Michael Fleishman Interview

X. Rodriguez: Good morning or good afternoon.

M. Fleishman: Good afternoon, Xavier.

X. Rodriguez: How are you doing?

M. Fleishman: I am doing exceptionally well. Thank you.

X. Rodriguez: (002) I would like to begin with you telling us about your family background, childhood interests, and any development things that happened to you as a child.

M. Fleishman: Family background, childhood interests and things that have happened to me as a child. I was raised by two teachers in the country, [as a] Wisconsin farm boy, my parents had a variety of educational experiences. Always understood the value of education because my parents reinforced that and I saw it. I saw them go to school they were college-educated so it was one of those things that was just natural for me to assume that I would go to college. Went to a parochial school for grade school sisters of Notre Dame they had a very strong educational emphasis which taught me some very strong study skills. Went to public school for junior high and high school. Went to junior college in Arizona then Arizona State University where my aspiration was to become a wildlife manager. It was technically a wildlife management major during my senior year decided I wanted to teach so the apple did not fall far from the tree. I went for an additional semester I got my educational credentials and started teaching in the secondary level.

X. Rodriguez: (019) Alright, What motivated you to enter the principalship?

M. Fleishman: Being the son of educators my parents are both very active in the educational associations back in Wisconsin and I heard every horror story you could hear concerning those lousy principals and what they were doing to the staff and I was pretty much raised as a someone who dealt with or should deal with administrators when they misbehave When I got into education I became very active in the association in fact I was president of the association in Eloy, Santa Cruz Valley Union High School and I represented many teachers when they tried to take personnel actions against them and I was very successful and all the time I’m doing this I say well I needed to move up educationally, I needed an experiences so I decided that I was going to get a masters in curriculum and development or curriculum development and my wife said why at least get it in something you might use- educational leadership and I laughed and said no way, no way. After I finished the course, I was intrigued and I decided to pursue a principalship and my thought process at the time was principals did not have to function or teachers should not have to function under the type of principals that I experienced. If I was in there I would do it different and I promised myself the day I would become one of the principals that I found that I hated I would quit the job and so my first motive was to go in and let’s see if we can work as a collaborative team let’s see if we can have some fun while we teach.

X. Rodriguez: (040) How did your motives change over the years?

M. Fleishman: Experience has taught me that sometimes you can’t have fun in this job. Have my internal motives changed? No but the reality of it is changed the stark realization that in some cases you will not have a compromised middle ground, you can’t. In this particular position, you will find out that normal people will refuse to agree and reach a compromise just because; it makes an interesting work situation

X. Rodriguez: (047) Yeah, I can imagine. Would you describe your personal philosophy of education?

M. Fleishman: It boils down to this those students are my responsibility they walk through my door and they look at me in a variety of different eyes and ways and its my responsibility to reach and teach each and everyone one of them and if I don’t I failed. As principal I believe that if the students haven’t learned the teacher failed. It may be I’m not using the correct technique and it may be an exceptional teacher but with that particular group of students the technique that they’re familiar and comfortable with isn’t working. It is ultimately our responsibility to make sure they learn and if they don’t want to learn it’s ultimately our responsibility to get the hook in them to make a connection so they do learn.

X. Rodriguez: Do you think that’s changed at all?

M. Fleishman: Not a drop

X. Rodriguez: No. Pretty Consistent?

M. Fleishman: Not a drop. While I’m back in the classroom here I’m still looking for hooks with some kids and I still feel personally responsible for each and every one of them. They’re mine.

X. Rodriguez: Do you think when you were a principal; sorry it’s off the sheet…

M. Fleishman: Go ahead

X. Rodriguez: Do you think when you were a principal, do you think that was right of you to assume it was the teacher that was failing the student, or do you still feel that way?

M. Fleishman: Yes. Yes, I do. Xavier, have you ever walked into a classroom that’s on fire? With excitement and energy, have you ever walked into a classroom where you say I just want to get the hell out of here?

X. Rodriguez: I think we all have, the second one for sure. The first one’s rare.

M. Fleishman: Who’s responsible for that? Not the kids.

X. Rodriguez: The person leading the discussion.

M. Fleishman: That’s correct.

X. Rodriguez: (067) Alright, what experiences or events in your professional life have influenced your management philosophy, like earlier you were saying you went in to being a principal for one reason but you realized there were some changes, could you describe specific events?

M. Fleishman: That’s a loaded question. That’s a very hard question to answer. One, my perception and understating of a student, I being raised in a family of teachers you have the expectations and you understand what’s expected of a teacher and you pretty much understand what students do. It’s the talk around the table and I could say pretty much I was raised in a traditional classroom type of management system. At least, that’s what my expectations were. A gentleman by the name of Pat Lennon became a principal at Santa Cruz Valley Union High School. This is one of the pivotal points in my life. He asked me to go to a Substance Abuse Intervention class and I said, “Well” he said, “it’s one week long”, and I said, “a week out of the classroom” while secretly I’m saying “Now don’t get too excited about this a week workshop. Then he said, it’s a week before Spring break, and I said “Oh yes! A two week vacation” and I said yes, I jumped at it. Went to Tucson West Center for one week of substance abuse education now being a science teacher we’re supposed to teach substance abuse and I thought I knew it all. I had taught it straight from the books and I knew exactly what it meant when you said substance abuse. I had no idea what I was talking about. I spent a week in a residential treatment program and I understood what substance abuse was and then all of a sudden I found out I couldn’t look at people different or the same. They were different. I didn’t see a kid coming to my class telling me to “fuck off” and sending them to the office. I saw a kid telling me to “fuck off” and looking behind the person and say wow, where’s he at today and what’s going on. And when you find out that dad beat up mom again just before he came to school then you somehow have to deal with the child. Francis Bacon had, has written in one of his papers, “to foster the mind, while neglecting the body is like placing a valuable cargo on a ship of disrepair.” How are we going to teach some of these kids when they present themselves to us in the condition that they do?

X. Rodriguez: So the idea of school more than a place of learning but a place of refuge almost or a place of safety, or harbor.

M. Fleishman: Absolutely. School to me became a holistic one-stop shop. If I can’t find the underlying motive, if I can’t get the hook in the child, if I can’t see them when they walk through the door and know that they are a thousand miles away today, how can I do my job?

X. Rodriguez: Miss the point.

M. Fleishman: That’s right. And that was one of the very pivotal points in my life. I came back and told my principal after I processed this for a week. I walked into his office and I closed the door and I said: “Pat, you’re a son of a bitch.” And he said: “I thought you would get a value out of this workshop. Welcome to teaching.” Now Xavier, that philosophy is not what you’re gonna find from most principals. Most principals want a kid and they want an out. Burn them. Get them out of here. There’s someone else’s problem. But they’re my kid. That’s my child. Why is my child failing? Why is my child hurting? Can I kick them out? Sure. And you know what, what have I done? I didn’t fix the problem.

