This post is part of a series on In Praise of American Educators (And How They Can Become Even Better).
“R u available for a quick call?” It was September 16th, 2014 at 8:12pm. It was an innocent enough text I suppose. Only I knew different.
This was a text from my friend and colleague Rick DuFour. I had known Rick since 1980 when we worked together at Community High School District 94 outside of Chicago. It wasn’t the norm for Rick to send a chit chat type of message. I was in a meeting, and I was afraid something wasn’t quite right.
When I called, he was matter of fact and to the point, as always. “I have cancer”.
I paused for a bit. Not quite sure what to say. I sat down. I got off the phone, numb to the news and afraid for my friend and fellow educator. We had been through a lot of battles together. This would be the next one.
Perhaps you have heard similar news from a friend or loved one. If so, you may understand on a deeper level, the balanced beauty and effort required to force away the distractions of Doctors, and Chemo; Of trips to hospitals, and time consuming surgeries; Of well-wishers and public speaking, and the 1000’s of opinions thrown at you.
There becomes this paradox of hope and disappointment, good and bad moments all within a single day wrapped into one week, then one month at a time.
And still, despite the cancer-caused distractions of the past 7 months, Rick managed to focus on the work at hand and among other things (with support from his friend and colleague Mike Mattos and Rick’s remarkable wife, Becky DuFour) write a book: A book for your benefit and for mine. It is a book that will serve your work as an educator for the rest of your life. It is a book that promises you the opportunity to have an extraordinary professional life. And although he is far too humble to say it, a potential professional life rich with the reward of knowing that, like Rick, your life will have made a significant difference for so many students and adults.
In Praise of American Educators is in its own way a clarion call to join the PLC movement. It is not for the faint of heart. The book reveals the reward and challenge for educators everywhere to invest their time, energy and entire beings into work and actions that really matter; and as Rick DuFour succinctly asks at the end of the book (spoiler alert):
Do you believe it is desirable that schools function as professional learning communities? CHECK!
Do you believe that it is feasible that you and your colleagues can help your school become a high performing PLC?
CHECK!“Will you act with a sense of urgency, as if the very lives of your students depend on your action, because in a very literal sense, more so than at any other time in American history, they do?” CHECK!
If your answer to these questions is “yes,” then we must ask the most important question of all.
“What are you personally prepared to do to bring the PLC process to life in your school or district?”
In other words, are you ready to rumble and get on the PLC Train? It will be quite a ride if you do!
In his book, The ART of Leadership, author Max De Pree indicates there comes a point when an exceptional idea becomes a movement. He defines a movement as “a collective state of mind, a public and common understanding that the future can be created, not simply experienced or endured”
In Praise of American Educators describes in great detail how the Professional Learning Community process has become a “collective state of mind” and portends a future that can be and is being created. The book provides in great detail the blueprint for how you too can discover this remarkable professional future, stake your claim to greatness as an educator, and not be held hostage as a victim of circumstance.
De Pree also provides insight into how you might know if you are part of the movement. DuFour manages to address many of these criteria in detail, in order to give you the help you need to get on board the high performing PLC train:
- Accountability to the results of your work and a perpetual disquiet with the status quo,
- High levels of trust and collaboration by the adults and a constructive conflict plan;
- Core values around a shared vision and fidelity of content and substance;
- Uplifting leaders that enable, enrich and energize and a rhythm of innovation and creativity that brings about continued renewal to the work of the school.
DuFour, in Part II of the book, point by point takes the reader through the viable actions necessary to get on the high performing PLC movement train and become empowered toward great work regardless of position, title or station.
It’s an “All Aboard” book so to speak.
A “No Excuses” book too.
Using his practical and practitioners lens, DuFour helps the reader become part of the only research affirmed educational movement in this Century that, if implemented correctly, contains the momentum to sustain great results forever. The book is in so many ways an intellectual, academic, hopeful and emotional gift to us, from a great American educator.
Back to that fateful text on September 16th: It is May 2015 as I write this. 7 months later. He is still as determined, as I have ever known him. He has this clarity of message and a way of cutting through the fog and educational rhetoric that I love, even at 80 or 70 or whatever percent he is operating at these days. He is one of those unique individuals who make you far better than you ever dreamed you could be. He pulls you forward into a better life: A rare gift. His legacy is many things, your commitment to the PLC life – the PLC movement – among them for sure.
For me, his legacy is his friendship. That is the greatest praise I can give him.
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