Scheduling Tactic

How do you BLOCK out your time so you can TACKLE what’s most important to ensure your teachers GO THE DISTANCE? Ah…sports analogies.

Locking in your weekly schedule will allow you to defend your time from distractions.  Schedule time with teachers for weekly one-on-ones.  This is protected time for face to face meetings that teachers will come to expect and they will begin to anticipate to receive feedback on their instruction.  Pick a standing half-hour window when the teacher is available.  Then, strategically block out time for your walkthroughs just before your weekly teacher meetings so that the observation is fresh in your mind and you’re delivering timely feedback.

Blocking and tackling are as fundamental to instructional leadership as they are too football.  Employ these scheduling tactics to ensure you and your teachers reach your goals.

Successful Change

How do you ensure that a change process on your campus is successful?  For example, say you want to introduce STEM initiatives on your campus.  First, know your culture and create strategies that work for your current culture.  Do most teachers value “I do, We do, You do” gradual release models of teaching rather than inquiry? Do you have a strong union who wants a voice or a few teachers who will try something if it’s for the kids or if you ask personally?  Do you have a culture of teachers who work collaboratively or work on their own?  

You may have heard the quote attributed to Peter Drucker, “Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast.”  Create or tweak strategies and structures that play into your current culture while providing opportunities to shift the culture by highlighting where you want to go.  Have some key players work to teach a lesson as a gradual release while some teach it as inquiry and investigate the differences.  Use scientific method to study STEM.  What are structures or systems that can also act as symbols for the culture you want to create?  Build, highlight, retain, and make decisions based on the people and systems that embody the culture and vision you want to create.

Monitoring Instructional Effectiveness

There are several approaches that leadership teams take to monitor instructional effectiveness and to ensure alignment of what is being taught in classrooms to the written and tested curriculum.  Conducting focused classroom walkthroughs and analyzing interim assessment data are high-leverage activities, particularly when they include feedback and follow up.  What about lesson planning?  What information about the effectiveness the instruction or the progress of your students can be gleaned from checking teachers’ lesson plans?

Collecting and reviewing lesson plans has been a time-honored tradition among school administrators.  But is it the best strategy for improving teaching and learning?  And, for busy principals, is it the best use of your time?

Some may have strong rational for collecting lesson plans every week and a system for providing timely feedback.  But to monitor critical areas that will provide you with the information needed to track alignment and effectiveness, consider sitting in on grade level or content team meetings or collecting PLC minutes.  In doing so, leaders can monitor academic priorities and assess alignment of instruction and curriculum while promoting data analysis, lesson planning, and collaboration.

Unplug for Brain Health

You are coming off a break where we hope you were able to unplug.  As you get back into the “busy-ness” of work, plan some time in your day where you unplug from technology.  Our brains have not evolved as quickly as our technology; constant external distractions cause smart people to underperform, become persistently rushed, and unable to problem-solve or stay with a task through completion.  Every text, tweet, update, newsletter, email, and passing conversation is competing for attention.  Want to be more productive, more creative, and have more energy for important thinking?

The best solution is to designate times for activities, even digital ones like email and social networking.  So go ahead and spend 20 minutes on Facebook.  Schedule it into your day but remember to schedule time to unplug.  Take 30 minutes for a walk outside or to listen to music or cook.  That time “unplugged” is when most of us are able to reflect and tackle the big issues of the day.

Knowing that we are competing for attention in your brain, we are making these texts shorter, more concise nuggets of goodness that help you be an amazing leader in 2017.  Happy New Year.

The Extra Degree

At 211 degrees, water is hot.

At 212 degrees, it boils.

And with boiling water comes steam.

And steam can power a locomotive.

Raising the temperature of water by one extra degree means the difference between something that is simply very hot and something that generates enough force to power a machine.  That one extra degree.

Thank you for consistently making the extra effort!  Your persistence and commitment can and will have a profound effect on the lives of your students and teachers you serve.

(For more, check out 212° the extra degree by Sam Parker & Mac Anderson.  It’s a great little book to use with your leadership team or as a thank you for your staff who go the extra mile or could use a little inspiration to make an extra effort.)

