From Beginner to Master Teacher -- year two-- the importance of mentors

http://inspiringmomentsblog.com/do-you-have-a-business-mentor/

Teachers in their second year are ready to focus more intentionally on their practice. Ideally, they finish their first year with a formal review with their divisional principal. At this meeting the principal should provide the teacher with a set of clear commendations and recommendations for improvement. Directional in nature these recommendations become the basis for the second year teacher's professional goals. At Westtown School teachers gather in their evaluation cycle cohorts in opening of school meetings to write their goals for the year. Second year teachers meet as a group, discuss their plans for the year and share their written plans. Second year teachers' goals must address the recommendations growing out of the first year review.

The best way to insure successful implementation of these goals is to provide second year teachers with a mentor, time and other resources as needed. We work to put the meeting with the mentor in our teacher's schedules. The dedicated time, every other week, signals the importance the school places on teachers realizing their goals.

Mentor selection in the second year is a mix of teacher request and administrative direction. In some cases, teachers want to work with their mentor from the previous year. In other situations, a teacher may request a new mentor based on relationships developed over the first year or a desire to work with a particular colleague. Administrators may also have a specific mentor in mind for a teacher. Usually, this happens when a teacher has a particular area of weakness that needs remediation in order for the teacher to be offered a contract for a third year. However the match is made, both teachers must commit to working together. We do a regular check in with mentors and with second year teachers each month to insure they are meeting and that they are working towards achieving the goals. All of our mentors have attended training sessions of effective peer mentoring and peer coaching. The mentors check in with the mentor program faculty leaders. The mentors need support too!

As in all of our supports for our teachers, we use a mix of requirements and offered supports. Our institutional goal is to provide intentional, sustained support for our faculty over the first four years of their careers. As a school we are investing in our teachers' success and through them serving our students. In the second year, we want to address specific areas in a teacher's practice and continue to foster a growth mindset.

New Teacher Seminar:The Best Classroom Observations --Third in a series on developing new teachers

A great deal of my week is spent in teachers' classrooms observing them teach. I do this work at their invitation, as a part of our school's evaluation process, or at the request of a divisional principal or department chair. This past week I watched an experienced teacher guide his sixth grade instrumentalists through their rehearsal, an intern lead a discussion on Antigone,  a first year teacher review three verbs in a high school Spanish class, a veteran choral teacher work with 7th and 8th grade boys, a second year teacher introduce the Buddha to a high school religion class, and an intern teach math to primary circle students.  In each case, I was struck by the passion and care each brought to his or her work.

DKNG Studios

As teachers in our classrooms we assume that our students are always watching us, they have to be in order for the classroom to work.  Having an adult observer in our classroom while we are teaching is something else entirely. It changes the dynamic, students behave differently, we are more self-conscious. When the observer is an invited peer or a young teacher wanting to observe a more experienced teacher, the experience is more low key. When the observer is a supervisor the stakes feel higher, even when the administrator is there by invitation. Though the act of observation changes what is being observed, observation and constructive growth oriented feedback are essential for every teacher, especially for a new teacher.

Photo by @Doug8888

• The best observations begin with my asking the teacher what they want me to watch for. Young teachers in particular need to develop the habit of self-evaluation: what went well in the lesson, where did I lose the kids, did they learn what I hoped or something else entirely, how did this lesson fit into my plan for this unit, am I reaching every student, what am I not seeing or doing? These are only some of the questions we need to consider. Given our overfull days, creating space for asking and answering these questions is challenging. Observations by others and the conversations they foster create the time and space for this reflection.
• While not always possible, I like to arrive before the students. I want to see how they transition from the minute they cross the threshold. I often keep a running record of what I see within a time frame. I have found this helps me stay focused on the observation. I like to record the time in three to five minute intervals. Time is the commodity of schools. We never have enough and we have to use what we have effectively. Young teachers should be asking questions about their management of time as well as of students
• I also like to look at the physical classroom and how well teachers are utilizing their spaces. While Lower School teachers understand the importance of well-designed spaces, most Upper School teachers think little of their spaces except as containers for teenage bodies. Often, a small tweak in classroom set up can solve a much larger classroom management challenge.  In comparison to his other classes, the religion teacher found this group of students' energy to be flat and and that individuals were easily distracted. After observing his class I asked him to think about how he moved around the classroom and how he wanted students to interact. After listening to him, I asked what would happen if he abandoned his current set-up and experimented with something that made it easier for him to move and that placed his students in closer proximity to each other. Later in the week, he told me that he had moved two tables. Rather than sitting in a large u around the room's perimeter, now the students sat across from each other at the tables. The tables were in two rows running the length of the room. He had easy access to the boards on every wall and he could move easily down the middle of the room. As they were sitting closer to each other, the majority of his students who were engaged and focused, helped the few who faded in and out stay in the learning. 
• During any observation I focus on the teachers' questions about their practice. If I have learned what the students have learned, then I have failed as an observer. I need to watch the teacher and see what she is doing and saying. At the same time I need to watch her students and see how they are reacting and acting. Do they understand what they are supposed to be doing? Do they know the class routine such that the learning is the focus of what happens not the mechanics to make it happen (what should have been prepared for class, what happens as students walk into the room, how quickly is the sheet music passed out, how quickly does the lesson begin, how are class discussions constructed, etc) 
• Most importantly I want to gauge student engagement. I take as a given that engagement goes up the safer the classroom is for students. In a school like Westtown, I take physical safety as the norm, I am looking for something more subtle, what Claude Steele would call the absence of stereotype threat. Often student intellectual and spiritual safety isn't the thing a young teacher is asking about directly. Focusing on this yields greater returns than almost any other tool a teacher might develop.

