Category Archives: Blog

Rules Should Serve Kids Not Adults

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Today it’s cell phones and backpacks.  Depending upon your generation, it was chewing gum, the length of girls’ skirts, boys’ low-slung jeans and exposed boxers, high school boys with face hair, or checking that every child showered after PE class.  There always has been a rule that school enforces upon children, an arbitrary rule with disciplinary repercussions. Why?

Pecking order of rules.

School rules fall into a pecking order.  There are hard and fast rules and soft and contextual rules.  At the top of the order are the generalized, little argument, good for everyone rules.  They read like a Ten Commandments for students.  Respect one another.  No fighting.  No weapons.  No drugs.  No stealing.  No cheating.  Stay seated while the bus is moving.  These Commandments don’t need a lot of retelling to children and don’t get push back unless a child is caught breaking one of them.  Even then, harsh consequences are understood because breaking one of these is a school sin.

In the middle of the order are rules that make sense if someone is watching.  No running in the hallways.  Don’t cut in line.  No talking during tests.  Do your own homework.  These rules make sense even when they curb what children would like to do without a rule saying “don’t”.  Lots of children break these rules with a “no harm, no foul” mentality.  The usual consequences for infractions of these middle order rules are middle order punishments. “Go to the back of the line” and “Go back and let me see you walk without running”.  Most children view these as “if you do the crime, spend the time” rules.

At the bottom of the pecking order are the arbitrary rules that are either irrational to children or are purposefully confrontational.  Today, these include rules about cell phones, use of AI, social media, and gender-based rules.  In yesteryear, these included rules about clothing, hair, language, and gum chewing.  Children know a rule is arbitrary when the school rationalization boils down to “because we say so!”.

Need for school rules.

It is hard to conceive of a place where hundreds to a thousand or more children, or adults for that matter, gather without some overarching understanding of orderliness.  Rules rule for orderliness.  We believe that a lack of understood rules creates conditions as in Lord of the Flies or the “wild west”.  To prevent school anarchy every state constitution assigns its department of education and local school boards the responsibility of propagating school rules.   

“Should schools have rules?  Obviously, yes.  No one – I think – disputes the necessity of having rules that keep people safe and make life easier and more pleasant for everyone involved.  So, a full setting out of acceptable behavior in a science lab or tech workshop is clearly important and sensible.  Rules governing minimum expectations of how students should behave in classrooms and social spaces are also desirable, as are rules about how teachers should and should not interact with children.”

Rules, however, do not make conditions orderly.  It is the people who enforce the rules who create order.  Therein, lies one of the rubs of arbitrary school rules.

“Teachers are woefully, incredibly, amazingly undertrained on the behavioral issues,” Wells says. “Teacher training today looks a lot like it did in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s. The typical teacher training tends to be about 80 percent content, on academics and curriculum, then 20 percent on the human factor. If you ask a teacher how many days they’ve had dominated by content, they just laugh. Their days are dominated by bad behavior.

Schools continue to prepare teachers for Beaver Cleaver and the 1950s. You talk to teachers, they’ll tell you they’ve got Beavis and Butthead. We’ve got a profound mismatch going on.

When a teacher feels he or she is losing control, Wells says the natural impulse is to start piling up arbitrary rules to regain some sort of order.”

Digging Into Seemingly Arbitrary School Rules

In most teacher preparation programs, a teacher-to-be completes one course in child development and one course in classroom behavior management.  These six credits are contrasted to the other 114 content, pedagogical, and student teaching credits in a typical 120 credit requirement for a BA in education. 

Teachers are indeed woefully unprepared to deal with a class, a grade level, and a school of contemporary children.  If teachers spent more time in the field study of child behaviors, the psychology of changing behaviors, and did clinical work in the negotiated management of children, we would see a great reduction in teacher stress and children’s confrontation with school authority.  But the institution of teacher prep is not going to change.

Hence, arbitrary.

