Public Education is Worth Fighting For

Public Education is about to venture back into the debate of charters and vouchers as options for turning around our struggling schools. With the appointment of Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary, Public Education is again being threatened by another "transformation" that is meant to raise standards and provide for excellence in American classrooms. However, with a focus on repealing the Common Core State Standards, providing vouchers and funding charter schools, there is little hope that this refurbished approach to transforming American education will do much more than frustrate high quality educators and leaders who have invested their lives into educating future generations of American children.

As a leader of a struggling school that is a completely different place than it was three years ago, I have a few pieces of advice for the incoming Education Secretary - not that I think they will be heard, but I have decided that if I do not use my voice to advocate for what I believe in (aka Public Education), then I am not being true to myself as a leader and I am not showing my community what I believe in and am willing to invest my time and effort into.

Common Core - Why does the Education Secretary want to repeal the Common Core? Her tweet, "Many of you are asking about Common Core. To clarify, I am not a support - period," (read more here) has been retweeted and quoted throughout the news cycles. The Common Core State Standards has put the need for more rigorous, student-centered educational practices that build on conceptual understanding the center of classroom planning and practice. How is that hurting anyone? The whole idea behind transforming our education system is that American students lag significantly behind students from around the world (see chart below) and in a global economy, we simply cannot afford for American innovation and business to continue to lag behind. 

While the roll-out of Common Core and the connection to APPR were highly (and rightly) criticized, the need for rigorous discourse, high quality instruction that builds on conceptual understanding, reading complex text, and writing across the content areas continue to be the best parts of Common Core and should not be "watered down" in the name of "transformation." The Common Core is not the problem in America's schools - if our students cannot meet the standards, we must look at effective leadership practices and effective classroom practices that will make sure that our students (that's ALL students) get the high quality instruction that they deserve. 

Vouchers and Charters - I can hear it now..."What's the big deal? If there is more choice, that will force schools to be better if they want to keep students!"Here is the real deal...it takes a considerable amount of time and effort to turn around a school. I am on year three and we are really starting to see gains across all areas. However, we have not yet reached a tipping point where the majority of our students are performing at or above their grade level. Public school dollars support charter and voucher programs that allow for students to leave public schools and attend a school of choice, which has a devastating impact on the resources available to students and in classrooms. Public schools have an obligation to provide the highest quality education to all of our students in order to have an educated citizenry and that requires having adequate resources. We cannot educate the future of our communities and our country if only some students are given the opportunity to experience excellence. 

Teacher Preparation Programs - In the past twenty-five years that I have been in education, there has been very little public debate about the quality and expectations of Teacher Preparation Programs. There is a significant amount of debate from within education, but no one else has really seemed to take on the challenge. I would encourage Betsy DeVos to take this on as one of her important first challenges - more important than Common Core revision, ESSA, or even the Voucher debate. Without having top notch teachers in our classrooms, very little matters about what the laws and regulations state about what we need in American classrooms. What we need, more than absolutely anything, is the best teachers ever. That will definitely require that colleges make changes to their programs. It will require that teacher preparation programs look much more like doctor preparation programs. And it should require changes to the salary scales for teachers as well - if we are expected to train like doctors, we should be compensated like doctors. After all, we are saving lives, too. 

So, my challenge to incoming Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, is more of an invitation. Come and visit. See first hand who American children are, what American children are learning, and American teachers are teaching. Talk with high quality school leaders who are training the teachers who are coming out of our Teacher Preparation programs over the course of three years or more in order to make young teachers who have just stepped into the classroom into effective practitioners. And lastly, I would ask you to remember that educators are making investments in our future each and every day. We wouldn't ask Wall Street Investors to make a promising future without the appropriate resources - likewise, our public schools need the resources to ensure a bright future for ALL of our children. 

Developing Leadership Opportunities

One of the key components of leadership is developing the next generation of leaders, whether that is classroom leaders, model classrooms, or school or district level leaders. We have an obligation to ensure that the leaders who come after us have a mindset and beliefs that will serve the students of tomorrow and provide them with the absolute best education. In some ways, that means that leaders are always developing teachers out of the classrooms in their own building, which can have a significant impact on the instructional program in a school. So, it is necessary to have a leadership development plan.

Developing a leadership development plan starts with your own leadership as the school building leader. You must have an idea of where you need to learn and grow if you are going to model and create opportunities for leadership development in your school. As a leader, you must learn and grow alongside your staff - simply providing them with opportunities to learn is not enough, and expecting them to learn for you is poor leadership. In an article in the Harvard Business Review, Deborah Rowland cites that many employees do not trust their boss and that most in-house leadership development is less about "doing leadership" and more about "how to do" leadership. As school leaders, we must start with ourselves if we want to develop highly effective leaders.

Having a leadership plan requires a common language around the competencies of leadership. There are certainly many to choose from - I have used the Turnaround Leadership Competencies by Public Impact for myself, my leadership teams, and my classroom leaders. Hearing my teacher leaders talk about recognizing the early wins or requiring all staff to make changes is exciting and it underscores the importance of having that common language throughout an organization in order to make substantive change. Here is an example of a self-assessment tool that leaders can use when beginning to make a leadership development plan.

The next levels of leadership vary based on the size of your system. Identifying these levels of leadership is essential for any strong leadership development plan. In my system, I have a leadership team (their primary role is leadership within the building), teacher leaders (they have additional leadership responsibilities that they have taken on outside of their classroom role), team leaders (they are the key person on their grade level team or department), and classroom leaders. There is some crossover between the layers of leadership, as some people are involved in multiple levels of the work.

