A long time ago, when I was a kid, there was something known as a variety/sketch comedy show. One of the more popular variety show was The Carol Burnett Show. It came on CBS on Saturday nights, and my family rarely missed it. While on the air for 11 seasons, the show won 25 prime time Emmy’s and in 2023 was voted #23 by Variety on its list of the 100 greatest TV shows of all time.
Carol Burnett herself is now 92 years of age, and is still active on the small screen, most recently shooting a cameo appearance as herself on “Hacks”, an HBO Max series about the second act of an aging comedian. Burnett herself has collected seven prime time Emmy’s, six Golden Globes, a Grammy, an honorary Tony, two Peabodys, the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and, in 2019, the first-ever Carol Burnett Award, a special Golden Globe given for lifetime achievement in television and named in her honor.
Now you may be asking yourself “What does Carol Burnett have to do with A Better Path to Learning?”
I read with interest a recent New Yorker interview with Burnett, especially the lessons she taught on leadership:
“…when it came to running the day-to-day operations of ‘The Carol Burnett Show,’ Burnett has said, ‘there was no doubt who was in charge’: at the height of the show, in 1971, she was featured, beaming, on the cover of Life under the headline ‘Mrs. Joe Hamilton.’ [Burnett’s second husband and the show’s executive producer] Burnett told me that, in the realm of professional decision-making, she has always suffered from a fear of being ‘seen as a bitch.’…Burnett said appreciatively, ‘I’m a people pleaser.’ If Burnett had a problem with a particular sketch on her show, she would tell the writers that she didn’t understand it rather than deliver criticism. She recalled on rehearsal during which she and the singer Eydie Gorme were practicing a duet of ‘Everything’s Coming Up Roses’ and the director kept haranguing them for moving out of the spotlight, until Gorme harangued him right back. Burnett told me, I wanted to kiss her feet! But she didn’t have to come back the next week.’”
Getting kids to learn is all about relationships, and there are too many classroom teachers and other school leaders in our traditional K-12 system that don’t understand the importance of building good will between themselves and the children they serve.
Traditional school leaders don’t talk enough about how their young learners can grow – academically, socially, and emotionally. Traditional leaders don’t empower their young learners to define, plan, execute, and evaluate their own learning. Leadership doesn’t expect their young learners to learn how to learn for themselves. Traditional leaders don’t expand learning from their stagnant classrooms to the possibility of anytime, anywhere. Instead of the world being their classroom, young learners are destined to sit in 30 x 30 feet classrooms learning what a school district’s curriculum department wants them to learn. Finally, traditional leaders are fearful to embrace today’s technology, instead choosing to practice pedagogy made popular back in the 20th century move than 25 years ago.
Carol Burnett, like most organizational leaders, could have won over her staff and her fans with the practice of “position power,” or the commandment to respect me because of the position I hold.
Instead, Burnett practiced “people power,” where Burnett won the minds and hearts of everyone around her because of how she treated people and the relationships she built because of that treatment.
Til tomorrow. SVB
A Better Path to Learning 
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