Key Leadership Challenge

From February 2017 through October 2017, I was a member of Cohort 1, of the Margaret Waddington Leadership Initiative (MWLI), a collaborative effort of the Center for Creative Leadership and the Vermont Principal's Association. This piece is adapted from the reflective writing I produced about the MWLI.

A major component of the MWLI is the Key Leadership Challenge. The KLC is meant to give each principal a focus for the work in the program.

My Key Leadership Challenge has taken a few different forms during my time in the program. When I enrolled and listened to the webinar, I was thinking about student behavior and staff culture. We were having a pretty rough year in terms of discipline in the middle school. I was spending huge amounts of time supervising a new, struggling teacher. I wasn’t sure of the language, but I was pretty clear that my KLC would focus there.

By the end of February, it was clear that things had begun to change. A look at our discipline data shows that we were entering a quiet phase. My work with the struggling teacher had shifted completely from a combination of suggestion and building on reflection to a strategy of direction. I had to tell the teacher how to relate to students and how to handle discipline. With some new approaches in place, the behavior problems settled down. I realized that it was easy to direct a struggling teacher. My struggle was with the veteran teachers.

Most of the veteran teachers at BCS last year were pretty solid teachers. They each faced challenges, but those were pretty subtle. I found that I was having a hard time approaching those teachers with concrete suggestions for improvement. I was also not getting to the good conversations where teachers identify areas of growth.

When I got to North Carolina, I framed my KLC as:

How might I improve the practice of good teachers to increase student engagement in learning and to meet the needs of students through social emotional learning.

I tried too hard to connect this to my school vision (the ideas of engagement in learning and social-emotional learning). Feedback from colleagues was as muddled as my statement. Most of the comments were focused on how to improve the social climate of the school. I left North Carolina a little bit dubious of the benefits of the program; I didn’t feel like I had a good direction. While I wanted to blame others, I knew the reason was that I didn’t focus enough on my key leadership challenge.

In July, I had the opportunity to work on my KLC again. I learned from the assessments that “I would benefit from listening to those who are better at clarifying the problem to solve.” So, without meaning to, I worked in a small group of principals with somewhat similar challenges. Through our work together, we wrote a new KLC that we all decided to use. It was broader and more focused than my original.

Create systems to expand or enhance teachers’ capacity to engage all students.

These systems would include:

• Having teachers act as accountability partners for each other
• Creating an inventory of teacher strengths
• Setting and meeting a goal of 2-hours each day in classrooms
• Creating my own coaching model to use with teachers

I left the July session charged and ready to implement these new systems.

As reality and planning for in-service in August began to seep into my consciousness, I realized that I had some other systems work to implement first. I took a step back from accountability partners to strengthening the teams in the building. First, I agreed to rearrange the Faculty Learning Time and merge it with our building PLCs. For this to work, we spent a bunch of time in the fall on team building activities. I introduced my User’s Manual as a device for the PLCs to work on norm setting. The idea was for each person to think about how they operate, then for each team to write norms that might honor those needs. The feedback from teachers was positive and the work showed it. Throughout the fall, we devoted time to learning and problem solving in our PLCs.

Now that the Waddington program is over, I have reviewed my KLC a few times without changing it again. I still seek to build systems for teachers to expand or enhance their capacity to engage all students. I have altered some of the particulars to match reality, but my focus has not changed.

For a CCL book on the topic see this page.

Direction, Alignment, and Commitment

From February 2017 through October 2017, I was a member of Cohort 1, of the Margaret Waddington Leadership Initiative (MWLI), a collaborative effort of the Center for Creative Leadership and the Vermont Principal's Association. This piece is adapted from the reflective writing I produced about the MWLI.

A couple of years ago, I finally heard the feedback that I needed to set a vision, or Direction, for my old school. It was time; I was finally able to feel confident setting a vision. My last year at that school was filled with my struggles to Align the staff and the programs to the vision. I knew then, and now have the words for the idea, that I did not have the Commitment of others to make this vision a reality. 

Fast forward a couple of years and things are different. At my current position, I’d planned to set a vision for the school after my first full year (and a process of much listening and observing). The craziest thing happened – Brownington Central School was totally ready and waiting for a vision to be set before Christmas. I had to double check my assumptions, and the staff confirmed that they were ready. So, I launched the Brownington Bridge to the Future. This Direction is to use Social-Emotional Learning and Student Engagement in Learning to lead all of our efforts. Since it already fit with our mission statement, it was an easy sell. I think that the staff was pretty well Committed to this, so that leaves only Alignment to worry about. That will be my role as supervisor – make sure that we stay aligned to the direction.



