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| SCENARIO: You are beginning your new job as a school principal, and your school board has charged you with "raising the bar and closing the gap of student learning." To complicate matters, your superintendent voices the expectation that you implement Michael Fullan's other two aspects of moral purpose: "treating people with supportive, responsive, and demanding respect" and "altering the social environment for the better." |
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- What systems thinking organizational structures should you identify as in place and/or develop if they are not already in use in your new district?
Answer: A good first step is to identify or create these systems-thinking organizational structures to help you with your task: the school system's vision, mission, essential learnings, standards, benchmarks, district long range and short term goals, building level long range and short term goals, district-wide leadership team format, building level leadership team format, district-wide action planning process, and building level action planning process. A professional development plan for systematic staff development should be in place, including a "study buddy" process, planned agendas, and a plan for learning and professional sharing at weekly staff meetings as well as inservice opportunities. Find out if your new school system uses their Comprehensive School Improvement Plan (CSIP) and Annual Progress Report (APR) as tools for school improvement and training. Also find out if the school and community have worked together to identify character traits and expectations for climate and culture in the district's classrooms, and if these traits are assessed through "walkabouts," surveys, and/or other measures. Ask other administrators and teachers if service learning is used throughout the system to link a caring community with an engaging curriculum that is "rigorous, relevant, and relationship-building."
- What if the school system doesn't have all of these elements in place?
Answer: Remember to "think big, start small" and use your leadership team to create the structures over time. Without ownership and deep learning, the structures won't have the power to change the culture and climate of your school into a systems-thinking community of learners. It is the process rather than just the final product that has the ability to change people's thinking and behaviors. If it's only "on the shelf" and not in the daily classroom life of the school, it just doesn't matter!
- How can you use the State of Iowa's required beginning and career teaching evaluation process to forward your work in building system's thinking?
Answer: One way is to have all educators, including administrators, maintain a staff development notebook that is a "selection from the collection for the purpose of reflection to give added direction" tool for the school system. This notebook is used at all trainings to archive materials and most importantly student work examples/comments and reflections on how training strategies impacted student achievement. This notebook is not a one-time scrapbook, but is instead a continual learning tool that gives added direction to each educator's practice. It is built around the eight Iowa Teaching Standards, so that teachers continually reflect on how the work of their school system also provides evidence of their own individual competence in those standards. Combined with a formal "study buddy" process, this notebook can also develop inter-rater reliability on student achievement expectations across the system. Consequently, system-wide professional development evaluation is ongoing and has systems-thinking assessment elements that include input from administration, peers, students, and self.
- How can you use individual professional growth plans to forward your work in building system thinking?
Answer: Include a section on the plan that asks the educator to connect how his or her individual growth plan connects with and supports both building and district goals. Also include a section that asks how evidence will be collected on the plan's impact on student achievement, as well as a reflection/results/self-assessment section. Finally, ask each educator to align the plan with one of the eight Iowa teaching standards.
- How can you use essential learnings to develop systems thinking in your new district?
Answer: These big picture outcomes (e.g., lifelong learning, effective communication, responsible citizenship, critical/creative thinking, healthy contribution, etc.) are a good rallying point that K-12 educators, students, and community members can agree with and work toward as a group. They provide a good basis for an exit presentation in twelfth grade, so that students and teachers "scaffold" K-12 experiences to prepare for the ultimate goal of demonstrating competence in these community-identified essential learnings (which are also career-expected employability traits). These big picture goals are supported by K-12 academic standards and benchmarks so that there is a working plan to move the mission and vision of the system from theory into practice.
- How can you use a twelfth-grade exit presentation to build relationships, rigor, and relevance in the system?
Answer: When everyone in the system "begins with the end in mind," they can plan backward to make sure that each learner is equipped with the knowledge and skills necessary to do the required exit presentation. Each senior can be paired with a "faculty friend" whose role is to support and give feedback to that individual. The task can be structured to include rigorous academic work and reflection, and the community presentation provides relevance as each senior uses skills needed for job seeking and job keeping. The exit presentation demands not only individual work, but also group work that replicates skills needed for living in a democratic society.
- How can you convince everyone in the system to implement a strategy for improved student achievement?
Answer: The first step is to help each individual educator answer the question, "What's in this for me and my students?" Help them identify ways that the strategy can be used in their grade level and/or discipline. Then ask them to implement the strategy in their classroom, identify what worked and what didn't, and bring resultant student work to a staff training to share with other professionals. Find time for teachers to visit each other's classrooms to see the strategy implemented, and to collect data that the observed teacher is interested in evaluating.
- How can you develop a culture and climate that uses rather than fears transparent data-gathering coupled with mechanisms for acting on the data?
Answer: One of the best places to start is by asking others to give you input on your own performance, and then using that data to develop your personal professional growth plan. "Deep learning" will be facilitated by also asking each person to reflect on his or her own performance as they judge yours. This illustrates the reciprocal nature of systems thinking and models the importance of everyone in the system using data for improved achievement.
- How can you keep the system focused when there are so many things that need to be done?
Answer: Each system needs to collect data from all stakeholders as a way of doing business. Data can be used by leadership teams as regular "temperature checks" to monitor when the system is ready to move on and when it needs to re-group for continual improvement. Keep individual, building level, and district-wide initiatives aligned for maximum benefit, and remember to check behind you every now and then to make sure you aren't marching alone on the journey to system-wide improvement!
- How can we find the resources needed to do the work of systems thinking?
Answer: Reallocate resources to support the most important work needed to bump student achievement. Think for the good of the system rather than being territorial and protective. For example, instead of saying "We need to spend it or we'll lose it", ask "How can these funds best be utilized to support system-wide student achievement?" Instead of saying "It's our turn", ask "Do we need these funds at this time to bump student achievement?" Instead of thinking that all staff development funds should be used to send people outside the system, ask if some of the funds would be better spent paying personnel to do implementation work inside the system. But make sure there is a balance as your school system also needs to work with other districts for maximum achievement and growth. In short, there is never enough time and never enough money, so think outside the box to find what your system needs to improve student achievement.
- What's the best measure of your impact as a systems thinker?
Answer: Your success will best be measured by the number of system-thinking individuals you get involved in the school improvement process. When you are gone, it is their work that will continue the tradition of a systems-thinking climate and culture.
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| Leadership for Systems Thinking |
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