Monday, February 23, 2009. Panel Discussion: Nurturing Leadership.

MR. GALBRAITH: Good morning. As a boy growing up in Detroit, the superintendent of schools was named Norman Drachler, and he had a slogan on his wall that said, "Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die."

And I felt that was happening today with the wonderful omelets and everything, and yet we have to start. But we can condense maybe the coffee break. Is that a compromise? Because I don't want to shorten our panel nor do I want to short Naomi Nye on her schedule. But thank you for hurrying a little bit.

Thanks again for last night. It was a great start. I was certainly touched by the gesture.

There's a sign-up list for sharing rides. It's a great thing to do, either share a cab or if by chance you have a rental car and you're taking it back to the airport and you could take somebody along with you, that would be most kind and ecologically certainly sound.

The evaluation sheets are there. I know some people have to leave early. We'd like any feedback you can give us on the yellow sheets there at the entrance to the room.

The trips today. The Monday Mission Trail is still full, but if anybody's not going, there are people who would like to go. There are 28 seats on the bus and we have 28 participants. We can fix anything. If you don't want to go, somebody will take your place and you can get a refund that way, if that's of interest to you.

The Lake/Flato trip will leave about 15 minutes after the end of the meeting and I want to correct last night. Don't take a box lunch. There's lunch for you on that trip. It will leave about 15 minutes after the end of the meeting, and lunch will be provided at the first stop. They have a couple of spots available. If you're interested, please see Greg or Karen. They're right outside the door.

And of the seminar brochure this year, the folks that come to this conference get head starts to register mentees that you might want to go to the seminar, because it fills. And so if you're sending someone, please do. And once again, we'll have a guest from Klingenstein at that seminar to talk about their programs, especially for women.

That's all I have. Our program chair, Jeanne Whitman, will introduce our first program this morning. Thank you.

MS. WHITMAN: We have a terrific panel on points of view on the topic of nurturing leadership. We have three different perspectives, one in the person of Pearl Kane who, as you heard last night and as you all already know, is the director of the Klingenstein Center. I would characterize her role as a coach. You know, she spots talent, she picks talent, she develops talent, and she works on providing the entire context for it.

Our second panelist is Wanda Holland Greene, from the Chapin School, who is about to step into her new role as head of the Hamlin School in San Francisco.

MS. GREENE: I'm already there.

MS. WHITMAN: How marvelous for them. She is taking the role of the mentee in this situation, although I'm sure she has, in fact, already begun a very powerful mentorship of many who cross her path.

Let me tell you quickly a bit about her. She graduated from Columbia University in Teachers College and then taught class 3 and class 8 English at Chapin from 1990 to 1997, and served as director of student life. She then spent 11 years at Park School in Brookline, which is relevant to today's discussion, because that's where she met the man who claims that he is the sole reason that she is a success in life, and I will tell you, he made a most careful note to tell me about that before this meeting. That's where she met Jerry Katz, who is our third panelist, who will speak largely from the perspective of the mentor. He is Park School's tenth head of school.

Before assuming the leadership of Park School in 1993, he was principal of the Bowen School, a public elementary school in Newton, Massachusetts, for ten years. And he also asked me to note to you that 25 years ago he was a founding member of the Principals Center at the Harvard School of Education, and as he noted -- I think not with a note of any resentment at all -- was not the recipient of the Klingenstein funding.

I'm going to ask the three panelists to come forward and join me here. They are going to speak to the roles that they have had in their professional careers. They're going to speak I think some to their relationships with each other and how they have worked, at least in the case of two of them, as a carefully developing relationship to provide leadership in independent schools.

I'm going to begin by asking Pearl to reflect further on part of what we heard from her last night, and that is, with the very intentional and structured work that we have going on in the world of independent school education and the preparation of leaders for that, as well as these many ongoing discussions we have about their roles, it seems to me that we are poised very strongly to move independent education through what I think will be a fairly tumultuous five to ten years. I'm going to ask Pearl to comment on that for a few minutes, and then each of the other panelists will have a few opening remarks.

Bruce is going to be timekeeper, because after opening statements from each of them we're going to turn it over to your questions. So if you will, please, join me in welcoming Pearl Kane, Jerry Katz, and Wanda Holland Greene, our panel.

That reminds me. When we get to the Q and A part, if you will use the microphone so the panelists can hear your questions.

DR. KANE: Good morning. Good morning. I still want to move you closer so we can have a discussion.

These are tumultuous times certainly. The question is: How will this affect independent schools? I think you can all answer that better than I can. It certainly affects different schools in different ways. It's regional. It depends on the kind of school, the level of school. So I would defer to you in answering that. I think it will test our skills as leaders. In some places, schools are just going on as usual; I think it hasn't hit yet, but it will. Schools, of course, with great endowments have the most to fear, because they rely on the endowment. I know about 12 percent of Columbia's operating budget is from the endowment. At Harvard, it's over 30. So Harvard has to work harder to make up, to deal with that deficit. For the first time, schools with low endowments are in better shape in some ways than schools that have had the benefit of large endowments, as long as tuition keeps up.

