Tag Archives: teaching

New Leadership Is About Solid Outputs Not New Inputs

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What if a school leadership candidate told the interviewing committee, “We will not introduce anything new! We will improve the effectiveness of how we work to improve the quality of our student achievement results!” Would you support that leader?

In our culture of consumption, every version of something new must be bold and innovative. The world’s most recognized brand name is our best example. Each year’s new Apple product rollouts exemplify this requirement. New displays, new functions, and new features make the new product better than the old. With high anticipation, we look forward to the annual Apple rollout of “new and improved.” Even if you have last year’s version, you no longer are in on the best of what is new. In fact, in every industry, including education, the words “new and improved…” precede every big announcement.

How does this work in selecting school leaders?

Currently, our local school board is hiring a new high school principal. Each candidate in the interview process fervently explains that she or he will bring the most benefit to the leadership position. “Pick me,” is the constancy between all candidates. “This is what I will do for you” is the variable that board members listen for and weigh in their hiring decision. Board members want to know what new and innovative thing a candidate gives the district that other candidates do not.

I once was a candidate for principal and superintendent positions selling my “new” ideas and I also was a school board president listening to candidates sell their “new” ideas. From both sides of the interview, the storyline was the same. Leaders are hired based upon how well the candidate identifies district needs and wants and translates those into statements of “new” leadership.

Interview for outputs not inputs.

In hindsight, we ask candidates the wrong questions. We seek leaders who can provide new inputs into our educational systems. Instead, we should be asking new leaders how they can improve the outputs, the results of instruction, in our schools. Just one two-part question matters. How will you improve the teaching/coaching/directing/mentoring to improve the educational achievements of all our children?

Instead of seeking leaders with new inputs, seek leaders who can assure the effectiveness of the professionals in your school to improve the quality of the school’s outputs – its student achievements.

What do we know?

Improving school outputs is not first, second, or third on a principal’s to do list. Principals typically self-report their daily time partitioned in these tasks:

  • Administrative tasks – 15-21%
  • Student affairs – 20-25%
  • Curriculum and teaching – 25-29%
  • Parent/Community interaction – 10-15%

The partitioning of these tasks supports the status quo of a school. The principal pays attention to the business of the school environment when spending time on administrative tasks, student affairs (discipline), and parent/community interactions. Given, each of these task categories is important, but status quo maintenance does not move the student outcomes needle. Too many principals spend too little time on the most important purpose of the school – student educational outcomes.

We get what we settle for from leadership, so raise the bar of what we settle for.

A principal’s primary focus should be on the effectiveness of the instruction, coaching, directing, and mentoring of students. To affect student achievement outcomes, new leaders must focus on what teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors do. To impact achievements, they need to improve professional performances that directly affect student outcomes.

So, what can a new principal do to have a positive impact on student achievements? We know from educational research that everything our teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors do can be calibrated for its impact on student learning in academics, activities, arts, and athletics. A school leader who causes teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors to increase the use of higher impact instruction and to decrease the use lower impact instruction can move the student achievement needle.

What to do?

Start with acknowledging that teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors share the same major task – how to teach children to be competent and improving performers in curricular classrooms and studios, playing fields and gymnasiums, activity venues, and student life. They are instructors, first and foremost. This starting point is significant because very few school leaders consider coaches, directors, and mentors as teaching children. As a generalization, the quality of coaching, for example, is never considered for its pedagogy. Sadly, coaching effectiveness relies singularly on each athlete’s native talent and seldom on talent development.

Second, use educational research. John Hattie provides our starting point. His study of typical school/classroom practices and calibration of their impact on student achievement gives us a ranking of the typical ways teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors “teach” children. See the link below.

Visible Learning – Hattie’s Research on Effect Size

My first take in reading Hattie’s work was clouded by my past understanding of teacher effectiveness studies. I was and still am a practitioner of teaching strategies aligned with learning objectives – direct, inquiry-based, problem/project-based, and implicit methodologies. I had not considered all the aspects of school-centric practices in Hattie’s study. Now, I believe they are the new starting point for improving student outcomes. Increase our capacity and use of higher impact activities and decrease the use of lower impact strategies.

