When the School Leadership Falls Victims of 'Edifice Complex' Syndrome

By:  Gilbert M. Forbes
DepEd Quezon, Region IV-A  (CALABARZON)

For quite a long time, more than two decades already, it has been experienced and observed that much focus have been directed and given to institutional projects otherwise known as ground improvements (landscaping) or beautification projects of all sorts among our schools.  So much investment without careful planning is spent in these project without considering its continuing maintenance cost or sustainability and returns on investment.  Teachers too are not prevented or excused from shelling their monetary share in the process. 

Delaire Elementary School  in Pennsauken, NJ, USA

At the outset, it isn't surprising to see our schools look like a mini-park or resembles a resort!  I am particularly afraid that many of us particularly school leaders have been infected with the so called 'edifice complex' syndrome or sickness. Unfortunately, we might be setting aside some of the most important things unintentionally. Sad to say, some authorities whose main function is curriculum and instructional supervision are encouraging, tolerating even making it as indicator of how good or better the school, its stakeholders and the school leadership is.

Surprisingly, schools in other countries particularly those which are topnotch when it comes to education like Japan and Finland or even the United States, a super power country have simpler school landscapes, even interiors as compared to the Philippines.

SO SIMPLE: A typical Japanese rural school.

With this, it is thought that it would be better to look back at our priorities.  What is really needed by our pupils and students.  How do these interventions going and is going to affect teaching-learning process and so the performance of our learners and quality of education in a larger perspective?

Probably, engineers and architects tasked to construct our school buildings should already consider and include specific landscape and designs for our schools to follow and maintain so that not much financial resources are spent for it.  In a third world economy and in a country where less than 5% of the GDP is allotted to education, it is a great relief.  

Financial resource commonly generated by the stakeholders can then be allotted to most important and much needed things, i.e., instructional materials which are the immediate source and instrument that will help raise educational performance and academic standards of our schools.  More so, on other ways that will strengthen and improve basic education performance indicators.

Being Whole, Becoming Holy: Upholding the Integrity Among Education Leaders

By:  Fr. Roderick C. Salazar Jr.
Director, SVD Mission Philippines, Inc.
First National Assembly of Education Leaders, Sept. 20- 22, 2017, PICC Manila Philippines

There is a philosophical principle first in intention last in execution.  Being and becoming on one side and whole in holy on the other side.  The word paired with being is whole.  The word that is introduced by becoming is holy.  Leaders then or its singular form leader and related words lead and leadership.  Among the many definitions of leadership the one that I like best is what Vance Packard wrote in his book The Pyramid Climbers.  He said, in essence leadership appears to be the art of getting others to want to do something that you are convinced should be done.  Towards, in that phrase, make it stand out from other definitions.  To want.  Take this away and you might indeed still get people to do something that you are convinced should be done but you’ll have exercised may not be leadership anymore.  It could very well be martial law, dictatorship.  But with these two words to want what is revealed is that leadership is really a matter of the heart.  The leader so touches the inner being of so stirs the soul that react of following which follows is a choice made freely motivated from within.

What this notion side by side with the usual of idea of leadership as taking charge and getting things done. Contrast this with the familiar picture of corporate management on the one side and the work force on the other side bargaining with bonuses and incentives, rewards and benefits and listen to these questions of James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner in their book The Leadership Challenge.  If that has been normal, picture of management and leadership in corporate characters.  What of those who have no bonuses to give, no promotions to offer and no performance to write.  What of those who cannot pay any compensation and yet asked us to contribute our time, our resources, our services, our energies, even our lives.  What of those who must rely upon our willingness, our internal motivation, to give ourselves to some just cause.  Do they not lead?  Keep this in mind so that we can be ready to look at transformational leadership. 

The idea and term was first introduced by James MacGregor Burns in his Pulitzer Prize winning book published in 1978.  Bernard M. Bass would later expand his idea and so would a host of other writers.  Putting together the contributions of these individuals we can differentiate between transactional and transformational leadership.  The first is characterized as the exchange of valued things that serve the individual interest.  This turns in contrast to collective efforts focus towards common interest.  Transactional leadership is a process of exchange the root word being Trans meaning between and act or action, Trans act, transactional leadership, the leader in this case clearly specifies what he or she wants.  Determines what the employees want and brokers the contractual exchange of the two.  So the contractual relationship is based on agreed upon goals and minimum acceptable performance levels.  Rewards for satisfactory performance or penalty for unsatisfactory work.  The negotiation that is involved the exchange or transaction that occurs lead to the naming to this kind of leadership transactional. 

