Tag Archives: Education

Engaging Teachers in Instructional Rounds

I had the good fortune to spend about three hours this morning with seven of my teachers as well as my instructional coach who are part of an intra-school “pilot” project inspired by Richard Elmore’s Instructional Rounds in Education. It’s a big chunk of my day, but this is the work that instructional leaders should be doing.

The Why

I have a personal goal to support teachers in talking to each other about their practice. As Elmore points out, “one of the greatest barriers to school improvement is the lack of an agreed-upon definition of what high-quality instruction looks like” (p. 3). The rounds process is intended to bring conversations about instructional practice into the school improvement process. The rounds process is adapted from the medical rounds model and includes “observing, analyzing, discussing, and understanding instruction” (p. 3).

My hope is that I can expand this school-wide next year, but I wanted to start small. I worked with my instructional coach to solicit seven teacher volunteers to be part of this pilot. I have a cross-section of disciplines, grade levels, and experience and we meet biweekly for a total of seven sessions. Each teacher will open their classroom to the group one time and have the opportunity to observe the other six over the course of the pilot.

In Elmore’s parlance, I have a theory of action that looks something like this:

If we develop and nurture a school culture that supports collaborative inquiry and the sharing of best teaching practices, then classroom instruction will be strengthened and students will learn in deeper, more authentic ways.

The How

The participants voluntarily come in to pre-brief at 6:45am on lab days. They have no incentive other than coffee and conversation along with their commitment to improve their practice through sharing in the lab experience. Though all participants are observing the same class at the same time, each bring a different inquiry question to the lab experience. These questions run the gamut and are highly dependent on the teachers’ interests and perceived areas for growth.

Some examples of inquiry questions from this group:

  • How can a teacher foster global citizenship in his or her students?
  • What strategies do teachers use to get students talking about text?
  • How can social studies teachers more effectively include historical fiction in their units of instruction?
  • How can I move students from external accountability to intrinsic responsibility for their learning?
  • How can I ensure that my lessons are authentic and connect students with the larger social context?

The teacher being observed may also pose a specific question related to their class being observed. These questions are posted on our neopolitan-colored “Board of Inquiry.”

At our pre-brief, we also assign people to track specific data that the host teacher requests. For instance, this morning we tracked:

  • Use of vocabulary by teacher and students that indicates “global literacy”
  • Connections from historical fiction text to self
  • Wait time between posing a questions and selecting a student to respond

The most challenging part is arranging class coverage for the observing teachers so that we can all be together to observe and de-brief the process. I am very passionate about the success of this pilot and have committed to using a chunk of the sub dollars allocated to me for professional development. On lab days, we use in-house coverage only when absolutely necessary, instead bringing in four or five half-day subs to cover for lab participants.

Following the one-hour classroom observation, we take a short break, top off our coffees, and re-convene for a de-brief.

Once everyone is back together, we sit silently for a few minutes to reflect on our initial observations. We go quickly around the table, sharing an objective, non-value-laden observation about what we’ve seen. Our instructional coach then leads the group through a discussion connecting one or two of the principles from the Elmore book to the lesson we observed.

It is at this point in the process that the requested data is shared and processed, along with other relevant information. For instance, this morning one of the participants noted that the host teacher had asked 70 questions in a 60-minute observation.

The hour-long debrief process usually flies by, and ultimately ends with each participant sharing something that they believe they have learned about the host teachers core principles. Examples include:

  • Ms. X seems to value every student’s contribution to her class.
  • It seems very important to Ms. X that her students access their personal experience to build background knowledge before tackling new text.
  • Based on the discussion, it seems like Ms. X has high expectations that students are able to connect course content to real-world contexts.

Final Thoughts (For Now)

We are two lab cycles in to our pilot project and we continue to re-visit the norms we established at the outset. It is incredibly courageous of the teacher participants to open up their classrooms to their colleagues, and all have expressed their nervousness to do so.

All in all, I think the two teachers who have hosted to this point have come away feeling positive about the experience. My hope is to generate enough energy and momentum to roll this out school-wide next year. The logistics of pulling this off with 44 full-time faculty will be a bit of a challenge, but I believe passionately that this is the work we should be doing so I am committed to figuring out how to make it happen even if it means I’ll be covering classes.

Blogging for District Leaders

I had my first meeting yesterday with my new boss, the Director of Secondary Education. She is the person whom I replaced as principal at my new school so we are both new to our respective positions.

