The Race to Educate

Running an endurance race for the first time is quite exhilarating. The anticipation mounts with the gathering of the runners.  The anxiety builds and finally the race begins. As the runner takes off, he finds it hard to gauge his initial progress. Is the pace too fast? Is he running too slow? The runner's brain pulses with every runner passing him by. There is little else that can describe the first mile of a race. Everyone is jockeying for position, trying to gain the edge.

As I synthesize the start of a race, I can't help but think how teachers in isolated systems feel. Without a team to collaborate with or a set of values to give them guidance or a vision to serve as a beacon of light, what emotions will run through their mind at the start of the race? In this race to educate every child, some will start off too fast and fall apart before they get halfway through it. Some will take off too slow and the race will end before they do. Some will finish the race, but they will have no one to share the sense of accomplishment with.

So what does every teacher need this Christmas to make it through the most important race in educational history?

Resources

In order to be the best runner, you need the best gear, training and coaching to compete.  In education, it's no different.  Educators need access to all of the resources, but more importantly, the training on how to effectively use the resources.  Many schools provide adequate or even superb resources, but no training about them.  This leads me to the most important resource that teachers need and that is TIME!!!  Without proper time to plan, ineffective lessons and poor use of resources occur.  This will lead to teacher fatigue and in time falling out of the race all together.  Coaches and leaders must be present to help, listen and guide educators so they, themselves, can be a valuable resource to the educator.

Affirmation

Affirmation is confirming that something is true.  To me, we all need to know that the path we are on is true or at least headed in the right direction.  This is where feedback is critical.  The more frequent the feedback we receive, the more we are fed intellectually.  All educators need feedback from their supervisors, from members on their team and from those that they lead.  Not all feedback must be positive to be helpful, but it must be TRUE.  If a runner's pace is too slow, the runner must be affirmed that what they are doing is not enough.  Feedback or affirmation is the nourishment that you need to continue running.

Collaboration

Just like every runner sees more improvement by working with a team, teachers benefit more by working regularly with a team of teachers focused on the same aspects of educating children. Teams that collaborate together, stay together, and they do so, because the focus is not on individual improvement but collective improvement. The purpose of a team is to get everyone across the finish line, and that occurs when all members are committed to making everyone successful.  Collaboration builds the stamina that every runner needs to finish the race successfully.

Encouragement

We all perform better when others cheer for us. Encouragement and celebration along the way help educators stay mentally focused on the importance of finishing the race.  Encouragement is different than affirmation because affirmation requires the runner to acknowledge his current reality.  Encouragement is what every runner needs after they accept their current reality.  Whether you are behind or ahead, every educator must feel appreciation from supervisors, teammates, students and parents.  The leader's job is to make sure that everyone comes out and cheers the teachers on to the finish line throughout the race.  Encouragement is the 2nd wind every runner needs to run even faster.

Half Way Point

It's almost Christmas and teachers across the country have finished their first mile or two in this race to educate every child. As their coach, we must ascertain where they are in the race. At this point they need support from their leader of the good job that they are doing. They have reached the water station and they need to quench their thirst. This month, I challenge you to join me in being the best Resource you can be to Affirm, build Collaboration and Encourage your fellow educators.  They are running their tails off to educate every child.

Collaborative Teacher Appraisal Systems

In Texas, our evaluation instrument is called PDAS, Professional Development Appraisal System. The emphasis should be on professional development but with the lack of time (due to endless tasks) to get to all of the components of the system, administrators usually resort to completing only the appraisal part of the system. Sadly, the result usually finds the principal coming in with little knowledge of the teacher, instruction and the class' progress up to that point. He bases the evaluation on his interpretation of instruction and gives the teacher feedback on what he saw in 45 minutes. The end.


There's a giant disconnect here. The principal is giving feedback on his or her perception of each of the indicators in the appraisal system with little knowledge of all the work that the teacher has done. For the teacher, he or she is hoping that what he or she is doing will meet the virtually unknown perceptions of the administrator.