My responsibility as the building leader is to distribute the leadership of our school vision through internal leadership and also provide opportunities for them to learn and grow their own skill set. Within this system, I have several leaders who aspire to be building leaders, several who wish to become model classrooms or instructional coaches, and some who are working on developing stronger communication skills within their grade level team. Differentiating leadership development and opportunities for growth requires that school leaders know the skill sets and leadership capacities of their staff as well as creative opportunities for leadership to live in your school. Leadership development also requires clear visioning, strong communication regarding the vision, and regular feedback and check-ins. Two-way communication and checking-in on progress have to be a priority in order for budding leadership to grow and yield the expected results.

How Can You Tell If Your School Has "Turned Around?

There are many components of school turnaround - suspension and referral rates, student achievement measures, attendance, parent involvement, staff turnover, and school climate to name a few. With so many moving targets, how can anyone ever know if their school has really "turned around?"

Even the idea of "turnaround" is somewhat of a misnomer. Moving a school from significantly underperforming to achieving takes time. It's not as if there is a magic wand that can take a school from one end of the spectrum to the other overnight. When we talk about school turnaround, we are really talking about significant school improvement and being able to see improvement in the terms of any of the indicators previously listed is an amazing thing to see.

There are many voices in the school turnaround debate. Advocates range from strategies that involve closing schools and re-opening them with new leadership, new staff, and new curriculum to strategies that involve supporting the whole child through addressing the issues of high poverty. No matter what the approach to school turnaround, the research supports the need for strong, visionary leadership in implementing a school turnaround plan that yields results.

This is my third year as a turnaround principal. My school has made significant gains in reducing suspensions and referrals, in improving student achievement, in improving attendance rates, in engaging parents and families, in reducing staff turnover, and in creating a school culture that is a productive learning environment and values achievement. This week, New York State released the Demonstrable Improvement Index for schools in receivership. This score indicates an overall improvement rating based on metrics that were selected for that school. Schools were given points based on meeting the targets set for each metric. The school I lead scored a 92 out of 100. Maybe I should say that in a little different way - how's this?

92 out of 100!!! That's amazing!!!

This acknowledges and underscores our hard work and improvement efforts. We are working tirelessly to make greater gains in student achievement and to continue toward being a model school in school turnaround. To read more about our demonstrable improvement index, our metrics, out turnaround efforts, and our school community, click here.

When Thinking is Visible

How do we know that there is really deep thinking, measurable learning, and significant growth happening in our classrooms? If you have followed any of my previous posts, you know that I am pretty passionate about classrooms where there is a high level of rigor, real life engagement, and deep thinking. I love thinking about rigor as "cognitive demand" - in simplest terms, who is really doing the thinking and the work?

This past weekend, I attended the NYSRA Conference in Rochester, New York. One of the most interesting sessions that I attended was by Maureen Boyd, a professor at University of Buffalo, which focused on classroom talk (find her book here). Although the idea of classroom talk seems simple, when you think of classroom talk as visible thinking, it takes on a different shape. Dr. Boyd talked about the power of the "third turn." The initial question is the first turn. The student response is the second turn. The power comes in the third turn - what the teacher does in response to the student response. The teacher can either elevate the thinking in this third turn by asking an additional question or asking for additional student responses, or the teacher can stop the thinking in the third turn by simply saying "okay, good." If the teacher's response ends the thinking, then the student only responds for the purpose of answering the question and getting a correct response - that is definitely not visible thinking. If you really want to learn about what students know or understand, you have to be willing to listen to student responses and all that they show you about what students do, and do not, think.

As School Leaders, it is our responsibility to know the kind of questioning, discourse, and thinking that is being asked of our students in our classrooms. When we see instruction that does not push our students' thinking and learning, it is our responsibility to have the hard conversations with our staff that will help them to think about pushing the thinking of our students. This idea of "the third turn" provides us with a clear strategy that can immediately change the level of questioning and discourse in our classrooms. Our classrooms must be vibrant places, full of cognitive demand and supportive relationships that help our students see their true potential. In this video from PS 359 in the South Bronx, you see exactly that - students who are given opportunities to show their thinking, explain their understanding or misunderstanding, and to take risks that will lead them closer to mastery of the standards. As leaders, we must push for our classrooms to engage our students in this kind of visible thinking in order to ensure that they are thinking deeply and authentically engaged in rigorous thinking.


Making Thinking Visible from NYC Public Schools on Vimeo.

Extended Learning Time

I have just returned from the Promising Practices Conference in Albany where we presented our approach to Extended Learning Time (see agenda here). There are many approaches to Extended Learning and our model centers on investing in both teachers and students through Collaborative Team Planning for teachers and Embedded Enrichment for students.

The research supporting extended learning time, particularly in urban schools, is convincing. In a recently published Hechinger Report, they outline the significant defecits thatchildren in poverty experience before they even start school. This research supports the need for extended learning time, and it also supports the importance of enrichment for children in poverty. Extending the school day for teachers without enriching the curriculum for students only addresses half of the need. 

Leadership in a school with extended learning time and embedded enrichment requires a clear vision (let's be real here, leadership always requires a clear vision) and a belief in the value of enrichment for students and the investment in teacher development through collaboration. The work we are doing in both areas is resulting significant growth in our school. 

Productive Struggle

When I was in middle school, I struggled with math. I didn't catch on quickly and the pace of the lessons always felt too fast for me. Math was presented in only one way and I had to try to follow along and make meaning, but I remember feeling stupid and started saying "I can't do math" as a result. My parents got me a tutor who helped me to see math in different ways and gave me the opportunity to talk through my thinking. It turns out, I could do math, but I needed to be able to make meaning and I needed to be able to talk through my misconceptions.

So, what is the difference between struggling in mathematics and productive struggle?

