Greer Mid-year Teacher Survey

Below is a copy of the survey we sent out to our teaching staff the week they returned from break. We used google forms to do it which was simple and easy. I have found that a mid year survey of staff is a great way to take stock of everyone's take on the various initiatives at our school. And after reading the responses, while sometimes hard to appreciate, I love the honesty and sense of community that is growing at our school. I hate nonsense in the education world, and leaders who make claims about their staff that they cannot stand by. For those who do, they should do an anonymous survey to see where their staff really is.

The survey really helps us (me) grow as a teacher and leader. And we share all of the answers with the entire staff so everyone can see it.

Mid-Year Greer Teacher Survey 2012

Please take some time this week to fill out this survey. We will close it out Monday, January 9. Because we believe the improvement and growth of our school is a collective process, all of the answers will be shared out with the staff.

One of major focus areas this year is reading, especially engaging and motivating all of our students to read. What do you need to sustain energy and passion around this initiative and help you become the best reading teacher you can be?

What is working about your PLC? What would you share about your PLC with other PLCs to help them?

What is not working with your PLC and what would help it improve?

Our work with Expeditionary Learning is in its third year. What staff development or staff work do we need to grow stronger in this initiative?

Committee work is in its third year of implementation. What is working about the committees? What can make them even more productive?

Reaching out to our school community through a variety of means is important to us. What else do you think can be done to make this relationship stronger?

Name and describe a little thing that could be done by the administration, fellow staff members, or yourself, that would make your job a little bit easier to do.

While Greer has begun to full implement the RTI model, we realize staff members need to know more about how it works and how they fit in the process. What do you specifically need to know about the RTI process?

We are in our fourth year of implementing Responsive Classroom. What do you need to help you develop more as an individual teacher with this model?

What can happen that will enable you to have more fun at school and enjoy your job?

Creating School Traditions- A few things we know for sure

We are creating new traditions as a school. Last year was the start with intensive learning expeditions at each grade level and student led conferences for every single student in the spring. We also took an older school tradition of visiting neighborhoods before the start of school and ramped it up a bit with pairs of teachers knocking on doors and visiting every single family before the start of school. Each child got a little bag of "back to school goodies" and if they weren't there it was left on the door. This "Stepping Out" day is quickly becoming once again a powerful school tradition. Our commitment is to visit and knock on every door. Last year, we met about 50% of our families face to face. This year I am guessing that figure is somewhere between 60-70%. Some students were woken up or still in their pajamas (and it was not that early). Other times teachers were invited in for tea, juice, or treats by the families.

A few things we know for sure. It took an incredible amount of work for teachers at Greer to pull it off. And it will help us build powerful connections with all of our families. A local television station did a good job covering one of the visits. Here's to another amazing school year at Mary Carr Greer Elementary School!

The different journeys we all take as educators

The New York Times this morning has an article about a new teacher training graduate program in New York City that was founded by three separate charter management organizations. The program prides itself on utilizing little to no reading or theorizing but instead an intense focus on practical classroom teaching strategies that raise student achievement. The founder is quoted as saying "if you think tests are evil... this is not the program for you." The program bases a lot of its pedagogy on the book, Teach like a Champion, whole class type teaching strategies.

When I was a beginning teacher in Baltimore in the early nineties, I struggled. My school noticed that pretty quickly and attached a master teacher to me for about three weeks. She modeled for me, co-taught with me, and finally just observed me teach. The strategies (a lot of positive reinforcement type stuff) she taught me brought order to my classroom and enabled me to start teaching the students. I used these strategies through my second year of teaching as well and got even better at them.

During my third, fourth, and fifth year of teaching though, I really started questioning myself:

• Do I need to reward students with points for almost everything they do?
• Shouldn't students have more choice in their daily life?
• Shouldn't I be developing more of a supportive community of learners?

So, without much or any support, I struggled to implement some of these strategies and realized that kids I taught did not need points for everything they did and when they chose their own reading material they were infinitely more motivated to read. I would love to say that I became a master teacher but I did not, I struggled up until the last day of my teaching career. But I new there was something different that I could be doing in education and in my classroom.

The journey of an educator is hopefully more than just learning new strategies over the course of thirty years. The journey hopefully leads us to some semblance of what is real learning, what is truth, and what really prepared students for the real world out there.

This past year, I have stumbled upon two educators who have had some similar journeys. Marc Waxman, a former TFA teacher and KIPP teacher, is now heading up charter schools in Denver that utilize Responsive Classroom and a more constructivist teaching style. Eric Juli, a central office administrator in Massachusetts is taking on a new job of running a small, innovative high school in Cleveland. Both of their journey's appear to have taken place because of a great amount of reflection and thought. One aspect of Marc's journey that is interesting is that he started to question his teaching as he started to have his own children.

My own journey as I enter my 11th year of being an elementary school principal has me working with a staff that is embracing the core principles of Responsive Classroom and Expeditionary Learning. I have learned more about myself, about learning, about children, and about people the past three years of implementing these principles than I have during any other aspect of my career.