She spent some time asking me about my vision for my school, but also asked for input on a few things. For instance, she wanted to know what I thought would be the best use of our monthly “levels meetings.” During these times, all the elementary principals, middle school principals, and high school principals get together with their colleagues. As a new principal, this time is going to be invaluable for me to learn from my colleagues at the other middle schools. My suggestion was that as much of the levels meeting time as possible be spent on sharing best practices, collaborating, and learning from each other. Administrivia, or the unidirectional flow of information items that could be handled via email or a memo should not eat into this valuable time that we will have out of our buildings once per month.

I was also very flattered that she asked me about blogging, and about how the Director of Secondary Education might make use of a blog. Like others I have worked with, she is an “article sender.” I’m certain most educational organizations have a person or persons who will send an email or two a week with some “suggested reading” attached or linked. I shared with her that with the high volume of email that I and other principals receive, it’s not unusual for something that isn’t an “emergency” to get overlooked for a day or two. Further, I don’t really care for email attachments as I think they’re an extremely inefficient way to pass along information.

One other assumption in the article-emailing model is that the information is getting to all of the people who need or are interested in it. This involves managing multiple email lists: one for high school principals, one for middle school principals, one for assistant principals… The list goes on. No matter how carefully you curate the lists, someone who wanted the information will be left out, and someone who doesn’t want it will have to either file it away forever because they think they might be asked about it someday, or (gasp!) delete it.

Even if the sole purpose for creating a Director of Secondary Education blog was to share articles and links, this would be a significant benefit to the folks at the buildings. My preferred way of receiving news is via Reeder on my iPad or Google Reader on my MacBook Pro. From there, I’ll often route longer readings to Instapaper so I can focus on them when I have the time.

Further, a blog would bring leaders and prospective leaders in as opposed to an email that is pushed out. I usually have one or two administrative interns who work with me and, despite my best intentions, I don’t always remember to pass along the articles and links that come my way. A blog would be a great forum to bring these up-and-coming leaders into the “fold” and increase their awareness of what is being discussed at the District and principal level.

Finally, with the ability to comment on blog posts, I could see a blog becoming a better place for discussion than the endless CC loops that email encourages and that, for better or worse, eventually get ignored or archived so I can come back later which I rarely remember to do.

It will definitely take some re-norming with principals, but I think given the success of June’s Leadership Bootcamp we are in a great position to start leveraging some more of these one-to-many means of communicating.

Overall, we had what I think was a very productive meeting and I’m excited to work with my new Director in the coming year. Plus, anyone who shows up in my office bearing breakfast burritos and Loveland Coffee knows how to set the tone for a great year!

Trying on the Big Chair

As I mentioned last week, career paths can take unexpected and unusual turns, usually when you least expect it.

I am happy to be blogging today and sharing the news that I have been appointed as the interim principal at Conrad Ball Middle School here in the Thompson School District. The current principal has been asked to serve as the interim Director of Secondary Education and I have been asked to assume her role for the 2010-2011 school year.

Of course, there are no guarantees beyond next year, but as a trusted mentor told me last week as I was weighing this decision, sometimes you have to just jump off the cliff without looking down and without checking your parachute. I’m extremely excited to get to know the faculty and staff at CBMS as well as to roll up my sleeves and get to work implementing some of the new and innovative initiatives that they have worked hard to bring to fruition this coming year.

I know I’ll be blogging more about my experience moving into this role, but I wanted to share this news with my virtual colleagues as soon as it was official!

My Latest Project

This two-days-in-a-row posting pattern is not indicative, by the way, of any nascent desire to participate in Melinda’s latest Twitter challenge. It is, however, an indication of how excited I am to have been asked to facilitate an extension of today’s Tech Bootcamp for leaders.

Inspired by the work of Bud and Michelle in the district to my south, I will be facilitating what amounts to a year-long, embedded PD experience for leaders who are motivated to stop simply talking about making change and actually start doing it.

I have to confess, the iLead name is not original. But I like it. (Or, iLike it…) It’s catchy. And “I lead” really speaks to what I hope participants will get out of this. We will work to build leadership capacity around robust, 21st century learning by supporting the cohort members as they build their own professional and personal learning networks. Reflection and data collection will be key components of this project, and with a little luck we’ll have this year’s cohort mentoring next year’s participants.

I hope to get a lot of interest from district leaders who want to play in our sandbox.

What you need to know when you’re done with teacher school

Actually, this should be called, “What you need to know before your first day as a teacher” since the original title, while pithy in its similarity to the title of a recent post, assumes (a) that every teacher went to teacher school (I didn’t!), and (b) that something you learned there may have some relevance to your actual job. Your mileage may vary with (b).

