Top 10 Tips for Leading in a Crisis

This past week an episode from the Innovator’s Mindset podcast came out that I was privileged to be a part of.  The interview was from the very beginning of Illinois’ Stay at Home order that resulted in our school buildings shutting down and switching to remote learning.  Listening to it has been a wonderful reflection tool for leading and learning during a crisis. Although almost six weeks later the themes we discussed still ring true, there is definitely more that I have learned in this journey.

Below are my greatest takeaways thus far.

1.      Continue to Focus on Relationships

This is truly the most important thing that we can do at any time, as leaders and as human beings.  Whether by email, text, phone call, virtual meeting or letter in the mail, find a way to regularly check on your staff and families solely for the purpose of seeing how they are doing.  Like George said in the podcast, this includes everyone.  People who you may think are completely fine may not be.  See if they need anything and just have a friendly conversation.   I have sincerely appreciated staff members who have reached out to me as well.  One of my teachers sends me funny memes and pictures on a regular basis.  I look forward to them so much!  They’ve helped really bad days when there’s a lot going on turn into manageable ones.  Social distancing may mean that we can’t be physically close, but shouldn’t mean that we distance ourselves from continuing meaningful relationships.

2.      Take Care of Yourself

You’ve probably heard this many times, but you can’t pour from an empty cup.  I know it’s hard.  I’m in 8 million virtual meetings on a daily basis myself while trying to balance with family responsibilities it can feel impossible to find the time, but you’ll be better if you do.

At the beginning of this I thought I could do it all.  I went about two weeks at full throttle and almost completely lost it by day 15.  My usual positivity was really forced.  It was hard to think and I don’t know that I was making the best judgment calls.  I had to change something fast.

For me, the taking care of myself ended up being a change in routine.  Monotony is my worst nightmare and I was trapped in a cycle of just that.  I started walking outside during some of my meetings.  I picked up coffee at a local coffee shop a few days a week for a treat.  I gave myself permission to not be busy every minute of every day and to sometimes just sit.  I started working on things outside of school that fed my creative soul.  It all made a huge difference and I am sincerely a better leader and human because of it.  Please, please, please take time for yourself each day.  You’ll actually get more done in the end and be happier doing it.

3.      Continue to Connect with the Community

Connecting with families is such an important part of leadership in any time, but when we don’t have the four walls of daily interaction to keep us all connected, it’s imperative that we find new ways to do so.  As an anchor of the community, supporting teachers, students and families will only make us stronger in a time of crisis.  Because there isn’t physical connection, regular facetime is imperative.  Look for ways to provide structure and routine that mirror what was happening before while also bringing in new and innovative ways that capitalize being at home.

At Jefferson, this connection has included:

• A daily morning message that is a hybrid of home and school.  I start the announcements celebrating birthdays each day, acting as the host.  The rest of the announcements is run by student contributions such as leading the pledge, sharing a talent, a challenge for other students, a wondering or even an example of some family fun.  It has been wonderful getting to see students show off talents that we might not have seen at school like acrobatics on a trampoline or cooking demos.  Today’s announcements included our PTA president and his two sons playing a rock version of the Star Wars Thrown Room Song.  I always close it with some encouraging words of positivity for the kids and/or parents.
• Both staff and student bedtime story read-alouds that come out at 3:00 p.m. on our YouTube Channel.
• Opportunities to connect virtually both synchronously and asynchronously through GoogleMeet, Zoom, FlipGrid Challenges, Instagram and Seesaw posts.  Every Friday in May I meet with groups of 5th graders to catch up and talk about their thoughts about going to Middle School.
• Spirit Week and last week of school activities developed by our Student Council that include a whole school virtual picnic and Field Day.
• Social Media posts about what our students have been up to while they have been at home as well as individual daily posts celebrating our graduating class of 5th graders.
• Staff collaboration videos sent to our families sharing how much we appreciate and miss them as well as what we’ve been up to at home.

Make sure that the sharing is not just one way.  Look for ways to incorporate families as well as staff in the community connection.

4.      Consistent Focus & Messaging

Since the beginning of this crisis, we have focused on two major things:  Connecting with kids and consistent communication.   Although there have been some shifts as to what this looks like as we continue to gain experience in the virtual world of learning, our focus continues to be the same.  I continue to reinforce this during team meetings, emails, 1:1 conversations as well as in my weekly Friday newsletter to staff and to families.   Feedback from our families has been incredibly positive in the area of both communication and connection as a result.

We have had some shifts from our district office throughout the time we have been at home related to various aspects of operations, grading and planning.  When these occur, I’ve found that significant changes are best communicated in a whole group virtual meeting (actually recommended to me by one of my awesome 5th-grade teachers).  This makes sure everyone hears a consistent message as well as gives opportunities for feedback which leads me to my next tip…

5.      Create Feedback Loops

Giving and receiving feedback is critical at any time, but especially when we are remote and not seeing on another on a regular basis.  Throughout this process, I meet with teams weekly to find out their needs as well as to receive feedback on processes and information being shared.  Our teachers have been asking both the parents and students for their feedback on our eLearning plans as they have progressed.  During the first month, I also hosted a “Town Hall” at our April PTA meeting to share with parents our plan as well as receive feedback on how we were doing in meeting Jefferson students’ needs remotely.  At the end of this month, I will also be sending out a final survey to families for positive feedback as well as suggestions for the future.  All of these things combined contribute to the regular improvement of our processes and helps to keep everyone connected as well.  It also will help to bridge a shared vision of education when we return in the fall or if we have to continue remote learning at any time in the future.

6.      Trust the People Closest to the Kids

This message is critical to the success of our students learning and feeling cared for at home.  Our teachers have been working with students since the beginning of the year and know them best.  They were rocking it when we were in school, but I have been blown away by the ways my teachers have been shifting their teaching practices to meet the needs of the students at home.  Trying out new technology, new ways to present lessons, and new ways to connect with kids have all come from my amazing staff.  This was rooted in a foundation of trust in staff expertise.  When we empower others, as opposed to limit their abilities based on a singular interpretation, great things happen for kids.  

The same applies to trusting our parents who know our students better than anyone on the planet.   Including parents’ ideas and feedback as well as supporting them when they need help is all an important part of the learning process, inside of school and out.  One of my greatest hopes after this is all over is that the collaborative and trusting relationships that we have continued to build during this time will continue when we return to our brick and mortar buildings.  The level of trust we give to our parents is a large factor in the success of this.  We can’t just ask for feedback, we need to act on the suggestions given.  If the idea is not feasible, it is important to explain why.

7.      Keep Meetings (& Messages) Short & Flexible

I don’t care if you are the funniest, most charismatic person ever, no one, and I mean no one wants to sit in a 3-hour virtual meeting.  People are trying to manage working remotely with taking care of family and 8 million other objectives of the day.  Prioritize your agenda to what is most essential.   The other items will still be there when we return to brick & mortar education and will be heard in a much more meaningful way when they actually apply to the work being done.  The same holds true for emails.  Keep your messages short and to the point.  When in doubt, default to what is reasonable.  

8.      Professional Learning Should Match Teacher & Student Need

Just like when we are in the four walls of a school, professional learning should include choice and be directly connected to the work teachers are doing.  Instructional coaches are making a huge difference during this time.  Our instructional coach at Jefferson attends virtual team meetings weekly and looks for ways she can support teachers to take things off of their plate.  She has created instructional tutorials for parents & students, modeled how to use tech tools to aide in synchronous and asynchronous teaching, offered office hours for families if a teacher is introducing a new way of learning to students and more.  She is thoughtful in the ways she shares new ideas or resources by communicating one new idea once a week at a scheduled time.  The things she shares are connected to conversations she has heard in team meetings or build upon the prior week.  Teachers can also reach out to her for coaching on any topic of their choosing.  For more information for how she is supporting our staff in new and innovative ways, check out my post, Coaching During a Crisis.