As educators, we get to being arbitrary quickly when confronted with child behaviors we can not easily change with Commandments or Makes Sense rules.  The hardest confrontations today between teachers and children are cultural, generational, technology-based, and gender related.  There are issues in each of these categories for which children today and adults of yesterday do not see eye to eye.  In fact, they are flat out oppositional and each side digs in for battle with little provocation.

This is not new.  Speech and dress and the right to protest rocks schools in the 60s and 70s.  Smoking and marijuana created trench warfare in the 70s, 80s and 90s.  Every issue was addressed with specific, “don’t you dare, kiddo” rules with punishments beginning with suspension and moving immediately to expulsion.  Schools carved out the cancers of defiance with hard justice.

As soon as a cell phone carried the Internet, phones in schools became the line in the sand not to be crossed.  Kids of all ages engaged in social media and texting holding their phones under their desk or table.  Just like POWs in enemy prisons, kids improvised and learned to text each other blindly with their phones in their pockets.  Genius, but against the rules.

Now it is AI.  “More than 4 in 10 teens are likely to use AI to do their schoolwork instead of doing it themselves this coming school year, according to a new survey.  But 670 percent of teens consider using AI for schoolwork as cheating, according to the nationally representative survey of 1,006 13- to 17-year-olds conducted by research firm Big Village in July for the nonprofit Junior Achievement.”

https://www.edweek.org/technology/teens-will-use-ai-for-schoolwork-but-most-think-its-cheating-survey-says/2023/07

The bad news is that although they consider it cheating, 40% of teens are likely to use AI for school assignments and claim the work as their own.  The good news is that many educators are using in-class targeted assessments instead of larger scale assignments and take-home tests.  Schools also use AI to detect AI.  The harsh news is that developers, mainly kids, develop programs to get around AI detection as fast as schools adopt detection. 

The Big Duh!

We adults tend to forget that the purpose of school is to prepare children for life after school.  We substitute the message that each grade prepares a child for the next and elementary for secondary school, and high school for college.  It is not so.  Public education prepares children for life after school and for a growing number of children, that means work not college.  The rules we create should have some basis in the real world.  Rules for our youngest should mirror child development in the homes of our community.  Rules for our oldest should mirror the rules they will find after graduation. 

Our School Commandment rules are sound and eternal in a school setting.  Our middle order rules also are sound, and their purpose is close to eternal in school setting.  They keep school from being the Wild West.  It is our arbitrary rules that cause us to woe.  We must find alternative ways to get around the swamps.

For example, due to school violence and school closings and changes in school activities, parents want their upper elementary through high school children to have immediate communication options with their parents and parents with their children.  It is not the cell phone that is the problem but the smartphone.  If schools are going to bar or bag smartphones, then provide every child with a simple cell phone with no Internet.  When a crisis or emergency hits, a school’s Wi-Fi is overwhelmed.  The cost of simple, no Internet cell phones is less than the time, energy, and hassling over student abuse of smartphones.

For example, the use of AI only grows.  In the non-school world, collaboration is valued whereas in the school world we want a student’s original work.  Make high stakes assessments paper and pencil and focus formative assignments on information gathering and synthesis and collaboration.  AI lives in the non-school world so make school AI parallel.

For example, remember that our nation was and is a melting pot of world cultures.  Learn from others as they learn from our culture, whatever that may be.  Don’t put up walls; keep the spoon stirring in the melting pot.  Be inclusive not exclusive.

And every adult in school needs to remember they are there only because kids are there! 

Do I Teach Subjects to Children or Children to Understand Subjects?  Huh?

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“I am a teacher.  I am a licensed social studies teacher.  My teaching assignment is middle school social studies; 7th and 8th grade, to be exact.  These are statements about my profession, my licensure, and my teaching assignment.  They are facts.

