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CHAPTER 1

Charting a Course Focused on Learning

Indeed, there are virtually no documented instances of troubled schools being turned around without intervention by a powerful leader. Many other factors may contribute to such turnarounds, but leadership is the catalyst.

—Kenneth Leithwood, Karen Seashore Louis, Stephen Anderson, and Kyla Wahlstrom

It was October at Grant High School when the newly assigned principal realized that 204 of the 264 seniors were not on track to graduate that year. Most of them had not passed the state end-of-year assessment or had failed required courses. As Sharon, the school-improvement coach for the PLC at Work process (DuFour et al., 2016), met with the new principal, it was evident that immediate action was necessary. No student should spend an entire year in school with absolutely no hope of graduating. Sharon and the principal created a spreadsheet to show the current status of each student and each student’s relevant information. The spreadsheet included courses completed, passing of required assessments, days absent, discipline referrals, tardies, and other pertinent data. The principal assembled a team consisting of the principal, assistant principals, counselors, registrar, team leaders, and the coach. The team discussed each failing student to determine his or her most appropriate pathway to graduation—for example, course recovery, night school, GED completion, and alternative options like blended schools or online school.

It became painfully clear that to meet the needs of these seniors, the entire master schedule, student schedules, and even teacher assignments would need to change. Many staff members complained and reminded the principal that schedules were only changed at the beginning of each semester—not in October. The principal met with teachers individually, in teams, and as a whole faculty to discuss the dire need for the changes. She told the stories of specific students to further demonstrate this need. She asked her staff members to put aside their own concerns because the consequences of not earning a high school diploma would be life altering.

She then met with each student and his or her parents to discuss the pathway to graduation that was most appropriate. As the principal and staff agreed on an individual plan for each student, they revised schedules and made appropriate placements.

The school year ended with all but seven students graduating through either the standard pathway or an alternative route. On graduation day, the teachers led the processional in caps and gowns. The student speaker at graduation thanked the teachers and administration and proclaimed, “You believed in me when I did not believe in myself.”

Without the strong leadership of a student-centered principal, this story would have a very different ending. She understood that her priority was to be an advocate for her students no matter how difficult or how many obstacles stood in the way. She was willing to take up the cause with students, parents, teachers, counselors, and even the district office. When the school-improvement coach asked if it was worth all the trouble and effort, the principal answered with a resounding, “Yes! This was the right thing to do, and I would do it again without question” (T. Sanders, personal communication, October 2012).

School leadership matters. Strong school leadership is associated with higher student achievement levels (Branch, Hanushek, & Rivkin, 2013). It is second only to teaching itself among school-related factors that impact student learning. Principals can either support or inhibit the learning of both adults and students.

Determine Vision Versus Reality

All too often the challenges facing a school in urgent need of improvement are numerous and varied. Determining where to start can be overwhelming; yet changes are critical to achieving student success. It takes a focused and intentional leader to create the effective leadership structures necessary to move teachers, students, parents, and community members toward a collective vision of teaching and learning. The goal is to become the effective school that leaders envision rather than settling for a less impactful alternative. A leader cannot simply impose new policies and procedures and expect better results.

In part, leading the task of turning around student achievement can be daunting because it requires second-order change. First-order change is doing more or less of what one is already doing, such as changing bus procedures to ensure a more orderly process or moving teachers of the same course or grade level to closer proximity with each other in the hope of increasing collaboration. First-order change is always reversible. It consists of adjusting the existing structure and seeks to restore balance or homeostasis. It is nontransformational and does not often require new learning. First-order change is change without making a real difference.

Conversely, second-order change is doing something significantly or fundamentally different from what one has done before. The process is usually irreversible. Once it has begun, it becomes undesirable to return to the former way of doing or being. It requires a new way of seeing things and is transformational. Table 1.1 shows examples that demonstrate the difference between first-order change and second-order change. First-order changes are usually strategies, while second-order change requires a shift in deeper philosophical beliefs. Second-order change requires new learning and results in creating a different story about the school. It shifts the culture to a more desired state. It is absolutely essential that underperforming schools understand second-order change. Table 1.1 describes a first-order change or change in strategy, such as creating smaller classes. This change will not result in more learning (or second-order change) unless the teaching philosophy shifts from whole-class to individual learning while establishing new relationships.