Shifting Perspective

For a long time school leaders were conducting classroom walkthroughs armed with a checklist.  We went in looking for, what felt like, a myriad of discrete pieces of evidence that would indicate effective instruction was happening. Is the objective posted?  What student engagement techniques are being utilized? What’s the cognitive level of the questions? Is the classroom environment literacy-rich?  We would leave the classroom with many bits of data but not entirely equipped with the information to determine how the strategies we observed actually contributed to student learning.

In contrast during formative classroom walk-throughs, principals focus on understanding the lesson from the student’s perspective.  Principals ask themselves, “If I were a student in this classroom, what would I be learning?” Conversations with students are critical in a formative classroom walk-through.  Asking students what they are trying to learn today and how will they know when they have learned it is a powerful indicator as to whether or not students know the learning target and understand how to demonstrate that learning.  By paying attention to what students do and say, the observer is more likely to understand how the teaching is impacting the student learning.

Rather than focusing on what the teacher did or did not do, when principals look for and learn about what the students are doing, saying, making and writing teachers begin to develop a trust and appreciation for the classroom walkthroughs.  Feedback that focuses on how the instruction supported the learning process “promotes a cohesive theory of action for effective teaching and meaningful student learning” (Moss & Brookhart, 2015).

Consider:

How would shifting the perspective from what the teacher is teaching to what the student is learning change the conclusions that are drawn regarding the effectiveness of a lesson?

Thinking about the walkthrough protocol currently used in your building, are the educators performing walkthroughs and those being observed able to explain how the items on the walkthrough protocol promote a cohesive theory of action for effective teaching and meaningful student learning?

How is the information collected from classroom walkthroughs used in your school? Who uses the information most frequently and why?

For more great information check out the book “Formative Classroom Walkthroughs: How Principals and Teachers Collaborate to Raise Student Achievement” by Connie M. Moss & Susan M. Brookhart.

Action Steps, Choose Them Wisely

We learn best when we can focus on one thing at a time.  How do you select the right action step for teachers when giving feedback?  Consider Julie Jackson’s criteria from Leverage Leadership (Bambrick-Santoyo, 2012):

Is the action step directly connected to student learning?

Does the action step address a root cause (rather than a symptom) affecting student learning?

Is the action-step high leverage?

Let’s look at an example of this related to classroom management.  A teacher may need to increase awareness of when students are off-task and implement the least-invasive intervention necessary.  This is a high-leverage root cause that impacts student learning.  Yet, teachers struggling with this may not know how to do this.  Look at the bite-sized steps from page 73:

Deliberately scan the room for compliance:  choose three or four “hot spots” (places where students often get off task) to scan.

Circulate with purpose by moving to different locations on the perimeter of the room.

Give an instruction, narrate the positive, then redirect student who is not complying.

Redirect from least to most invasive:

Use proximity.

Use a nonverbal.

Maintain eye contact.

Say student’s name quickly.

Give a small consequence.

Each of these steps is small and direct yet may take deliberate thought, planning, practice, and continued feedback to master.

Consider having your instructional team bring samples of feedback and action steps to your next leadership team meeting.  How might you work as a team to ensure your feedback to teachers is bite-sized and actionable?

Speaking of feedback, please take a quick survey to let us know how we’re doing.

Thank You

“The way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement.” Charles Schwab

This is a time of year when we give thanks for what we have.  As school leaders, this is a good time to reflect on the success of our organization and express gratitude and appreciation for the staff whose efforts are making the impossible possible.  But this Thanksgiving, think about what it would mean to your school community if you embraced the power of gratitude all year long.

Simple, heartfelt gestures, like a thank you note or a word of appreciation, go a long way to ensuring your teachers feel valued and appreciated.  Over the Thanksgiving break, consider how you can better foster a culture of gratitude at your school and how your attitude of gratitude will support you in retaining your best staff.

We at Text for Leaders are thankful for you!  We want to provide you with the most relevant and impactful content, so we’d like to hear from you. Please take a quick survey and let us know how we’re doing.

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Press Pause, Time to Analyze

It is a good time of year to pause, analyze how close your teachers and teams are to meeting the school goals, and determine what short-term adjustments will have the most impact toward the long-term goals.  At this point in the year, most schools have some benchmark data, teacher observation data, and data about the effectiveness of systems and processes.  What patterns are you seeing in the data right now?  

Recognize teachers and teams who are on track to meeting or exceeding their goals.  What can we learn from these teachers and teams?  How might you leverage their strengths to support others?