Avoid assigning articles on theory or required learning like scheduled webinars. Assigning blanket learning for all, especially when it is disconnected to the work currently being done is a major misstep that shows a lack of empathy as well as creates a perfect breeding ground for mistrust and resentment.  The most meaningful learning that will happen at this time will come directly from your staff.  We need to value their time and knowledge base as well as educator’s natural inclination and gifts in seeking out information and new ideas.  When we do, their teaching will far surpass anything we could have possibly imagined.

9.      Celebrate & Share the Good

There is so much good happening right now, but it may be hard to see because we’re all teaching in our own virtual classrooms.  My instructional coach and I have been attending team meetings once a week virtually for the purpose of seeing how we can support teams, but also to be able to share what other teams are up to.  This has been great for sparking new ideas as well as trying new things with students.  I continue to send emails to staff about the great work they are doing as well as share on social media learning happening as a result of my teachers.   When parents share something positive with me about a staff member I make sure I share it with them.   One of my colleagues highlights in her weekly newsletter something wonderful she’s seen in each of her team’s plans.  I plan to start doing this as well.  Good ideas need to be shared!

10.    Continually Learn & Plan for the Future

In any situation, the best thing we can do is reflect on our experiences to plan for the future.  As a staff, we are already thinking about next year, considering what teaching strategies and tools we want to make sure we continue to utilize.  A strategic plan for teaching students at the beginning of the year how to use various technological tools has been a large part of this conversation.  To start the year, my staff has asked that we focus our professional learning on various aspects of technology to better prepare ourselves if this were to happen again.  Teams have also been brainstorming ways they will use what they have learned in their classrooms in the fall.  If this happens again, (please no!) I am confident that we will be prepared because of our thoughtful reflection and planning.

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At the beginning of this, I felt like my greatest role was supporting my staff and families to stay connected as a community.  Six weeks later I continue to stand by this conviction.  Without our regular routines and interaction, it can be easy for anyone to start to feel disconnected and alone.  As leaders, our actions can either fuel that isolation, or be the antidote, bringing everyone closer.   When in doubt, air on the side of empathy.   

“Empathy is a strange and powerful thing. There is no script. There is no right way or wrong way to do it. It’s simply listening, holding space, withholding judgment, emotionally connecting and communicating that incredibly healing message of ‘You’re not alone.”  – Brene Brown

Coaching During a Crisis

Click Here for the Audio Version of this Post

Like the rest of the world, education has been deeply impacted by COVID-19.  From the ways that we build classroom community to instructional practice itself, we are reinventing, experimenting, and remixing almost everything we do.   Even the most technologically savvy of us weren’t prepared for the emotional toll this would take on our students, ourselves and our communities.  We’ve home for almost a month in my district and I am only just now feeling semi-comfortable in the shifts to my role as a leader.

It’s a time like this that I’m thankful for instructional coaches, especially our instructional coach at Jefferson, Pia Bartolai who jumped in from day one supporting teachers in ways I couldn’t have imagined.  In just a few weeks she has been working non-stop to help not only teachers, but students and families as well.  Her “greatest hits” have included:

• Creating tutorial videos for both staff and families to use (Seesaw, Zoom, GoogleMeet, FlipGrid, Screencastify etc.) 
• Holding virtual office hours for students and families to get help from her when a teacher is trying out a new technology 
• Creating an eLearning Dashboard that has everything teachers could need during this time all in one place with simple headings (Think 1-Page Hyperdoc Extraordinaire)
• Not overwhelming teachers by sending them a million resources at a time.  Instead, she sends out one email on Monday with a resource they might use with examples of how they might use it 
• She tries out the tools that teachers may be using first with a faux account so that she can answer questions from how students might be seeing the technology 
• She makes herself available whenever teachers may need her sharing her calendar so they can make appointments, letting teachers drive the meeting with what they need
• She attends each team’s virtual meeting each week and frequently offers to help create tutorials, videos, templates, etc.  She comes to the meeting with the attitude of, “what I can I do to help most?”
• She doesn’t, “should on people.”  (Listen to the podcast to understand this one)

When I thought about writing this post I realized that these ideas were probably best talked about in an audio form so that Pia could explain in more detail her thought process.  The recording is about 35 minutes.  I have included most of the transcript below.  To play the interview, click here.  Highlights include:

Up to 5:30:     Introduction & Pia’s Background

5:41:               Shifts in Coaching Since COVID-19

7:56:               Supporting Teachers in Technology with a Wide Variety of Experience

10:32              Rebuilding Classroom Culture & Community

13:50              Two Recommended Tech Tools for Remote Learning

17:38              Coaching Requests from Teachers

19:41              Leveraging Students Being At Home

20:38              Supporting Teachers in the Feedback Process to Students

24:56              Positive Effects & Possibilities For Teaching Moving Forward

26:41              Advice to Teachers, Coaches & Admin 

C: Can you share with our listeners how you’ve supported teachers throughout their time at home vs. at school?

P: Yeah, so I think my approach to coaching, my big rules for coaching haven’t necessarily changed. So I kind of live by two rules as a coach and one is like practice empathy and then the other one is like, don’t “should on people,” which is what was told to me I think in one of my first years of coaching, they just said, like, “Don’t should on people.” And so what I’ve noticed is in our new reality right now is that practice empathy. Empathy is hard right now because oftentimes as a coach, I’ve relied on my experience in the classroom to help to support me with that. I had nine years in the classroom so I would often ask myself as a coach like, “What would I want from a coach, as a teacher right now? If I was a teacher in their shoes right now, what would I need?” and none of us have ever experienced anything like this before, none of us have ever done remote learning. And so, you know that Brené Brown video…that we’ve watched about empathy and how she talks about… It’s got the animals and she talks about like don’t stare down into the hole and say like how’s it going down there, like actually get down in there with people. So that’s really what I’ve been trying to do as a coach is really try and get down there with teachers right now and try as much as I can to be able to put myself into their shoes. So what that’s meant for me is, I’ve been doing a lot of creating of tutorials and videos. I’ve been practicing what it would feel like in order to teach remotely, so I do a lot of screencasts, and Flipgrids, and virtual tutorials, a lot of trying to teach through Hangouts, or supporting teachers through Hangouts and sharing of screens. So it’s been a lot of just trying to get myself to understand as best as possible without ever having experienced what our teachers need right now and what they’re going through right now without having experienced it for myself.

C:  In coaching, we’re always trying to take off the plate as opposed to continually add to the plate. One of the things that I noticed that you’ve been offering in addition to making tutorials for the teachers, so that they could use those with their classes or giving those to parents is that you’ve actually offered office hours for kids to check in with you.  What’s been your feedback on that so far?

P: Yeah, so that’s something that is pretty new since we’ve been trying to move more towards some things that maybe teachers haven’t tried before. So teachers are really being asked to step outside their comfort zone right now, and teach in a completely different way than they ever have before. So, we have some teachers at our school who have been teaching for 25 years and have never been asked to teach like this. And so one way I’ve been trying to take some stuff off their plate is like you said by offering some office hours for students where they can check in with me or parents can check in with me to support them through some of the technology that they’re being asked to use that they may not have been asked to… Or been asked to use before. So, for example, with one grade level, they are gonna be doing with Flipgrids so I created a tutorial about Flipgrid from both a teacher point of view but then also from the student and parent point of view so that they can share that out with students and families, so that families can see it in action before they try it.

P: And then we set up a day where I will have office hours with those students and their families so if they needed to get in touch with me through Google Hangouts, and I can actually walk them through it, and we can share our screen so I can show them how to do it or if they just need to email me they have access to that. So that’s an option that we set up in order for me to best support not only those teachers but then also the students and the families with some of the new technology that they’re trying out.

C: Yeah, and I really appreciate that a lot. One of the pieces of feedback that we’ve gotten from a lot of our teachers through this is that the questions that they’ve been getting over email, most of them have been related to tech-related issues and so Pia really saw a need in a way to show that empathy, but also to help out our families and our community as well, and so I think that’s gonna be a really nice addition. So in talking about the learning piece, and how you’ve been helping teachers to maybe discover some new tools or some things that might just help with what they’re doing and planning, what have been your new thoughts about how you’ve been going about doing that?