Management understood in the traditional sense is equated with it.  By contrast, transformational leadership occurs when one or more persons engage with others in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality.  We ask ourselves then, what shall we do?  We ask ourselves who are we dealing with transactions or we transforming people?  What is the kind leadership that we are doing?

In his 1978 work, Burns mentioned the importance of a leader in both imparting and compelling forces and in leveraging his or her charismatic personal qualities in support of the vision.  So when, Bernard Bass took of the pulpit, he said that transformational leadership is comprise of charismatic leadership distances of reasoning and inspiring others to follow the vision.  Individualize consideration which concerns the leader developing the follower and intellectual stimulation, new ways of thinking, problem finding and solving.  To these others would add the importance of visioning, promoting shared values, culture shaping, role modeling, trusting and empowering.  The theory is that these practices inspire followers to exert extra effort, become self-led leaders and enhance commitment to the common purpose of the group and the leader.  

Indeed Burns sees leadership as inducing followers to act to certain goals that represent the values and the motivation.  The wants, the needs, the aspirations and expectations of both leaders and followers.  In other words, leadership is a relationship between leaders and followers who are acting interactively to attain some purpose. 

And this is what Burns, Packard said which I quoted earlier, leadership is the art of getting others to want to do something that you are convinced should be done.  For when a vision is shared and the longing for it has become common to both leader and follower, then the movement towards the goal comes quite naturally.  And one then knows that leadership has been exercise.  Leadership is an art and stirs the followers from the heart.

Taking off from the concepts just presented, two others offer their insights without actually using the terms transformational.  James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, who were also quoted earlier, articulated the idea even more.  And their research on leadership they found out that leader is at their best when they challenge, inspire, enable, model and encourage.  A shorter way of differentiating transactional from transformational leadership is to look at the spelling of the verb to lead.  It starts with an L and end with a D.  L E A D that is transformational.  If you reverse the first letter and the last letter it become D E A L, it becomes transactional.  

How do you deal with your people?  Where are we at this words and goods familiar not to ask that we try to use them from our position in the organization? What do you think ourselves?  Because we are the director and the president and the superintendent and the supervisor, who are we?  

Stories told that once Mohammad Ali boarded a plane and when it was about to take off, the announcement came that everyone should fasten their seatbelts.  And when the stewardess walks the aisle to check everyone complied.  She approached Mohammad Ali and politely said sir, “Please fasten your seatbelt.”  Mohammad Ali arrogantly answered loud enough for everyone to hear.  “I am the greatest.  I don’t need any seatbelt.  I am superman.”  Without missing a deep, the stewardess asked politely replied, “then please superman, get off the plane and fly.” And wordlessly, the greatest just put on his seatbelt.

Are we the greatest because of the title that we have?  In another occasion in an airport, the check-in counter was swarm with people waiting to be served when a man drunk the queue and demanded that he be served first.  The clerk said, “Sir please takes your turn and the queue.”  The man shouted and said, “Don’t you know who I am?”  And the clerk took the public address system and announces, “Ladies and gentlemen, there is a man here at the check-in counter, who does not know who he is.  Anyone who knows him, please come and identify him.”  Amused chuckles of the people, the man who did not know who he was immediately took his place in the queue. 

Do you know who I am?  Do you know who you are?  Are you that kind of leader who will rise only on titles and positions?  Let us now look at where we are supposed to be as leaders in education. 

Integrity also comes from the Latin word which means whole.  Corruption breaks the heart, the core of your value.  That’s the reason why so many problems in our country today because heart has come to do hell.  If you don’t have your heart whole, corruption follows.  

A person of integrity is living rightly not divided.  It is not being a different person in different circumstances.  A person of integrity is the same person in private that he or she is in public.  Integrity is related to the word integrating which means the result of infusing together of different parts into a coherent consistent whole. 

Public and private life is the same for the person of integrity.  Integrity is what we do when you are not aware that your children are looking and listening.  Integrity is who we really are on the inside.  Other descriptions of integrity are what you see is what you get and who you are when nobody is looking.  Integrity is the wholeness which is the first part of my title of this talk.  Being whole.  It is doing what you say you’ll do. 

