M. Gladwell writes that if you want to change people's behavior, "you need to create a community around them, where these new beliefs could be practical, expressed and nurtured" (The Tipping Point, p. 173).

Michael Fullan believes that "...if you want to change systems, you need to increase the amount of purposeful interaction between and among individuals within and across...the systems...Setting targets and mandatory annual yearly progress as is the case with 'No Child Left Behind' will change only a tiny slice of the context and is neither large enough nor powerful enough to motivate or give people the capacity to succeed..." (Leadership Sustainability, p. 17).

So what does this mean in practical terms? One of the most recent contextual battle cries in Iowa education is the latest mantra that "all teachers are reading teachers." Certainly this matches the group-think mentality for "No Child Left Behind" purposes. However, if you want each K-12 teacher to truly change individual perception of the context of his or her job responsibility, it's important that the context be explained in relationship to their assigned role within the system. Simply put, system-thinking leaders need to be able to help individuals answer the age-old question: "What's in this for me?"

One way to do that is to have K-12 leadership communicate that content-area reading strategies are also content-area thinking strategies. If we work as a K-12 system to develop those skills in age-appropriate ways across all disciplines, we will help students develop their competence in the school system's essential learning of critical thinking.

For example, let's say your system wants to focus on reciprocal teaching as a K-12 staff development initiative. First, your leadership team should identify the steps to reciprocal teaching (clarify, question, predict, and summarize). Next, K-12 system leaders should model how those steps are useful in both reading and thinking by using them as a part of the inservice training on reciprocal teaching. Then teachers should be asked to identify when they have already used the steps of reciprocal teaching in their classrooms by identifying actual lessons with standards and benchmarks. Discussing whether the steps were used in reading and/or thinking would be a part of this conversation. Finally, teachers share their information in "study buddy triads" made up of one elementary, one middle school, and one high school teacher, with peers coaching one another. A next step would be visiting each other's classrooms to watch another instructor as he or she implements reciprocal teaching and critiquing for fidelity. Or, teachers could bring actual student work to the next staff meeting to show how they used reciprocal teaching as a reading or thinking activity; the impact of the technique of student achievement would also be discussed as "action research."

NOTE: If your district is too large to have study buddy triads made up of a teacher from each building level, then you might choose to form triads from different grade levels (e.g., 6th, 7th, 8th or Kindergarten, 1st, 2nd). You could also form triads based upon disciplines (e.g., music, language arts, math, social studies, visual arts, industrial tech, etc.). The key point is to get educators out of their normal context into a situation that gives them "new experiences, new capacities, and new insights into what should and can be accomplished. It gives people a taste of the power of new context..." (Leadership and Sustainability, p. 17).

Use the Content Area Reading and Thinking Strategies Peer Coaching Activity template to the left to facilitate conversation around content area reading and thinking to foster Commitment to Changing Context at All Levels. Please note that systems thinkers don't limit staff development to inservices; instead, they use faculty meetings for training in systems thinking. (Multitasking administrators find time for "changing context" by communicating management items through e-mail and voice mail.) Also note that there is built-in accountability because staff members place the completed document in a career portfolio as evidence for one of the Iowa Teaching Standards.