P: Well, we initially set up an E-learning dashboard where teachers could go just so that they had easy access to everything that they might need. My number one goal right now is just to help teachers stay sane. And so, I know that they’re getting tons and tons of stuff so I’m trying not to overwhelm them with an overabundance of resources which is really hard and this time because there are so many ideas floating around out there. And so I’ve been trying to navigate through and mine through a lot of different ideas and kind of just share one a week with teachers. That could be really useful and beneficial to them and their students.

P: So that’s one way that we’ve been going about that, you know, it’s also, like I said, going back to just a place of empathy, we’re asking teachers to do something, a completely different teaching style. They had no warning. They had very little warning, they had very little training on this. So just reminding teachers that we’re not gonna be able to replicate their exact classrooms in a virtual environment, but they can recreate that same vibe that they had in their classrooms. A lot of their classrooms were built on relationships and community building and feedback for students. So, those things are more challenging in a digital environment but they are definitely possible in a digital environment so helping people think through how can they go back kind of to the beginning of the school year and… Like, when we were establishing our classroom community when we were thinking through how to build relationships in the community and in our classrooms. Like what were some of those things we needed to do then and how do we kind of do that now through… In our current reality with the digital environment.

C: And what have you seen our teachers kind of choosing to do that? How have they been going about setting that backup?

P: So, a lot of them are doing it through Zoom Meetings or through Google Meets, more so through Google Meets now to actually get some face-to-face time with students. I’ve seen a lot of teachers reading aloud to students which is such a huge community builder like in the actual classroom and that just carries over right into a digital environment that’s such a perfect way for teachers to just keep that classroom community going. And it allows kids to, you know, hear a great story and then talk about it and we know that those are just good things for kids all the time.

P: A lot of teachers are doing things like screencasting a lesson and then sharing it out with teacher… Or with their students or setting up Flipgrids for students to be able to actually provide feedback to each other. So teachers love Seesaw and I love Seesaw so much but one of the hardest parts about Seesaw is that kids aren’t always able to see each other’s work and comment on each other’s work, I mean you can set that up, but Flipgrid is such a perfect opportunity for kids to be able to see each other in, you know, reality… See each other’s faces at least it’s not in real-time and then actually comment back and give feedback to each other so that the teachers aren’t having to give as much of that feedback that students can actually provide that feedback to each other and cheer each other on and be each other’s cheerleader. So that’s such a huge… It’s such a great tool, and there are a whole bunch of tools but I mean if there was one that I really was like, this is working right now, Flipgrid and Screencastify are probably two of my biggest ones right now.

C: Yeah, the thing I love about Flipgrid ’cause I’ve been invited to some teachers to respond and also I’ve created some for our school is that you can respond in a video, so it’s nice that it’s more than just, I’m typing you a comment, ’cause the biggest thing you know we’re all being a little bit more isolated. A lot more isolated than we have been in the past. And so having that opportunity to connect and to see faces, I think is just so important and I love that option on there. For people who aren’t familiar with Screencastify can you talk about that a little bit more.

P: Yeah, so Screencastify is a really great tool it’s actually an extension on… Or I have it as an extension on Google Chrome and so and right now they’re offering out the ability to take off the five-minute limit which is a huge help. And so what it actually does is you can either record yourself in a video or you can record your screen. And so you can then share it and it goes automatically into your Google Drive if you’re a Google for education or district, and then share it straight from there so that students can have a link either to a video that shows the teacher, or that shows the teacher’s screen. So, for example, today I just did a tutorial using… I can never pronounce his name Steve Wyborney, sorry if you’re listening. [chuckle]

P: Exactly, exactly, but he has these amazing… His blog is amazing but on there he has these esti-mysteries. And so I actually just created like a little video for kindergarteners and first graders using an esti-mystery using Screencastify and so he has them in Google Slides and so as a teacher I was able to pull up Screencastify, bring up my… The Google slide with the esti-mystery and walk through the esti-mystery and I actually put stopping points in the video to say like okay, pause your video now and and change your estimate if you need to based off of the clues that we had in it. And then I’m sharing that out with teachers so that they can actually either use that as an exemplar if they wanted to try it out themselves or that one they could actually share with their kindergarten and first-grade students. So, I mean, Screencastify has so many options but it’s just a really seamless integration with Google Drive which makes it super useful, right?

C: Yeah, which is nice and with that asynchronous learning then kids can choose to access it when they would like to as well, which I think is also such an important thing. Knowing right now, how many demands we have upon families, and that their school day or their time for learning may be completely different than another families so…

P: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I mean that is such a… I mean, when I listened to that webinar with George Couros and with AJ Juliani and Katie Novak and when they showed that synchronous versus asynchronous image of like synchronous is you know your virtual meetings, face to face meetings versus asynchronous would be like a Flipgrid or, you know, a Screencastify and just that realization that not all families have more than one device in their home you know and so if we’re asking students to be in face to face meetings with us, that’s wonderful for community building and it’s great for instant feedback, but it may not be reasonable to expect that of all students every day and so also giving students that same opportunity to engage and see your face. And, you know, get some of that face to face time. But in an asynchronous way at a time that works for them and their family is really powerful.

C: So, when you’re thinking about like teachers and I know they’ve been reaching out to you throughout this, what have they been coming to you with the most that they’re looking for help with or for coaching on.

P: Originally it was you know tech support ’cause I think that’s just the reality of coaching right now is that a lot of us have… That’s where the need is right now is just because that’s the reality that a lot of families and students are living in at the moment, but recently in the last you know week or so it’s switched over more to. We feel like, students are spending too much time with tech and digital tools,  “Are there ways that we can recreate the same kind of experiences for kids? But in a non-digital way?”

P: And so, that’s really where I’ve been trying to support teachers through thinking through that. So I just created and I had a whole list of ideas, and I just keep adding to it, and trying to support teachers and thinking about: How can we recreate that same learning experience, but giving kids an opportunity to be creative, leverage the fact that they are at home? As much as this is difficult, it’s also an amazing opportunity for kids, that they have access to their pets, so why not encourage a kid to take notes like a scientist about what their pet is doing throughout the day, and then write a creative story about a day in the life of their pet. Or use the tools that are… Or use the things that are in their bedroom to recreate a scene out of a book that they’ve read. Or use their stuffed animals to recreate, or a public show. So those kinds of things are really where I think we’re gonna get the most bang for our buck with students, and that’s really where I’m starting to see a shift in some of the conversations that we’re having away from… Not away from the tech ’cause I don’t wanna say we wanna move away from the tech, but just so that not all options are tech-related.

C: Yeah, I love that. I think we had a conversation with our first-grade team, and they were talking about having their students create a habitat for one of their stuffed animals or a pet or something like that, out of things in their house. And I really think that we need to look at students being at home as a strength and a learning opportunity. In my morning announcements, I give opportunities for families to contribute in a variety of different ways, and one of them is the talent section. And a lot of the families have sent in videos of things that there’s no way we would have been able to replicate at school. And so, it’s just been really wonderful to strengthen that partnership of homeschool, and really look at that from an advantage, and how can we capitalize on it. So I love that you framed it that way. So moving forward, then, what do you think you’re going to start providing a little bit more support in with teachers?

P: So I know it seems like right now, the thing that is in the top of everybody’s mind is: How do I give feedback on all these things that I’m getting? There are all these different platforms. Students are submitting work on Seesaw or through Flipgrid or through Google Classroom. And I’m getting two, three, four pieces of evidence or artifacts from kids of what they’re doing and what they’re learning every single day. How do I actually navigate that and provide meaningful feedback when I’m getting 60, 70 things a day in my email? So definitely, moving forward, I wanna help start thinking with teachers and help identify, “What are the big outcomes we want for kids during this time? We have, at least four weeks, maybe eight weeks, who knows? And so, if we can really sit down together as a team and think through as a second-grade team, a third-grade team, a fourth-grade team, what do we really want students to get out of this time?” I think right now, understandably so, we’re all living very day-to-day with the uncertainty causes us to revert back to living day-to-day. But if we can think longer-term about what is it that we want students to know and be able to do by the end of this, even if it’s not academically-related, maybe it’s social-emotional, maybe it’s with their families. And then, really streamline our instruction and feedback to reflect those priorities that we set.