After the class if I am not meeting with the teacher within an hour or so, I send an email with quick questions and concrete "this is what I saw." Nothing replaces a good follow up discussion. With young teachers, I provide both directive feedback-- "You need to tighten up how class begins", "you tend to call on girls more frequently than boys", "your questions were too basic to encourage thoughtful discussion"-- and ask questions. The questions always take into account what they have wanted me to think about. But the questions also come out of my own wondering about what I have seen. With the intern leading a discussion on Antigone, I wanted to understand how she had planned her questions. I wanted her to think about other ways the discussion might have progressed. I asked "I wonder what would have happened if you had asked a few of the students to tell you more about their answers?" After a few moments of reflection she began to think of how this might have stretched her students' thinking. I asked about specific students. She was worried she might not have gotten them to the conclusion she wanted them to reach, that they would have gone off on a tangent. We discussed the trade offs of moving through her prepared series of questions versus asking follow-up questions and following her students's leadings. There were no right answers, only learning possibilities for my intern.

http://crossroadscn.com/

"I wonder. . ." may well be my favorite question!

The New Teacher Seminar:books that work - Second in Series on Developing New Teachers

I recently gave a presentation at the PAIS Biennial Conference titled "From Hiring to Mastery: A Comprehensive Induction Process." Mentorship was one of the themes I stressed. However, good mentors are only a portion of what new teachers need. As a part of our support for our teachers, Westtown requires all of its new to teaching folks to participate in our New Teacher Seminar. Where once I led 10th graders through US History,  now I teach a curriculum intended to help interns and first year teachers take successful first steps towards a career in education. There is very little theory in this curriculum, instead we focus on practical ideas for the next class. The class is a mix of discussing books, sharing successes, asking questions, meeting with seasoned teachers and support staff, and building a personal learning network.

First and foremost the sessions are designed to provide ideas new teachers can implement now. When our group is largely teachers who will have their own classroom we begin with two intensive sessions of mapping out units of study and writing the first two weeks of lesson plans. When the group is weighted towards interns or assistant teachers we focus on classroom management. One of the best tools for rapid improvement in classroom management is Doug Lemov's Teach Like a Champion. While Lemov's audience is teachers working in school's with at risk students, his techniques translate to Westtown's independent school culture. The beauty of this book is its focus on concrete techniques easily implemented in the classroom. Such things as "100 percent", "no opt out", and "post it" provide our newest teachers with a means of achieving high classroom expectations. Furthermore, and this is most important for young teachers, these techniques provide a means of helping young teachers get over their fear of not being liked. The specific techniques take the practice of teaching out of "I want them to like me", and put the focus squarely where it needs to be on the students and their success. I follow up on our class discussions with direct classroom observations. In my post observation meetings, I am able to speak directly to how well I see them implementing something like "Right is right" or "Stretch It." We talk about what worked, what didn't and how they might adjust to make it better the next day. At some point, these teachers will need to better understand the theory underlying their practice, but in their first year, they need to do, to get feedback, and do it again.

Later this year we will read Peter Gow's The Intentional Teacher, which is focused on teaching in independent schools. Mid-year Gow's book fits well with that moment in which new teachers find themselves wondering if this is the right setting for their aspirations. His is one of the few books for new teachers that is geared towards independent schools. Most importantly, his book helps to provide new teachers with a context for understanding their work in terms of Westtown's Mission. We will finish the year with Mary Cowey's Black Ants and Buddhists. I use this book as a means of transitioning from surviving the first year to thinking creatively about their next year. Cowey's classroom serves as a model for where these young teachers should aspire to go in creating a student centered approach to teaching.

These texts were selected with specific outcomes in mind:

• day to day success in classroom management and student learning
• developing a sense of what it means to be a professional in an independent school
• creative planning for year two

WEEK 26: What makes a great team mate? #savmp

This week in SAVMP we are asked to consider what makes a great team mate.

“Leaders should never work in isolation and the best one’s often create teams that will ensure they are doing what is best for kids.  In a previous article I posted on my own blog, I share some of the attributes that I look for in a great Assistant Principal.  I would like to challenge you to think and share what you look for in a “leadership partner”?  (George Couros)

I have a quote from Peter Drucker, business guru, on the bulletin board in my office " the task of leadership is to align strengths in such a way that weaknesses are irrelevant.” I have spent considerable time considering the strengths and talents (and areas for growth and even out right weakness) of those I work with. In my more usual job I serve in a role akin to a public school Vice Principal shared across divisions and help our Lower, Middle, and Upper School Principals with curriculum development and faculty evaluations. Reporting to the Head of School I also help the him with special projects. In this role I see myself as the team member rather the constructor of the team. As interim Principal I inherited the team constructed by my predecessors. In all cases I see my task as seeking out the best partners from my co-workers and drawing out their strengths.

In thinking about the attributes I most value in my educational partners I would lift up the following three:

1)  A relentless, laser focus on our mission as a school; the corollary would be a comfort with saying "no, that's not what we do." As an independent school with a very specific and aspirational mission in a very competitive market, decisions have to be consonant with our mission and sensitive to our student market. This is no easy task. In the end, mission has to trump all else. Our mission, in the limits it imposes, fosters incredible opportunities for creativity. Some of my best partners have challenged me to remain within the mission even as we are forging new ground with approaches to program and personnel development.

2) Willingness to always put students first: Teaching in any school is exhausting, in a boarding school the exhaustion can be relentless. In every conversation about balance of life or pace of life for teachers the danger is to put the needs of the adults above the needs of the students. Whether its designing a new student leadership selection process or implementing a 1 to 1 program or creating a new schedule, I want a partner who understands that what serves our students best will in the end serve the adults well too. I am not suggesting that the students run amok or are spoiled or catered too. Rather, the school and its systems are here to serve and educate our students (from within our mission!).

3) Risk taking/confidence/moxie: When I was a full time class room teacher, I experimented with my curriculum, pedagogy, and assessments as a matter of course. I thought everyone did. In a recent meeting, when a well respected, mid-career colleague said that for our emphasis on Action Based Learning to Work, she needed permission to fail, I was reminded once again that my habit of leaping before I looked is not the norm. Many of my colleagues want permission first. While I appreciate caution, I seek out partners who are willing to try something new, have the confidence to be wrong, enjoy taking a creative approach, and are willing to challenge me. I am most impressed when this confidence is accompanied by a genuine unassuming manner.