Table 1.1: First-Order Change and Corresponding Second-Order Change

First-Order Change (Strategies)	Second-Order Change (Philosophies and Beliefs)
Smaller classes	New relationships and teaching philosophies (from whole-group instruction to an individualized approach to learning)
Site-based management	Collaborative ownership (from “This is my classroom” to “This is our school”)
Ninety-minute teaching blocks	Extended teaching and learning opportunities to ensure all students learn (from doing more of the same type of instruction to varying instructional strategies)
Small learning communities (such as freshman academies or houses)	New interactions and relationships (from students being isolated to creating a system of support)
Teaching teams with common planning time	Collaborative teams focused on curriculum, instruction, and assessment (from spending team time planning lessons to focusing on student learning)

Source: Adapted from Fouts, 2003.

With a clear understanding of the second-order change required, schools can move from a reality of false promises from too many strategy changes to philosophical and belief shifts in a system that actually improves learning. It takes an effective leader to manage this type of complex change and better the lives of students.

Start Now

Principals and other administrators in underperforming schools are clearly not managing second-order change. Principals must understand how to lead this type of change; not impose change. So, what are the high-leverage leadership actions that support the change process? Leadership for change must include these four specific tasks.

1. Form a team capable of leading change.

2. Develop urgency and a collective vision for change.

3. Develop collective commitments that lead to action.

4. Clarify and communicate expectations for collaborative teams.

Form a Team Capable of Leading Change

To be a leader is not a position or a title; it means one takes action and models behaviors. The most powerful and effective role the principal assumes is that of lead learner, not expert or “all-knowing one.” Leadership that gets real results is collaborative; it’s a process that involves building a school leadership team, a guiding coalition (DuFour et al., 2016), to lead the school-improvement transformation in what we can almost guarantee to be tumultuous work. The role of the leadership team is not the same as traditional leadership teams. Traditional leadership teams operate as communication vehicles between teachers and administration. The teachers typically bring up concerns or issues that they have heard about or are experiencing and want the principal to address. The principal uses this time to communicate information most often related to the operation of the building. The team rarely, if ever, spends this time discussing data or related topics. In contrast, the leadership team has the responsibility of leading the change process by focusing on learning. The members of this team are cheerleaders and problem solvers who are hungry for data that fuel school improvement.

The single most important task a principal can do to ensure high levels of learning for students and adults is to build a leadership team. We use the term school learning team because in schools in need of improvement, this team works to gain a deeper learning and understanding of the work. This team comprises administrators and team leaders from every teacher team. The group functions as a collaborative team and models the teaming process for the entire school. Leaders should never delegate selection of leadership team members to the teachers themselves or choose membership based on seniority. This is the leader’s opportunity to grow the leadership in his or her school. The leader’s responsibility is to create a strong team with members who have complementary strengths. It should include a balance of individuals who possess one or more of the following qualities.

• An eagerness to promote change

• Expertise relevant to the tasks at hand

• High credibility with all stakeholders

• Proven leadership skills

Use figure 1.1 (page 10) as a protocol to determine which teachers have these characteristics.

Source: Adapted from Buffum, Mattos, and Weber (2014) and Kotter (1996).

Figure 1.1: Leadership team selection protocol.

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These characteristics positively impact how the team will engage in the work and ultimately how much progress it will make along the way. Use the chart to list names of individuals who possess the stated qualities. Some names may appear in more than one category. Eliminate anyone who does not possess any of these qualities. It’s possible that a current team leader or department chair may not be a good fit for the leadership team. Be aware that those on the leadership team are not always staff members who eagerly agree with one another or the principal. It is also important to include support staff representatives as a part of the leadership team. Everyone must be all in for student success!

It is not enough to simply create a leadership team; as DuFour et al. (2016) note, this team must engage in the right work. Its primary responsibility is to coordinate the school’s collective efforts across grade levels, departments, and subjects. The leadership team meetings focus primarily on these PLC tasks.

• Build and support the school’s mission of learning for all.

• Model the collaborative team process by using norms, agendas, meeting records, and so on.

• Create a master schedule that provides time for team collaboration, core instruction, intervention, and remediation.

• Coordinate staff and other resources to support core instruction and interventions.

• Articulate essential learning outcomes across grade levels and subjects.

• Ensure all students have access to grade-level or course-specific core instruction.

• Continually monitor schoolwide evidence of student learning.

• Support the work of collaborative grade-level and content teams.

• Problem solve school-improvement strategies to support increased student learning.

• Celebrate small wins along the journey with the entire staff.

