Beyond Mission Statements: Finding Integrity between Word & Action

Our school has a well crafted mission and vision statement.  It would make any school or organization proud.  It provides us with the strategic direction (in word) that we need.  But I've had a growing question lately:  Do our actions match what we say? In other words, “What are we doing and why are we doing it”? 

Linked to this idea of mission and vision statements is the idea of "culture".

“Culture is the underground stream of norms, values, beliefs, traditions and rituals that has built up over time as people work together, solve problems and confront challenges.” (Deal, 1993) 

As the principal I see myself as the guardian of the school’s culture.  One of my favorite researchers on this topic is Edgar Schein.  In his research he identifies three levels of organizational or school culture: the artifacts, values, and underlying assumptions. 

According to Schein, a school’s artifacts are those things that are easy to observe but more difficult to decipher (e.g. trophy cases, pictures, classrooms, etc).  Artifacts can be ambiguous and are often dependant on the observer’s reference point (Schein, 2004).  Schein goes further and states that to find a deeper level of understanding of a culture one must move to identifying the espoused values of a school (e.g. all children can learn, safe and caring community, etc).  The values themselves fall on a variety of levels.  At the outset, a culture’s values might not be shared knowledge; they must be tested over time (Schein, 2004).  Once a group’s values are reinforced through such things as problem solving, stories, traditions, and celebration than those values can become basic assumptions. 

Schein argues that these assumptions are the root of an organization’s culture and are so strongly held that any behavior based on a different premise in inconceivable (Schein, 2004).  These basic assumptions, according to Schein, are at the core of understanding organizational culture.  Good or bad, these assumptions are so entrenched in the group that, at times, it can be the cause of the distortion, or rationalization of certain realities.  As such, the challenge for leaders is to identify the assumptions of a culture, assess them and come up with coping strategies to deal with the anxiety when you try to change them.  

2011-2012 Getting off of the right foot

To start the 2011-2012 school year, we will be asking  ourselves some important questions related to our shared sense of purpose contained within our school culture.  For us to be more successful as a school we need to ask ourselves  - are our stated values and visible artifacts congruent with what we believe and do – across all stakeholder groups?  Put another way - does our "talk" match our "walk"?

To accomplish this, we will have to test whether or not our stated values are being matched by the actions of our stakeholders – in this case, the professional teaching staff of the school.

The following is a sample of some of the espoused values at our school and some guiding questions to test our underlying assumptions: 

Value

We educate the whole child. 

Testing underlying assumptions:  

How is teaching and learning conducted in the classroom?  How much differentiation is happening?  Is technology being embraced?

How do we assess and grade our students?  

Are learning opportunities extended beyond the classroom?

What extra-curricular activities do we provide our students?

Value

All children can learn.

Testing underlying assumptions  

Do our actions affirm our belief that all kids can learn?  Does our assessment and grading reflect this?  What does success look like for students?

Do you follow the pyramid of intervention effectively and consistently?

Do we understand the different ways that students learn?  (Brain based learning)

Do our school polices related to such things as admission, discipline, grading & reporting align with this stated value?

Who is control of the learning in the classroom?  What will an observer see when walking thru classes?  Who is doing the talking?  How are students being engaged?

Value

“Jesus is the reason for our school”

Testing underlying assumptions

How does this translate across the curriculum?  

Do our school policies match this value statement?

Value

Parents as primary educators and partners

Testing underlying assumptions

How and what do we communicate to our parents? 

Are parents given enough voice?   

Value

Working and learning in community

Testing underlying assumptions

How is teaching and learning conducted in the classroom? 

How is our PLC time being used?

What does collegiality look like?

How do we treat each other?

How do we celebrate together?

I am looking forward to leading the staff in this important process (before school starts) of finding integrity between our words and actions. 

This process is critically important in order for us to sustain a positive school culture - where there is a shared sense of purpose, where there are underlying norms of collegiality, where there is a focus on improvement, where student accomplishments are celebrated, where there is teacher innovation, where we encourage parental involvement, where meaningful traditions are maintained and where learning is surrounded with integrity, joy and humour. 

Any suggestions or comments that could assist in us finding greater “alignment” would be gratefully welcomed!