You have the most influence on your instructional cabinet’s short-term goals. Maximize the power of your instructional cabinet now to impact the teachers and teams who, with support, can make the most impact in meeting the goals. 

Do the members of your cabinet have a shared understanding about the following?

Does each member of the instructional cabinet know the educators and content for which they are responsible?

Does each member of the instructional cabinet have clear direction in terms of how to prioritize their time?  Things always come up and this is a busy group.  Are there certain responsibilities, team meetings, observations, data collection, or support structures that are critical? Does anyone need support prioritizing time?

Does each member of the instructional cabinet know how to access and collect the data they need?  Are they able to support teacher teams in accessing their own data?  If not, how might you support your cabinet in helping teachers be responsible for their data, their analysis, and their adjustments needed to meet their goals?

For teachers and teams that need intensive support, how are you clearly communicating and regularly assessing the cabinet members’ support, monitoring, and feedback?  Do the teachers and teams have input in their next steps?  Are they finding the cabinet members’ support and feedback positively impacts their ability to meet their goals?  

Consider bringing these questions to your next cabinet meeting and clarify responsibilities and short-term support that can impact long-term goals.  If teams need support connecting or revising short-term and long-term goals, check out this protocol from Rubicon.  

Lock in Time with Your Teachers

In last week’s Text for Leaders we examined the “Six Steps to Effective Feedback” as a means to ensure that teachers are able to incorporate the feedback they receive after classroom walkthroughs.  But, in order to give your teachers the coaching that will increase their effectiveness, we need to find the time for face-to-face, one-on-one feedback.

Structuring your schedule requires that you determine how much time to allocate to the most critical areas of your school leadership.  Observation and feedback are arguably two of the most important activities leaders engage in every day.   Once all of your mandatory meetings are blocked out on your calendar, schedule your time with teachers.  This takes some work because the time is contingent upon your teachers’ availability throughout the day.  Lock in weekly half-hour check-ins with teachers to provide feedback from that week’s classroom walkthroughs.

This frequent and planned contact ensures consistency; the teacher knows that they can expect weekly feedback from their administrator and you’re provided an avenue to monitor your teachers’ progress on an on-going basis.  Imagine how much your teachers could grow given the benefit of weekly feedback sessions based on focused and purposeful walkthroughs!

How will you “lock in” your feedback sessions with teachers?  With whom will you communicate your observation and feedback schedule and how will that help you to protect your time?

Timely, Effective Feedback

You spend hours observing classroom instruction but do you also give timely, effective feedback to your staff?  If you are spending time in classrooms but neglecting face-to-face feedback, you are evaluating and being visible, but what is your evidence of growth?  Effective feedback is more about effective coaching that improves student learning.

As you provide formal or informal observation feedback to teachers, follow these “Six Steps to Effective Feedback” from Leverage Leadership (Brambrick-Santoyo, 2012) to ensure teacher and student growth:

Provide precise praise.  Start off the meeting with one or two pieces of precise praise from your observation.

Probe.  Ask a targeted open-ended question about the core issue.

Identify problem and concrete action step.  Identify the problem and state a clear, measurable, observable action step that will address the issue.  

Practice.  Role-play or simulate how the teacher could have improved the class. 

Plan ahead.  Design or revise upcoming lesson plan to implement this action.

Set timeline.  Determine time by which the action will be accomplished.

Let’s see this in action.  View Julie Jackson leverage the six steps of effective feedback to show Carly Bradley how to raise the rigor of her questioning.  Watch how Julie gets Carly to do the thinking and to practice on the spot.

With which teacher would you like to practice giving effective feedback?  By when?  Go ahead and practice this as you plan for this conversation.  The steps become automatic the more you see the kind of teacher growth that comes from this type of effective feedback.

Stay tuned.  Next week, we’ll look at how to find the time to provide regular face-to-face feedback with teachers.

Academic Outcomes: Effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences

Traumatic experiences can impact academic outcomes in many ways including higher absenteeism, decreased ability to focus, disruptions in memory and attention, and discipline issues.  To effectively educate youth who have been exposed to traumatic events, we must first understand what adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, do to the brain, body and behavior.

