Changing Public Perception

Public Education is under attack.  We all know that because we see it on the news, read it in the paper, and get asked about it by our patrons.  Why haven't we been able to turn the tide toward the positive?  It seems that no matter what we say, the result is still the same...public schools are in bad shape.

At the Spring Conference of the Missouri Association of Secondary School Principals these past few days, I heard great messages about what is right with public schools and how we can get that perception out.  What do we need to do?  We need to change our language, give people an emotional connection to our school, and tell individual, specific success stories.

Why change our language?  As NASSP President B. J. Paris so succinctly stated, "the language we use speaks volumes about what we value."  What does that mean for schools?  We need to stop talking about 'dropout rates' and instead view 'every child as a graduate'.  We need to take the term 'faculty lounge' (think about how our public perceives a lounge for a second) out of our vocabularies and start calling those areas something like 'teacher think-tank'. (I'm sure there's a better term out there, but that's the best I could come up with at the moment!)  We need, as educators, to consider carefully how we name things and what those names convey to non-educators.

Dr. John Draper also indicated that we need to quit comparing ourselves to neighboring schools, states, and other countries.  We need to compare ourselves to....ourselves!  It is really irrelevant to our students, parents, and communities how a standardized test score stacks up against another education institution.  What is relevant is the growth and progress of each individual student!  It is so easy to find negatives in data when using comparisons.  Take the US 'so called' underperformance on international testing measures.  According to Draper, the US has never tested well due to a number of issues.  In fact, the first time international tests were used, the US finished 11th out of the 12 countries tested!  Since that time, we've 'fallen up' to about average which is real progress.  Another misconception he addressed was that the average ACT/SAT scores are continually falling.  Of course the average is falling, more students are taking the test!  When these tests were first scored, only the top 10% of students even took the test.  Now that about 60% of kids take the test shouldn't the overall average drop?  What's important to recognize (and you never hear this in legislative halls or the mainstream media) is that EVERY SUBGROUP has shown continuous improvement on these tests for the past several decades!  Why aren't we hearing that piece of the story?  It's because we don't tell it!  The US also scores high on the Global Competitiveness Index (a measure of the number of original patents and other creativity measures) while those scoring high on standardized tests are lagging in this area.  Let's start sharing data like this with the media and legislators.

So how do we change the dialogue in our favor?  We all have to work together.  The best thing we can do is to tell specific, individual success stories about kids in our school.  These stories will create an emotional connection between the listener and the school.  The more emotional connections we create, the more we turn the tide in our favor.  Draper suggested four things we should do every week to start the change.

1. Focus on the positive!  We must celebrate even small victories.
2. Stop bad-mouthing other educators/education institutions in public.  We are all in this together and negative talk about one another adds to the current perception.
3. Share ONE positive story per week with a non-educator.  If every educator in the country would do this for the next 52 weeks imagine the impact on non-educators!
4. Monitor your progress.  This doesn't mean look at achievement data.  It means hold yourself accountable to the above three steps on a weekly basis.

I know that I came back from the Spring Conference at MASSP motivated.  I learned much more than I can share in one post.  Most of all, I came away feeling positive about the state of public education in our country.  Thank you MASSP, Dr. John Draper, and B. J. Paris for helping the principals in Missouri feel empowered to continue the good work we do while leading our schools.

I will...

After reflecting on the NASSP Ignite '14 conference in Dallas last week, I wanted to put out a list of commitments that I am making as an administrator.  These commitments will revolve around the need of educators to have and develop a growth mindset (instead of a fixed mindset), telling my school's story digitally, creating an environment where both students and teachers 'own' their own learning, and cultivating a culture of risk taking and excellence where failure is celebrated as a growth opportunity.

I will...

• stop using the word CAN'T and replace it with the phrase NOT YET.
• recognize students and teachers for taking risks and pushing through barriers.
• reduce restrictions and create as flexible an environment as possible.
• create mechanisms for student and staff input and recognition.
• carry my smart phone/iPad at all times to take pictures of good things happening that need to be shared.
• work to change adult learning from a Professional Development (PD) model to a Professional Learning (PL) model by creating flexibility for staff learning times.
• encourage students and staff to try new things.
• increase the use of this blog as well as other digital resources to share information with students, staff, community, and other educators.
• work to establish an environment where IMPROVEMENT is more valuable than achievement.
• ask students "What is the purpose of education for you?'
• shift the focus from content to...
• communication
• collaboration
• creativity
• problem solving
• critical thinking

Other questions I am pondering as a result of the conference:

• What are the brilliance blockers at MHS?
• How can we use our resources to EMPOWER our students academically and socially?