In the words of Jesus about love and our relationship with God, you shall love the Lord your God with a whole heart.  With a whole soul.  With your whole mind.  With your whole strength.  Love your neighbor as you love yourself.  Whole, entire, complete, not a fraction.  No time in the history of our nation is this world integrity find out for fulfillment.  In the times and by some about elected leaders and the followers, we are besieges with lies and fake news, and killings and insults and tens of lies and more lies.  Where are we going?  Where is the integrity of this beloved nation Philippines? 

At least this assembly is looking at what integrity requires.  What is happening?  It is indeed timely that starting today on the anniversary of the declaration of martial law in our country where different positions on leadership and integrity are raised.  Without integrity, where are we?

This is not easy.  If my leader above me says or does something patently wrong.  Or even evil, what should I do?  If I speak up for the right and true, I may lose my job.  This is an existential situation.  There are no easy answers. 

Genuinely loving those God has placed in our life’s path is the starting point of that influence.  Add to that a commitment to using every ability, God has given us to be the best that we can be regardless of what we do or where we are and you have a recipe for leadership to succeed.  This is really what leading from the heart is all about. 

Leading and leading from the heart as God designed it means our relationships are always central to our actually being the best that we can be.  We make mistakes, we fall.  We sinned but the God who called us to be whole will help us to become holy.  There will be so many temptations in our lives.  We betray our faith, our values, and our loves.  We make compromises but we must rise after every fall.

There is a song that most Filipinos know.  The story behind the song My Way is that after decades of being in the entertainment world, Frank Sinatra felt that he should retire.  He asked a fellow singer who is also a composer Paul Anca to propose a signature song for Sinatra’s farewell concert which is how Paul gave him the song with the catchy first line. “Farewell tour of Frank Sinatra, ladies and gentlemen, Frank Sinatra.”  He goes up on the stage, “And now, the end is near.  And so I face the final curtain.”  You know that song did say in the proud final line, “I did it my way.” 

It is truly great for a leader to do things his or her way.  It is the mark of originality.  But in the moral scheme of things, each ones way is not God’s way.  The life would be a failure.  Jesus would say it.  “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but suffer the loss of his soul.” 

Back to the Frank Sinatra’s story, so after his farewell tour, telling people to do things his way, he retired but the entertainment body in him refuse to go.  After some years, the world knows that he is on a comeback tour.  “Huh, he already said good bye.”  But he goes to Paul Anca and he said Paul, write me a song.  “I thought that was the lost song for you.”  “Come on Paul, give me a song.”  He did.  “Ladies and gentlemen, Frank Sinatra, in his comeback tour!”

I know I said that I was leaving,

but I just couldn't say good-bye.

It was only self-deceiving

to walk away from someone who

Means everything in life to you.

You learn from every lonely day

I've learned and I've come back to stay.

Let me try again; let me try again.

We must learn to say, Lord, let me try again.  Upholding.  It really means to hold on up.  For everyone to see.  For us not to be ashamed of who we are.  Uphold.  Hold up.  It is not meant to make a ghost of who we are but it is also what Jesus said, “We must be the light of the world.  Who you are.  Stand up for others to see.  Not for your own benefit but for the sharing of the light to this world. 

If God made us body and soul.  Matter and spirit.  He meant for us to do whole, integral.  We cannot be whole or holy unless God holds us up.  Integrity is wholeness.  Wholeness is holiness.  This is what each have all wants try to achieve.  The goal the end must be clear even if the way is not easy.  We need God.  And we need one another.

Many years ago in 1963, there was the popular movie entitled The Cardinal.  It was about a priest who became a cardinal despite his having vouch of unfaithfulness to his vocation.  There is a lovely song connected to the film which of us can learn, priest or not, religious or lay, learn in sing and pray when struggle to uphold our integrity.

Should my heart not be humble, should my eyes fail to see,

Should my feet sometimes stumble on the way, stay with me.

Like the lamb that in springtime wanders far from fold,

Comes the darkness and the frost, I get lost, I grow cold.

I grow cold, I grow weary, and I know I have sinned,

And I go seeking shelter and I cry in the wind,

And though I grope and I blunder and I kneel and I'm wrong,

Though the rose buckles under where I walk, walk along

'Til I find to my wonder every task lead to thee,

Or that I can do is, pray, stay with me.