There are other characteristics I value, not the least a willingness to challenge my assumptions and present alternative ideas. But when it comes to courageous leadership I find the three I listed invaluable.

Week 23: Being a Student Driven Principal #SAVMP --scattered thoughts on a Sunday evening

This week Amber Teaman asked us to consider the challenges of keeping teachers and other adults in a teaching community focused on doing what is best for our students. Recently, we adopted a new schedule. The three prime directives of this schedule were that it serve the needs of students first, that the middle and upper school schedules align enough to allow for student (and therefore teacher) cross over, and that it increase time for extended projects and deeper learning. In other words, the schedule needed to serve students needs to take as wide a variety of courses as possible, to take the courses that best fit their readiness to learn -- 8th graders taking language and math courses in the high school program--, and that time for student exploration be hardwired into the day. The unintended but not unexpected consequences included less meeting time during the day for adult committees and fewer free periods for teachers.The daily period changes were accompanied by a switch from trimesters to semesters. Through the process I observed the correlation between an individual teacher's general unhappiness with the old schedule and now with the new schedule and the number of times sentences about the schedule would began with "I need in order to . . . " or "this doesn't work for me because . . . ."

I believe my colleagues are genuinely motivated to teach because they see themselves as serving their students. Those that don't have this approach generally don't last in today's climate in independent schools.  Naturally, we want to do and teach what we enjoy. If we aren't already knowledgeable we want to be learning something new that interests us. We want to work with students in ways that play to our individual strengths. And as a Principal/principle I want to align my faculties' strengths with the needs of my students and the tasks that need to be accomplished (clubs, sports, advising, academics, dorms, leadership roles, athletics) within the complexity of a school. Having said this, there are any number of things in a school that are good for our students, good for the school and not always good for a teacher. Perhaps, I am over focused on this prompt in job descriptions and the day to day work -- this is probably a reflection of where I am in the cycle of the year.

Let me try and step up to a thousand feet at least.

I intended to write about school change to benefit students and put their needs first. Maybe, I shouldn't have started with the schedule ! :) For the past year I have had the same chart over my desk that Amber placed at the top of her blog. As an administrator I have had to work hardest at avoiding both confusion and false starts. Either the vision isn't clearly articulated or in the end the action plan needs better delineation. Both run into the same problem in the end. Only a clearly articulated vision and a carefully planned set of action steps will overcome inertia and TTWADI. When presenting student centered initiatives, I have found it useful to remind us of where we have been and how the work we have already done has led us to this place -- to lean into the direction we are heading and remind us of why we are doing the work before us, no matter how challenging (or exhilarating!!). This helps with establishing the vision. That work always has our students at the core. I am reminded of a workshop led by Heidi Hayes Jacobs in which she had us imagine students sitting next to us as we mapped our curriculum and then she invited real students into the room. Lately, I have been adding students to faculty committees to remind us always that the decisions we make affect our students; why not invite their voices where appropriate (they are sure to share them inappropriately otherwise).

Week 20: The Art of Delegation #SAVMP

This week in SAVMP we are considering the importance of delegating tasks to succeeding as an administrator and insuring that our schools thrive. This topic resonates on several levels, the first of which is mere survival. Two weeks into my term as Interim Principal, people ask me how I am getting along. At the end of my first week I was thrilled to remember I had managed to get to the gym three times! At the end of the second week I was struck by how spatially constrained I was by the demands of my new responsibilities. Before, I was observing classes in all three divisions across all of the campus. I tended to meet people in their classrooms and offices, now people come to find me. Instead of working with teachers as people working on the craft of teaching, I find myself talking with upper school teachers about upper school students and upper school department chairs about course offerings and staff needs. One significant and anticipated shift has been in the time speaking with parents. Hearing their concerns, celebrating with them their children's achievements, and solving problems with them has become the  prime focus of my work. Some of this last work should never be delegated -- it properly belongs to the principal.

I have survived this first stretch because I have delegated . . . .and trusted. The only way to step in mid-year is to rely on the staff in place and ask lots of questions. My favorites right now are "what do you need from me," "what does the principal typically do," and "how might you handle this?"  I know my team as colleagues but the specific tasks they perform, the projects they carry forward, the processes they administer are all new to me. My predecessor, Eric Mayer, worked hard to leave me with a strong team. He told me to trust them and I do.

Given the scope of the exciting and energizing work we (the high school) have before us the rest of the year, delegation is the only way forward. Part of delegation includes rethinking how the work gets done and trusting colleagues to do it. In decisions affecting the entire division, our faculty prefers to work as a committee of the whole and yet, over the next several months we have to divide into teams. These teams will each be responsible for a piece of the work, the rest of the faculty will have to trust that the recommendations and plans brought forward are what we will do and not concepts to be de-constructed and then re-structured by the committee of the whole. With four teams meeting at the same time, I can only be in one place at a time. I have to trust that the clerks (in a Quaker school a clerk is the team leader/committee chair) of the teams will carry out the charges/tasks before them with all the creativity and thoughtfulness I know they each possess. This is a different sort of delegation. It requires a trust among colleagues and an openness to the leadership of others.

Because schools have relatively flat structures identifying authentic leadership opportunities becomes critical to developing teacher leaders. Delegation at Westtown works because over the past decade we built a culture of collaboration and have developed more and more avenues for teachers to assume leadership roles as committee clerks, as mentors, as peer coaches. In all of these situations I enjoy the opportunities to listen to these leaders, ask questions, help remove road blocks when I can, redirect when necessary and always support. It brings me great personal satisfaction to see in action the younger men and women who have grown and are growing into leaders within our school.

Week 19 – Communication Essentials #SAVMP

"For this week, I want you to talk about some of your communication essentials and ways that you believe are imperative that we communicate with all of these technologies available."  George Couros

Parents want to know what is happening in their children's lives. 18 years ago when I started teaching parents of our high school students were guaranteed four comments a year from classroom teachers at the end of each marking period and two letters a year from their children's advisers.  Advisers were also expected to call parents within the first month of school to check in and introduce themselves. Today's parents expect more--in an independent school especially. No-longer is it enough for us to tell parent's that we know their child, we need to demonstrate this over and over again.