The leadership team must operate as a model for all of the other collaborative teams in the school. The members should meet biweekly, or even more frequently, and provide meeting agendas and minutes to all staff members for their continued learning and understanding.

The first step in the modeling process is to set norms for adult behavior. Norms are the standards of behavior that members of the team agree to follow so that meetings are effective and efficient (Mattos et al., 2016). Team members can think of norms as the commitments they make to each other about how they will accomplish working together. As DuFour et al. (2016) note, there are procedural norms such as meeting times, attendance policies, punctuality expectations, shared responsibility for the work, and the need for follow through. In addition, there are behavioral expectations that address how a team will handle disagreements or make a team decision. The team must define, clarify, and describe a process for consensus decision making. The team should also establish an accountability norm that specifically states how the team will respond if any member violates the norms. The administrator is not the norm monitor; instead, the team designates a monitor and uses a nonverbal signal to indicate violations in an effort to monitor them. It is best for teams to handle norm violations themselves. Principals should meet with the entire team rather than individual members if norm violations are a persistent problem.

At the start and end of every meeting, the team reviews these norms, which describe how the team will function. Some typical team norms include but are not limited to the following.

• Procedural norms:

Start on time and end on time.

Be engaged.

Come prepared.

Be present—no cell phones, email, texting, and so on.

• Behavioral norms:

Focus on only those things we have control over.

Talk about students as if their parents are in the room.

Assume good intentions.

Focus on solutions rather than problems.

Use data and information to make decisions.

No parking lot meetings. Discuss concerns at the meeting, not elsewhere.

Respect the consensus of the group. Consensus means we will agree with the clear will of the group and enact the decision collectively after hearing each opinion and having a public fist to five vote (DuFour et al., 2016).

• Accountability norm:

The norm monitor designated for each team meeting (chosen on a rotating basis) signals any norm violations with team member input.

Every member of the leadership team must model norms at the meetings he or she leads. This means collaborative teacher team meetings as well as faculty meetings. Norms help every group to function as a high-performing team rather than simply a collection or group of people.

Develop Urgency and a Collective Vision for Change

Every journey of improvement starts with the why before the how. This means that a school must examine the current reality and confront the brutal facts before it can take any meaningful action (Collins, 2001; DuFour et al., 2016). This is an especially difficult task for underperforming schools because they often have extremely negative or stagnant data. They must be willing to look at the good, the bad, and the ugly, no matter how uncomfortable that may be.

To determine each school’s urgent and targeted needs for improvement, we use a needs-assessment protocol (much like an audit) based on the work of DuFour et al. (2016). An unbiased coach from outside the school usually administers the assessment, taking a 360-degree view of all of the school’s policies, practices, procedures, and structures in light of their effect on student learning. The coach gathers evidence and summarizes the needs-assessment results. This protocol creates a safe environment for the coach, principal, and leadership team to engage in the difficult conversations that allow them to develop specific action steps for improvement. The protocol includes interviews with small focus groups of stakeholders and a review of all related data and information from which the coach, in collaboration with leadership, develops an actionable plan. The leader’s job is to frame the challenge or challenges that are getting in the way of improvement in student learning without placing blame. This process requires a fearless inventory of the entire organization that paints a data picture of the school landscape. See the data-collection and focus-group protocols in figures 1.2 and 1.3 (pages 12–16).

Figure 1.2: Data-collection protocol.

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Figure 1.3: Focus-group protocol.

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Leadership consists of both pressure and support. A leader must create more pressure for change than there is resistance to change or nothing will change. Second-order or lasting change will only occur if the leader is willing to frame the challenges that block improvement efforts. When schools try to improve without a clear understanding of the root causes of the issues and problems they face, their progress is slow and minimal. A school cannot continue to treat the symptoms of the problem without understanding the underlying causes. The audit or needs assessment helps teams analyze these root causes and leads to actionable steps to improvement. A graphic organizer for determining root causes and solutions appears in chapter 2 (page 27). The end result of the collaborative conversations within the assessment is a shared definition of the current reality as advocated by DuFour et al. (2016). It answers the why of school improvement before the how.

Once teams understand the current reality, the next step is to create a shared vision for change. A shared vision answers the question, What do we want to become? (DuFour et al., 2016). Without a clear and compelling vision, organizations have no direction. To use a navigational system for directions, we must first decide on the destination—otherwise the GPS just tells us the current location. If a school does not have a clear understanding of where it is headed, it may vaguely hope for better results year after year, but has no clear goal.

