This always seems to be one of those "beginning of the year ice-breaker" questions used in many faculty & staff meetings. In fact, a version of it was asked today in a back-to-school meeting that I attended with a group of teacher leaders.

So I am curious -- what DID YOU read over this past summer vacation?

Your answers can include work/education related books as well as other books. Post your responses in the comments -- I am really looking forward to seeing many responses and possibly learning about some great new books to read!

Here are my responses:

Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education

I have a great deal to say about this book but will save it for an upcoming blog post. It was fascinating to read and I do recommend it for anyone concerned with the state/progress of school reform in our country. It's a great follow-up text to Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns and it makes for some powerful text-based discussions around the factors that aid or impede school improvement and reform -- whether you agree with the authors viewpoints or not.

Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time

I have not yet finished this book, but I am enjoying it. It's a bit lighter than some of the other books that I have read recently, but it touches on a serious subject. I am sure I am behind the curve on reading this one -- it seems as if many people I know have already read it. Oh well, better late than never!

And of course, I've also been doing lots of reading with my kids! Some of the new books we read this summer include: What's Happening at the Zoo, There's a Mouse About the House, The Dinosaur, and That's Not My Monkey :-)

Now it's your turn... what did you read this summer?

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Stephanie Sandifer
Blogs: Change Agency and Young Readers
Author of “Wikified Schools”

Posted by LeaderTalk Contributor at 10:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

I checked the Houston Chronicle website this morning as I always do on Sundays and I was pleasantly surprised to see an article/interview with one of our local high school principals who achieved great success with her school this year.

Jane Crump, the principal highlighted in this article, is also one of my closest friends and I know that the success of the students and teachers in her school are a reflection of her leadership style. She was selected last summer to lead the 10th-12th grade campus at a high school that the state had designated as being in need of restructuring after several years of unacceptable academic ratings. As the article on the Houston Chronicle states, in one year she took the campus from "unacceptable" to "recognized" -- completely skipping the "acceptable" rating and earning the second-highest academic rating given to schools by the state.

I can't begin to list all of the things that she did this past year to get the school to move up two ratings, but I can tell you the leadership qualities that she possesses that enabled her to achieve this success:

-- She has sincere love for children and for their individual success
-- She believes strongly in supporting teachers and doing everything to help them be successful
-- She hires strong leaders for her leadership team
-- She knows what good instruction looks like and feels like in the classroom (she was an excellent classroom teacher herself)
-- She knows how to create a positive and nurturing school culture and climate
-- She sets high expectations for everyone -- including herself
-- She relies on a support network of other strong school leaders (her own PLN)
-- She views the students as if each one were her own child and she works hard to create a learning environment that she would want for her own child
-- She celebrates success often
-- She "feeds" her faculty and staff (literally and emotionally)
-- She works hard to maintain a positive attitude even when the odds are against her
-- She mentors and supports others on her staff to be leaders and she supports shared/distributed leadership

I am sure that many of those qualities are familiar to all of you who have read any of the books and resources on effective leadership. The difference for me is that I rarely see ALL of these qualities in one person, and I rarely see these expressed through genuine actions rather than just through words and "mission statements." She lives these qualities. I truly wish we could clone her for the many schools that need effective leadership.

Jane -- my hat is off to you and your successful students! All of you worked very hard this year and it paid off. I wish you the very best success and continued improvement in the 2009-2010 school year!

Stephanie Sandifer
Blogs: Change Agency and Young Readers
Author of “Wikified Schools”

Posted by LeaderTalk Contributor at 3:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been hearing that phrase quite a bit lately -- especially from people who aren't happy with some of the “other duties” they've been assigned because the other duties are not aligned with 1) their job, 2) their skills set, or because the other duties take so much time away from their core job duties that they aren't able to perform their core duties. I now work in the central office (I am hearing these complaints from people on campuses), but I have been on a campus in an administrative position and I know all too well the pressures that come with the job. I know that too often decisions about duties can be made quickly without much thought about who, when, where, and why.