So, in thinking back about the new teacher training program in New York, I probably could have used some of those strategies to survive and in some regards thrive as a new teacher years ago. Some of the new teachers I have worked with over the years could have used some of those strategies as well. I don't disdain them at all. But I also realize that there is a richness of thought and reflection when you try to go past test scores and develop a true learning community that I hope, hope, hope that those teachers in the program get at some point in their career but worry in the current reform climate, they never will.

If your school teaches to the test, it’s not the test’s fault. It’s the leaders of your school.

So David Brooks wrote a column in the NY Times the other day about the school reform debates. This is not my attempt to add to the debate. I don't have the time to add to the fray. He ended his column though with a rather enticing line though: "If your school teaches to the test, it's not the test's fault. It's the leaders of your school."

The line invoked in me the most irritating response, I both agreed wholeheartedly to it and wholeheartedly was aggravated by it in the same moment.

I am a principal of an elementary school in a high pressure, high stakes environment. 70% of our students qualify for free/reduced lunch. We are the most ethnically/racially diverse school in our school division and in the entire region. If you just look at AYP during my tenure at the school, the results are mixed. One year, we did not make it, one year we did, one year we just barely missed it, the the jury is still out on this past year. We are in our second year of formal school improvement with the state. We are a public school choice school and have mandated outside tutoring as part of the NCLB law. I attend monthly meetings with the state department of ed and turn in data reports to them on a regular basis. Everything in this world tells me as a leader to lead a school that teaches to the test. Every meeting, every statement, every webinar, every powerpoint. The words teach to the test are never used, but it is always implied.

The past two years, however, we have embarked on a different journey. Along with a focus on data and results, we have implemented different strategies through our intensive work with Responsive Classroom and Expeditionary Learning:

• Intensive community building through classroom and school-wide morning meetings
• Student led parent conferences for every single student, Prek-5
• Learning expeditions (you can see them here) at every single grade level
• Instructional rounds for all teachers (learn about them here)
• Extensive use of formative assessment strategies

Now, I know many good educators would look at that list and say or think that those strategies would increase student achievement for everyone. I agree. But, the prevailing wisdom in the world in which I partially inhabit (the high stakes world) does not push or even nudge school leaders in that direction. We do the right thing at Greer because we have a culture of professionals who value the strategies above. The does not mean we never doubt ourselves, or worry we are doing the right thing. But we have held the course. We also have a superintendent (@pammoran) and a school board who support our work as well.

Our school is going in the right direction with both our school culture and yes, student achievement, slowly but surely. The school has a vastly more positive and learner supported feel than it did four years ago. But David Brooks, and most other policy wonks, would look at our data and label us as failing. We are not failing, and I would argue we are improving in a more authentic way than most other schools.

What David Brooks fails to realize is that for a school leader to swim up the fast flowing stream of "not teaching to the test", it takes an incredible amount of support, collective courage, and belief in children to accomplish doing things the right way. Most people in education right now, because they are in schools that don't face these issues or they simply refuse to face the issues themselves, don't really have an idea of how tough it is.

David Brooks certainly does not. He is pretty darn clueless.

A Red Shouldered Hawk Visits Mary Carr Greer Elementary and We Have a Hawk Party

A little interesting thing happened at school today. I was out on the playground watching some fourth graders play basketball at recess (it was a very nice day in Central Virginia). Suddenly, my walkie talkie crackled to life. Usually it is Dorothy, our office associate, telling me about a phone call or a classroom I need to visit. Instead, I heard this "Mr. Landahl, there is a hawk on top of the flag pole. You should go take a picture of it with your phone." Despite my shock, I hustled to the front of the building as fast as I could to see this hawk.



It was magnificent and was sitting as still as can be on top of our flag pole. Our fifth graders were about fifty feet away running the mile in our bus loop and it was them and our PE teacher Mrs. Bond who first saw it.

So, naturally the next step was that more people needed to get invited to this hawk party. Our fourth graders are in the middle of a learning expedition exploring the return of the bald eagle to Virgina as part of a intensive study of our local ecosystem. I decided to use the walkie talkie again and called to one of the teachers at recess and said, "we have this enormous hawk on the flag pole and it is not really going anywhere. You might want to bring the fourth graders to see it." The response I got was, "ok".

A few minutes later I received another communication from a fourth grade teacher, "is it still there?"

Indeed it was. So, our fifth graders are still running the mile in front of the school and our fourth graders are now walking very quietly to stand and sit in front of the flag pole to watch the hawk.



The above picture only captures a fraction of the kids watching the hawk. As we stood there looking at it, I am sure all of the adults, me included, were starting to wonder, "how long do we stand here looking at this hawk?" The kids were all well behaved and seemed genuinely interesting in this rather majestic creature perched on top of our flag. But shouldn't we get back inside and start doing some work, I am sure crossed more people's minds. Finally, one teacher said," maybe we should wait until the hawk flies away so the kids can see its wingspan in flight."

So we waited some more. Kids still looking at the hawk. A pair of nesting mockingbirds began to fly at the hawk in an attempt to scare it away. We got to watch that for a while.

And then finally the hawk flew away and all the kids cheered for it. It was really quite an unusual, special fifteen minutes.