The shifts in the common core require that the students do the majority of the thinking and the work - that they are the ones productively struggling with the problem solving, questioning, thinking, and explaining.

It really comes down to conceptual understanding. Conceptual understanding is how we make meaning of what we are learning - it's the mental models and images that we create to help us understanding what we are doing. 

Prior to common core, learning math was largely about about procedures. It was up to us to make our own meaning and find ways to understand the concepts behind the procedures if we did not immediately "get it." Twenty years ago, we didn't provide students with manipulatives to make meaning - we gave them procedures and expected them to figure it out. As a result, many students continued to feel like they didn't "get" math.

What is the lesson here for teachers of common core mathematics? 

Think about how long it took you to make meaning of mathematical concepts. Now think about how long you give kids to really make meaning of mathematical concepts. If you give students two days with manipulatives, have you really just substituted different procedures and students still don't have enough time to make meaning?

Here's an example. (https://www.engageny.org/sites/default/files/resource/attachments/g4-m1-full-module.pdf)

Lucy plays an online math game. She scored 100,000 more points on Level 2 than on Level 3. If she scored 349,867 points on Level 2, what was her score on Level 3? Use pictures, words, or numbers to explain your thinking.

Struggling would mean that you would give this problem to students and let them try to figure it out., Productive struggle means that you woud read through this problem with your students, giving them an opportunity to discuss what strategies they might use to solve the problem and what information they see as critical to understanding what the problem is asking. 

In order to do teach in this way, you have to plan differently. First of all, you need to do the math. You have to understand what students are going to do when they first approach this problem. You have to plan for an ideal student response and also plan for misconceptions that students are going to have. If you don't do the math, you are merely teaching to procedures and not to conceptual understanding. 

Secondly, you need to plan for students to productively struggle. Again, that means that they have to have some information to use before they begin to problem solve. In this problem, you might talk about the numbers that are important in the problem, and you might even brainstorm strategies that students could use to solve the problem, but in order to ensure that students would be doing the thinking, you would not set up a tape diagram for them. Productive struggle means that students have to have an idea about the work they are going to engage in and they would be able to explain the reasons that they chose the approach that they did. Do you provide students with manipulatives or do you have them get their own? Do you encourage them to use their white board? How do you help guide students toward potential strategies that will help them make meaning without telling them how to think?

Students also need time to do the math. Too often, this time is cut significantly short because teachers have not taught students to productively struggle. You have to have an idea of what you expect to see while kids are working in order to plan effective questions, redirections, or next steps. Your job during this phase is really to facilitate thinking. Students have to have a starting point and they have to be able to determine which strategies are most efficient.  As you gather information from students, you have to be able to really listen to them in order to understand their thinking and plan for next steps in moving them forward. Students should be encouraged to work together if it helps to facilitate their thinking - think about what you would do if you had to solve a problem. Chances are, you would at least talk it through with someone before you decided what steps made the msot sense to you. 

The real impact comes in the student discourse - where students explain their thinking whether they have a right or a wrong answer. The confident practitioner will embrace the questions that help move other students toward understanding during this part and will not get nervous about students modeling incorrect answers or divergent thinking. If student discourse sounds just like students filling in the blanks in your classroom, it is not getting to real understanding and it is certainly not moving students toward proficiency. Students should be able to think through their understanding and simply snot encouraged to find a friend if it takes them longer than 15 seconds to answer or explain their thinking. Classrooms that really understand that every child makes meaning about mathematics in their own way are classrooms that will celebrate divergent thinking, will build on other students' responses, and will ultimately see the greatest growth in mathematical understanding. 

I have come to look at mathematics instruction so differently than when I was a student. Our children are ready, willing, and absolutely able to master the mathematical concepts and skills that are a part of our common core curriculum. Teachers must look at teaching as more than simply covering the lesson and must do the math in order to be able to facilitate conceptual understanding for students and build on their questions in order to secure foundational skills. Our students must have more time with manipulatives and making meaning in order to build conceptual understanding. 

Making math matter in classrooms requires teachers that believe in the power of making meaning, building conceptual understanding with tools and manipulatives, and the ability of our children to conceptualize how different parts of mathematics align and connect. Adults must engage in productive struggle with that kind of planning in order to create clasrooms where students can productively struggle with concepts in mathematics. 

http://makingmathmatteronline.com/resources/math-make-and-take-activities/

http://educore.ascd.org/channels/9f4217a1-0b89-456b-8188-ee29fccf1441

https://www.edutopia.org/blog/common-core-math-elementary-resources-matt-davis

Celebrating Diversity

I grew up in a small town. Diversity was not a part of the fabric of our community. I grew up knowing that there was much about other cultures that I didn't understand or even know about, and I chose to move away from the community that I love and to relocate in a place where there was greater diversity.

It may sound like a sound bite, but diversity is our greatest strenth. It is truly amazing to think how different people from different cultural backgrounds have all found themselves drawn to the liberties, freedoms, and opportunities that this country offers its people. I am not hugely political or patriotic, however, I believe that people deserve the "certain unalienable rights" that our forefathers wrote about and I believe that the people referred to in the Declaration of Independence rmeans all people. 

Friday we celebrated International Day at my school. It was absolutely amazing to see students dressed in their traditional cultural dress. Parents and families brought in traditional dishes to share with students in the class so everyone could have a "taste" of the different cultures that we represent. Classes read stories, learned cultural dances, made different foods, played games, and shared history from around the world as they learned to truly celebrate the diversity that lives in my school. I was so proud to be the leader of a school where there is so much diversity and so many cultures represented.

Providing opportunities for students to share their stories is essential in giving them a voice. In this day and age when some people feel that their voice should matter more than others, it is important for us to remember that public education exists to provide access, opportunity, and a level playing field for all - that means that all people, from all kinds of diverse backgrounds. Look at these kids - don't they deserve the very best we can give them every, single day?