Thanks to NASSP and their presenters for challenging me in these areas.  If you're not familiar with Eric Sheninger (@NMHS_Principal), Todd Whitaker (@ToddWhitaker), Annette Breaux (@AnnetteBreaux), and Sean Cain (@LYSNation) you should check them out. 

What are your 'I will...' statements?

Leading Change

If there is one thing I have learned throughout my career in education, it is that change is both inevitable and difficult.  During my 12 years as a building principal, I have had the opportunity to lead my school through a couple of significant changes.  One of those was our 1:World Learning Initiative that provided every student a laptop.  I believe that the process we went through as a building led to effective implementation and as a result, an effective initiative.  Currently, we are in the process of potentially converting our traditional eight period day to a flexible-modular schedule.  As I reflect on the processes that have been important on each journey, I thought I would share some thoughts.

None of these items are earth shattering or groundbreaking, but they have been important in my experience leading change.  So....here are eight items that are important to me in the change process.

1.  Begin with the end in mind.  What is it that you want to accomplish with the change?  What are the key issues that the change is to address?  These items must be defined in order for the change to be view as essential for success.  If you can't answer the question of 'How will things be better as a result of this change?' then you are just changing for change sake - which is rarely successful.

2.  Develop 'buy-in' from the staff/students/community. For any change to be successful, those that are impacted must understand and value the change.  This is not to say that you have to have 100% of those impacted fully behind the change, rather it is to say that momentum must be built leading up to the implementation of the change.  It is vital that key people within your organization are supportive of the initiative.  These people will help bring the others along throughout the change process.

3.  Show them how it's working elsewhere.  As we completed our 1:World Learning Initiative which provides every student a laptop computer, the most valuable piece of the change process was site visits.  We took several trips to other schools that were already doing this type of initiative successfully.  This reinforced the need for the change and created momentum toward making the change successful.  But, most importantly, it alleviates many fears that exist when a change is taking place.

4.  Keep the 'Main Thing' the 'Main Thing'.  As you work through the implementation of any initiative, it's easy to get distracted by the logistical hurdles or negative thoughts that will surely present themselves.  As we worked through the transition to every student having a laptop, we worried about such things as battery life, charging stations, PE locker room issues, field trips, etc.  Several times, it felt that we became so overly worried about these things that the real focus of our initiative was lost.  As the leader, it is your job to take a step back and remind your team what the focus of the change is.  Details are important, but the impact for students is the most important.

5.  Acknowledge fears. To me, this is high on the priority list during change.  The leader must be ready to validate the fears of his team.  One activity that I do for this is 'Three Hopes and Three Fears'.  When we undergo a major change initiative, after the education process and near the time of commitment I ask my teachers to anonymously submit to me their three hopes for the initiative and their three fears for the initiative.  I then compile these lists and put them out there for all to see.  This simple acknowledgement helps us to deal with those fears up front by focusing on what we hope will come from the initiative.  Then, after we are several months into the initiative, we pull those lists back out and start marking off fears.  With our recent technology initiative, we reduced the fears list from 29 items to 12 items just over a year into it's implementation!

5.  Model your expectations.  As the leader in the building, it is vital that you are the first one to try things that will be impacted by the change.  If you expect your teachers to use technology in instruction, you need to be using it in faculty meetings.  Nothing will kill a change initiative faster than your team feeling like you are in a 'do as I say, not as I do' leadership mindset.  Modeling expectations develops a 'we are in this together' mentality.

6.  Provide training and time.  Providing training for teachers is vital to the success of any initiative.  However, where we usually miss the boat is by providing excellent training but skimping on the time teachers are allowed to work with the new material.  How many times have you had a full day inservice and then asked teachers to implement a change in your classroom?  When do you expect them to plan to use these new strategies?  Time to process and plan are the most critical yet most often sacrificed components of learning a new skill.

7.  Celebrate Failure. (thanks @casas_jimmy) - Anytime you make a change in expectations, procedures, culture, etc., you will make mistakes.  Those mistakes should be CELEBRATED!  Why celebrate mistakes?  Because that is how we learn!  The key to this mindset is to not give up when a couple of things go wrong.  If the change is good for kids, it is essential that we fight through the issues and stay the course.

8.  Be comfortably uncomfortable. (thanks @johnjungmann) - Throughout the change process (and the overall growth process for that matter) there will be discomfort.  It is vital that you as the leader are comfortable with that and that you teach those in your building to have the same mindset.  The trick here is to know the line between comfortably uncomfortable and being completely uncomfortable.  This will vary from situation to situation and from school to school.  It is your job as the leader to determine this line and make sure your organization doesn't cross it.