I am not going to overdo trying to attach some sort of significance to these fifteen minutes. But, the more we get interested in the world outside, the more ready we are to investigate and explore this incredible world outside the school door, the more hawk parties we are probably going to have.

Author's note: when our neighborhood black bear makes his annual visit, we are not going to do the same.

The power of listening

I recently was exposed to two slightly different takes on communication from a leadership position and both involve one on one meetings with people.

The first was from a Corner Office interview in the NY Times a few weeks ago. In this interview of Doreen Lorenzo, she talks at length about the power of one on one meetings with people in her design and innovation firm. In these meetings, she lets each person guide the conversation and spends most of the time listening. She also uses this time to communicate the mission of the company, because she feels strongly that people need to hear it from her.

The second exposure is a short video from The Learning Community School in Rhode Island. The co-directors two times a year sit down with every person in the school and just listen. They then do an interesting next step and track all of the things people say, take notes on it, and then share it with everyone in the school, and finally try to facilitate some action steps from the data.

I have done bits and pieces of this as a leader over the years and I value this type of data probably more than any others.

But I need to improve on:

• Communicating the vision one on one with everyone.
• Truly listening to people and letting them guide the conversation.
• Doing it in a systematic way and finding the time to implement that system

It is powerful stuff. The best thing I know I could probably ever say about a boss is that I really felt listened to. I hope I can improve in that area as a leader myself.

A good Sunday morning

The Sunday morning paper is a ritual in our house. Since moving to the east coast years ago, it has become the New York Times. But, this morning, I was filled with a bit of dread when I saw that education was a focus of the magazine section. Dread, because, so often I have found that anything written about education, seemingly almost anywhere, seems to miss the nuances behind what actually happens in a school. So, I had to make a decision, read it right away and work the rest of my Sunday on not being annoyed by it, or just push it off. I decided to read it.

And, I could not believe it. It was one of the best articles about a city school that I have ever read, especially in the context of the current state of reform. It is a good article because it is real. The principal, Ramon Gonzalez, seems amazing and he struggles with many things: the encroachment of charter schools, the inexperience with Teach for America teachers, kids with a lot of needs moving into the school any day of the year, finding funding to the extra things, lack of support from central office. What is great about the article is that it seems to have no "angle". Teachers unions are not the enemy at the school, they copy strategies from some charter schools but ignore others, and they go all out for kids and do not always find success because of their own fault or the circumstances of the child's life. Really an amazing read and I hope that folks in the policy field, because their own experience in actual schools was most likely rather fleeting, give it a read. It would help them understand what impact certain policies have in a real school trying hard to improve.

Our Planned Learning Expeditions at Greer for this Spring

Listed below are summaries of the learning expeditions that our grade level teams have put together for the very first time. Some are being implemented right now and others later this spring. The summaries are in the words of our teachers and instructional coaches. I know we have a lot more hard work to accomplish but we are proud of getting this far.

Kindergarten

Kindergarteners will investigate and understand the basic needs and life processes of plants and animals. They will explain how living things change as they grow and describe what living things need to survive. Each class will study one animal in depth as a case study that they relate to other living things. The product of this expedition will be a ‘how to’ care manual that will be developed by students for an animal fostered by each Kindergarten class from the SPCA. The manual will include photographs of the animal in the classroom and in-depth information on its behaviors, habits and needs, as studied by the students. The manual will be available to the SPCA and prospective families for future use when caring for this species. Students will investigate how the SPCA supports our community and will gather resources needed for the animals such as cleaning supplies, blankets, animal food, and volunteer support.

First Grade: Souper Soup

First grade is currently in the middle of our first expedition, Super Soup. Through the lens of soup, we are tackling a variety of standards, while providing authentic learning experiences that are relevant to our students. Integrated standards and topics include:

• Science: states of matter and dissolving, seasons, and the needs of living things
• Math: volume, measurement, and fractions
• Writing: functional and non-fiction writing, revision, writing with clarity, and publishing
• Social studies: community service
  

Students are developing is a grade-wide cookbook, which will include a recipe from each student. By cooking a variety of soups in class, reading about different cultural soups, experimenting with vegetables, talking to expert nutritionists, and visiting farms, we are building background knowledge so that students can successfully write soup recipes. We are formatively assessing their learning through each step of the process and meeting individual needs through modeling and one-on-one conversation. We are keeping an Expedition Journal to record our work and students actively use previous pages to find and write vocabulary words, add more details to drawings and record their thinking.

Additional plans include a return visit to the farm to see how it changes in spring, consultation with the nutritionist to make sure our soups are healthy, a visit to the food bank to see how soup can help our community, and a calendar to show people, plants, animals, and the weather in each season.

Second Grade: From Seed to Plate - the Cycle of Waste

We are looking at 3 separate investigations: How do plants grow? What happens to food waste? How does weather affect growth? Our product will be a public service announcement. This expedition will involve science (life processes, living systems, weather, scientific inquiry), math (measurement, estimation, data collection/graphing, calendars) and literacy (oral, reading, writing).