X. Rodriguez: (117) Alright, Would you describe some of the pressures you face in a daily basis in the principalship and how do you cope with that?

M. Fleishman: Oh, the old cliché “it is lonely at the top”. Pressures, okay. So I’ve got a kid whose smelling of marijuana what am I gonna do about it. Am I gonna follow it, am I not gonna follow it. If I follow it, what steps am I gonna take? Am I going to do the down and dirty deed, am I gonna call the police, am I gonna do what I have to do? Of course I am. Am I gonna be subpoenaed, go to court? Yes. Am I gonna be called by parents and accused of planting it and called every name in the book? Yes, I am. Will I have people who want to slash my tires because I arrested the kid or do I have kids that want to do that? Yeah. All those discipline problems. Are you gonna take the heat for doing what you have to do? Yes. What happens when you have to arrest one of your teacher’s kids? Okay. What is it like to walk into a teacher’s lounge and the conversation stops? Is that a little pressure? Yes. What about the parents that you call in because Johnny is having some problems and when Johnny’s parents come in and after Johnny’s parents get done trying to unload. You look and Johnny after they leave and say: “Johnny, im just glad you’re here.” And think to yourself, “My God the fact that he even came to school is a miracle considering where he’s coming from.” The special interest in your school and outside of your school I many times found out people were upset with me by reading the paper. That’s always fun. Trying to go to the store and buying a can of chicken noodle soup. You can’t. It takes four hours to get out the store and my wife is so used to it she’ll do the shopping. It’s how far I made it into the store before I’m stopped. When the phone rings at two in the morning because the alarm went off. When the superintendent wants you up because he’s pissed off at a teacher and wants them fired and you got to remind the superintendent that if he wants to play principal, you’ll be more than happy to change spots with him. When you have to deal with other principals for fighting over resources because if you don’t fight for your staff, you lose. So when you have just a short amount of resources, how are you going to make it work? And what non-funded mandates gonna come down the pike and who’s gonna do it? And how are you going to address the schedule to satisfy the needs of your staff. How do you keep the staff happy? How do you keep them from killing each other when they’re upset? And how do you not take sides? Because the enemy of my enemy is my friend and you have no friends because you can’t. The fact that when you do go home, you found out that the calendar you had on your desk of things you had to do, you weren’t able to teach because some kid brought a gun to school that morning. Or you had someone else in your office that said they wanted to commit suicide and your North Central report is late again. So you wake up at two in the morning with these panic attacks. And you make excuses in your own mind just to get you back to sleep and hopes you can catch a couple of hours because you’re chronically fatigued. It makes for a fun job.

X. Rodriguez: (160) Sounds like hell. Good reason to move on. Alright, lets move on to something a little more positive. What would you tell us or would you tell us the key to your success as a principal. What was the key to the positive moments?

M. Fleishman: Xavier, I’ve been an administrator in more than one place. Okay. I did have a nirvana once and it was called Queen Creek High School. In fact if you look up in my board right here, there’s the staff of Queen Creek High School. Please notice that the staff of Williams is not up there.

X. Rodriguez: Well, it changes a lot here.

M. Fleishman: Good cover. Every principal deserves a staff like that. What happened in that particular school is my educational philosophy and my leadership philosophy meshed so well with that staff. It was a place where magic happened. It truly was. The students were excited, the teachers were excited. School started at 6:45 in the morning because we were a rural school with a very few buses and we had to get the high school students there. Then they had to make a run for the elementary school even starting at 6:45 in the morning, it was upbeat, positive, things were happening. We did tremendous programs and the key there was good morning, how are you, what are we going to do today that’s fun. And it was fun. When you get a group of competent professionals together and they wanted to have fun and they wanted to teach, you let them go and you give them the authority to do what they want to do and guess what, they’ll do incredible things. That was fun. My style in this particular school didn’t mesh. Not all principles will match all schools.

X. Rodriguez: Once again, skipping ahead a little.

M. Fleishman: That’s okay.

X. Rodriguez: (185) There are those that argue that more often than not central office policies hinder rather than help build level administrators? For example, the superintendent coming up with ideas or telling you how to do your job more often than not hinder than help. Will you give your views on this issue or do you think it gives a more positive relationship?

M. Fleishman: Depends on your system. I’ve been in both. I’ve been in a system where the superintendency was an asset to the principal’s support system. I’ve been in a system where the principal had to fight both directions to get anything done and I have experienced both where you do have support it makes your job so much easier. Where you don’t have support then not only are you fighting the district office but then you’re fighting the school board. So you get to fight a couple of levels up and a couple of levels down.

X. Rodriguez: You feel stuck in the middle?

M. Fleishman: Yes. And you’re remembering that you’re there for your teachers. And your students and my job is to protect my teachers and get the teachers the materials they need to do their work because ultimately they’re the ones impacting on the students. And when you can’t do it because of district office and its more of a punitive situation then you spend your time on the defensive instead of proactively trying to make modifications to a program that needs changes. So in my three years from retirement, I would say that of all the systems I have been in the district office has been more of a hindrance than a help.

X. Rodriguez: (209) If you were advising a person who is considering an administrative job, what that advice be?

M. Fleishman: Question: Why? If they are getting there because they think that they can make people change, don’t go. If they are going to affect a positive change, then go. But go wide-eyed and understand that affecting a positive change sometimes is more difficult that it sounds. I would also advise them not to pursue this job is they have kids because you become of the parent of everyone else’s child and you neglect your own. One of the most personal occurrences that ever happened in my life is my son asked me to do something one time when he was a junior in high school and I said Son, I can’t I have a school activity board meeting I believe. And he said you know Dad, you have time for everyone else’s kid but your own. So I would tell you that especially I a small school, if you have young children, don’t do it. It’s a widow maker job, your spouse will pay for it, your children will pay for it, wait until they get out of school, then pursue it. Large schools are different situations I’ve never pursued a large school principalship and they’re a different creature. Small school principals do it all. Large school delegate how many layers underneath do you have? Does a principal ever even walk into a sports activity, who knows? It’s your administrative assistant or assistant principal. So ask that question to, small or large?

X. Rodriguez: I tend to agree with that you see the small school, you don’t have anybody, you don’t have any other administrators. I thought that was a tough situation.

M. Fleishman: It is.

X. Rodriguez: (238) Less support or less layered. Okay, they are those that argue or those who argue that a principal should be an instructional leader, those who suggest that, realistically speaking; this person might be, above all, a good manager. Would you give your views on this issue and describe your own style? Do you believe that as instructional manager, principals as instructional leaders, and they must be good managers.

