But First: Support

I am feeling so energized after the opportunity to spend a day with the building leadership teams in my school district. I am energized for a couple of reasons. To start, we are establishing clarity about the work of these teams. We can’t hit a target we can’t see. I’m excited to see what these dedicated, talented, and hard working teams accomplish this year as we work to make our mission as clear as possible. But I’m also excited because we have worked really hard to provide the support needed to ensure the content teams in our middle school and high schools have the support they need to be successful. Conversation around how to best support our teacher teams was energizing to listen to yesterday and will be a big focus of our building leadership teams this school year. And in subsequent school years because this work is really never done.

We read an excerpt from Energize Your Teams yesterday – shout out to my friend Jeremiah Henson who recommended this book. As we read about three conditions that are critical for thriving teacher collaboration: clarity, feedback, and support, we agreed that the following sentence felt important, “Accountability is unethical if it’s not preceded by support” (Crow, 2012, pg. 20.)

We are deeply committed to providing the support needed to ensure that our content teams have the support needed to do their best work to deepen student learning. Here are some examples of what support looks like in our middle and high school this school year:

TIME

Our associate principals used their scheduling genius to ensure our core teachers have common content collaboration time on a weekly basis in grades 7-12. It is vital that teachers have time in their day to engage in meaningful dialogue, reflection, and planning. It is no small feat to create common time like this especially given the complexities of various course offerings at the secondary level. We continue look for creative schedule ideas to maximize time for more groups of teachers to meet during the day.

COACHES

We have three coaches who are shared between these two large buildings. This school year we carefully reviewed teacher schedules to ensure that instructional coaches could facilitate the weekly course group meetings. I’m continually amazed by the strong instructional coaching culture in our school district. So many of our teachers are open to working with an instructional coach to tweak and refine practices. We reiterated in our meeting yesterday that coaches aren’t here to fix anyone or because of perceived deficits. Coaches are here because our teachers deserve the support. This work is hard, and it’s not getting any easier. The most talented athletes in the world have coaches. This is how we grow and improve. No matter how skilled we are, we can always grow and learn. Teacher collaboration can be hard at times especially when we find ourselves in disagreements or simply tired in the grind of a busy school year. Having an instructional partner (as our coaches like to call themselves) to come alongside the group, planning for meaningful meetings, and facilitating decision-making protocols, helps us ensure that the work moves forward and we don’t get stuck.

TEACHER STIPENDS

Too often, we fail to acknowledge the time it takes to do this work well. Too often, we expect common assessments to be created and curriculum to be curated, and yet this work takes additional time. Additional time that busy teachers don’t have as they work to plan engaging lessons, give students feedback, grade assessments, and communicate with families. This school year we are acknowledging that this work is important and takes time by offering a stipend to a teacher in each course group who will ensure that this additional work is complete. We hope that in doing so, the group won’t get stuck in assessment creation mode when they could be engaging in meaningful dialogue about effective instructional practices.

There is always need for more support. I’m not saying that what we have in place is perfect or even in an idealized state. But I do believe that these supports make success more accessible for hard working teachers.

Content teams are in different places with this work for different reasons. However, by the end of this school year, all course groups will:

• prioritize standards using the REAL protocol (I write about this protocol in my upcoming book.)
• break standards into learning targets
• define mastery of those learning targets
• develop common assessments to measure mastery (This will look different across contents.)
• review student performance on assessments
• reflect and respond accordingly

In the simplest format possible, our work this year can be described using DuFour’s 4 Questions:

1. What do we want students to know and be able to do?
2. How will we know that they have learn it?
3. How will we respond when they haven’t learned?
4. How will we respond when they have?

And sometimes support looks like making copies of the reading for people and subbing in classrooms. I believe so deeply in this work that I am willing to do whatever it takes to remove barriers. I subbed in a classroom last week, and I think I’m a better leader because of it. The further we are from the classroom and the day-to-day of our schools, the less clear we become about the support that is really needed. This is also why teacher and student voices are critical in the continuous improvement process.

To my administrator friends, put on your sneakers, get out of your office, roll up your sleeves, and help out.