Many of these activities commonly focus on happy and positive feelings and thoughts, at the expense of allowing an examination of more painful issues. This is especially problematic for disenfranchised and failing students, who, through this type of structure, receive direct and indirect messages from the group structure to not deal with the depths of their pain, anger, frustration, sadness, hurt, anxiety, or fear." (Bemak, 2005, p.1) The need for a culturally diverse approach must not be lost, either in the approach of education of counselors and educators, despite the need to build teams and effective groups. Controversially, Bemak entertains the suggestion that an ethnic and gender match between students and guidance counselors might be a needed additional support for students from at-risk groups, although he finally rejects the idea as impractical. (Bemak, 2005, p.5) the article is provoking and challenging to accepted norms, suggesting that the need to build a school community must not conceal individual differences and special needs of students, and that the need for harmony must not cloud adminstrator's eyes to the reality of the student's home and social envionments. Any human resource professional should read this article and find interest in its unapologetic defense of the need to acknowlege the problems of creating a community filled with differences, although Bernak could have included more examples of effective use of groups that fostered the children most in need, whom are the primary preoccuation of his aricle.

Marzano, Robert Timothy Waters & Brian a. McNulty. (2005) School Leadership that Works. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development, 2005.

Robert J. Marzano, Timothy Waters, and Brian a. McNulolty offer a comprehensive, step-by-step guide to implement a leadership program based upon faculty meetings, consultations with parents,...

Situational leadership, or flexible to on-site attention student needs is deemed key, as well as communication between faculty members. The authors strike a contrast between what they call first-order change or incremental change and second-order change which is a sudden, decisive step taken by the educational leadership. Although both forms of change are necessary, and first order change is inevitable, the authors stress the need for second-order, seismic changes to create better ways to monitoring and evaluating student success for quality, build a positive teaching culture based on communication and mentoring between faculty mentors and parent input, and to have a strong leader with clear ideals and beliefs. Constructing groups and meetings that foster and define such ideals are essential.
This type of actively induced change allows more subtle first order changes to occur, such as fostering personal relationships between the faculty, creating a deeper base of knowledge of the curriculum of instruction, fostering faculty optimism, and making the learning process constant for all persons involved at the school, including teachers. However, if sudden second order changes are not taken to improve today's schools, then the inevitable slower, incremental changes will not nearly be as positive.

This is a hands-on approach to participative management and not simply a theoretical restatement of its benefits. Human resource professionals in other areas might not find the prescription as interesting as educators, as the suggestions are specifically targeted to schools and the populations of administrators, teachers, parents and students the school serves. But for those educational personnel wishing practical solutions for the problems facing their school, this book is ideal.