Category: Building Professional Learning Communities (Fall 2007)

Patricia Ruane is Superintendent of Schools in Hopedale, MA, and led the Harvard Principals Center Institute on School Improvement for Jewish Day School Leaders, sponsored by Avi Chai in 2005. Dr. Ruanes consultation and mentoring of Jewish School leaders includes successful introduction of Tuning Protocols. She can be reached at pruane@hopedale.k12.ma.us

When I became superintendent of my current school district in July 2004, I encountered a community that was largely content with its public schools. Teachers and citizens told me that the elementary school of almost 700 students was wonderful, and the combined Junior-Senior High School of 500 plus students was a place where students were loved and cared for. The school districts mission, developed by a group of educators and citizens, sought to graduate students who were prepared for their future and happy in the present.

Indeed, the students were happy that is, moderately prepared, and very comfortable. During my first year I visited each classroom and saw well-behaved elementary school children who danced to school and enjoyed their teachers, their peers, and the content. At the Junior-Senior High, I saw older versions of these same children sitting passively in many classrooms. Teachers did most of the work, while most students risked little intellectually.

Student performance data painted a portrait that did not look as happy. Average math and reading high stakes state tests were good, but inconsistent with community demographics, students were not reaching their performance potential, and while a large percentage of tenth graders cleared the graduation-testing bar, Advanced Placement (AP) results were generally poor. Yet very few teachers or parents seemed concerned. Passing the tests was nice, but not necessary, since students were happy, and mostly went to safe, nearby state colleges.

How could I generate interest in improving student performance in such a happy place? I needed to cultivate dissatisfaction, get peoples attention, then engage them an improvement agenda. While this work is ongoing, it has required ten strategic moves during the first three years.

Year One

Move #1: Put the dissatisfaction in a proactive harness.

Dissatisfaction is a powerful motivator, but it is dangerous when it runs wild. The key is to manage dissatisfaction by putting it in a relationship with controllable variables. The following formula, which I picked up over the years, provided the necessary harness on the positive side, while underscoring the negative counterweight and provided a helpful context for the challenge that I faced:

Dissatisfaction x Vision x Next Steps > Resistance

Understanding this formula enabled me to approach the challenge strategically, and to unleash the dissatisfaction purposefully, putting the dissatisfaction in its proper context.

Luckily, my dissatisfaction found some powerful allies. The Leadership Team (2 principals, a Curriculum Director, Business Manager, and Pupil Personnel/Special Education Director) and School Board shared my sense that our students should be doing better, and were interested and willing to act on the dissatisfaction. As levels of dissatisfaction grew, we used the formula as a framework to understand the tasks needed for raising expectations on everyone’s part.

Move #2: Create a vision that merits attention and commitment.

Harnessing dissatisfaction requires leaders who can agree on the problem, design a comprehensive response, work in close collaboration, and help each other stay reasonably focused on its implementation, despite the distractions of school administration. To maintain energy, we had to pull simultaneously in the same direction. The Leadership Team began by tackling our Mission Statement. Part of the mission statement reads, We want our young people to be happy and to be well prepared to meet their own needs and the needs of others as responsible members of society. All were dissatisfied with the word happy. We decided to unpack and redefine it for students entering a 21st century world. After three months of spirited and intense, discussions, over three months, we agreed that our graduates happiness should be characterized by:

• Courage. The ability to risk intellectually and interpersonally
• Resilience. The ability to learn from mistakes, accept feedback, persevere, become self-critical task masters.
• Compassion.The ability to accept self as a work in progress, appreciate differences and multiple perspectives, expect and demonstrate respect and dignity.

We also agreed that this would not happen unless the adults modeled and named these qualities whenever possible. The realization that our school culture did not reinforce these values was sobering. We needed to grow the culture, starting with ourselves. We began immediately by speaking and writing with these ideas and words, both within the Leadership Team and in the schools and community.

Move #3: Take strategic steps toward the vision, as opportunities present themselves.

With staff and budget fixed for the current year, The Leadership Team had a limited set of immediate possibilities, and thus focused on the following agenda:

a. Construct a strategic budget for the next year.