In the book “Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done” (Larry Bossidy, Ram Charan, Charles Burck), the authors list one of the “building blocks” of getting things done as “Having the Right People in the Right Place.” In fact, in the title of the chapter on this building block, the authors describe this as the one “job no leader should delegate.” The authors state:

An organization's human beings are its most reliable resource for generating excellent results year after year. Their judgments, experiences, and capabilities make the difference between success and failure. Yet the same leaders who exclaim that “people are our most important asset” usually do not think very hard about choosing the right people for the right jobs. They and their organizations don't have precise ideas about what jobs require--not only today, but tomorrow--and what kind of people they need to fill those jobs.

As I read that passage I also reflected on the idea that in some cases, on some campuses, the wrong people are assigned to the wrong duties because the leaders really aren't clear on what the core jobs of those people really are -- so the leader assigns “other duties” that conflict with the core job simply because they don't have the knowledge that they need about the person's core job.

The authors go on to explain that:

Common sense tells us the right people have to be in the right jobs. Yet so often they aren't. What accounts for the mismatches you see every day? The leaders may pick people with whom they are comfortable, rather than others who have better skills for the job. They may not have the courage to discriminate between strong and weak performers and take the necessary actions. All of these reflect on absolutely fundamental shortcoming: The leaders aren't personally committed to the people process and deeply engaged in it.

Do you know all of the strengths, weaknesses, talents, and interests of all of the people in your organization? Do you understand what their core job entails with regard to information processing, time, energy, and critical thinking? Do you know who on your staff really is the “right pick” for the multitude of “other duties”?

Or do you operate in what I refer to as the “warm body zone” where other duties are just assigned randomly with no deep consideration of which team member might really be the best fit for the job?

How do we become deeply engaged in the people process to ensure that we are putting the right people in the right places?

• We must take the time to know our people...
• We must take the time to understand what their current jobs are and what those jobs demand of them...
• We must know our people well enough to understand their strengths, areas for growth, talents, interests, and career aspirations...
• We must understand what each “extra duty” requires and what skill sets are essential for each duty...
• We must become good “match-makers” between people and tasks...

What else would you add to this list?

Do you have a successful process for “match-making” in your organization? How do you put the right people in the right places?

Stephanie Sandifer
Blog: Change Agency
Author of Wikified Schools

Posted by LeaderTalk Contributor at 7:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

When I received an HP iPAQ several years ago, I immediately began wondering how I might be able to use it to improve classroom observations. I was in a school improvement leadership position at the time that required me to collect data from classroom observations, and this was a difficult process with the traditional pen-and-paper methods we were using at the time. The administrators on campus were used to using printed observation forms that did not allow for easily accessible data. Documentation was also not uniform, which made proper data collection nearly impossible at the time.

I played around with the use of an open-source survey package installed on my own server and found that the survey form it generated was very easy to view and complete in the browser of my iPAQ. However, I was the only campus administrator at the time with an iPAQ. Times have changed and now most of the campus administrators that I know have some type of mobile device that allows them to view some web-based tools through a browser installed on the device. My BlackBerry Curve works as well if not better than my old iPAQ when it comes to viewing web pages.

I now work as a district-level administrator and one of my responsibilities involves working with and supporting a large network of campus-based Literacy Coaches. Our district has made a commitment to improving the quality of literacy instruction at all levels, and with this commitment comes a certain amount of monitoring. That translates to classroom visits.

One of the solutions that I am currently working on for this is the use of Google Forms to create an easy-to-use walk-through form that can be accessed through any mobile device. Not only is this solution a wonderful alternative to printed forms for collecting and analyzing data (it all goes directly into a spreadsheet where the data can later be sorted, disaggregated, and analyzed very easily), it also allows for a great deal of flexibility. I am not stuck with one form forever. If for some reason we decide we only want to target one specific literacy area or strategy, a form can be created quickly and easily that allows us to concentrate on the one specific area for as many observations as we need at that time.

How easy is this to do? Here are the steps:

1) Create a Google Docs account if you do not already have one.

2) Under the "New" menu, select "Form."

3) Give your new Form a title (and any explanatory text if needed) and begin entering your questions. Response options allow for short text (names, course titles, sections or time periods), paragraph text (for open-ended narratives of observations), to multiple choice (for observations rubrics or a continuum -- I prefer not to use the term "checklists").

4) After you have created all of the questions you want on your form, click on the "save" button in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.

5) Click "See Responses" and select "Spreadsheet" to go directly to the Google Spreadsheet where the entered data can be manipulated later.