  • Be interested. No, that’s not a typo. I don’t want you to worry too much about being interesting because that’ll take care of itself. And, let’s be honest, you just can’t force that. So start out your first year in the classroom by being interested — really interested. And please, for the students’ sake, show them that you’re interested in more than just your content area. You’ve got a passion (presumably) so don’t be afraid to let it come out in who you are in the classroom. In one of my all-time favorite blog posts ever, Russell Davies says, “The way to be interesting is to be interested.” Sound advice. See also.
  • Be a learner. Unless your content area is “literature of Ancient Greece,” things in your area are probably changing with the times. When I took Earth Science, for example, Pluto was still a planet. More than that, the ways that we interact with our students are changing. And the ways that students interact with the world are changing. You’ll likely never catch up to where your students are in terms of comfort with technology, but the best teachers are the ones who are the Lead Learners in the classroom. They take what kids know and think they know about technology tools and help them use it as an effective tool to do more than update their Facebook status with what they had for lunch that day. Note: The best way for teachers to learn is not necessarily through one-size-fits-all professional development sessions. Read a lot. Create an account on Google Reader or Netvibes and subscribe not only to education blogs, but blogs about what you’re passionate about (remember the first tip I gave you?). And also, keep it in balance and subscribe to blogs that you don’t necessarily agree with. Preaching to choir is always fun, but it can be a dangerous habit. Network with colleagues who have been doing it longer and who are doing it differently. Find an administrator you trust and see how he or she is willing to help support your professional growth.
  • Avoid like the plague negative people and their efforts to recruit you. Misery loves company. This is true at all levels. You’ll find negative teachers in the lounge and negative administrators in the front office. You’ll know the ones as they’re fairly easy to spot. Their attitude is generally that students are a nuisance to be dealt with and they view their job as laying out a buffet of knowledge from which students can choose whether or not to partake. Their syllabi usually read like the state penal code. You’ll see a lot of “Do nots” and “No exceptions” in their classroom expectations. In fact, you probably won’t see a section called “Expectations” so look for the section called “Rules and Consequences.” The administrators may have cute, witty things in their offices like an urn on their bookshelf that oh-so-humorously reads, “Ashes of Problem Students,” or an old-fashioned paddle engraved with the words, “The Enforcer.” Forget any discourse about the messages these “jokes” send to students, parents, or community members who may have occasion to see them and who may not share their owner’s sense of gallows humor… Negative people want nothing more than to perpetuate their negative energy. Seek out teachers and administrators who enjoy working with kids and have a positive world view. They’re out there, and more common than you think, but they’re usually doing something good for kids instead of complaining about how no one else is.
  • Have fun. Don’t confuse this with “be funny” because they’re not the same thing. And by “fun,” I don’t mean pizza party or Friday Free Day. You’ve chosen a very serious job with a serious responsibility. You’ve accepted the challenge of teaching the next generation. They will have to go out there after you’re finished with them and make the world a better place. So take the job seriously, but not yourself. Show a funny YouTube video, sponsor the sophomore class, smile, and love your job.
  • Just because you can do something with technology doesn’t mean you should do it with technology. Do you need a wiki intervention? You know who you are.

It’s not an exhaustive list, but that should get you started. You’ll notice I didn’t include anything about where to find discipline referrals or how to access the copier. You’ll get all that stuff from your new boss on your first day of orientation. I also didn’t share my philosophy on discipline and how you work with kids, but that’s been done before by me and others. This is some of the other stuff that’s been on my mind for a while. And spending time with new and preservice teachers, I’m sure there will be more that follows.

Coming soon: What you need to know before your first day as an administrator…

Making things happen

[This post also appears on LeaderTalk.]

A month or so ago, Twitter colleague Dave Meister (@phsprincipal) sent out a tweet wondering if any of the educational leaders on Twitter would want to attempt a “virtual” meet-up sometime this summer. Being a generally social person who enjoys exchanging good ideas with smart people, I thought this would be great. Dave threw together a quick interest survey on GDocs and over 40 school and district-level leaders expressed interest in the event.

Being fresh off the modest success of the Learning 2.0 event at my school, I volunteered to help out. We’d gotten pretty adventurous with the online portion of Learning 2.0 so I wanted to see how much farther we could push the virtual conference paradigm. Being that all of our districts are cutting back on PD money and that we all have other things we like to do in the summer, we thought that a virtual, half-day event would be ideal.