For the first time, the principals took charge of the total dollars assigned to their site. They cut the extant budget by 5%, and replaced it with people and programs they wished they could put in place to achieve our new definition of “happy”. This included a rethinking of student support services, inclusion teaching, and a wish for restructuring and consolidating some obsolete positions to create more vital and responsive staffing. With this collective wish list, we restored the cuts and became alert to openings that would move us toward those better ideas.

b. Advertise positions aggressively, and hire early.

Anticipating a number of retirements and maternity leaves, we sought teachers who were bold, resilient, and compassionate. We geared our recruitment materials to attract these professionals, hustled them at job fairs, invited them to visit, reinforced our expectations for their self-actualization, promised to support cutting-edge work, and made offers before bigger and more prestigious towns got organized for hiring. Everyone we liked came on board.

c. Identify promising practitioners.

We focused on the pockets of excellence in our school community in two ways. First, the Leadership Team began to look at staff through our new culture lens. We observed adults teachers, aides, coaches, bus drivers, custodians, secretaries who were taking intellectual risks, experimenting with their practice, and raising expectations for themselves and their students. We watched them helping students to overcome mistakes and maintain dignity, or taking the extra time to care for and help someone above and beyond their job description, and then we caught them being brave or celebrating a student who was brave. With the Team’s help, I highlighted individual or group acts of courage, resilience, and compassion in a weekly newsletter specifically designed to build culture and community. Staff not only appreciated the public acknowledgement, but also became avid readers of the newsletter.

Secondly, we approached the brave teacher leaders whose skills or interests suited our ideas, and we invited them to explore for us. Setting fiscal and logistical parameters, we let individuals or teams develop ideas like School to Career Program, inclusion teaching, and Peak Intellectual Experiences, culminating in projects that challenged students to integrate learning, develop and exhibit substantive work, and present this work against clear standards for public scrutiny and feedback. These people were ready to take some risks, improve themselves, and raise expectations for colleagues and students. We gave them release time and paid summer time to formalize the emerging ideas for systematic implementation.

d. Find structures and processes to support a high-risk learning community.

Critical Friends groups in which colleagues regularly examine learning issues and critique each others practice, were not a part of the districts culture. The Leadership Team decided in early spring to explore Tuning Protocols (Easton, 1999). This is a tightly structured and timed format for conducting a critical friends group among 6-8 colleagues in which one member serves as a facilitator, one presents a lesson, and others serve as critical colleagues. We asked two seasoned teachers to present a lesson while we simulated a collegial role in order to help us learn the process. Because our focus was student performance rather than instruction, we asked that they choose a lesson that showed children’s responses across a spectrum high, average, and low performance. Experiencing this organized reflection on practice was powerful and surprising. While it was easy to comment on what seemed right about the lesson, we found that it took courage and skill to offer cool or critical feedback. The structure, however, provided protection and safety. We decided to widen our Leadership Team to include teachers, Department Heads and Curriculum Coordinators in summer training that introduced them to Tuning Protocols and expanded their instructional and team-building repertoire. Participation in summer leadership training was enthusiastic.

e. Target professional development monies to match district goals.

Past practice was that the Director of Curriculum solicited paid summer workshops. Teachers happily responded with pet projects some essential and helpful, others idiosyncratic and not transferable. There was little screening for quality or relevance only for availability of funds. The Leadership Team agreed to put the brakes on this reactive response, and proactively advertised curriculum workshops that would advance Peak Intellectual Experiences and the ideas discussed with our identified teacher leaders for raising student performance. Different people, and a different quality of work began, even as we replaced our Director of Curriculum with a new person in an expanded position the one we envisioned on our wish list (CAT Director - Curriculum, Assessment, and Technology).

The left side of the equation was well fortified for us to deal with the resistance that was sure to follow. It began softly.

Move #4: Bend with the first wave of resistance.

At first, the resistance was collegial and professional. While the teacher leaders and department heads responded well to Tuning Protocol training, they expressed concern about their ability to corral in difficult colleagues who might behave badly. We listened, then provided extra training so that they could develop norms for group behavior, and learn how to maintain safety and focus. We agreed to introduce Tuning Protocols to the entire professional staff at a fall early release day. Armed with new skills, courage, and resilience, our new trainers were ready to facilitate.

Year Two

Move #5: Prepare additional moves to counter more serious resistance.

