Responding to Bad Staff PD As A School Leader

We had some bad PD last week on an important school matter - writing curriculum with UBD. It lacked for 3 key reasons

• The presenter did little to engage the group
• The examples and documents had little alignment with district vocabulary & direction
• The presenter had difficulty answering any questions teachers had

Writing curriculum is too important to allow a bad presentation be the excuse why it doesn’t happen, and from this I learned a couple of lessons about how to respond to bad PD from a leadership position moving forward.

1. Roll Up Your Sleeves - The PD wasn’t aligned to any of our district vocabulary, curricular categories, etc so I made some templates and design tools to distribute to the staff. I’ll share them with everyone in the school via Google Drive, and they’ll be there when folks need them. The presentation being poor doesn’t change the importance of UBD in the eyes of the district and school; if the speaker didn’t get it done, then it’s up to the leadership team to help staff get better. Leaving the result to chance and allowing bad PD be the reason folks don’t improve isn’t an option.

2. Find Authentic & Convenient Ways to Do It - People need to be able to conceptualize how they’re going to do whatever is being asked of them; I’ve found in my brief leadership stint that modeling pays huge dividends. I needed to plan for our next Staff Tech Club meeting, and I needed to make use of the bad PD on UBD; I did both. It takes care of multiple birds with one stone. To promote it further, I screencasted my efforts and put in the staff resources section of my school website
   
   
   
   

3. Make Staff Sharing Easy - I set up a community on Google + for our teachers earlier this year when we moved to Gmail, and it’s worth it’s weight in gold. During the PD one of our science teachers posted from his tablet that we should create a discussion category regarding UBD. Since Friday’s “PD” we’ve seen resources, articles, and commentary regarding UBD posted from teachers in various departments. There hasn’t been any talk of the performance of the speaker; even though the speaker performed poorly the community is keeping the discussion about UBD and professional learning alive and on point. Creating the community was a low effort / high reward idea that gets better with every new request to join and resource shared.

4. A Little Goes A Long Way - Maybe only a few people will even click on the documents I created at first. As of now, only a small sampling of faculty is engaged on Google+. But, there’s more talk and action happening in regards to UBD and other edu topics than there would have been otherwise, and all of those resources and perspectives already shared will be there forever; someone may not look at it for a few months, but it’ll be there. I reckon folks simply seeing leadership working to salvage a poor PD session through creation and community has an impact even without specific engagement; people respond to effort.

The lessons I learned here can easily be applied to the inevitability of more lackluster professional learning engagements over the years; even if I’m using outside speakers to facilitate the session, I still have multiple opportunities to insure the outcomes and changes in practice I wish to see.

5 Resolutions For the New (52% of the school) Year

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

While the new calendar year does not mark a new school year, the spirit of starting fresh offers an opportunity to re-commit to goals we set out to achieve in September or to set a standard for a re-energized last 52% of the year. I embedded 5 slides below that capture what I'm committing to for the remainder of the 2012-13 school year.

Haiku Deck is the best application for creating presentations on iPad

1. BE THE SPARK: continue to model the practices and habits of mind you wish to promote to others. I need to focus on what I can control from my position, and what I have complete control over are my actions, my words, and how actively and intentionally I promote the values I wish to see. 

2. MAKE CONNECTIONS: bring people together and put folks in positions where their strengths and skills will thrive. I need to continue to meet with and visit faculty and staff as they lead classes; I need to find out who our house experts are and what they are experts in. We have teachers doing awesome things, and I need to be intentional in finding and promoting them.

3. FIND THE ROOT: "People don't buy what you do they buy why you do it." I need to continue to articulate the why with everyone I work with if I want to see the results I want to see.

4. ENJOY THE PROCESS: leadership is hard; this has been the most difficult yet invigorating semester of school I've ever had. Getting sucked in to the highs and lows of working with a lot of people is a trap that I'm sure has plagued many before me and will plague many after me. I need to trust my values, instincts, knowledge base, and professional network; I need to enjoy the ride.

5. POLISH WHAT WE HAVE: speaking of traps, I'm committing to improving what I have rather than starting something new. It's easy to move from new thing to new thing in 2013, but effective results come from practice and polishing of what works rather than continuous implementation and shuffling of new things. I need to stay focused on what works and how to make it work better.