I believe that including these eight pieces in the change process are essential to a successful implementation.  I'd love to hear about your experiences, thoughts, and/or additional steps you feel are important.  Thanks for reading!

What motivates students?

I had the pleasure earlier this week of being invited into one of my teacher's classrooms to watch student presentations.  These presentations were the culmination of a semester long project in which each group had defined a problem or issue of interest, gathered data, and then presented their findings with possible solutions.  The work of these students was high quality and they were excited to discuss it.

After the presentations, I had the opportunity to discuss the overall project with the class.  Each of them indicated that they were more engaged in and motivated by this project than most of the class work they do on a daily basis.  So I asked them why.  They responded that the choice in topic, structure, etc. allowed them to 'own' the project.  In other words, it meant something to them.

That discussion led to me reflecting on student motivation and motivation in general.  Why are most of our students not motivated in school?  I believe it is pretty simple - they don't have much choice in their learning.  For a myriad of reasons, almost all of their school time is on things that are mandated to them.  Think about yourself as an adult.  Why do you do the hobbies/activities you do?  Why do you not do other activities?  It is because we have the choice to engage in activities for which we have an interest. Students, in much of our current educational structure, have little if any choice.  The project mentioned above gave students choice.  They were allowed to follow their own interests, curiosities, and passions which led to internal motivation and semester-long engagement.  The best part of it from my perspective - the students were engaged in critical thinking, problem solving, and collaboration without even knowing it!  These kids really ENJOYED this part of school.

I'm not naive enough to think that we can only put students in courses/projects that they are interested in just for motivation's sake.  There is a foundational level of knowledge across multiple subjects that is necessary to be a productive citizen.  Additionally, part of school is learning about life and sometimes we just have to do things that have to be done - whether we are interested in them or not.  That is called responsibility.  However, our entire life is not that way.  We, as adults, get significant choice in how we spend our time and we choose to spend that time doing things that interest us.  How can create this balance for our students?

As you look at the next semester and at the following school year, my challenge to each of you is to look for ways to utilize student choice as a motivator.  Be innovative! Be open! Be different! - Your kids will appreciate it.

An Open Letter to Legislators and Appointed Officials

Dear Legislator or Appointed Official,

I'm in my 21st year in public education and I've seen many changes.  Some have been good and some have been head-scratchers.  All have been enacted with the greatest of intentions, but their effectiveness has varied greatly.  Recently, I've been thinking about our current accountability systems (NCLB, Common Core, etc.) and struggling to really find the benefits that our current systems have for STUDENTS.  I understand that these systems are designed to allow for comparison among states and countries, but I don't know how that helps the low socio-economic freshman in my building that is searching for an education that is relevant to his or her future.  I don't think he or she really cares how we compare to our neighboring states or other countries.  He or she cares about how school is going to make his or her life better.

As public educators, we depend on our patrons for financial support and we handle our country's greatest resource - the next generation of adults.   So I get the need for accountability, I really do. However, as I have been reflecting on our current systems, I have come to the realization that we are being held accountable to the wrong things.  We should be held accountable to each individual STUDENT to prepare him or her for their next step in life.  Whether that step is college, military service, a trade, or an hourly production or service job the primary focus of education should be to prepare each STUDENT for that step.  I think that our current test-driven accountability system takes the focus off of the student and places it on the test. That is a great disservice for our kids!

I know that tests are easy to gather data from and generate nice, neat comparisons.  But what is easily measured is not always valuable and what is valuable is not always easily measured.  What would happen to our education system if, at graduation and again a few years later, we asked students and their families for their feedback on how we did preparing them for THEIR future?  I know that type of data gets a little messy and it's not always easy to gather, but isn't it the most valuable piece of data we could use?

One of the issues I see with our test-driven accountability is that we try to force all students into the same box.  I know that there is a base of knowledge that each student must know and it is our job in education to facilitate that knowledge.  But our kids each have different strengths and passions.  Our current system does a great job of taking their passion and squelching it by inadvertently telling them that their passion doesn't matter unless it is in one of the tested areas.  I'm reminded of this quote from Albert Einstein, "Everybody is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid."  We need an accountability system that encourages students to work in their areas of strength and passion, not the areas that others deem important.

My goal in this letter is not to be a whiner or complainer.  Rather, I think it is time that we take a step back and look at the focus of our accountability and ask ourselves if it is really being effective for students.  I know that in my building, we are making efforts to put the focus back on each individual student.  We will not ignore test scores and the current accountability systems, but we will make them a secondary issue.  Our primary focus will be to help students discover their strengths and passions and then use those to develop problem solving skills, critical thinking skills, and communication skills - skills that will serve them no matter their chosen path following graduation.

