Back in the Day or
Back to the Future?
Steve Kukic
VP, Strategic Sales Initiatives
30 Years Older than Back in the Day
(Here's the reply the teacher received the following day)
Dear Mrs. Jones,
I wish to clarify that I am not now, nor have I ever been, an exotic dancer.
I work at Home Depot and I told my daughter how hectic it was last week before the
blizzard hit. I told her we sold out every single shovel we had, and then I found one
more in the back room, and that several people were fighting over who would get it.
Her picture doesn't show me dancing around a pole. It's supposed to depict me selling
the last snow shovel we had at Home Depot. From now on I will remember to check
her homework more thoroughly before she turns it in.
Sincerely,
Mrs. Smith
Greatness
The call and need of a new era is
for greatness. It’s for fulfillment,
passionate execution, and
significant contribution. These are
on a different plane or dimension.
They are different in kind—just as
significance is different in kind, not
in degree, from success.
Covey, 2004
THE Conundrum
We can, whenever and wherever we choose, successfully
teach all children whose schooling is of interest to us. We
already know more than we need to do that. Whether or not
we do it must finally depend on how we feel about the fact
that we haven’t so far.
Ron Edmonds, 1982
5
• “The rate of change in the society in which we live forces
us to redefine how we shall educate a new generation”.
• “Education will require constant redefinition…the period
ahead may involve such a rapid rate of change in specific
technology that narrow skills will become obsolete within a
reasonably short time after their acquisition” .
1966
• Bruner, J. S. (
). Toward a theory of instruction.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
SEE
GET
DO
The Business of Paradigms
DISCOVERING THE FUTURE
• Avoid paradigm paralysis
• Paradigms can set boundaries
• Paradigms can provide rules
• Be open to change
• Help shape change rather that be
controlled by it
• Paradigms can give comfort
• Paradigms can promote the
status quo
• Paradigms can inhibit growth
Taken from Thomas Kuhn’s
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Joel Barker (1988)
It ought to be remembered that there is nothing
more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to
conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than
to take the lead in the introduction of a new
order of things.
Because the innovator has for enemies all those
who have done well under the old conditions,
and lukewarm defenders among those who may
do well under the new.
Machiavelli
A Remarkable Convergence
•
•
•
•
•
Powerful Factors that are deeply compatible—indeed
synergistic.
Moral purpose
Understanding change
Developing relationships
Knowledge building
Coherence making
Fullan, 2001
Mindset
Fixed
v.
Growth
Dweck, 2007
How teachers put a growth mindset into practice is the
topic of a later chapter, but here’s a preview of how Marva
Collins, the renowned teacher, did it.
On the first day of class, she approached Freddie, a leftback second grader, who wanted no part of school. “Come
on, peach.” she said to him, cupping his face in her hands,
“we have work to do. You can’t just sit in a seat and grow
smart…I promise, you are going to do, and you are going
to produce. I am not going to let you fail.”
Dweck, 2006
The fixed mindset limits achievement. It fills people’s minds
with interfering thoughts, it makes effort disagreeable, and
it leads to inferior learning strategies. What’s more, it
makes other people into judges instead of allies.
Dweck, 2006
1
4
Dealing with Difficult People who have
Dinosaur Brains – including ourselves!
Bernstein, 2004
Inside each human being lurks the brain
of a dinosaur – irrational, emotional,
easily enraged – waiting to take control.
Dealing with Difficult People who have
Dinosaur Brains – including ourselves!
Bernstein, 2004
•
•
•
•
•
•
Maintain a positive attitude.
Stick with a decision.
Think of setbacks as challenges instead of disasters.
Exercise, eat a balanced diet, take care of yourself.
Always take the time to have fun.
Learn a technique to lower your physiological arousal on
demand.
Coach John Wooden produced one of the
greatest championships records in sports.
He led the UCLA basketball team to the NCAA
Championship in 1964, 1965, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970,
1971, 1972, 1973, and 1975. There were seasons when his
team was undefeated, and they once had an eighty-eightgame winning streak.