M. Fleishman: Xavier that goes back to the question of what size school. If you’re gonna be a small school principal, you have to be a manager. Now they want instructional leaders, and I wanted to be an instructional leader my forte is in instructional leadership. That’s my strength, my weakness is in management. I’m not as good as a manger, if I was a principal in a large school; the principal is the instructional leader. District office and or other people underneath him take in on most of the management responsibilities. Is it important for a principal to be the instructional leader, if he or she isn’t, who is? If you have a weak teacher, what are you going to do? And Xavier, a good school in my opinion has 1/3 young teachers, 1/3 from 5 to 10 and 1/3 the dinosaurs, you need your dinosaurs to mentor your young teachers, and its your middle third that’s gonna be your actively driven staff. Your always gonna have teachers that need instructional support, some guidance and you know that. And if you can’t give them guidance they’re gonna flounder. Now if your not afforded the opportunity to give them guidance because your computer system broke down and you’re the computer tech on campus and or you’re the disciplinarian and you have some issues to deal with there or you’re everything, you don’t really get to be as an effective instructional leader as you like.

X. Rodriguez: Okay

M. Fleishman: Makes sense?

X. Rodriguez: Yes. It’s all time.

M. Fleishman: Yes it is.

X. Rodriguez: (268) Would you describe your ideal requirements for principal certification, so if somebody was going to become a principal, what things must they go through, in order to be properly trained and discuss appropriate procedures for screening those individuals who become principals?

M. Fleishman: Xavier, my attitudes about this have changed so much. I always thought to be a good principal you need to be a good instructor. With the understanding that you have to be the educational leader, and I can say that in my life, I have seen principals that were lousy instructors but excellent principals. I wish I could say there was a magic formula, like the ideal gas law PV=NRT and you could play with the variables; if you have this strong here you’ve got that there. I don’t believe that there is that magic formula. I believe in large part it’s a matter of personal character, integrity and perseverance. Are you going to work at trying to make this a good place? Are you going to work at the principalship the way that it needs to be? Are you dedicated to put the hours in? Are you going to work yourself to death?

X. Rodriguez: Does it have to be to death?

M. Fleishman: I almost think so Xavier because if you don’t put it the hours necessary and the hours that are demanded upon are unending, I don’t think you are going to be successful in addressing it all. Why is there such a high turnover rate in principals?

X. Rodriguez: Well, you want them to work till they’re dead.

M. Fleishman: No, because it takes, average principal gets in you’ve got a honeymoon year, then you find yourself falling behind and or stepping on enough toes if your going to do it right and its over. I have seen principals and I have worked under principals that went home at 4 and the guidance that came from those people was commensurate to the fact that they went home at 4. Have you ever seen it Xavier?

X. Rodriguez: Yes.

M. Fleishman: How much are you going to put into it? It’s not, being a principal is more than being a teacher and I live teaching. I mean, I go home and all I do is prepare for teaching but being a principal requires more.

X. Rodriguez: (309) Alright, lets move on to the next page, it is often said that the principal should be active in community affairs. Please discuss your involvement with and participation in civic groups and other community organizations.

M. Fleishman: Kiwanis, Rotary, Salvation Army, the Governor’s Alliance, the Chamber of Commerce, the Chamber Ambassadors, the various committees set up by the city that you’re supposed to serve on, the focus groups, the study groups, its true with every town. If you’re not involved in them, then you’re just a person taking the tax payer’s money and you really don’t care about the community and if you don’t care about the community, you don’t care about our kids, you don’t care about our kids, we don’t want you here. But it gives you tremendous insight to the problems of the community because we’re not a box isolated from the community where in the community so many of the issues that my kids are facing at school they face outside of that box and if I can impact that somehow so be it.

X. Rodriguez: (327) Which of these groups do you think have the most effect on your principalship? The most effect on you in your organization?

M. Fleishman: Without a doubt, the booster club. They’ll get you hired or fired. Cardinal rule of principals: Never cross the booster club.

X. Rodriguez: (332) Alright, A good deal of attention has been given to career ladders, pay differentials plans, merit pay in recent years. Would you give your views on these issues or if you have any experience on these issues and describe any involvement you had with those experiences?

M. Fleishman: Sure, I was in a system that started a merit pay, a career ladder system, I was opposed to it to begin with and after I finished it, I’m even more opposed to it. It boils down to finances. Finance will kill your school we’re gonna give teachers raises, lets see if we can develop a system to pay those truly worthy of earning that extra money. We’re gonna make them jump through hoops A, B, C fill out forms D, E F make portfolio G. Spend all the hours that they can, then we’re going to compare them against each other and we’re going to evaluate them on their performance based on a quote “Standard Rubric” and the more that make it, the less money there is to share. So what you actually have your teachers doing is killing themselves trying to jump through all the hoops and if they jump through the hoops they spent more money then they’re actually gonna make as a pay increase. Number 1. Number 2, we isolate our teachers. I want to get this far on the rubric and I’m going to be evaluated against every one in my department, why am I gonna turn around and help a struggling teacher. So it becomes I get mine and I get mine. I don’t care about you and I’ve seen the system work that way and it’s a cutthroat nasty system. You’ll find places like Mesa’s school district where they actually have teachers; evaluation of teachers was taken out of the hands of the principal because the principals didn’t know how to evaluate the teachers based on mesa’s career ladder performance scale. Before a principal could evaluate a teacher, they had to be trained by the Mesa group of trained teachers that went around and evaluated themselves. So you have staff evaluating staff, it was sick. I hate it. There is no good to come out of career ladders.

X. Rodriguez: I think it’s just a response to people trying to figure out a way

M. Fleishman: Why can’t we get teachers together and say hey, what problems are you having in a classroom? What problems are impacting you? How can we collectively do this, instead of putting them in competition of each other can you imagine the collective IQ in a room full of professionals, and can you imagine what would happen if you had a collaborative synergism. My God, there’s not a single problem that a group of teachers and I don’t care what school I’ve been in if you allow those teachers to address the problem, look at it come up with it, own the problem, own the solution, it will get fixed. I’m sorry. We pit teachers against each other. We don’t allow them to take and collectively work in a system where it’s not punitive, we just don’t.

X. Rodriguez: Do you know why?

M. Fleishman: It’s the process and function of what administration should be. You know it takes a very powerful person to give away control. The more you give it away, the more it comes back to you. But a lot of guys enter administration to be in charge and the more they take control, the less effective they are. Now, control in the classic sense, I’m in charge. Find yourself a micro manager and find out how happy your school is. Hershey and Blanchard is probably best stereotypes my leadership style and they basically draw it up into four quadrants from everything from you tell someone what to do step A to step B to step C to the continuum of you have a competent person say Xavier I want you to be my vocational director, do it and get out of his way ‘cause he’ll do it. I don’t need to tell Xavier how to be a vocational director. I just need to say you’re the vocational director, what support do you need from me. Too many guys believe I’m God. When I speak, bow and that’s how we treat our teachers.

X. Rodriguez: (412) Once again, just a slight different direction. Would you describe your approach to teacher evaluation and give your philosophy of evaluation? This is not that far from just talking about merit pay, teachers evaluating themselves. How would you describe your teacher evaluation approach and what’s your philosophy towards evaluation?