What's an even bigger problem is that the administrator is doing this to several teachers at one time, and the teachers often wonder what is expected from the administrator in the evaluation. And even bigger than that the administrator has no baseline, other than the evaluation instrument, to base his subjective ratings.

Pre-Conference
To ensure appraisal alignment between both parties, administrators meet with teachers before they have the formal evaluation. The administrator clarifies his or her expectations for what they would like to see in the classroom, and the teacher plays a role in the discussion by sharing what they are going to deliver in the instruction. This will help things, but here's the problem with this from a global perspective.

Time constraints
If an administrator is evaluating 20 employees, how much time will he or she spend pre-conferencing with every single person that they are going to evaluate? A good pre-conference last about 30 minutes, so for 20 employees the administrator would need to take 600 minutes or 10 hours to do pre-conferencing alone. Will every pre-conference get the same level of dialogue from these 10 isolated hours?

Limited ideas
If the preconference is at its very best, how many ideas can be gained from one 30 minute conversation between one teacher and one administrator, even if the setting has the ultimate level of trust? If the administrator is interrupted mentally or physically (which is certain to occur), the think tank is reduced to 1 person.

Solution
Instead of one administrator spending 30 minutes meeting with one teacher at a time, why not get all of the employees together with the administrator and meet in 3 or 4 meetings of 30 minutes each to discuss the evaluation together. The administrator would cut the pre-conferencing from 10 hours down to 2 hours. That's efficiency!

Safety in Numbers
When there are several teachers in the room with one administrator, teachers feel more comfortable in sharing their ideas about the evaluation criteria. They will also be more willing to ask questions about what the administrator's thoughts are on the criteria.

Exponential Ideas
If the administrator will spend time guiding discussion about each indicator with the group, teachers can be truly collaborative about what those indicators look like and sound like in action. In this setting, teachers will feel more comfortable asking questions about the criteria to the administrator and to different teachers that share ideas in the meeting. The focus of the meeting moves from the teacher and the administrator agreeing on the conditions of the appraisal to creating high quality instruction in action. That's a think tank on steroids!

Pre-Observation Walk-Throughs
Administrators should spend some time in each teacher's classroom giving them feedback before the formal evaluation. I plan to use the Evernote app and take specific notes and then share them with the teacher. The notes will be scripted in a way that are not judgmental but rather factual things that are seen in the classroom based on the collaborative discussion from all the teachers. My hope is to have dialogue with the teacher and encourage the teacher to visit with other teachers to gather suggestions and new ideas. The purpose of the informal walk-throughs is to ensure alignment on the criteria between the teacher and the administrator.

Instructional Rounds
After my first meeting with all the teachers that I plan to evaluate last week, two teachers stayed after the meeting. They asked me if it was okay to observe another teacher from the meeting that had great ideas that they wanted to know more about. My response was an emphatic yes followed by a question of how I could help them get into the classroom to watch the teacher teach. This, after all, is the ultimate form of professional development.

Teacher Retention
Now imagine! What teacher wouldn't want to be in a system like this:

• A system where the expectations are that the teachers co-labor with the administrator and one another to come up with the criteria for each indicator in the evaluation,
  A system where teachers commit to support one another to make sure that all of them are successful,
  A system where teachers are wanting to be in each other's rooms to learn from one another,
  A system where professionalism & improvement are the centerpieces of the appraisal system.

Putting the PD in PDAS
A strong collaborative team has an immense amount of power to build capacity in every single employee. Teachers want a great evaluation, and they want to know that they are doing a great job. Administrators must provide the supports and the avenues for teachers to work together to ensure that every teacher succeeds instructionally first and earns an excellent evaluation second. Through this system every teacher who commits to this collaborative appraisal system should earn an excellent evaluation because the teachers and the administrators are working in tandem to ensure that instruction is at the highest levels of quality, and shouldn't that be the intended outcome of an appraisal system?

Pruning your Leadership

This past week I have been meeting with different leaders on my leadership team. In our second year of building our campus leadership team and a campus PLC philosophy, we have noticed that we are experiencing much faster growth in a positive direction. Rapid individual growth coupled by extending abilities into new directions have led each leader to new and unique places in their leadership. They are identifying innovative ways of doing things that are benefiting kids and teachers, and this is extremely exciting to watch.