Our two schools presented very different learning communities. Despite initial positive feedback about the potential value of Tuning Protocols, elementary staff resisted implementation. Teachers approached the principal and asked not to be put in a group with certain colleagues, or in any group at all. Some accused me of ruining the culture of their school while others became suspicious of the Central Office.

Although we did not take the criticism personally, it was clear that we were creating discomfort at rates this staff could not handle. Rather than force the issue, we devised strategies that would raise dissatisfaction in terms the teachers could embrace. The Director and I stepped back and let the principal take the lead, focusing on areas that teachers recognized as needing attention. The principal also provided release time, workshops, model teaching, and time to rewrite the Scope and Sequence. In short, she engaged her learning community on terms they could accept, without confronting longstanding problems with collegiality and school culture.

While I stepped out, the CAT Director moved sideways. Coached away from taking on problems with anxiety-inducing elementary math instruction, he introduced our first site-based graduate course in Differentiated Composite Instruction. Since our teachers have the right to get course reimbursement for $1100/year, this filled everyone’s needs without making anyone feel threatened. The course filled with elementary teachers many of them our newer staff members. The CAT Director used this course as a way to become acquainted with elementary educational leaders.

Move #6: Take the leap: be prepared to give over control.

Meanwhile, the high school principal assigned new and experienced teachers to cross-disciplinary Tuning Protocol groups and devised a schedule whereby the groups could meet in lieu of his monthly faculty meeting time. Secondary teachers were receptive. For a group of professionals typically limited to interactions within their department, they were eager to get insight from colleagues in other departments, while also getting to know and share ideas with a significant number of new colleagues.

Within their Tuning Protocol groups of 6-7 people, participants were all expected to present during the year. Beyond that expectation, and the use of suggested norms and process, we let the groups develop their own mini- culture. Some teachers played it safe, and presented their best lessons, while others took more risks, and struggled with the group over difficult issues. Following a session, it was common to see different mixes of teachers in animated discussions such as an art teacher consulting with an English teacher about visual use and arrangement of space.

After a while, some groups experimented with variations on the process, with mixed results. By years end, secondary staff requested that we continue this safe and productive vehicle for colleagues to discuss instruction. New and seasoned teachers found it valuable and relevant, regardless of the presenter or content. Teachers felt ownership and empowerment within the process. We could let go, and we did.

Move #7: Be open and flexible about investing in side trips.

One of our boldest professionals was the math department head, who approached the new Director and proposed a variation on Tuning Protocol called Lesson-Study (see Takahashi & Yoshida, 2004). We had supported coursework for her to understand this methodology, which is a major professional development technique practiced in Japan. She was eager to have her department use this approach as a way to focus their improvement of instruction, and proposed that the department implement Lesson-Study in exchange for three graduate credits toward salary advancement. Since there are not many relevant math courses for these teachers to pursue independently, we jumped at the offer to create a rigorous extension of the Tuning Protocol that we could observe and possibly grow on site, as other departments became braver. The entire math department signed up. They agreed to meet after school for about four hours each month to research and develop model lessons on topics that were particularly difficult for students to learn, but whose understanding was crucial for the successful sequencing of math learning. One of the teachers would then teach the lesson, while the rest of the department observed and made specific notations on a feedback grid designed by the department head as a product of her coursework. After the class, the teachers would meet, debrief, fine tune the lesson and document their findings for future use and reference. Administrators were welcome at the class observation and debrief meetings, which included honest exchanges about what did/didnt work, and how to address problems. These teachers were not only honest, brave, and resilient with each other, but were also willing to risk genuine collegiality in front of their supervisors.

Move #8: Feature the people and the progress toward a different level of adult and student engagement and performance, as you continue to open up new opportunities.

Thanks to the work of several strategically placed pathfinders, some new and others experienced teachers, the Junior/Senior High began to feel like a different place. We launched an eclectic senior internship program that took off instantly and gained kudos for our students, stretched them, and gave them fodder for substantive dialogue with college interviewers. We launched two Peak Intellectual Experiences: a Grade 9 Science Research Project with mentors from the scientific community, and a speech project that required research and presentation on a topic in Grade 11 American History. One hundred per cent of our students participated, despite their initial resistance to the rigorous expectations for this assignment, astonishing themselves, their teachers, and their peers. Happiness was getting a new definition that incorporated more risk, more discomfort, and more joy and magic. I continued to share the progress and celebrate the risk takers in my weekly newsletter.