HERE'S TO MAKING 2013 THE BEST YEAR YET! WHAT ARE YOU COMMITTING TO TO MAKE SURE IT IS?

Teaching a Class Without Content Knowledge

An untimely combination of personnel changes, department shuffling, and volunteerism left me in the unique position of teaching a high school psychology class with zero psychology background this school year. 15 weeks in I've found 5 great things are happening in class that I'm not sure would be happening if I had even a small amount of pre-existing content knowledge.

1. I'm able to model how I learn new things to the students constantly; I show them how to learn something new rather than tell them about content I already know. I discuss apps & resources I use to help me learn, and celebrate the process of learning alongside the written curriculum.

2. I participate in my own activities, and use the resources I create with the students to learn the material together; I have a unique opportunity to assess my materials as learning tools. I'm able to see what I'm doing and using from a first time learner's perspective.

3. My lack of overall content knowledge focuses the course on the process of learning and the sharpening of skills; what we're doing in psychology promotes lifelong learning far more than my AP U.S. history class' curriculum.

4. As I learn these new concepts and debate & discuss with students, I able to show and model my love of learning in ways I'm rarely able to as the room "expert." New and interesting points raised by students are truly new and interesting to me.

5. When I ask the class what they think about the theories of behavior development I ask the question because I legitimately wonder what they think because I'm not sure if I know what I think yet; the class has developed a great culture of learning from each other.

Obviously it's preferable to have content knowledge in any endeavor, but even the silver lining can provide some important insights and highlight great unintended developments and practice.

Embracing Insecurity in the First 2 Weeks

My new position as Dean of Students/Teacher has drastically changed both my responsibilities and what my day looks like. The juggling act that is my new professional existence is physically, mentally, and emotionally packed, but it's allowing me to do exactly what I've wanted to do for two years; while having the chance to build a school-wide culture of achievement at the administrative level, I also have the unique chance to continue to find ways to enhance student learning at the classroom level.

But, it's hard. I've never been as professionally self-conscious as I've been over these first two weeks in my new role. There are two reoccurring situations and thoughts I have been experiencing constantly since school started that challenge my confidence in my abilities to perform, but rather than allow my own insecurity to interfere with my capacity to lead, I've embraced it as a motivator and used it as a reminder of the steps I know I have to take to succeed and impact the school positively. This self-doubt could overcome me, but I choose to spend my time and energy reflecting on the remedy rather than the problem. Do I have it all figured out? No. But, I figure the concerns and paranoia I've experienced two weeks in can't be unique, and maybe what I do to overcome them will help someone in a situation similar to mine.

It's the end of day where I didn't sit down or eat lunch, and  my "to do" list I made at 6:30 this morning has nothing checked off...

I try not to dwell on the outstanding tasks on my list and spend more time on the professional relationships I need to build in my new position; the paperwork and things I need to "get done" can be finished anytime, but the students and staff are only in school for a fixed block of time each day. If I fancy myself as a leader of people, then that's where my priorities must lie. I focus on being a resource to as many people in the building that I can, and I figure the rest will take care of itself. I've been capitalizing on many apps and digital tools to improve my efficiency and organization with administrative tasks, but that can be saved for a different post.

I was a full-time teacher here; I know there are staff members who talk about administration all the time. Surely they are talking about me and my decisions...

People are inevitably going to talk about what I do and how I perform in my new role, and instead of being a slave to my own insecurity, I use it to make sure I'm always in an optimal position to make the right decision and be in the right place at the right time. I use that self-consciousness to pull myself away from the office and walk the halls to interact with students and staff.  I listen to people, because I figure that if I let them know that I'm listening then maybe they won't need to find another audience in less constructive environments. If I'm going to be a topic of conversation then I might as well make sure people are talking about me for the right reasons. I welcome anybody talking about my work ethic, positive energy, or my genuine commitment to the learning that happens every day in and out of our schoolhouse. And, if they're not sold on me yet, I still have 38 weeks to get it done!

The bottom line is that my biggest takeaway from these first two weeks is that all I can do to alleviate my own insecurity is to lead by example, and model the elements of a culture of achievement I wish to see. Everything else is currently out of my hands.