M. Fleishman: There’s only two purposes for evaluation. Number one, personnel action. Number two, improve instruction. If you are going to use a teacher evaluation for personnel action you are not a very good administrator. Sorry. I have fired many people; I never once had to fire them through the formal process of non-renewal. I counseled them out, we had many talks, they left happy. A good principal will convince the individual that this is not a good match. This leaves evaluation to improve instruction. Now, how are we going to improve instruction if the evaluation tool is a punitive tool? When you have teachers that come into a classroom or your office and a pre-observation conference and break down in tears and that was a situation in this particular school where most of my teachers where so stressed out that they did break out in tears because the evaluation process was a beating. What value does it have? You see, there’s one thing that I have and that I believe is the strongest element in any evaluation process: What is your goal for professional growth? And if really ask a teacher what their goal for professional growth is and they don’t feel threatened about it, guess what they’re gonna pick?

X. Rodriguez: Improving instruction, reaching more students

M. Fleishman: Almost always, their area of weakness.

X. Rodriguez: Right

M. Fleishman: I have been amazed by the number of times I’ve asked that question and their response is well, I’d really like to do this. That’s a great one, how can I help you? You know, it makes a world of difference in, well I would like to do this, how can I help out, may I help you? Here, hey by the way, you remember you said you want to do this, here’s a workshop on it. Or hey, here’s a teacher, how would you like to go and check this one out and instead of you beating up a teacher, they know what they need. Teachers are not cattle. They’re competent professionals that are in this job for a reason. I believe that and I believe that every teacher does know their own weakness. Just like I know your gonna ask me because I’ve read the question, upon reflection, what are your strengths, what are your weaknesses? I know those. I don’t need a superintendent to tell me that. From my perspective, if the superintendent says, what can I do? What is your professional goal? And I’ll tell them, this is it. I think evaluation needs to be that. You know, it’s

X. Rodriguez: More exchange, less filling out a rubric

M. Fleishman: Absolutely. And there’s so many different styles of teaching. Madeline Hunter is not the end all of all educational processes. It’s just not.

X. Rodriguez: (474) So you dropped the point of helping them achieve their goals, it comes to the idea of service leadership, I’ve been reading about and thinking about. Do you see yourself….are you familiar with the idea of service leadership?

M. Fleishman: Yes.

X. Rodriguez: The leader being of service to those who he leads.

M. Fleishman: Yes.

X. Rodriguez: I get that a lot from you just from the things that you say. Do you see yourself in that light?

M. Fleishman: I like to think of myself that way. Now let me ask you a question, it’s not gonna do this researcher any good. Xavier, you worked under me. Did you see that? I don’t know if I could have defined it then. But I think you did do things to help to assist us in accomplishing what we saw as our goals and that’s what a service leader does. That’s what I believe we should do. I was not effective here, Xavier. There were several reasons I was not effective. But I was effective in one place, actually more than one. I don’t think that weren’t effective. I think you weren’t as effective as you wanted to be.

X. Rodriguez: Good point.

This is the end of side one, tape one. We will be flipping over to the other side now.

Reset counter.

X. Rodriguez: Xavier, interviewing Mike Fleishman.

X. Rodriguez: (001)Alright, let’s move on now. It’s been said that a good deal of things that happened these days about teacher grievances, a good deal of teacher grievances arise. Would you give your views on the desirability of these procedures and describe the approach for handling teacher’s dissatisfaction. So in other words, the teacher grievance process and their grievances, how do you handle it or how would you handle it?

M. Fleishman: Xavier, teacher grievances, now you’re gonna get two different sides of this. You’re talking about the association president, who represented teachers effectively. I’ve never lost a case. Okay. Do I believe in the validity of teacher grievances, absolutely, you have to. When you have a northbound portion of a southbound horse occupying the principals office who’s an egomaniac micromanager and a god complex. Your gonna have grievance procedures and you’re gonna hammer them, each and every time, I don’t care what hotshot you have, those people make mistakes and you can beat them. You can beat them with your own system. Xavier, I’ve been in administration in all the places that I have been in, a total of 14 years, I have yet to have my first grievance filed against me. One of the interesting things the association does is they contact former Uniserv directors and say How many grievances have been filed against this principal? You can check if you want. They have a nice record, 0. If you are a principal, that cares about your staff and works with their staff. You’re not gonna have grievances, you can have difference of opinion, you can have conflicts, but it doesn’t have to end in a grievance and it doesn’t mean you as an administrator lose.

X. Rodriguez: What about the other side?

M. Fleishman: What do you mean?

X. Rodriguez: You kind of described it more from the teacher’s side and then you went slightly, you personally not having any grievances. But have there been any grievances against maybe the school district or the school that you’ve worked at, on behalf of a teacher, not specifically something that you’ve done, and how is that handled. I’m saying for example a teacher doesn’t feel that they’re being treated the right way in respect to the district office or something like that and filed a complaint?

M. Fleishman: The teacher never. . . I’ve never had that happen. They never had to. Because if the teacher was being treated unfairly by the district office. It would be me that would be in there fighting on their behalf.

X. Rodriguez: Okay, so what you are saying is that you haven’t had any formal grievances filed?

M. Fleishman: None. Do I believe in the process? Yes, absolutely. Xavier, my teachers are mine. It’s my responsibility to make their job easier. Not harder. You know when a teacher messes up, they know it. You don’t have to tell them. I would say that the highest sign of respect that I’ve ever had was when a staff was comfortable enough to come to my office and say, I messed up, how do we fix it. Yeah, you did mess up but boy, glad it was you instead of me. Now let’s fix it. Xavier, if you have that mindset

X. Rodriguez: A cooperative as opposed to a confrontational one.

M. Fleishman: Absolutely. And someone does want to…in part, I was put on a one-year contract here because that’s what I did here with my staff, district office wanted teachers fired. Called me in and said, this one is gone, and I said, no, this one’s not gone. Did it cost me? Yes it cost me. Did I enjoy fighting that? Hell no. Because next time you go into the year, your administrative meeting guess what.

X. Rodriguez: Scary

M. Fleishman: Yes. So..but that’s my job; if you’re not prepared to do that, don’t become a principal.

X. Rodriguez: (046)As you view it, what characteristics are associated with the most effective schools and what features characterize less effective schools?

M. Fleishman: Communication, communication, communication, and after you do that, you have communication. If you think a school is a static place where you make the rules and it’s there. You’re wrong. It changes, it’s dynamic, it has to be. With that communication comes empowerment; you empower the people that are responsible for making change to make change. You support them. Xavier, when I have given up power, authority, I’ve given it up to people who make decisions that I would not make, I still support that. And you know what? It comes back to you even more. You’re a more dynamic, more successful leader when you support a decision that someone else has been in power to make and you support it even though they know that you don’t necessarily agree with it but it’s a decision of the collaborative group, fine, so be it. There’s a lot of power in that. Did I answer your question?

