Creating a School Culture that
Enables Personalized Learning
Alan Blankstein
2015 K12 Personalized
Learning Symposium
How Do YOU Get Their Attention?
Agenda
1.Congratulations!
2.Framing the
Challenge Ahead
3. Building Culture
4. Scaling Capacity
to Meet the
Challenges
2. The Challenge of
Rising Job Frustrations
A new national survey finds that three out of four
K-12 public school principals, regardless of the
types of schools they work in, believe the job has
become
“too complex,”
1/3 say they are likely to go into a different
occupation within next five years.
Rising Job Frustrations
83% percent of school leaders rate
“addressing individual student needs” as
“challenging” or “very challenging.”
78%rate managing the budget and
resources as challenging or very
challenging
53% Evaluating Teacher Effectiveness
EdWeek Superintendent Survey
Professionals Feeling Stretched
Common Response
1. Do what is urgent v. what is meaningful
2. “Chronic inconsistent search for great
programs” v. developing people’s capacity
to continually solve problems
--Jim Collins, AASA, 2013
3. One size fits all approach
What is Creating These Challenges?
1. Expanding Underclass
2. Disparity of Wealth
3.Growing Student
Diversity
4. Increasing Disorder
1,258,182
1,258,182 homeless
students in public schools
in 2012-2013 – up 8%
Top 1% has more of US
wealth than bottom 95%
The Majority of Students in U.S. Public Schools are Now
“Minority”
2 or More Races
Hispanci
64.8
American Indian
Black
49.8
Asian/Pacific Islander
White
45.1
15.1
15.4
16.8
29.9
25.8
13.5
3.7
1.1
1995
5.2
2.8
5.5
3.5
2014
Projected 2023
Could We Educate all These Children?
Places with bigger elderly
populations now spend less on
public education, especially
when youth are of different
races.
--James Poterba, MIT
We Need a New Paradigm,
Supportive Culture and …
…
Courageous Leadership to
Advance
“the Movement”
5 Principles of Courageous Leadership
Assuring Constancy
and
Consistency of Purpose
Facing the Facts
and Your Fears
Getting to Your
Core
Building
Sustainable
Relationships
Making Organizational
Meaning
The 10 D’s of Deviance in
Approaches to Difficult Youth
Perspective
Problem Label
Typical Responses
Primitive
Deviant
blame, attack, ostracize
Folk Religion
Demonic
chastise, exorcise, banish
Biophysical
Diseased
diagnose, drug, hospitalize
Psychoanalytic
Disturbed
analyze, treat, seclude
Behavioral
Disordered
assess, condition, time out
Correctional
Delinquent
adjudicate, punish, incarcerate
Sociological
Deprived
study, re-socialize, assimilate
Social Work
Dysfunctional
intake, case manager, discharge
Educational
Disobedient
reprimand, correct, expel
Special Education
Disabled
label, remediate, segregate
Adapted from Reclaiming Youth at Risk: Our Hope for the
Future
(Bloomington, IN: National Educational Service, 1990)
Cogs
Building Sustainable Leadership
Capacity
Common Mission, Vision, Values,
and Goals
6
Gaining Active Engagement from
Family to Community
PLC
5
4
Using Data to Guide
Decision Making and
Continuous Improvement
1
2
Ensuring Achievement
for ALL Students:
Systems for Prevention
and Intervention
3
Collaborative Teaming Focused on
Teaching and Learning
21
Classic Mission Statement
The staff of Jackson Middle School has worked for several months
to develop a new mission statement for their school. Ultimately
they voted to endorse the following:
It is the mission of our school to help each and every
child realize his or her full potential and become a
responsible and productive citizen and life-long learner
who uses technology effectively and appreciates the
multi-cultural society in which we live as they prepare
for the global challenges of the 21st century.