C: Yeah, that is something that has come through a lot in our conversations with teachers. When they were in the classroom, they were meeting with small groups or they were giving that live feedback right there. But now, they aren’t able to necessarily do that unless it’s in a virtual setting. And so, whether they are meeting with small groups of kids and giving them that feedback that way, but it’s added a much larger volume of assignments of videos of whatever it is for them to be looking at and responding to. And so, how do we give kids feedback that is meaningful? And also, how do we decrease some of that volume? Because that is a huge stressor, and we wanna make sure we’re taking care of our teachers, too, because they’ve gotta have balance in their lives, as much as everyone does.

P: And it’s… Yeah, it’s also, I think a lot of it, we’re starting to realize our students are dependent. And I think that’s just a reality of elementary school. But how much feedback, informal feedback we were giving to students throughout their learning and throughout the process, and so, we could head off some of those misconceptions and some of those mistakes that students were making before they even submitted an assignment. And I think that’s something that teachers are having a tough time with this, it’s like, “Now, I’m waiting until after they’ve submitted the assignment to catch some of those things.” So what can we do to help students start to… It’s hard in a K-5 building, but at least, start to self-reflect and self-assess. And where can they be a little more independent with that so it doesn’t all fall on the teacher to do it after they’ve already submitted the assignment?

C: Yeah, and that is another thing that I’ve seen you’re doing with teams in offering to them, and the conversations they’re having about what they’re assigning, talking about that success criteria, what should that look like. And you’ve been offering to work with them to create an example so that students have that. So if the teacher is not there live, which is really in most of the occasion right now, that they have something to look at to reflect themselves, and then make those choices for what their next steps are while they’re waiting for feedback, for the teacher. And my guess is that through this, kids are gonna end up being more independent. And that’s gonna be one of those great benefits that we’re going to have out of this time.

P: I agree, I think that is a silver lining, is that even through all of this, this is pushing some of the ownership of learning back onto students. And this is a great opportunity for teachers to experiment with some of those things that we’ve talked about like success criteria and self-reflection and goal-setting, all that kinda stuff that does empower students to take that ownership of their learning because we have to, right now. Otherwise, parents and ourselves, we’re going to go crazy because they’re still gonna be dependent on us, and we’re not right there with them. And so, really, I think going back to your original question of where do we go from here, is that’s really what I wanna start thinking about is: How can we support teachers in some of that with thinking about goal-setting, thinking about success criteria and thinking about feedback? And how all that plays together in really turning the ownership of learning back over to students so that they’re not as dependent on us.

C: Yeah, I definitely agree. And I think within that realm, giving our teachers that creativity, the creativity piece has really, not that we didn’t offer that before. I like to think that Jefferson’s a school that loves taking risks, and I see that in our teachers all the time, but there’s a different type of creativity that this offers. It’s almost like starting teacher teaching from scratch. There are certain things that we know work really well with our kids, but we can also just try a lot of new things, and see how they go, and keep reflecting and refining along and throughout the process.

P: Absolutely.

C: So if you were gonna give any advice to teachers at this time, what would be your greatest advice to them?

P: I think one of my favorite things, and then I had seen this on Twitter so many times, and it’s really striking a chord with me, is that idea of Maslow before Bloom, that we need to make sure we’re taking care of kids’ needs, and making sure kids feel safe and connected to school before we can push rigor and all that kind of… All those good educational terms on them. So really, making sure that students feel connected to you as a teacher, feel connected to their classmates, feel connected to their school. And we’ve been doing so much at Jefferson to try and support that, and I know teachers are trying to do that every single day. And just reminding them that that is first priority is making sure kids are safe and connected.

P: And then, one of our teachers said it really best, and we talked about this earlier, but take advantage of the fact that students are at home. And they can be creative, and we can try things out with them, and they can show you, I think you talked about this, what they’re really passionate about outside the confines of the school. They can build, they can create, they can make videos. We are not restricted to that bell schedule anymore right now. We’re not restricted to that time schedule that we have in school where we only have literacy block from 8:30 to 10:00, and then it’s done because we need to be moving on to the next subject because somebody’s coming in. So to take advantage of that and find those silver linings and the things that we can try out and do differently now that we have a completely… We basically have a blank slate for education right now. So I know, and that sometimes feels super overwhelming, but just small things that we can do to, again, turn the ownership back over to students and give them some say in their education, and say in their learning. Those are my two biggest ones, is take care of their needs first, their safety needs, and their need to have that sense of community. And then also, just take advantage of the fact that we have a blank slate for education right now.

C: So what advice would you give to other coaches, then?

P: Not being an expert in this by any means. I think it’s just be there to support your teachers and try the best we can to not pile on anything additional. That is my number one thing that I keep saying to myself every time I create something or do something. I’m like, “Is this adding more onto their plate? Or is taking something off of their plate?” And just really, again, same thing for us as coaches, we have a blank slate here of trying different things in our coaching practice that we may not have been able to do within the school setting. And there are some teachers that I know that I haven’t reached out to yet, and I need to make sure that I’m making those connections with everybody and making sure that they’re doing okay, too. Because our teachers are stressed right now, and rightfully so. And so, just really making sure we’re taking the time to practice what we preach for our teachers with ourselves.

C: Yeah, I definitely agree with that. I was thinking about touching base with everyone is just so important because on the outside, we can all say whatever, but… And those internal moments, giving people an opportunity to share and take something off their plate, or to help out where we can. And I really see that as my job, as well as an administrator, of just taking care of my people. And that includes students, that includes families, that includes everyone. And so, that means checking in as much as you can.

P: Absolutely.

C: So then, my last question would be; What advice do you have for me as an administrator, also knowing I’m a parent?

P: I think, and this is really challenging for me, not being a parent. And so, I guess it’s, again, really just thinking about what is essential right now for our students and where can we push, maybe, and push some of that independence on our students. I think as a teacher, this was one of my hardest things that I had to learn early on in my teaching career, was the idea of productive struggle, and not jumping in and saving students. And I know that some students are probably going to struggle. And parents, as a parent, I am sure that they’re gonna wanna jump in and save when math is challenging and a student doesn’t necessarily understand that they’re gonna wanna jump in and say like, “Here, let me show you.” But allowing students the space to struggle productively is a huge learning experience for them. So for parents, that would be, I think, the biggest thing, is giving your students some space. It’s gonna be hard and that’s okay. Again, this is new for all of us. And for administrators, you’re doing such a great job. [chuckle] You’re being so…

C: Thank you for saying that. I don’t know if that’s true.

P: No, I know. As I told you, no one was ever trained on how to be an administrator or how to be a coach or how to be a teacher or how to be a student or parent during a global pandemic. So we’re all trying to figure this out together. And so, again, just being as supportive as possible of your teachers, backing up your teachers, giving them some space to do some of those creative things with students, and allowing them to know that that is okay. I think sometimes, we just need to hear it from an administrator that that’s the right thing to do. And so, really just being there and being supportive.

C: Well, thank you, I appreciate that advice. Well, Pia, I just wanna thank you again for everything that you’re doing for our staff, for our students, for our community. And I am just grateful that you took a few minutes, actually, to do this podcast with me today, as well, because I know your schedule is definitely slammed with all the work that you’re doing. So thank you again, and that’s gonna be it. Bye, everyone!

I started my newsletter this week with this quote from A.J. Juliani:

“The sooner we realize that there is no instructional manual for this situation, the sooner we can give each other grace to experiment, learn, and iterate to the best of our abilities in the worst of circumstances.”

Our coaches are the ones helping to make the experimenting, learning and iterating a little less scary and a lot more successful.  To all of the coaches out there supporting teachers during this crazy time, thank you.  The difference you are making is immeasurable.  