The problem that we currently face is that each leader is encountering different challenges, and there's not enough time to get to all of the recently implemented improvements as well as the old and productive tasks. The best analogy that I can make is that each leader represents a plant that has too many limbs as a result of their initial amazing growth. If this plant is able to grow stronger and taller, the gardener (leader) must be willing to prune unnecessary foliage so that the plant will continue to grow and thrive. Take a look at this YouTube video about how this gardener makes decisions when pruning bushes and plants.

Pruning your Plants

Before the gardener begins to prune the plant, he must know what the plant will look like if it is going to develop in its second year. In other words he must visualize what the tree or plant will look like next year as a result of purposeful pruning. Once he has a vision for what he wants the plant to look like, he then can make important decisions on which limbs will help the plant reach its maximum potential and which limbs are inhibiting growth. Branches that are close to structures or are overlapping one another must be eliminated. Cutting away the "sucker" branches is critical.

The same goes with leadership. Each leader must know which skills or which tasks are overlapping one another and thus are no longer useful. Old ways of doing things that were once successful may no longer be needed to help the leader lead his team. Those actions, too, must be eliminated. Tasks that were once meant to help teachers and students have become ingrained in the organization and no longer need you. Removing these actions and simplifying behaviors helps make the leader a stronger, more productive and more fruitful plant. In pruning the unnecessary branches from the plant of leadership, the leader is able to guide their leadership toward future growth which makes the leader a much healthier leader.

The last consideration to make before pruning a leadership task is can the team or organization sustain this action without leadership? If the answer is yes, remove it. If the answer is no, the leader must take purposeful steps to make the action sustainable by the team and then make plans to remove himself from the task once the team is capable of taking ownership.

Which actions, behaviors or processes do you need to prune from your leadership and what ideas do you have about pruning them?

What if We Quit Caring...

I was at the grocery store waiting in line and noticing the tabloids about the worst in every "important" celebrity. The headlines brought us the infidelity, divorce, weight gain, incarceration and every other bad thing that was currently happening to "important" celebrities right now.  As I processed the mindlessness of the headlines, I couldn't help but imagine. What if our society quit caring about all of the ridiculous stories about people that do nothing more than entertain us and started caring about the really important people, kids that desperately depend on the society that they live in?

• Instead of the headlines that tell us about a bitter divorce between 2 superficial celebrities, we would see a headline about the importance and sanctity of marriage and how kids need both parents working together.  We could even read about 2 important people in pop culture that put their marriage above their careers. #wow.

• Instead of the headlines talking about a teen pop star entering rehab for the 4th time, we could read about how a high school student body is working hard to battle against drug abuse and the community is actively supporting them. #canyouimaginethat

• Instead of the headline reading that a leading actress is overweight or looking haggard, we could read about an organization that promotes the real beauty that we should see in young ladies that is grounded in self-confidence, intellectuality and modesty. #weneedthis

• Instead of reading about the latest stupid act that some actor did that landed him in jail, we could be inspired by a community that has joined together to mentor disadvantaged youth to keep them from becoming a statistic of the criminal justice system. #thatdoeshappeninamerica

• Instead of reading how America's schools are horrible because of a few that are not doing well, we could read the headlines about the actual reality of schools which is they do the best job ever preparing kids for a college and career pathway. #testscoresdonttellthewholestory

Let's be honest.  What we read and allow to enter our brains affects us.  It numbs our character and dims our wit.  In the 1940's & 50's, mainstream literature was grounded in character, examples of improvement, and obstacles overcome that motivated and inspired a nation.  What do we have today in mainstream America that is available to every American that motivates and inspires us?  There are too many examples of literature that tears people down which in actuality rips apart our nation's fabric.  As a nation and as Americans, we should and we must promote and provide our students with multiple examples of literature that will stimulate and inspire their minds in such a way that will encourage them to become something bigger and better than literature that they read.  #itcanhappen

