the underlying thing that needs to be fixed if we want morale to be good justin one thing i did i want to mention from that chapter on morale is that quite often the status quo is a key player in that morale the leader might be comfortable with a certain situation

[21:19] SPEAKER_01:

but the individual teacher or that other person on the staff may understand the issue from a different angle and the willingness of leaders to be able to question the status quo. It's not always something that has to be changed, but sometimes we do need to be willing to hear the bad news and have someone tell us the truth. And it's also important for us to receive it in such a way that the next problem that comes down the road two months later will come from someone who's comfortable bringing us that message so that we can uncover the truth and correct the problem that is affecting our school.

[22:04] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, very well said. Very well said. I wonder if we could talk for a moment about people who are new to the field of education, whether they're young teachers fresh out of college or people who are changing careers and entering the teaching profession for the first time. Often our concerns about professionalism stem from kind of differences in expectations between ourselves, our broader school communities, and people who are new. And I'm hearing a lot of examples, a lot of cases where people are coming into the job maybe seeing it as a job and not as a profession or just not coming in with the sense of seriousness that it takes to be a member of a profession. What are some of your top ways of thinking about this or pieces of advice for administrators who are working with people who, you know, they were the best available person.

[22:54]

It's not like we have 10 other people lined up to take this job, but we need to bring this person into the profession and help them think like a professional and Not just make them feel beat up, like we're telling them they're not good enough or we're expecting too much of them. But like, how do we how do we bring people into that world of being a professional if that's not really what they're prepared for?

[23:18] SPEAKER_01:

Well, I think two things that come to mind. One, I think I might need to make a comment just based on the premise of your question. I would have to say, as I sit in year 25 in my career as an educator, 14 years in the classroom and 11 now as a school administrator, that in some ways my book could be seen as a pushback against 25 years worth of fads that have come through our field. And technology might be one example. I know it's not the only one. But I started in the year 2000, the 2000-2001 school year, and there was not a single device in my classroom.

[24:02]

In year two in Mississippi, we mandated that every classroom have a desktop top computer. And so there was one device in my classroom for year two. And so 25 years later, when you think through all the different iterations of how technology should be applied in the classroom, the ways that has totally changed everything we do in some ways in a school district, it is not lost on me. And one thing that...

[24:32]

has kind of come to mind as I've tried to think of ways to talk through a big overview of our book is that most everyone who is entering the field of education today is in some different point on the scale of where that last fad was, because we may have people who have 10 years of experience who were trained in one thing, you may have people who have 25 years of experience like me that still talk about the difference of finding the learning styles, even though there's quite a bit of research going against that now. And so there are a lot of differences that come out And so being able to kind of draw everyone in to those most important principles, I would say that my book probably tries to help us refocus on those principles that are universal throughout that continuum.

[25:27]

One of the things that I talk about that I see as a huge benefit to focusing on the trust framework is the idea of mentorship. And so we often hear the words, everyone is a leader. Uh, and, and it's applied in so many ways and it is a wonderful phrase. I've used it quite often myself, but I don't know if there's one that's more constructive to the field of education than mentorship, uh, as an applicable use of that phrase. We each in every person that works in a school share responsibility to mentor those younger teachers. in bringing them into the fold.

[26:05]

I talk about mentorship a good bit in my book because I do see it as a huge byproduct of building trust among everyone. And so we've got to be careful in how we communicate with those younger teachers. Quite often we're hardest on ourselves. And so as we talk to and interact with a brand new teacher, the 20 year veteran or the five-year veteran is going to see themselves in that new teacher, and they'll immediately have that reaction of communicating with them in the same way that they would talk with themselves, and quite often our self-talk is pretty negative and can be quite brutally honest, and that's not necessarily the most constructive way to talk to someone who's trying to find their find their way.

[26:56]

And honestly, that's the toughest part of the, of the career is your first year. Obviously we talk about that so often, but being able to lead someone along, be patient with them and, and, share the responsibility of mentorship. I don't know that it's appropriate to have all that responsibility placed on one person who's assigned at the beginning of the school year. I understand that's constructive and I do that myself in my school building to help, you know, how do we integrate and some of those superficial things that they are very important. But for the bigger picture, I think it's something that we all share a responsibility for. And I would say mentorship is probably the biggest way that we approach that big issue that you bring up in that question of trying to bring those new teachers into the fold, keep them focused on not having a good first year, but having a good career.

[27:50]

And so the lessons learned in that tough first year, you're in it for the long haul, and we're in it for the long haul with you, I think is the right approach to take for that.

[28:02] SPEAKER_00:

I love that perspective because it's one of responsibility that if I hire a new teacher, I'm not just hoping for the best, I'm also committing to supporting that person until they are at the point where I feel really good about their work and continuing to support them in growing. I think one of the things that the last couple of years have helped us realize is that there's not an infinite supply of people out there who can just meet whatever expectations we happen to fling out or come up with, that we have to actually develop people and we have to take responsibility for developing people. And I think professionalism is just such a good lens for doing that and one that we don't talk about enough.

[28:41] SPEAKER_01:

Thank you. Justin, I would also add one other aspect to that. And again, as I've tried to think through how this best promotes our work as educators, this idea of educator efficacy, if we're going to keep bringing our people back to that concept, which I do think is very constructive for us to do, that's another reason I think it's really important to focus on those most important and most urgent principles. If the single most effective student achievement builder is our personal belief that the work that we do matters, then a focus on how each of us can personally contribute to that culture of learning in our schools and focusing on how our personal conduct at work builds that culture, then this trust framework and these five principles are worthwhile for all of us to focus on.

[29:34] SPEAKER_00:

So the book is The Five Principles of Educator Professionalism, Rebuilding Trust in Schools. And Dr. Nason Lawler, if people want to follow your work online, maybe subscribe to your blog, where's the best place for them to go?

[29:48] SPEAKER_01:

So everything that I post in the blog, I'm going to share out on X, Twitter, whatever your favorite title for that app is. But at Nason Lawler, just my first name, last name, at Nason Lawler. I'm on X. And then I've got a link to my blog on that. I also have a Facebook page, Personal Development, where anyone that might be interested can I'm going to post most articles there, but sometimes just other things that may, you know, off the cuff sound good in my mind. Social media is a great place to try out ideas.

[30:24]

It's kind of the first iteration of what I might use to publish at some point and kind of gauge effectiveness. But those are those are the easiest ways. And I quite often interact with anyone that would engage there.

[30:39] SPEAKER_00:

Mason, thank you so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio. It's been a pleasure.

[30:43] SPEAKER_01:

I'm honored. Thank you for the opportunity.

[30:46] Announcer:

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