Student projects along the way will include planting and caring for vegetables, as well as keeping an observation journal. We are beginning seeds in the classroom and will plant outside in a school garden as weather permits. The Local tennis club has pitched in with a grant to revamp existing garden beds as they explore “Healthy bodies, healthy eating.” They will also be involved in measuring cafeteria trash and various composting projects as they learn about the cycle of waste. Some classes are creating in-class compost bins, others are participating in vermiculture, and everyone is contributing to the grade level compost bin for long-term use. Students will create, maintain, and document various weather stations. Also, classes will complete case studies with animals to compare life cycles and systems. For fieldwork we will visit a compost business, a local farm for hands-on experiences with where food comes from, as well as others opportunities not yet scheduled. Our hope is that students will be able to make a difference in the amount of food that is sent to trash.

Third Grade: Into the WIld
Third grade’s Spring expedition is based on animals. The guiding question for the first case study, entitled What’s For Dinner is “How do animals meet their basic needs?” The students distinguish between predator and prey, create a food chain, design a plate showing what omnivores, carnivores, and herbivores eat, and describe the importance of producers, consumers, and decomposers. They also perform research and write a report based on an animal of their choice.

The second case study entitled, “Survival of the Fittest” has the guiding question, “How do animals adapt to their environment?” The students begin with a gallery walk of animals that showcase their physical adaptations. They move on to read a common text on animal adaptations and then expert texts on hibernations, mimicry, migration, and camouflage. The students continue to their animal research reports in this case study. In art class they make their own paper which will be used to make “Animal Fact Cards” as a product. We had a guest speaker from the VMNH outreach program talk to us about animal adaptations, with objects for the kids to explore hands-on. The students will perform a mimicry experiment and hide butterflies to exemplify camouflage.

There is a third case study that will be finalized for next year. It will deal with the human impact on animals and conservation. Throughout the expedition we are using quick checks, graphic organizers, art projects, drawings, and note taking to assess the children. As each item is completed we are displaying the work, along with the Learning Targets, in our community.

Fourth Grade – Through the Eyes of Eagles

The Through the Eyes of Eagles learning expedition will allow 4^th graders to explore the interdependence of every part of ecosystems by studying the purpose and importance of each aspect of the ecosystem of the bald eagle in Central Virginia. Learning experiences are designed to help students form answers to the questions: Can eagles survive in Charlottesville or Central Virginia or Albemarle County? Is survival enough?

Each student will choose one part of the bald eagle’s ecosystem to draw (scientific, museum quality). They’ll include a short explanation of what would happen to the ecosystem if their part were to disappear. The final draft of their drawings will be displayed along with other student panels to show the interrelationships within the ecosystem. The final gallery presentation will be hosted offsite with an audience of parents and community members.

Their study of the eagle’s ecosystem will bring students to the water sources in our area that are shared by all of the plants and animals in our ecosystem. Students will test water at four different local locations and produce a water quality report analyzing the health of the watershed. They will also research and suggest action steps for community members to take that can reduce water pollution.

Fifth Grade

As a part of our study of Virginia History, we are taking a very local focus on Charlottesville/Albemarle from the end of the Civil War through the Civil Rights Movement. Specifically, we’re learning about our school’s namesake – Mary Carr Greer. Our project has three main parts:

1. Who was Mary Carr Greer?

Students will follow the Carr/Greer family from emancipation through Mrs. Greer’s principalship in Albemarle County. We are working with Mrs. Greer’s descendents to learn more about her as a person and why our school was named for her. We’ll ultimately rededicate our school in her memory at the end of the school year.

2. Virginia History Timeline

We’ll be working to expose our students to a variety of primary source documents and recordings to help them build a timeline of our local area – from the end of the Civil War through the present – with attention to issues of rights, freedom, and equality in education.

3. Community Biographies

Students will interview local community members about their experiences during school desegregation and Massive Resistance here in Virginia. Small groups of students will interview their subjects and produce a biography that we’ll ultimately display as a gallery for our interview subjects and other community members to view.

What do we do next?

Our school just completed our mid year review in the form of a "gallery walk". Each team reflected on their progress with their students both in terms of student achievement but also in use of instructional strategies (a big focus for us is assessment for learning) and then created a display for all of the other teachers to take a look at and give feedback.

We have a professional learning day in a week so this year we decided that we did not want the mid year review to seem like an isolated event but instead wanted to build on this major information sharing on February 21st. At the gallery, we asked for each teacher to do some reflecting and provide some idea of an area or areas we could focus on for our conversations. After reviewing this reflective data over the past few days, it is a hard call. We know in our journey as a school that we need to be more consistent in our language and instructional practice. Should we use the day to build on what we are already working on this year? Should we introduce something new? Should we do a little of both?

I always find analyzing this kind of feedback from every staff member to be a fascinating process. We often share it all right back to the staff so they can see where everyone is coming from. Sometimes though, when receiving all of these ideas and feedback, it is hard to stay focused. I don't want to seem to slow moving as a leader, and ignore the call for faster change, but I also don't want to go to fast, and pretend that everything has changed when it hasn't.

So, what will we do. We probably will try to do some sharing and consistency development around our initiatives for this year, but also try to spend some time honoring where we want to go in the future.

