Creative-Transcendental Leadership (a statement of educational philosophy)

Through my graduate studies and experiences with students and colleagues, I have developed my understanding of educational leadership into the philosophy of Creative-Transcendental Leadership. This theory, rooted deeply in the Jesuit tradition in which I was educated during my formative years of high school, upholds as its ultimate goal the creation and fostering of true, transformative excellence: on an individual level, in the classroom, and in the world.

Creative-Transcendental Leadership calls us to encourage the innovation and industry of each member of our community by providing channels for personal development and creativity. As educators, we are constantly creating: lessons, opportunities, solutions, and relationships. Through our innate call to be creative, we strive to ignite our students’ desire to learn—to distinguish themselves academically, artistically, and athletically—and to contribute to society through service. Furthermore, we have a calling beyond mere success in school. Our duty is to help students strive for their full personal-social-emotional-spiritual potential, and to help them understand that their every effort can have a greater purpose, one that transcends ordinary achievements such as good grades or high scores.  At the heart of this process is the Jesuit insistence on the magis (literally the “more”). We must be tireless in our quest for more knowledge, better understanding, and a deeper commitment to one another and our communities, and we must inspire students on these levels, as well. In this daily commitment, we truly change lives and make the world better.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his speech “The American Scholar,” said, "[G]enius looks forward: the eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates. To create—to Create!—is proof of a divine presence.” It is in this spirit that I have taught scores of young people and teachers to seek their own genius. As a teacher, I give students space to find their “Aha! moments”--a critical essay on Gatsby does not begin with a prompt prescribed by the teacher, but rather the student’s own response to the question “What do I love/not love about this book?” We discuss, we chase the proverbial rabbit down the hole, we develop theories, and we form conclusions. Students and teachers grapple together, inspired by one another and by the spirit that gives creativity and curiosity to all people. In one such scenario, a comment from a student led to the preparation and performance of a well-researched and dynamic mock trial, in lieu of what could have been a forgettable test on rhetoric and logical fallacies. The goal, for me, is to always try to find ways to link the lesson to a lived experience, so that it can be made real.

With some great studes

Collaboration is vital to faculty-driven projects as well. One night I told a few teachers about Kairos, a four-day retreat that I went on in high school. We talked about the possibility of starting the retreat for seniors at our school in Georgia. We planned, shared the idea with others, adapted manuals, trained student leaders, convinced other teachers to join us, and took 20 students on the very first Kairos in the school’s history. It was a milestone for me to recognize, in my final year teaching there, that the retreat was on its tenth year, that we had shared a life-changing experience with over 1,000 students and a majority of the faculty. Kairos continues to thrive there to this day, a legacy I’m proud of. Such joyful moments of  shared accomplishment are what form and transform community, shaping both personal experience and the culture and ethos of the school. This is what happens when we allow the Holy Spirit to guide our teaching and to be present in our classrooms.

In all of my work in education, I learned to acknowledge two basic human tendencies in everyone. The self-transcending tendency—the desire to be a part of something bigger than oneself, to connect with others, and to enjoy fellowship in a community; and the self-contracting tendency—the desire to know oneself, to be apart from the crowd, to be unique. I have exercised this balance in my teaching, as well as in my administrative work. I celebrate and empower the individuality of teachers by seeing their different strengths, and understanding that effective teaching comes in many forms. Let the gifted lecturer lecture; the innovator, innovate; the facilitator, facilitate. To prevent great teaching from happening in a (self-contracting) vacuum, I have helped facilitate a peer-observation program. Visiting colleagues’ classes, a faculty gets to know each other, and the (self-transcending) door is thrown open: teachers learn new styles and grow together in new ways that benefit students and the whole school. Collectively, collaboratively, we are called to rise above our positions as students, teachers, and administrators, in order to contribute something new to the world, something genuinely our own. As such, the practice of Creative-Transcendental leadership is not reserved for school leaders, but for all members of the community.

I have little doubt that education chose me, and not the other way around. When I was a freshman at St. Joseph’s Prep, I sat in my English class with our teacher, a young Jesuit. He taught us to question everything, to always strive for more, to understand and serve others, and to set the world on fire. I’ve continued to answer those challenges throughout my life. As the great educator and Jesuit leader Father Pedro Arrupe wrote: “Nothing is more practical than finding God--that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way.” In education, and the full spectrum of humanity that it epitomizes, I have, indeed, found and fallen for the divine.