When I was first told that I needed to do this, I really had no idea that it was going to be part of a consultancy protocol.  I thought it was merely a video that was being shown to the teacher leadership students as an example of what their assignment would be.  So when Ryan told me what it was really for, I was taken off guard.  Consultancy protocols usually involve a dilemma, and for the life of me I couldn’t find one.  We had already done the assignment, and we debriefed about it with the other school leadership students in groups of 3 or 4 to go over the experience.  We also wrote a two page reflection on it.   So my first reaction was that I had nothing left to say, or learn.  I was beginning to think I’d have to make something up just to make the protocol work.

So basically, it really made me think harder than I ever had before.  I challenged myself in a different way, questioning my initial thoughts.  I’m glad I did that because I actually learned quite a bit from the comments that were made.  I decided to question whether my initial plan was right in the first place.  I wanted to know what people thought about the approach I had to speaking to a new teacher.  I found out that while I may have done a good job of boosting her confidence, there were still a few places in the discussion that the door was left open for me to help her.  It made me think about the importance of planning out what to say before the debrief.  Or at least planning out more than just a simple strategy.  Rob had his checklist, and now I have mine.  The snowball is my goal.  I want to keep the criticism to one or two key points so they’re not too overwhelmed.  And I want to make sure that the teacher feels good at the end of the conversation.  I also found out from another comment that the planning stage can extend much farther than just the actual debrief.  Using the first debrief, before seeing the video, can be helpful as well.  I could’ve asked her to think about two questions she had about her teaching that she’d like to bring up after watching the video.  Make her a goal.  That way no time is wasted and the second conversation becomes more useful for the teacher.

In the end, I was extremely happy that I was able to go through the protocol.  While I didn’t think it was necessary at first, it really challenged me to go deeper and I ended up learning a lot more about debriefing than I expected.

I chose this quote because I often wonder how useful some formal meetings are.  Protocols and guidelines can help them move along and attribute to their meaning.  But it often seems that directors feel the need to have formal meetings set every day in order to promote teacher development.  This particular book addresses several protocols to make sure these formal meetings can be productive, and they have many helpful suggestions.  But I think it’s important to remember this quote, to remind us that a lot of work really gets done when we’re given the time to grow as professionals on our own.  I’ve probably gained more wisdom about teaching in one sitting at a bar with three teachers than I have at a month’s worth of formal meetings.  For instance, there was just a conference call meeting with the math organizers, to talk about how to make math meetings more meaningful.  So in essence, there was a meeting to talk about how to do another meeting.  To me that sounds ridiculous.  All the math teachers at my school talk with each other at random times:  during lunch, passing in a hall, after work, prep periods.  We help each other out so much in a completely informal basis.  We have mentors, and talk math all the time.  We set a meeting with someone else when we need to talk to them.  Yet we’re required to schedule discipline meetings and figure out a way to make those meetings meaningful.  Doesn’t that seem to be a little backwards?  When I have problems or want to grow professionally, I don’t wait for a meeting to be scheduled to improve myself.  I seek out that help immediately, when I need it.

I’m not saying that formal meetings are bad, and I’ve basically dodged the whole point of the book.  We of course need to have them.  They definitely promote professional growth, and it certainly helps to have protocols set to make them more meaningful and useful.  But most of my professional development has come informally.  I learned more from Ron Berger at the bar after his discussion than I did at his 2 hour long workshop.  I grow professionally by being surrounded by an amazing cornucopia of educational minds that I’m able to pick at the most random of times.  That’s the support structure I find valuable.

Since we’ve been talking in class about ways to support teachers in reflecting and improving their practice, I’ve been wondering how much a leader needs to actually force this formally.  One of the biggest complaints of teachers is that they need more time.  Designated formal morning meetings can cause a lot of stress leading right up to class time.  So my question is:  “Are formal meetings every day really that effective in pushing a teacher’s growth?