The One Question That Will Change Your Data Review Conversation

Ever been to a data review meeting like this?

Data is projected for everyone to see.  

You group students into those who are exceeding, meeting, and not meeting the target expectation.

Everyone gives reasons for why students have reached varied levels of proficiency.

In the last 5-10 minutes, you come up with some ideas for what to do for these students, focusing mostly on the students who are struggling.  These ideas almost always include the following:  reteaching skills in small group and/or a “double-dip” with a specialist. 

Everyone agrees to do said ideas, but these ideas either get pushed to the wayside for new standards being taught or people end up planning the language and strategies of the reteach lessons on their own.  For the most part, everyone ends up in the same place at the next meeting.

I’ve experienced hundreds of meetings like this as both a participant and facilitator.  It can be incredibly frustrating and make everyone feel like they’re wasting their time.  However, I’ve also experienced the opposite where conversations result in specific goals and rich plans for student learning resulting in huge growth for kids.

So what’s the difference?  How can we have meaningful data conversations each time?  

It’s actually a lot simpler than you think, but requires an openness on the part of the participants.  This past week we had a data review of our winter Fountas & Pinnell data planned for each grade level at their weekly 60 minute PLC.  The objective of the meeting was to answer the question, “Is our Tier One instruction meeting the needs of our students?”  

We started out similarly to the description at the top of this post.  We looked at data and gave possible reasons for the results.  This year started with 46% of our 2nd grade students not meeting the grade-level benchmark in literacy, but this percentage had now dropped to 29%, a significant amount in a short few months.  This growth had truly been a group effort that included:

• Coteaching with the EL teacher and reading specialist
• Small group instruction with the reading specialist outside of the classroom
• A deep data dive into phonics skills using the Core Phonics Inventory run by our school psychologist that was monitored and checked in with the team every six months. The results shifted instructional practice and grouping.  
• Parent volunteers who were trained by our reading specialist and one of our 2nd-grade teachers to come and read with ALL kids daily
• A 5th-grade mentor who also read regularly with students
• The instructional coach working with the team to develop a Tier One phonics progression with learning experiences
• A retired teacher from Jefferson regularly volunteering and working with groups as well as reading with individual students as well

When we got to the part where we discussed what the classroom teachers were doing instructionally they attributed the success to their small group instruction.   Like what has happened hundreds of times before, we could have stopped there.  Everyone knows what small group instruction looks like so it must be the same right?  

Nope.  

When we were about to move on, I asked a simple question to one of the teachers, the question that I would recommend asking every time you meet as a group.

“What does your instructional practice actually look like?”  

From this one simple question, we got a variety of answers that ended up resulting in a huge shift to the direction we were going in as well as a concrete plan for next steps.  One teacher explained that she has the students do the reading for group at their desks and then the time she spends with them is actually on talking about the book and developing instructional strategies.  Another teacher explained that she was working on questioning which was different from another teacher on the team.  The third member of the grade level team said that she gives students at least 10 minutes each day to just read independently.

As we delved more deeply into the specifics of their instruction we realized as a team that students were frequently meeting with teachers and getting systematic instruction, but that the amount of time students had to read independently varied greatly.  Teachers were honest in the fact that they were worried that many students weren’t able to do this for extended periods of time on their own.  This was the reason why they had come in as such struggling readers at the beginning of the year because they were mostly “fake reading.”   

We celebrated as a team how far the students had come from the beginning of the year, but really started to push one another’s thinking on independent reading.  Essentially, how could students continue to grow if they were never really reading longer than 10 minutes on their own?  

Instead of leaving saying, let’s make sure our students can read at least x amount of minutes a day without a concrete plan for how to do this, we made sure that the team was supported with ideas as well as resources to help.  Our instructional coach brought up Jennifer Serravallo’s engagement inventory that many on the team had used before. She offered to come in and do it for the teachers so that they could work with students.  Another part of the plan was freezing some of the group work that was happening so that the teachers could monitor independent reading for “fake reading” as well as independent strategy use.  This would be done by conferring.  They planned to redo their “Good Fit” book discussion as well as their processes for students filling their book boxes which was planned outside of the independent reading time.

The team ultimately decided they would set a goal for the students to read independently for 20 minutes a day.  This benchmark would be progress-monitored and discussed regularly at PLC meetings.  The conversations that they would have as a team would be explicit discussions of conferring strategies, students who were struggling with independence followed by specific plans of action moving forward.

Another realization that came out of this conversation was the importance of academic language and that students might be missing understanding simply from not knowing the vocabulary.  An additional plan was created for this outcome as well.  The meeting finished with a few minutes to spare and a sense of accomplishment.

It is amazing what can be accomplished in a short time when the goal is clear and the participants share deeply.  DuFour created these PLC Questions decades ago:

• What do we want all students to know and be able to do?
• How will we know if they learn it?
• How will we respond when some students do not learn?
• How will we extend the learning for students who are already proficient?

Each of these questions plans plays a critical role in the power of a PLC, but if we don’t have deeply explicit conversations about any of the questions, then they are relegated to simply a discussion tool to run the organization of a meeting.  The power in the PLC is the expertise of the participants, trusting one another, benefitting from one another’s strengths and ideas.   The next time you are planning or participating in a PLC, give explicit time to share how you teach, not just what you did.  Making this tiny shift will create an incredible ripple of effects on student learning.  

 

 

Tapping Into the Strengths of Your Staff

So I used to think that there was some magical formula or a needed in-depth plan to building capacity and strengths of others as a leader, but the longer I am a principal (I know a whopping 6 months) the more I realize this isn’t necessarily true. 

This week my reading specialist came to me excited to share the work she started doing as a result of observing our speech and language pathologist a few weeks ago.  We are wrapping up a second round of Fountas & Pinnell testing throughout the building and our teams have been noticing that students continue to struggle with the retell portion of the assessment.  When we talked about observing one another as a school leadership team my reading specialist strategically chose one of our speech & language pathologists (SLP) because she had heard she worked with students on this specific skill.

During the observation, she noticed that our SLP used visual cards with images that helped students be independent in their retell.  It was more than the typical “5 Finger Retell,” she used specific language and images that helped students with their specificity and organization of ideas.  After her observation, she created her own version, went into classrooms and modeled the process for other teachers and then created a higher-level version for intermediate students.  I informally observed her this week using the process with 5th-grade students and it was clear that this small shift was having an impact on their conversations about the books they were reading.  

My reading specialist is clearly a leader in our building and has gone above and beyond all year looking for ways to build capacity in many dimensions of literacy.  She collaborates with teachers, works with the instructional coach and even trains parents to be effective volunteers in classrooms.  She is open to new ideas and generates new ones without prompting. 

I’ve noticed that this type of creativity, dedication and attitude seems to pervade the staff, students, and parents as a whole in the Jefferson community.  My happy little heart dances on a regular basis due to the flooding of creative ideas that are full in my conversations.  This isn’t the case in every school across the country.  So what’s the difference?   Was this the result of a strategic plan for awesomeness with checkpoints and benchmarks?  Not really.

When I think about the magic happening at Jefferson school I attribute it to these things.

1.  Each person on the staff has a multitude of inherent strengths. 
2.  I spend the majority of my time as a leader talking to people (adults & kids) listening and looking for these strengths.  
3. When I see something wonderful, I name it and let the person know.
4. When someone comes to me with an idea, I listen, ask questions, get excited and see what they need me to do.  I follow-up on the ideas and try to see them in action.
5. The people on my staff talk to one another frequently and collaborate often, in and out of team/PLC meetings. 
6. I look for opportunities to highlight the strengths of my staff whether it is giving opportunities to observe a peer, present at one of our Late Arrivals, or give a shout out on social media.

There are elements of these actions that are very purposeful like setting up observation opportunities and being present around the building, but I think that the most effective way to build the capacity of the others around us, is in our attitude.  Instead of looking for ways to “fix people,” I spend the majority of my time looking for unique talents in their staff and students.  It’s a shift from looking for problems in our building to there’s some untapped magic here to be discovered.  