This is the question I answer every day.  Do I teach social studies to children, or do I teach children to understand the social studies?  How I answer the question makes a world of difference to me and to the outcomes of my teaching.  The answer is not a fact but a disposition about the purpose of teaching.

When you construct these statements about yourself, substituting your teaching license and your teaching assignment, how do you answer the question regarding the teaching of curriculum or the teaching of children?  The direct object of your statement indicates the focus of your teaching.”

I pose the above to adults who want to enroll in our post-baccalaureate teacher licensing program.  The completion of the program produces a teaching license.  However, from the get-go, I want each person to pre-consider the kind of teacher they will become.  Will they teach curriculum to children or teach children to understand curriculum?  I tell each person “The children you teach will know the difference on the first day they sit before you”.

Usually, these enrollees ask me for more information.  “How are these two things different – teaching subjects to children or children to understand subjects?”.  My response is “I will ask you this question again mid-way through your program.  I also will ask you to explain your response in a manner that exemplifies your role as a professional educator.  If you don’t understand the difference between teaching subjects to children or children to understand subjects by that time, we will discuss your future as a teacher”.

There are some questions that need to be answered.  The disposition of teachers toward the subjects and the children they teach lives out every day in their classrooms.  Teachers must know why they teach.

Personally, and professionally, choose this answer.  I teach children to understand the social studies.

Disaggregated, There Is a Vast Difference in Teachers

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Teachers are a vast hodgepodge of people.  They come in all colors, shapes and sizes, and from the wide spectrum of cultural and socio-economic backgrounds.  At one point, each decided to be a teacher.  Some early in life, the majority during their education, and others after experiencing other vocations.  Each is the product of an educator preparation program.  Each has earned a baccalaureate or more degrees and each carry one or more teaching licenses.  As practitioners today, they range from first year teachers to four decade-long veterans.  Teachers also range across the spectrum of effectiveness.  That describes the hodgepodge of our profession.

Question?

If a teacher teaches a lesson and no one learns, did the teacher really teach?  Though a play on Cartesian logic, it is a question that is asked everyday about teachers.  We teach to cause children to learn. 

Every day there are millions of lessons taught in our schools.  A lesson is a complicated dance requiring teaching skills, teacher empathy, child readiness to learn, and child engagement with the teaching.  Teachers know the dance steps but too often their teaching does not lead to learning.  Some point to the other person(s) in the room – children.  “Only if the children …” is their lament.  Others point to the current morass of distractions confronting teaching and learning.  Technology, social media, unstable home life, poverty, harassment from their peers – take your pick, they each bear guilt.  On the Cartesian other hand, if a teacher teaches a lesson and every child learns, the teacher really did teach.

Not all teachers are created equal.

The following may be generalizations about teachers, but when you close your office or classroom door and consider your faculty peers, their names and faces fall into these.

We know teachers who have learned instruction as a form of mechanical teaching.  They can construct lessons.  They also know their curriculum.  They can attach content knowledge and skill development to their instruction.  They teach and some children learn some things sometimes.  If these teachers were inspired and excited about learning and if they were “connected” to the children they taught, the results would be different.  But they are not

We know teachers who innately care about children and in return children respond to them.  Their classrooms are happy and exciting places.  They teach and children engage because the teacher cares about them, their school life and their home life.  Children hear and see and do and learn something sometimes. However, being happy and excited overpowers their constructive instruction.  Class time is full of talk and activity and excitement, but their instruction is not focused and scaffolded to build learning outcomes.  These teachers are liked by children, but these students will need reteaching next year of what they did not learn this year.

We know teachers who can deliver high quality instruction and innately care about children.  They connect their caring of the child as a unique person to their instruction of the child as a student.  Because the teacher cares about children, children care about their learning what the teacher teaches.  These classrooms combine a caring and inspired teacher with honed and effective teaching skills with children who are wanting and ready to learn.  Children learn.

The crux.

