The Artist's View:
Color is the most dynamic and exciting element of art. It is also the hardest element to describe. Color comes from reflected light. When light reflects off of an object such as a red ball, the red ball absorbs all light waves except the red light waves. The red light waves reflect into our eyes and are interpreted by our brain as the color red. Often, we represent colors along a spectrum primary (red, yellow, and blue), secondary (violet, green, and orange) and tertiary or intermediate (red orange, red violet, blue violet, blue green, yellow green, and yellow orange). When these spectral colors are bent into a circle, we form a color wheel. White and black are not considered colors at all. Black is the absence of color and white is considered to be all colors.
ISLLC Standard #6: A school administrator is an educational leader who promotes the success of all students by understanding, responding to, and influencing the larger political, social, economic, legal, and cultural context.
A Leadership Perspective:
As different colors contribute to the whole beauty of the art and people's different styles, different gifts support successful schools. One of the ways leaders can celebrate differences is by first acknowledging that diversity is valued. This diversity can be in terms of gender or ethnicity, of course. What might also be noted is that the diversity of ideas, teaching styles, or perspectives is important to the successful school. Successful leaders consider learning styles and personality types as they seek out teachers' help. Building a successful committee is as much about “who decides who decides” as it is about who is in the group. In other words, successful leaders help bring together individuals with acknowledged differences so that a true exchange of ideas can begin. The negative approach might be leaders who select the “right” ones for committees knowing before the work begins what the conclusions will be. Where leadership is successful there are shared values and goals coupled with an appreciation for the different paths one might take to reach those goals. One of the more notable examples of these shared values amidst diverse approaches can be in a principal's role as instructional leader at a local school high school. Specifically, how might the principal support a shared value through staff development initiatives that also celebrates diverse approaches to effective instruction?
No Child Left Behind (NCLB), for better or for worse, has school leaders across the nation looking carefully at staff development, especially as staff development affects the notion of “highly qualified teachers” and “school improvement.” Two questions that continue to arise among many school leaders are, “How can we be sure that our money spent on staff development has measurable results?” and “How can we sustain any benefits so that our good intentions might last longer than just to the end of the training session?”
Historically, leaders have created mission statements and vision statements to help provide organizations a means to articulate what they value most. As noted earlier in this monograph regarding “space,” some schools have adopted a core values approach school leadership. Core values help schools communicate to the community, students, teachers and administrators what is most important. It would stand to reason that the daily activities within the school would support those values as well. Principals have an especially important role in making certain that what the teachers are doing is supportive and consistent with the articulated core values. Additionally, in a time when much staff development is being eliminated because of diminishing budgets, initiatives must be able to communicate to various audiences their value with specific and understandable assessments. And as leaders begin to “justify” their expenditures for staff development in light of NCLB, then they might return to what matters most, helping children learn.
Even when a staff development program adopts a core values approach, it will continue to find challenges to implementing successful professional development. If on the other hand school leaders couple core values with an intentional, on-going reflection process, then they can greatly improve the chances for successful staff development. One way that professional development efforts can achieve desired results is by the principal, teacher-leaders, and teachers answering affirmatively the following seven questions about the staff development initiative:
Given the core values of the school, have we done the following successfully?
- Have we made all involved aware of the initiative?
- Have we provided information about the initiative and how it supports the core values of the district?
- Have we communicated the personal impact the initiative has on people affected?
- Have we provided strategies for managing the initiative within the current realities?
- Have we communicated what consequence the initiative will have on student achievement?
- Have we provided opportunities for collaboration among those affected?
- Are we willing to provide opportunities for the affected parties to work together to further extend and refocus the initiative beyond its present form?
In order to achieve desired results of a given staff development initiative, principals will answer, in order, all the questions above. Only after one is answered adequately can the next question be asked. Skipping or avoiding a question will prevent the successful implementation of the initiative.
At a local high school, the principal was considering various scheduling initiatives to support improved standardized test scores. Early in the school year, before students arrived, the principal and teachers agree upon the following core value: “We value knowledgeable, reflective, and thoughtful students.” At the school a committee, facilitated by the staff development leader, then examined various scheduling models that would support the articulated value. With district-level support, the high school team committed to team teaching for math-science and English-social studies.
The first order of business was for the principal, with the collaboration of the high school committee, to make the entire staff aware of team teaching. The leader then provided information that clarified in what ways team teaching supported the core value. Once the faculty had the team teaching information, it began asking questions like, “What does this have to do with me?” Individuals quickly moved to decide if the idea affected them personally. Again, the leader shared with the faculty how team teaching affected them. The faculty then imagined how it, collectively and individually, would absorb or adopt team teaching into its existing schedule. In other words, how would each teacher manage team teaching? Up to this point, questions focused on the teachers. When the faculty began to consider the impact of team teaching on student achievement, however, then their concern about the initiative moved from inward looking to outward looking. The discussion about team teaching moved to the consequence on student scheduling or student achievement. The phase revealed a significant shift in the focus of the faculty. The faculty (principal and teachers) ceased to think primarily of itself and more towards the students. It is important to note that the faculty could not be asked to consider the needs of the students until the first four phases were addressed.
An especially exciting moment was when the faculty moved to the next phase of concern and began asking questions about how it might collaborate to further enhance the positive benefits of team teaching. This level of concern represented the best elements of site-based management and shared decision-making. This level, however, served to remind reformers that systems change is a multi-year challenge and that there are few shortcuts. Finally, in very rare instance, this faculty began to imagine how team teaching could be refocused or reconstructed to be an even better strategy for enhancing the quality and quantity of student learning.
For school leaders the message from the example above was that as schools engaged in professional development, they must attend to the needs of those caught in the change in specific and intentional ways. And only after individuals began to understand how they would manage the change could the staff development move to its most important point . . . student achievement. Understanding this process could help reduce frustration and ambiguity amidst the storm of change. As NCLB begins to disappear on the political horizon and the next “miracle plan” arises, then school systems can be confident that they are already attending to what matters most, helping children be productive, reflective, and knowledgeable citizens in a global society. Indeed, staff development can support high standards while also supporting a range of approaches. When staff development, as well as other school-based decisions, allows for shared values and diverse approaches, then those efforts support the diversity of ideas . . . the color of successful schools.
Element #7
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