I find myself thinking all of the time about the next step. I find these reflective moments are more challenging yet more fruitful when I ask the entire staff to weigh in on the decision as well.

Why is the Edreform world having trouble finding turnaround principals?

There were two fascinating pieces in the New York Times last week that centered on issues in the principalship. I don't often get my education news from the times but the juxtaposition of these two articles just one day apart was too much to resist.

The first article centered on the national effort to use different turnaround models for the most struggling schools in each state. Quick summary, these schools often leave the same principal in place that they had before or they really struggle finding people to take the positions. Not a real surprise to me because the turnaround principal job has got to be one of the hardest in education and for the people who take on the positions, there is absolutely no guarantee of success.

The second article focused on New York City Public Schools effort to collect unpaid lunch bills by charging school principals with the collection duties or else the money comes out of their individual school budget. Which, as a principal, seemed to me a completely insane policy. If you want principals to be instructional leaders in schools, it seems obvious to not saddle them with even more non-instructional duties.

How are these two things related? The reason we have a turnaround school principal shortage is that we keep putting up roadblocks to principals who are put in these positions. If we want more people to go after these jobs, they have to be given a ton of support, and not lunch bill collection duties to complete. It may seem like an absurd policy, but probably most districts in this country expect principal to be superheroes, to be strong instructional leaders, manage everything in the building, and make sure all policies are followed.

The principalship is a very unglamorous position. I happen to love it, and I embrace that element of the job. But if you are trying to turnaround a school, you better not have to collect lunch money too.

Collaboration Kills says Joe Klein.

I tried really hard to stay digitally away from the Teach for America summit this weekend. Both the TFA is the enemy and TFA is the answer tweets and blog posts make me weary. As a TFA alum, I too have mixed feelings about the organization. So I stayed away, except when working on making some revisions to Chapter 3 of my dissertation, I accidentally just clicked on the video of this morning's panel and hopped around for literally two minutes before I stumbled upon this quote from Joe Klein: "Don't buy into this notion that if all the adults just collaborate, it will be just fine for the kids, the adults have been collaborating for a long time, and the kids are getting screwed." It is about 1 hour and 18 minutes into the panel and after the quote many cheered.

I get it to some extent. I am now just a small city, elementary school principal and have no ideas about big city battles between administration and unions.  So, I am not one that will pretend I know the answers.

But, to go back to the quote, if you mess with collaboration, you really make me angry. The sound bite about collaboration got applause from the TFA audience because it conjured up images of union teachers collaborating only around how little they were going work the next day or something.

What worries me about all of this is the notion of leadership that TFA seems to engender. Just tell people what to do, blast them if they don't follow the mandate, and if they question things they don't have the best interests of the children in mind.

What if there is another way? What if there are school leaders out there, TFA alum like myself included, that fully believe in collaboration. That believe that involving all of the voices in a school in the slow and messy process of improving and building a dynamic learning environment. That believe that test scores measure some things but not every thing. That seek out feedback and input at every step of the process, no matter how difficult and time consuming.
I don't think our kids are getting screwed either.

I know, I know, I am just a principal of a little elementary school. What could I possibly know about leadership and change and human behavior? I think I had spent more time both teaching and leading a school than anyone else on the panel, except maybe one. I guess I know that much more than them.

Solitude and Leadership

I read a great essay a week ago, "Solitude and Leadership" By William Deresiewicz in American Scholar magazine. It is based on a speech he gave to cadets at West Point. It is really worth the time to read and makes a few key points. We need original thinkers in leadership positions. To be an original thinker with vision, a leader needs to find some time to be alone and comfortable with new thoughts. A final point he makes is that multitasking is extremely detrimental to the kind of thinking a visionary leader needs to do.

Two quotes:

• "For too long we have been training leaders who only know how to keep the routine going. Who can answer questions, but don't know how to ask them. Who think about how to get things done, but not whether they are worth doing in the first place...What we don't have in other words are thinkers...people, in other words, with vision."
• Multitasking with technology, TV, newspapers, etc. is "just an elaborate excuse to run away from yourself. To avoid the difficult and troubling questions that human beings throw in your way."

So, a few thoughts as I head into this new year.

I want to multitask less. For me, that means being more thoughtful about how I use my time (and looking at my iPhone less).

I want to read more complete books and less snippets of things.

I want to take time for solitude.

I want to deal with the difficult and troubling questions head on.

This essay is worth a read, it has a lot more to say than this post gives it credit for.

Happy New Year!

Instructional Rounds at Greer

I am inspired to write this blog because of Pam Moran's wonderful post "Spring of Hope" and then @chadsansing's tweet response to it:" piece on where we are, what we need 2 do: share, believe, act me: devil is in the how, what, & why".

I never pretend to know all of the answers to hard questions like Chad's but I love exploring potential answers in my work as a principal.

Greer Elementary is in school improvement with the Virginia State Department of Education and one of the things we need to do as a result is write a school improvement plan with the VDOE. They empower us at the school level to choose 5-7 improvement strategies from a list of a couple of hundred. One of the strategies is to develop a system of peer observations in the school. We chose this strategy for some simple reasons: it was a lot better than some of the other ones, it had real potential to change culture in our school, and I was personally tired of paying lip service to peer observations every year and never really implementing them.