We want to focus on leadership and how that affects leadership. Well, I would thank you because I love independent schools and independent school people, and if you're not in it -- and there are outstanding brilliant people that I worked with in public school, but I think there are more of that type in independent schools. You could go to the smallest school, you could stop at any school in the world, and you'll find some superstar there, someone who's just wonderful, giving their life to the profession in ways that make you feel proud to be part of it. But independent schools certainly have benefited from large numbers of people like that, people who see their work as a calling, although they also work hard and play hard. They're fun to be with, they have a sense of humor. We're in a great business with young people. Developing young people I think is probably the most important thing anyone could do, and it's the most exciting and challenging thing one can do. So I think we will always attract people.

I'm very inspired by the people in our programs who come to us. It's really wonderful to see that we continue to get outstanding people to come to our schools. I am concerned that programs such as Teach for America are attracting young people who might have gone to our school but they're very enamored with the idea of the altruistic bent that Teach for America preaches.

I see those people. I'm very impressed with many of them. About 60 percent of them stay in education in some form, and they go on to work in charter schools. Charter schools hire Teach for America people in great numbers. They rely on that talent pool. And I think after a while, they leave because it's very, very difficult to sustain yourself in a charter school. I think the schools are struggling to make that a better career alternative.

So I think we need some intervention early on, kind of a Teach for America. We need to get people early to think about independent schools. That's been on my mind, and perhaps we can discuss that later. But I do love the way independent school leaders develop aspiring people.

I know that we get a lot of pressure from you to take different people into our program. And I like that. I think that's great. I think it's great that you call me or write letters because you really care. So I know although there are a lot of e-mails that I answer, I think, yay, this is so great that you care so much, that you're knocking at our door saying, "You have got to take Robert, because he's terrific."

So you do that well, and keep doing it. But we may have to have some intervention as a field to ensure the quality of teachers and administrators continues at a high level. Thank you.

MR. KATZ: Bruce left the room, so he can't hear me say that it's really not realistic to give heads of school one minute, so I hope you'll indulge us a little more, because I think Wanda and I each have some opening comments that will be helpful to your being able to generalize from our very unique stories. I'm going to ask for a little indulgence, and particularly a little indulgence for Wanda's voice in a moment.

In juxtaposition to Pearl, who's working and nurturing leadership at an institutional level, we're here to talk about the nurturing that goes on school by school and relationship by relationship. I would venture to presume that every one of us in this room who is a school head was nurtured by others throughout earlier phases of our careers. And in that part of our work, part of our responsibility, part of what we attend to in our daily lives, is nurturing those within our schools who have that interest or that potential.

Our story is a unique one. It's a story of a white Jewish male from public school background and an African-American woman who's young enough to be my daughter. And I think part of the power of our story is to at least focus in this institute on the question: Who needs to mentor whom? And in particular, who do women and women of color need to be mentored by? Why be mentored?

In spite of my facetious comment and your kind reference to it, Jeanne, Wanda came to Park School 11 years ago, and everybody noticed immediately her ability as a leader. She had benefited from the work she did under Sandy Theunick's mentorship at Chapin, the work she had done under Pearl's mentorship at Columbia, but why did she seek further mentorship and wait 11 years to become a head of school? She certainly had opportunities along the way before that, and from my perspective, why commit time and why share my job over many of those years?

So I hope as we talk later in response to your questions, we can give you some insights that we've generalized about and reflected upon that will be helpful to your thinking, as well. Thank you.

MS. GREENE: Good morning. If you think it is difficult for a head of school to spend one minute at the podium, try the daughter of a Pentecostal preacher. That is me. But I'm a woman who is up to the challenge.

Good morning, everyone.

"My grandmothers were strong.
They followed plows and bent to toil.
They moved through fields sowing seed.
They touched earth and green grew.
They were full of sturdiness and singing.
My grandmothers were strong.
My grandmothers are full of memories,
Smelling of soap and onions and wet clay,
With veins rolling roughly over quick hands.
They have many clean words today.
My grandmothers were strong.
Why am I not like they?"

This morning I begin my comments about my leadership journey and my relationship with Jerry Katz with the words of Margaret Walker's poem "Lineage," not because I was an undergrad English major or because I'm a former English teacher, but because I can easily locate my ten-year-old self in the lines of the poetry.

By age ten I had lost all four of my grandparents, and I think that loss and the absence of those wonderful women and men in my life gave me an impulse to be a mentee. And I'll explain why. When you lose the people who are just older than your parents, I think you grow up feeling an even deeper reference for age and experience. There is an unstated desire to hear stories and songs, and there's a humility that comes about where you just know that you don't know everything.