As school leaders it is our responsibility to understand the impact of ACEs and to develop strategies to build a school culture that is sensitive to the needs of traumatized learners.  One way to help teachers to recognize signs of trauma and be equipped to respond is to learn more about ACEs and Trauma Informed Practices.  See below for links more information and registration for two upcoming workshops being held at MCESA in December and January.  If you cannot attend, do you have a psychologist, social worker, or teacher leader who could attend the trainer of trainer sessions and be ready to support your staff?  

December 6th

Supportive School Culture: Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) Trainer of Trainer Workshop   http://maricopacountyesa.wildapricot.org/event-2358464

January 31st

Supportive School Culture: Trauma Informed Care Trainer of Trainer Workshop   http://maricopacountyesa.wildapricot.org/event-2358476

Improving Teacher Quality

Put another way, “The quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers” (Barber and Mourshed quoted in DuFour & Marzano’s  Leaders of Learning, 2011, p. 16).   One way to improve teacher quality is to increase educators’ capacity to keep growing based on student learning evidence.  Models such as Professional Learning Communities or Data Wise support collective inquiry around student learning, but we often stop with how teachers are using these models.  Do you use collective inquiry to inform your learning and the learning of your leadership team?

What student and teacher learning evidence drives your instructional leadership team’s learning?  

Does your instructional leadership team regularly ask, “Who on our team is getting the best results?  How can we learn from each other?  What can we learn as a team to address this need?”

How might you use leadership team meetings to provide professional learning, modeling, and practice for your instructional leaders and coaches?

When you consider your job as the main people-improver on campus, is there support you need to help others grow?  If you are not sure where to start, consider having your team work on its own effectiveness.  Check out the Leading: High Functioning Teams Workshop.

Professional Development - Make it Meaningful

Professional development is not effective unless it causes teachers to improve instruction. Instructional leadership includes creating and maintaining systems to monitor the outcomes from professional development in the class and/or with student learning.  Think of an upcoming PD session you are planning.

·       What teacher behaviors or student results will your team monitor to determine the effectiveness of the PD session?

·       How will the leadership team monitor and analyze walkthrough data or student work in order to address misconceptions or adjust instructional support?

As you and your team consider how to adjust support for teachers, consider how different individuals respond to change.  By differentiating support, celebrating small wins, and using data to help teachers see the “why” behind the change, coaches and leaders can support teachers as they adopt and commit to the new strategy.

For more information on how support teachers who may be resistant to change, check out https://learningforward.org/docs/tools-for-learning-schools/tools1-11.pdf

Classroom Visits: Narrowing Focus

There is much to see and hear during every classroom visit.  Having a narrow focus and purpose allows leaders to collect specific evidence to monitor progress on particular initiatives and strategies.

But to really hone in on the evidence of student learning, leaders must focus their attention on what students are doing in classrooms every day.  

- What evidence might you collect if the focus is on student learning?

- How does shifting from what the teacher is doing to what the students are doing change how you view the effectiveness of a lesson?

- How can teachers share in the formation of your walkthrough “look fors”?

- What are the benefits of specific student learning “look fors” as it pertains to targeted and actionable feedback for teachers?

- How is the information that is collected used to inform the work of your leadership team, progress toward school goals, and how adjust support for teachers?

- Is your walkthrough team in agreement about how to collect and report “look fors” so that you can use it to discuss patterns?

My Meeting, Your Meeting

Your Leadership Team is meeting regularly.  Check.  The agenda prioritizes support for your teachers’ instructional needs and the academic progress of your students.  Check.  Members share leadership responsibilities and take steps to advance the school’s mission.  Check?

Harnessing the expertise of the Leadership Team participants is an opportunity to foster their leadership capacity.   Maximize their impact by equipping members to engage in the important conversations inside and outside of the meeting that lead to improved practices.  What steps can you take to ensure members can communicate and take action to move the work forward toward reaching school goals?

Encourage members to share in the meeting facilitation to encourage a sense of ownership and accountability.

Create a system by which the agenda is crafted collaboratively so that it isn’t “your” meeting but “our” meeting.

Elicit different perspectives regarding potential obstacles to encourage innovation and challenge the status quo.

Role play.  How will members articulate a new strategy to teachers? How will they deliver specific and actionable feedback?  What does it sound like to facilitate a difficult conversation?

Check for understanding with individual members to ensure the expectations for next steps are made clear (due date, manner of follow up, etc.) to avoid getting stuck.