We can teach teachers pedagogy.  We can teach teachers the content and skills of their curricular disciplines.  We can purchase and provide all the curricular print and media, install and train teachers in the appropriate technologies, employ simulations and games in a rich educational environment.  But we cannot teach teachers innate caring.  The amorphous “teacher’s heart” is a variable we cannot grow.

On the positive side, we can train teachers to be responders to child needs.  As trained teachers, they do wonders in assuring that children have the support and programs they need in school.  Training is what moves children from hunger to being fed, unclothed to being clothed.  Training helps them respond to students who are victims of bullying and harassment and low socio-emotional self-esteem.  As trained teachers, they can implement their training, but training is not caring.  There is a difference between caring that is from the heart and caring that is a trained response to need.

Our reality.

There is not a shortage of people who completed teacher preparation programs and are licensed to teach.  There is a shortage of licensed teachers who want to be in classrooms.  We need to acknowledge the latter.

As another generalization, the low arc of teacher compensation over the first decade of employment and the low esteem the public has for public school teachers means that undergraduates in the top half of their graduating class do not choose education as a degree program.  Engineering, medicine, law, and business draw the top half of each graduating class. 

The same reasons have diminished the annual numbers of graduates with a teaching license.  In yesteryear, a district posting a teaching vacancy could expect dozens to a hundred applications.  Today districts are lucky to receive five applications, and some postings result in zero applicants.

The shortage issue has caused state government to open apprenticeship pathways to a teaching license.  People without teaching licenses are hired by school districts on the condition that this person enrolls in a teacher preparation program.  Concurrently, these unlicensed teachers teach and learn how to teach.  Understand clearly that school boards are happy to have a teacher of any dimension in the classroom even as they acknowledge apprentice teachers are not yet trained teachers. 

This introduces a new category to our generalizations about teachers.

  • The inspired, caring, highly effective teacher who causes successful student learning and growth.
  • The caring teacher who engages children socially and emotionally and causes some children to learn some things sometimes.
  • The technically-efficiently but emotionally vague teacher who constructs lessons and causes some children to learn something sometimes.
  • The apprentice teacher who is learning how to teach on the job.

The Big Duh!

We need to know our teachers and their widely differentiated qualities and understand what we settle for when we place every teacher in a classroom.  Children know the difference, so should we.

When Trust Is Reciprocal, Great Things Happen

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“In my last visits to your classroom, I was not certain I was in a math class.  You and your students were talking about current events on three consecutive days”, her principal told her.

“It’s my classroom and I will determine what my students do there”, she told her principal.

“All of your students made good progress this year as we look at fall and spring assessments.  Your tier 2 attention to a handful who had some significant gaps last fall really paid off”, her principal said in the last weeks of the school year.

The tension between a principal’s supervision of teaching and student learning and a teacher’s freedom to teach is real.  Principals and teachers each have skin in the game of what is taught, how it is taught, and the outcomes of student instruction.  The tension is a positive force when both parties understand their roles and responsibilities.  Tension becomes negative when either party strays into the other’s role and responsibility.  At its best, the tension is shared, and each trusts the other as a professional.  At its worst, it is a drama and a showdown.

A principal’s role and responsibility.

Principals are the working interface between school board policies and approved curricula and the classrooms, theaters, libraries, and fields where teaching, directing, and coaching take place.  In theory and practice, principals are instructional leaders.  It is important for all faculty to know the why and wherefore of a principal’s role and responsibility.

Principals are legally authorized to supervise teachers regarding the teacher’s curriculum and instruction.  Wisconsin state statute 118.01 directs school boards to “provide curriculum, course requirements, and instruction consistent with the goals and expectations established” in the next section of that statute.  Further, statute 118.24 speaks to the employment of a district administrator and school principals to “supervise the professional work” of the school district.  And statute 120.12(2m) directs school boards, typically through school principals, to “evaluate the effectiveness of each teacher … using either the system established under (statute), or the equivalency process established by rule …”.