And so from age ten to age 28, I think I walked through life listening to Mrs. Berendsen as a student. I still call her Mrs. Berendsen. I cannot call her the M word. I know many of you call her Millie. I just can't do that.

But I remember literally sitting at Mrs. Berendsen's feet, because she always stood on a podium and the girls were on the floor, and we listened to her stories. I went to Columbia and just sat in the company of amazing professors, not the least of which is here, my graduate professor, Pearl Kane, and then back in 1990 to Chapin as a teacher and an administrator, and I kept myself in the company of amazing people, I think very much because of the loss of my grandparents.

And at age 28 I met Jerry Katz. He called on the phone and he talked to me about the Park School. This conversation came about because one of my friends begged me to submit my resume for a middle school division director search that I really didn't feel quite ready for, but I was interested in moving beyond my comfort zone. If there was anything that I learned at Chapin, it was to stand up and be counted and to move beyond that comfort zone and I thought, let's think about this.

What I didn't know on the other end was that Jerry was thinking to himself, well, I think this woman might be too young, but she's really interesting. Let's meet her.

But one thing led to another, and I was seduced to Red Sox Nation, and I moved from New York City, learned to drive a car, and went to Park School. You know, the middle school division director job was an amazing one. It was the first phase of my mentor/mentee relationship with Jerry. We call it the father/daughter phase of our relationship, because yes, Jerry's old enough to be my father, but there were two things that made it all really hold together, and that is that at that time, the perception and the reality was that Jerry's experience was vastly greater than my own. I had three years in administration as a director of student life or dean of students, and it was very valuable experience, but certainly I was working with someone who had been a principal at a public school and a teacher, and was currently in his career at an independent school and so you know, I always looked up to him and wanted to learn from him and gain his knowledge and experience.

And his approval, secondly, was very important to me. Again, like a father, you look to him when you finish a speech or when you submit a particular report. There's that certain smile, that certain nod of the head that seems gratifying to you.

Toward the end of my first year, one of the worst days of my life occurred when I lost my own father very, very suddenly, and that I think cemented that father/daughter phase for us, because I needed something both on a personal and a professional level, something to sustain me, something to guide me through those years.

And lest you think that those years were ones where there was some kind of infantilizing relationship and a kind of, "There, there, Wanda" relationship, it was not at all. In fact, Jerry at that time made me the second member of NAPSG. You asked me to be the co-presenter with the Institute for New Heads, and we did some great work together on diversity.

So each time I engaged in a task at Park School, it was as if Jerry was holding a mirror up to me, showing me myself, showing me my skills and my strengths and indeed revealing those to the community of which I was a part. And I always relished those opportunities to take on the leadership roles, loving every single minute of being the middle school division head and yet knowing that one day I would be a head of school, not knowing when that would occur, but knowing that as each day passed, that possibility became more and more likely.

Then came 2002, and I married a wonderful gentleman, and Jerry and I had this conversation. I think he wanted to save me from my mother-in-law, and we talked about whether or not I would leave Park School and move to Georgia.

At that time Jerry was nearing his tenth year as head of school, and we talked about whether or not I was ready to be the acting head of school while he was away on sabbatical. I felt that I was ready. I think he and the board felt I was ready, and we went forward to that year knowing that the next year, when he left for just half of a year, I would step into his shoes.

Now, I always talk about that year, because it was the year that I married my husband, but shortly after, I feel like I married Jerry. Hence, the next phase of our mentee/mentor relationship, which is the school husband phase, where indeed, Jerry and I became partners, because by the time he came back -- right now you should be hearing that movie music. You know, "Jerry left for sabbatical" (da da da da).

It was his return to Park that was very challenging. Our dear friend and psychologist Michael Thompson mediated some marriage counseling sessions for us because it was very hard to go back to being the division head. I told my good friend that being the acting head of school is like eating one potato chip and then someone took the bag away. And it was very, very hard. Very hard indeed.

I remember the day when Jerry came back and I had to go back upstairs to my division head office, and a math teacher who had just come in from supervising lunch duty handed me six bent forks, and he thrust them into my face and said, "Wanda, you have got to do something about this."

And I thought, I have been manipulating budgets and dealing with recalcitrant faculty and thinking about the big picture, and now here is my job, to figure out who bent these forks in the dining room.

So that was a very, very startling and harsh return to being a division head leader. And yet Jerry and I were wed because I had done the job at least for a short time, I had done the job that he was doing.

At that time, Jerry also sent me to the NAPSG seminar, and I look straight out and I see Burch Ford, and in the audience is Blair Stambaugh, and I look at Jacqueline Smethurst, who are three of the women who were in that cosy Miss Porter's home that fall, and I remember thinking, hmmm, I'm not sure how long, how much more time I have in the division head role.

That weekend was incredibly important to me and I'm so honored to join the seminar faculty this fall. But nevertheless, the acting head of school role and the NAPSG seminar and other moments in that school husband phase catapulted me into thinking that perhaps it was time to leave. And there's this really interesting mentee/mentor relationship where there's this question that comes to you: Do I need to go to grow?

