One simple question to use to touch base with teachers' values

featuring a long discussion of my favorite athlete of all time

At the start of last year, I did a getting-to-know-my-teachers activity that turned into one of the best things I’ve ever done in my career.

I found time to talk to every teacher I work with face-to-face, and then moved on to administrators and other certificated staff. I asked each a question that I modified and adapted from Elena Aguilar. It’s a little complex, and over the 110 times I asked it, I developed a loose script I followed. It was a little long, but it was effective enough that I stuck to it:

The answer to this question needs to be either an animal, a fictional character, a historical figure, or a celebrity. Don’t pick someone personal to you, like your grandfather or fifth-grade teacher or something: it needs to be someone or something we all can know or look up. The question is this: When you are at your absolute best on the job, who or what do you want to embody?

Often, the teacher really hems and haws and drags their feet. I try to discourage that. My experience is that, if you’re thinking at all about your answer, you’re probably thinking too hard. Just go with that first gut feeling. Where the thinking needs to come is in the follow-up question: why that choice? What is it that makes you want to channel that person or thing on the job?

Let me take you through how an answer to this can reveal values by telling you about my own answer. In the process, you get to hear me geek out about one of the 1980s’ greatest athletes and why he resonated so deeply with a young, sensitive dude who had no chance of getting on any real athletic field.

from letsengage.com

When I am at my best on the job, I want to channel Alex English of the 1980s Denver Nuggets.

I grew up going to a few Nuggets games a year with my dad at McNichols Sports Arena, starting with the late 1970s teams of David Thompson and continuing through the late 1980s teams of Dikembe Mutombo. These were fun, entertaining teams, and consistently very good. Alex English stood out.

English was every bit as good as any superstar player from that golden era of the league. (In fact, he scored more points than any other NBA player in the 1980s. Go out tonight and win a bar bet with that fact!) What drew me to him, however, wasn’t just that he was an elite talent–it’s that he was an elite player in what felt like a completely singular way. As a slash-and-dunk style started to take over basketball in the mid-’80s, as Michael Jordan, Dominique Wilkins, and Charles Barkley were posterizing their defenders every night, Alex English was taking these calm, picturesque jump shots. Don’t get me wrong: I like an aggressive dunk as much as the next guy, but my mind and eye kept going to Alex and his #2 jersey. He was excellent and he was elegant. It was like he was playing classical violin while everyone around him was shredding endless electric guitar solos. 

On top of that, English was a literal poet. Copies of his poetry books were on sale in the team shop next to the T-shirts, jerseys, and programs.

As a kid in his tweens, then teens, I think I semi-consciously saw English as a metaphor. I saw that he was different in the ways that I felt like I was different. I knew I was heterosexual, and if questioning gender were at all on our radar in the Denver suburbs of the 1980s, that wouldn’t have been an issue for me either. But while I knew I was a straight man, I also knew that I didn’t check off every traditional masculinity box (I wasn’t aggressive, didn’t assert physical dominance, and felt uncomfortable with the misogynistic videos my classmates cheered at on MTV, to pick a few examples). If, by some chance, I ever forgot that I didn’t check off those masculinity boxes, the mouth-breathing contingent of my middle school would certainly remind me of it by regularly hurling homophobic slurs at me.

As a result, I think I looked to Alex English as a sort of role model. He wasn’t as “masculine” as the guys around him, if we measure masculinity by mean mugging and trash-talk (I don’t recall him ever speaking on the court). But he was absolutely the best. The memorable, fun, and very high-quality Nuggets teams of that era would give him the ball when the game was on the line, and he would deliver in his own style. In spite of his unique style, he had the respect of his teammates, who fed him the ball, and his opponents, who struggled to defend him.

So why do I want to embody Alex English on the job?