X. Rodriguez: I think you answer the question of what characteristics are for most effective schools. So then, in contrast, the less effective school would have…

M. Fleishman: Lack of communication. Poor communication. One-way communication.

X. Rodriguez: Not dynamic, maybe static.

M. Fleishman: Static schools.

X. Rodriguez: (063) In recent years, more and more programs for special groups of students (LD, Gifted and Talented, Non-English speaking) have been developed. Please discuss your experience with special student services and your views on today’s trends in this regard.

M. Fleishman: One of the things that I didn’t tell you when we started this interview was some of my background, after I got my degree, I immediately started working at the Arizona school for the deaf and blind and I also worked at the Arizona training program in Randolph. I worked with the profoundly retarded then I worked with the deaf and blind. So I, on a continuum have worked with special populations and probably the broadest range that any public school teacher will see. I even lived in the residential facilities so am I very open to special needs or special population needs? Yes, I am. Is it something, aw man this is a tough question; it really is because I believe that the special needs population needs more. There needs…

X. Rodriguez: More programs…more funding…

M. Fleishman: Need more programs. They need more funding. They need more attention. They need a smaller student to staff ratios. They need that. Now, im going to flip and say I have a special needs population with total inclusion excuse me. Not they’re going to be mainstreamed into my classroom and I have AHD. I have SLD. I have every characteristic you can name through in with ELL. So I throw in an ELL population, combined with the special needs population, combined with you name it and I have it all in one classroom. Then I have a heterogeneous group with an extremely wide diversity and Im supposed to hit all ins and I can’t. Now im hurting my top-end students. Now understand, they’re going to survive in spite of what we do but even my middle population is starting to be affected because I have to provide the one-to-one. I have to correct the ADD, or the ADHD. I have to wonder why he’s going off cause he doesn’t have his meds and he becomes a three ring circus.

X. Rodriguez: So what kind of support would you want in that situation? Would you propose less mainstream or more help?

M. Fleishman: Smaller class sizes. You can’t do it with a class of 30. You lose everybody then you ask yourself what did I accomplish today and if you’re talking to a teacher who has specific goals they want to accomplish and realize that they’re on the same learning objective for the last 4 days because that’s as fast as they can go, you’re setting that teacher up for failure. I am so strong an advocate of programs for special needs but I think we’ve reached a point where the special needs programs are having a negative impact on the overall performance of our school and especially right now when you’re in high stakes situation with testing and say why didn’t you cover those objectives? Im trying but my hands are full and you know what those teachers who demonstrate any ability whatsoever to deal with special need students are the ones that get dumped on. Here, ho, they can handle them. They’re really good with them. Oh, wait a minute, why do I get them? Because you’re the guy that doesn’t kick them out of class, you teach them. And you’re going, that’s not fair. So it’s a double edge sword and I’m not anti special needs, I have a true love there. But I think we need to look at a system that’s gonna give us a smaller heterogeneous group of that’s what were gonna do or have a homogeneous inclusion which is an oxymoron.

X. Rodriguez: (116) Since you’ve had some time now to reflect on your career as a principal, I wonder if you would share with us what you consider to be your administrative strengths and weaknesses?

M. Fleishman: My strengths as a principal were dealings with parents, students and teachers. I always had an open door and I always listened and that was a strength. I have found that sometimes teachers aren’t always right. If you approach the job of administration, as here is a referral, what did this kid do? You’re going to find yourself defending positions sometimes you can’t defend and I was very good at dealing with, I believe, upset students, upset parents, and actually getting down to the bottom of what really did happen and you know if you teach and/or treat and teach dignity, it has a tremendous impact. If you treat the students as if they’re guilt or as some principals do when you’re in principals’ office. You know, it always amazed me to hear parents come in and say man, im in the principal’s office and im scared. Adults would tell you that. Any principal who’s sat their for more than 6 months or 6 weeks have heard parents say, oh im in the principal’s office it scares me. Why? I had a highway patrolman in this town tell me, he still gets upset when he walks into the principal’s office. And I said, well then, please understand why I get upset when I see you follow me. And he says, well, yeah but its different, principals are mean. And im going, yeah, okay. Well, it’s the same thing. I have a lot of success I believe in breaking that down, kids talk to me. And you know, sometimes they told me things I didn’t want to hear. Sometimes, I’m glad they told me things I didn’t want to hear because they trusted me. That was I believe my strength. My weakness. I hate dotting I’s and crossing T’s. I have every intention of getting this done but I’ve found that the human factor or facet of the job was more appealing to me and as a consequence, I’ll tell you the truth, paperwork was not my priority. I didn’t like to count beans. I like dealing with people.

X. Rodriguez: So do you think that’s the main reason that you’ve moved on?

M. Fleishman: Here, no. No. I moved on here, Xavier, because I was in a no win situation. When you lock horns with district office and you’re fighting for your people and your people are fighting behind your back and you find yourself trying to defend and support people that really don’t give a damn about whether you’re going to be there tomorrow or not. In fact, would prefer you not to be there because they see you as an ally of the superintendent or whatever reason. It got to the point where you say, why am I doing this? Now, there are 2 types of principals, there is place and there’s position. A position principal will stay get the experience and move up. They’re going to be your superintendents of Scottsdale and mesa and deer valley. That’s a position. I’ve never wanted that, I’ve always wanted place. I always wanted the feel. I want home and I feel in love with this town so much so that I did not want to leave this place to pursue another position. So I asked to be reassigned when they cut large portions of you out, in surgery cause of stress. It’s time to reevaluate whether or not you are having fun. I always side the day I became a principal I didn’t like I’d quit. I never once said the day the job I decide is killing me, I’m going to quit. But I came to that realization so that’s why I left.

X. Rodriguez: Well maybe you did become a principal; you didn’t like always being consumed by stress.

M. Fleishman: True, it was constant and then with stress comes fatigue and all the health problems and then it’s a vicious circle and how do you get out from it. You don’t, you walk away from it. Or you die.

X. Rodriguez: Well, you wanted to work to death, you almost did.

M. Fleishman: Almost.

X. Rodriguez: (179) I’m gonna go back to some of the earlier questions that we skipped. A couple of reasons but mainly because know I am interested in the answer. But if you want to flip back just so you could read it. What techniques did you use to create a successful climate for learning? So as a principal, what techniques did you do to help your staff creating a successful climate?

