[Note to readers: This column is part of an ongoing series for Iowa ASCD’sThe Source e-newsletter.]

Leaders of Relationship Building: Listening is a part of leading

What does it mean to be a curriculum lead? This is the fifth column in a series for Iowa administrators, teacher leaders and anyone else interested in enhancing curriculum leadership. So far, we’ve discussed the work of curriculum, instruction, and assessment; data analysis, processes, and professional development. This week, we’ll be taking a closer look at what it means to be a leader of relationship building. Future columns will consider the remaining facets of curriculum leadership: performance, operations, and change.

According to the functions of our work, curriculum leads, “Seek first to understand and then to be understood.” Listening matters! One way of thinking about this is that administrators ought to be the least vocal educators in the room. Sure, the central office and principals comes with a TON of positional authority, but this doesn’t mean administrators ought to be flexing their muscles with top-down conversations at every meeting. I am not suggesting grass-roots, plan-every detail during the meeting based upon a vote leadership is required either. In fact, I was advised early in my administrative career that time is limited, therefore it is more efficient to critique than create in most meetings. Some of the most effective administrators I have observed come to a meeting with a tentative plan for moving forward and ask those in attendance to provide their input. During the meeting, the team often revises, re-orders or re-prioritizes the next steps. Other times, administrators bring more than one option for the team to consider and seeks their input on the most feasible option. In both cases, listening to others is a high priority.

At one leadership team meeting comprised of administrators and teacher leaders at Solon, I brought what I thought was a timely plan for our upcoming professional learning day. Per the usual protocol, I asked the leadership team to provide additional guidance: “What were we missing?” and “What do teachers need right now?” As it turns out, the initial plan I presented was not in tune at all with the leadership team’s thinking, so we ended up scrapping the whole thing and starting from a blank slate! This was not very efficient at all! In fact, it took a lot more time to clean up the mess I had created through extra work following the planning meeting. On a good note, the team ended up facilitating a much better professional learning day. In addition, I was told by several teachers that administration earned even more trust with those in the planning meeting, because of the way the situation was handled.

Instructional coaches and others in curriculum leadership roles might model this practice, too, by asking a plethora of questions at planning meetings or in reflective conversations following classroom observations. For those of us who have completed Iowa evaluator approval coursework, ORID (PDF) questions is a possible framework to consider in conversations with colleagues in a meeting. Objective questions such as “Where does this next step fit into our district strategic plan?” can help a team stay focused on the right work. Reflective questions might sound something like: “How do we feel yesterday’s professional learning went?” Interpretive questions could include “What things could we do next week to increase teachers’ understanding of the writing workshop framework?” and “What other ways could we assess the sheltered instruction lessons we observed this morning?” Finally, curriculum leaders might use decisional questions such as “What supports do we need to continue to work on these areas of concern?” to encourage a group towards action. All of these questions are designed to facilitate conversation rather than monopolize it!

Our role as curriculum leaders is also to remember these wise words from Susan Scott (2004), author of Fierce Conversations, “the conversation is the relationship.” When we engage in dialogue with fellow educators, we can develop others’ ability to lead or we can micromanage them. As members of many teams, committees, and task forces, we can aim for collaboration whenever possible or we can be the first to be frustrated. When doing it right, our colleagues should describe our conversations are more often encouraging than demanding. Jim Knight (2015), author of Better Conversations, suggests authenticity and good communication work hand in hand. In other words, our aim should be to “walk the talk” of listening. If our end goal is to seek input frequently and do nothing with it, our motives will quickly be exposed. Knight (2015) encourages educators to know what we believe in and act consistently with those beliefs. May we strive to be known as leaders that listen and seek the input from those around us.

In closing, curriculum leaders who value relationship building seek first to understand and then to be understood, all the while understanding the conversation is the relationship.

Resources to further learning as a leader of relationship building:

● Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Our Life One Conversation at a Time, by Susan Scott (2004, Berkley)

● The Art of Coaching, by Elena Aguilar (2013, Jossey-Bass)

● QBQ! The Question Behind the Question: Practicing Personal Accountability at Work and in Life, by John G. Miller (2004, TarcherPerigee)

● Better Conversations, by Jim Knight (2015, Corwin)

[Note to readers: This column is part of an ongoing series for Iowa ASCD’s The Source e-newsletter.]

Leaders of Professional Development: Moving towards a process rather than event

What does it mean to be a curriculum lead?  This is the fourth column in a series for Iowa administrators, teacher leaders and anyone else interested in enhancing curriculum leadership.  So far, we’ve discussed the work of curriculum, instruction, and assessment; data analysis; and processes.  This week, we’ll be taking a closer look at what it means to be a leader of professional development.  Future columns will consider the remaining facets of curriculum leadership: relationship building, performance, operations, and change.

According to the functions of our work, “Curriculum leads model, expect, monitor, and evaluate continuous learning of all students and staff members.”  Modeling matters!  Central office administrators ought to be modeling curriculum leadership with principals through frequent and collaborative classroom walkthroughs.  Principals and instructional coaches, too, should carve out time to model curriculum leadership by being in classrooms and providing feedback to teachers.  Most importantly, these walkthroughs should inform upcoming professional learning.  In my experience as a district administrator, a team of principals, teacher leaders, and central office personnel visited classrooms at least twice per year.  The most impactful observations were purposefully scheduled one month prior to a full day of professional learning, for the purpose of influencing the details of the professional development day.  Similarly, PLC or data team leaders might visit colleague’s classrooms a week prior to an upcoming common formative assessment, in order to better understand the different pedagogical approaches taking place across a grade level or content area.