Videos as Professional Learning Prompts

In preparation for our two day staff gathering  at the end of August I have been working on a some presentation material  Here are some videos I have found that I'll be sharing with my staff as learning prompts.  As I've shared in a previous post, these prompts will be used to "kick start" a new professional learning initiative at our school next year.  Thought I'd share with my PLN as well:

On Personalized Learning:

On the importance of understanding technology as teachers (technology integration)

Literacy Instruction

Brain Based Learning 

Motivating Students

Grading/Assessment Best Practice

Would be interested to hearing about any more videos people may want to share....

Rethinking Provincial Exams

At St. Patrick Regional the Administration team and some staff feel the need to share our concerns about the seeming futility of the Gr. 12 optional exams and the Gr. 10 and 11 mandatory exams. After five years of experiencing these exams in our school, we feel that is time to generate and gather feedback on the efficacy of these exams from high schools across the province. We invite you to read and comment on the following concerns and conclusions. 

Grade 12 Optional Provincial Exams

Based on our experience, students consider the following with regards to sitting Provincial exams:

• A very small percentage (often less than 5%) of students choose to write these exams 
• Students must achieve 86% or better in 3 exams in order to win the Provincial Scholarship. (This idea is abandoned when one exam does not go well) 
• Students sit exams in order to improve a school grade. (Students abandon this idea when they do not do well in school final or they realize that colleges and universities do not consider provincial results. Besides the results which are posted in early August are too late for effective course selection!) 
• Students do not sit the exam for “the experience”. 

Problems:

• Schools schedule teachers to supervise exams, a coordinator to organize, monitor and expedite exams and a space to sit exams. These resources are extremely underused. 
• The considerable expense involved in generating exams, shipping and handling, marking and reporting is questionable. 
• Multiple days of learning is sacrificed for exams for a handful of students. 

Some Ideas:

• Abandon the exams 

Or

• Reinstate compulsory exams for academic courses (universities and colleges no longer use these results for admission) 

Or

• Provide e-exams at the Grade 12 level which are administered and graded in-school 

Or

• Develop one mandatory “exit” exam for each student in the Province that can be written in a student’s Gr. 11 or Gr. 12 year. The exam would be used to determine a student’s overall skills related to various literacy competencies. The exit exam should embrace the ideals of Personalized Learning whereby the “content” area of the exam would be based on student interest and choice. (E.g. Students could produce a piece on non-fiction writing on the exam on a topic of their choice) 

Grade 10 and 11 Exams

Some observations:

• The Science 10 exam is a catch-all for all students- learning disabled and gifted students sit the same exam. The exam is content heavy. 
• The English 10 exam is a catch all for all students - learning disabled and gifted students sit the same exam. The exam is loose and subjective. Only multiple-choice is marked by ministry. 
• Foundations and Pre-Calculus Math 10 is a catch-all for all those students who wish to have credit that transfers to post-secondary leaning. 
• Social 11 exam forces teachers to stress content over literacy and skills and only multiple choices is marked by ministry. 

Problems:

• Students tend to believe that the objective mark from the exam is more authentic than the personalized mark generated through the year. 
• Students lose confidence in core disciplines at the Grade 10 level. This is particularly true of students who have special learning needs (e.g. The children of new Canadians for whom English is not their mother tongue). These students need the extra two years to master culture and literacy. 

Resolution:

• Abandon exams and allow schools to focus on literacy and skills in core disciplines from which they will generate independent, personalized exams. 

Or

• Provide differentiated e-exams at the Grade 10/11 level which are administered and graded in-school 

Or

• Exit exam at the Gr. 12 level will provide standardized data. 

We believe that the time has come to do a rethink surrounding how and if we deliver Provincial Exams in the Province.

Would like to hear other thoughts as well….

G. Donnici
P. Nannery
J. Bevacqua

Teaching How to Read in High School

When I started my career as a high school social studies teacher, I took many things for granted when it came to my students.  One particular thing I took for granted was that my students knew how to read (and all its related competencies - e.g. synthesis, main idea, making inferences, etc). 

Call me naive, I know.

Interestingly enough, my naivety was supported by the fact that, as a trained high school social studies teacher, the reading process and how to teach it was never deciphered for me! 