Dave and I spent a lot of time DM-ing and emailing and collaborating to determine an appropriate format for the event. We wanted a format that would provide a loose structure, but not too much structure, and that would allow participants to network, share what they’re passionate about, and form learning groups organically.

After a couple weeks of planning, I am proud to invite your participation in LeaderCamp 2010 on Thursday, June 24, 2010. Naturally, you can follow the event updates on Twitter.

The theme for the day, “Making Things It Happen,” was inspired by this Tweet from Dave. We talk about change a great deal. For this event, though, we hope to focus on action; on leaders who are – well – making things happen in their school or their district. Big successes or tiny victories, we want to learn from them.

We’ve attempted to structure the event in the spirit of a Barcamp or Unconference. We are exploring WebEx Event Center as a possible vehicle for collaboration, and will probably open up the agenda-creation phase the Monday before the event. We will not be calling for proposal submissions or anything so fancy or sophisticated as we really want this to be as open as possible. We wanted to create a space and time where everyone is welcome and anyone can claim a session and share a good idea, a powerful tool, or a success story.

We’ve created longer session slots for big ideas, as well as a pair of 10-minute “micro-sessions” that would be perfect for showing off a tool that you use in your practice. We’re also building in some “networking” time as well and working on an opportunity for participants to submit a 2-minute video on a topic of their choosing which we’ll string together to create a session in the style of “TED” or “Ignite.”

I hope that if you’re a reader of this blog, you’ll at least mark your calendar and plan to spend some time with us this June. It’ll be a first of its kind event and I am very much looking forward to connecting with colleagues I’ve never met and sharing more than the confines of Twitter allow.

What you need to know when you’re done with high school

I had a great experience working with a group of teachers and leaders in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, a couple weeks ago. While I like to kid about them being a “tough crowd,” the truth is that they were an open-minded group who asked great questions.

One of the participants (I can’t recall her name – sorry!) challenged me during my session to identify the Top Ten Things Every Graduating High School Student Know or Understand. Since I enjoy a challenge, I told her I’d work on it and post a response here. I’m not sure it’s what she had in mind, but it’s the best I can think of.

  • Know what is valuable. The value of factual information is either at or quickly approaching zero. What you need are skills. Skills that will allow you to learn and re-learn will be more important than factual knowledge. Now, don’t read this to say that factual knowledge is never valuable or that it shouldn’t be taught — all things in moderation will create balance — but if all you take away from science class is that you memorized the Periodic Table, then we may have a disconnect between what we do in school and what you’ll do when you’re done in school.
  • Learn how to learn. In our information-rich, always-on, instant-access world, the winner isn’t the one who knows the most, rather it’s the one who can do the most. So how do you learn? Do you read a book or watch a video? Do you find a mentor or expert tutor? Do you throw your search at Google and click “I’m Feeling Lucky”?
  • Tackle interesting problems, and be OK with messy solutions. Find an interesting problem and solve it in a unique way. But know that the answer will rarely be found in the form of a 5-paragraph essay or a nice, round integer.
  • Be a connoisseur of information. Anyone with a computer or cellphone can do a Google search. But you need the information literacy to make sense of the results. The trade-off of having all this information a click away is that you’ll need to be able to read and assess it for possible reliability and validity issues.
  • Be conscious of your digital footprint. It’s never too early to start being aware of your online presence. You will be Google-able and you will be Googled. I suggest that you be certain that you’re in control of what people find when they Google you.
  • Give back. Share. Contribute. Help out. It doesn’t have to be monetary.
  • People are more important than technology. Technology is awesome because it gives us the ability to break down barriers. We can share and collaborate in ways that, even as recently as 5 years ago, seemed like the exclusive domain of the crew of the Enterprise. So use the technology to build and strengthen connections, but always remember that technology is only one tool in relationship-building.
  • Find something you’re passionate about. Life is really going to stink if you can’t find something you love to do.
  • Be nice. One effect of all this technology is that everyone who’s anyone has a blog or a Twitter account or a Facebook account. That’s swell. But what I don’t particularly care for are those who use these platforms as a soapbox to pop off about anything and everything simply because now they can. And because there are no short-term consequences, people uncork with things they’d never say in front of actual people for fear of getting punched.
  • Play. It’s not just for kids anymore. Play is an important part of learning. It helps us think.

So that’s pretty much it. I’m not sure if it’s what she expected, but that’s that I think our kids need to know when they leave high school. I sure hope you weren’t expecting me to say they needed to understand the electoral college or how to change the amplitude of a sine wave. They can look that stuff up when they need it.

