How do leaders of learning operate differently from traditional managers?

Leaders of Learning who are charged with school improvement must address the climate and culture of the school.  The culture of an organization—the background assumptions and beliefs that go unchallenged and universally accepted within the system—is critical to its performance.  

Consider the culture of an organization to be the low spot on the floor—when you pour the water onto it, it is where the puddles form.  While the water can be pushed out of its puddles, when the external force is no longer applied, the water will re-puddle exactly as before.  This is why the context of the system is so essential to any effective analysis.  To have an order-of-magnitude lasting change to an organization, you must not push the puddles around—you must change the shape of the floor.

Traditional managers are puddle-pushers.  They can create "accountability" measures and put the squeeze on people to step up performance through monitoring.  And for a while, they can be effective.  But over the long haul, unless there is a shift in the culture, as soon as they stop looking, the system will shift back exactly as it was.

A Leader of Learning must help the organization to learn and develop.  They create an environment for cultural shift through honest, open, non-judgmental observation and analysis.  People want to be successful and if they are stuck in a rut, even of their own making, they will (eventually) respond positively to honesty.

How do management tasks contribute to student learning?

The largest management task I spend my time on is the master schedule: writing it, maintaining it, revising it, changing it, scheduling students, changing student schedules, etc.

The Master Schedule MUST reflect the values and priorities of the school.  But often times there is pressure to compromise some of those values and priorities because of logistic conflicts.  For example, providing in schedule time for data teams means that there will be some periods with extra large class sizes.  And you'll hear it from those teachers with large class sizes.  Their arguments will be reasoned and rational.  "Why is my block 2 have 18 kids but block 3, the same course, has 35?  Why can't some kids be moved from block 3 to block 2." To enact those solutions, however, you may have to violate the principle of in-schedule time for data teams.

I spend a lot of energy puzzling out solutions to these kinds of problems so that we can stay true to our values and priorities while minimizing some of the negative side effects of those solutions.  It's tricky.  But if the root of our values and priorities is to improve student achievement and promote student learning, it is one critical management task.

Year Round School?

Oh yes!  It is so much better for how people actually learn and develop.  But there is that cost...

Why can't we still work have 180 days of school but not have all 11-12 weeks off happen over the summer?  Why not have 6 weeks off in the summer and the other 5 weeks sprinkled throughout the year?  I know I could sure use a break in February. And a week off at Thanksgiving would certainly help my attitude.

Plus for those that would like a little extra pay,  we could offer "intercession" classes for students who would like to spend a week in specialized study.

I am not the first to suggest this.  But such a plan would get my vote in an instant. 

... Looking over all my reasons for the shift in calendar, I only give reasons about why it would be good for me.  Perhaps I need to really examine this proposed solution and study how it might affect students and families before I vote.  *sigh*   Ethics.

You're the leader so you oughtta know...

I was working with a teacher leader in my school on our staff development plan for second semester when she said something very interesting.  She told me that because I was the School Improvement Leader I was supposed to have all the answers about how to create student-centered classrooms and develop problem based learning in all content areas. "You're supposed to be teaching us.  Aren't you the expert?"

Reflecting on that comment I think it drives right to the heart about what does a teacher do?  I'm reminded of that old paradigm-shifter, "Sage on the Stage or Guide on the Side."  She was definitely putting me on the center stage under a white-hot spot light.

As a leader, I should be alert to trends, ideas, and methods for refining teacher practice.  But an expert on all things problem-based learning?  Wow!  I'm just not sure I can do that. I guess I have been approaching my role as a networker for my staff-- hooking them up with new ideas, other thinkers and each other in a way that creates dialog and development.  I certainly don't think I have all the answers.  I am not a filing cabinet of strategies and solutions. But I can create the conversations to discover those strategies and develop those solutions.

I probe people's thinking with questions.  I learn from them and share with others what I have learned.  I build the structures so that they can be in the right place at the right time with the right people to do the hard work of figuring it all out. And I roll up my sleeves and work just as hard right beside them.  

Fear Causes Cheating

This actually happened.  A teacher in my building took the District Benchmark test-- a district-wide test over the standard curriculum for a core-area class-- and slapped the title, "Practice Test" across the top, made a few minor changes to wording and order of multiple choice options, and handed out copies to all of his students to use as a "study guide" when preparing to take the test.  It did not occur to him that this would be unacceptable and unethical.