What did he give them? He gave them constant training in
the basic skills, he gave them conditioning, and he gave
them mindset.
Dweck, 2006
Wooden is not complicated. He’s wise and interesting, but
not complicated. He’s just a straight-ahead growth-mindset
guy who lives by this rule: “You have to apply yourself each
day to becoming a little better. By applying yourself to the
task of becoming a little better each and every day over a
period of time, you will become a lot better.
Dweck, 2006
It is our choices, Harry, that
show what we truly are,
far more than our abilities.
Professor Albus Dumbledore
Headmaster, Hogwarts School of Magic
Change is
good.
You go first!
Judy Elliott, 2004
Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams: Pausch’s Goals
•
•
•
•
•
•
Being in zero gravity
Playing for the NFL
Authoring an article in the World Book encyclopedia
Being Captain Kirk
Winning stuffed animals
Being a Disney Imagineer
Pausch, 2008
Brick walls are there to stop the people
who don’t want it badly enough.
Randy Pausch, 2006
It’s About How You Live Your Life.
Pausch, 2008
Always do right (things right).
This will gratify some people
and astonish the rest.
Mark Twain and Stephen Covey
“Whether you think you can or think
you can’t, either way you are right.”
-Henry Ford (1863-1947)
“Daddy, If you want to, you can.”
–Stephanie Kukic, Age 4, 1983
Every Great teacher who has ever walked the planet has
told you that life was meant to be abundant.
“The essence of this law is that you must think abundance;
see abundance, feel abundance, believe abundance. Let
no thought of limitation enter your mind.”-Robert
Collier
The Secret, 2006
To mobilize the sort of cooperative
Whole-System effort Fullan proposes:
1. We must believe that real change is possible.
-Transforming the fatalism that currently afflicts far too many starts with a
conviction that change is possible with a clear framework and practical tools
for engagement and moving forward.
2. We must imagine a vision for school that is far more
compelling than fixing a broken system.
Fullan, 2010
Rosa Parks
“There is no use trying,” said Alice;
“one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I dare say you haven’t had much
practice,” said the Queen.
“When I was your age, I always did
it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes
I’ve believed as many as six impossible
things before breakfast”.
Lewis Carroll
As Albert Einstein said:
“The significant
problems we face cannot
be solved by the same
level of thinking that
created them.”
Tend the
CHAOS,
Don’t
Manage it!
Ciara Turner, 2010
ODYSSEY, Pepsi to Apple…a Journey of Adventure,
Ideas, and the Future
The Best
way to
predict the
future is to
invent it.
John Sculley, 1987
Every organization is
perfectly aligned for the
results it gets.
Sustainable
system change is
the agenda.
Fullan, 2003
High-Reliability Organizations (HROs)
“The public expects fail-safe performance and successful
organizations adjust their operations to prevent failure.”
(Bellamy et al., 2005)
Unfortunately, all of the examples of HROs offered by
Bellamy and colleagues are far removed from education
Bellamy et al., 2005
Characteristics of HROs
Clear goals and constant
monitoring of the extent to which
goals are met
An understanding of the necessary
conditions under which these goals
are met
Immediate corrective action when
goals are not being met
Marzano and Waters, 2009
Firms of Endearment
Firms of endearment (FoEs) endear themselves to
stakeholders (customers, employees, investors,
partners, and society). When these authors claim up
front that no stakeholder is more important than any
other, they are getting at the core of Secret One.