Our role as curriculum leaders is also to monitor and evaluate the impact of professional learning.  As I travel the state visiting with current and future school leaders, I often hear about professional learning as an event rather than a process.  Events look something like this: Group of staff attend Mr. Big-Name-Speaker at regional workshop or district brings in Ms. Book-Author to do a workshop for all teachers.  Following the professional learning event, those with positional authority do not articulate any expectations or timeline.  In other words, it’s up to individual teacher discretion to determine the next steps and impact, if any, the professional learning time will have on students in the classroom.  Furthermore, with such a scattering of professional learning, teachers may be wondering where they should be prioritizing their time in order to work towards district goals.  Meanwhile, the district has invested taxpayer funds and staff have depleted their limited time away from students which may or may not yield any long-term improvement.  As such, curriculum leaders owe it to our colleagues to assist in identifying at least one new learning/behavior resulting from professional learning opportunities, and provide ongoing support for this new idea to enhance student success.  In buildings and districts with a strong vision for professional learning as a process, every opportunity for new staff learning is carefully planned, building upon the previous learning opportunity, student learning needs, and district goals.  A quick and efficient approach might be sending a professional learning follow-up survey soliciting participant perspectives such as their biggest take away, lingering questions, and suggestions for needed implementation supports.  When a leadership team summarizes this feedback, sends it to staff, and carefully plans the next professional learning supports using this information, not only will teachers appreciate their voices being heard, but also see curriculum leaders making plans to connect new learning with previous learning.

In closing, curriculum leaders who value improving professional learning in a school district invest their time to ensure it is a process rather than event.  This function requires leaders visit classrooms and systemically follow-up on each staff professional learning opportunity in order to purposefully model and monitor continuous improvement.

Resources to further learning as a leader of professional development:

• The Principal as Curriculum Leader, 4^th edition, by Allan A. Glatthorn, Jerry M. Jailall, and Julie K. Jailall (2017, Corwin)
• Evaluating Professional Development, by Thomas R. Guskey (2000, Corwin)
• Professional Development That Sticks: How do I create meaningful learning experiences for educators?, by Fred Ende (2016, ASCD).

[Note to readers: This column was published in a September 2018 edition of Iowa ASCD’s The Source e-newsletter.]

Leaders of Processes: Making Every Professional Learning Opportunity Count

Last school year, I challenged readers to join Iowa ASCD by digging deeper into what it means to be a curriculum lead.  According to our organization, the functions of our work as a curriculum lead include being leaders of…

• Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment
• Data Analysis
• Processes
• Professional Development
• Relationship Building
• Performance
• Operations, and
• Change

In the first column, I posed some key questions and shared my own experiences related to being a leader of curriculum, instruction and assessment.  Curriculum leads are constantly painting the picture of a shared vision for the integration of curriculum, instruction, and assessment, all the while trying to keep up with changing state standards and assessments (ready or not, here we come, Iowa Statewide Assessment of Student Progress!)  In the second column, we considered how curriculum leads “assure all educators’ ability to use data to inform, implement, monitor, and evaluate results-based decisions” through tools such as innovation configuration maps.

The curriculum leadership journey continues in 2018-19!  This week, we’ll be taking a closer look at what it means to be a leader of processes.  “Curriculum leads establish and monitor common practices and procedures to assure alignment and achievement of initiatives and plans with district and building goals.”  Perhaps the most tangible example of this function in action is the teaming structure of a building or district.  Whether data teams, collaborative learning teams or achievement teams are the structure of choice, the common goal is to create a community of adult learners who are focused on ensuring students learn at high levels.  Curriculum leaders can and should play a key role in these teaming structures.  Rather than merely requiring agendas and minutes from each team, curriculum leads might map out differentiated deliverables throughout an academic year.  For example, elementary teams could share a summary of the data used to identify students in need of reading intervention on a monthly basis.  A secondary science team working through the Next Generation Science Standards likely has a list of revised units and assessments which would serve as evidence of collaboration time well utilized.

Moving beyond “pockets of excellence” should be a common talking point for curriculum leads embracing their role as leaders of processes.  Dr. Thomas Guskey (2000) suggests school leaders consider five critical levels of evaluation: participants’ reactions, participants’ learning, organization support and change, participants use of new knowledge and skills, and student learning outcomes.  While professional learning alone that directly affects students learning may be viewed as the holy grail because it is often a costly and time-consuming process to isolate and track down the necessary information, this does not mean schools should give up evaluating professional learning efforts all together.  As a leader of processes, curriculum leaders take the time to plan desired student learning outcomes and then work backwards to identify adult knowledge/skills to be acquired, organizational supports, and related learning activities.  Following each professional learning opportunity, participant reactions and levels of learning might be captured through a tool such as Google Forms or SurveyMonkey.  In addition, classroom observations should be scheduled to note the degree to which participants are applying newly acquired skills.  For example, at my former school district, principals and instructional coaches scheduled classroom observations to follow-up on a multiple year reading-in-the-content area initiative.  Using information from these observations and participant reactions captured via Google Forms, we were able to plan future professional learning opportunities that targeted areas of fine tuning.

In closing, curriculum leaders who value improving processes in a school district invest their time in structures to ensure each professional learning opportunity counts.  This function requires a leaders to think of change as a process rather than an event, such that each professional learning opportunity builds on the previous one, using multiple sources of data in the planning process.

Resources to further learning as leader of processes:

• Evaluating Professional Development, by Thomas R. Guskey (2000, Corwin)
• The Data Teams Experience: A Guide for Effective Meetings, by Angela Peery (2014, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• Learning by Doing: A Handbook for Professional Learning Communities (3rd Edition), by Richard DuFour, Rebecca DuFour, Robert Eaker, Thomas Many, and Mike Mattos (2016, Solution Tree)