Third, change our concept of the principal as an instructional leader. Instead of being the school’s teacher of teachers, the principal is the school’s empresario of school improvement. The principal causes improvement in student outcomes to happen. Causing positive things to happen is a powerful administrative skill set.

For one, principals neither have the time nor the preparation to teach teachers how to improve pedagogy, coaching, directing, or mentoring. But they can work with their school board to bring experts to the school or send school staff to the experts to learn and improve their high impact strategies.

Fourth, begin a new annual reporting of student achievement that includes all academics, student activities, the arts, and athletics. These are the scope of what students engage in in school, so report on their reality. And stop hyperventilating on annual student performances on state-mandated assessments of reading, ELA, and mathematics. Granted, annual school report cards report reading, ELA, and math for disaggregated groups, and include attendance, discipline, and graduation data. But the governmental view of school achievement exists only for schools and states to receive federal money.

What does this look like?

Use the 25+% of a principal’s current daily commitment to curriculum and instruction to

  • Helping teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors to understand and use data-based research on effective teaching practices. All staff need to see the principal’s big picture – We all are teachers and we all can improve student achievements by using higher impact teaching strategies.
  • Collaborating with the school board, school district leaders, and the school leadership team to teach teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors how to optimize their use of high impact strategies. Do not assume that all “teachers of children” know the top ten strategies on Hattie’s list. Do not assume that their recognition of the strategy is the same as knowing how to effectively use the strategy. Teach or improve the capacity of all “teachers of children” in how to use high impact strategies.
  • Change the principal’s use of daily “walk throughs” around all the school from innocuous comments to reinforcing effective practices and diminishing ineffective practices. Most teachers report that traditional “walk throughs” and notes left in mailboxes are in the “ineffective” practice category.

Effective leadership is not bright and shiny – it is hard earned and endurable.

Most teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors rely on the “teaching” methods they learned in their educators licensing program. Although teachers are required to engage in continuing education, PD is conducted as a check-off requirement. Very little PD is directly connected to the practices that improve the effectiveness of teaching related to student achievements in academics, activities, arts, or athletics.

Consequently, a principal’s initiative to increase and improve the use of highly effective practices and diminish the use of ineffective practices will be “new.”

New is a hard task. New inputs face the age-old trial of change theory. Schools, as institutions, have built-in buffers against change initiatives. School traditions, past practice, standardized training of educators, time, and money are all barriers to novel changes in the system of things. Change theory tells us it takes five to seven years to implement and embed significant changes.

The Big Duh!

Yet, new is required for real change to happen. When school boards hire new school leaders, they must take care that they are bringing a “new” to the school that really will have an impact on the most important things – student achievements.

If Not Taught At School, Then Where?

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Is school responsible for teaching children to understand and practice basic human values?  Values like honesty, personal integrity, respect for others, and civility; you can add or subtract what you believe are basic values.  Isn’t this the role of a child’s parents?  Of the child’s church leaders?  Traditionally, it was, but in the absence of these values-teachers we are left with this:  if not at school, then where will children learn and practice basic human values?

Teachers I talk with, ask “Is the teaching of values really a part of my teaching assignment?”  My answer is “Yes.”  A standard curricular assignment entails the instruction of content knowledge, skills necessary to acquire and understand content knowledge, problem-solving skills for using knowledge, and skills to reach supported conclusions, and, here it is, the personal dispositions necessary to be a successful learner and user of the curriculum.  Personal dispositions are laced with basic human values.

We all expect children in school to demonstrate a set of educational and social values.  I will use the word “expect” in this context.  An expectation begins with the teacher describing the positive characteristics of what a child should do and be.  “Keep your hands to yourself.  While listening to this story, don’t grab or hand-play with others.”  “Look at your classmates when they are talking.  Listen quietly.  If you want to add to what they say or ask a question, raise your hand.”  “When doing these math problems, please do your own work.  Don’t copy down what your classmate is writing.”  Teachers explain what children should do and then expect children to do it.

In PK and primary grades, teachers demonstrate expectations.  They model sitting attentively, raising hands, and engaging in the assignment without distracting others.  In intermediate grades teachers use verbal reminders.  In secondary grades, teachers expect these behaviors.