So here is what I suggest that every one of us do.
Let's not wait for this change to take place and take matters into our own hands. What if we used our schools as the new source for meaningful news in our community?  Our kids could work with our local newspapers to write inspiring stories about the excellent education that they are getting and the issues that are important to them.  Our webpages, blogs and social media could feature the writing of our students and staff members.  If we want our children to be focused on this utopian type of  character, we must take purposeful steps to make it happen.  #wecandothis

We have the smartest kids in the world, and unlike other countries in the world, we don't limit their opportunities or potential due to socioeconomic status, race, religion, or disability.  Every child has an equal opportunity, and our schools do more for kids than ever in the history in the world.  We owe it to our kids, their future children and our country to demand that we all save and protect the character of our youth, not by eliminating or censoring literature, but by something bigger and better, diverting our attention from this trivial gossip.  This change would push our collective character to expose ourselves and our moral fiber toward meaningful literature that will challenge us everyday to be better individuals, to create a better community and a belief in a better America.

7 Traits of a Transformational Leader

Leadership is not a job. It is not a position. Leadership is a passion. It is a calling.

Leaders are not appointed.  They are not selected. Leaders emerge. They rise up in times of adversity while others stay seated.

In rereading Marzano's 'School Leadership that Works' for the umpteenth time, I zoned in on his description of the transformational leader. This is where the leader's behavior is characterized into "four factors: individual consideration, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation and idealized influence". I attempted to synthesize this idea into 7 specific and tangible traits that every leader must possess if they want to move from being a transactional leader to a transformational leader.  Here is a description of the four factors as they are found in Marzano's work (Marzano, 2005, p14).

1. "Individual consideration is characterized by giving 'personal attention to members who seem neglected' (Bass, 1990 p.218)"
2. "Intellectual stimulation is characterized by enabling 'followers to think of old problems in new ways' (Bass, 1990 p.218)" 
3. "Inspirational motivation is characterized by communicating 'high performance expectations' (Bass, 1990 p.218)"
4. "Idealized influence is characterized by modeling behavior through exemplary personal achievements, character and behavior.(Bass, 1990 p.218)"

L
Loyalty - Leaders are loyal to the cause and to the people who are involved in the cause.  Their loyalty is manifested in helping everyone become better. Loyalty means putting others' interests before yours.  Loyalty is a character trait that is the foundation of Idealized Influence.

Learner - Leaders don't know everything, so they are constantly finding new ways to do things in a more effective and efficient manner from all kinds of people.  Leaders model Intellectual Stimulation to their staff by deepening their own intellectual capacity through constant inquiry and dialogue with all staff members, especially those staff members that are not seen as the teacher leaders of the campus.  By engaging them in conversation about practices, leaders challenge their own intellect as well as the intellect of the staff.

E
Enthusiasm - Leaders are enthusiastic about what they do, and they use their enthusiasm to motivate and inspire those that they come in contact with. They are enthusiastic about helping people. They are enthusiastic about making progress, and their enthusiasm spreads throughout the organization and its stakeholders. Enthusiasm can't be spread without a commitment to being visible. Enthusiasm, to me, is a required ingredient of Inspirational Motivation.

A
Accountability - Leaders believe in holding themselves accountable for the cause. Leaders encourage team members to hold the leader accountable, and when leaders are held accountable by the organization, they are able to hold others accountable for supporting the team in meeting campus expectations and goals.  Being accountable and holding others accountable is two-fold in transformational leadership.  Holding yourself accountable is Idealized Influence, and holding others accountable a key component of the 'high' expectations in Inspirational Motivation.

D
Discipline - Leaders are disciplined in their behaviors and in their organization. They structure their time and their days in such a way that they are able to support and serve others. In being disciplined, leaders do not let outside influences or distractions deter them from reaching their goals or staying focused.  This example of Idealized Influence is exactly what schools and organizations must see from the leader on a daily and consistent basis.