Like most schools, our staff (including administrators) have been talking about test scores.  How to raise them, how to close gaps, what to do about them.  North especially has been focused on scores since we had the lowest ITED scores in the entire state in 2010 and that resulted in a complete change in administration at our school. 

One thing we have been very careful to explain is that the test is a way of measuring student achievement-- it is not actually student achievement by itself.  It is just a tool for figuring out where we are and mapping a route to where we want to be.

But somehow that message was lost, at least with this one teacher-- probably more.  We have some teachers in our school who actually believe that they are being evaluated on how students do on tests (benchmarks or other tests).  We have explicitly stated over and over that teachers are absolutely NOT evaluated on student test scores.  But the misconception persists.

My only thought about why this might happen is because of fear.  I notice that when I am talking to a teacher who is especially fearful, that he or she only hears 1/3 to 1/2 of what I actually say.  I spend most of the conversation repeating myself in a variety of ways until I get some indication that they have grasped what I am driving at. And even then, I find that I have to re-engage them in the same conversation for several months before I finally feel I'm being heard. Our staff experienced the entire replacement of the Admin team, some of them gotta be thinking that they might be next.

So what do I do with my teacher and his "practice test"?  Do I make a clear example and cite him in his permanent file?  And if I don't, am I making a making a "JoePa" mistake?  Will the court of public opinion believe that I condone cheating if I don't write this up?

Do I recognize the level of fear this teacher is operating under and work with him to learn other pathways to student achievement?  After all, the district benchmark is a pilot test that isn't fully developed and addresses a scant 6-weeks of the curriculum. 

Suggestions?

Iowa Teaching Standards-- Revised?

I am working on a recommending committee charged with looking at the 8 Iowa Teaching Standards to determine if they need revision after a decade of use.  The question was posed, "Have we learned anything in the last decade that needs to be reflected in the standards?"  I think we have.

 When the Teaching Standards came out in 2001, I was electrified!  How had we ever worked without them!?!  They brought a clarity to my practice and opened my thinking about the characteristics of effective teachers. I worked for 10 years with the BEST program for Beginning Educators in Des Moines after working on the pilot program in 1999.  During that time I read 300 - 400 first year teacher's portfolios and watched them evolve as the teacher preparation programs developed using the standards.  In the past year and a half as a teacher evaluator, I've discovered new dimensions to the standards as I see how they affect our evaluation process.  In the past few years I find myself bumping up against the standards because we have grown beyond their current scope.

Where are the anchor standards for collaboration, teacher leadership, learner differences, and the teacher's ability to apply their content knowledge?  If  you look hard enough, they are in there... but they are not the focus.  A teacher could teach in the traditional style, in total isolation, with no more strategies than those commonly used in one-room schoolhouses, and meet all 8 teaching standards.

Why are our only options when evaluating teachers "meets" or "does not meet"?  What if a teacher is merely adequate in one area but truly exceptional in another?  What's the old saying?  "Only the mediocre are always at their best."  How do the Standards guide our professional development and refinement of our practice?

Someone on the recommending committee reminded everyone of the amount of work that went into the current teaching standards.  The speaker remarked that the Teaching Standards are deeply embedded in our system.  He asked, "Is the benefit that we would expect from revising or updating the standards worth the cost in time, money, and training it would take to make the switch?"  That is a wonderful question.  I guess the answer would depend on how we revised the standards.

If we reflected on what we have learned over the last ten years and we shift our thinking from the characteristics of effective teachers to the characteristics of teacher effectiveness, then ABSOLUTELY revising the standards are worth the effort.

Difficulty Blogging

I am torn. 

One the one hand, I spend so much of my day thinking, discussing and reading about education, education reform and school improvement, that when I get home I have little interest in writing one more thing on the topic.

On the other, I have always viewed it as my personal responsibility to the profession to engage in the important conversations of the day.  Not just as a reader and listener.  But also as a thinker and speaker. Certainly, blogging, if done well, is about thinking and "speaking".

I have so many thoughts in my head that I could write about.  But sifting through them, I wonder how much is the same old thing I always say. Maybe at this time of day I am much more interested in reading and listening. 

Ah well, maybe for the wide audience that probably only encompasses me, I will formulate my thinking for future conversations.