6) In the Spreadsheet View, go to "Send Form" to email the new Form to yourself (or to other members of the team who will be conducting the walk-throughs).

7) Check your email through your mobile device and click on the first link in the email from your Google Form. This will open the browser on your device and take you directly to the form.

In order to use the form multiple times for multiple observations, you can use your mobile device's "back" button (too many options on too many devices for me to explain which button it might be on your device -- consult your device manual), and this should bring you back to the form page after data has been entered. If the old data is showing on the form, simply type over it and resubmit to enter the new data. If you don't think this method will work, try it with sample data in your computer browser first and watch the new data appear instantly in the Google Spreadsheet.

I think it is important to stress that I DO NOT recommend this as an option for coaching walk-throughs. This is simply a quick, easy, and free solution to collecting classroom observation data for a variety of data review & analysis purposes.

Many of you may already have a mobile solution for collecting walk-through data, however, some school districts (or schools) are not able to purchase existing packages from vendors. For those schools and districts that do not already have a solution, this may be a viable option for collecting this valuable data.

What other free, DIY solutions have you discovered for performing daily activities?

Stephanie Sandifer
Blog: Change Agency
Author of Wikified Schools

Posted by LeaderTalk Contributor at 4:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A couple of months ago I wrote a post introducing a dilemma that my colleagues and I have been struggling to solve. The dilemma essentially is "How do leaders ensure that teachers are implementing best practices at a rigorous level in their classrooms?"

This year we launched a major literacy initiative (really just a major expansion of an existing initiative) and along with that we introduced "Literacy Commitments" to increase the use of literacy skills across the curriculum. Nearly all of our middle schools and high schools have a Literacy Coach assigned to their campus and this person is charged with increasing adult capacity for using literacy skills in their classrooms. This does not mean that all teachers will become reading teachers, but that all teachers will employ effective strategies that improve students' abilities to read, write, speak, listen, and think about the academic content of each class. How do we read and write about science? What is the language of mathematics and how do we speak it? What are the common "academic vocabulary" words that are universal and used across the curriculum?

The campus literacy coaches work one-on-one with individual teachers and in small groups with departments or Professional Learning Communities, and they use coaching methods to help teachers improve their use of strategies to increase literacy in all content areas. The expectations for this coaching are that we should see an increase in the use of literacy strategies in the classrooms and eventually an improvement in student academic achievement. No specific strategies are prescribed by the district to any campus, but all faculty and staff were provided with a booklet describing (with examples) ten research-based "best practices" that they could use. In most cases, the administrators allowed teacher teams on their campuses to review the materials and to select one or two strategies that were appropriate for their content area that they could all agree to implement during the school year.

After visiting a few campuses we realized that we were seeing an increase in the use of the "best practices," but I had a recurring, nagging thought running through my head about what we were observing. Was it rigorous use of a strategy if the teacher was just using an overhead to lead the students through it while they copied everything onto their papers? Was it rigorous use if the primary method of instruction was still just lecture and note-taking? Unable to shake the feeling that what we were seeing was base-level compliance I shared my doubts with colleagues and we engaged in many in-depth conversations around the issue. In the end we realized that all of the "best practices" could be used in multiple ways across a continuum that on one end was more passive, teacher-centered, and less rigorous and on the other end was more engaging, student-centered and highly rigorous.

We are now in the final stages of sharing an evolving "tool" with our campus leaders that we hope will be a catalyst for professional conversations on our campuses around the concept of what rigor looks, feels, and sounds like in the classroom. The danger of course is that the tool we created will become just another checklist for administrators to use in walkthroughs, but we are hoping that our message to campus leadership is very clear: This "Rigor Continuum" should be used as a talking point to engage teachers in a discussion around the nature of engaging, rigorous, and effective facilitation of learning. The power in the tool comes from the conversations and not from the tool itself.

Feel free to download and use our current "draft" of this continuum, and feel free to make changes in order to fit the needs of your campus or district. You may already have some other strategies that you are using in your work to improve the depth and quality of student learning in your classrooms. If so, please share those strategies in the comments on this post.

Regardless of what tools, checklists, or rubrics we use in our work, we must always remember that all of them are less effective than the professional conversations around effective facilitation of learning.

Stephanie Sandifer
Change Agency

Posted by LeaderTalk Contributor at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)