Nonetheless, featuring our evolving pockets of excellence wasn’t enough. We needed to work simultaneously on a large-scale, systemic improvement initiative. Social Studies, in need of some revitalization, was the perfect content area for such a strategy. Taking advantage of a change in departmental leadership and some new teachers, we set a goal to examine and revise this curriculum, and established a district-wide Task Force of handpicked people to raise the bar. This was our chance to separate out some positive elementary pathfinders to join K-12 colleagues in some forward thinking that would introduce key educators to the new performance standards we were creating. By moving some technology and new software into Task Force members classrooms, the CAT Director got a friendly foothold at the elementary school, with a show rather than tell strategy. Curious teachers in other classrooms began to pay attention to these great instructional tools.

At the end of Year Two, the Leadership Team had empowered the secondary staff to generate its own momentum toward adult development and student improvement. While progress was slow and people were cautious at the elementary level, the Director had made a positive entry. Buoyed by modest success, the Leadership Team put even more time and energy into planning and focusing professional development time and money to advance the strategic work, so we could assist each other in opening new doors and windows. This included a thoughtful organization of all release time and goal work, and a site-based math course for elementary teachers. Having earned elementary teachers trust, the CAT Director filled this summer course.

Year Three

Move #9: Pull the weeds that are choking the culture.

The districts contractual agreement with teachers calls for prior approval by the principal and superintendent for graduate coursework. In the past, this approval was pro forma. But we discovered that certain courses were much less than they purported to be, in terms of class time, work, and substance. This sham had been going on for years, and it needed to stop. Since the courses did not constitute legitimate graduate level work, we turned down all requests to earn credits in these courses. The Leadership Team was united in its resolve to insist that coursework would have intellectual integrity and be about improvement not merely credits toward salary increases. Despite three levels of appeal by union leaders, we collected enough data to encourage them to drop their grievance. The Leadership Team has now reasserted its management right to make sure that a teachers course selection will advance his/her improvement in significant ways that relate to personal and professional goals that are part of our supervision and evaluation process.

Move #10: Come back in the game after a round where you had to fold.

It is important not to give up on any individual or group. Just as we know to wait until our students are ready, we needed to wait for our elementary staff. Excited by the investment we have made in their development in Language Arts and math, they are ready to use a critical friends approach this year, and the elementary principal has constructed Tuning Protocol groups by level and subject area. To make sure they operate at their best professional level, and not resort to the discourse of complaint, the principal asked teachers to write an anonymous reflection which she collected after their first Tuning Protocol session, and shared it back to the group. As we move toward spring, most have moved past the grievance, and are talking about how they might turn their group time into graduate credit, with some process that borrows from Tuning Protocol and Lesson-Study. Over time, these professionals will invent a reflective process better than anything the Leadership Team could imagine. They will make it their own.

Inconclusive thoughts

In his book, Dreams from My Father, Barack Obama (1996) observes that, “Communities had to be created, fought for, tended like gardens.” Such is the reality of the very different learning communities we are trying to grow. The Leadership Team is now focused on a serious improvement agenda. Most of the teachers are working with us, at least part of the time. But like a garden, the work is ongoing. People come and go, and we have to begin again. We can’t make assumptions or relax. We are in it for what Zander and Zander call “the long line” (2000), about having a clear purpose and endpoint. In time, we will have a culture that embraces the highest level of performance for adults and students. We are well on our way. This is the good and satisfying work of education.

References

Collins, J. (2001) Good to Great: Why Some Companies make the Leap and Others Don’t. New York: HarperCollins

Easton, L. (1999) Tuning Protocols, Journal of Staff Development, 20 (3) pp. 54-55

Obama, B. (1996) Dreams from My Father. New York: Three Rivers Free Press. NY,NY.

Takahashi, A. & Yoshida, M. (2004) Ideas for Establishing Lesson- Study Communities, Teaching Children Mathematics, May 2004.

Zander, B. & Zander, R. (2000) The Art of Possibility. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.