Guest Blog Post By: Dr. Jenna Woodland, Superintendent of Evergreen Park School District D124
The pendulum just keeps swinging. It is shiny, bright and new. Every chance we get as educators, we jump on the bandwagon of the next “big thing.” In my experience as a classroom teacher and administrator, I have found that chasing that moving target left me frustrated, confused and uncertain about my place in the bigger picture. My goal as a classroom teacher was always to be the best that I could be, doing what worked for kids. In my core, I believe all educators go into the field to make a difference for students. It is our administrative role to provide our teachers with focus and clarity. In that same vein, why does education always swing and when do we as educators get to say, stop jumping? What if we went back to the basics to focus on what matters most; collaboration with teachers, solid instructional practices and meaningful stakeholder engagement.
This journey takes me back in time to when I started my transition to the seat of the Superintendency. I was given a gift. An opportunity to serve a district that was craving leadership, direction, and most importantly, teacher voice in the decision-making process. As I transitioned into this seat of service, I quickly embraced the challenges the staff was facing. It was clear to me that the staff wanted to be pulling on the same rope, working towards the same goals. They understood the beauty of a K-8 system but needed direction and alignment. To explain this further, it is important to understand the setup of the district. It is a small south suburban district in Chicago, IL, with approximately 1,900 students. It is a diverse community with four elementary schools that feed into one middle school environment. A beautiful world of educational bliss. To have students in front of teachers for nine hours can make all the difference and impact the life of a child. But at the core of all of this work is deep-level systemic change. Change that must lead to results for no other reason than the well-being of the organization and the betterment of our students.
As a superintendent, I embarked on a district listening tour to identify trends, listing simple questions to staff that lead to strengths, opportunities, weaknesses, and threats. Throughout my tour it was evident that the staff was grieving. They lacked collaborative practices and felt as though their voice didn’t matter. The teachers talked mostly about teaching. What a concept! They shared their hopes and dreams with curriculum and instruction. They wanted resources, high-quality resources that they could put in front of kids. They shared their desire for vertical and horizontal articulation as they understood the importance of teachers talking to teachers. They valued Tier 1 instruction but had a difficult time articulating what it should look like and sound like in a classroom setting. What stood out to me the most was that their biggest fear was that as a leader I would NOT change anything at all. They were done with being status quo and wanted to move on to bigger and better things.
Throughout my anecdotal note-taking and feedback from staff over the course of six months, implementation was at the core of changing the systems. It was not as if the district didn’t have a curriculum or that they didn’t review resources, but there was a lack of effective implementation. Materials were given to staff and administrators with little direction or involvement, and as a result, staff became anxious and left to their own devices. At no one’s fault, when this occurs in school systems, what often happens is that the teacher resorts back to the practices they are comfortable with. Why? Because they have not been taught differently. So this urges the question: how do we teach our teachers new instructional strategies that stick to ultimately see results with kids?
It was at this time that I did the only thing I knew to do: put together a group of educators in a room to drive implementation and systems change. I contacted K12 Systems Change Solutions, LLC (K12 SCS) to assist in facilitating the systems change process. We were at the beginning of a long journey and I knew K12 SCS was the right organization to assist in leading this charge as the core of her research centered around implementation science.
I vividly remember sitting in an administrative meeting with my principals and district office cabinet members, sharing the results of listening tours. The next step was to create a district team of educators by grade level and category. It was a requirement for all principals to be a part of the district team as the long-term goal would be for the building principal to lead out high-quality Tier 1 instruction in their buildings. Individual invites were sent to each and every member of the committee and the purpose was set.
The goal of the committee was simple: define what high-quality instruction should look like and sound like in the district and do so in a collaborative manner that involves teachers every step of the way. This committee would act as our District Implementation Team focusing on district-level systems change, my favorite work of all time.
The committee met monthly on half days or after school depending on the topic. We had deep-level conversations on components of effective lessons. We decided on solid practices; practices that are at the core of great teaching. For example, we all know that every lesson should have a launch and a closure. Now let’s define this together. We discussed core components of classroom design such as whole group and small group instruction. Strategies were shared and discussed from teacher to teacher and what became apparent was the high-quality professional learning that this committee was receiving.
