2 Comments

1. 

   Stephanie Sandifer on July 14, 2008 at 5:54 pm

   Thanks for live-blogging this — although I missed it “live” 🙂

   I’ve read his book on school culture and I think it has some great points about nurturing a positive school culture.

   Last year I participated in a leadership retreat where we read the section of the book on the negative roles that can affect the culture of the school and then we engaged in an activity to identify which of those negative roles we take on whenever we get into a negative mood. That was an interesting activity for a bunch of school leaders to do — when we read the passage on the negative roles, most of us are able to picture some specific people on our campuses who fit those roles, but rarely do we immediately think of ourselves in those roles.

   I think it’s powerful to reflect on our own habits and behaviors and to acknowledge that even the most positive and most passionate of all of us do have times when we fall into a negative role. If we can identify which negative role we adopt, then we can become more aware of when we might be lapsing into that role and pull ourselves out of it before we sabotage our own work.

   For the record: When I lapse into a negative role I tend to either become a “keeper of the nightmare” or a “martyr” 🙂

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2. 

   Elaine Talbert on July 15, 2008 at 10:59 pm

   Wow,
   Doesn’t all that just make sense to me. It is only 1 year since I was a secondary school principal.
   Now, I am corporate services, a desk jockey, let’s say. Do I miss the hurly-burly of day to routine, not really. Do I miss the students, yes, definately! Do I miss the staff, some yes, too many no.
   As for the “negaholics”, keep your enemies close, they say …

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