Drive Decisions with Open Air Data

We are about six weeks into the school year. We had some initial data from last school year and summer that could inform the initial steps we took, but now it is time to get serious about planning for the students that we have in front of us and moving them toward proficiency.

I take this part of turnaround leadership very seriously. We do not have a single moment that can be wasted in classrooms in order to ensure that our students make the growth that is necessary for them to have the future that they deserve. To be able to immediately respond to the needs of our individual students requires knowing our students, understanding how they learn and where their gaps are, and believing in where they can be with our help. Teacher preparation programs do not train teachers to think this way - to plan in such a way that they can modify and adapt the standards to meet the needs of every individual child in the classroom - but it is necessary in order to move our students that we develop the skills to plan in this way.

Here is an example of our September data based on the STAR Reading Assessment.

What do you notice? As a school building leader, what would your first step be? As a teacher leader, how would you begin to look differently at the needs of your students? As a classroom teacher, what would you immediately begin to consider in order to plan for the students in your classrooms? 

I have a colleague who has her teachers create individualized plans for every student across their grade level team so that they can have a strong plan for moving each student toward proficiency. That is a powerful way to drive decisions based with the data. Whateer your approach to owning, sharing, and planning based on your data, it is essential to name the students at each proficiency level and have a clear plan for moving those students. There must be as strong of a plan for the students who are in green (at proficiency) as there is for the students who are in red. 

My plan is to meet with each grade level team and ask them to name the students performing at each level of proficiency, as well as information about each student in order to round out our understanding of what each child needs. Each grade level team will create a data wall that will track the interventions and progress for our students. This adds a level of accountability for the data. It also makes us constantly aware of where students are performing and our obligation to providing them what they need to move toward proficiency with grade level standards. 

Driving decisions with data is an essential component of school turnaround. The model above, which builds on a key quote from Peter Senge, supports the assertion that without the use of data to drive decisions, the underlying structures and mental models will not be significantly impacted. As Senge stated in The Fifth Discipline, "In a learning organization, leaders are designers, stewards, and teachers. They are responsible for building organizations where people continually expand their capabilities to understand complexity, clarify vision, and improve shared mental models - that is, they are responsible for learning." Turnaround leaders must own their data and be able to lead the next steps for changing the events, patterns, structures, and mental models underlying the practice in classrooms. Making significant change requires that we have a clear plan for moving our students toward proficiency. Every moment counts. 

Why Don't Some Changes "Take?"

I have been thinking deeply about why some schools are successful in school turnaround and others are not. What are the differences between a school or a district that experiences visible change and sees visible results and a school or district that is on a treadmill of trying things differently but getting the same result. While I believe that there are many things that ultimately impact this change, there is one key ingredient that is critical to every single component of the change. Systems.

Go to your bookshelf and grab your copy of Peter Senge's book, Schools That Learn. If you have never read Senge's work, it is really critical to understanding systemic change in any organization (buy it or download it here). Senge has spent his career studying businesses, the corporate world, schools, and higher education with the quesion of what underscores real and effective change in these large scale organizations. His theories on systems thinking and having a systems approach to imacting meanigful change speak to the underlying reason that some schools successfully turnaround and others do not. Here is Peter Senge in his own words explaining systems thinking in schools.

Systsems thinking requires that leaders (classroom leaders, school building leaders, district leaders, corporate leaders) see change in terms of the entire system - what are the actions that will be required at every level of the system and who is responsible for the successful implementation. This is significantly different from a leader issuing a memo stating what the change will be and then becoming frustrated when that change has not been thoroughly implemented or implemented to the degree in which the leader is satisfied. It's the same idea as we have been pushing in classrooms with the implementation of the Common Core - who is doing the thinking and who is doing the work? In learning organizations who are successful in implementing systemic change, everyone in the system is doing the thinking and the work around the key components of change as outlined by the leadership.

I was first introduced to Peter Senge's work in 2001, when I was invited by my principal to join her in a year long book study with other leaders throughout the county. I was mesmerized by the principles that Senge outlined and it made so much sense in light of the work we were engaged in at the time - continuously striving to get enough momentum to move the needle away from single digit student achievement and significantly disruptive and dangerous student behaviors, struggling to be more proactive and less reactive, and always struggling to get our staff on-board with our vision. In my twenty-four years in education, I have watched district and building leaders have varying degrees of success with the same issues - trying to get buy-in, make changes that stick, and move the needle on student achievement. But changing the system is different from making changes - and systemic change is the only thing that will ultimately result in the organization looking, feeling, and acting differently.

The image of an iceberg is used in many different ways to describe thinking. Senge's image of system thinking uses the iceberg to analyze what we see as opposed to what is the underlying reasoning or purpose. If we are to make real systemic change, we must focus on what is underneath and not simply on the surface of what we see.

The bottom of the image refers to "mental models." That's the thinking that goes in to the decision making of people in your system. No matter how much effort you as a leader put into changing the surface of your system, if you do not disrupt the thinking patterns, or mental models, of the people in the system (in schools that includes teachers, students, parents, and the community) then we will not succeed in implementing systemic change. For leaders (classroom leaders, school building leaders, or district leaders), this is critical. We must look at every aspect of the system and work to built capacity for every person in that system to see how we need them to think, act, and respond differently if we are to make a difference in how the entire system performs. 

Shifting Thinking

So much of our work in school leadership is based on this idea of shifting the thinking of others - trying to get buy-in to the direction of our work or building capacity around the vision for our school. Since there is currently no technology that can allow us to upload our experiences and processes into those who work with us (I can definitely see how a Vulcan Mind-Meld would be a significant benefit here), shifting the thinking of others happens in conversation, reflection, re-direction, and clear visioning over time.