And, in fact, we decided at that point in 2004 that I didn't need to go to grow, but that there was another leadership opportunity ahead of me. And at that time Jerry recreated an assistant head of school position. I went off and had a wonderful baby and came back into a new role, which I love, and I moved downstairs right next door to him and together we have these adjoining offices for four years.

At that point the school husband relationship -- I think you also became a life coach, because becoming a mother was one of the most extraordinary and exhausting rites of passage of my life. I began my tenure at Hamline last June, July, with a five-month-old and a three-and-a- half-year-old, so that just gives you a tiny glimpse of my life. I'm so happy to be here without strollers and car seats. I cannot tell you how liberating it has been for the past two days.

Nevertheless, I think those past four years with Jerry and his coaching of me and especially when I decided to enter the search for Hamlin's head of school, I felt so empowered that all the years that we had been together made me feel absolutely ready. And I remember the day when I walked in to his office and I said, "What do you think, Jerry? How am I going to do when I fly six hours across the country to get to Hamlin? How will

I do?"

And he said, "Wanda, there is no question that can be asked that you don't know the answer to. There is no issue about which you have no opinion. So don't worry. Don't worry, this is not a multiple-choice test. This is about seeing whether or not this school is a fit."

And indeed, it has been an amazing eight months. I look at my mentor, Bodie, from the Institute for New Heads, and it seems like a long time ago when we sat across from each other in Washington, D.C., and it's eight months later and I'm thriving because of the men and the women in my life.

I'm really interested in going forward in mentoring others, but my life as a mentee I do not think will ever end. It has changed over time again from father/daughter to school husband and now to friend and colleague and confidant. But I never, never will diminish the importance of my relationship with Jerry Katz. He is one of my absolutely dearest friends and it is so good to be here with him on stage doing the great work that we started 11 years ago. Thank you.

MR. KATZ: One of the things I learned in my relationship with Wanda over 11 years of working together was never to let her speak before me. But I do want to just pull out three strands that we think are important parts of the nurturing we've done for one another -- because it certainly has been two-way -- that might provoke questions or thoughts later.

First of all, in a school setting and in a very personal nurturing relationship, there has to be authenticity. This was never about Wanda trying to become me, and it was never about me having any lack of respect for who she was. I always knew I was in a relationship with an African-American woman, and that that was going to frame much of her thinking and perspective about our work together. And I think we both were able to maintain this relationship without ever losing ourselves in it. And that was a very important aspect of it.

I think secondly, there's got to be open and honest communication, and Wanda alluded to it. It's got to cross both the personal and the professional aspects of growing together. At the same time that Wanda was talking about her anxieties and her hopes about entering a marriage and beginning a family, I was talking about my anxieties and hopes about becoming an empty-nester and launching my own children into the beginnings of their careers. And we supported one another through those different phases in our lives, just as we shared tasks at Park School.

And the sharing of real work is the third theme. I think that one of the reasons that Wanda stayed when I came back from sabbatical is because we were able to craft real meaningful work that she could take ownership for over the next four years, and that I would be willing to give up over the next four years.

I have said to Wanda with a little bit of guilt and some irony that I'm really enjoying aspects of my job this year in a new way. As much as I'm missing our partnership, I realize that I shared a lot over the last four years, the real meat of the work of the head of school. But I think without that opportunity, Wanda might have left feeling less prepared for stepping into the role of heading a school like Hamlin. So we really had the opportunity to share leadership.

In terms of the question I posed earlier, why be a mentor in a relationship with someone who's an aspiring school leader, for me, it's not only the obligation to the profession, the generativity that we all seek at some point later in our careers, but it was the opportunity to do something very unique with the headship, to share with another person. It is such isolating work. And I had the privilege for four years of almost being de facto a co-head of school. I will always be grateful for that opportunity, so this is very much a two-way street.

DR. KANE: I wanted to share three things with you. It's a result of listening closely to my students. What is it that attracts them to high-level administrative positions? What challenges they see and what we can do as school heads, principals, people in high-level administrative jobs to foster that leadership?
The reason I know about challenges is that in the past couple of years I have added a question to the final exam that I give. It says, "What challenges do you see? What do you feel is most challenging about leadership?" And I really want to share that, because it's important to know what I have done well and what I need to do better to deal with those challenges and to prepare them for those challenges.

Notice I'm not talking about leadership, because we talk about leadership as a behavior, not a position. And one can practice leadership at any level. We hope that some of our students come and they get inspired to go back to the classroom and do a better job, because they learn about what good teaching is. And I encourage that. I don't think everybody should necessarily go into administrative leadership. So they may go back to their schools and be teacher leaders, much more valuable as faculty members, and one can be an administrator and not behave as a leader. So there's a difference between administration and leadership behavior.