Daily instruction is subliminally loaded with values.  We expect children to be honest without writing the word “honest” in the specific lesson plan.  Children will submit their own work; they will not cheat.  Children will speak honestly; they will not lie.  Children will use and maintain their own learning materials; they will not steal from other children.  It is hard to imagine a classroom without honesty.

We expect children to act with integrity, at least an integrity corresponding to their age.  We understand that Kindergarten children are five years old and when confronted with responsibility may want to squirm and lay blame for their shortcomings onto others.  However, we consistently confront children with expectations that each child owns their personal behaviors with praise for appropriate acts and corrections for inappropriate acts.  It is hard to imagine a classroom without personal student integrity.

And, the list of basic school values grows as children are involved in school athletics, activities and arts programs.  Sportsmanship, being part of a team or troupe, accepting critical review, and putting personal performances on display all require children to exercise value systems. Discussion, modeling, and expectation of these are part and parcel to a school’s extensive curricula.

Outside the classroom, teachers help children to learn and practice civil behavior in the hallways, rest rooms, cafeteria and playground.  Many children and naturally competitive while others are submissive.  In order for all to participate positively in playground games, we teach children how to play “fairly”, how to stand in lunch lines and wait to be served, and how to walk in a crowd in the hallways.

To support school and academic values, we develop and enforce policies with penalties for serious infractions.  Fight, steal or bring or use specified contraband at school and you will be disciplined.  Plagiarize or hide notes for a test in your pocket and you will be penalized.  If we did not teach, practice and expect these values to guide students, we should not enforce punitive policies when the values are violated.

One of the relevant 21st century skill sets school teach is that children will learn to work together and demonstrate the values of cooperation and collaboration.  We teach children the roles necessary for good group work and the skill sets of each role.  We teach children how these roles interact, the value of each person’s contribution to the group, and the way that consensus-building creates results that the group can support.  Group work is all about basic human values.  Political and business leaders expect that school graduates are well versed in these values.

At the end of a conversation with teachers about these school-based dispositions, I often ask and say, “Does your well-run classroom happen by accident?  No.  Children are successful learners because you and your colleagues taught each child how to act as a learner so that he or she can succeed as a learner.  You are a teacher of values.”

Classroom Interactions Are Soccer Touches – Quality Touches Create Scoring Opportunities

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“How many touches did you have?”

“How many were quality touches?”

“And, what did you do with your quality touches?”

I listen to kid-talk about their soccer game. I did not play soccer, so I am learning by watching and listening. A touch is a player getting a foot to touch the ball for a pass, shot, dribble, trap or tackle. I have learned that a tackle in soccer is not a tackle in football. Everything in soccer revolves around touches. Touch the ball and make good things happen.

The kid-talk is genuine. They are very candid in declaring or describing a good touch and in explaining how a touch failed. Interestingly, they talk about the importance of seeing ahead – how their preparation for a touch needs to be viewed by the next two or three touches to follow. Few touches immediately result in a score, but a quality touch in a sequence of quality touches can lead to a score or keep an opponent from scoring.

The same questions can be asked about what happens in a classroom at school. Causing learning is all about touches, of a different yet similar kind.

“How may interactions did a teacher have with a student?”

“How many of these were quality interactions?”

“And, what did the teacher and student do with their quality interactions?”

Like watching soccer, I visit classrooms to watch and listen for how a teacher causes each child in class to learn in that specific period of instruction. Unlike my viewing of soccer, I know what quality touches or interactions in a classroom look, sound and feel like. I look for a teacher’s intentional touches.

  • Questions or statements a teacher directs at the class or at a particular group of students to cause them to think and respond, to apply a problem resolution and share their solution with classmates, and to ask questions or make statements to set up the next questions.
  • Questions asked of a specific student to elicit a specific response.
  • Kicked questions that use one student’s response to seek agreement or disagreement from another student or to ask for add-on thinking from successive students.
  • Questions that are not to be answered immediately, but after more information and thinking have been exposed.
  • Questions that expose students’ readiness for the next teaching.