Ten Easy Ways You Might Discourage the Truth

While reading Fisher, Frey, & Pumpian's How to Create a Culture of Achievement, a quote jumped off of the page at me and led me to reflect on different things I've witnessed, experienced, heard about, and/or done, and the effects it had on people.

"If people think that there are consequences to their honesty, they will no longer be honest and you will be faced with making decisions and taking action on inaccurate data." -p.68

If you cannot be trusted with the truth, then you will at one inevitable point be in the precarious position of trying to fix a problem, answer a question, or exist in a situation with incomplete, exaggerated, or fictitious information or data. Effective leaders (or anybody who interacts with people casually or professionally) must be aware of the potential truth barriers their actions or words may inadvertently create. I wrote down ten things in no particular order that you may do or oversee that probably discourages or at some point will discourage honesty and openness from the people you work and interact with.

1. Your organization has a spoils system culture with favorites; there are haves and have nots
2. You're hotheaded; you're reactionary
3. You're vindictive or judgmental
4. You're someone who only does what they "have to" to fulfill the position
5. You're a "me first" personality
6. You shoot the messenger(s)
7. You have a big mouth; you tell people other people's information
8. You always make it about you and how it makes you look 
9. You don't make an effort to include everyone
10. You don't seem like you care enough to do anything

 I'm most guilty of number eight, and am consciously working on fixing this insecurity. What about you? Are there any on the list that you know you need to be aware of? 

What are the other mistakes we make as people and as leaders that discourage people from telling us the truth? How can we avoid sabotaging ourselves by not promoting an open and honest culture?

"How to Create a Culture of Achievement" - Welcoming Students & Teachers

 Chapter 2 of Fisher, Frey, and Pumpian's How to Create a Culture of Achievement in your school and classroom discusses the importance of making all the stakeholders in a school feel physically and intellectually welcomed; while reading I found myself thinking about ways I can make students and teachers feel more apart of the culture and operations of the school. Some key questions I wrote in the margins as I read were:

• how can individual groups of stakeholders be made to feel more valued as contributors to school policy and direction?
• how can I as a classroom teacher and a dean of students better show my appreciation for each stakeholding group's potential value as builders and shapers of a culture of achievement?
• how can I from my positions better reach out to the folks in each stakeholding group who do not feel welcomed in the school community?

 There were two quotes that especially stood out to me in highlighting what can happen if we do not pay attention to how welcomed our students and staff feel. (the underlining was added by me)

"They will makes choices to actually be where they are supposed to be and be there on time. Students will exercise this choice over and over again through the day, week, and year. Finally, and most importantly, students choose to engage or not, to tune in or not, to contribute or not, to value being in your school or not." -p.20

We can force and mandate all we want, but if we want our schools to have cultures of achievement and excitement for learning then we must create the kind of school where students want to do the right thing and want to be present physically, emotionally, and intellectually. Just as we don't want an environment where people are abdicating their responsibilities and ignoring procedures, we also don't want a culture of people only doing what they "have to," and nothing else. Although the eventual results surrounding complete student participation and engagement is an outcome not exclusively in our control as educational leaders, there are certainly many steps and actions that can be taken to better the odds of a favorable outcome. Two steps I've taken as a classroom teacher that I will continue in my new role as Dean of Students in an attempt to make students feel welcomed in our school are:

• speaking to every student every day- Even if it's just a "hey, how are ya?" as they walk in the room, I make a point to say something and elicit a response from every student I teach every day. I miss them in class, I get them in the hallway at some point. 
• taking every student's thoughts seriously- Some of the most valuable class-wide discussions I've experienced as an educator have been in the most unexpected classes. It's amazing what a person can do when they know the leader respects them and takes what they do and offer seriously; welcoming students beyond physical presence in the classroom goes a long way

"When teachers talk about administrators as 'them' instead of as partners, boundaries prevent the transparent and collaborative flow of ideas, program development, and accountability." -p.26