For me this week the magic came from my reading specialist.  Last week it was the team of teachers taking a district-level class on Notice & Note asking if they could present their learning at a Late Arrival in February.  Many times it’s been brilliant ideas in our SPED team meetings of unique ways to help kids who are struggling.  Today I got an email from a Kindergarten teacher asking if she could write a grant for a sensory path for our school.  I frequently overhear teachers sharing ideas in the copy room that’s across from my office.  This week I can’t wait to go to our PLC’s on Tuesday because I get to see our teams collaborate and create brilliance together.  

There are so many talents and ideas at Jefferson that I know I haven’t begun to discover or utilize.  I find myself in awe of the creativity and uniqueness of the ones I have.  Thank you to every member of my staff for giving me this gift.

 

 

 

 

The Phrase in Education That Needs to Go

Teach with Fidelity.

If you want to get me riled up, tell me I need to do anything with this as the standard.

I remember when I first started teaching almost 20 years ago, I was told by a colleague that the first year we implemented a new curriculum we had to, “teach it with fidelity.”  After that, we could maybe make changes, but the first year we had to do every single lesson exactly the way that it was written in the exact order that it was written.  The thought behind this was that by teaching every lesson we would have a better understanding of how the program worked.  If we didn’t teach it exactly as the curriculum said, it was our fault that kids weren’t learning.

This philosophy made sense at the time.  It was the era of No Child Left Behind where there was a heavy focus on “research-based programming.”  According to the rhetoric (being propagated by politicians), our schools were failing and we had to do something about it.  Curriculum written by mythical education gurus was suddenly the answer to everything.  Teacher weren’t the experts.  Curriculum writers were.  And so began the fallacy that curriculum has all the answers.

Teaching With Fidelity is an archaic phrase that needs to disappear.   I might argue it’s actually one of the most harmful phrases in education today.     

If educators are told that they cannot change any lesson and must teach it exactly in the order it is written, it nullifies their ability to respond to the learners in their classroom.  This is counterintuitive to responsive instruction, an effective instructional practice that results in growth in students because it meets them where they are and grows their abilities from there.   When we teach every student every lesson exactly the same way we are harming both kids who can go beyond the curriculum as well as the ones who are not yet ready for the lesson.  It takes away the ability of educators to select lessons that are connected to students’ lives and interests which takes away their ability to make lessons meaningful.  The result is boredom, frustration or even apathy in students.  

Teaching with Fidelity is harmful to school culture as well.  It sends a message to teachers that I don’t trust you and your expertise and experience in teaching.  Unfortunately, there is a dichotomy of “us vs. them” with teachers and admin in some schools and this phrase only adds to that tension.  We have to trust our teachers.  They are the ones who work with students daily.  They know the students’ strengths and the intricacies of the next steps in instruction because of the relationships they work hard at building.  Because of this, we need to empower them to make instructional decisions, not undermine their competence by expecting them to follow a box.

This phrase also results in a system where the ability to confirm is more highly valued than innovative ideas.  It tells both students and teachers that there is only one right path to learning.  If I cannot teach or learn exactly the way someone else tells me then there is something wrong with me.  This is the complete opposite of the world outside of school where creativity and innovation are sought out and celebrated.  We need to provide learners with school experiences that empower them to own their learning so they are prepared for the multitude of experiences they have outside of school.  I struggle to see how teaching with fidelity does that.  

I’ve seen this quote from Maya Angelou quite a bit lately on social media.  

“Do the best you can until you know better.  Then when you know better, do better.”

We know better than Teaching with Fidelity.  We know that getting to know our learners and building on their strengths and talents as is the best teaching practice to help them continue to grow.  The idea that there is one program that can reach all learners is archaic and misleading.  John Hattie names Collective Teacher Efficacy as the number one factor being strongly correlated with student achievement.  We need to empower our teachers, not take away their ability to make informed instructional decisions.

We know better.  Let’s do better.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Evolution of Parent Communication

I’ve been reflecting this week a lot about some conversations I’ve had recently with staff about parent communication.  In Elmhurst, we have something called, “Acceleration Block.”  It is a time when we group students based on a specific learning standard or need and plan learning experiences to accelerate their growth in that area.  In previous years we had focused solely on literacy, but this year I have opened up Acceleration Block to include any area that the teachers think would benefit students. 

Because this was something new, last week I secured 1/2 day subs for my staff so that they would have time to reflect on our first round of Acceleration Block and plan for the next six-week interval.   Part of the planning was creating parent communication regarding how students progressed in the last round and how we would communicate progress during this round.

I have to confess that when I was in the classroom, I was a pretty basic communicator.  I had a weekly parent newsletter that shared what we were working on as well as a few highlights of students who had demonstrated great character that week.  I made sure to grade papers in a timely manner and send them home with a few comments or feedback.  If students were not meeting my expectations academically or behaviorally I made sure to email, send a handwritten note, or call depending on the severity.  About halfway through each trimester, I sent home a progress report in addition to sending home a report card at the end of the trimester.  If parents wanted to communicate with me they could email, call, or write a note in their child’s assignment notebook. 

As we talked about different ways that teachers communicate with parents, I realized that as much as the need for communication has stayed the same, the medium in which it happens has expanded greatly.   The tiny world of email, notes, and phone calls has expanded into texts, video messages, class websites, blogging, social media, student self-assessment,  and on-demand access to student work.  There are so many options that it can get a little bit overwhelming at times.  Some of our questions became:

1. What information should we be communicating with parents? 
2. What is the frequency that we should communicate?
3. What mediums make the most sense to communicate with?

In looking at these questions I decided to refer back to guidelines that Christine Trendel, a colleague whom I greatly respect created for her staff at the beginning of the year.  She starts by explaining that the overall purpose of any parent communication is to build relationships and to keep parents informed.   She then breaks communication into two groups: Global & Personal.   Also included are timelines, purpose and examples for both.  

Global Communication

Purpose:  To communicate grade-level standards students will be working on, learning experiences happening in the classroom and resources that parents might find helpful

Frequency:  Once a week

Examples:  

• Newsletter Created by Teacher:  Gives a general summary of what is happening in each subject with links to resources.  Teachers can choose to do a written version or record themselves in video format.  These can be sent to parents by email, in paper or through social media such as Seesaw, Class Instagram or Facebook page or text message using an app like Remind.    
• Newsletter Created by Students:  Students can create the content at the end of the week by either writing a newsletter or recording themselves using a web-based service like WeVideo where they can edit together different clips and turn it into a show.  
• Class Website or Blog:  Using Google Sites or another service like Weebly, Kidblog, Edublog etc.  teachers or students create different pages based on what has been taught or will be taught in upcoming units.  If a blog is included there can be additional narrative and reflection included by anyone in the classroom.  This gives parents an additional window into the work that has been done
• Social Media:  Teachers can create a class Instagram, Twitter or Facebook account.  They can use this to create stories or posts about different learning experiences happening in the classroom.  This keeps parents informed in real-time.  The account can be controlled solely by the teacher or students can be assigned as a class job for the week to document learning occurring.