Clear visioning with new members of your team sounds simple, however, it is not about simply stating what the vision is. There are nuances and intracacies of what that vision may mean and it will take repeated reflection and practice in order to feel like it is truly a shared and supported vision. For example, in my school, we have built some common expectations around classrooms having tight routines and procedures in place and well practiced by the third week of school. We shared data to support the need for strong routines and procedures to be in place and built capacity around our shared belief in what routines and procedures need to be modeled, taught, practiced, and reinforced (all of them!), and then we built 8 week plans around how those routines and procedures would be laid out in real time in real classrooms. As school leaders, we have been "inspecting what we expect"(see last week's blog post) and giving feedback on where we are in terms of being tight as a school. This is where the clear visioning can be called to question - what if members of your leadership team have different perceptions of what it means to have "tight routines and procedures?" What if some of your staff has a different tolerance level around student misbehavior? What if your expectations of what it means to be tight in the cafeteria include everyone in their seat using a quiet voice and members of your staff are okay with students out of their seat as long as they are not fighting?

If you find yourself thinking that you would be better off if you had clones of yourself to work with, or musing that it would be so nice if everyone just did their job, then you have an issue with clear visioning.

Shifting thinking is a process. It involves purposeful planning and carefully crafted feedback conversations. If you want members of your team to share your vision for anything from classroom routines and procedures to student behavior to meeting deadlines, it falls to you as the leader to be clear about your expectations, check in on those expectations, and provide immediate feedback or course corrections in order to see progress. Back to the example of the tight routines and procedures, if I am not seeing from classrooms what I expect by week three, it falls to me as the leader to intervene, provide immediate feedback and allow for opportunities to put that feedback into action.

The next step to feedback is checking in. This is the difference between feedback and actionable feedback. If I have a conversations with a staff member about her clear signaling in her classroom and have an expectation that different strategies will be implemented in order to get student attention and allow for a culture of learning to take place in the classroom, then I must also follow up to check the progress. Because shifting thinking is not a one time thing, I should plan on this process happening repeatedly until there is clear progress in the classroom.

I know what you are thinking...who has time for this? If I have to check in with every person on my staff to ensure that their actions are aligned to the vision and give actionable feedback with follow ups, I will never be able to get my work done! I would try to shift your thinking around that (did you see what I did there?) because this is the work. Emails, phone calls, and meetings are not the work. Being in classrooms and making sure that the vision is alive in your classrooms is the work. Shifting the thinking of others so that they see how your vision lives in their students is what will allow you to answer emails and phone calls in a few weeks - once you feel like there is truly a sense of shared ownership and capacity.

So I would ask you to shift your thinking this week - clear your calendar to the extent that you are able and live in classrooms, in the cafeteria, in team meetings, and every place that you want to see your vision in action. Give immediate actionable feedback and follow up to see the progress. You will be glad you did.

Inspect What You Expect

As leaders, we have spent the last weeks carefully outlining the expectations that we have for our school, our teachers, and our classrooms. How do you know that the work that is happening is meeting your expectations and that your students, staff, parents, families, and classrooms all share your vision for the culture of achievement? You must inspect what you expect - not once, not twice, but continuously, in order to ensure that the culture of achievement lives in the day to day work of the school. Likewise, if you are the classroom teacher, you must provide opportunities to model, teach, practice, and assess your expectations in order to ensure that the culture in your classroom will allow for students to reach high levels of achievement. 

Creating a classroom culture 

What are your beliefs for student learning? How are they in evidence in the day to day routines and procedures and what you expect or reinforce in your classroom? For instance, you might say that you believe in a culture of achievement in your classroom or in your school. How would I know what your beliefs were if I were to walk into your classroom? 

So, what is culture? According to NAESP, 

"Whenever a group of people spend a significant amount of time together, they develop a common set of expectations. These expectations evolve into unwritten rules to which group members conform in order to remain in good standing with their colleagues. Groups develop a common culture in order to pass on information to the next generation. That information, however, represents a set of beliefs that have been passed down by imperfect humans with personal preferences." https://www.naesp.org/resources/2/Principal/2008/M-Ap56.pdf

So, the amount of time that you as a leader must invest into ensuring that the culture - or unwritten set of expectations - of your school aligns to your vision cannot be discounted. It must be your top priority as a school leader or as a classroom teacher leader to ensure that your beliefs live in the culture of your building and your classrooms. 

Culture and climate are usually talked about in the same sentence - as if they are the same thing. Leaders often mistake making adjustments to the climate of the the school will impact the culture, but it is really two different things. Culture is the deep-seated beliefs of an organization and you can feel a school's culture in the exchanges between students and staff, staff members with one another, staff with parents and families, and the school and the community. 

Please take 10 minutes out of your busy day today to watch this video of Citizen's Academy in Cleveland, Ohio. The impact of school culture is evident in every purposeful teacher action, every student action, every leader action that has led to this school's academy and social successes. As a classroom teacher leader, think about your actions with students - are they are purposeful and on point as the teachers in the video? As a school leader, think about the expectations that you inspect and continuously reinforce in your school - do they all point in the same direction of high levels of student achievement? If your beliefs do not match your actions, then your school culture will reflect the fact that what you say and what you do are two different things. Kids, teacher, and families will know that and it will become the culture of your school or your classroom. Be purposeful. Say what you mean and mean what you say. Inspect what you expect. 

Starting Strong

You know that saying - "You only get one chance to make a first impression?" The same is true for the start of the school year. You only get one chance to start the school year right - and it doesn't happen by chance.