School boards use this authority to set the principal’s job description and responsibilities.  One of the universal duties of a school principal is to supervise/evaluate the professional work of the faculty and ensure fidelity of instruction with the school board’s approved curriculum.  This responsibility, as written, does not belong to anyone else in the school district, even districts with significant central office staffing.

“What” principals are to do is enunciated in policy and job description.  “How” they do it is not specified and the “how” contributes to the quality of the tension.  The best analogy is this – teachers instruct children in the classroom and principals instruct faculty and staff in the schoolhouse.  Using this analogy, a principal’s curriculum and instructional strategies are designed to cause high quality instruction in every classroom.  The “how” lies in the principal’s personal and consistent conversation and oversight of each teacher’s classroom work.  Oversight can be a talk over a cup of coffee, a focused conversation about children and their learning needs, provision and discussion of personalized coaching, and informal and formal classroom observations.  A principal’s “how” relates to her personality and ability to keep instructional leadership a top daily priority.  Too often the other principal responsibilities, like student discipline, campus supervision, filling in for absent faculty and staff, and responding to general school problems, erode a principal’s time for teacher talk and classroom visits. 

A teacher’s role and responsibility.

Teachers hold a license to teach specific subjects and grade levels of students.  Typically, school districts provide each teacher with specific students to teach and an annual curriculum to teach to those students.  These are the “who is to be instructed” and the “what is to be instructed”.  There is no language regarding “how they are to be instructed”, beyond the effective educator provisions of WI statute 120.12(2m).  Teachers have a broad reach in their choice of pedagogies to use in their teaching.  This choice is their “freedom to teach” in ways that best meet their contractual responsibilities.

Teachers are responsible for the “how” they teach.  A teacher’s instructional decisions in the units and lesson plans she designs are fully hers.  A teacher’s instructional “toolbox” will contain strategies for direct and explicit instruction, inquiry-based instruction, problem- and project-based instruction, outcome-based instruction.  Each of these strategies can be effective in causing children to learn a curriculum and one strategy may be most effective for the curricular unit being taught.  Teacher’s choice!

The concept of a teacher’s academic freedom is real.  It relates to the teacher’s decisions of how best to cause all children to be successful learners of the school curriculum.  All teachers have freedom in choosing their instructional tools.  Academic freedom, however, does not extend to decisions about what to teach.  The teacher’s contract designates the teaching position and curriculum related to the position.

Shared responsibility for learner outcomes.

At the end of the proverbial day achievements in student learning are the responsibility of both principal and teacher.  School boards and superintendents smile when student achievement demonstrates growth but look for faults and blame when achievement is not what they expect.  Then, principals are teachers share the hot seat. 

In the post-pandemic the relationship between principals and teachers has been stressed.  Some students readily re-engaged with school.  However, other students returning from remote instruction and those who fully disengaged from school instruction demonstrate a wide range of patterns in daily attendance, lost or forgotten learning, and socio-emotional problems.  Finding solutions has not been easy.  Schools with positive principal/teacher relationships sorted issues, tried solutions, and adjusted solutions together.  In other schools, disconnected students only added to the tension.

One of the indicators of relationships is teacher attrition in schools.  The patterns of principals and teachers who are leaving public education or seeking different school districts are closely related to their feeling of partnership and collaboration. 

Trust is earned.

In the decades of my experience as a teacher, principal, superintendent, and school board member, I found that trust is a reciprocal relationship.  To be trusted, one must trust.  The quickest way to create mutual trust is to recognize and honor the interfaces of roles and responsibilities of others, personally engage in consistent and constant professional conversation with every employee and celebrate not just enjoy the synergy of the environment.  When teachers trusted my leadership, they relied on me to trust them to form positive relationships with students and to use all their instructional tools to cause all children to learn.  Also, we trusted each other to always work for the best interests of our students.  Trust does not need to be complicated.