What they find appealing is that leadership is a social phenomenon, that it is not isolating, as it used to be. At least less so. And rather than the root definition of being out front, it's more of a "with" job. And the more they learn that they can share many leadership tasks, the more appealing it is, that they don't have to do it themselves, particularly this generation of young people, who grew up in a social networking climate; they don't want to do something alone. Teachers don't want to be alone.

In my first job as a teacher, I was given my keys to the classroom and promised autonomy, which really is a mask for isolation, and our young people don't want that. They want to work with others. They realize they have a lot to learn. In the schools that I see, particularly the new charter schools, teachers are in and out of each other's classrooms. You know, it isn't that people stop teaching when an adult walks into the classroom. There's much more of a social milieu for them to work in.

What they find a little daunting and challenging is worklife balance. I don't think we've been good role models of that. The worklife balance is something that concerns them. And I want to read to you some of the things they say, and it also is a reflection of what they're learning about. "The most challenging thing about leadership is the need to collaborate, build coalition, and network with everyone, not just the people you like."

I always say, "Keep your enemies close." The people who like you and are your friends will tell you -- you know, they're likely to agree with you. You learn more from the people who don't agree with you. So network with people you like, respect and admire, as well as others. Be constantly attentive to the needs of sometimes mutually exclusive constituents.

"It seems as if there's no room for self-directed autonomous action in a leadership role." So you know, they're moving away almost to the other side of the continuum of solo leadership. "The amount of emotional energy required by the constant process of courting support seems voluminous and overwhelming."

For how many of you does that describe your role? You're constantly courting people to win them over.

Another one. "The most challenging thing about leadership is that it is so vast and multifaceted, so outrageously varied in demand, that it seems fundamentally impossible to do it well."

We have a skills course. One of the things we talk about is leading meetings. If there are two pages' worth of single-spaced notes about how to manage a meeting, how many thousands and thousands of pages would there be in a manual outlining the job in its entirety? "I think people who have an affinity for 'perfect' are not destined to be leaders."

Another one talks about the balance between pushing an organization ahead and making sure you leave no one behind; that addressing this challenge lies in creating collaborative cultures that work together to create a shared vision. They worry a lot about shared vision. It's very hard to teach that, very hard to get a handle on that. And frequently communicating goals to keep people invested, frequently checking on morale and willingness to regularly revisit the vision.

Another has to do with the slowness of cultural change, recognizing and accepting that change is a slow process, due in part to the inherently conservative nature of human beings and their institutions, but also the need for a leader to work jointly with others is a great challenge. "To slowly accumulate through genuine interactions with peers, using political and social capital necessary to gain the level of credibility and trust needed to effect lasting change."

I think they have a good idea of what the job involves. How many of you would agree, that's a good idea of what the job involves? And a lot of that comes from watching you. So what can you do? One is, even if you're not mentors -- and it's very hard to have many people that you mentor -- you are exemplars to them. Exemplars are something different. An exemplar is someone they watch who inspires them. The person who's the exemplar may not even know how influential they are. So we talk a lot about role-modeling. As leaders of your school, you are watched in everything you do, every interaction, so it makes the job enormous and exhausting, but they really do watch you.

Another bit of advice I could say is that it's important for you to better act personally in the job interview process. It's very important to these young people to work in a school where the head is someone they want to learn from, they think they'll have access to. They come back from interviews and a lot of the pulse of an interview is how their interaction with that key person is to them, that head of school. So taking the time in those interviews to meet with people is very, very important.

The third is being transparent about some of the decisions. You can't do that with everyone and with everything, but you can be much more transparent about why you made a certain decision, if it isn't a legal issue.

I would urge you to have a council of aspiring leaders. You have lots of talent to share. Have a group that meets once every two weeks or once every month for 45 minutes and talk about some of these things. Talk about what you do, and I would leave it open. You'd be surprised at who might emerge. Say, "If you're interested in leadership, let's have leadership discussions. Meet with me once a month."

There are some people you might invite and say, "I'd love you to come and participate in that meeting." Others will just show up, and you may find some terrific people you hadn't thought about in leadership positions. Use the opportunity to give people leadership positions in your school as much as possible. People almost always rise to the occasion.

You know, I remember doing this as a teacher. You take the kid who was reticent, and you give them a part in the play and then say that day, "Dear God, please let them come through."

Well, I find the same thing with our students, giving people opportunities. We have search committees for every professor who comes in, making someone chair of that committee. Give people opportunities as much as possible to be leaders in your school. You're really training leaders all the time, and you can make a big difference in developing people for the future.

Those are my thoughts and I just thank you for sending us great people. Thank you.

MS. WHITMAN: Wanda, would you like to make another statement, or shall we open for questions?

MR. GALBRAITH: Ladies and gentlemen, your questions. If you would use the microphone. Please state your name and your school, if you would, for the record.