One thing I’ll definitely remember came from page 143:  “…at the very moment when most people become furious, we need to become curious.  Rather than respond in kind, we need to wonder what’s behind the ruckus.”  I have to give props t0 my wonderful director Janie for following this to perfection.  At a recent expulsion hearing, things became pretty intense with the parents.  At first the mother was crying, and then she got angry and accusatory.  She basically pointed out what she saw as a deficiency in our school that could have prevented her daughter from being in this situation.  I immediately became defensive, and was thinking of ways to counter-attack her assertion.  I’m glad Janie was running the meeting, because it kept my mouth shut right when I wanted to debate.  After the parents left, she pointed out that they were speaking from a place of deep frustration, and that it was best to let them vent.  She was able to take herself out of the conversation and see what was behind the parent’s comments.  The accusation the parents made had nothing to do with the real issue, so it didn’t need to be addressed during this particular conversation.  I believe we heard of a very similar Larry story during his talks with the NTC shops.  That’s what the book meant by exploring other’s paths.  Since I got a zero in that category in the online conversation skills quiz, it would be wise for me to follow some of their suggestions for improvement.   But I could honestly use a lot more than one.

Since it had me interested straight from the title, it didn’t take long for me to find a quote that struck me.  The author states immediately that real learning is encapsulated by the words: “You learn from the company you keep.”  So on page 10, he makes this quote: “I have never heard a parent say, I’m not worried about the gang my son goes with — he’s a slow learner.”  Parents know that children learn from their friends, particularly the things the parents would prefer their children not to learn.  And they also know that what their children learn this way will be very difficult to erase.  It is life-long learning.  We don’t join a club, or stay in it, if we can’t identify with the other members.  It is a frightening thought for many teachers that their students are learning all the time. ”

What I took from that is how a kid starts labeling himself as a C student and associates with that club.  Once they’re in that club, they tell themselves that they’re not good at math, or that they hate reading or history.  Once that happens, they can’t learn anything about those subjects because they’ve already convinced themselves otherwise.  So the challenge is to get kids to believe in themselves, and join a better club.  Another key point the author makes is how the actions of the teacher are actually teaching the student something as well.  If the teacher says they need to work hard at this, then they’re learning that what they’re doing is hard.  And therefore, they won’t want to do it.  That had me really thinking about how I act towards certain students.  Am I giving of a vibe to a struggling student that this is hard stuff and they need to work harder?  Is that student then just thinking that this is all too hard to deal with and therefore doesn’t care?  I’ve been watching myself lately since reading about this.

From a leadership perspective, the book gave me a lot of pride for this school, mentioning the importance of doing things.  But more directly, I was struck by this quote, on page 95: “Students, like teachers, exhibit more responsibility when more is given to them; they take the tasks they are engaged in more seriously and experience far greater satisfaction.”  This was intriguing to me because I’ve often thought about what the different teachers are teaching in their classrooms as far as curriculum.  I’ve heard how this school enjoys and encourages the classes going in different directions based on the passions of the teachers.  I’m not sure if I’ve ever completely bought into that.  But after reading this, I think I understand it now.  Giving the teachers more responsibility can produce such a greater reward.  I just forgot the different kind of learning that was going on, and I appreciate it much more.  It makes the role of a leader much different at this school than say a corporation.  Or maybe that’s the way a corporation should be led as well.

This book made me think about a lot of my flaws.  Which is why I chose this passage as my quote on page 93: “Another lesson I learned in Alaska was the importance of context.  In education, we set about solving educational problems as if they exist in a vacuum.  We isolate the problem and then seek technical solutions…Certainly some of those solutions might promote reading and writing, but I knew from my own experience that the “problem” might be deeper, related to more than the technical skills of literacy.”