Fullan, 2008
Firms of Endearment
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Amazon
BMW
Carmax
Caterpillar
Commerce Bank
Container Store
Costco
eBay
Google
Harley Davidson
Honda
IDEO
IKEA
Jet Blue
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Johnson & Johnson
Jordan’s Furniture
LL Bean
New Balance
Patagonia
REI
Southwest Airlines
Starbucks
Timberland
Toyota
Trader Joe’s
UPS
Wegmans
Whole Foods
Sisodia, et al., 2007 in Fullan, 2008
Southwest Airlines
Ten Synergistic Southwest practices for building high-performance
relationships
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Lead with credibility and caring
Invest in frontline leadership
Hire and retain for relational competence
Use conflicts to build relationships
Bridge the work-family divide
Create boundary spanners
Measure performance broadly
Keep jobs flexible at the boundaries
Make unions your partners
Build relationships with suppliers
Fullan, 2008
Elements of a Successful Reform
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
A small number of ambitious goals
A guiding coalition at the top
High standards and expectations
Collective capacity building with a focus on instruction
Individual capacity building linked to instruction
Mobilizing the data as a strategy for improvement
Intervention in a nonpunitive manner
Being vigilant about “distractors”
Being transparent, relentless, and increasingly
challenging
Fullan, 2010
Interaction of findings for district leadership
Nonnegotiable Goals
For Achievement
Nonnegotiable Goals
For Instruction
Collaborative
Goal Setting
Board
Alignment
Allocation of
Resources
Marzano and Waters, 2009
Welcome to RtI/MTSS Land,
a land of triangles, circles,
swirls, data, non-negotiables,
interventions, technology,
coaching, systems, and
student success!
What is your reality?:
The Clark County experience
Generic Models
A
FEW
need
Intensive
instruction
SOME need
more support
NEARLY ALL
work in core curriculum
Another Reality
Most will benefit
from Intensive
Instruction
Some need
more support
A few learn
easily
A Call to Action:
The relentless pursuit of excellence (CHAOS)!
C – Collaboration with a purpose, to improve achievement
H – Hierarchy of tiered, effective, academic and behavioral
interventions
A – All, some, AND few as the consistent focus
O – One child at a time, instructional decisions based on progress
monitoring data
S – Systems change with coherence to
Close The Achievement Gap
The Systemic Work of RtI Leadership
• It requires creating a culture and deep belief that all students can
(will) learn.
• It requires the vision and the intentional message that instructional
reform efforts and resources must be aligned to ensure growth in
student achievement and that delivery of quality professional
development, for both teachers and administrators, is systemic.
• It requires the knowledge, appreciation, and continual use of data in
making instructional and programmatic changes that are second
nature to all consumers in the system.
Judy Elliott, 2008
Wichita Public Schools: District Level
Non-Negotiables
The concept of PLC is embraced, expected, and supported at the school and
district level as operationalized by the MTSS innovation configuration.
District level standard protocols, in the areas of academic and behavior
assessment, curriculum, intervention, and instruction are established,
implemented and supported with fidelity.
The focus of Professional Development is expecting and supporting fidelity of
implementation.
Results-driven leadership is expected and supported at all levels.
The Essence of Reform
In our rush to reform education, we have forgotten a simple
truth: reform will never be achieved by renewing
appropriations, restructuring schools, rewriting curricula,
and revising texts if we continue to demean and dishearten
the human resource called the teacher on whom so much
depends. Teachers must be better compensated, freed
from bureaucratic harassment, given a role in academic
governance, and provided with the best possible methods
and materials. But none of that will transform education if
we fail to cherish—and challenge—the human heart that is
the source of good teaching.
Palmer, 1998
Four Ps to a New Beginning
(Ending, Neutral Zone, New Beginning)
• Purpose—People need to know why the organizational
change(s) associated with their personal loss is
necessary.
• Picture—People need a picture, image, or vision of what
the future will be like as a result of the change(s)
associated with their loss.
• Plan—People need to know the plans for implementing
change(s) associated with their loss.
• Part—People need to know what part they can and will
Bridges, 1980
be asked to play in the future.
Resolute leadership,
allegiance, and
professional power
create the conditions
for sustainability.
Fullan, 2010
Making All Systems Go
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Resolute Leadership
Intelligent Accountability
Collective Capacity
Individual Capacity
Moral purpose/High Expectations
These five components represent a complex resource,
one that compounds and multiplies its effect through
interrelated use.
