# Weekly Reflection 8 In my years of leading schools, I've learned a few things. I still have much to learn. that is for sure. But one thing has certainly stood out for me, and that is the idea of building trust with my teachers, staff, students, and community members. Not only do we all have to work together, but we also must have relational trust in order for success to happen (Bryk, 2003). We can't just assume that someone is good at their job. We have to truly believe it, and when we don't believe it, things break down. This idea of competence and core role responsibilities is so important because everybody hast to believe that the people that are working with ARE competent (Bryk, 2003). It is my belief that many educators think that parents and others telling them how to do their jobs is because the parents and others think teachers don't know how to do their jobs, but I don't think that is it. And it's not just happening in education. "Doctors are finding that many of their patients are engaging in independent research about their conditions and come with detailed questions and recommendations for their treatment" (p. 10, Tschannen-Moran, 2014). Not to mention the advertising by pharmaceutical companies that encourages folks to go talk to their doctors about particular ailments and tell their doctors what medication they need. The phenomenon is a result of easier access to information that what we have had in the past. While working on a project this weekend, I used Perplexity AI to solve a particular coding question that would have taken me a very long time to solve without the help of AI. When searching for the solution to my problem on Google, this was the first page: ![[CleanShot 2024-03-04 at [email protected]]] There is a lot of stuff there, and none of it is helpful at first glance. Using [Perplexity.AI](https://www.perplexity.ai/search/Jekyll-local-site-PEWjpbofQHm3i.ncfu0wWw) gave me a different perspective. The AI did the search for me, and offered me three solutions to my problem. ![[CleanShot 2024-03-04 at [email protected]]] Number 2 was the solution, by the way. Lest you think I'm something of a coder, I'm not. And I didn't know what these things meant. But the AI gave me enough information to make it clear what I needed to do. Here's how this relates. For a long time I have not found Google to be competent. I don't have relational trust in Google anymore. If our families or teachers or principals, or students can easily find things that contradict what we are saying, it will be easy for them to lose faith in our system. So, we have to continually work to build that relational trust. I want to highlight one suggestion from Bryk and Schneider: "Effective principals couple these behaviors with a compelling school vision and behavior that clearly seeks to advance the vision" (p. 43, 2003). A principal having a vision and acting in accordance with that vision is one of the most powerful things I've personally seen in building trust. It seems strange to think that, but all stakeholders notice when a principal doesn't have a vision, and where "there is no vision, the people perish" Proverbs 28:19. ## References - Bryk, A. S. (2003). Trust in schools: A core resource for school reform. _Educational Leadership_, _60_(6), 40–40. - Tschannen-Moran, M. (2014). _Trust matters: Leadership for successful schools_ (Second edition). Jossey-Bass. - King James Bible. (2008). Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1769)