Entry # 4: The North Star Team --
All of Us Finding Our Way
(Alternate title: "Change Looks Completely Different in the Middle
than It Does from the End.")
When I read of the miracle of Central Park West or Paideia Schools or hear
of the school so beloved by Governor Bush in Texas -- KIPP Academy -- I
commit an act of hubris in thinking, "I can do that."
Well, frankly, my dear, reading about innovation is a lot easier than doing
it.
The rest of the story:
At least once a day I wander in and out of the two teachers' classrooms
which comprise the team "North Stars." What I see is good, sometimes
bad, but never predictable. And therein lies the challenge. This is the
team which was a shared dream of two extraordinary teachers. We wanted a
safety net for children we could predict would take a hard fall when they
reached middle school. The dream alternates between "not as good as
we had hoped," and "not as bad as it could be." The dream
is not exactly as we had imagined.
The teachers in this team are remarkable and selected because they were
so. The students are equally notable, but for very different reasons. The
team sprang from a teacher's dream last spring. She had become frustrated
with "things as they are" which did not address what she considered
to be the most compelling needs of students. Julie was teaching in a special
reading program, highly successful if our pre- and post-test results were
counted, and also strictly scripted. Two years into it, she had enviable
student outcomes but was professionally unchallenged. She wanted a change,
a challenge, and more congruence between what she perceived students needed
and the program of study they were receiving all day, not just one period
a day.
Finding a like-minded partner for her was a task. Together we interviewed
a number of candidates for her team who passed the paper audit. But when
we talked with them, the magic ingredient was missing. Julie and I talked
about a teammate who had compatible philosophy about children and their
learning and who held "what was best for children" as her essential
measure for decision-making. Eureka! That person finally appeared in July.
Tracie was ready to leave special education but had not forgotten the reasons
she was drawn to that specialty initially. She believed there were other
ways to engage children in learning that she was not able to implement in
her special education assignment. They worked together to identify students
for the team.
We chose sixth grade repeaters
The students were matched to a profile we developed. First, we set enrollment
cap at 30 students for the team. We wanted a group that mirrored the demographics
of the school. This proved difficult as there were so many more African
American boys in the pool. We made a conscious decision to reach for a gender
balance even if we could not achieve racial parity. We looked for students
who had not been successful last year, sixth grade repeaters. We were advised
of upcoming students who were predicted to have difficulty in their transition
to sixth grade.
Slowly, we identified our North Stars who we conceived of as those heading
for the same destination as everyone else in the school but who might be
taking a different path to get there. This was the essence of our belief
in their ability to succeed at a high level and the need for different ways
of learning.
I wish I could give a list of 10 steps necessary to design and implement
a program that recaptures students. Rocket science it is not, but this sort
of dreaming requires a clear vision that is not blurred by the daily challenges
it faces. The whole enterprise has been messier than any of us ever imagined
it would be.
It is one thing to read about innovation and change; it is entirely different
to "do" innovation and change. It is the difference between learning
a waltz step and waltzing around a ballroom. No doubt about it. We are learning
to waltz and this is no graceful sight. The steps we are taking seem to
work one day and be ludicrous failures the next. The students appear to
respond and then there are multiple frantic calls to the office for administrative
backups.
Discipline has been a major obstacle
We began with a democratic notion of classroom and instructional design
which included an interest-driven curriculum. This notion did not survive
the first week of school. The inexperience of the teachers, coupled with
the lack of discipline in the classroom, made such an effort seem hopelessly
naïve. But, there was no flagging commitment from the teachers, just
a renewed determination to get it right. They planned every day for as many
hours as they were in the classroom.
Now, just nine weeks into the year, they have retreated into a structured
curriculum of adopted textbooks and routines consistently enforced. The
expectations for work product have been explicitly described. Students are
given examples of the quality of work they are to produce. They are asked
to describe the standards they are aiming to reach. There is, for the moment,
more peace and focus in the classroom and the students seem to have relaxed
a bit. This is where they are for now.
The discipline has been a major obstacle. Hourly, there were calls to the
assistant principals alerting them that another obstructer of learning was
leaving the classroom. They videotaped the classes and asked students to
analyze what was going wrong. The students were involved in refining classroom
rules and procedures. The "think tank" was a time-out center where
students wrote a reflection on what was not working for them in the classroom.
We hit some sort of a rock bottom when the idea surfaced of placing a baby
monitor in the classroom and AP's office as a proactive strategy. But there
were some effective solutions: a regular "walk and talk" session
after lunch where students walked the track and were given a topic to work
with as they walked their half mile getting focused for the afternoon.
The single gender class groups receive two-thumbs up from the teachers.
The climate could not be more different in each. The girls' class is social
and highly interactive; the boys tend to individual effort and general disengagement
with the learning.
My revelation of the week
So much for the messy act of change and innovation when you think it is
isolated to one setting. The brain seeks patterns and one finally registered
with me. I caught sight of myself trapped in the very dilemma these teachers
were facing every day. I was promoting teacher collaboration in looking
at students' work and teacher-made assessments through the eyes of a critical
friend. I realized that the very same issues are here. North Stars do not
have any prior experience doing the work we are asking. They need scaffolding,
templates that spell out teacher expectations. Just as the faculty needs
structure to begin their examination of students' work.
Why does it take me so long to figure out the obvious? So, that is my revelation
of the week: Do not forget what you know about learning and change. The
lessons are universal.
As a final note to the week, unrelated to the busy issues the days have
involved, is yet another revelation: the real meaning of "high"
in the term, "high stakes testing." Our fallen PACT test results
turned out to be an error in data analysis at the state level. As the story
unfolds, we actually improved our performance. But my sister, a super principal
in a rural community outside Athens, Georgia, received results on her annual
mammogram test. They were not what we had hoped.
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