Individual Communication

Purpose:  To communicate individual student progress towards meeting standards,  celebrate success, or communicate concern in all aspects of the classroom

Frequency:  Varies based on student, but at a minimum once a month

Examples: 

• Student Work With Feedback Attached:  Students are more likely to learn from the work if it is in the form of feedback as opposed to a grade.  At Jefferson, we love the single-point rubric for this reason.  Making sure the feedback given is specific and timely is key.  
• Progress Report:  Giving parents an update on their child’s progress between report cards is important.   This can be a simple one-page sheet with the standards you are working on along with executive functioning or SEL goals.  Sitting down with students and having them give feedback on where they think they are will make this process even more effective.
• Student Goal Setting & Reflection:  As mentioned in the previous bullet, involving students in reflecting on their progress and setting goals is a meaningful way to help them grow.  Having students share their goals with parents is a great way to increase home/school communication as well as collaboration.  Some of my teachers have students write about them and others have kids do a video reflection like a Vlog.  
• Parent Access to Google Drive:  Giving parents access to their child’s Google Drive or inviting them to your Google Classroom is another easy way to communicate with families.  Even if you are not writing comments on their work, it allows parents to see what students are working on so they can talk with their students about it at home.  
• Seesaw:  This is such a great tool for parent communication.  Students can record videos, take pictures with voice-over, fill-out templates, create demonstrations of their learning and more in this application.  Parents can comment on their child’s work as well or simply click a heart to like it.  Some of my teachers use this with their students almost daily and the parent response has been incredibly positive.
• Report Card:  No explanation needed on this one. (I think) 
• Phone Call, Email, or Note to Celebrate or Voice Concern:  One of the mistakes I made my first years of teaching was only communicating when I had concerns about students.  As I got more experienced I realized that positive communication is just as important as expressing concerns.  I recommend creating a schedule of when you plan on sending a quick note, email or phone call about each student in your classroom.  As a principal I have teachers nominate a positive phone call of the week.  The students then get called down to the office and we call their parents and celebrate the good news!
•  Assignment Notebook:  Students can write down a daily reflection in their assignment notebook or set a goal or celebrate an accomplishment.  Assignment notebooks can also be used as communication logs back and forth between parents and school.  

As we talk about parent communication it’s also important to remember that it shouldn’t be one-sided.  We should be just as proactive in reaching out to parents with celebrations/concerns as we are in asking them for feedback.  Requesting information on their child’s strengths and interests as well as discussing the goals they have for their child can only strengthen our ability to help every student in our classroom to grow.  Giving parents an opportunity to give feedback regularly will also strengthen our efficacy as educators.

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School has changed greatly since many of our parents were in school.  (For the better I think!)  The trends that I have seen are less formal paper and pencil assignments where students receive concrete grades as well as less formal assessing overall.  The volume of assignments has decreased because we are placing greater importance on giving students more meaningful long-term projects and explorations and/or assessing students informally through observation and conversation.  Many elementary schools have decided to give homework only if it is necessary and meaningful for learning.  The unintended consequence of this is that parents have less of a sense of what their child is working on as well as how they are progressing in all subject areas.  We have to start thinking differently about how we communicate with our families.

Just like we design our learning experiences to meet the needs of our students, we need to create communication plans that meet the needs of our families.  I would recommend sending home a survey at the beginning of the year (or now) and then building a plan of action from there.  Do most families have older children in the school or is this their first year?  How do they prefer to be communicated with?  Email? Text?  Social Media?  What do they know about the learning in the grade that you teach?   As a general rule, the more communication the better.  No parents have ever complained to me their teacher overcommunicates with them, but I have definitely gotten feedback when parents feel that communication is lacking.  

The changes to the way that we communicate with parents can be overwhelming, but can also be a game-changer when it comes to partnering with parents and building a shared vision of what we want our school to be.   

 

How Administrators Can Support Teacher Leaders in Their Schools

Jeffery E. Frieden, an educator, and blogger I greatly admire put out this tweet in February:

I have to admit the first time I read it I thought to myself, what on earth would cause an administrator to not support the efforts of a staff member to create meaningful change for students?? Since I began my administrative career in Elmhurst District 205 innovation has been at the forefront of what we do.  Our belief statement about curriculum and instruction literally says,

“Students learn through innovative, engaged teaching methodologies taught by highly qualified, dedicated and inspiring professionals.” -Elmhurst Community Unit School District 205

For me, supporting innovative ideas of educators is one of my absolute favorite parts of my job.  (Not to be completely lame, but my tagline on Twitter literally reads, “You had me at, “I’ve got this idea.”)  Doesn’t every administrator feel that way?

As the responses began to unfold I realized the naivete of that thought.  There were valid questions and points brought up from both teachers and administrators demonstrating varying perspectives on the topic.  It was a rich discussion that ultimately left me evaluating and reflecting on my own perspective and approach.

Common Fears, Beliefs & Questions

It was clear from the responses that everyone was on the same page as far as the focus should always be on helping students. However, there appeared to be a major dichotomy from many teachers and administrators as to how to why innovative ideas weren’t flourishing.

From the administrator perspective, many responses included a desire to have data to back up the idea, a well thought out plan of execution and a connection to the district or school goals.  Making sure that educators had support or research behind their ideas was a theme that popped up repeatedly.  When they said no to an idea it was because it wasn’t clearly thought out or didn’t have a connection to district outcomes.  

Teachers who responded wanted to feel heard by their administrators.  Many expressed that they felt like innovation was a defeated effort before they started because their administrator was not open to new ideas.  They wanted their ideas to be met with enthusiasm, support and thoughtful questions that helped them bring their idea to life.  They wanted a leader that not only says we support innovative ideas, but also supports the words with action.

The Plan

Reflecting on the comments made in this thread I realize that I have been lucky in my teacher/administrator relationships.  I had administrators who either left me to my own accord to do what I knew was best for kids or leaders who regularly gave me the green light on my ideas.  As a result, I felt trusted, empowered, and inspired in the places I worked.  

As a new administrator, I hope to continue this approach to supporting innovation, but also think that based on some of the tweets I read I might be missing some structural pieces.  By incorporating these pieces, my hope is that the innovation started by one becomes more widespread leading to more success in students.

1. The Why

Tell me why you want to implement the idea you are bringing.  Is it based on the interests of your students?  A problem you are seeing in your classroom that you’d like to solve?  Something related to our mission and vision? An article you read?  Where is the idea coming from?

2.  The Plan

This is more of an overall plan as opposed to a step by step.  How do you plan on bringing your idea to life?  Who will this idea impact in your class?  What’s an estimated timeline?  Tell me about your idea so I can share in your enthusiasm. 🙂

3.  What You Need from Me

Is there anything I can do to support you?  Do you need extra materials?  Feedback on your idea?  A partner to implement it with?  Reassurance from me that it’s ok if it doesn’t go according to plan?

4.  How You’re Going to Evaluate it

How will you know if it’s a success?  This part is more about thinking about the outcomes and how we’ll know if the students have met them.  Sometimes it’s anecdotal notes with specific behaviors or mindsets to be observed, student reflections on the work or even a project of some sort.  I don’t mean that you have to give every student a formal assessment, unless that makes sense for the idea you’ve created.

5.  How You’re Going to Share it With Others

One of the problems that I’ve seen happen over and over is that we amazing things going on all over our building on a daily basis, but administrators or coaches are the only ones who get to witness it.  How are you going to share your brilliance with our staff?  It could be something as simple as sharing it on social media and tagging it with our school # or as involved as presenting about it at a staff meeting or Late Arrival.  

Final Thoughts

Innovation in schools is critical to the success of our students.  Our kids are constantly changing and we need to make sure that we are regularly reflecting and shifting instruction to ensure their needs are met and their strengths are grown.  This starts with administrators supporting staff in taking risks.  This is more than saying we are innovative, it’s taken action steps and following through by supporting them through the process.  

I was lucky enough to be able to speak to Jeff directly about this idea in his podcast, Dear Teacher Don’t Give Up! If you’d like to hear more regarding both of our thoughts on the topic of teacher leadership and innovation, please click here.  (As a side note, both his podcast and blog are chalked full of inspiration and great ideas to use in the classroom. If this topic doesn’t interest you, I’d highly recommend checking out others.)

Goals Groupies: Synergizing the Passions of Staff

Last year, I read this post by John Spencer about the importance of being in a “Mastermind Group” with other educators.   It’s basically a group of teachers that meet regularly to explore and share ideas and also give one another feedback.  Because the members get to know each other well they can push one another in ways that would not be possible with other groups.

This idea has always stuck with me as something that would be great to implement with staff.  So when we started exploring options for our monthly staff meetings as an instructional leadership team, I brought this up as a possibility for a way to structure our time.  After talking through a variety of options, including a focus on the 6C’s or differentiated choices aligned to our School Improvement Plan, we ultimately decided on having staff finding a group of people who had written similar personal goals for the year.