For students who are struggling, who have IEPs or LSS (depending on your school's lingo), the promise is regular, weekly communication between adviser and parent (and sometimes teacher and parent). But what about students who are doing fine or even excelling? For these parents, our new communication tools are a boon. As a class room teacher I made it a point to send an email out to parents every few weeks sharing where we were in our history studies and giving highlights of student projects, debates, essays or experiments.

Over the course of the year I made it a point to send each parent a brief email about a success enjoyed by their child in class -- leading class discussion, proving a point in a class debate, discovering a new resource in their research process, improving their thesis development. These two types of emails connected parents to our class. As an administrator I will tweet about events at school or to share a picture showing a happening I see in the course of the day. I would never use twitter any other way with parents.

While email works for my happy and general information out to parents, when parents contact me I use another standard. First, I try and respond within 24 hours. If a parent texts (something that rarely happens) I would at least email.

If a parent emails me, I call them. If a parent calls and leaves a message I call and offer to meet in person. If a parent cares enough to call, I need to offer to make it even more personal. Quite often, the parent is satisfied to speak over the phone. I find making the offer of my time in the office conveys my genuine interest. Speaking over the phone allows me to hear the emotion the parent may be feeling--something absent from email. I am able to ask questions in real time and get the information I may need. In person meetings allow for full knowledge of a parent's concerns. I need this knowledge if I am to be an effective partner with parents in their child's education. Being at a boarding school means that not all parents are able to come in, for these parents SKYPE is helpful. For parent's for whom English is not their first language using a translator becomes imperative. We must be able to listen, engage, and understand in order to serve our students and families. The fewer barriers of time, technology, and language between me and my students' parents when they want to talk to me about their children the better.

Reflections on the First Semester of the Independent Seminar

This is a re-post of a blog I wrote for Westtown School's Independent Seminar Blog

We are in the last weeks of the inaugural Independent Seminar. If you have been following the Independent Seminar blog you know that each of the students involved is pursuing a very different passion. In mid-December they each wrote a final blog post and are now writing self-reflections as they put the finishing touches on their projects.

I have been trying to decide how to describe my role as it has evolved. What follows are some terms that do and don’t fit.

Facilitator– I have helped them at different points along the way to find the person they need or to talk through an idea. For Isabel’s performance I helped her think through all the support people and scheduling hurdles she would need to negotiate in planning her performance.  I connected Eric with our Lower School Principal so that he could set up a day long visit. Tristan and Habeeb’s poetry jam took a different sort of facilitation — assuaging the concerns of teachers that the assembly would be too provocative (it wasn’t).

Mentor — Lyra and I discussed feminist theories of writers and wondered aloud what her French fairy-tale writers were challenging. Emma needed help from time to time talking through a writing idea. Taylor wanted to discuss the writing process. Nate needed to try out his ideas on the Alawites. Shuangcheng needed to talk through his frustrations with Westtown’s performance at a math competition. Chester, writing a computer program, probably thought I had little to offer and yet we talked through the steps he needed to follow and the problems he was encountering. I didn’t have answers, but I did have the sense to help him consider his program from different perspectives.

Administrator/Conductor — I am not sure about these two.Certainly, I have had final say on publishing each post and seeing to it that the posts happen on time. I have alerted other administrators that students would be coming their way to set up use of the theater, schedule final presentations, or visit classes. I have kept in contact with mentors and made sure students fulfilled the intent of their original proposals. I haven’t been able to pull the eleven into a semi-cohesive group seeing themselves as supportive and more than mildly interested in each other’s work. Efforts to have them comment on and read each other’s blogs have been sporadic at best.

Teacher — One of the skills we have focused on is blogging. Over the course of the semester each student has received feedback on everything from grammar, to tone, to using images to add interest. What’s interesting and challenging is the awareness they have that what they write goes out to a wide, unknown audience and a resistance to adopt techniques to improve that reach such as adding hyperlinks or sharing their posts on their Facebook and tumblr pages. Our college counselor wished that each blogger had attended to the over all quality of their writing (as did I). As a teacher of blogging I give myself a B- and look forward to having the opportunity to improve! 

Another skill reinforced was creating an annotated bibliography. Taylor’s bibliography includes sources on ammunition, Isabel’s focuses on the pieces she selected for her recital. Each has expanded his or her understanding of this most basic of tools for recording and focusing one’s work. 

In the next two weeks all of their work will come in, I will read their self-reflections, check in with our librarian about the quality of their bibliographies, sit in on their presentations and defenses, check in with their mentors, write summative comments and assign grades. This feels teacherly.

In spite of or perhaps because of the muddiness of my own role, everyone involved in this first go round feels this experiment in education has been hugely successful.

Stewardship of Resources -- a strand in excellent teaching

Recently, I wrote about the Testimony on Integrity as a means for developing a definition of excellent teaching. I believe that the Testimony on Stewardship provides a second basis for developing a Friends' school definition of excellence. Quite often stewardship has come to mean care for the earth and ecosystems we all share. American Friends Service Committee describes good stewardship as caring for the gifts given to us. Within the school context what greater gift are we given then the students we teach? Their parents entrust us with joining them in partnership to educate their children.

What does it mean to be good stewards of our students and their education? In part, I would argue that we need to be mindful of the world they live in and the context of that world for their lives. Too often colleagues (especially in the high school grades) complain the kids aren't able to concentrate or they don't have the skills they used to have or that they aren't as smart as the kids ten years ago or the admissions office has lowered its standards. None of these are true. These kids are not less able, they are differently able. They need an education that takes into account their context and that looks ahead to their adult lives. Stewardship demands we adjust our teaching to their world.

With our mission to inspire and prepare our  "graduates to be stewards and leaders of a better world" what are the queries related to excellence in teaching and stewardship?