We have spent the last two weeks in professional development that focused on Restorative Practices, Building Supportive Relationships, Bias and Diversity, Mathematics Instruction, and Writing Instruction. I have been challenged in my thinking and in my practice by an amazing team of teachers and leaders. Seeing them take leadership in group discussion and in exemplar practice, really made me think back to where we started. The growth we have made is truly amazing.

Throughout our discussions, we have continued to return to the need for strong routines and procedures and the importance of building a strong sense of community in your classroom. We have looked at data that supports the "why" of the work we are doing and planned carefully for the "how" so that our routines and procedures are able to be tight and purposeful. Routines are essential to providing students the structure and safety that will allow them to take personal and academic risk and to invest themselves fully into relationship with the classroom learning environment (read more about the importance of routines here and here).

Starting the year strong is essential to implementing the strong routines and procedures that will lay the strong foundation for student achievement. As a school leader, it is critical that you "inspect what you expect" and provide opportunities for teacher and students to mode, teach, practice, and assess the routines and procedures that will set students up for success during the year ahead.

We focus on being #tightbyweek3, which means that all of the school-wide routines and procedures have to be well established in order for us to have a safe and productive culture of learning. My leadership team clears their schedule for the first three weeks - there is nothing more important than being in classrooms, in common areas, and in transitions in order to provide immediate feedback and offer opportunities for immediate course correction. For classroom routines and procedures that become the foundation of academic achievement, we will provide feedback, opportunities for practice, and action planning to ensure that we are poised to achieve the level of academic success that our students deserve.

It is critical that school leaders have a clear vision of how school-wide routines and procedures will be modeled, taught, practiced, and reinforced and that there is a clearly articulated vision about the routines and procedures that are expected in order to ensure academic achievement in classrooms.

What is Your Why?

Why do you do what you do? What do you miss family dinners and doing homework with your kids? Why do you work on the weekends and wake up in the middle of the night? Why do you come in early and stay late and spend your own money on school supplies or clothes or birthday cupcakes or clothes?

One of my colleagues asked me this earlier this week. "What is your why?" Why do I do what I do to the extent that I do it? The answer is pretty clear cut - I have to.

The passion that I feel for the students in my school is deep. I have two biological children and 800 other children that I feel equally as passionate about as I do my own. I did not know that urban education was my calling, however, once I started on this path I was completely taken.

You have to know your why. If you don't know what drives you, then you cannot have a clear vision and you cannot lead others.

In her book, The Leadership Muse, by Linda Cureton, she talks about determining your why. In this inspirational text, Cureton challenges leaders to consider what drives them and what inspires their leadership. Knowing what drives you and where that drive comes from is critical in inspiring others.

My teachers returned to school this week. We have the benefit of additional professional development before the students return. All of our work this week has focused first on the why. Why are we looking closely at our restorative practices? Why are we shifting our practices in mathematics instruction? Why have we aligned our writing instruction with our content instruction? The why has to be clear before the how or the what is ever discussed.

As a leader, knowing your why is essential. It is your vision. It is your messaging. It is your branding. And it is your drive.

Get the Right Staff, Right the Remainder

I have written about this topic before - there is nothing more important to school turnaround than having the right team. That includes your leadership team, your teachers, your key supporters, and your consultants. The second part of this key competency is more challenging - right the remainder. You have to have your whole team rowing in the same direction and if there is even one person who is rowing against you, it can have devastating results.

I have been highlighting the Turnaround Competencies and Actions from Public Impact over the past several weeks because they are essential for turnaround leaders to consider as they plan for the upcoming school year (if you haven't reviewed them, please refer to them here). What ways will you address this competency during the upcoming school year?

Get the Right Staff; Right the Remainder (from Public Impact)

• Require all staff to change: When turnaround leaders implement an action plan, they make the change mandatory, not optional, beginning with accountable team leaders in the organization. 
• Make necessary staff and leader replacements: Successful turnaround leaders typically do not replace all or even most of the staff, but often replace team leaders who organize and drive change. After initial turnaround success, staff who do not make needed changes either leave or are removed by the leader

Even if you have already started your school turnaround, you need to consider how you will "right the remainder" each year. I have been reviewing each teacher's data, determining strengths and areas for growth within teams, developing support plans, and mapping out the way I will deploy my resources in order to maximize the growth. Last year, I replaced all but one teacher on a grade level team because they were not maximizing their potential, working collaboratively, using data effectively, or getting results from their students. In 2015, there were ZERO students from that team who scored proficiently on our state assessments (on either ELA or Mathematics). The new team was in place for this school year and we learned Friday that we had 15 students score proficient on the Math assessment and 11 students score proficient on the ELA. This is cause for celebration! While we recognize that we are not where we need to be, we are definitely moving in the right direction and the team is now on the right path. 

Right the remainder means having the right supports and the right conversations with your staff. There is not time in school turnaround to "hope" that staff or students "just get it." You must create a culture where it is the norm to challenge, to ask, and to even push back in order to always get better. If the school culture is not geared toward being able to have difficult conversations, doing what is right for children above what makes adults comfortable, and letting go of individual areas of self-interest in order to work collaboratively as a team, then you might have silos of superstars, but you will not achieve as a turnaround school. There is only time for what we know we will be effective - no time for some cutesy thing we saw on Pinterest or Teachers Pay Teachers. Teachers who are truly going to make a difference on your team have the ability to connect with other effective practitioners and say, "hey, I saw how you really produced results there, I want to learn more." 