A CCL book on DAC can be found here.

SBI for Feedback

From February 2017 through October 2017, I was a member of Cohort 1, of the Margaret Waddington Leadership Initiative (MWLI), a collaborative effort of the Center for Creative Leadership and the Vermont Principal's Association. This piece is adapted from the reflective writing I produced about the MWLI.

I really like the simple, straightforward approach to feedback that is SBI. Tell the person the Situation about which I want to comment, tell them the Behavior I noticed, and then tell them the Impact the behavior had. I struggle with how to put the impact onto students instead of on me for feedback that is not about interpersonal behavior. CCL teaches that the impact can be about me or others present. Since it can include “work outcomes” I guess that I can use it with teachers. 
Here is an imaginary example (I have been using this with real teachers and worry that I would break confidentiality and trust with a real example):

Mrs. Jones, earlier during 6th grade social studies, when you told the students that they can choose the way they would be assessed, they got excited about this project in a way I haven't seen from them.

While this example seems a little stilted, the lesson learned is to be specific about the situation, the behavior and the impact when giving feedback.




Related Article
Feedback You Can Fathom

Teaching Principal Revisited

I have been a full time principal for about ten years. A few years back, I took on teaching the sixth grade social studies class at the same time. I wrote a mighty fine blog about it: http://principalspov.blogspot.com/2012/11/top-ten-benefits-to-being-teaching.html. I was a social studies teacher before becoming a principal. During my first few years in the classroom, I taught sixth grade. Being a teaching principal was a good experience, but proved to be too difficult to try again.

However, since December 4, I have taken on a 75-minute math class. You see, our 4th/5th grade math/science teacher is out on maternity leave, and the longterm sub I hired decided this was not the work for him. I have been unable to find someone to take the rest of the leave. So, we have been cobbling together the instruction for these kids. 

Our interventionist is planning and sometimes teaching the science for both 4th and 5th grades. She works with whatever daily sub we find to make sure the students are still getting some science. One of the special educators had been co-teaching 4th grade math and has taken over the full teaching of that class. That left only 5th grade math. The interventionist wasn’t available as she was busy teaching 7th grade at that time. The special educator had to deliver other services during that slot. That left us no other option but me.

I am loving it. I am learning tons and getting to know this group like no other in the building. I have earned some capital with the elementary teachers as I try to learn how to use Eureka Math (nee EngageNY). Had attended the training in August 2016 and had exposure going back a year or two before that. I thought I understood the program on a superficial level. Well, now that I have taught it for eight weeks, I can say that Eureka is not a script that any untrained person can follow. We need real teachers who understand math and math pedagogy to make sense of the program. We need real teachers who can assess where the kids are. We need real teachers to make real educational decisions.

I’m not sure I fit that description, but with some help and lots of trial and error, I am making it work. That said, I can’t wait for the teacher to return from her leave, and I’ll miss this class at the same time.

cross posted at Connected Principals

They Should Know Better...

They should know better than to:

Talk out of turn,

Argue with each other,

Ignore the rules,

Disrespect adults,

Give up quickly,

Choose so poorly,

(insert your least favorite student behavior here)...

... but they don't. 

They don't know better. Many students struggle to accept authority, think for themselves, or manage their own emotions. Students affected by poverty or the opioid epidemic are not getting many of the basic social-emotional skills they need. They don't arrive at our schools with the Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, Relationship Skills, and Responsible Decision-making that we believe they need to be successful students and members of society (see CASEL, https://casel.org, for loads of info).

They need us, the adults at school, to teach them. Whether we teach them through a formal curriculum (such as Second Step), a classroom approach (such as Responsive Classroom), school wide expectations and celebrations (as included in PBIS), or in the "hidden curriculum" so many of us have always been sure to focus on, it is now a necessary part of many public schools to teach students how to get by in a community. Kindergarten teachers are chuckling now that the rest of us have caught up to them; they've been teaching the "hidden curriculum" for ever. The problem is that kids are starting school with so few of these skills mastered that it takes far more than one year to catch up. We have to teach social-emotional skills through the grades.

Many teachers start their career thinking that they will focus mostly on academic skills. People dream of teaching kids to read in first grade, divide fractions in sixth grade, or recite Shakespeare with high school juniors. When they hit reality and realize that teaching involves tons beyond the content, some teachers run with it. Other teachers start complaining that the students should know better. Well, they don't; it is our job to teach them. When we put in the time to teach Social-Emotional skills, fractions and Shakespeare are not far behind

cross-posted to Connected Principals