Change Leadership
A Practical Guide to Transforming Our
Schools
Presented by:
Suzette Cook
Title I School Improvement Coordinator
West Virginia Department of Education
Title I Directors’ Meeting
October 4, 2010
Gingerbread Man
What drives
you crazy?
What do
you want to
take away?
What do
you want to
let go of?
What gives you indigestion?
Block Party
• Read and reflect upon what your quote
means to you and your work
• Share your quote and your insights about its
implication for your work with your
tablemates
• Share ideas and questions
Caught between the imperative of preparing students
for the next half-century and the political mandate for
short-term performance improvement on
standardized tests, many educators are dropping by
the wayside but a few are stepping forward with new
leadership skills and vision. Working with such leaders,
Tony Wagner, Bob Kegan and their colleagues
have created an invaluable guidebook for those
with the courage to have conviction without answers
and the openness to learn together.
Peter Senge, author
The Fifth Discipline
There is no school for leaders
that will teach them exactly how
to make their district into one
that will leave no child behind.
Seven Disciplines for
Strengthening Instruction
• Urgency for instructional improvement
using real data
• Shared vision of good teaching
• Meetings about the work
• A shared vision of student results
• Effective supervision
• Professional development
• Diagnostic data with accountable
collaboration
Seven Disciplines for
Strengthening Instruction
These seven disciplines are not a buffet,
where a district can choose one or two
for implementation without regard to
the others.
Your system – any system – is
perfectly designed to produce the
results you’re getting.
If every system is designed to
produce exactly the results that
it does, then perhaps before we
try to improve our system, we
need to better grasp its current
design.
Seven Disciplines for
Strengthening Instruction
Rate Your District
1.The district creates understanding and urgency
around improving all students’ learning for teachers
and community, and it regularly reports on
progress.
• Data are disaggregated and transparent to
everyone
• Qualitative (focus groups and interviews) as
well as quantitative data are used to
understand students’ and recent graduates’
experience of school.
Seven Disciplines for
Strengthening Instruction
Rate Your District
2. A widely shared vision of what is good
teaching is focused on rigorous
expectations, relevant curricula, and
respectful relationships in the classroom.
3. All adult meetings are about instruction
and are models of good teaching.
Seven Disciplines for
Strengthening Instruction
Rate Your District
4. There are well-defined standards and
performance assessments for student work
at all grade levels. Teachers and students
understand what quality work looks like,
and there is consistency in standards of
assessment.
5. Supervision is frequent, rigorous, and
entirely focused on the improvement of
instruction. It is done by people who know
what good teaching looks like.
Seven Disciplines for
Strengthening Instruction
Rate Your District
6. Professional development is primarily onsite, intensive, collaborative, and jobembedded and is designed and led by
educators who model best teaching and
learning practices.
7. Data are diagnostically at frequent intervals
by teams of teachers to assess each
student’s learning and to identify the most
effective teaching practices. Teams have
time built into their schedules for this
shared work.
The realities of today’s
economy demand not only a
new set of skills but also that
they be acquired by all
students.
Framework for
Effective Instruction
3 Rs
• Rigor: Mastering Core Competencies
• Relevance: Connecting the Curriculum
Through Real-World Applications
• Respectful Relationships: Finding the
Key to Motivation
One of the hardest aspects of
charting the course… is
identifying the ways that we
might also create obstacles
that get in the way of our
own plans.
Obstacles to Improvement
v.
Momentum for Improvement
Reaction
Compliance
Isolation
• Purpose
• Focus
• Engagement
• Collaboration
The Final Word
• Reaction Transforms to Purpose and
Focus – pg. 65 to top of pg. 68
• Compliance Transforms to
Engagement – pg. 68 to middle of pg.
71
• Isolation Transforms to Collaboration –
middle of pg. 71 to top of pg. 74
The Final Word
• Identify a timekeeper
• Read your assigned passage
• Identify one ‘most’ significant idea/quote from the
text to share – have a ‘back-up’
• First person – share selected idea/quote and why –
3 minutes
• Second person – respond – 1 minute
• Third person – respond – 1 minute
• Fourth person – respond - 1 minute
• First person – The final word – 1 minute
• Begin new rotation
Fortune Cookie ‘Break’
• Open your fortune cookie – but
don’t share your fortune with
anyone
• Think of how this ‘fortune’ may
relate to you and your work – jot
some notes if you wish/for sharing
The forms of our personal challenges
are not infinitely different. There is
more than one crater on the dark
side of the moon, but not an endless
number.
If we, as leaders, deny ourselves the
opportunity to ‘grow on the job’, how
likely is it that those around us, those
who work for us, are going to feel
genuinely entitled to this same right
themselves?
Arenas of Change
• Competencies – of adults
• Conditions – of learning and teaching
for students and adults
• Culture – of classrooms, schools,
districts
• Context – understanding global, state,
and community realities and revisioning what all students need to
know
4 Cs Diagnostic Tool
Context
Culture
Conditions
Competencies
Back to the Future
Context
Culture
Conditions
Competencies
The prime function of
a leader is to keep
the hope alive.
John W. Gardner