MS. GEIGER: Jayne Geiger, Far Hills Country Day School, New Jersey. I'll address this to all of you. I'm concerned about the kind of informal mentoring that goes on -- sometimes it's even formalized -- among and between teachers, an experienced teacher with a new teacher, because they haven't had any kind of formal training and I think what they do is pass on a lot of culture, some of which we're trying to expand thought about, and they kind of become cultural buddies, and they may be very congenial, but not necessarily collegial in their aspect of constructively criticizing and, you know, doing all those things that might be hard in a mentoring relationship. Any pearls of wisdom on that? No pun intended.

MR. KATZ: I think we all immediately resonate with your question. I want to start by saying that I found very intriguing, Pearl, your idea of creating a leadership council that would meet once a month. For me, that's a really interesting, very new idea. But it suggests, in response to this question, who's mentoring the mentors? What training or guidance or support do we give to those more often veteran members of the faculty whom we're asking to play at least an exemplar role,

again in referencing Pearl's framework, for newer members of the faculty?

I think that in our school, we have those relationships, but we also make sure that every new teacher is meeting with his or her division head once a week, because we want to make a core commitment with a senior member of the administrative leadership team throughout the whole year to people who are new in our school, even if they're not new as independent school teachers. So I think that structurally we need to look for ways to create not an overdependence on the very good work that can happen in those relationships, but it can't be the only structure in the school.

DR. KANE: Thank you for that question. That's an excellent question. How do you acculturate teachers in a way, maybe while you're trying to change the culture a little bit? I think that's hard. One thing is, you have to be countercultural, so maybe the leadership councils could be helpful. They need to hear from more people than the one or two people who are helping them acculturate, so they have to hear other voices.

If you're in an area where there are several schools, you might get together so that teachers see other models and hear from other people with a deliberately planned program where they could talk about some of the important issues that will help them in their schools. You know, a program that starts with learning about culture and how people become acculturated will help them be aware of the culture, describing their cultures. If they're in different schools, that can be very helpful.

Those are my suggestions. But I know the culture of "nice" in independent schools often pervades, and while people in high-level leadership positions are trying to change, many of the people who have been there for a

longer time perpetuate a culture that might not be in the best interests of the progress of the school.

MS. GREENE: I'll add one thing that I think is really important, and that is that it's often important for heads of school to really understand what's operating in their schools in terms of generations. So Jerry is a Baby Boomer and I'm a Generation X-er, and we are very, very different in how we think about change and how we think about life. We used to joke about sharing a brain, and I think that's true in many aspects in term of our values. But how long I'll stay at a particular institution may vary from all of the women and men who began to mentor me. When I was a new teacher, you know, they were there 20-something years and felt that they needed to induct me into the culture of the school and I didn't plan to stay for 25 years. I didn't plan to stay for ten. And I think if heads of school are savvy about where people are coming from and what mind-sets they bring to their work, it may help us understand some of the fear that is part of mentors; I think it helps us understand some of the instability or entitlements of some of our Generation X and Y faculty, and certainly my 20-somethings are really interesting to deal with in the faculty, but I make it a point to understand who's in the room.

DR. KANE: I would just add that that it is important to continuously develop people. There are critical friends groups. For example, there are ways to change the culture. If you just let people learn from each other without some intervention, it's going to be very hard to change the culture. I think it's one of the hardest and most challenging and interesting parts of being a head of school, and that is, it's understanding the culture and how you can change it.

MR. GOLDING: Tim Golding from Wooster School. I just wanted to share with you a comment from my earlier days in running Tara Hill School in Wilmington, Delaware. I always thought my role as a head was to help prepare for the next leaderships that were coming along. And I got out of heading and I went to Moses Brown, found myself mentoring, as an athletic director, three young administrators. And in coming to Wooster, which is in desperate shape, I have been trying to bring together a team. The most valuable partner that I have right now is a former student of mine, Tad Jacks, who came out of the Baltimore area, who'd been at Baltimore Friends for 25 years under Byron Forbush, and went to run his own school, the Odyssey School in Baltimore, and I coaxed Tad down to Connecticut to be my director of admissions. Ted just turned 52. I'm going to be 62. It is the most important relationship I have had in schools. He's ten years younger, and yet I feel that he's a peer. He's just down the hall, I can share my anxieties about this economy, I can share his wisdoms, and it's just one of the most empowering parts of my life that he's my right hand. And I'm about to have a 47-year-old business manager be my left hand. It's just a comment, but it's a wonderful part of my life today.

MS. WINDSOR: Hi. I'm Kate Windsor, and I'm new head at Miss Porter's School. I actually was a new head of school 11 years ago and met Jerry and Wanda as part of that process.

I wanted to share with you just a bit about that experience. One of the things that I think is missing oftentimes is heads mentoring heads. So I met Jerry and Wanda there. I will go talk to the heads at NAIS and one of the things I will tell them was that the best thing that happened to me my first year was that Jerry appointed me to be on the Park School Board. So I had an opportunity to see him, another head of school, doing the work of a head of school as I was learning in my first year to be a head of school.