These two factors contributed to my blissful ignorance.

Fast forward to today.

For some time now, I have been hearing from teachers that students are struggling with many of the core reading competencies.  Teachers, in various content areas, continue to comment on how many students “can’t read” and are struggling with “understanding” what they are reading. 

Some want to blame social media or technology for this “slide” in reading skills.  Some, in our profession, shun the idea of “21^st Century Learning” because they see it as eroding our students' literacy skills.

As a school we have decided that it is precisely because of social media and its emerging technologies, that our students need to be more literate than ever before.

We are not going to take the literacy skills of students for granted any longer.  

As our community navigates through “21^st Century Learning” and “Personalized Learning” – we realize that literacy is a core competency that all of us (not just English teachers) need to teach.

For us, this process started a few years ago.  We invited a literacy expert to meet with our staff to conduct a in-service on the reading process.  Since that time we have been developing an action plan to integrate literacy instruction throughout our school.

This past year our “Literacy Learning Team” - a collection of teachers representing every department in the school, came together to pilot a reading program for our Gr. 8 students. 

The process began with administering a reading assessment tool (RAD) to each of our Gr. 8 students.  The team looked at the results and discovered some important findings.  Namely that the majority of our students needed attention in two areas of the reading process: Targeting Main Idea and Making Inferences

  

Equipped with this information, the team of teachers, regardless of their content areas, used specific lessons/resources to teach those specific reading competencies.  Teaching the skills related to targeting main idea and making inferences became very intentional.

A few weeks ago the team did an analysis of the year end assessment for our Gr. 8 students.  The results looked promising.

Next year, we intend on caring forward with this pilot project with our new incoming Gr. 8’s.  Our long term goal is to have every teacher in the building comfortable with literacy instruction.  Our teachers must be able to decode and teach the reading process to our students. 

The 21^st Century demands that our students be more literate than ever.  As a consequence, all teachers (not just teachers of elementary age students) need to be intentional about teaching our students how to read!

A stumble down memory lane....

A few weeks ago I started the daunting task of cleaning my garage.  I will be spare you the gruesome details however I did stumble upon a box full of old file folders.  As fate would have it, the first thing that caught my eye was series of files from my Bachelor of Education days (1994-1995). 

The first thing that “fell out” of the file folder was an excerpt from a book that was photocopied and given as required reading.  The excerpt was form Learn to Teach, pg. 189-191, Richard Arends, 1994 (newer edition 2008)

As I skimmed the excerpt I was mesmerized by the author’s assertions on pedagogical issues related to rewards, punishment and the use of grades.

This exercise was particularly intriguing in light of the fact that I have also started reading Alfie Kohn’s, Beyond Discipline (#kohnbc).

Here are some of the more jaw dropping and head scratching sections of the excerpt:

Rewards and Privileges:Teachers can also encourage desirable behaviors through granting rewards and privileges to students.  Rewards teachers have at their disposal include:

1.     Points given for certain kinds of work or behavior that can enhance a student’s grade
2.     Symbols such as gold stars, happy faces, or certificates of accomplishment
3.     Special honor roll for academic work and social conduct

Privileges that are at the command of most teachers to bestow include:

1.    Serving as a class leader or helper who takes notes to the office, collects or passes out papers, grades papers, runs the movie projector and the like
2.    Extra time for recess
3.    Special time to work on a special individual project
4.    Being excused from some required work
5.    Free reading time

A carefully designed system of rewards and privileges can help immensely in encouraging some types of behavior and reducing others. However, reward and privileges will not solve all classroom management problems, and beginning teachers should be given two warnings. First, what is a reward or a privilege for some students will not be perceived as such by others. The age of students obviously is a factor; family and geographical background are others.  Effective teachers generally invoke their students in identifying rewards and privileges in order to ensure their effectiveness. Second, an overemphasis on extrinsic rewards can interfere with the teacher's efforts to promote academic work for its own sake and to help students practice and grow in self-discipline and management.