Four Questions of a Mission Statement
to Shift School Cultures
1. If all students can learn, what should they be
learning?
a. Is equity at the core?
b. Is there a school wide agreement about the answer to
this question? How about district wide?
c. Is there alignment between what is taught and what is
tested?
d. Are the scope and sequence of lessons consistent
across subjects or grade levels?
Four Questions of a Mission Statement
to Shift School Cultures
2. How will we ensure engaging and relevant
pedagogy?
a. Is professional development for the adults in
the school engaging and relevant?
b. Is the instruction relevant to student needs?
c. Is the pedagogy state-of-the-art and continually
improving?
What’s the Solution
Four Questions of a Mission Statement
to Shift School Cultures
3. How will you know if they are learning it?
a. How often are assessments given?
b. Do the formative assessments align with the
summative ones?
c. Are assessments consistent across
grade/subject areas?
d. Are tests a “surprise”?
e. Do you use multi-source data?
Four Questions of a Mission Statement
to Shift School Cultures
4. What will you do if they don’t learn?
a. Do all teachers and staff agree?
b. Are supports working? How do you know?
c. Are supports comprehensive, or are
there holes?
d. Are all staff aware of all supports?
4. Scaling Capacity via Collective
Teacher Efficacy
First, who is teaching?
Meet…
Five Practices of Effective Leaders
4.
Theory of Adoption –CREATE
Commit to “it”
Resource allocation
Excellence defined
Action plans determined
Transference occurs
Embed the process
3. Mastery-Collective Teacher Efficacy
First, who is teaching?
Meet…
Who is Teaching?
See no evil Sam
Who is Teaching?
Karate Kate
Who is Teaching?
Smooth Stewart
Random Acts of Excellence?
De-brief:
1.
2.
Which of these teaching approaches is
underway in schools you serve?
Which is most prevalent in these schools?
Case Study of Building CTE
Mansfield, Texas
Case study of Worley Middle School, Mansfield, Texas
•
In 2008 – 2009, in- and out-of-school suspensions and
detentions were approximately 2,000 per year.
• By 2010 this number was reduced by half to 1,000
• At present the number for 2010 – 2011 is 100
In Synch or Lost in the Translation?
Steps of Instructional Learning Walks
Step 1: Brainstorm a list of observable Indicators of Quality Instruction.
1. Think of a lesson you have taught or observed that was highly
successful in terms of student participation and outcomes.
2. How did you know it was successful?
3. What actions were the students engaging in that contributed to
their successful outcomes?
4. What actions or role did the teacher take to garner the success?
5. What were some of the key attributes of the lesson that contributed
to its success in each category?
6. Think of these categories: teacher behaviors and student behaviors.
7. Individually, list teacher behaviors and actions and student behaviors
and actions that you expect to see when Quality Instruction is present.
Steps of Instructional Learning Walks
Step 2: Norm the Indicators of Quality Instruction as a group
1. In teams or small groups, share your individual lists.
2. Combine and refine the lists to form one comprehensive list.
3. Continue combining and refining until you have a list of three to five
indicators in each category (teacher behaviors, student behaviors).
Steps of Instructional Learning Walks
Step 3: Check Indicators of Quality Instruction
Be sure you have distinguished between Indicators of Quality
Instruction and Lesson Design/Instructional Strategies. For example,
an indicator might be “focused student discussion” while one
strategy the teacher is using to incorporate focused student
discussion might be cooperative learning. We are looking to identify
the “indicator of quality” such as “focused discussions” not the
specific instructional strategy or program.
Conversation shifts
To Support and Scale Excellence
Changing the conversations…
From
To
What’s wrong
What’s right
WHO did it
WHAT was done?
We already do this!
What is new to learn here? (treasure hunt)
Construct for developing common language and priorities across the district/network
Where There Is HOPE, Failure Is Not an Option
®
FOR MORE
INFORMATION:
To Host an Excellence Through Equity
Summit:
Alan@Hopefoundation.org
Attend an Excellence Through Equity Summit:
ETESummit.org
Obtain ETE Book:
www.Corwin.Com
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