I also then got to know Wanda, and the two of us and then the three of us had an incredibly dynamic experience as we went through our own work as leaders. And I think it's hard, particularly for women, to be head of school and I encourage other heads of school to think about ways that you could mentor leaders, other mentors within the school.

DR. KANE: I just want to add that all of our students now, masters students, end up doing a capstone exercise. And Bodie, I know you have been followed by our students, where they work in groups. We do a lot of collaborative work, and they study a school head. They spend a couple of days at the school and they also do an interview with the board chair, and they do an interview with someone on the administrative team so they get kind of a 360 understanding both observing and hearing what the person says. They interview them.

That experience demystifies the headship when they see what's involved. So first of all, thank you all, those of you who are participating, and will in the future. It means a lot when you open yourself up to having budding leaders come to your school, and doing that is a very valuable contribution to their education. So thank you.

MS. GREENE: To piggyback quickly on what Kate said, when Jerry invited Kate to be on the Park board, my dear friend Jake Dresden invited me to be on the Concord Academy Board, and Sandy Theunick invited me to be on the Chapin board. So the underpinning of my 11 years at Park as an administrator were complemented by incredibly rich and wonderful experiences being a trustee. I finished eight years on the Concord board last year, and I'm still a Chapin trustee.

I have to say that during the search, that was a really important thing, being able to talk about my experience with the board and my fellow new heads last summer. I was actually surprised at how many assistant heads of school had never been to a board meeting. I was shocked. I thought, I go to all the board meetings with Jerry. I know exactly what the agenda is going to be. I read my board packet, and I'm a trustee in other places. And that was a part of our experience last summer that I actually felt even more grateful to my mentor for, because I had very, very intensive and important experiences as a trustee.

MS. REA: I'm Charlotte Rea. I was the head of the Williams School in New London for ten years, and I was at the new heads workshop with Jerry and Wanda and a lot of good people here.

There are no solutions, but I just want to share an impression and a concern that I have from hiring senior administrators and participating in school heads for upper schools because we're having a hard time attracting women. It's very ironic to say in this particular room, but what we're finding is that -- again, this is impressionistic, and I hope all you can tell me afterwards, "Charlotte, really, we haven't had that experience."

But what we're finding is for upper schools, not lower schools, women are not willing to proceed with the interview process often. Why? I don't know. I think Pearl has named a number of the reasons. And again, these are just my impressions. Part of it is we're finding women won't move. They have this ridiculous notion that their lives should be in balance and that they want to commit themselves to family and children as well as to "a reasonably satisfying job where I am and I'm happy where I am."

And it is a generational thing. I think that's true. I was a full-year Klingenstein fellow under Pearl in the '80s and I remember at night being at Columbia and calling home to check on my child, who was home alone. She was at that point 16. Several of us did that and we

called it "Mothering with Ma Bell." There was Ma Bell in those days.

But that generation, my own child, wouldn't dream of having my own job. And I had a number of teachers tell me, "Why would I want your job?"

And my daughter said, "I'm staying home

with my child for at least the first ten years."

≥Good. Love you.≤ It's great for the kid. But when I go looking, I cannot find the women.

I think the other is, they were latchkey kids, and they don't want that experience. And then they look at our lives from the inside and "I don't want your life."

So it seems to me one of the few things we can control in there is: What example are we setting? And when we go around talking about the weight of the world on our shoulders, as I did for ten years, there's the example, and women are a little too smart to look for our jobs, is what I'm afraid of. I don't know what you can say to that.

DR. KANE: I'd just say one thing to support what Charlotte said. In our Summer Institute for Young Teachers, we now take 75 teachers. Two-thirds of them are female. When we move to the masters program for administration, there are definitely many more male applicants. We have a majority of males. We work hard to get that balance. We work hard to get diversity of all kinds. So that's absolutely true. It's still hard to recruit women who want to take on administrative roles.

MS. REA: Can I add to that? My husband did the search for Athenian School last year, in California. Great school, great job. Lots of comfort around the job. 50 men, two women.
MR. TOBOLSKY: I'm Steve Tobolsky. Pearl and I were graduate students together in the early '80s. I'm currently head at Chestnut Hill, which is right around the corner from Park, so I especially enjoyed all your remarks today. One of the things I struggle with when we talk about leadership is that often it centers on the relationships between adults. And I wonder, because you spoke so eloquently, especially Jerry and Wanda, about your growing up together in those mutual leadership roles, if you could all say a little bit about the responsibilities we have in role-modeling for students, as well.

MR. KATZ: I think that's a fabulously important point. I have felt for a long time that if independent schools in this country, that educate 1 percent of the children in the United States, make sense, they make sense because they're places where kids can be empowered to believe in their own capacity to make a difference and to be leaders. So I think if our programs are not, again, structurally creating opportunities for kids as they're growing up in our schools, to see the world outside of the school and to see themselves as players in that world, it doesn't make a great deal of sense.

