EQ: How do you develop teacher leadership capacity to increase student learning through the AVID College and Career Readiness Framework?
At the core of every school district’s mission is the goal to have all students learning at increasingly higher levels. Our central mission is to ensure high levels of success for every kid. We work to establish a common vision and mission and generate purpose among staff through a student-centered and collaborative culture. Recognizing that while strategy is at the behest of culture, it is culture itself that comprises the engine and capacity of an organization. Initial focus and effort must be dedicated to building relationships with staff, students, and families and establishing a common purpose.
Fullan (2005) points out that the culture of a district has the effect of culture on building administrators, and the continuous improvement of all schools in a district. Our focus needs to establish the structure necessary to allow teachers to collaborate interdependently. We are responsible for creating a structure that expresses clearly established values and expectations, but allows teachers the freedom to develop their own means of meeting those expectations. We call this “Tight-Loose leadership.” Since the development of collaborative teams depends greatly on the ability to dialogue effectively and exchange ideas freely, we need to place early emphasis on creating a sense of community so that teachers are comfortable collaborating with each other.
At Churchill High School in Eugene, Oregon, we aligned and prioritized two systems that we felt would generate the most traction with engaging all students at high levels. We established Professional Learning Communities and aligned our efforts so that they reflected the intention of the AVID College and Career Readiness Framework. Our systems and structure provide a framework for how to establish a shared vision, insist on rigor in every classroom, break down barriers of access and expectation for students, and align our work to ensure that our every effort supports every child.
Creating a Shared Vision: Collective Commitments – The struggle to breathe life into our mission is not isolated. The central challenge in changing culture is changing people’s behavior (Kotter, & Cohen, 2002). We began by engaging our staff in a collaborative process to identify shared values and establish “collective commitments” as a means to address what we want for our students and how we collectively function as a team in order to actualize the desired outcome. As we built the shared knowledge, we recognized that our commitments must inspire the teacher to behave according to the commitment otherwise they were merely a list of good intentions. We framed the development of collective commitments by asking ourselves, “If learning for all is at the core of our common beliefs, what will our behaviors be that match that commitment? What would it look like if we really meant it?” Teams were asked to deliberately identify actions that they could embrace to improve the learning of each and every student.
- We believe every student deserves an adult that deeply cares for them.
- We will maintain a steadfast focus on scholarship by working to close the opportunity and expectation gaps.
- We actively seek out and eliminate educational barriers to (access/opportunity).
- We will focus on systematic responses to interventions to include attendance, behavior, academics, and time and opportunity for support.
- We will provide clear and consistent expectations.
- We will provide access to rigorous classes and access to academic supports for all.
- We will focus on AVID strategies Schoolwide.
- We look for opportunities to accelerate instead of remediate.
- We collectively encourage students to take challenging courses.
- We establish practices that develop relationships with students who struggle.
Aligning the work – At Churchill High School we established an AVID Site Team comprised of PLC Team Leaders as representatives of each core content area. This was originally established to create distributed leadership capacity across common academic content areas. Our sole purpose was to lead PLC implementation and the development of a guaranteed and viable curriculum. Our vision for a guaranteed and viable curriculum was complemented by our adherence to an AVID Schoolwide agenda complete with AVID WICOR strategies in frequent use in every classroom.
In order to facilitate our vision for learning, we recognized that we need to provide appropriate training to our team leaders each year to help them understand their role and function and to support their work leading teams. Specifically we focused on the efficiency of teams and the value of dispersed leadership.
- Have Empathy– Filter your work and decision-making from the lens of what you would want for your own child. What would you want as a teacher? What would it look like if we really meant it?
- Intense and Passionate Focus on Learning – Constant focus on the material and how to communicate that with students.
- Develop and Sustain a Collaborative Culture: Focus on the critical questions of a PLC, ensure that each team is focusing on the right things and continually improving.
- Ensure teams work interpedently to achieve common goals while holding themselves mutually accountable.
- Focus on Results: Use quantitative and qualitative data to inform learning of staff. Are more kids learning more? How do we know?
- Cultural Change: Model tight/loose leadership, reciprocal accountability and servant leadership, and equity and antiracist focus. Seek out best practices.
The Teacher Leader role is to:
- Coordinate and lead the work of their team. Collaboration based on informed decision-making and shared learning of best practice.
- Be a key communications link between the principal and staff. Bring concerns, questions, ideas from team. Communicate and explain the rationale and plans for initiatives to team.
- Model the work of the team.
- Enhance the capacity of the team to work interdependently to achieve common goals holding themselves mutually accountable.
- Ensure that the team focuses on the critical questions and best practice in order to improve student learning.
- Demonstrate a record of effectiveness their own teaching—recognized and respected as an effective teacher by their peers.
Breaking down barriers and advocating for students – An intentional layer to the AVID Site Team was the merger of building an Equity Team to create a combined leadership effort. As these teams merged, so did our conversations. In our combined AVID Site Team and Equity Team meetings, we researched practices that prohibited students from having access to high levels of learning and those that closed off opportunities for students to participate and demonstrate their learning. In short, our discussions focused on issues of access and opportunity. We realized that not all of our courses were rigorous for all. We kept reminding ourselves that “Excellence without equity is only privilege.” Our academic focus needed to have a deliberate and intentional focus on all students. We established a moral imperative through a collaborative process to include an equity filter in every decision we make to keep the tenets of institutional racism on our radar at all times as we prepared and delivered course materials.
We ensured that no AP course had prerequisites that discriminated against participation. Any student at Churchill High School that shows interest in taking and Advanced Placement course may take one without having to meet criterion requirements. Additionally, we joined forces with Equal Opportunity Schools to learn more about student interests, learn who might have an interest in taking an AP course, and factors they felt discouraged them from participating. We surveyed both staff and students of their perceptions and created an outreach plan to include more students in AP coursework with a focus on closing participation gaps among students of color.
Summary – We were able to develop teacher leadership capacity by creating shared knowledge and identifying common values and a set of behaviors that would drive the work. We also aligned our efforts to the AVID College and Career Readiness Framework as it focused on what students need and what educators need to do. We paid attention to ensuring that all classes were rigorous, all students had access and opportunity to learn, our systems were aligned and we were advocating for students by paying attention to their needs. We resolved to embrace a relentless focus of serving all students; kid-by-kid, skill-by-skill. The combined effort of content-area team leaders and the Equity Team ensured that the entire staff was a part of the equity conversation and decisions. By including the work and thinking of the Equity Team, we are better prepared to serve every student on campus. Our current work is focused on restorative practices under the umbrella of Antiracism and Universal Design for Learning (Fritzgerald, 2020). We are working to eliminate toxic grading practices, creating differentiated assessment practices, and adding multiple creative opportunities for students to receive additional time and support during the school day.
References
Eaker, R., & Keating, J. (2008). Collective commitments focus on change that benefits student learning. Journal of Staff Development, 29(3), 14–17.
Fritzgerald, A. (2020). Antiracism and universal design for learning: Building expressways to success. CAST
Fullan, M. (2005). Leadership & sustainability: System thinkers in action. Corwin Press.
Kotter, J. & Cohen, D. (2002). The heart of change: Real-life stories of how people change their organizations. Harvard Business School Press.
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