So with the leadership of our instructional coaching team at Greer, Ken Ferguson and Sue Harris, we dove into the book Instructional Rounds. Ken has especially been instrumental in leading the effort of rounds in our building from developing our unique philosophy behind it and working out all of the details.

A couple of choice quotes from the book:

• "The rounds process is an explicit practice that is designed to bring discussions of instruction directly into the process of school improvement. By practice we mean something quite specific for observing, analyzing, discussing, and understanding instruction that can be used to improve student learning at scale. The practice works because it creates a common discipline and focus among practitioners with common purpose and set of problems."
• "The process of rounds requires participants to focus on a common problem of practice that cuts across all levels of the system."
• "You improve schools by using information about student learning, from multiple sources, to find the most promising instructional problems to work on and then systematically developing with teachers and administrators the knowledge and skill necessary to solve those problems."
• "Language is culture. Culture is language. How people talk to each other about what they are doing is an important determinant of whether they are able to learn from their practice."

The book is powerfully written and gets at what it calls the core of interaction between student, teacher, and curriculum. It provides some vignettes of fictional schools that have looked at data until they were collectively blue in the face without ever really analyzing how they interact around the core in the classroom. So, we adopted instructional rounds as one of our strategies.

Here are some of our rounds strategies unique to Greer:

• Every single teacher and administrator is involved in rounds. We decided against piloting. We are all in. If we ever want to make teaching public at Greer, we could not have this be an opt in event.
• Every teacher gets coverage two hours a month to practice observing from video and then spending time observing in different classes.
  
• We have focused relentlessly on having everyone practice non-judgmental feedback. It is a harder skill to learn than people think.
• The teacher involved in rounds on a given day debrief after school.
• We took feedback from every teacher after a few months of rounds and had the school improvement team do old fashioned sorts and wordle sorts with the info to come up with our school challenge of practice. Our challenge of practice- how to improve as a school at checking for understanding multiple times in a lesson.

I am pretty realistic person. Not everyone in our school sees rounds as a wonderful, transformational process. Some see it as a waste of time. Some like it. It is very different than just about everyone's experience either teaching at Greer or at any other school. Most schools do not develop systematic procedures for peer observations. But, we are sticking with it. I personally see it as a three-four year culture changer. It will take a long time to really affect change.

PLC meetings can get old. For those of us schooled in the Dufour model, we can sometimes look at test data every which way til Sunday and still never really talk instruction in a meaningful way. Rounds helps get at it.

But one caution. Although the book is written more for division rounds teams, the first few chapters are essential for understanding the process. Rounds are not walkthroughs. Rounds are not observation checklists. Do not implement the process if you are just doing that because you will not change culture in a building. "Language is culture, culture is language" and we cannot make that phrase meaningful until we foster powerful conversations among a staff around what is actually happening in the classroom.

#blog4reform!

Some Notes from Chris Lehman's talk on the Educator's PLN: Progressive Schools Need Systemic Structures

In some quiet moments in my office this week with our students out for winter break, I have had the chance to listen to @chrislehman 's talk on the Educator's PLN and I picked up some interesting ideas that either validated what we are doing at Mary Carr Greer Elementary or challenged me to think about where we are as a school. Chris is the principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia which is a progressive, magnet high school. Our school is elementary and just plain regular public. We are in the midst of an overall change/improvement process using the core ideas of both Responsive Classroom and Expeditionary Learning. While I do not use the terms progressive or traditional very much, we are definitely on a path as a school to increase the level and spirit of community and the level of engagement with our students and our teachers.

So, here are the ideas or quotes from Chris:

• "Progressive schools need systemic structures". It is a simple yet powerful quote. Greer right now is struggling with implementing learning expeditions, student led conferences, and new technology while maintaining our assessment model among other things. I firmly believe that we need systemic structures to flourish as a school but I am also realizing that we are not close to having them yet. We will have them but it will take time. We need to develop systemic structures for our planning of instruction, delivering it and also our assessing of our student learning.
  
• "A common language of teaching and learning drills down to the process...The way we talk about project based learning and inquiry is the same across all teachers." With systemic structures comes a common language and vision for teaching and learning. I find myself hearing "common language bla bla bla" coming from many educators but I don't often see it. I don't often see it because I know how hard it is to accomplish in my own school. It takes a hell of a lot of work and is hard and maybe harder to do in a regular public school. I know it is worth every ounce of effort.
• Grade levels have essential questions, the school uses a common lesson planning format, teachers work over the summer to develop these. We have made some amazing steps with this work at Greer but again have a long way to go. Our last summer retreat with our staff had each grade developing essential questions in social studies and science through some intensive work. We had that time because of the quirk of making up a vast amount of snow days. How do we find a way to do that this school year? An individual school will not grow without this intensive summer work.
• A committee structure guides all of the work at the school. We are in our second year of a committee structure at Greer and again, have seen some amazing growth with it. I also feel that it is probably two or so more years away from getting really powerful. This work takes a long time!
• The school requires a unit plan for teaching interviews. When a teacher is scheduled to come for an interview, they are given every piece of information about the school in advance so there are no surprises. They are also told to design a unit given what they know about what the school believes about teaching and learning. Hiring is always a consensus decision. I have generally been a good recruiter and hirer of teachers but I think this would be a great advance for us at Greer. It would be more in depth and more democratic.
• "Our school is a hard place to work"- I love this quote. Greer is also a hard place to work. It used to be hard because we had the most students coming from poverty of any school in our entire district. It is now becoming a hard place to work because we have such high expectations of ourselves. We are getting there, but like everything else, we have a long way to go. And a hard place to work does not also mean fun, joyful, supportive and caring as I am sure it is at SLA.
  