I listen for student questions and statements that expose what they know and can do with confidence, what they are unsure of, and what is just plain misunderstood. And, I listen for the teacher’s responses, the touches that reinforce, build confidence, clarify and correct. This type of interaction is essential. If there is a strong sense of teamwork between students and their teacher, I expect to hear these touches all the time. If there is no trust between students and their teacher, students will not risk exposing their uncertainties.

The sociometrics of classroom interactions are fascinating and telling. When the interactions ping-pong around between teacher and students, kids are scoring all the time. When the interactions are stilted, contrived, unidirectional, and closed, there is little scoring. Students just wait for the quiz or test without confidence that every student is able to share in a good score.

Interactions can be questions, as shown above. Interactions can be visual looks of support and reinforcement, quizzical looks that ask a question without words, a physical proximity that says “I care”, a kneeling down next to a child’s chair to make a conversation private, and a smile to say “well done.” A tally of the interactions between a teacher and all the students in a class rises to the thousands every day. How many are quality interactions?

For teachers, the ability to make quality interactions is a learned and acquired skill set. It is intentional within a teaching and learning design. It is mentally rehearsed. It is practiced often enough that students will risk their engagement. Good interactions beget more good interactions. Quality interactions are the heart and soul of good teaching.

Every now and then, I hear teacher-talk that sounds like kid-talk about their soccer game, talking about how well a teaching episode felt as a result of quality interactions. Teachers know all about quality and no-quality touches with students.  The task is increase the number of quality, diminish the number of no-quality, and improve the likelihood of student scoring.  Goal!!!!!!

If Students Did Not Learn, Were They Taught? No

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Start with this thought experiment.  “If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it, did it really fall?”  You’ve heard it before.  It poses the relationship between observation and perception.  If you cannot observe something, it becomes hard to prove that it scientifically exists.  Similarly, Einstein posited that “…the moon does not exist if no one is looking at it.”  Now, extend the thought experiment to this:  “If I taught my students a unit of instruction and they did not learn it, did I really teach them anything?”  The answer is no.

Like observing a tree falling in the forest or the moon in a nighttime sky, the perception of teaching requires an observation of learning evidence in order to prove the reality that teaching occurred.  Just as George Bernard Shaw could not disprove Einstein’s statement that the moon must be observed to prove it exists, a demonstration of successful learning is required proof of successful teaching.

Given the above, why are educational leaders loath to be so direct in their evaluation of teaching?  Why do we place more emphasis on the delivery of instruction than on the learning outcomes teaching is designed to cause?  This is true.  Our scenarios for determining educator effectiveness show that a teacher who demonstrates high scores in the use of models of instructional delivery that result in lower scores of student achievement will be rated higher than a teacher who demonstrates low scores in instructional delivery that results in higher scores of student achievement.  Teaching practices are prioritized over student learning.  Why?

We want there to be a direct cause-effect line between a set of teaching practices and student learning.  But there are variables in the learner that disrupt this causation, we are told.  We know this by the ways in which we manipulate student achievement data based upon the presence of students with special education needs, who live in poverty or unstable home environments, are effected by drug and violence in their community, and attend schools with higher percentages of similar students.  Institutionally, we posit that these students will not demonstrate high levels of achievement in learning as compared with students without these challenges.

Yet, there are many stories of success with highly diverse students.  In each of these stories, teachers who add “the art of teaching” to the science of effective teaching practices find ways to connect their teaching to their students and cause high learning achievements.  These teachers observe falling trees and a nighttime moon, because they are present in ways that exceed and/or differ from the standardized instructional practices.

I refer to Billy Bean in the movie Money Ball.  “If he is a good hitter, why doesn’t he hit good.  We need more players that hit good.”  For Bean, the batter’s technical skills were not as important as the batter’s ability to get on base.  For educators, the teacher’s technical skills matter but not as much as the teacher’s ability to cause all children to successfully learn their grade level or course curriculum.  We need to prioritize our teachers who cause children to get on base and score with high regularity.  Otherwise, a teacher can teach a classroom empty of students or full of inattentive students and still believe that teaching occurred.  Without learning, there is no teaching.

(Prioritizing learning outcomes does not condone a reaching of achievement measures by any means possible.  Breaching professional ethics can and should lead to loss of employment and/or incarceration.)