So, what we are talking about is hiring and supporting a growth mindset. How can you tell if you have created a culture that values a growth mindset in your school and why is it important to school turnaround? We have to focus on results in school turnaround, but because moving the needle on overall student achievement takes time and relentless commitment, you need a team that has the right mindset for growth and change over time. In this article, by Xclusive Fitness, they talk about the importance of a culture of development and having positive relationships with your team. The reality is that the right team is not just about working with your friends - it is really about being able to have difficult conversations with your team, hold them accountable, push them to be better, and still be able to know that you respect and care for one another. Creating that culture of collaboration, of challenge, and of unified purpose is key to school turnaround. In preparing for this upcoming school year, consider how you can support a culture of development in your school and with your teams. 

Lead a Turnaround Campaign

How well do you promote your vision and the purpose of your school turnaround? I never envisioned that being a principal would involve quite so much PR as I am involved in. The messaging and branding of your vision are critical to the success of your turnaround plan.

Public Impact has summarized the key competencies of turnaround leaders and this is their synopsis of leading a turnaround campaign:

• Communicate a positive vision: Turnaround leaders start their turnaround campaign by communicating a clear picture of success and its benefits. This motivates others to contribute their discretionary effort.  
• Gain support of key influencers: Turnaround leaders gain support of trusted influencers among the staff and community, then work through these people to influence others. 
• Silence critics with speedy success: Turnaround leaders use early wins not just for success in their own right, but to cast vocal naysayers as champions of failure. This reduces leader time spent on “politics” and increases time spent managing for results.
• Help staff personally feel problems: Turnaround leaders use various tactics to help staff empathize with—or “put themselves in the shoes of”—those whom they serve, to truly feel the problems that the status quo causes and feel motivated to change. (from http://publicimpact.com/web/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Turnaround_Leader_Actions-Public_Impact.pdf)

Messaging and branding are key concepts in school turnaround. As we move toward full implementation of a community school model, creating a sense of welcoming for parents, families, and the community is key to our messaging and our branding. If parents do not feel welcome, they will not use the school as a resource and it will ultimately have a negative impact on their child's education. Our turnaround campaign has had to include professional development, practice sessions with scenarios, direct conversations, and targeted feedback for anyone in our staff who comes in to contact with our parents, families, and the community in order to ensure that we are all on the same message and that our "brand" says "welcoming" to our community.

Another key component of branding is the use of social media. How well are you utilizing social media to promote and maintain your messaging and branding of your vision? Is your vision clear in what you post, how you post, and to whom you post things on social media? We can all learn from Nike or McDonald's when thinking about branding and messaging - we have to think like those major players when we are branding our school turnaround. Clear, consistent messaging is as important to school turnaround as it is to business leaders.

In this time of social media, it is important to consider that you are your brand. As the turnaround leader, there is very little separation between you and your vision for your school. Consider that in posting, commenting, and sharing things on social media. While everyone does deserve a degree of privacy, posting on social media allows what was once private to be public, and that should be considered as you build, market, and support you brand and your vision. 

Focus on the Early Wins

I have spent some time with the Turnaround Leader Competencies - I have even written about them in my blog. This week, I spent some time with some amazing leaders in my district, reviewing these Turnaround Leader Competencies, and I was brought back to "Focusing on the Early Wins." I will admit that I had thought I was past this stage, since I am entering in to year three as a turnaround leader. I was brought back to thinking about the early wins as a way to frame the positive things that are happening in my building - thinking about the early wins as a measurement of our current goals, rather than just as a point on the original path that we started out on.

Here is an outline of what it means to "Focus on a Few Early Wins:" (taken from http://publicimpact.com/web/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Turnaround_Leader_Actions-Public_Impact.pdf )

Focus on a Few Early Wins; Use the Momentum 

• Collect and analyze data: Successful turnaround leaders are focused, fearless data hounds. Initially, turnaround leaders personally analyze data about the organization’s performance to identify highpriority problems that can be fixed quickly. 
• Make action plan based on data: Turnaround leaders make an action plan that includes annual goals and major steps, with enough detail that each group in the school community knows specifically what they need to do differently. This allows people to focus on changing what they do, rather than worrying about impending change. Plan should cover years 1 – 3, with more detail for year 1. 
• Focus on a few early wins in year 1: Successful turnaround leaders choose a few high-priority goals with visible payoffs and use early success to gain momentum. Although limited in scope, these “wins” are high-priority, not peripheral, elements of organization performance, and they are bold in speed and magnitude of change. Early wins are critical for motivating staff and disempowering naysayers.

I thought that we were "past this" point in our turnaround, but when I was challenged to think about the early wins for right now, or for year three, I was suddenly able to see how important it is to frame the early wins in terms of where we are right now. 

With that in mind, I will celebrate a few of the early wins in our turnaround. We are currently implementing a thematic, project-based summer program for our students. Students were able to select their theme (from options like I, Robot, Outdoor Explorers, Designing the Future, or CSI: Classroom Science Investigators). We are working with our enrichment partner so that everything we are doing is aligned to the theme. Our students are having so much fun learning! One student actually said to her teacher "When are we going to do math?" after they had finished a hands on activity where they were measuring perimeter and area. This is what we want for our children! To be so engaged in learning activities that they are not even aware that they are learning! I am so proud to be leading a team of teachers who believe in the power of hands-on and minds-on learning for our students. 

Students creating their own blogs

Principles of engineering in mathematics - hands on and brains on!

Working together to solve problems - that's what real engineers do!

Making passports to go Around the World!

Robots!!!!

Making the robots move!

Why Your Students Should Start a Blog

I started my own blog in January of 2015 and it is one of the best things that I have done in terms of my own leadership; providing me an opportunity for reflection and a chance to think through my next steps. So, I am 100% behind the idea of supporting the students at my school in starting their own blogs.