What will your next steps be to further empower your team members and ensure you are getting the traction you need to advance the school’s mission, vision, and goals?

Partnering with Parents

A research review titled, “A New Wave of Evidence: The Impact of School, Family and Community Connections on Student Achievement,” found that every family has the capacity to contribute to their child’s success, regardless of race, ethnicity, economic standing or the parents’ level of education.  But how do we leverage this capacity and create genuine partnerships with parents?  Reading Rockets emphasizes the importance of positive news as a great way to form the partnership.  They write:

Parents are not accustomed to hearing unsolicited positive comments from teachers about their children, especially in a phone call from the school. Research shows that school-home communication is greatly increased through personalized positive telephone contact between teachers and parents. Remember, when a phone call from school conveys good news, the atmosphere between home and school improves. When you have good news to share, why wait? Make the call and start a positive relationship with a parent.

Later, if concerns arise, discuss as a team how to leverage the child’s strengths to support areas of growth.  Ask parents if there are strategies that work at home or strategies that other teachers have found to be successful. Supporting the child together as partners is more likely to occur when parents know that you see have noticed the child’s strengths and will share positive news.

Responding to Misbehavior

Your staff teaches and practices expectations, cultivates relationships, and positively narrates behaviors you want to see.  However, when misbehavior occurs, how does your campus respond?

Look at your current data for students who are visiting the office.  Are they visiting for the right reasons? Find root causes and the figure out your best next step to support students and teachers so we all can spend more time on instruction.

Are there patterns of times when more students are referred?

Are there differences in the number of students being sent or not sent from teachers or other staff members?

Do staff know strategies for intervening while minimizing disruptions?

Are there expectations of teachers that are “slipping” such as sending students without referrals, or teachers not being outside their doors during transitions, or sending more than one student to the bathroom at a time?

Consider what changes or supports would have the biggest impact on the number or severity of office referrals.  Fine-tune your practices for maintaining a positive learning environment.  How might staff connect with the data to determine next steps for fine-tuning?  How might you support those who may need more strategies or tools?  Ensuring that your staff can support students in maintaining a positive learning environment is one of the best ways to ensure you spend time supporting instruction.

The Gift of a Functional Professional Learning Community

Collaborative teams thrive when leaders create the conditions that allow for them to work together to analyze and improve classroom practice.  But, too often, what is called a “PLC” meeting turns into something else entirely.  According to Richard DuFour, in a PLC teachers engage with colleagues around three critical questions: What do we want each student to learn? How will we know when each student has learned it? How will we respond when a student experiences difficulty in learning?  These questions are what should drive the work of those within professional learning communities. So, how can you as a leader support this level of collaboration?

Encourage your teachers to maximize the time for the professional dialogue that will lead to increased student achievement.  Can a different time be set aside for discipline conversations, field trip planning, social committee work?

Consider what might be needed to engage teachers in this important collaboration. Support teacher teams to develop norms and protocols that clarify expectations, roles and responsibilities.

Inspire teams to take ownership of their Professional Learning Community. Do they have the tools to create their own agendas, analyze their own data, make instructional and intervention decisions, and assess their own effectiveness as a team?

As you think more about how to stay true to the intentions of Professional Learning Communities, check out this great blog post from ASCD titled, “Five Dysfunctions of a Professional Learning Community”.

http://www.wholechildeducation.org/blog/five-dysfunctions-of-a-professional-learning-community

Smooth Transition: Support for New Teachers

You worked hard this summer to carefully fill your vacancies to ensure that every classroom has a qualified and prepared teacher at the helm.  Now that you’ve found and hired these treasures, how you support them in their transition to your school’s culture and climate can have lasting consequences on their instructional effectiveness, student achievement, and overall sense of belonging.  This can be a challenging and lonely time for a new teacher. Don’t leave these important first weeks up to chance.

To whom are your new hires turning?

Do they have a mentor that can provide both teaching and emotional support?

What will be your approach to assessing how they are navigating the learning curve?

Beginners in the Classroom: What the Changing Demographics of Teaching Mean for Schools, Students, and Society, a 2014 report from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, provides research on why teachers leave, some excellent insight into the needs of new teachers, and how to employ strategies to provide your new hires with concentrated and meaningful support.