The purpose behind this was twofold:

1.  It gave people time to delve more deeply into something they were already personally invested in.
2. It made our goal writing process more meaningful because staff would have dedicated time to continually work on them.  This is in contrast to past practice, where many educators (myself included) would wait until it was time to have a follow-up conference on their goals later in the year.  

At our first meeting in September, we had staff members do a “speed date” activity where they moved around the room talking about their goals for the year with different people.  Their goal was to find others who had similar interests or their “Goals Groupies.”  When they found a “match,” they would write that person’s name down on an index card.  At the end of the meeting, they met up with the people on their card and came up with an official focus for their group.  

Although I had met with staff members on their goals for the year prior to this meeting, it was fun to see how groupies ended up evolving and what they ultimately chose to focus on.  We had 5th-grade teachers working with first-grade and even kindergarten teachers.  There were groups of specials teachers mixed with grade-level teachers.  The goals chosen were just as diverse and included:  SEL, critical thinking, parent communication, inquiry-based and real-world projects, reading fluency and accuracy, and facilitated IEP and collaboration.  

This past Thursday was our second meeting.  Our Goals Groupies were given time to explore their work more fully setting specific outcomes for their impact on students, creating a plan of action and agreeing on what they would bring to share at the next meeting.  We gave them this template with guiding questions to help them to further think through their ideas.  As I walked around the room, I listened to rich conversations and genuine enthusiasm for the work they were doing.  It was a Thursday after school, but everyone was just as energized as if we were starting a fresh day.  

This process has only reinforced my belief that when we empower staff to take the lead, we embolden change that impacts students far greater than any mandated initiative ever will.  When staff is given dedicated time to collaborate with colleagues who have a common passion, we capitalize on our strengths as a school as well as build capacity in multiple grade levels. The goals the groups have chosen to work on have far surpassed my wildest dreams of what we could work on this year as a staff.   I am beyond excited to see the impact on students as the year unfolds.

 

Putting a Stop to the Right Way of Education

I recently saw this tweet by Dr. Brad Johnson: 

I liked this post for several reasons, but mostly because it goes against what is frequently heard in education, that there is only one right way to teach children.  I’m guessing this has stemmed from the No Child Left Behind era that we are all still suffering PTSD from, but it needs to stop.  

I have spent the past seven years working in classrooms, observing teachers or partnering with them on lessons.  Not once have I seen highly effective teaching demonstrated in the exact same manner.  I cannot tell you how many teachers I have spoken with, in a variety of capacities, who have asked me, “Am I doing this right?” “Is this okay?”  When we tell people there is a “right way” and a “wrong way” we are setting up our educators for self-doubt as opposed to empowering them to make instructional decisions based on the needs of their students.  

We set up a similar dynamic when we give students limited ways or one way of demonstrating their learning.  This cartoon is a great illustration of this idea:

Making kids read a book and fill out the same template after they read, complete a problem set after a math lesson, or write a five-paragraph essay on the same topic are all examples of ways we tell students that there is a right way and wrong way of demonstrating learning.  We give students assignments like this because it is an easy way for us to see if students have reached proficiency.  However, the unintended consequences of this approach might be:

1.  We create a classroom dynamic where students constantly ask us, “Am I done?”  “Did I do this right?” (I don’t know about you, but these type of questions personally drive me crazy.)
2.  We aren’t really getting an accurate gauge of student understanding.  When given choice in demonstrating their learning, as opposed to a one-size-fits-all approach,  many students will actually show they can go way beyond the target.  On the flip side of this, students who struggle with the way we are asking them to demonstrate learning (think elephant, fish, seal above), may show us they don’t know how to do something that they actually do.

Please know I am not advocating for zero expectations or standards in the classroom.  I do believe strongly that there are strategies and structures we can use that are more effective than others depending on the learners in front of you.  I also know that students are not going to be able to set goals and reflect on their progress if there is never an expectation to be reached even with choice provided.    

We need to start thinking more of teaching and learning as a limitless continuum as opposed to an endpoint to be reached.  When we provide professional learning experiences we should have educators experience and explore a variety of high leverage instructional practices and then trust them to make the right choices for their learners.  We need to have high expectations, but broaden our definition of what this means and recognize this might look different depending on students and the target for learning in the classroom.  

At our Late Arrival on Wednesday we focused on microshifts in practice in math workshop.  We gave teachers a continuum with three options of what it might look like in the classroom with descriptors. (Thank you to our amazing coach Pia for creating it!)  Instead of saying, your goal is to get to the last option, empowering students, we asked teachers to reflect on times when they had been in each of the options.  They thought about when it made sense to use each of these types of models and then set a goal for one new strategy they would implement over the next few weeks. 

I have already seen the impact of this approach in the classrooms I have visited.  I’ve seen examples from the continuum as well as ideas that have far surpassed it.  No one has asked me for permission or questioned whether they are doing it right.  Each classroom has been uniquely amazing in its own way and I look forward to keeping it that way. 

Thanks for reading.  Christina

 

Putting an End to the Meaningless Agenda

We’ve all been there.

Sitting at a meeting or a grad school class where the agenda is ten miles long, broken up into either short little choppy increments or hour-long blocks without a break in sight.

Half of the items on the list seem to come from out of nowhere or could easily have been addressed in an email.

The absolute worst?  When the facilitators in no way honor the experience and talents the people at the meeting bring to the table, making everyone learn about the same things as if they have no understanding whatsoever.

When I was a teacher I loathed these experiences.  It felt like meetings were “being done to me” as opposed to inviting me to bring my talents and grow my strengths.

Many of our students feel the same way.  No matter how great of a student they are, they feel like they are showing up to the “school show,” expected to follow the rules and expectations set forth for them with little input as to how the day will proceed.

Can you imagine spending every day this way? I can’t.

We can and should do better.

When I became an administrator I vowed I would never bring this type of experience to my staff.  Am I perfect at it yet?  Definitely not, but here are a few things I try to do so that I’m not bringing a case of the meeting dreads to my staff:

1. Ask for feedback.  Although I haven’t yet been able to start from scratch with my school leadership team in creating an agenda due to time constraints (we’re almost ahead of this), I do bring the agenda to the team and ask for feedback prior to our institute days or Wednesday late arrivals.
2. Build on the expertise of the team.  What are they good at?  What are they passionate about?  What do they see as the greatest need that would make the meeting most valuable to all?  Stop being the only one who presents and let teacher leaders lead.  They’re the ones who know the kids the best.  We need to trust them!
3. Tie everything back into the vision that was created as a staff.  Ours this year is #unlimitedgrowthandconnection.  We make sure that every agenda item is connected to this and explicitly stated.
4. Include breaks and don’t make people turn off their technology.  We’re all adults.  If we’ve made the topics of the meeting meaningful then people won’t want to distract themselves with other things.  We should trust people to use their resources when they need/want to.
5. Include something fun.  Meetings are an opportunity to build culture and camaraderie.  We added in a “Walk-Up Song” activity at the beginning of each staff meeting where we asked staff members to send us the song they would have played when they walk into the classroom like they do in Major League Baseball.  The rest of the staff has to guess whose song it is.  We even have prizes.  From the response at the last meeting, we might add in karaoke.  What does your staff enjoy?  Thankfully mine loves music and food, two of my favorite things so I also try to bring some sort of tasty treat.

If you’re a teacher, what might this look like in your classroom?  How often do you ask for feedback or build the day around goals students have set for themselves? How can you make each learning target meaningful to the students so they see a connected purpose in the work they are doing?  What would the day look like if more choice and voice were incorporated?

I love this question that George Couros poses to educators,

“Would you want to be a student in your own classroom?”

For me, this question has transitioned to, “Would you want to be a teacher in your staff meeting?” I hope as the year progresses the answer to this question becomes an emphatic yes!  Let’s stop “doing school to people” and start asking for meaning from our people.