A school’s vision describes a compelling picture of a preferred future that inspires action throughout an organization (DuFour et al., 2016). The process for creating a shared vision for change asks each staff member to envision the ideal school in just a few sentences. Leaders can accomplish this by asking staff to write a headline that will appear in the newspaper five years from now about their school. What will they write on the front page of the newspaper? (See figure 1.4.) The leadership team collects these headlines to look for commonalities and themes. The team then drafts a vision statement to share with the entire staff for input and revision. After all voices have weighed in, the team reaches consensus for final approval of the vision.

Figure 1.4: Shared-vision protocol.

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Develop Collective Commitments That Lead to Action

Unfortunately, creating a vision statement does nothing to improve learning. Each staff member in the school must commit to action. Without cohesive, focused effort to further the vision, the statement is nothing more than a picture on the wall. Every staff member asks, “How must we behave to reach our vision? What must I do to ensure we will get there? What must happen to make the words and phrases in the vision come alive? How will we live our vision every day?” In other words, What if we really meant it?

Truly living the vision for improvement requires collective commitments: “the specific attitudes and behaviors people within the organization pledge to demonstrate” (Mattos et al., 2016, p. 24). These statements begin with the words, We will …. The process of developing collective commitments begins by the principal asking each staff member to answer the question, What actions, if we collectively committed to them, would lead our school closer to achieving our vision than anything else? The learning team collects and reviews these statements to determine commonalities and themes and then sends them to the entire staff for a final consensus. Figure 1.5 (page 18) is an example of collective commitments that the Mason Crest Elementary staff members made.

Source: Mason Crest Elementary, Annandale, Virginia. Used with permission.

Figure 1.5: Collective commitments example from Mason Crest Elementary.

The staff review and revise these commitments each and every school year. Staff members hold each other accountable for keeping these promises. The principal and administrators must also be willing to make commitments by identifying the specific actions they will take to support the staff’s collective efforts to reach the vision. (See figure 1.6 for an example.) As the principal and administrators share these commitments with the staff, they align the sense of urgency for improvement with real actions. People begin to believe that reaching the vision is possible. This internal accountability is what harnesses the power within a school to increase student learning.

Source: Mason Crest Elementary, Annandale, Virginia. Used with permission.

Figure 1.6: Administrative collective commitments example from Mason Crest Elementary.

In order to realize the vision, the school creates goals with short- and long-term action steps. These are learning goals that focus on increasing student achievement. Goals help monitor progress along the way. They are “measurable milestones that leaders use to assess progress in advancing toward a vision” (Mattos et al., 2016, p. 25). They structure the work in a manner that gets real results. Without goals, schools simply hope for better results, and when they achieve them, it is usually a surprise; the school has no real understanding of how it improved. No one has ownership. They cannot clearly explain the antecedents of excellence to continue or enhance. Schoolwide goals state the priorities and are the benchmarks that teams monitor throughout the year. Figure 1.7 (page 20) contains examples of schoolwide goals for both high school and elementary school (DuFour et al., 2016, pp. 44, 45).

Source: DuFour et al., 2016, pp. 44, 45.

Figure 1.7: Schoolwide goal examples.

Based on the schoolwide goals, each collaborative team of teachers creates a SMART goal that describes the greatest area of need for that grade level or content area. It uses data to determine the current reality and achievement levels. Using the current data, the team projects an increase in learning. This is usually a school-year goal that fulfills the SMART criteria (Conzemius & O’Neill, 2013).

• Strategic and specific

• Measurable

• Attainable

• Results oriented

• Time bound

A goal is strategic and specific when it addresses a targeted need that teachers have identified by analyzing several data points. Teachers determine SMART goals by determining the gap between the current reality and proficiency. In addition, using data ensures that the goal is measurable. The gap between current performance and proficiency can be large and difficult to reach. Therefore, teachers should write goals with high expectations in mind and require some stretch to get there, but at the same time, they must be attainable. SMART goals are results oriented, not a to-do list of activities or a process. This means that a results-oriented goal includes a measurable focus on some aspect of student learning. We show the difference between process goals and results goals in table 1.2.

Table 1.2: Process Versus Results Goals

Process Goals	Results Goals
Implement an integrated mathematics and science curriculum.	Reduce the failure of mathematics and science students by at least 20 percent.
Develop a balanced literacy program for primary students.	Increase the number of students who are reading on grade level by the end of third grade from 67 percent to at least 87 percent.
Adopt a zero-tolerance policy toward violence.	Eliminate violent behavioral incidences.