• Do I put my students first?  This might be the most challenging query of all. As teachers, our first response is "of course I do." I would push back and ask, how much of what we do is about us and our needs? When we complain over lunch about a less than stellar class or a student that didn't follow through are we looking to vent or seeking to improve? Do we manage our classrooms to serve our need for control or to foster a learning environment reflective of how our students learn and relate to each other and to  their learning? Do we stick to the tried and comfortable because that reinforces our sense of ourselves as the experts?

• Have I stayed abreast of fore ward thinking educational experts who are asking and writing about the kids we teach and ways in which they construct meaning? Do I bemoan what is lost or live realistically and optimistically in my students' present?

• Do I use my students' time with care? What is most important for them to learn? How does what happens in my class weave together with the whole of their experience? 

• Does my philosophy and pedagogy help my students to express the school's mission through their lives in this era?

Like the queries on integrity these on Stewardship are only a beginning. However, taken together I hope they provide a means for our conversations to move forward--to unstick us from old paradigms. 

Let me know if you have queries to add or would like to challenge these or the previous set. I look forward to the conversation.

What is excellence in teaching in a Friends School Context?

One of the critical conversations happening at Westtown School this year revolves around what it means to be an excellent teacher at this school with its particular mission. In a recent discussion on the characteristics of good teaching I received some push back on the use of the word "excellent". The criticism was that the word smacked of elitism and furthermore if a teacher was an amazing, spell-binding lecturer did that make her a better teacher than one who crafted thought provoking problems for his students to solve. What is the standard if not excellence? And once we have a standard how do we define and name its characteristics?

I took these related questions with me to the recent Friends Council on Education Peer Network Meeting for Associate Heads and Division Heads. Our topic for the day was "Faculty Evaluation and Professional Growth in a Friends School Context: How does Quakerism inform how we go about doing evaluation and professional growth?" I explained that criticism of the term "excellence" seemed to be rooted in a strong strain of equality within Friend's schools. The first response to my questions after a collective chuckle was "what are we all supposed to be... equally mediocre?" But then two other members of the group nodded in agreement and said that this was a theme found among their faculty as well -- this conflating of excellence with elitism. Fortunately another member of the group offered a way forward from within the Quaker testimonies--To be excellent is to do one's work with integrity. Integrity is one of the Quaker SPICES (testimonies). The whole list includes Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality, Stewardship.

Integrity asks of us to give our best in every situation, to deal honestly with our students and colleagues. At its core it calls on us to have our outward lives express our inward thoughts and beliefs. So what are the queries we might ask (rather than a check list of things to do)  in relation to whether or not we are doing our jobs with integrity? I would begin with following:

• Does my teaching in philosophy and pedagogy support the mission of the school?
• Do my actions in the classroom, as an adviser, on the playing field, in the school community, place the needs of my students at the center?
• Do I deal honestly and forth rightly with my colleagues and supervisors?
• Am I open to learning new ways to do my work in the evolving life of this school?
• Do the strategic imperatives of the school and my personal talents and beliefs align?

I'm sure this list isn't exhaustive and would welcome hearing others' thoughts.

In my next post I will explore my thoughts on Stewardship as another means of defining excellence.

Taking Risks, Taking Flight

I have a colleague who spends her summers carefully planning every day of her curriculum. She is one of our innovators, one of our first adopters. But before she adopts she tests, plans, prepares-- nothing is left to chance. This year she is adopting and adapting on the fly. Her experiment is to more frequently follow the lead and interest of her students. Reflecting on this experience of "flying by the seat of her pants" she had this epiphany about how she felt and how her students must always feel. Seldom do our students (and hers are in middle school)  feel like the expert. They are always in learning mode, always to a certain degree off balance --or just taking off. How powerful for them to have their teacher model for them how to manage that experience.

I have another colleague, a master teacher who shared with his intern last year on the eve of the intern's first solo lesson, "the worst thing that will happen will be that its a failure." Just the lesson will fail, the next day you get to try again. This experienced teacher has lived a career built on experimentation in how students learn best. He is still experimenting -- his students think he is excellent.

Just last week I watched a group of our primary circle students play at the water table, a number of tube and funnel attachments were tried and failed to get the desired result. Finally, the kids figured out the combination that gave them the right sort of bubbles in the right color. Eureka! And then they started all over getting it wrong lots of times until they got the new result they wanted. Young children don't need permission to experiment, they are hardwired for it.

I see part of my role as creating the climate and support for teachers to experiment, to take risks with their pedagogy, their content, their approaches to teaching. Becoming a master teacher is an ongoing, career spanning adventure. Personally, I have come to believe the minute we are no longer wanting to venture something new we need to retire. Learning to enjoy the energy that comes from not being one hundred percent sure or  the absolute expert in the room reinforces for us and our students that we are partners in a learning community.

Creating that climate means providing resources for learning, time to be creative, and permission to try without always waiting for perfection or certainty or even an ok from an administrator. Peer coaches and mentors need to see their role as one of fostering courage. Our professional growth cycle and evaluation systems must reward risk and question stasis. We need to be involved in a process of ongoing revelation--always with our students as the focus of what we do.

Living in Quadrant 2 -- Time Management #SAVMP

For our Senior Administrators Virtual Mentor Program (SAVMP) prompt this week we were asked to think about time management. Fellow SAVMP participant Amber Teaman wrote eloquently and shared a helpful graphic that got me thinking about my days ( from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey).

One of the reasons it caught my eye was the location of email and a niggling guilty sense that I had chosen to not answer the email of someone recently. I hate the feeling of firing off an email and hearing . . . nothing. Any yet, this particular person was not a current parent of a Westtown student, not a potential parent, not a colleague, not a member of my family or a close friend. For all of these I try and reply within 24 hours.  Nor was it someone asking for a reciprocating sort of information common among independent school teachers and administrators. It was just the email I could ignore -- along with the daily announcement from Diigo, the New York Times, the Smithsonian, and our school's spam filter. Email is our chief means of communicating basic information, and like all other sorts of information, basic information has exploded in volume.