E
Empathy - Leaders are not always judgemental, contrary to popular belief. They are very interested in thinking about the individual person and the situation that they are going through before making a decision. Leaders think about why people make decisions that lead to mistakes. Leaders display Individual Consideration by helping others learn from their mistakes. The leader does this because he knows that empathy is the best way to overcome obstacles.  Additionally, Individual Consideration must be used with every staff member, especially those that are often overlooked.

R
Results-Oriented - All people want to see results; however, leaders know that all of their efforts put together maximize the results that they should expect to see. Leaders develop tight systems to monitor and evaluate all parts of the system to ensure that they are efficient and effective. Leaders use the data not to demonize those who fail to get results but to help them figure out how to improve and get closer to reaching the goal.  Most importantly, leaders can't get results without using a mixture of all 4 of the factors (Idealized Influence, Intellectual Stimulation, Inspirational Motivation and Individual Consideration).  These factors combined allow the leader to make decisions and changes that ultimately sustain and solidify the organization.

Bosses are a dime a dozen. They think about the results and have little consideration for building people or organizational capacity. As a result, they have to start all over again when a new and different result is needed.  Leaders, conversely, think about all of the other things that go into making the results happen. And in doing so, leaders get the best results, because they put all of their efforts into building people not programs.

Vertically Align your Interventions & Instruction Simultaneously

On our campus, we don't have faculty meetings.  I don't like them because what I need to announce, I can do through an email or a flipped video.  Instead we have Vertical Alignment Team (VAT)  meetings on the 2nd Monday of every month.  This is our time to come together and vertically align instruction, curriculum, assessments and anything else that needs alignment. 

Our focus this year is aligning interventions and collectively answering Question 3, "How Will We Respond If They Don't Learn It?".  This month we had a VAT where our teachers worked in teams to improve their interventions. Our teachers brought with them the high leverage skills that they were focused on for the first six weeks of school. Teachers from the same grade level worked in pairs to identify one high leverage skill taught during the six weeks, find the most common mistakes that students made in learning the skill, and prescribed possible interventions to eliminate the mistakes.  The purpose of this activity was to proactively address 80% of the reasons that kids fail to learn the given skill, so that they could have time in planning meetings to respond to the unexpected reasons that kids fail to learn the skill (the other 20%) after the instruction was delivered.

Meet with the Grade Level Below

Before the teacher pair could finish designing the intervention, the pair had to meet with the grade level below to ensure that the intervention prescribed was aligned with the way that the skill was taught in the previous grade. The two grade levels had discussions about methodologies of instruction as well as the learning styles of the students from the previous year to ensure that the intervention would be aligned with the method that the students learned the concept the year before. Prerequisite skills were also discussed to ensure that the foundation for learning and intervening was aligned.

The most important point for meeting with the grade level below is that intervention for the current grade level must be aligned with the instruction from the previous year.  Otherwise, your intervention will come out of left field and not from the instructional experiences that the student was exposed to in the prior year.

Meet with the Grade Level Above

After the teacher pair finished meeting with the grade level below, the pair then met with the grade level above to ensure that the interventions that they were prescribing would help the student be prepared for the next grade level. The interesting thing about this discussion with the grade level above is that the discussion was more about instruction than intervention. This great conversation helped make sure that what is taught in the current grade level will set the stage for the teachers in the next grade level. The importance of the conversation is that grade levels understand that what they are teaching must build schema in the way that students learned the prerequisite skills in the previous year.  Conversely, the current grade must be cognizant of the way that skills will be taught next year.  Failure for both grades to recognize instruction from both perspectives will result in more students failing to learn.

The most important point to consider from meeting with the grade level above is that dialogue must eliminate bad habits that students learn in the current year, so that the next grade doesn't have to lose value instruction and intervention time breaking those bad habits.  For you math teachers, I give you the best example possible, to cross multiply or not to cross multiply...

Considerations & Reminders

There are two important things to consider when having a VAT intervention meeting. First, we need to be clear in our understanding that Tier 1 interventions are for all students and that intervention begins where the student begins to have difficulty in learning a given concept. In addition, Tier 1 interventions should be tried frequently over a period of time to gauge whether or not the intervention is effective.