Fullan, 2010
A powerful feature of
all systems go is that
shared commitment,
allegiance, and
responsibility for
results becomes
collectively owned.
Fullan, 2010
Sustainability Involves Four Things
1. Establish a large critical mass of “beyond expectations”
work
2. Grow, select, recruit, and develop talent consistent with
the culture and constantly replenish it
3. Be relentlessly consistent with respect to what works
while at the same time looking for the next improvement
(Today’s relentless consistency is tomorrow’s innovation in the next day’s
relentless consistency.)
4. Secure the district in its own context (in its own
community)
Fullan, 2010
The Mantra
Get the goals right, keep the
storyline brief, stay on message,
get simple evidence of results,
and persist even (especially) if
the other side seems obtuse.
Fullan, 2010
Collaboration
An unnatural act
committed by
unconsenting and
unwilling people
despite their
mutually
benefiting goals.
We are all caught up
in an inescapable web
of mutuality.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Leadership...is a team performance.
Collaboration is a social imperative.
Without it, people can’t get
extraordinary things
done in organizations.
Kouzes & Pozner, 2003
The Chaordic Organization
All organizations are merely conceptual
embodiments of a very old, very basic
idea -- the idea of community. They can
be no more or less than the sum of the
beliefs of the people drawn to them; of
their character, judgments, acts, and
effort
Dee Hock
THE Key to the success of the Consortium:
Combining Order and Chaos
The Consortium as a Chaordic Organization
• Structured for the long term
• Dedicated to an extraordinary purpose: to improve
teaching and learning
• Willing to change organization as times demand, but
never at the expense of the extraordinary purpose
• Focused on an ever-evolving community
• Focused on ANDswers: consistency and innovation,
science and passion, work and celebration, process and
results
In complex, flat world times, purposeful groups do better
than a handful of experts, but you have to work the
group.
There has to be:
1. A sense of purpose
2. Freedom from groupthink
3. Consideration of diverse ideas
4. Retention of practices that work
Fullan, 2008
The Tyranny of OR …The Genius of AND
We’re not talking about mere balance here. Balance
implies going to the midpoint, fifty-fifty, half and half…A
highly visionary company does not want to blend yin and
yang into a gray, indistinguishable circle that is neither
highly yin nor highly yang; it aims to be distinctly
yin and yang—
both at the same time, all the time.
Collins & Porras, 1994, in DuFour, et al., 2004
Built to Last
Preserve the
Extraordinary
Purpose
AND
Consider no organizational
chart as sacred
Collins & Porras, 1997
Consistency and innovation can and must go together,
and you achieve them through organized learning in
context. Learning is the work.
Fullan, 2008
Science without Passion is uninspiring.
Passion without Science is self-centered.
Science with Passion is THE key
to
student success!
Kukic, 2008
PIRSIG’S PEARL
CLASSICAL
ROMANTIC
ROMASSICAL
Classical Precision with Romantic Style
We acknowledge the need for schools to move beyond
pious mission statements pledging learning for all and to
begin the systematic effort to create procedures, policies,
and, and programs that are aligned with that purpose.
DuFour, et al., 2004
In theory, there is no
difference between
theory and practice.
In practice, there is.
Yogi Berra
The problem:
Building the plane while it’s flying.
Key Moments
•
All of us have designer genes: Think about our parents-Woody Pace, Cy Freston, Ken Reavis,
Barbara Brunker, …
•
1980: The Special Educator is published and the Utah Special Education Consortium is formed
•
1981: The successful ULRC is refined to become the centerpiece of technical assistance
•
1980s: The Utah Mentor Teacher Academy is formed
•
1987: FASES is formed. VOICES has followed.
•
1988: The Utah Agenda for Achieving Better Outcomes for Students with Disabilities is developed.