What really struck me about quadrant two was the relationship building bullet. On Friday, I had a series of meetings -- see quadrant one. But all of those meetings were with individuals, all were in the interest of building relationships and encouraging the capacity of those individuals in the chair across from me. I met with three interns, two of my independent seminar students, and a stressed out advisee. I also carved out time to complete a project (see quadrant 1). However, this project was related to continuing my relationship with our young alums. Meeting with teachers and students, observing teachers in their classrooms and working with them through their evaluations fill my days and weeks. However, I give over little time to the other areas of quadrant 2.

One of my first blogs was about closing my computer when people come to speak to me, this week I want to experiment with leaving my email turned off for some of the time I have carved out to work at my desk and while I am doing that I want to create space for quadrant two's  planning and values clarification even as I tackle the two projects with deadlines fast approaching!

Reflection and leadership - #SAVMP

This week as a part of our SAVMP (School Admin Virtual Mentor Program) we have been asked to consider the role of reflection. I have written in other posts about my own need to think before I act and take time to listen without distraction to the person in my office. I have also written about the role of reflection in my student's self-assessments of minor and major projects/papers/presentations in my classes. I know that at the beginning of the year, most students write cursory reflections and only when asked to re-write and consider specific questions they have actually posed do they come to see the value of self-reflection.

I ask my faculty to write reflections after they have completed any major professional development activity whether its attending a conference or workshop, completing summer curriculum development, or participating in a fellowship or sabbatical opportunity. I want them to think about what they have learned in terms of what it will mean for their students. I also want to build us as a community of people who think about their own learning and share it with others.

This week I want to reflect on an experience sharing a concept for a new program with our high school faculty. This is a faculty that has had to absorb an extraordinary amount of change in the past two years -- after years of incremental, barely noticeable change. Some have become weary of change and understandably want time to become expert at what is new -- and not take on any new initiatives. On Wednesday I went before them with an idea that was disruptive in how we think about that most precious of commodities -- time (I am asking them to innovate and change again) -- giving over regular course/class time for two weeks of problem based learning.I worked with a great partner on the presentation (our faculty clerk) and began by reminding the faculty of how I had come to be standing in front of them -- I provided context.

This is what I want to think about some more, the importance of providing context. I hadn't arrived at this proposal on my own or gotten the idea from some alien visiting from Mars, instead this was an idea that had its roots in several years of self-studies and side conversations around other related projects and discussions. Furthermore, the concept was developed by other teachers working with me. While it had the backing of administrators, the leading committee bringing the idea forward was made up of teachers and administrators. One of my teacher partners in this work helped with the presentation and finished by tying the concept to our school's mission.

Once the context was established, I sat down and our faculty clerk asked the teachers to turn to a partner and consider the wonderful possibilities arising from this concept. What followed was 5 minutes of creative, open, positive imaging and brainstorming. We then shared out with the entire group.

What I have learned from this is to remember that in all change, at any given moment I need to remember that leadership includes building consensus through reminding folks of how we got to where we are, how it fits with our vision and at least initially focus on what is possible. (Later of course, we will have time for others to voice their concerns and help us find solutions to challenges). But context and focus on creative possibility (rather than allowing a single grumpy voice to shut everyone down), opens up space for the creativity that is at the core of my faculty; it makes space for us to collectively imagine the ends we wanted all along. It helps us realize our mission in this century.

Critical Conversations #SAVMP

This week's prompts for our #SAVMP blogging were questions about encouraging Critical Conversations.

• How do we create a culture where "pushback" is encouraged?
• How do we know when to stick with the minority over the majority?
• How do you create a team that will give you honest feedback?
  
  

It put me in mind of Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals. Certainly, Lincoln created a team where group think was never going to be a problem! At schools, I suspect leadership teams are not put together the way that Lincoln's cabinet was. Certainly at Westtown, leadership positions were not awarded as favors to political allies (or rivals), as rewards for roles played in one's election or for one's ability to hold a difficult border state in the Union. Indeed, at schools leadership teams are constructed one hire at a time and evolve with each new hire.

For me, these three SAVMP questions of the week turn me back upon myself and my own aversion to providing difficult feedback, to having difficult conversations with colleagues. When I first stepped into my new role, I knew this would be my greatest challenge. I participated in our school's peer coaching program and asked for a specific colleague as coach with the intention of leaning into this discomfort. Over the school year my coach and I worked through Difficult Conversations. He helped me explore the reasons for my dis-ease and we role played several different sorts of conversations. We also kept a log of the conversations I was having with colleagues and how they fell on a continuum from easy to difficult and challenging. What I found was that I need to always keep four things in mind when approaching any conversation I anticipate might be difficult: assume the best from the person I am speaking with, remember that the needs of our students come first, and that the well-being of our school comes second only to that of our students. Finally, and not least, never forget there is a person sitting across from me in this conversation. Not surprisingly, I generally have to remind myself of these givens before I have a difficult conversation. 

But this isn't what the original prompt was about, Creating a culture for promoting critical conversations is  about both leadership teams and faculty teams; about encouraging the realization that truth can come from any corner of the room and that not all truth is easy or convenient. In debriefing our relatively new 360 faculty evaluation process, teachers evaluated in the second year of the program reported that they had felt uncomfortable receiving difficult feedback and recommendations for growth from a peer. They had all enjoyed being commended by peers and having their successes celebrated. But they felt the more challenging recommendations for growth should be handled by a supervisor.  I believe the true power in this process is that the message is delivered by a peer. I believe that we all need to become if not comfortable at the very least adept at offering and receiving the criticism of our peers as well as their commendations. I know I am in the minority in this position (though it is shared by my evaluation clerks and Head of School). Needless to say, the peer evaluation teams will continue to give recommendations for growth that will sometimes be challenging.  In this way, I believe that teachers create a culture in which they both support and challenge each other to be excellent educators. I think an extension of this process will be a willingness to engage critically with any discussion before us and a willingness to give honest feedback. If we learn to do this with peers, we will be better able to do it with grade, division, and school wide initiatives. This is a learning edge for all of us, most especially me. 