Teachers who ignore how welcome their students feel in class do so at the expense of their individual classroom culture; administrators who fail to make their staff feel welcomed as professional members of a great team do so at the expense of their entire school's/district's culture. Similar to welcoming students, administrators can do wonders by making a point to engage with all faculty/staff in regular intervals, and by celebrating and taking seriously their hard work and effort. Some steps I've taken to make new teachers feel welcome in my old role as mentor, and plan to apply on a grander level in my new role in leadership are:

• curating and sharing collections of resources- who doesn't like getting free stuff? I always gave the new teachers on day one a binder of resources ranging from school specific info to assessment and pedagogy. As my technology skills have improved (lifelong learning), the resources have gone digital, but the effect remains the same; professionals feel most welcomed when the organization is immediately helping them be better at their job. 
• following up & asking- if a teacher comes to me with an issue, I follow up on it. If I notice a teacher who I think has a lot to offer on a committee, I ask them if they want to get involved. It sounds simple and obvious, but it's the simple and obvious things that add up to make big positive cultural changes; it's the simple and obvious things that make people feel important.
• visiting their classes and learning what they do- I have always wished that administrators came in my class more and talked to me about teaching and learning; now that I am in leadership I have the opportunity to fulfill that desire, albeit in a different way. I can make teachers feel more welcomed in school simply by watching them do what they do best, and providing them opportunities to get even better. It also puts me as a leader in a position to learn as many tools of the trade as possible to better educate and assist the staff in becoming master teachers. 

A group of we will always outperform a bunch of you and me; how are you going to make your school more welcoming to all stakeholding parties? What can you do to make sure your students and staff feel important, appreciated, and perpetually working toward something bigger and better?

"How to Create a Culture of Achievement" Chapter 1

After I read chapters of the books on my summer reading list I intend to reflect on some of the key quotes I highlighted as I read. I just finished reading chapter 1 of Fisher, Frey, and Pumpian's How to Create a Culture of Achievement in your school and classroom, and selected four quotes that jumped out to me from my duel perspective as a classroom teacher and school administrator for next school year and beyond.

"We believe that no school improvement effort will be effective, maintained, or enhanced unless school culture and academic press are both addressed and aligned." -p.5 

 How many great ideas for professional learning, assessment, etc. have you had stifled because nobody else was into it? Have you ever brought something into the classroom you were absolutely convinced was going to be a hit only to have to drag students through it like a reluctant pet going into the vet? Even the most innovative initiatives are destined to remain ideas in the wrong culture. We tend to focus on the more tangible aspects of our lives, and spending our time on the academics surely makes sense with any school reform, but in order for us to avoid wasted time and effort attention must be paid to developing the culture needed for meaningful change.

"An effective school culture will provide students a respectful mediating experience through which they can understand, examine, affirm, modify, or change understandings of the world and how they want to engage in it." -p.9

We all have our personal dogmas and beliefs that will always affect who we are and how we think, and effective cultures use that to their advantage.  Open dialogue, an emphasis on the art of listening,  and emphasizing the process of learning and reflection rather than common understanding. That's how enlightenment happens; that's how the society we're preparing our students for best operates.

"A shared definition of quality also enlists all members of the culture, not just a few, to take an active part in the effort. Importantly, it also empowers people by sending them the message that they are of value and their contributions are essential." -p.11

Sometimes I seek people out simply because I know I haven't sought them in a while; folks that feel included are invested.  Whether someone is a superstar, backbone, or mediocre teacher or student, they are a member of your team and learning community. No matter what, quality and quantity of output will be superior from members who are invested.  While turning everybody into a superstar is unrealistic, finding the way to get maximum physical, emotional, and intellectual effort from the entire team is paramount the overall health of any organization.

 " If mission building and revisiting is designed as a pivotal and integral driver of a school's ongoing implementation revolution, it is unlikely that the mission will be treated as something you did two years ago in a...meeting room." -p.13 

Do what needs to be done to ensure that your work is meaningful and leads to the results you intend for it produce.  Agreeing to a common mission and vision on paper is the beginning, and whether it not it leads to anything of value depends on what happens next. Like with anything that matters, the real work lies in the middle. What you do with your mission will have a far greater impact on your culture than the simple act of putting one on paper.

What else can be done to create a culture of achievement? How can we as school leaders promote the openness, inclusiveness, and constant reflection required to produce optimal school environments?