Sincerely,

David Steward, Principal
Monett High School

A Good First Day

We completed the first day of the 2013-14 school year yesterday.  I have to admit, I was really nervous because of a directive I had given my faculty.  I had banned rules presentations and syllabus discussions on day 1.  I expected my teachers to show students their passion for their subject area and engage students in activities designed to capitalize on their excitement for the first day of school.  However, the administrator piece in me was worried I was setting myself up for more difficulties because we weren't going over rules on day 1.  How would the kids behave?  How would they know the expectations?

The results could not have been better!  As I talked to students throughout the day, asking them how their day was going, they were excited about school.  They were genuinely appreciative of the teachers' efforts to engage them and they were definitely not bored.  Most said it was their best first day ever!  Many of my teachers have 'flipped' their rules presentations and will give a short quiz later this week to ensure students watched them.  In fact, I did the same thing with handbook changes for the building.  I checked this morning and about 1/5 of the student body has already watched the handbook video when it isn't 'due' until Friday.

As you start your school year, think about capitalizing on the excitement of day 1 and using it to build a positive culture and climate.  I think it was successful for us.

Now, I can shift my worry to something else.....like day 2....

Where's the Passion?

Recently, I read Will Richardson's book "Why School?" and it has challenged my thinking and led to me question much about our education process.  Mr. Richardson discussed things like: information scarcity vs. abundance, whether standardized tests are the most appropriate measure of student success, and the skills that students will need to be successful as they move on to college and careers.  His thoughts and assertions led me to think about student motivation as that seems to be a common concern among teachers and parents.

Why do students enter school at age five or six eager to learn but then, over time, begin to dislike school?  I believe that it is because we (the system, not the people) educate the passion for learning out of them.  Think of all the content objectives that students are mandated to learn - whether they are interested in them or not.  These mandates take ownership of learning from the students themselves and have given that ownership to 'the powers that be' in the name of educational improvement.  The problem with that is that the things that are touted as improving schools and students are simply the things that are easily measurable - that is to say the focus is on more content knowledge and not more 'soft skills' for which employers are longing.  Finally, at some point in the education journey the focus for students, parents, and others shifts from the learning to the grade.  The letter we assign to the learning takes precedence over the learning itself.

So what do we do about this?  How can we move forward for students while still 'playing the game' of testing.  I believe we need to find a way to reignite each student's passion for learning.  First, we give them ownership of at least some part of their learning.  There are certainly foundational concepts with which every student must be familiar, but outside of those students should own what they are learning.   If we could provide that, what would that do to a student's motivation?  Secondly, we must make learning relevant to students.  Standardized tests, and the concepts they address, for the most part are seen by students as irrelevant.  They are asked to solve problems and answer questions that are of little value to them.  As Alan November says, "Whoever defines the problem owns the learning."  Clearly, standardized tests are not owned by the students.  Finally, we must honor individual student strengths and passions.  Each student is 'wired' differently so why are we working to make them all the same?  Students need to be allowed to work in their area of passion and on things that excite them.  More growth is possible in strength areas than in areas of weakness.  Let's work on growing each individual's strengths and managing their weaknesses.

What would this look like in schools?  I believe a start is to build at least 20% of a student's time around their area of passion.  That number could increase for those that have a solid grasp on basic skills in every content area, but even those that are behind in basic skills would be motivated by spending 1/5 of their time working on something about which they are passionate.  (Google has used this philosophy and it has worked pretty well for them.)  With technological access, much of the basic skill learning could be done virtually with support from a local teacher if needed.  Teachers must shift from the dispensers of knowledge to the facilitators of learning - not knowing everything about everything but being able to guide students to find the answers they seek.  This would require a complete rethinking of the traditional school schedule and school requirements.  What would happen to standardized test scores?  My first thought is 'Who cares?' but that is a little flippant.  However, I believe that if we allow students to develop the critical thinking skills that would be necessary for this type of learning, test scores would be just fine.  And more importantly, our kids would be prepared for success in whatever each of them chooses to do after graduation.

As I meet with my teachers, students, and other community stakeholders at the start of this school year, I will be asking them one question - "If we take away all pre-conceived notions about school and all the requirements placed on schools and we simply focus on what students need to succeed when setting up our learning structure/environment, what would our school look like?"  I hope that question generates discussion and ignites a passion in my staff and community to change the way we do business - because I want my students to know their passion and be able to design their learning around it.

We have been doing the same thing in schools for 150 years.  Now, we are trying to do the same things better to get better results.  But, as Mr. Richardson puts it so eloquently in his book, we don't need to focus on better, we need to focus on different.  Remember the definition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.  We have to be different for our student's sake.  It's time to stop the insanity and ignite the passion.