Finally, SMART goals are time bound; there is a specific time frame to successfully achieve the goal. Examples of team SMART goals include the following.

• By spring 2017, the percentage of fifth-grade students meeting or exceeding grade-level proficiency on the reading state assessment will increase from 40 percent to at least 85 percent.

• By spring 2017, the percentage of ninth-grade algebra 1 students meeting or exceeding proficiency on the state end-of-instruction assessment will increase from 60 percent to at least 87 percent.

• By spring 2017, the number of second-grade students solving two-step word problems will increase from 27 percent (pretest) to at least 80 percent (post-test).

Teams develop SMART goals by examining data to determine program goals (goals focused on improving student learning in a grade-level subject or course) and cohort goals (goals for the same group of students over time). Teams review the data from the previous year to decide how they will improve their results in the upcoming school year. As collaborative teams focus on program-improvement goals, they should expect to get better results every year because they are learning more about what works and what needs improvement in instruction, curriculum, and assessment practices. Then the teams graduate the data to the next grade level or course to allow the teachers to review the results of their incoming students. Teams review the students’ data over time, as they progress through the grades, to determine if these cohort groups are continuing to grow across grade levels. The cohort data also provide more information to successive teachers as to who the new learners will be and what they may need.

The teams then chunk these yearly team goals into short-term checkpoints. Teams use common formative and summative assessments to determine if they are making progress toward achieving the end goal. (See chapter 5, page 79.) The results of these collaboratively developed and scored assessments determine instructional revisions and interventions for students along the way. This increases student learning and informs instruction in unit-by-unit cycles. Through this process of monitoring the short-term goals, students and teachers are able to celebrate successes and check progress closely to meet individual student needs and get them to proficiency. (See chapter 7, page 137, for more information on using SMART goals for accountability purposes.)

Clarify and Communicate Expectations for Collaborative Teams

As Rebecca DuFour often states in her PLC staff development presentations, “Clarity precedes competence.” Every educator comes to work wanting to do a good job, but if he or she doesn’t know what a good job looks like, it will ultimately lead to confusion and frustration. Collaborative teacher teams must engage in the right work that improves student achievement. The role of the principal and the leadership team is to clarify and communicate exactly what the right work looks like, sounds like, and feels like for all staff members. Increasing the capacity of any organization begins by building shared knowledge.

All school-improvement efforts designed to increase student learning consist of the following five essential elements as described by Richard DuFour in his PLC at Work keynote presentations (DuFour, 2016).

1. All teachers must work on a collaborative team. No one works in isolation.

2. Teachers implement a guaranteed and viable curriculum—a curriculum that contains the most important or essential knowledge and skills students need with time to learn them—on a unit-by-unit basis (Marzano, 2003).

3. Teams monitor student learning in an ongoing assessment process that includes team-developed common formative assessments.

4. Teams use the results of common assessments to improve individual practice, build team capacity to achieve goals, and intervene in or extend student learning.

5. The school provides a system of teacher, team, and schoolwide interventions and extensions.

Principals create a loose-tight culture by explicitly communicating (tight) what everyone will do and giving the teachers and collaborative teams the autonomy (loose) to determine how they will get there (DuFour et al., 2016). These five tight elements will increase student learning. We discuss them in further detail throughout this book.

Collaboration is the key to learning for all. It is the “engine that fuels the school improvement process” (Mattos et al., 2016, p. 37). As a part of the collaborative teaming process, teams take collective responsibility for student learning. “Team members work interdependently to achieve common goals for which they are mutually accountable” (Mattos et al., p. 37). Teachers begin to refer to students as our students, not just my students or the students in time-block five. No one individual has all of the knowledge, skill, patience, or insights to meet the needs of all students. It is through collaborative efforts that options and opportunities grow for the students each teacher serves. This process is as much about adult learning as it is about student learning. Student learning will not increase if the capacity of the teachers to deliver specific lessons and implement best practices does not also increase. In fact, “teachers and students go hand-in-hand as learners—or they don’t go at all” (Barth, 2001, p. 23).

Just being a member of a team isn’t enough. Collaborative teams must engage in the right work. The principal and leadership team must define, clarify, and communicate what that work looks like. The four critical questions of a PLC (DuFour et al., 2016) that teams answer on a unit-by-unit basis embody the right work. This is applicable for all schools, no matter if they are involved in the PLC process or not.