Stay with me.

God help us.  Hole integrity among education leaders.  Thank you.

Motivation in Public Service

By:  Ambassador Henrietta T. De Villa
First National Assembly of Education Leaders, PICC Manila Philippines, Sept. 20- 22, 2017

Why is the heart so important because it is where all dealings are made?  There is the heart.  The heart is the first organ that is visible. Engaging your heart is vital because you have the power, you have the means and you have the captive subject to shape a new and different future for the country. I hope you are very excited about what you do.  Yes, o yes, you have to be because it is always an adventure and an adventure to newness really is quite exciting.  Servant leaders of the nation with a heart, a pure heart, a clean heart, a compassionate heart.  And you have the power to chart a new course for our country that could even impact our ASEAN nations to draw them out, to draw us out, of the grab mentality.  Grab power, grab profit, grab pleasure.  I hope you will ponder on this and start doing it. 

I still remember my mother who was a Math teacher in FEU.  For her, math is not merely addition, subtraction, multiplication, division or equation.  She expanded her math lessons to wider dimensions, a more holistic meaning to the mathematical processes.  Subtracting pain through sharing, adding joy and hope through good deeds.  Multiplying talents with community work and dividing work load through volunteerism.  Sharing pain, having joy and hope, multiplying gifts, dividing the burden, this is engaging the heart of education leaders.  The sit of wisdom, the heart, compassion, most of all the start up motor of humanizing the person in society.  Education is an on-going process, a life-long project.  Even if in your case, education would be, educating in schools, within the confines of classrooms, within specific timelines, still there must be that consciousness that education is life-long and life-wide.  

What you teach and how you teach can detonate positive or negative heart bites.  TO TEACH IS TO SHOW SOMEONE HOW TO LIVE.  Teaching is not merely transmitting literal knowledge.  Teaching is making word and happening one.  So it is witnessing.  Pope Paul VI teachers teach best when they are witnesses.  Realize that engaging the heart is the dynamic force for motivation, experiences that becomes memories of the heart and lessons for a life-long and life-wide practice.

Mothering or parenting and teaching form a single vocation.  Both engage the heart to the hill in motivating their children and students to strive for excellence and to account for the hope that is in them.  Engaging the heart does not mean permissiveness.  It requires discipline.  A danger, parents are sometimes prone to probably due to the lack of time since both father and mother have to work.  Or the guilt provoked by this lack of time.  Neither does compassion mean, you can’t confuse it with pity.  If we spoon fed our daughters and sons of whatever age.  Your students of whatever level, there is a danger of turning them to become mental wimps, worst with hearts that crumble at the slightest stress or difficulty. 

Forms and substance but this has no reference to impeachment requirements.  Impeachment cases have become a dime a dozen now a days which is a sad commentary on public service.  Was it Jefferson?  I think its Jefferson who said, what we acquire too easily, we esteem too lightly. Going back to my sharing, this will focus on form and content.  The form, anecdotal narratives.  The content flushed out from the Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines which is invoked by every congressional investigation in aid of legislation, a dime a dozen too now a days.  Since I am not a lawyer or an elected servant of the people, I just went as far as the preamble articles I to III, because I find them all the highlights I needed in these sections which can be crunched into three headings for purposes of motivation, motivating you as educators and public servants.  

The three motivators; maka-Diyos, makabayan, makatao.  Maka-Diyos when you read the constitution, that is the first part.  It invokes God, so it is recognition of the primacy of God.  And makabayan states the national territory that is our country, the Philippines which public servants and all of its citizens have to develop her patrimony and secure her posterity.  And then makatao particularly the poor, ang mga pinapahirapan, ang mga isinasaisantabi, mga kinakalimutan para sa panahon natin ngayon mga pinapatay.  Paulit-ulit, andun po sa Philippine Constitution ang karapatang pantao napakahalaga na ang karapatang pantao, hindi pinapahalagahan ng isang libo lamang.  Wala pong . . . ,  it cannot be buy you.  Do not be scared even if you are public officials to concern what is right and what is wrong.  I admire your secretary.  She vouched for the character of Kian De Los Santos.  That was brave.  I thought that was very brave.  What will make maka-Diyos, makabayan, makatao excellent motivators is love.  And love is not an emotion.  It is an action of the heart.  Love for God, love for country, love for people especially the poor.  This love must be proactive not passive.  Not just a passing emotion. Naku, kawawa naman.  Naku talagang mali ‘yan.  Magrarally tayo.  Pagkatapos, nakalimutan na.  It has to be a passion for it to be a life-long and life-wide. 

