A few weeks after the 2010-11 school year ended, ABPC consultant Jackie Walsh and I spent two days in Tarrant with their administrators and teacher leaders. We used that retreat to look back at what we’ve all learned during our two years of close partnership and to brainstorm about ways to accelerate the pace of improvement even more in the immediate future.
On hand for our 2-day retreat were all the principals and assistant principals from each of the four schools as well as some incredibly committed teachers. Beth Sanders, a second year high school social studies teacher, captured most of our work product using her phone and the Evernote app.
If you’ve ever participated in the professional development facilitated by the ABPC, then you know that participants are active learners who participate in activities designed to deepen their understanding and prompt reflection. Our expectations are that participants will take what they’ve learned about best practice and put it to work in their classrooms and leadership roles.
In the two-day ABPC retreat, participants spent considerable time discussing and reflecting on the knowledge and skills that students need to be well-prepared for college or work. The Tarrant leadership team took the next step by identifying the knowledge and skills both teachers and leaders must have to ensure that students are well-prepared. After a lot of brainstorming and discussion, the team did a “gap analysis” to identify target areas for future PD, coaching and assessment.
The retreat closed with a powerful reading about a professional learning community written by PLC experts Rick and Becky DuFour. The story described a school where collaboration is expected of both teachers and students, where teacher learning is valued as much as student learning, and where there is a relentless focus on results and a restlessness to improve. After taking a few deep breaths, Tarrant’s administrators and teachers embraced the possibilities of the vision offered by the DuFours and began mapping the next steps to get there.
It was apparent during this exciting two-day process that Tarrant’s school and classroom leaders relished the learning opportunities that took place — just as Jackie and I have savored all the insight we have gained during the first two years of our partnership with the district. Here are some of my own take-aways after spending time in deep conversations with administrators, observing teachers collaborating together, and watching them practice their craft in Tarrant’s classrooms during our Instructional Rounds visits.
School reform is inherently relationship-based: Forcing people to change or to behave in a certain way won’t stick. Teachers might comply, particularly when they know you will be in their room, but they won’t own the change and won’t take the steps needed to make it part of their routine.
Jim Knight, a leading expert on coaching, believes that “Professional learning fails when change leaders underestimate how complicated change can be. Just telling people what to do and expecting them to do it might work for simple tasks like stocking shelves in a grocery store, but such an approach is seldom motivating or effective for professionals. In education, effective professional learning must be grounded in anunderstanding of how complex helping relationships can be.” (Unmistakable Impact, p. 21)
Over the past two years, we have developed strong relationships with Tarrant teacher leaders and administrators. We listen deeply to what they say and watch for non-verbal cues. We work hard to build trust and to demonstrate respect for their willingness to take the difficult steps that lead to improvement.
Partnerships, not mandates spur improvement and results. Are you old enough to remember “Mighty Mouse” who would fly into a situation to “save the day?” That might work in a crisis, but if you want a school to change, a partnershipapproach is necessary.
Knight invokes the Golden Rule when describing the partnership relationship: Treat people the way you yourself want to be treated. He adds, “if someone else does all the thinking for them, people will resist.” Our job when we work with Tarrant teachers and leaders (and in other districts) is not to do the work. Rather it’s to help them think about the work, connect them to resources that will help them do it better, listen to them to gain better understanding of their issues, and help them learn from mistakes and reflect about next steps to be taken.
Change is a slow process and it is important to celebrate small wins. Change experts like Michael Fullan, Clay Christensen, and Tony Wagner are quick to remind us that America’s schools haven’t failed. Rather, the world has been irreversibly changed by technology and other global dynamics and, as a result, schools must change too.
A simplistic example is the change one sees in a school library. There are no longer card catalogues. Instead banks of computers are available for students to search for information. As we help teachers move away from reliance solely on lecture-based instruction and help leaders move from solely being building managers to becoming instructional leaders, we need to remember that we’ve asking people to make BIG changes. When small steps are taken and behavior changes, we need to be right there celebrating with them.
The best learning is teacher-to-teacher, school-to-school, district-to-district. Our networks have shown us that educators learn best when they can see examples of successful change and talk with those who made it happen. In addition to our six sessions at Tarrant, the district is involved in our Key Leaders Network and the Powerful Conversations Network, where they and hundreds of other potential change agents are given opportunities to discuss and learn from their peers.
This learning was heightened this year, when we conducted 7 Instructional Rounds across the state which benefits both the schools and systems that participated and the educators who played the role of observers during the Rounds process.
In my next and final post about Tarrant, I’ll turn my attention to some specific actions being taken in the city schools to advance learning.
Click here to read part 1
Click here to read part 3
