# 7650 Assignment 9 Jethro Jones also available at [drjethro.com](https://drjethro.com/7650assign9) ## Assignment Directions 1. **PLACE** is one of culture's components (along with vision, values, practices, people, and narrative), but it's often overlooked. Walk throughout your building, checking out what is posted in the halls and what you can see on classroom walls. Make a point of going to places in the building that aren't in your typical path. (If you are not currently working in a school, either visit one or do you best to recall what you experienced.)      a. What are the messages? Do they espouse achievement, inclusiveness, a welcoming attitude?      b. Are there patterns, i.e., more or fewer items posted and/or different messages that stem from different grades, departments, and so on?      c. The entrance to the school: What's the message to students? To visitors?      d. What tone exudes from the principal's office? Pick one or two significant things that you observed - a positive, a negative, a trend, an outlier - and give me a couple of paragraphs about it. 2.  What's your main take-away from the following article? Did anything surprise you?  ["Why Emotional Intelligence Matters for Educators"](https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/edcast/24/03/why-emotional-intelligence-matters-educators) ## Assignment In the software design world, they use the term “eating your own dogfood” or “dogfooding” to describe the process of gaining empathy. Dogfooding means that you actually use the tools that you are creating for other people. This term is especially apt when we talk about the parent experience with our schools. Much of the parent experience is hidden to us, as educators, because we don’t interact with parents nearly as much as we interact with students and other teachers. This was brought to a head for me as I left education and became "just a parent" at my kids' schools, no longer a teacher or principal in the district. I saw first-hand how hostile the school experience was for someone who wasn't a known entity. My kids' schools actively made me feel like I did not belong there as a parent. Buzz-through systems, which are supposed to keep our kids safe from active shooters, actually make our kids and parents feel like they are walking into a prison. It doesn't feel safe, it feels unwelcoming. Empathetic signage is where someone intentionally make signs that help people feel empathetic. The simplest example of this is the "updated" [active wheelchair signage](https://www.stopsignsandmore.com/p-2908-active-wheelchair-symbol-reserved-parking-only-sign-12x12.aspx) that indicates a person in a wheelchair but they are active and pushing themselves, where the [old wheelchair signage](https://maintco.com/content/uploads/2023/03/02-ADA-Parking-Lot-Requirements-in-California_.jpg) was someone who had their arms out in front, waiting to be pushed, as though they were incapable of pushing themselves. Making an effort in signage is a surefire way to show at least some level of emotional intelligence. ## Emotional Intelligence But emotional intelligence extends far beyond just signs. Having emotional intelligence also helps in decision-making in the direst of circumstances. While the business world focuses on the details about numbers and bottom line, it actually is even better to do it with empathy. Having "given permission" to several people to end a chapter in their lives by leaving a profession that doesn't serve them, I can say with full confidence that acting with empathy is actually better. It gives you a super power in helping people see what is real right in front of them. This quote is from the article ["Why Emotional Intelligence Matters for Educators"](https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/edcast/24/03/why-emotional-intelligence-matters-educators) > You can tend to the difficult decisions that you have to make, but it makes it a lot more understandable for the person you're dealing with and for yourself if you could do it from a place of empathy. Principals have a very hard time spending money on themselves for their own professional learning, even though they know that they need it: > “Many people just see it as, ’I'm not going to spend my money on me.’ That's number one. 'I'm not going to spend my money on adults. I'm going to spend it where we need it on kids.' We understand that,” Patti says. “But if they only realize that by the investment in the principals and the assistant principals and even the superintendent who also is not faring well in terms of long lasting, they would have such a different outcome. Such a more productive environment. Kids would be able to achieve. Adults who would be happy going to work. It would be a different world.” This is something that I have been saying for years, trying to get principals to spend money on themselves so they can be prepared and ready to face the challenges that come with the job.