K12 SCS led us through research. What does the research say we should be doing? And if we only relied on the importance of research, wouldn’t we get so much further in our classrooms? Finally, we were at the point of a draft that defined instructional practices that all teachers in our district should master.
Often what I find in school systems is we adopt curriculum resources but never go down the route of teaching and identifying core practices that each teacher should master. Ultimately, there is a disconnect between what should be done and what is being done for our students, at no fault of the classroom teacher.
One may argue that we have the Danielson Framework that identifies what good teaching is. To some extent, this is correct. The difference is we must see alignment to our evaluation framework and then coach teachers on practices in a non-threatening way, solely driven by improvement. Many preservice teachers or first-year teachers are not given the proper coaching techniques to improve. They are provided one-time feedback in a short observation format but have not been given the strategies to implement in their classrooms effectively. The mindset shift is simple. Let’s ask ALL teachers in one building to do one practice better and then hold ALL teachers accountable for that practice.
To define the tool that was created, each component of an effective lesson was identified in rubric format. It demonstrates what full implementation of solid instruction should look like. The ultimate goal is to provide targeted professional learning to teachers based on each instructional strategy. Simple. Teach teachers how to be better teachers based on classroom observations, one individual instructional practice at a time.
The work of the District Implementation Team would now funnel into School Implementation teams. Every step of the way the district’s curriculum director, instructional coaches and building principals were responsible for participating. More importantly, we included a small cluster of teachers from each building to also pilot our high-quality Tier 1 framework. Trends from our observations were collected and together, teachers and administrators agreed upon strengths and opportunities for improvement. For example, student-to-student discourse may have been an area of improvement for one building, while another building may need to focus on the launch of the lesson. From here, each building would create its own personalized learning goals and as a district, we would plan ours!
As a district leader for nearly ten years, I have found that there is an art to learning what each building needs to get to common district goals. Each of the five buildings I serve is unique and different, therefore we must respond to their differences and what makes each school special while still creating a district system and culture. We do that by creating core components that we can all commit to and assessing each building individually. This is the true art of collaboration. Collaboration at the district level, building level, and classroom teacher level.
Upon the conclusion of all district learning walks, we would debrief as a district team to identify common trends. Planning professional development for our teacher institute was the next step. It is the most surreal experience to be in classrooms of all five buildings and identify a targeted goal. Not because you “think” it’s best or because it’s the next shiny object that has come your way, but because you have clear data to determine it is the most important focus for your teachers. I like to call this leading with intentionality.
Intentionality with professional development allows for targeted growth for our teachers. We have identified exactly what they need help with, what they are doing well, and what may be next in our long-term plans. The shiny object of the pendulum swinging becomes a moot point because we no longer need to jump, shift, twist or turn. We take each instructional practice one step at a time and coach our teachers on implementing that practice with fidelity. I recall a phone conversation I had with one of my principals. She said, “this does really work, we set one expectation for our teachers to increase discourse in the classroom, taught them how to create student-to-student question stems and it is now becoming a part of their everyday instruction.” It is remarkable to see the process in just a short amount of time. Simply put, clear expectations lead to clear results.
My favorite part of my job is not only leading systems change but doing so in a way that involves teacher voice and stakeholder engagement. As I reflect on all the work we have ahead of us, it can seem like a daunting task. A number of practices need to be refined but the beauty is we have a road map. As a district, we have created collaboration with teachers which defines high-quality instruction. We set aside the shiny pendulum because it is only going to change in the near future. We put our hands in the center, committed to solid instruction, and said “Go, Team!” At the end of the day, we know the most critical component in student achievement is the impact of the classroom teacher. As a district, we will continue to invest all our time and energy into helping them be the best teacher they can be, removing the barriers in order to coach them every single step of the way. And let’s face it… our kids deserve nothing less than the best!