Blogging provides students with an opportunity to write with a purpose - to take a stand on a topic and use research to support their opinions and to develop their own voice as a writer and an owner of ideas. This is what we want for our future generations - to be literate, to be well-spoken, to have ideas that they can support with facts, and to be creative. Blogging is a natural entry point into all of these aspects of being college, career, and life ready.

With everything that students can consume online, isn't it a better option for them to engage in being producers of a positive online presence? George Couros, whose blog I love, shared his similar points of view in his own blog (here). Our students can, and should, see themselves as having a positive influence and online presence. There are countless YouTube videos and Reddit articles for them to consume, but in order to truly make a difference in the world and in their community, they must have opinions that they can support and speak intellectually about - even when their opinions may be about pop stars or sneakers or fashion icons. Check out these children bloggers who certainly have something to say and who are making an impact with what they are saying here.

Here are some great resources for models when you are encouraging your students to begin a blog (remember that a model is important because it provides something that you either can choose to or not to emulate and that is important for framing kids perspectives):

https://childtasticbooks.wordpress.com/

https://meandthebigworld.wordpress.com/

https://millenniummacy.wordpress.com/

http://neverseconds.blogspot.com/

http://kidsblogclub.com/

https://turtleofhappiness.wordpress.com/

http://libdemchild.blogspot.co.uk/


Blogging is a vehicle for self-expression, reflection, and for making a positive imprint on this universe that we live in. In this time of anger, protest, violence, and confusion, isn't it important that we give our children a means to think through the questions that the have in a way that will help them to learn and grow and make a positive impact on this ever changing world in which we live.

Building a New Team

It's July 1 and in my district, that usually means the beginning of new leadership roles and newly formed leadership teams. We have a fair amount of  movement in our district each year, and this year was more than usual. My team is no exception - I am beginning this summer with a new vice-principal and an unfilled leadership position. So, the topic of building a new leadership team is at the forefront of my thinking - even as I am vacationing with my family.

There are a couple of important conversations that must be had as people join your leadership team. The first is what you need from them - the non-negotiables that you have to have in order for things to run smoothly. For me, I have to have someone who works hard, meets deadlines, is completely committed to the well-being of our children, who is not afraid to give honest feedback, and whom I can trust. The other side of that conversation is what the new team member needs from me. That conversation is equally important because you are really setting the norms for your working relationship. It is essential that we enter into new leadership relationships with a clear vision of how we need to work together in order to move the work forward. I am two years into the turnaround in my school. It would be completely unfair for me to expect my new team to be able to match my pace immediately upon entry. I must look at a 30, 60, 90 day entry plan that will structure success for my new team, much like I did for myself as I took over as principal.

If I fail to create the vision for my new leadership team, fail to set goals for them, fail to develop an action plan with them, or fail in my monitoring of the plan, my new team will fail. In my district, we have seen this time and time again - the lack of vision leads to people reacting, rather than building a purposeful and proactive plan. In many of our schools, this translates to becoming overwhelmed with discipline issues and reacting to classroom problems that could have been addressed by having a clear  vision that everyone was a part of.

I have one opportunity to get this right - the stakes are very high as I enter into year three. At the end of the day, I am responsible for the education of 800 children every day and they deserve the absolute best.

Are you adding to your leadership team or are you a new member of a leadership team? Here are some additional resources that might help you frame your success.


http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnhall/2013/01/29/team-building-leader/#2c0c7aff660e

http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottedinger/2012/07/16/5-ways-to-ensure-team-members-develop-into-great-leaders/#3cc7b37fc563
https://www.peterstark.com/leading-a-new-team-how-to-ensure-a-successful-transition/

Core Values

The end of the school year. As much as it seems like we should be able to kick back and relax at the end of the school year, this is a busy time for school leaders. Not only are we trying to make sure that we have absolutely everything tightly wrapped up with a bow, from end of the year data to hiring plans to culminating events, we are also gearing up for whatever work we are engaged in during the summer (for me that includes running a summer academy) and planning intensely for getting us off the ground in September. The planning for a solid opening cannot be underestimated - so this alone requires a great deal of reflection, planning, collaboration, and visioning.

I started working with a group of teacher leaders that represent a cross section of the different types of work we are engaged in a few weeks ago as part of a Turnaround School Leadership Program that I am involved in through my district. As we looked closely at different areas of our turnaround, we reflected on where we felt like we needed greater clarity. We looked at School Culture, Education Program, Talent Management, Operations, and Governance and Accountability. We decided that the areas for us that needed greater clarity centered on core values. We felt like we had a clear vision and that it was clearly articulated and that there was significant buy-in, but there was not always consistency in how our vision is carried out. Our core values are the beliefs that we have as an organization and what transpires as a result of those beliefs. An organization's core values must be clearly known and shared throughout the organization in order to have systemic change.

In this article by Jim Collins, he describes how the core values of an organization have to be shared by everyone in the organization. There is no detail too small to attend to - as Rory Sutherland talks about in this Ted Talk called "Sweat the Small Stuff."

In our work with the core values of our school, we used the analogy of a house that we built based on our core values. We described four pillars with an overarching "roof" on our structure. Our pillars are Academics, Social Emotional Learning, Collaboration, Culture and Climate with Community as our arch over the system. Looking at these pillars, we were able to articulate our core values and begin the discussion around what we need to do in order to ensure that everything we are doing aligns to these core values.

As the school leaders, we are responsible for the core values and alignment of those core values to the work across our organization. Teachers are the leaders in their classrooms and it is up to them to ensure that their classrooms align to the core values within the pillars of Academics, Social Emotional Learning, Collaboration, and Culture and Climate, as well as the Community. Ensuring systemic shifts in our organizations requires that our core values are in alignment throughout the system. Stay tuned for the next steps we will take to ensure that in our turnaround school!