So, I loved listening to the talk after the fact and it has me inspired for 2011! My main goal from the talk is to find ways to add and grow systemic structures for the kind of teaching and learning we want to take place in our school.

In Memory of My First Mentor: My Mom

I have not posted in a few months with I guess would be good reasons. My mom Carolyn died quite suddenly in late October and the fatigue from that experience left little time for wanting to post on my blog. I also returned to the usual busy of school and dissertation work which left little mental energy for blogging.

We were able to celebrate Carolyn’s life with a beautiful service and remembrances written by my two sisters and me. The one thing I have not had a chance to pay tribute to is my relationship to my mom as a teacher. So, here goes.

Carolyn had and still has an enormous influence on my career as an elementary teacher and now an elementary principal. She taught mostly third and fourth grade for a total of 28 years (she stayed home with us kids until we started kindergarten) in a suburban Chicago school district. My first memories of mom as a professional teacher were of how hard she worked. I knew this as a child because she would spend lots of time planning on weekends and on school nights. I also knew it because she would be tired on many weeknights from putting so much into her teaching day. My parents were both hard workers and took their professions very seriously but they were always there for us kids as well. They were amazing role models. I will always remember in junior high watching the show MASH on Monday nights with my mom. By the end of the show, she was always asleep on the couch from that hard Monday at school.

My senior year in college, I decided to try to become a teacher. While I was not sure if I wanted to do it as a career, I wanted to at least give it a try. While going through this process, my mom was enormously proud of me. I knew it because she would tell me all of the time. Many public school teachers discourage their children from going into the profession. Carolyn took the exact opposite approach. She talked to me often during those decision making times and was supportive throughout. She viewed teaching as the most important job you could do. And with that view, she was honored that her son would think about following her in the profession.

I taught fourth grade in Baltimore City Public Schools my first year of teaching. That year my mom was also teaching fourth grade. She was my first professional mentor. Our classrooms may not have had a lot in common, hers was mostly white and middle class, mine was mostly poor and African American, and our level of proficiency was vastly different, she was a master teacher, I was just surviving, but despite all of that we still managed to have frequent professional conversations. We talked about reading instruction, classroom management, dealing with principals, and probably more important, dealing with teachers’ unions. Through those conversations a few things carried through: the importance of planning and hard work, the power of a good book with a class or individual student, and always with mom, having a sense of humor about things.

She helped me out in material ways those first few years as well. In trips home, I would go over to her school during some “off hours” and load up my Ford Escort station wagon with “gently used” sets of books from her school’s book room and slightly faded construction paper that was deemed unusable by her school. I would often bring so much back to Baltimore that I would share this bounty with my team mates.

I will always remember that we both taught Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli to our fourth graders as a read aloud and I was always fascinated by how much both of our groups of students, despite all of their differences, just loved that book.

After five years of teaching, I decided to move into administration with a first step in the graduate program at the University of Virginia. I think she was a bit nervous about this move. I was young, and in her view had probably not taught long enough to become a principal. Despite these misgivings, I will never forget her one bit of advice she gave me before my first assistant principal job. She said, “Matthew (she always called me that), never ask your teachers to do anything that you would not do yourself.” Good advice, all could probably agree, and it has had an amazing impact on me throughout my career. Often when I am struggling with a decision, or with the direction my school needs to take, I think about those words and I can always hear my mom’s distinct voice saying them. The words have helped my leadership style because although I have high expectations and want great things for the schools that I have worked in, I also know that every action we take is an enormous human enterprise with people watching me to see if I will roll up my sleeves and do it too. Since that start, I have had the chance to introduce myself to two different staffs as a new principal. One of the first things I always say to the group of people that I am about to start working with is that my mom was a teacher.

My mom and I talked school quite a bit. I will miss those talks greatly. I will also miss my Virginia snow day tradition. Whenever we had a snow day, I would call my mom and let her know and she would always say the same thing, “How do you all ever accomplish anything in that school district?” She was a teacher in Chicago, where there is never a snow day.

The last professional gift my mom gave me sadly came at her funeral. As I stood at the receiving line, in the midst of receiving condolences from old friends , family, and strangers, I got to meet some of her old students. The meetings were quick but the students would always say the same thing, “ your mom was the best teacher I ever had”.

The impact of a teacher goes farther then we can ever imagine. All of Carolyn’s hard work, planning, and patience was worth it. I don’t think she ever had any doubt about that though. I just hope I can continue to live up to my first mentor’s example. Thank you Mom for everything!