Ongoing funding secured for the Consortium and its projects
•
1990s: Refinement and Systems Change in areas including Behavior, Neighborhood Schools, Rural
certification, FACT, State Improvement Grants, LEAD (or is it LEAD? ) formed to give a strong voice
to local special ed directors,…
•
2000s: Continual Refinement through State Improvement Grants-All Systems Go!!!!!
There are two principle-centered commitments.
1. Do the right thing.
Use only those strategies that have a strong
data base.
2. Do them right.
Implement them all with passion and fidelity.
To know and not do
is really not to know.
Covey, 2002
The student achievement gap can be
solved only when the adult gap between
what we know and what we do is
reduced to zero. We can do this.
It is a matter of will, not skill.
Kukic, 2009
What we know v. What we do
• The five basic components of early reading v.
constructivist ideology for all students
• Making decisions based on data v. making
decisions based on tradition
• Evidence based and responsive teacher
certification v. academic freedom
• Diagnosing for special education using Response
to Intervention v. IQ/Achievement discrepancy
Bold Action to Get Serious Results
• Commit together to data based decision making 100% of the time. No
more ideologically based decisions.
• Establish district level nonnegotiables related to assessment, curriculum,
intervention, instruction, & positive behavior supports.
• Commit to using curriculum, interventions, technology, services that have
external validation that they work with target students.
• Never purchase materials primarily because of the amount of free stuff
your system gets.
• Implement all curricula and interventions with fidelity.
• Implement a replacement core for students who continue to achieve
below the 30th percentile.
• Build and sustain a Multi Tier System of Support focused on improved
performance for all.
Grow
Deep
NOT
JUST
TALL
Karen Kaiser Clark
Like wind rustling my leaves and bending by boughs, life flows from season to
season. Even in the darkness it moves on, straining for the light. Unfailingly,
the night gives in to dawn.
Life is ever changing, always new. Many yesterdays slip into today. Yet, each
sunrise offers a fresh new day. Tomorrow can never be now and for one of
us…may never be known.
Make the most of your moments and remember, change is not merely
necessary for life,
Life is change…Growth is optional…
Choose wisely.
The Paradoxical Commandments
of Leadership
1.
People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered: love them anyway.
2.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives: do good anyway.
3.
If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies: succeed anyway.
4.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow: do good anyway.
5.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable: be honest and frank anyway.
6.
The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the
smallest minds: think big anyway.
7.
People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs: fight for a few underdogs anyway.
8.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight: build anyway.
9.
Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth: give the world
the best you have anyway.
Kent Keith, 2002
Live with intention.
Walk to the edge.
Listen hard.
Practice wellness.
Play with abandon.
Laugh.
Choose with no regret.
Appreciate your friends.
Continue to learn.
Do what you love.
Live as if this is all there is.
Mary Anne Radmacher, 2008
You’ve got to dance
like nobody’s
watching and love like
you’ll never get hurt.
The Secret O’ Life by James Taylor
The secret o’ life is enjoying the passage of time.
Any fool can do it. There ain’t nothin’ to it.
Nobody knows how we got to the top of the hill.
Since we’re on our way down, we might as well enjoy the ride.
The secret o’ love is in opening up your heart.
It’s okay to feel afraid. Don’t let that stand in your way.
‘Cause anyone knows that love is the only road.
Since we’re only here for a while, might as well show some style.
Give us a smile.
Isn’t it a lovely ride? Slidin’ down, glidin’ down.
Try not to try too hard. It’s just a lovely ride.
Now, the thing about time is that time isn’t really real.
It’s just your point of view. How does it feel for you?
Einstein said he could never understand it all.
Planets are spinning through space.
Smile upon your face. Welcome to the human race.
Some kind of lovely ride. I’ll be slidin’ down, I’ll be glidin’ down.
Try not to try too hard. It’s just a lovely ride.
Isn’t it a lovely ride? See me slidin’ down, glidin’ down.
Try not to try too hard. It’s just a lovely ride.
The secret o’ life is enjoying the passage of time.