If I am at my best as an instructional coach, it is because I am good at my craft, yes. but it is also because I strive to be a little bit gentler, a little bit more elegant, and a little bit more thoughtful than others in my field–while unquestionably myself. 

from sportscollectorsdigest.com

I have to admit that I’m usually not a party-game kind of guy. (What two books would I take to a desert island? Survival Tips for Dummies and Basic Boat Building.) Because of that, I was loath to try asking this question. But once I started asking this to my colleagues, it went viral in all kinds of ways, and it was a delight. In addition to being fun and providing a surprising amount of Friday-staff-beer-outing banter, the question was good for my coaching. It turned into a priceless tool to determine what my fellow educators’ values are. Let me give some examples.

I met one teacher who was a swan. The principal who worked with her said it was the absolutely perfect description of her work. The teacher said she “looks calm and graceful, but is working incredibly hard under the surface.” This absolutely nails it–and informed the way I viewed her work.

Another was Mary Poppins. She is unrelentingly positive, and always manages to pull the correct toy out of her bag for any situation. I loved that choice.

I worked with two Leslie Knopes. No matter what weird red tape gets in the way, one said, she will have an unrelenting insistence to do what needs to be done to get to the desired outcome, and will value everyone who works with her as she does it.

A science teacher cheated a little bit and said she was air. She gives life and energy, but ideally won’t be seen or noticed.

I met a young woman this year who, in our first-ever conversation, enthusiastically waxed poetic about Megan Rapinoe’s bravery, and how important that is to hold close to that in the chaos of a school year. I now know what values to center in our early conversations.

Oprah popped up three times for teachers who described her as supportive, kind, and curious. Those same adjectives apply to Ted Lasso, the choice of a pair of teachers. Samwise Gamgee was picked by two teachers who strive for his selflessness.

And, to my surprise, we had three different teachers who want to be otter moms. One showed me a video of a river otter dunking her young in the process of getting them to learn to swim. The video isn’t for the faint of heart–it’s a bizarre combination of fun and brutal. “We’re doing this,” the mom otter says in this teacher’s imagination. “It’s going to be fun. Yes, you have to do it. But isn’t this fun? Fun! FUN!”

In the end, the embodiments were as diverse and interesting as our staff is. I work with everyone from Reagan to RBG, from a queen ant to a lion, from Robin Williams to Denzel Washington, Socrates to Margaret Mead, Messi to Brady to Gary Carter. I even made “staff photos” of the embodiments last year, and a principal liked it so much he made it his computer wallpaper.

We even devoted a staff meeting last year to a “masked ball” where we had to talk to our colleagues about their embodiments. I made separate lists of our staff’s names and our staff’s embodiments and we spent 45 minutes walking around talking to each other, trying to match the lists. Some played a guessing game and some simply told each other, but that didn’t matter. The only rule, and my only goal, was that we could not merely tell someone your embodiment: we had to tell every person the why. I modeled by talking about Alex English and then turned everybody loose to talk. We learned a lot about each other that afternoon.

The embodiments didn’t die there. I found that they became useful in my daily coaching life. Sometimes, I glance at my list of teacher embodiments before a coaching session to remind me what that person’s values are. I have learned I can never go wrong in coaching a teacher in the direction of their values, and their embodiments are often visceral guideposts in that direction. When it feels right, if a teacher is stuck, I will mention their embodiment and ask them to remind me what they do best. That can get us unstuck. As we started this year, I gave everyone a chance to either re-commit to their embodiment from last year or to make a change if it felt right. Conversations about their embodiments were just as raucous and deep as last year. A few days later, one teacher quoted his embodiment (Steelers coach Mike Tomlin) to his students as he started the year, explaining that it is a reasonable expectation for them to be getting better all the time. It was a really cool moment that I doubt would have happened had he not thought about why Mike Tomlin resonated so deeply with him.

Again, this question and the subsequent activity was way outside of my comfort zone. But Aguilar convinced me to try, and the result was magic. I’d encourage any instructional coach to give it a shot.

In the meantime, I am asking you what I asked them, and invite you to tell me about it in the comments: 

When you are at your absolute best on the job, who or what do you want to embody?

I hope that question puts you in touch with what most matters to you.