1. What do we want students to know and be able to do?

2. How will we know if they learned it?

3. What will we do if they don’t learn it?

4. What will we do for those who have already learned the concept?

Principals need to provide and protect the time for collaborative team meetings during the school day. It is impossible for teams to answer these four questions without the necessary time it takes to discuss each one. Leaders need to structure school schedules so that teams of teachers meet regularly (almost daily) during the regular school day to engage in this work. Scheduling reflects a school’s priorities. If collaboration is a priority, and it should be, then the schedule will reflect the time necessary to actually do the work of the team. Sample school schedules with collaborative team time are accessible at AllThingsPLC under Tools and Resources (www.allthingsplc.info/tools-resources).

It is not enough to tell teams that they must answer the four critical questions of a PLC on a unit-by-unit basis; it is also important to describe the work teams would engage in during this process. The best way to describe, clarify, and monitor the tasks of teams is to delineate the products that they would create from answering the four questions. For example, the team products for question one (What do we want students to know and be able to do?) are the essential or priority standards for this unit, the standards unpacked into learning targets, and descriptions of proficient, above proficient, and below. Figure 1.8 outlines the tasks of collaborative teams, products, and time lines for each of the four questions.

Sources: DuFour et al., 2010; Kramer, 2015.

Figure 1.8: The work of collaborative teams.

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As teams answer question one (What do we expect students to know and be able to do?), they create and implement the guaranteed and viable curriculum on a unit-by-unit basis. Teams answer question two (How will we know if students have learned it?) as they develop common formative assessments to monitor learning. Teams address question three (How will we respond if students have not learned?) as they examine data from common assessments for the purposes of intervening with students. Teams answer question four (How will we respond if students have already learned?) as they develop extension questions and activities that align to the learning targets in the unit. Students extend their learning while others may need extra time and support to learn. As teams answer these targeted and specific questions, they create the products of collaboration that improve schools. The administration and leadership team monitor these actions in an effort to support collaborative teams in the process. We will discuss how to answer these questions in the ensuing chapters.

Finally, clarifying and communicating expectations is never a one-time event; it is an ongoing process of building shared knowledge as an entire staff, in team meetings, and one conversation at a time. It requires different levels of support for different groups of people. No one way will work for the entire staff. The important point is that the principal and learning team must speak with one voice. Everyone must communicate the same clear, consistent message over and over again. As each year begins, the principal, leadership team, and collaborative teams revisit and further clarify their expectations. This is the continuous-improvement cycle in action.

As we previously stated, leadership for learning is a combination of exerting pressure and providing support. Principals practice reciprocal accountability in both their words and actions (Elmore, 2004). This means that whenever a leader holds others accountable for completing a task or goal, the leader is accountable for providing the resources necessary for success. The leadership team is the vehicle for modeling the expectations and providing the supports necessary so that every team can experience success. If the goal is highly effective and efficient collaborative teams, the question becomes, What will they need to perform at this level? It is certain they will need sufficient time to meet, clear direction regarding the work to be done, ongoing feedback, and training and resources necessary to help them succeed at what they are being asked to do. Leadership for learning develops people and harnesses the power within the organization to increase student learning.

The key to charting a course focused on learning is to create a common vision together and commit to each other to act and hold each other accountable for engaging in that work. Leaders demonstrate what they value by those things they choose to monitor, celebrate, and confront (DuFour et al., 2016). Choose the most important factors presented in this chapter that will improve student achievement at your school based on your current reality and needs. Be willing to address an obvious problem and hold people accountable for the collective commitments and core practices that are essential to improved results. What you permit, you promote. Be intentional and purposeful in promoting the right work.

Reflect and Take Action

The rubric in figure 1.9 shows levels in charting a course focused on learning. Look at the rubric to determine staff strengths and next steps to plan the actions necessary to improve learning.

Figure 1.9: Chart a course focused on learning rubric.

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Once teams have reached agreement about their current status, they should use figure 1.10 to determine the next steps focused on learning.

Figure 1.10: Chart a course focused on learning reflection and action plan.

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Collaborative Team Questions to Consider

• How can your school build a leadership structure that focuses on learning?

• How will you engage teachers as leaders?

• What products of collaboration will you monitor? How will you provide meaningful feedback?

• How will you support the work of teams?

• What structures exist to lead and support the work of teams?

• What is your compelling vision?

• What steps will you take to make sure that your vision lives beyond the paper it is written on?

• How will you turn your collective commitments into actions?

• What process will you use to create, monitor, and celebrate SMART goals throughout the year?