This quote was in reference to teaching literacy to native americans and how the author needed to think beyond the standard technical solutions that promoted silent reading, as the new philosophies had recommended.  He talked to the local teachers to see that in their culture, reading aloud in a circle gives more impact.  We often talk about finding different ways to teach a kid that’s struggling, and I’m aware of that in my classroom when it comes to math.  But I found that I’m not so aware of that when it comes to the school’s overall teaching philosophy.  Whether by ignorance, or school pride or selfish ego, I looked at project based learning not just as a good way to teach kids, but the only way.  I felt so much pride in this philosophy and school that I unknowingly put myself up on a pedastal when talking to other teachers at other schools.  How incredibly pompous of me?  I looked back to last week’s master’s meeting at how I felt threatened by the thought of online learning, and felt compelled to compare and contrast it to what we do at our schools and what I bring to the table as a teacher.  But what that quote made me realize is that there’s not just one way to teach, or one philosophy to use, when it comes to education.  I was a straightforward learner in math, and didn’t like or need manipulatives or projects to understand the material.  I wanted more problems and more sheets and more stuff to learn.  Some kids in my class are like that.  And there are a lot of kids in the world that are like that.  So it makes sense that there are a lot of people that would love online learning.  It’s like Stacey brought up.  Introducing it is the key to see what happens with it.  Just another way to teach that may end up being fantastic.

Then as if in some karma like thing, the same situation was brought up in our staff meeting today.  Many teachers weren’t happy about doing advisory comments, and wanted them to be eliminated.  They cited reasons like they were difficult to write because they didn’t really know the kids that well, or it was a waste of time, or they’re not useful for parents, etc.  The technical solution would be to eliminate them.  But Janie brought up the context of it.  If we don’t know our advisees well enough to write about them, then maybe we need to take a look at advisory.  A wonderful conversation turned up in response to that.  But I found it interesting to see how it dealt with the same issue of context vs. technical.  Our staff has a culture that’s different and needs to be understood as well.

He started talking about how each student learns differently in the first chapter, which is also a core belief of mine.  The particular line I liked best was in reference to a teacher that didn’t have time to help a struggling student: “His experience as a teacher has taught him to triage: some students get it, and others don’t.  In a school this big, what could he do?”  Now the book was speaking to me.  I felt good again about how we try to individualize instruction to every student at our school.  We may not always succeed, but at least we realize the importance of differentiated instruction as opposed to ability grouping.

From a leadership perspective, the section that struck me the most was about research.  On page 160: “There is a lot of education research.  Some is filled with mountains of statistical evidence, while other research examines case studies of randomized control trials.  But the statistically valid research too often leads nowhere…. So many talented, committed people work so hard to improve public schools and yet get disappointing results because the research they follow is preliminary and incomplete.”  There’s a lot of research about what doesn’t work.  But not a lot about what to do in order to fix it.  Conclusions seem to be drawn too quickly and hastily following a lot of this research, and I wonder how often we react too quickly on research ourselves.  It makes me truly appreciate the internal credentialing program we have, allowing our research to come from our own model.

During the debrief,  I saw some candidates get 1′s and 2′s that I happened to give a 3 for.  Since a “1″ is explained to mean you just can’t work with that person, I started to wonder if that was the great teacher that we were letting slip away.  I then thought back to earlier bonanzas, and people that I had given a 1 or a 2, and some of them are working here right now.  My small impression of them was completely wrong, because those particular people are now awesome teachers, and even good friends of mine.  So I’m obviously not very good at picking ‘em!  My point is that for me it seems to be too small of a snapshot to be able to determine such an important thing.  I liked Ryan’s idea to have a teacher appointed to a candidate for the full day.  So at least someone gets a true view of the candidate as a person and a teacher.

Of course I’m nitpicking here.  After hearing the way other schools are forced to hire teachers, it blows that process away.  I remember the guest principal we invited to class talking about how she is forced to hire certain people that other principals find to be incompetent.  Or the fact that each teacher that was allowed to interview the candidate had to ask the exact same questions without any follow up questions.  I can’t imagine having to deal with hiring that way.