M. Fleishman: When I’ve been successful it was a common goal and a common mission. Case in point, renaissance program, I was fortunate enough to be one of the first schools in Arizona to do the renaissance program, which is dead and basically what it was was a token economy for rewards for a variety of academic performances and basically we found reasons to reward students when they were doing positive and the whole premise behind the program was catch them doing something good, reinforce it and guess what and it meant paying them for it, so be it, so what it. Business in this country runs on rewarding positive performance and the first time that schools systems look and say they’re not paid not be students, you’re crazy, they are and if I had a kid who was fighting like heck to raise his grade point average up to be eligible to get a 1955 Baseball card that a local card shop gave us to support educational excellence, so be it. The interesting thing was that the Renaissance worked, not because of me, not because of nifty prizes we gave away but because of the staff and their stress on what are we going to do. How are we going to improve instructions? How are we going to reach out to the kids? So that was very successful and it was not me, it was the staff. How are we going to do it? Here’s a program, does this suit our needs, can we modify it? I turned it over to them, they ran it. They even made a thing called Bogin bucks and in the file cabinet, I’ll even show you one of our beloved teachers, are on bogin bucks and we just cut George Washington and put his face on and staff had bogin bucks and they passed them up. What a powerful concept to let teachers have that much control and I keep saying this. A leader is someone who gives the leadership away. It doesn’t me ignore it, it means give it away, track it, support it, foster it, let it grow and if it grows in a way you don’t like remember, don’t ask them to be educational leaders if you don’t want them to lead. My job is to help that growth.

X. Rodriguez: Like a gardener.

M. Fleishman: Yeah.

X. Rodriguez: Could you prune?

M. Fleishman: Sure. Absolutely. And that when you go, hey, how’s it going? Oh, we have problems here. We do. What’s going on? How can I help? And you know if they trust you to do that, Xavier, they will come up and tell you, hey we have a problem here, can we try, what do you think.

X. Rodriguez: (222) You’ve described the successful one though and I don’t want to dwell on the negative but what about some unsuccessful programs what things did not work out?

M. Fleishman: Biggest failure I’ve ever had was a staff that wanted to hate each other and they would not collaborate, cooperate or even be civil towards each other. And you had such a history especially in small schools of where did this started. It started back in ’68 and I’m not gonna forget about it and when you have a situation like that it’s no win. I don’t care what you do, you’re gonna go into a situation and you will be behind the eight ball because you got to agree with something. If you agree with something, then you’ve agreed with or disagreed with someone else and generally you find yourself not agreeing with either of the parties and you’re somewhere in between and then everyone hates you.

X. Rodriguez: Well then, they have a common thought.

M. Fleishman: Oh yeah. Sometimes it’s the only time you’ll find them unified. It’s in a hatred of someone else. And I have been in that situation and it’s sick. But if you follow the hiring patterns of the people or the person before me. They hired individuals that came with a weird sense of ethics and it was not pretty. Nor comfortable.

X. Rodriguez: (245) I guess I mean this next question is more of a day in the life question but how do you describe a normal day, if there is such a thing as a normal day and how would you spend your time? What’s the normal number of hours a week that you would say you put in?

M. Fleishman: Normal hours? 65 was a light week. 80 was not unusual. More of the norm- 70, 75. That’s normal and how do I know? I tracked it. I have it on my calendar, my wife made me do that so she would write down what time I left, what time I came by, then you throw in your Saturday activities. The time you go in on Sunday because you didn’t finish the paperwork you had to finish. Normal day, you get to school, if you need to get something done, you get there an hour before people show up because you’ve got to have some time. Because the first time the bus shows up and little Johnny got a fight on the bus or the parents in that morning to discuss Mary Sue and that English teacher, math, science, social studies and you have the discipline referral sitting outside the office. By the time you get there, your plans are pretty much shot when the staff and the teacher, a staff and student show up in a small school I would love to have had a dean of students. There you handle the discipline, how do you be an educational leader in a situation like that, I found that I knew more about what was going on in my school in dealing with the discipline problems by actually getting out of the office, walking down to the classroom and picking the student out of class. I would get a brief snapshot of what was going on in the classroom at that time. You do that twenty times in a month and guess what you get a pretty good idea of what’s happening, you know who’s doing what. It made it easier help identify goals for professional growth if they were lacking some but you stay with that, you’re dealing in conflict resolution and teacher conflict, teacher problems, and not every time a teacher walks through your door are a problem. They need support. My computer is down, what can I do? How can you help me? I want this new textbook series, how can I get money for? I want to try this program what do you think, you know that all takes time. And sometimes you deal with personal issues with the staff, you do. Plain and simple. I’ve dealt with staff rapes, I’ve dealt with suicidal, I mean these guys were suicidal. I had to get help. Bankruptcies, I mean you’d think as a principal im not supposed to deal with these issues but when you have a teacher falling apart because it’s happened, it is happening you have to deal with it. You can tell them to go back and be a pro, yeah okay. And that doesn’t work. You stick around till everyone goes home, if you have the energy to stay and you’re not totally exhausted try to pick up the pieces from the morning that you didn’t get finished and look at the pile that is 2 inches high that you didn’t even attempt that was due last Tuesday and then you go home at 8 o’clock and eat lunch.

X. Rodriguez: So it’s a good weight loss program

M. Fleishman: No. No. Because you starve yourself, when you go home, you eat like a pig ‘cause you haven’t had lunch and you go to bed exhausted. You don’t get exercise.

X. Rodriguez: Just anxiety.

M. Fleishman: That’s right.

X. Rodriguez: (301) Okay, would you describe those aspects of you professional training which best prepared you for the principalship?

M. Fleishman: I’d say working with at risk youth when I went to Tucson West Center I set up an alternative school, alternative program. I was a substance abuse coordinator. I started dealing and doing interventions with substance abuse. And when you start dealing with substance abuse you find out that substance abuse many times is just the tip of the iceberg. Why is there substance abuse? Then you deal with sexual abuse, physical abuse, suicide, depression, runaway, hunger, the whole ball of wax. By dealing with those issues intimately on a one-one setting because I was the coordinator of those programs this was the first administrative program I got into is to set up and run a program, an intervention program for the schools because Santa Cruz Valley Union High School in Eloy had the vision of saying we have to deal with these issues by learning the issues that people come to school with and how to deal with them it was really easy to see them when they came through my door as a principal. I’ve had some teachers say that sometimes you play more counselor than you should. Guilty. Yes, I am. But gosh darn, if you had a kid who walked across the stage and hugged you afterwards that normally wouldn’t have been there in a lot of school systems it would have been gone, that’s great. So I would say getting to know the problems that might kids face, that we all face was the greatest preparation I had, if you don’t have the slightest idea and a student is in your office after telling a teacher “Fuck you” and there’s tears just sort of welling up in their eyes, you can simply you’re out of here, you don’t talk like that or you could say what’s wrong?

X. Rodriguez: Do you think that your stance on this or the way you approach it maybe affected your objectivity at all?

M. Fleishman: Absolutely.

X. Rodriguez: And you don’t care?

M. Fleishman: I don’t care.

X. Rodriguez: That’s sounds fair.

M. Fleishman: Yes, I had teachers that did not like what I did. And you know what, I found out a long time ago that I can’t make everyone happy. I have to do what I think is right. Again, the question is double sided. What training experiences did you find least useful? How to be a principal, those were the worst set of classes I’ve ever had. They were set up by university professors who hadn’t been in a classroom dealing with academic problems that I had dealt with; they had no clue about the drug issues facing the kids. But they didn’t care either because the guys in the golden towers that were teaching us how to be principals didn’t deal with people the way I dealt with people. So from their perspective, I may be a poor principal, from my perspective I called them a poor administrator, they didn’t care they might have cared but

X. Rodriguez: They didn’t show it.

M. Fleishman: They didn’t show it and they had no clue. I mean when you have a guy who hasn’t been in a classroom for twenty years. Good heavens. I’ve been in a classroom now, Xavier, five years, four years after my principalship and I am hankering to chomp the bit again to tell you the truth because I’ve learned a few things I thought I knew quite a bit then, I’ve learned a lot now.

