Change LeadershipA Practical Guide to Transforming Our

Schools

Presented by:Suzette Cook

Title I School Improvement CoordinatorWest Virginia Department of Education

Title I Directors’ MeetingOctober 4, 2010

Gingerbread Man

What do you want to take away?

What drives you crazy?

What gives you indigestion?

What do you want to let go of?

Block Party

• Read and reflect upon what your quote means to you and your work

• Share your quote and your insights about its implication for your work with your tablemates

• Share ideas and questions

Caught between the imperative of preparing students for the next half-century and the political mandate for short-term performance improvement on

standardized tests, many educators are dropping by the wayside but a few are stepping forward with new leadership skills and vision. Working with such leaders, Tony Wagner, Bob Kegan and their colleagueshave created an invaluable guidebook for those with the courage to have conviction without answersand the openness to learn together.

Peter Senge, authorThe Fifth Discipline

There is no school for leaders that will teach them exactly

how to make their district into one that will leave no child behind.

Seven Disciplines for Strengthening Instruction

• Urgency for instructional improvement using real data• Shared vision of good teaching• Meetings about the work• A shared vision of student results• Effective supervision• Professional development• Diagnostic data with accountable

collaboration

Seven Disciplines for Strengthening Instruction

These seven disciplines are not a buffet, where a district can choose one or two for implementation without regard to the others.

Your system – any system – is perfectly designed to produce the results you’re getting.

If every system is designed to produce exactly the results that it does, then perhaps before we try to improve our system, we need to better grasp its current design.

Seven Disciplines for Strengthening Instruction

Rate Your District1.The district creates understanding and urgency

around improving all students’ learning for teachers and community, and it regularly reports on progress.

• Data are disaggregated and transparent to everyone• Qualitative (focus groups and interviews) as

well as quantitative data are used to understand students’ and recent graduates’ experience of school.

Seven Disciplines for Strengthening Instruction

Rate Your District

2. A widely shared vision of what is good teaching is focused on rigorous expectations, relevant curricula, and respectful relationships in the classroom.

3. All adult meetings are about instruction and are models of good teaching.

Seven Disciplines for Strengthening Instruction

Rate Your District

4. There are well-defined standards and performance assessments for student work at all grade levels. Teachers and students understand what quality work looks like, and there is consistency in standards of assessment.

5. Supervision is frequent, rigorous, and entirely focused on the improvement of instruction. It is done by people who know what good teaching looks like.

Seven Disciplines for Strengthening Instruction

Rate Your District

6. Professional development is primarily on-site, intensive, collaborative, and job-embedded and is designed and led by educators who model best teaching and learning practices.

7. Data are diagnostically at frequent intervals by teams of teachers to assess each student’s learning and to identify the most effective teaching practices. Teams have time built into their schedules for this shared work.

The realities of today’s economy demand not only a new set of skills but also that they be acquired by all students.

Framework for Effective Instruction

3 Rs• Rigor: Mastering Core Competencies

• Relevance: Connecting the Curriculum Through Real-World Applications

• Respectful Relationships: Finding the Key to Motivation

One of the hardest aspects of charting the course… is identifying the ways that we might also create obstacles that get in the way of our own plans.

Obstacles to Improvementv.

Momentum for Improvement

Reaction •Purpose•Focus

Compliance

•Engagement

Isolation •Collaboration

The Final Word

• Reaction Transforms to Purpose and Focus – pg. 65 to top of pg. 68• Compliance Transforms to Engagement

– pg. 68 to middle of pg. 71• Isolation Transforms to Collaboration –

middle of pg. 71 to top of pg. 74

The Final Word• Identify a timekeeper• Read your assigned passage• Identify one ‘most’ significant idea/quote from the

text to share – have a ‘back-up’• First person – share selected idea/quote and why – 3

minutes• Second person – respond – 1 minute• Third person – respond – 1 minute• Fourth person – respond - 1 minute• First person – The final word – 1 minute• Begin new rotation

Fortune Cookie ‘Break’

•Open your fortune cookie – but don’t share your fortune with anyone

• Think of how this ‘fortune’ may relate to you and your work – jot some notes if you wish/for sharing

The forms of our personal challenges are not infinitely different. There is more than one crater on the dark side of the moon, but not an endless number.

If we, as leaders, deny ourselves the opportunity to ‘grow on the job’, how likely is it that those around us, those who work for us, are going to feel genuinely entitled to this same right themselves?

Arenas of Change

• Competencies – of adults• Conditions – of learning and teaching for

students and adults• Culture – of classrooms, schools, districts• Context – understanding global, state,

and community realities and re-visioning what all students need to know

4 Cs Diagnostic Tool

Conditions

Competencies

Culture

Context

Back to the Future

Conditions

Competencies

Culture

Context

The prime function of a leader is to keep the hope alive.

John W. Gardner