The second point to consider in a VAT intervention meeting is that we must ensure that our instruction is as effective as possible. We ensure that by having discussions about the methodologies and what quality instruction and student work look like and sound like from grade to grade. This discussion ensures that what we're doing in one grade directly leads the students to a solid foundation of how they will learn it in the next grade.

The most important reminder is that these meetings are not about the grade level below and what they didn't do to prepare kids.  The grade level below does the very best that they can to educate every child, and our discussions should always make both grade levels better.  Mutual respect, trust, and commitment to helping one another must always be the goal of a VAT meeting.

Put What We Learn to Work

The result of a VAT meeting should be answering question three for our weekly planning meetings, how to respond when students are not learning. This activity makes planning each week easier as teachers are able to draw upon the intervention plans that they created in VAT meetings. These plans must be in front of teams to guide the discussion weekly and make lesson planning more focused and efficient.

In addition, the result of a VAT intervention meeting should also create strong lines of communication from grade to grade so that when teachers or teams are having difficulty teaching a particular concept, they can have a conversation with the grade below to see how they taught the prerequisite skills.  Then, they can have a conversation with a grade above to ensure that the instruction that they plan to deliver will prepare all kids for the next grade.

Vertical alignment is usually put to the back burner for most schools.  Schools that excel make vertical alignment a priority and more important schedule it on the calendar regularly, so it does not get move to the back burner.

Are You Vulnerable as an Instructional Leader?

The other day I was having a great conversation with Bill Ferriter about flipping faculty meetings. In my discussion I was talking to him about some of my instructional goals for the campus this year and  how important it was that I have a culture where the staff could be vulnerable in their discussions about instruction.

Bill, a teacher himself, posed this question to me. "Well John, how vulnerable are you in your instruction?" He went on to say that it's real easy for the instructional leader to ask everyone to be vulnerable when he, himself, doesn't have to be vulnerable. This statement gave me pause as I started to reflect about how many times in my career I have asked teachers to do something that I, myself, didn't do at all.

As leaders, it's very important for us to set goals for the team. It is imperative to set a vision of where we want our organization to be. It's also vital to describe the behaviors and attitudes that we must all exhibit if we want to reach our vision and our goal.

So it all comes back to the title of this post, am I vulnerable as an instructional leader? I would say that I work hard to be an instructional leader because I have a good understanding of what curriculum should look like in instruction at all levels, what it should look like in an assessment and intervention,
and how the organization must work interdependently to link those things together.  I make plans to create the structure and culture to give teachers the autonomy and safety to discuss instructional practices and how we as a campus can improve; however, I think that I can do a better job as an instructional leader by putting myself in the place that I ask teachers to put themselves every single day.

An essential trait of an instructional leader is the ability to model instruction. Am I willing to put myself in front of the teachers teaching a lesson and ask for them to give me feedback on how to become a better teacher? Some ideas have emerged that I need to put myself in the teaching role, teach a lesson and have my teachers evaluate me on the things that I think are very important. One idea that I have started to implement is doing read alouds throughout the campus and asking the teachers to evaluate me using the district balanced literacy components on an effective read aloud.

When I sent an email asking my staff to help me become better at elementary instruction by doing read alouds, I received lots of positive feedback and requests for me to come to their classroom. Teachers were enthused and positive that I wanted to be a part of their instruction and that I was asking them for help.  This warm and welcoming reception made me feel more comfortable about being vulnerable in my own instruction.

I have two hopes in this activity that I'm about to begin. First I hope that the teachers will give me honest feedback on where I need to improve as a teacher, and second I hope that through their observations this will create a natural dialogue among teachers about what essential components should be in a read aloud to make them meaningful and focused on learning, as well as give the staff the confidence to be vulnerable with one another about instruction.  Ultimately, I want them to learn from one another, and as a bonus, I hope to get made fun of a little bit, so that I can be closer with my staff.

Are you vulnerable as an instructional leader?  If so, I would really enjoy your feedback and opinions about how you make yourself vulnerable as an instructional leader.