Excellent Teachers Don't Just Happen

In his book the Intentional Teacher, Peter Gow writes that there are three characteristics teachers must have to be great educators: Affection for Children, Joy in Learning, and Commitment to Student Success (Gow pp 19-26). Teacher's Joy in Learning is the focus of my work at Westtown School. Whether they are fresh out of college or seasoned educators, excellent teachers are committed to their own learning and to seeing positive results from what they learn in their classrooms.

Successful professional development for teachers begins with a thoughtful and ongoing induction program. Spring 2012 we formalized a new three year induction program for all new teachers whether they are just starting out their careers or are seasoned teachers accepting a new position at Westtown School. Feedback from previous years had helped us refine our new teacher orientation program and mentor program. Good mentors are critical to new teacher success. Every new teacher at Westtown has a mentor. This seems so central to our process that I was taken aback when a colleague was telling me about his son who is in the second year of his Teach for America assignment in New York City. When he asked his son about his mentors, his son told him he had none and his supervisor had made it very clear that all questions should come back to him, the supervisor. He should not be asking other teachers  for help or advice. My colleague's son said he feels very alone in his class with his students.

At Westtown, mentors serve as guides to school culture, provide practical answers to questions, and facilitate understanding of all the various technologies and processes at our school. In the first year, this is invaluable work. A single, known, wise friend insures new teachers never feel alone. Through out the year, mentors meet as a group to compare notes and see how best to support their mentees. Mentor relationships continue into the second year. Different teachers will want different things from their mentors in the second year. Generally, the differences fall out along lines of still new to teaching folks and those with more years of teaching. Increasingly we are finding that teachers want peers to observe them teach, read through lesson plans, and offer feedback on what the mentor sees of the teacher's practice.

In their third year at Westtown all teachers have a peer coach. The difference between mentor and coach is subtle but critical. A mentor is someone who has answers, who knows how to find the answers, who serves as a guide. A coach assumes that with help the coachee will  find the answers for him or herself, will achieve his or her own goals. Coaching is a process of active listening and thoughtful questioning.  By their very nature coaches and mentors are leaders within the school. Our school culture is becoming one in which everyone is invested in realizing educational excellence across the school. Mentors, mentees, coaches and coachees see themselves as sharing responsibility for creating an excellent educational experience for all of our students.

Alongside this culture of peer support and development we have increased the support and feedback department chairs, the Athletic Director, Dean of Students, and divisional principals provide to new hires. Every new hire should expect to receive constructive feedback from her supervisors after the first month, the first quarter, the first semester, and the end of the first year. In this way, new teacher success, support and evaluation is treated as a top priority by school administrators. We believed in these new people when we hired them now we must insure their success.

Our induction program is resource, time, and people intensive. This investment in new teachers up front guarantees success and longevity in the lives of our students. Young teachers make a commitment to careers in education at Westtown, more experienced teachers see Westtown as a place to build their professional lives. Parents and students know that excellence is the expectation and not taken for granted. Anyone who really doesn't have what it takes is counseled out in the first year. The second and third years are all about striving for excellence and establishing patterns of continuous learning and commitment to student success.

Developing Leadership--one inspired colleague at a time #savmp

At Westtown School we have embraced a peer coaching model for individual teacher development. While not every teacher aspires to be a school dean, principal, department chair, every teacher has the potential for true leadership in her classroom or with her colleagues. Our peer coaching program helps to develop these individual talents -- including those of leadership. My own trajectory to my current role as Westtown's Director of Teaching and Learning has benefited from such mentoring by supervisors and coaching by colleagues. Early in my teaching career I was encouraged by my history department chair to take on a new course in a subject area I hadn't really ever studied -- Chinese History. Furthermore, he told me to trust my instincts and adapt that traditionally political history course to my existing background in social and women's history. His confidence in me liberated me to experiment throughout the year and to know that I could share ideas with him and other members of the department. That was one of the most exciting and rewarding years of teaching I had experienced to that point. Over my 19 years of teaching my own experiences as coach, coachee and mentor to new teachers has confirmed for me that school transformation takes place one teacher at a time, that leadership can come from any one of my colleagues, that visionary school leadership means nurturing leaders from within the faculty, that teachers as leaders in striving for excellence in education makes for a strong school. 

As a part of our holistic approach to teacher development and by extension leadership development we ask teachers to write goals for themselves each year. While our school has strategic goals and we ask teachers to attend to these as they think about and write their goals, the emphasis is on individual direction in recognition of its power to unleash great creative energy. Just as good teachers try and connect student passion, interest and strengths with their learning so too should teachers as they set their own learning. The goals teachers write become the focus of the relationship between peer coach and coachee.

My work as an administrator is to nurture teacher talents and connect their strengths with those of others. The more that I can hand off tasks to others better suited than me to lead a study, develop a new program, clerk a particular committee, the better I am doing my job as a school leader. Then my task becomes providing support, a sounding board, and occasional guidance to these many leaders within our school. With so many practicing leadership in so many roles we become a community well practiced in leading, collaborating and knowing when to trust someone else to take the lead.

Fourier was right!!

As you may recall from earlier posts here, I enjoy the time I have in the summer to read widely and haphazardly. By way of disclaimer I do recommend all the books below. I no-longer bother to finish books that I haven't managed to engage with by 50-70 pages in no matter how well-recommended by my friends.