COERCIVE PUNISHMENT AND PENALTIES
Rewards and privileges are used to reinforce and strengthen desirable behaviors, Punishments and penalties are used to discourage infractions of important rules and procedures. Socially acceptable punishments and penalties available to teachers are, in fact, rather limited and include:
1.            Taking points away for misbehavior 'which, in turn, affects students' grades
2.            Making the student stay in from recess or stay after school for detention
3.            Removal of privileges
4.            Expulsion from class or sending a student to a counselor or administrator

As I read this excerpt I was left with a few thoughts:

• I couldn't help but notice the stark contrast between some of what this teacher training book was advocating and what I believe and advocate now as a principal – from reforming our school’s grading and assessment practices  to understanding rewards and punishment.
• In few weeks I will be celebrating my 41^st birthday and will have completed my 6^th year as a high school principal.  I don’t consider myself old (don’t ask my students or my children).  This was assigned reading 16 years ago.  That’s not that long ago is it?  Are they still advocating some of  these practices in our teacher training schools today?
• At times I see myself as an agent for change.  This little stumble down memory lane is another reminded of why,  perhaps, some find change so difficult.  

If we want to affect real change in our school’s we need to understand where we've come from  and, more importantly, come to a deep understand about our underlying assumptions about students as learners and persons. 

Cloud Computing in Education

Today I had the opportunity of attend a "pre-launch" event of Microsoft's latest venture into cloud computing called Microsoft 365.  While the event itself was technical in nature, it did provide me the opportunity to reflect on the impact this type of technology can have in education.

I have already seen and experienced, first hand, the tremendous power of Google Docs and all its applications in my role as principal and teacher.   I will be looking forward to Microsoft's official release of Office 365 and it's potential to transform how we teach, learn, collaborate and communicate in our schools.


Just before we were dismissed from the event we were shown Microsoft's "Future Productivity" Video - a vision for the next 5 years (see below).  The possibilities of this type of technology in education seem endless.....

Giving Up Control

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you will know that as a high school principal, I still teach - one class of Law 12 (and really enjoy it). Over the past several months, I have been doing a fair bit of reading on Personalized Learning and Problem Based Learning. Increasingly, I have been intrigued by the practical application of these strategies. 

An Experiment
Armed with some theory and a few practical ideas, I decided to try something new with my class - an exit assignment entitled “I want to know more about……”

The concept behind the assignment was basic: give students complete ownership over a topic/ research question which they wanted to learn more about. 

I didn’t provide a list of “approved” topics or recommended list of questions. From start to finish student were given complete choice.

To assist the students, we brainstormed some of the big themes of the course and discussed some “current & controversial events” that linked to those themes.

To provide further focus to their research I asked them to think about a question they want to answer and understand deeply.

I also gave the students complete choice as to how they would share their findings with the class. The only directive I gave them was that they couldn’t “bore” the audience.

I purposely chose to not discuss grades for the assignment. Instead, we focused on “discovering an answer to their question”.

The Results
The students chose some of the most interesting and engaging topics that I have ever heard in my class, including:

• Why I want to join the United Nations Police force and how I can best do that? 
• How to take care of your personal safety in Vancouver? 
• Was the assassination of Osama Bin Laden legal under international law? 
• Should marijuana be legalized in Canada? 
• What is the correlation between mental health and criminal behavior? 
• Are Young Offender given too much leeway in crimes they commit? 

Students were diligent in their research, seeking out multiple sources - including the use of surveys.  The students also leveraged the use of technology to explore and present their findings.


Despite the fact that no “grades” were awarded, students were genuinely interested in their work and took great pride in sharing their findings.   Not one student (to this day) has ask me: “how much is this worth” or “do we have to do it?” 

I learned an important lesson in the power of student choice and how to intrinsically motivate them and their learning.

Other Lessons Learned

• As a teacher I found myself working on a more “one on one” basis with students. 
• The very nature of the assignment shifted the focus from teaching to learning.
• Grades don't always motivate students. (Late today, the one student who had not presented their findings, searched me out and made an appointment to show me his Prezi.  He was so excited when I offered him "the Principal's desk top computer and office" to share his presentation!)   
• For this to be most effective I had to give up control! 

I have seen a glimpse of what Personalized Learning can look like.  Next year I plan to give away more control of the learning in my class and place it firmly on the shoulders of my students.


Paradoxically, it appears that the more control  I "give away" the more student engagement I get in return!