Synergy in a school is not openly discussed as much as it should be.  Call it a special place in time, synergy or the good times, happens when everyone from the superintendent to teacher to custodian to bus driver is in synch with each other.  It is when all the stars of the school universe congregate together and shine.  I observed good times that lasted from months to years.  “Lasted” is the operative word.  Schools that are recognized for excellence enjoy the synergy that creates excellence for a period but then those stars of the universe begin to drift.  People retire or move on to other positions.  Teaming that coalesced for effective work becomes individuals left to carry on.  The new personnel, as good as they may be, just don’t jive as well.  Schools still can be successful in their programs, but that special aura of camaraderie does not last.

When everyone in the schoolhouse seems happy, trust is never discussed.  When there are troubles, lack of trust is the first word spoken.  Troubles quickly divide personnel by roles and mutuality and reciprocity are abandoned.  Distrust becomes the byword.

So, what are we to do?

At their core, teaching and principaling share this similarity – they are callings.  Those who are called have an innate motivation to work with children and to help in shaping children’s lives through learning.  When we discard all the other issues of public education and recognize our mutual calling, understand the roles and relationships of a school’s organization, and place ourselves in our role with a commitment to contribute to the school’s commonwealth, it is relatively easy to synthesize a successful school.  It is when we add back all the other issues that the work becomes difficult.  So, keep it simple.  Know and build trust in each other.

Inspired Principal + Teacher Cadre = Change Agency

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Effective school leadership is a lonely voyage without collaborating partners.  When a leader understands distributed leadership and emboldens a cadre of like-minded colleagues to use their knowledge and skills to advance a school mission, loneliness turns into camaraderie.  A cadre of comrades is a powerful change agency.

Time and theory do not favor change.

In the usual pyramidal hierarchy of school personnel, a principal is assigned as its executive leader and all faculty and staff ultimately report to the principal.  When a school board recruits, selects, and hires a principal, they usually see the new principal as a change agent, a leader who will use new thinking and strategies to improve the school.  However, change does not happen with a vote.  Change is hard work.

Once seated, most principals have less than five years to implement the changes the board envisioned.   The average tenure of a school principal is 4.5 years.  Of the five reasons the National Association of Secondary School Principals identified for principal, two are directly tied to time on the job and change theory. 

  • Inadequate preparation and professional development.
  • High stakes accountability policies.

An effective leader of organizational change understands the concepts, requirements, steps, and time required to move an organization from what they have been doing in the past to what they will be doing in the future.  “In Gallup’s experience, organizations that work on changing company culture typically see the strongest gains in three to five years”.  But it takes seven to eight years for changes to be institutionalized as the ongoing company tradition.  “Mr. Principal, your time is up!”

https://www.gallup.com/workplace/471968/culture-transformation-leaders-need-know.aspx#

Decisions and actions taken by a single person that affect an entire school, although inspired and informed, have so many strikes against them from the get-go that it is unlikely any are accomplished.  A Stanford University report reiterates the findings of the Effective Schools research of the 1980s – the principal is the focal point for leading all school improvement efforts.  However, according to McKinsey studies, “70% of change initiatives fail”.  Change theory alone places a single leader against a status quo supported by those who are invested in past practices and the initial wall of resistance dooms most change efforts.  Moving from a single person leading change to collaborative leadership is essential for increasing the likelihood of success and cadre development is a principal’s best friend.

Cadre not committee.

Cadre or committee?  There is a difference.  Cadre members are committed to outcomes not school politics.  Although picked by the principal, as cadre members their voice is equal to the principal.  There is no deference given to the input of the principal.  Where committees discuss and recommend a principal’s school improvement actions, cadres members share with the principal in doing the work of school improvement.  The key is empowerment.  The difference is action versus discussion.

