Living Faithfully

Living Faithfully is for anyone interested in education and education policywhether parent community member teacher student of leadership or policymaker. It looks at school leadership and reform in an alternative way followingthe story of change at Washington School a troubled grades 5-6 center in a smalltown in Western Oklahoma. Not only does the book address a neglected populationthe more than 1/3 of the nation's children who go to school in small towns andrural areas it uses the occasion to invert thinking about school reform. It arguesthat in today's policy climate where guaranteed standard outcomes are touted asgoals of education leadership schemes even those designed to challenge topdownbureaucratic models are quickly co-opted to produce the appearance of learning. Prevailing leadershiptheories beg the question of who is being transformed and to what end failing to challenge assumptions anddominant ideas of contemporary education and leadership thinking.Drawing on Philip Phenix's idea of the faithful life the book proposes an alternative way forward. Phenix talksabout connections between school and life. According to Phenix the faithful life is concerned with the normativequestion of what is good true right just beautiful and holy. This is not the vocabulary of current educationpolicy. But it describes the kind of community created at Washington School despite its history of failure. And itdescribes what most families want for their children whether they live in thecity or country America or elsewhere: an education that matters.