It's all about building culture

I have been mulling over the theme "reconciling standards with 21st century learning" for a few weeks now, or to be honest, for the last sixteen years or so (I have been in education for seventeen years). The first year of teaching, there was no mulling or reflecting, just surviving.

Since I an relatively new to the world of blogging and tweeting, I thought I would first tell a brief bit about myself and so you could put my thoughts into some sort of context. I began my teaching career in a very large, urban elementary school in the early nineties as a Teach for America teacher. I absolutely loved it, became a certified teacher, and stayed for a total of five years at my placement school, three years beyond the two year commitment most TFA members serve. I served at my school during an interesting time period because I taught there before there were any sort of state standards and while I served standards were put into place by the state of Maryland. I have to be honest, I am not anti-standards in any way, shape, or form. Before standards were instituted, my school was the education version of the wild west. Everybody just did their own thing and there certainly was no sheriff in town to keep things orderly. I survived on some old textbooks, an educator's library card from Baltimore County that allowed me to check out vast amounts of books, and my wits. My colleagues, once they saw I was not a quitter (which was well into my second year of teaching) started to help me too.

Toward the end of my tenure in Baltimore, standards were put into place. I felt a certain a sense of relief that I did not have to come up with everything myself. I also liked that I had some sort of measure to strive for with my students. I also knew our school, with new leadership along with the state standards, began to take the education of poor, minority children much more seriously than they had before.

Fast forward ten years and I am now an elementary principal in Albemarle County, Virginia in a school that is a majority minority school with two thirds of our students qualifying or free/reduced lunch. I was placed in the school, my second as principal, to "turn it around". Turning a school around, in case you have not been reading anything for the past five years or so essentially means getting those test scores up. My first year at the school in 2007, I was confident I could raise those test scores from I guess my sheer presence. That first spring, the test scores actually went down.

That began the major "aha" moment that has carried me through the last three years of leading my school. With the scores going down that year, we qualified for a school improvement grant from the state and used some of the money on some powerful staff development the folks from Responsive Classroom and Expeditionary Learning. What I started to learn that year from this professional development that I experienced with our staff was that it was all about building our culture and it was not just about test scores. Sure, we went on to significantly raise our scores two years ago (with a dip in reading this past year) but we started to make some intentional changes in our community of learners, adults and children, that have allowed us to attempt the reconciliation between 21st century learning and the standards movement (for the purposes of this post, 21st century learning standards equals our work with expeditionary learning, hands on learning, authentic products, public audience etc.)

So now, a few years later, our school is on a continual path of working deeply and thoughtfully with state standards in a way to make them meaningful to 21st century learners, our students. We have a long way to go in the process, but I have learned some things along the way as a leader that I think, helps support teachers in public schools to deal with the tests and also make learning engaging and meaningful.

• All learners in the building must have social and emotional needs attended to through respect and basic human kindness. Our work through Responsive Classroom has been powerful and transformative and has taught us that adult learners have a need for support and connection as much as kids do. Most of our meetings have some sort of connective time that allows to value each other or just plain have fun.
  
• To borrow a phrase from Bob Sutton, the principal must serve as a "human shield" from this awful world of punishment and corrective action that we experience with NCLB. A true leader never uses threat and "if we don't get the scores up bad stuff is going to happen" kind of language with a staff. Of course, I have probably resorted to this a time or two over the years, I am human and have been in a high stress position. But as soon as a staff is threatened, innovation and change end. And I have not done it in a long time.
  
• The leader must model not only good quality instructional practice, but also be completely honest when things go wrong. When you ask a staff to innovate, mistakes will happen all of the time. They are wonderful mistakes, and they will happen a lot, but mistakes must be seen as reflective opportunities and we must model that constantly. People will want to take more risks when they see a leader or colleague to the same. When I lesson plan a meeting, and the lesson does not go according to plan or was just plain bad, I admit it. That can be a powerful thing.
  
• Leadership must be distributed throughout the school. I am lucky to work with a very powerful group of people. I used to try and make all or most of the decisions, and I did it poorly. Now, we are creating structures to tap into the real leadership that is evident throughout our building and are helping us to build a culture of honesty and collaboration at a level that I have never experienced before. In a committee meeting just two days ago, teachers were having a lively and spirited discussion about what true achievement in math really means in an elementary school. If that comes from me in a meeting, it is about a tiny fraction as powerful as it is when it happens among colleagues.
  
• A leader needs to set in place feedback loops from both parents and staff that help keep us on course and also help us realize where we are not communicating very well. Everything always makes perfect sense in my head. My first year at my current school, everything was in my head and no one had any sense of what was wanted. Beginning this fourth year, I am trying relentlessly to see if people are understanding all of the goals and trying to get feedback about where we are in terms of that communication.
  

A good leader of a public school in this country is in constant reconciliation mode between standards and 21st century learning. If you put supportive, honest, and strong structures in place to help everyone in the building learn and take risks, I firmly believe that we can live well with the standards without losing engagement and deep understanding. It is a long hard journey, but in my mind, the only one worth taking.