X. Rodriguez: Maybe if you had bigger schools.

M. Fleishman: Oh, I have a couple of enticing offers

X. Rodriguez: Well, I just thought that’d be a change. You can try some of your..

M. Fleishman: Washington State is calling my name

X. Rodriguez: Will they let you go?

M. Fleishman: Yes.

X. Rodriguez: (366) If you had to do it again, what kinds of things would you do to better prepare yourself in principalship.

M. Fleishman: Xavier, my teaching background and what I worked with at-risk kids gave me preparation to deal with kids for dealing with teachers. You have to know how to defend a teacher to be a good principal; you can’t fire a teacher without knowing how to defend one. So I think some people will listen and say what do you mean. I’ve seen even here when people have tried to fire teachers, well they didn’t know how to do it. If you know how to defend them, you know how to fire them. The work with the association as being the president gave me a strong insight. I think I came to the principalship prepared for the role of a small school principal. What would I do different? I would somehow like to think I could deal with stress better in a stress management venue somehow. But realistically I don’t see me doing that. I would say it would have been an asset that I didn’t have.

X. Rodriguez: You just mentioned after being in the classroom for 4 years you’re feeling like you want to be a principal again, what’s happened, what have you learned in these four years that you think will better prepare you for doing it again or have you just rested, recharged your battery.

M. Fleishman: Combined. I’ve recharged my battery and have become a disciple of Peter Senge, Fifth Discipline. Anyone who wants to play administration needs to understand what Senge is saying and he is just the tip of the whole educational reform iceberg what we have now in education is destined to fail I don’t care what state director or state department of education is going to say, it will fail. It’s been destined to fail and it’s going to and there will be massive educational reform, it must happen. We cannot be a postindustrial educational school system, the way we were in the sixties, fifties, forties. We have a different role, a different responsibility and anyone who disagrees still is part of the same problem and it’s going to happen and I’m excited that it is going to happen and it’s going to happen in my life and I’m going to be there while it does occur and I’d like to be a part of that.

X. Rodriguez: Part of the rebuilding?

M. Fleishman: Yes.

X. Rodriguez: (421)Alright, what is your view on mentoring programs for new administrators?

M. Fleishman: Absolutely essential. Mentoring is something that needs to happen with teachers, it needs to happen with students, it needs to happen with administration. You know, just because you are now in charge doesn’t mean you sure don’t need someone to fall back on and say: Hey, how did you handle, have you ever seen. Most of the time principals don’t have that. Small school principals don’t because if you start asking questions on a small level then it gets in the day this guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. A formal mentoring program would be nice.

X. Rodriguez: Did you think maybe even an informal one where you would call back some of your former administrators?

M. Fleishman: Sure. Male administrators do that and have that circle available to them far more than female. I found that to be true. Females are left alone.

X. Rodriguez: Why?

M. Fleishman: They’ve got to be better and do it better. It was kind of funny Xavier just two weekends ago my son got married and it was funny a lady that was very dear to me, vocational director. I encouraged here to become a, join the ranks of principal and she’s an elementary school principal now and it was funny because she heard I was in town, home, and she wanted to come over and talk. She knew it my son’s wedding day and yet she wanted to come over early in the morning and talk. Can we talk for three hours? And all she wanted was validation for the fact that she too had reached the spot in her career that I reached here four years ago and she can’t do it anymore and had no one to talk to and I listened and validated her feelings and she is proudly in all likelihood going to tenure her resignation and go back to the classroom.

X. Rodriguez: I think the mentorships are underrated but what experiences have you had, any experiences with mentorship programs?

M. Fleishman: Not formal.

X. Rodriguez: What about teacher mentorship programs?

M. Fleishman: Yes I have, I established one program where as I said, I took my dinosaurs. Any new teacher I hooked up with a mentor and there are now formal programs out and you can go and become an expert mentor director in a three-day workshop and they’ll tell you everything you need to know to run a mentor program and yeah, okay. Mine was more informal and I think a little bit more effective. We currently working with a mentor program here and I find it very ineffective because you have to make sure you fill out box and dot, all those I’s, make sure you do that paperwork in this person, you have your three requisite visits per month, for at least twenty minutes, come on. It’s bureaucracy making more of a bureaucracy. In Queen Creek, we had an informal. I actually made sure that my veteran teacher went back or first day of school and pick up the newbies and made sure here I’m picking you up, don’t worry about being late, don’t worry about where you are going, don’t worry about anything and make sure that that transition, how do you transition a new teacher to your school, how do you show to get paper from your copier, where is your mailbox, what do you do for supplies, make sure they know and establish that linkage and you know what when you have an informal linkage like that it’s far more powerful and then you have your mentors being able to refer to someone else. Classroom management- hey here’s some tricks that so and so uses, let’s go talk. And that was very powerful, very dynamic, very non-threatening.

X. Rodriguez: So what do you think the most difficulty in establishing mentorship programs would be, finding a mentor?

M. Fleishman: Yes.

X. Rodriguez: Finding teachers willing to mentor.

M. Fleishman: Yes. Yes. You’ve got to have a pool of veteran teachers to be able to get that information. The interesting thing in retrospect, looking back, when I started this program, the veteran teachers did not want to be mentors and it kind of took some cajoling and some arm bending and come on but there’s a new teacher and you’re a great at. Why don’t you try it? Imagine what the lessons they can learn from you and I’ll tell you I set them up. But when you professionally praise them and say this person deserves someone like you, then they reconsider, and at the end it was kind of funny because those veteran teachers even if someone was transitioned in for a year or two that’s still theirs and camaraderie existed between them.

X. Rodriguez: I think that it can be a powerful thing.

M. Fleishman: Yes it can or it can be devastating.

X. Rodriguez: (526) But something you said made me think of another question, you’re used it as an opportunity, you’re cajoling mentors opportunities to praise the teacher. Did you find that there were significant or sufficient opportunities to praise your teaching staff or would you rather have more opportunities or ways to praise?

M. Fleishman: Xavier, if you do it right, you can praise a teacher, any teacher, any day. Xavier, you can also find a reason to criticize any teacher, any day. It’s your mindset. Yeah, I slap my teacher’s on the back all the time. Hey good job.

X. Rodriguez: Alright one more thing let me flip because there’s about five minutes to go on this one.

Tape 2 side 1 Interviewing Mike Fleishman

Reset the counter.