And, in fact, you know, I think that part of the culture that I hope I have played a role in creating in 16 years at Park School is one that is nurturing leadership at all levels. And I think in part, my responsibility as the head of school is to continue to be a learner and to seek nurturing from other people in my work. It's the exemplar part. And I'm concerned, as we stand up here, that it sounds like somebody is the mentor and somebody is the mentee, but I really believe that at its best, leadership requires continuing seeking of people to nurture our work as we advance in our careers, just as it requires opportunities earlier in one's career and opportunities for students. So I think this is a continuum, where you don't just all of a sudden shift from one role to the other.
DR. KANE: I'm interested in how many of you are finding what Charlotte found, that it's very hard to attract women to headships. How many of you are finding that? How many of you are not finding that?

SPEAKER FROM THE FLOOR: Administrative positions.

DR. KANE: How about administrative positions? Is it hard to attract women?

MR. KATZ: Pearl, I keep sending people to Miss Porter's workshop and then they want to go off and be leaders somewhere. So it works.

MS. GREENE: Here's a little bit of a secret because I feel like I'm one of those rare birds, a Generation X-er who fits that profile. I was a latchkey kid. I remember the yarn around my neck. I can feel it, and the two keys that were cold on my chest and the emergency dime in my pocket. Remember pay phones?

But what appealed to me is honest women. And I say that because there's no woman who said to me, "Wanda, your life will be in balance."

I do not strive for balance, because if you quantify the minutes in my week, I speak to children and adults other than my own children and my husband many more minutes than I speak to them, you know. Just look at the hours of your day. There is no such thing as working and being a mom and being in balance. So I got rid of that notion very early on, because women whom I admire said, "There is no such thing as balance. It is an elusive concept at best."

So all of the women and my Generation X peers who think that there's some sort of balancing, there is no balance. I strive for joy. And I'm happy. And when I get home, I'm really clear about boundaries. I think

women in leadership need to continue to be honest and to say, "You can do it."

And I love the fact that 400 girls look up at a woman every day who's a mom. I live right next door. They can see me feeding my son through the window of the first-grade classroom. My life is a text to be read. And I feel very, very empowered that I have a spouse and two children and they're going to grow up in front of these girls' eyes, and I don't feel at all guilty. You know, there are days when I wish that I had more time with them, but I don't feel guilty at all about being a head of school, and I think more of the women who have done it need to model the joy that's a part of the job, because I am really, really happy and I think not enough of the joy comes forward. A lot of the fatigue and sacrifice come forward; you hear those messages. But no one says, "But I really love it."

And many people told me how much they loved it, and they were honest with me about the balance issue. That got me.

MR. KATZ: And what did you tell the faculty at the opening faculty meeting?

MS. GREENE: At my opening faculty meeting in August I said to the faculty that I would like to still be married in June of 2009, meaning that my relationship with my husband and my relationship with my children were important, and that I would not answer the phone after a certain time, and that unless there were a real emergency, that when I was home, I was really home. And that was really important to them, and I think it empowered them so to live their lives as members of families, as well.

DR. KANE: John Dewey talks about dualities, things that seem to be opposite, but are really on a continuum, and two of those are work and play. And I think for most of us, work and play are not exclusive; that we love what we do. And that makes it also fun, and that's what sustains us, that we really thrive on the work that we do.

Having said that, I feel strongly that moving into a team approach, which is really evolutionary in leadership, is so important, that there are people on our faculty who do things better than we do. And we need to find out what talents are of different people and develop them, so that leadership is not the solo adventure that it used to be, which really is a killer.

So I think we want to share the joy and also share the job, so that it doesn't get us down, but it allows us to thrive in our jobs. You know, also another dichotomy that's often talked about in leadership is management and leadership. Abraham Zalesnik did some pioneering work in that, and when I read that article there was an "Aha," that certain people have talents as managers; that is, they're good at transactional things. And then there are leaders, and we think of the one who goes on the mountains and thinks of what the vision of the school could be. Both are a little exaggerated, but you can't have a vision if you're constantly running, if you're constantly on the treadmill. You have got to have some time, got to cut out some time where you can think otherwise. You can't be always in motion. And some of us feel guilty even stopping. But cutting out some time to allow for those leadership characteristics to emerge is so important to the success of our schools. So I urge you to do that.

MS. WHITMAN: I think we need to wrap up with a huge thank-you to our panelists. Thank you again, to Pearl, Jerry, and Wanda. We're dealing with the convergence of cultures and sometimes the clash of cultures and having nurturing leadership do that. Thank you very much.

Bruce, I think we have a break.
MR. GALBRAITH: We have a 30-minute break.

Naomi Nye is signing books, and books from other authors are on the table outside. See you promptly at 10:30, because we'll keep on schedule. Thanks.