This summer my picks included South of Superior by Ellen Airgood. I picked up Airgood's book at one of my favorite independent bookseller's Mclean and Eakin in Petoskey, Michigan where I vacation with my family. Wherever I travel I try and read based on where I am located. Airgood's book set in the Upper Peninsula didn't disappoint me for thoughtful summer reading well tied to its/my location. And interestingly, it fit in well with one of the unexpected themes from the books I read-- finding solutions/building our lives by looking outside our hidden assumptions. The other fiction books included  Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Plan, Louise Erdich's Round House, and Patrick Rothfuss' What the Wise Man Fears. Kingsolver is a master of setting, especially in her books set in Appalachia. The main character Dellarobia, like the butterflies she loves is transformed and by the end of the novel well on her way to her own metamorphosis -- all because she was saw wonder in her own backyard. By the way I especially loved the scene in which the northern eco-warrior shows up with the top ten things to save the planet and she makes short work of his list as impossible for her family or anyone in their economic place. This summer I returned to poets I already loved taking Mary Oliver's Why I Wake Early and Seamus Heaney with me on vacation. For my soul I worked through the Book of Romans and the corresponding chapter in The Women's Bible Commentary. I also read Henri Nouwen's Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life.  For my non-fiction choices I started with Mary Cowhey's Black Ants and Buddhists and have begun but yet to finish Doris Kerns Goodwin's biography of Lyndon Baines Johnson ( this president was featured very colorfully in the movie The Butler) moved to Cathy Johnson's Now You See It: How Technology and Brain Science will Transform Schools and Business for the 21st century and finished with Roz and Ben Zander's the Art of Possibility. While I read Now You See it my son sat on the couch across from me reading The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brain by Nicholas Carr. We had a great time comparing notes and eye catching titles aside we found many things in common.

So what does the French philosopher Francois Marie Charles Fourier have to do with my summer reading? Whenever I have taught World History I tend to keep my students thinking and working at a 10,000-20,000 foot level focused on human interactions with the natural world and with other human populations. However, we do a couple of dives into more detailed looks at human ideas. One of them explores the trajectory from Jean Jacques Rousseau to Karl Marx. Fourier is one of the steps along the way. For those of you who aren't familiar Fourier is best remembered for his ideas on how to create harmonious, cooperative societies and for his thinking on feminism and human love. For him the greatest harm to the human psyche was separating our passion from our productive work. In his utopias people would choose what work they wanted to do that the society needed or wanted accomplished. One of his ideas that my students always enjoyed was the idea that because little boys like getting dirty they would be natural rag and trash pickers. Fourier recognized that for this society to work you needed a sufficiently diverse population to insure that all of the jobs got done. For him that number was 1620 individuals. As I read Cathy Davidson's discussion of the genius of Wikipedia and its truly democratic nature, I was struck by Wikipedia and other wikis and moocs as proof that Fourier was correct. Wikipedia thrives on the way it connects individual passions for any topic imaginable, to other people's love of editing, with those who want to improve the functionality or take on any number of the other hundreds of tasks needing doing and getting done through the Community Portal. All of this happens because people choose to engage. Twenty first century technology created the scale necessary for Fourier's ideas on harmony, collaboration and mutuality to thrive.

Leading inspite of myself #SAVMP

I am the oldest of three siblings . Birth order does matter. I have an engrained take charge reflex. Sometimes taking charge is not the right course of action! Sometimes leaders do have to take charge. Certainly, this was my experience as a first time department chair. Our department had experienced a challenging personnel situation the previous year and had lost our ability to work together for the benefit of our students. In this case, I was clear that there were issues we needed to tackle and work on together. I set an agenda for the year, first rebuild trust and relationships, second agree on standards for reading and grading essays, third develop our student's capstone research project. By the end of the year we had regained our collegiality and trust and done real work to strengthen our program. Then we got to the second year. What was the agenda going to be?At first, I again tried to set an arc for us for the year. But as I listened to my colleagues gamely work through what I thought was the next important thing to tackle, it became clear that group didn't all agree that this topic was where we needed to focus our energy and talent.  In listening and reflecting back what I was hearing we arrived at a new sense of where our students and our program most needed our focus. In this case, re redesigned our course offerings.


As I have taken on other leadership roles within Westtown School, I find myself doing an interesting dance along this continuum from taking charge to listening and facilitating. On my bulletin board I have a Canada Fisheries and Oceans navigation chart of the Benjamin Islands (#2207-1), a tapestry my daughter brought me from Tibet, a papyrus our exchange student brought us from his home in Egypt, a chart on managing complex change, and two reminders. One is a quote from Peter Drucker that I first heard while attending the 2011 Hathaway Brown Innovation Summit, the other is an expression common among, though not exclusive to Friends(Quakers) "Way Opens". The Drucker quote is "The task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths making our weaknesses irrelevant." This was particularly apropos for the Innovation Summit as the workshop leader was Ronald Fry at Case Western helping us learn about and employ Appreciative Inquiry in our work as change agents at our various schools. Both of the reminders push me towards facilitated leadership. They both also encourage me to ask a few questions of my work:

• Does this task/project/problem advance the mission of our school?
• Does this task/project/problem build on existing strengths (conversely am I overly focused on fixing a problem)
• Do I have the right people around the table?
• What are my blinders and assumptions that might get in the way of the best way forward?
• Is there someone else on staff who might want to do this work, might be better skilled for this task, feel passionately about assuming the leadership for this?

My dual responsibilities for faculty professional development and curricular review and innovation are predicated on a growth oriented model for staff and program in the service of our students. With 110 teachers on staff, all at various stages of their professional lives from teachers with 30+years of experience to fresh from college interns, a collaborative approach to leadership is a necessity to my ability to thrive. As such I have two more reminders hanging on my walls. Both were created by lower school students working with  visiting artists. Both are greater and more stunning than the sum of their parts. What you see of the lizards is only a portion of the six foot piece of drift wood stretched across my wall with 19 basking lizards. The rain forest water color is the work of first graders. An art teacher colleague pointed out to me that very young children understand instinctively how to best fill a space -- an understanding lost before adolescence and not regained without effort. Both works of art provide daily reminders to look for and cultivate leaders from within my faculty for all of our professional development and curricular development programs: peer coaches, new faculty mentors, 360 evaluation team clerks and members, curricular review facilitators and the list goes on and on. Its thrilling to have lived through this transformation from a one person Dean of Faculty and three divisional principals to one in which we all see ourselves as leaders sometimes and team members always.