X. Rodriguez: (001) Mike, just a couple of more things I want to ask you before I’ll let you go home to your family who I’m sure is going on without you. What strategies did you use to improve problem solving and communication within your school? What techniques did you use to improve?

M. Fleishman: This is basically a rehashing of one of the earlier questions there’s no problem that I wasn’t afraid to discuss. If you get people at least to talk about the problem, to start kicking around some possibilities, then you can come up with some resolution. If you approach a problem in such a way that I’m principal, and I’m God and I said this, that problem doesn’t go away it just goes under the carpet that basically goes in the teacher’s lounge. You haven’t solved anything. The most effective strategy that I personally have found is to get the parties that are interested in that problem to discuss the problem.

X. Rodriguez: What would you do, aside from getting them in a room together, to help facilitate the problem solving?

M. Fleishman: What else would I do?

X. Rodriguez: Like it’s well and good. Okay, here you are. You two talk it out.

M. Fleishman: Oh, sometimes we address it in a faculty meeting you know, this is the problem let’s all figure it out. Xavier, you’ve been in my faculty meetings and you know that I have business that I have to take care of and I try to get them done respecter of time but I always have a portion there that’s called good of the order and good of the order is where I wanted people to bring up problems they were facing. This particular system we have very short meetings. I have been in systems that required at least one hour a week in faculty meetings and I found out that I really didn’t want to speak an hour so the good of the order was a great time for the faculty to air and we got more done in those settings, where we will be here folks, district office mandates one hour. I’m done with what im doing in twenty minutes we’ve discussed this, what are you guys facing? What’s happening, anyone? Let’s lay it out on the table, kick it around, let’s talk about it.

X. Rodriguez: Get more brains on it.

M. Fleishman: Collective IQ. The collective IQ in that room is very very high and if they can’t figure it out, we’re all in trouble.

X. Rodriguez: (030) Okay, despite my best efforts or my efforts nonetheless, I have been asking you questions and I probably left something out or I probably not asked you something that you wanted to talk about or not ask you something that maybe is the most important part of being a principal is there anything you wish I would have asked you or anything else that you wanted to discuss.

M. Fleishman: Greatest success, greatest failure. I think you’ve touched on it. What do you think made you successful but is there a greatest success and is there a greatest failure.

X. Rodriguez: (036) What do you think is your greatest success?

M. Fleishman: I caught a kid who was going to commit suicide. Had the bullet in his pocket and had the time 3:30. I caught him. I got an announcement from the young man when he graduated college, I got an announcement from the young man when he got married and this kid was in bad shape. That was a success.

X. Rodriguez: Well; now you know for sure you’ve changed one person’s life

M. Fleishman: Yes. Yup. Greatest failure. I lost a kid. I didn’t catch him. You see these kids are going to go on regardless of what we do. Both positive and negative and we collectively try to make it more positive. I believe that in our hearts, how in creation’s name can we sit in a classroom with nickelbee and with all the garbage we have to with No child left behind and whatever they want to call it five years from now or five years from now or in another five years from now and keep doing it in spite of what they are doing to us. If in fact, we weren’t trying to make it better for kids. We aren’t here for the bucks and when we lose a kid, that’s a failure.

X. Rodriguez: I assume, you meant you lost a kid, you lost them permanently, not just a kid dropped out.

M. Fleishman: No, he committed suicide.

X. Rodriguez: So do you think that I understand that you personally feel that way that they’re all more kids do you think that is why spread view low principals?

M. Fleishman: No. No.

X. Rodriguez: And you think it shouldn’t?

M. Fleishman: Yes. It should be. I’m sorry if you’re a big school principal and yo don’t know your kids well who is going to be there for them. If you’re not going to do it make sure you have someone who will and a lot of principals say we have a counseling department. Nah. It’s an atmosphere I’m talking about. It’s an atmosphere of caring. It’s an atmosphere of wanting them to walk through your door. You know, it was really really interesting one of the things that I got out of Senge and it just came to light, it’s so important, he was telling us of a small African nation, I believe it was Nepal. He started off his conference by coming up with an African phrase and he said and the response is and he gave us a phrase and I’m sorry I don’t remember the phrase and I started off this whole conference and oh lord this is exactly what I thought I was going to get into another one of those touchy, feely, here we go again activities and he said it again and all the good little boys and girls gave the correct response. They said, it’s interesting this tribe feels that there’s a deep seated belief that a person is not brought into existence until someone sees them and what you literally have said in this phrase is I have said I see you and the literal translation of what you have told me was I am here. And I said what a powerful, powerful statement. Listen to another superintendent who happened to be in charge of Philadelphia talk. He had 28 schools I believe that were under performing or failing and he walked into one of the schools and being an old high school algebra teacher he walked up into the front of his class and said or walked up to his school and said im going to watch an algebra teacher, a superintendent. He walked into the classroom and saw a very animated Algebra teacher, he was watching the students four were paying attention and the rest were doing homework, sleeping, passing notes, whatever. After the class finished, he walked up to the teacher and asked, well what do you think? He says it was a great lesson, what do you think? Well, how many people were paying attention? What do you mean? He said, how many people during this class were paying attention? I don’t know. He said, four and he looked at the superintendent in the face and said you know what it was my responsibility to teach them, it’s their responsibility to learn. And there’s this shroud between a teacher and a class and he talked behind the shroud. I was so intrigued by this whole concept that I came back to my class Xavier, I start my classes differently. I say good morning, good afternoon, I see you. And they respond, I am here. And I discuss the whole concept behind them, I see you. And as a class we discussed how many teachers see them and they said even in the small school right here, they aren’t seen. Teachers don’t see them so it’s real powerful. So as a principal, you better see your people so if you see them, they’ll be here. Interesting things happen. I have a group of freshman boys you know running up full scale backwards, physical science. I had two kids that were out. The office was calling for assignments by the end of the period. The internet was down so I was calling in attendance I started off my class with a quiz and immediately after the quiz was collected went into the learning objectives and one young man said in the back of the room, Hispanic male, raised his hand, I said “Yes, Jesus.” He said, Mr. Fleishman, do you see us today? Oh God and it floored me and I said Jesus no I don’t see you. Im sorry class. I see you. And they responded I am here and the phone started to ring and it was ringing and Jesus said are you gonna answer the phone? I said no, if it’s important enough they’ll come down and find me. Right now, you’re the most important thing. As a classroom teacher I can say that as a principal I am say that. If you don’t see your people, if you don’t see your kids, you’re teaching or acting behind a veil and who are they and you’re doing things to them not with them. And unless you’re willing to do that your gonna be an administrator that’s going to sit in an office and they’ll say Mr. Who, Mrs.. Who? Never saw the principal. I don’t know who they are.

X. Rodriguez: Alright, thank you Mike.

M. Fleishman: You’re welcome

X. Rodriguez: Appreciate your time. I will take you and Dr. Senge’s message back with me.

M. Fleishman: It’s an unpopular message.

END