Interim - Not just a stop gap

Starting tomorrow (1/6/2014) and continuing through June 30, 2014 I am the Upper School Interim Principal. Our previous principal, Eric Mayer, has assumed his new job as Head of School at St Stephen's in Rome. Last summer in anticipation of his departure, in good Quaker order we convened a search committee and conducted a nationwide search. With great excitement, Chris Benbow was selected and accepted the job as our next Upper School Principal. He needed to finish out his current year at The William's School. I am filling the gap.

Many of the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year have to be set aside. Fortunately, my predecessor and mentor is coming out of retirement to take on most of my responsibilities as Director of Teaching and Learning (DT&L). He will oversee the Visual Arts and Performing Arts curricular reviews. He will participate in the remaining 360 faculty evaluations scheduled for the year. He will take over leadership of the Professional Development Committee, shepherd through the second year of our sabbatical process, and support our first year teacher induction program. Finally, (and most dear to my heart) he will take charge of my five interns.

People I haven't seen since the interim announcement congratulate me, my extended family sees this as a plum, even a temporary promotion (principal makes more sense than Director of Teaching and Learning) . My immediate family and friends know I don't see it that way -- I see it as moving down the hall to a different office, switching administrative assistants, and trading one set of responsibilities and opportunities for another. Furthermore, I know that the challenge to create space for thinking, creating, and planning will multiple exponentially. Part of my role as DT&L was to meet with each of our principals and create space through our conversations for them to take in the bigger picture. Being principal brings with it the unpredictability of students and their parents. Equally, as principal I will be directly responsible for a large faculty rather than the eleven folks who currently report to me. This brings with it another level complexity. In honesty, this dailiness and what one colleague calls the firefighter nature of being a principal is what concerns me the most. At the same time, the opportunity to be in relationship with more of Westtown's constituents is one of the draws to my move down the hall.

I suspect that there are some on the Upper School faculty who are hoping that with an interim, we will take a collective deep breath and hold off on further transformations-- just teach our classes and consolidate the changes already made. Indeed how much change can a six month interim reasonably expect to effect. And yet, when our Head of School asked me what I was excited about in taking on this work, I realized it was the ability to better drive the Upper School initiatives I was supporting in my DT&L role. The next six months will see the actualization of four projects in the works for quite a while. Two will be trans-formative, the other two will require systemic disruptions to the way we have "always" done things.

So I have new/old goals for the rest of the year:

• To ask lots of questions
• To bring my full attention to the person/people sitting with me in my office
• To do this work before me with integrity
• To lead our faculty through to realization of the school's initiatives
• To challenge our faculty to be stewards of our students and the world they live in.
• And to happily hand off this work to our new principal in July!

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.