“Empowerment for teacher leadership is not an act of assigning roles of conferring authority but is rather a state of mind – teacher leaders embrace greater responsibility for the culture and work of their school and profession.  Teacher leaders and administrators in both formal and informal roles recognize the power and synergy that arises from a spirit of genuine collaboration – culture in which the contribution of each person is valued and respected.”

https://www.nea.org/resource-library/great-teaching-and-learning/recommendations/teacher-leader

Committees are a traditional school structure.  Whether standing or ad hoc, committees are balanced by faculty and staff representation.  Often committee membership is open only if a current member leaves.  And committee chairmanship is privileged.  Good ideas and talents too often are lost in the games of committee politics and the mechanics of chain of command decision making.

“What we know is that instructional-leadership teams, such as district and building leadership teams, have internal struggles with status because school-based leaders are member of the team, and that often means that teachers around the table do not want to speak up and challenge their supervisors.”

https://www.edweek.org/leadership/opinion-what-are-the-elements-for-a-more-impactful-focused-school-leadership-team/2021/08

Cadres are different.  Cadres lead by example, exercising individual strengths that contribute to improvement goals.  The principal is a member of the cadre, stirs the discussion, and leads the search for research-based ideas for cadre consideration.   Unlike committee structures that recommend and wait for approvals, cadre members act on consensus.  The cadre’s job is to advance and polish good ideas, create pathways within the faculty for understanding new ideas, and coaching professional development to implement school improvement.  Principal approvals are baked in because the principal is a cadre member.  It may sound camp, but the Three Musketeers’ “All for one and one for all” describes the best cadres.

Every school faculty has its in-house innovators; teachers who are out-in-front of the rest in trying new teaching, pushing for higher student performance and getting positive results.  Their colleagues know who they are.  Too often these “all stars” languish with a lack of leader recognition or diminish because they seem to compete with short-sighted administrators for the school spotlight.  Outcome-minded principals don’t see them as competitors but as co-leaders.  They encourage innovation and engage their “all stars” in constant conversation about “what ifs”.  With collegial conversations, it does not take long for partnering to begin.

Cadre leading with mindfulness.

This may be read as a cadre highjacking school leadership, but it isn’t.  The principal, the school board’s school leader, keeps cadres mindful of their mission. 

When a principal creates a leadership cadre, each person in the cadre is empowered and mutual respect is the only politic.  The cadre keeps its mind on these five steps for changing their school.

  • Aspiration.  What new outcomes are needed to improve the school? 
  • Assess.  What is the current status of these outcomes?
  • Architecture.  What “small step trainings” are required to change the current status into the desired systems and culture?
  • Act.  Rehearsing and scheduling the who does what, when, and how much of cadre-led PD.
  • Advance. Institutionalizing the new outcomes into the school’s way of life.

There is nothing magic in these 5 A’s.  They work because they are systematic.  Cadres tackle each step in its turn.  And the resulting changes are accumulative.  The more a cadre uses this plan, the more their colleagues will trust the cadre’s work.

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/how-to-double-the-odds-that-your-change-program-will-succeed

Principals lead cadres with mindfulness.

Historically, a school principal was the lead or “principal” teacher.  When a principal forms a cadre of leaders, the principal once again is the lead teacher.  Once a cadre forms, a principal must exercise team leadership and coaching mindfulness because cadres need nurturing.  Educators are human and trying to change the status quo of a school can take its toll on the cadre.  When cadre comrades observe the principal exercising the following mindset, they find it easier to persevere.

These ideas are part of a principal’s mindset.

  1. Prioritize – do a few things well
  2. Communicate – do it always and in all ways
  3. Trust- relinquish some control and build relationships
  4. Collaborate – do better together
  5. Celebrate – do it frequently and freely

https://ascd.org/blogs/5-ways-to-build-staff-leadership-in-your-school

Be the change!

Change from the top down is a mighty struggle with a low success rate and loses its efficacy the more it is used.  Change from within using a cadre as its agency has a much higher success rate and is repeatable.  Principals become one with the change when their investment in camaraderie results in cadre leadership.