Teaching and encouraging creativity

When I first saw the video of Ken Robinson talking about creativity, I sat and nodded my head in agreement. Most of the people I show it to do the same thing. But then most of us go back to business as usual.

Is our current educational system even capable of addressing an idea as nebulous as “creativity?”

Do we employ creative teachers? Creative leaders? Is it even a trait that we value when we interview prospective teachers or administrators?

Do we have students who think of themselves as being creative?

I’ve said out loud before, ‘You know – I’m just not a very ‘creative’ person.” It’s taken me a long time to realize that what I really meant to say was, “I’m not really good at drawing things.” Because when we talk about creativity, that’s the first place a lot of our minds go: the fine arts. Sometimes we extend that into writing classes, but we rarely envision students being creative in Physics or Calculus.

Fortunately for us, though, Albert Einstein didn’t view math and science as a series of chapters in a textbook. He didn’t think that doing math meant doing “1-35 odd.” He didn’t have “science time” during which he thought about the Theory of Relativity followed by “math time” when he calculated how many dimes and nickels he had if he had 13 coins and 95 cents. His most important discoveries and theories came from having time to just sit and think and play with the interactions of multiple disciplines.

And Einstein knew how to have an idea and take action to push it forward; to focus on moving from vision to reality.

I like Ken Robinson’s definition:

Creativity means having original ideas that have value.

I would also add that it’s about knowing where to go from there. It’s about ignoring — just for a moment — the impulse to tell yourself, “That’s stupid.” Of course, not every idea deserves all that attention, but for those that do we need to know what to do next.

Opinions are Like Belly Buttons from "Indexed"

from "Indexed" by Jessica Hagy

So I’m wondering a lot lately about how we can provide time for educators and students to just sit and wonder. Or play.

I know, I know. We would allow kids more time to be creative if it weren’t for [standardized tests, behavior, curriculum, attendance]. I know the barriers because I live within them, too.

But given all that, how we can support teachers, leaders, and kids learning how to make their ideas happen?

from "Indexed" by Jessica Hagy

from "Indexed" by Jessica Hagy

The Larger, Smaller Conversation

[I posted this on LeaderTalk earlier today.]

I had a whole post ready for my “official” LeaderTalk day last Friday but in the end I just couldn’t bring myself to click “Publish.” I was a little frustrated when I wrote it and I think it needs to simmer for a bit before it’s ready for prime time.

Fast-forward to this morning and a great keynote from Karl Fisch about literacy in the 21st century. Karl said a lot of great things and challenged the thinking of a lot of people in the room. This led to some great conversations throughout the morning and throughout the day.

But Karl’s talk got me thinking about my “unpublished” post. I’ve been spinning a lot of half-formed thoughts around in my head all morning and this is my attempt at putting them together in some quasi-cohesive form.

Most of us reading LeaderTalk and publishing our blogs are basically in agreement that school, in its current iteration, leaves something to be desired in terms of its ability to meet the individual needs of students in a way that doesn’t look like an assembly line. Though the methods proposed to address this deficiency vary from blog to blog and person to person, there isn’t a lot of disagreement that something needs to change.

The question I’m left with, then, is that with all of this ideology around how things should look, and all these great conversations “out there,” how do we carry these conversations back to our schools? If we (the schools) are supposed to “be the change [we] want to see in the world,” then how do we start talking about this change at the micro level in one school?

More pointedly, how do we have a real discussion about these real ideas that doesn’t somehow degenerate into (a) “If the school/district would buy me a projector/computer/document camera, then I could do this stuff,” or (b) “Let’s talk about tardy policies and consequences for cell phone use…”?

Is this the majority of teachers? Probably not. Are these equipment and policy issues important? Sure. Are they the most important? Not to me.

Nonetheless, I would love to get beyond them in a way that doesn’t sound like I’m minimizing the concerns of the teachers for whom these are the Big Issues Of The School.

My struggle right now is trying to frame these big ideas in a simple, straightforward way that is accessible to everyone and doesn’t alienate any particular group of teachers. On the other hand, part of me feels like waiting around for buy-in from everyone means we’re wasting a lot of time when we could be moving ahead.

I guess don’t have a lot of answers, but I sure have a lot of questions.

Update on Learning 2.0

Here are the links I know you’ve been dying to have for this Saturday’s Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation.

I look forward to seeing you there (in-person or virtually!).