Passion is a produce of the heart.  A heart that has been loved.  A heart that has known what it is to be loved and what it is to love.  ‘Yong mga nakaranas, naïve, na mahal sila.  Na inibig sila.  Those who experienced how to be loved without looking at our warts, or moles, or defects, simply for ourselves, that is the best motivation, iyon ang nag-uudyok sa puso na magmahal din,  that dictates the heart to love too. 

I am a Catholic.  And I’m very proud to be one.  I believe in one God for whom nothing is impossible.  My God whom I believe who loves me and is always there for me, come hell or high water.  You have to believe in something or in someone.  Whatever your faith is or whatever god you worship, your faith, your god must be your all in all.  What is this that gives meaning to life?  To your vocation as educators.  God who is love is the absolute motivation for remaining faithful in being maka-Diyos, makabayan, makatao, in all things that we do and say. 

You know, Pope Francis is a very practical man.  He is very kin on encounter.  Iyong makipagtagpuan.  Because life is all about relationships. You relate with our children.  Children relate with their parents.  You relate with your students.  You relate with each other.  Life is relational.  We relate with people we encounter. Kaya best iyong person to person contact eh.  Kaya ako, hindi ako naniniwala nung bibigyan na lang ng assignment ang mga estudyante.  Darating na lang kapag may eksamin.  Sa college yata iyon, mas type nila yon.  At hindi na nakikita.  Wala iyong exchange, interaction, engaging the heart.  And we need to encounter God in especial moments of our lives.

I met my God early in life.  I know it was not through my effort for what grade three girl student for seriously know who Jesus is.  He must have been the one who drew me.  To wake up early every morning and walk to an early mass. 6:00 o’clock in the morning.  And then, so that we will not be late in school which starts the next day at 7:30.  Since then, Jesus and I have been friends.  And I can tell you.  There is no bff better than He is.  And I know, He will save me from whatever fall I find myself into from whatever foolishness I may do He will save me because He loves me.

When you know you are love unconditionally, faithfully walking with you in sunshine and in rain.  Then this gives meaning to your waking, sleeping, breathing, working living. 

Motivation starts with relationships, carried through relationships, which bear fruit in relationships.  They can be good or bad fruit depending on the relationships you established and encounters that you have.  I am a Filipino and I am very proud to be one. 

You saw that, The Devil Wears Prada?  Ang galing-galing ni Merill Strip.  The Devil Wears Prada, kase kapag nagkaron tayo ng mga ilusyon, to buy this, to buy that, to wear this to wear that.  Hay naku, umpisa na ang katapusan.  Madali po kaseng matisod, di po ba?  Kaya kailangang balik-balikan ang dalisay na hangarin sa paglilingkod.  Alalahanin n’yo po si Bonifacio.  Humayo kayo, humayo tayo at ibangon ang bayan sa kawalan ng puri dahil sa katiwalian. 

When somebody does something for you, no matter how small, or even if it’s their duty to do so, show some appreciation, some affirmation because some affirmation expands the heart.  And motivates it to go an extra hundred miles for the magi’s be abundance to life. One of the things I cannot forget, he told me because he made an order that I should repeat it to as many people as I can.  Pope John Paul II said, “God has blessed the Philippines, with two things that is not present anymore in other countries; the richness of your faith and the closeness of your families. 

Engaging the heart knows no distinction, no barriers, no differences.  The three motivators, Maka-Diyos, makabayan at makatao.  I hope you will always remember God who is kind and merciful.  Slow to anger and rich in forgiveness.  Even if your students are nakakagigil.  That you will remember that.  Na araw-araw hahayo kayo at ikalat na walang pag-ibig pa, na hihigit sa pagkadalisay at pagkadakila,  kundi ang pag-ibig sa tinubuang lupa.

That when you encounter people especially the poor.  That you will teach them, rather show them, through your hugs and affirmation that there are no children of a lesser god.  And what better motivation for you than being true to what you are and what you do which is a privilege no amount of money can equal that privilege to form the minds and engage the hearts of the young Filipino, the new Filipino, the future’s authentic Filipino servant leader.  Education is on-going, life-long, life-wide.