How We Think About The Impact of What We Do: We Know Quality When We See It

Everything we do in education is about building capacity.  We know that for systemic growth to take place, systemic limitations must be eliminated or restructured to increase efficiency and productivity while constantly increasing the human capital capacity of people within the building.  This is done by either hiring better people or making the ones you have better.  Reflection is one of the most important processes for improving effectiveness and growing our human capital capacity.  Now take all of the educational jargon out of that and what we are really talking about is “Quality”.

 

When we think about it, we all spend about 15,000 hours of our lives in school (not including education past high school) and we are taught by more than 50 different teachers and far more than a dozen administrators.  When asked to remember the best teachers/principals or the ones that had the most positive impact, we normally can only name a select few or remember only a handful of the many we had over our school years.  The vast majority of teachers and principals are erased from our memory or not encoded into long-term memory.  Why is it that some teachers and principals succeed in remaining in our memory for years or even decades, whereas others fade into oblivion or disappear after a very short period of time?  It’s not that they taught a specific subject or were all in a certain grade level.  The memories that last are of the educators that had the most significant impact on our learning and students as individuals. 

 

What is it that makes teachers great?  Todd Whitaker’s research identifies 17 things that great teachers do differently than good teachers, but he actually expanded it to 20 things in subsequent versions.  John Hattie conducted over 1500 meta-analyses that quantified 252 different teacher actions with a corresponding effect size on student learning.  North Carolina New Schools Project and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation identified 5 instructional practices that should be utilized for a Common Instructional Framework that has the most profound impact on student performance.  There’s High Impact Instruction, 10 Strategies, that have been research-based and proven to have the greatest impact on student success in relationship to teaching practices.  Marzano has countless amounts of research on the Art and Science of Teaching.  Atlantic Research Partners did an entire series on the “Power of Teaching: The Science of the Art” and broke down every part of teaching practices into subgroups and distinct factors of each part.  The research that attempts to quantify and qualify teaching practice into what makes teachers great or what the great teachers do differently is endless.

 

What I’ve learned in 20+ years of educational practice is that educators tend to overcomplicate many things.  As a coach, I knew a great player when I saw them play.  Nobody knows or needs to know Michael Jordan's 40 yard dash time or bench press or vertical, but everyone knew who was taking the last shot when the game was on the line.  When I first started as an assistant principal, I remember telling my principal that while I may not be able to completely describe or define what good teaching is, “I know it when I see it.”  This morning, my superintendent shared a book with me by John Guaspari titled “I Know It When I See It: A Modern Fable About Quality.”  Of course I didn’t even make it to lunch duty without the book to read.  The book was about quality and made some great points that we’ve always known, but we often let get cloudy in all of the research and latest educational innovations.    Guaspari (1985) said

 

I’d like to leave you with one piece of advice, he continued.  My hope is that I might be able to spare you some of the pain that we went through.  Above all, listen to what your customers are telling you about Quality.  Your customers are in a perfect position to tell you about Quality, because that's all they’re really buying.  They’re not buying a product.  They’re buying your assurances that their expectations for that product will be met.

 

The boss went on to say “Your customers may not have all the hard business facts.  They may not be aware of your specs and your standards and your inspection reports.  But just because they may not speak with a lot of precision, don’t assume that what they have to say doesn’t have a lot of value.  They may not be able to give you a precise definition of Quality, but one thing is for certain – they know it when they see it! (p. 79-80)

 

As a beginning administrator, I couldn’t give a specific definition of great teaching but I knew it when I saw it.  As a student, I knew it when I saw it.  And as a seasoned principal, I still know it when I see it.  Our teachers can't define what makes a great principal, but they know it when they see it. Don’t overcomplicate education and make things more difficult than they have to be, we all know Quality when we see it!

The Principal as Leader in a Culture of Change: The Importance of Emotional Intelligence

           We all know the role of the principal has shifted over the past two decades.  Principals were considered building level management and trained in the principles of transformational leadership.  The new norm over the past decade has shifted to the principal as the instructional leader of the school.  The past two years have shifted this again to the principal as the instructional leader of the building….in a culture of change, which has a tremendous human capital component of leadership.  Simon Sinek said that “leadership is a choice” and “leadership isn’t about authority, it’s about influence; not being in charge, but taking care of those in our charge.”  More now than ever in leadership, taking care of employees, with the patience of Job, is critical to organizational success. 

          Fullan (2001) says “My point is that the principal of the future has to be much more attuned to the big picture, and much more sophisticated at conceptual thinking, and transforming the organization through people and teams. This, too, was my conclusion when I examined successful leadership for businesses and in school system.”  While I’m always excited and love the instructional leadership component of being a principal, I realize that one of the most important things we can do as principals right now is work on our culture in the school with a focus on taking care of our teachers and staff, and our teachers/staff taking care of our kids, with administration and teachers having patience and compassion for parents/community showing signs of stress.  Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee (2002) claim that emotionally intelligent leaders and emotionally intelligent organizations are essential in complex times. 

          We took a step back and put some of our instructional plans on hold this year, or adjusted to fit the needs of the situation we are in this school year.  Last year our middle school professional development series was called “High Impact Instruction” and looked at the factors that had the most positive significant impact on student learning.  These included clear learning targets, instructional pacing, explicit teaching/questioning, data motivated instruction, cumulative daily review, classroom discourse, literacy across the curriculum, multiple exposures/differentiation, formative assessment, and reflective practice….with building collective efficacy as the foundation of all we do.  We made the decision to not add new professional development or instructional practices or book studies or anything else that might put more on our staff.  We adjusted out professional development for 2020-21 to “High Impact Instruction: In The Virtual World” to not add anything new but provide support in moving to hybrid and virtual learning this year.  Teaching online and in a hybrid model is stressful for students, teachers, parents, etc.  Our job as administrators should be to make it easier for teachers to do their job well. 

          Fullan says “sustained improvement of schools is not possible unless the whole system is moving forward”. This commitment to the social environment is precisely what the best principals will do in 2020-21 in realizing this supports and enables instructional capacity throughout the school.  People operate within systems and do what systems allow them to do.  While we will continue to build instructional capacity, it requires the right culture and mechanisms of support from both an instructional and emotional standpoint.  Many instructional leaders are heavily focused on numbers and data, instructional practices, and moving test scores…….but for significant learning to take place at a high level this school year we must focus on our teachers and students' emotional health to ensure we are taking as many things off of them as possible, providing as much support as possible, and doing everything we can to help them be able to do their jobs well!  If there's one things principals must do this school year to be successful.....it's take care of your people!