You Can Do It!

For nine years, I served as principal of a then new Central Ohio suburban high school. We opened dedicated to initiating and implementing the principles of Professional Learning Community work and sought resources to inform, guide, and inspire staff.

One of the best resources we discovered was On Common Ground, edited by Richard DuFour, Robert Eaker, and Rebeca DuFour. With our Central Office's support, we purchased a copy for each staff member, that year and every year for new staff, and we utilized it as our PD focus and application.

My well-worn copy of On Common Ground.

It is a unique compilation of articles by some of America's best educational researchers and reformists supporting characteristics of specific research, such as assessment, and how it is supported in and by Professional Learning Community work.  Contributors include Michael Fullan, Douglas Reeves, Michael Schmoker, and Rick Stiggins, and other notables.

One of the chapters, entitled the "Masters of Motivation,"became one of our most valuable resources in our work with changing the culture and climate of our building from an emphasis on teaching to an emphasis on learning.  Why?  Because it is the chapter that speaks of learning communities as schools of hope, schools of "effort-based ability."

In short, the author Jonathon Saphier encourages us to examine the message we send our students every day in our classrooms.  Do we convey to our students that we believe they can each do rigorous work to high standards, even if they do not believe it themselves?

He states that we should and must continue to exhort students in our words and actions that "What we are doing is important. You can do it. I will not give up on you."(p. 87, On Common Ground.)


"What we are doing is important.

You can do it.

I will not give up on you."


It is a simple mantra, but one that as we reflected on it, we realized that we were not implementing.  As a high-performing high school that offered both AP and IB courses, in addition to Honors, we often started the year with long syllabi and first week of school messages that emphasized how hard this class was going to be, how prepared you better be to be able to succeed and how much work you were going to have to do.

We emphasized the "this is important work" portion without reassuring students that yes, they could be successful and yes, we were there to help them learn it.

As a result, many students fled to guidance in the first week of school to drop the very AP and IB courses we had encouraged and recommended that they take.

We had excellent discussions with our staff about the sometimes subtle and sometimes overt messages we sent students about whether they should be in that class or not.  We also realized that we sometimes believed ourselves that certain students shouldn't be in certain courses.

This, of course, is an antithesis to the PLC belief that we all need to commit to focus on learning, that students can learn, and it is our job to assure learning in every classroom, every period, every day.

We had rich discussions in staff meetings, department chair meetings, same-subject team meetings, department meetings and casual conversations.  This dialogue and its outcome was one of our tipping points in our PLC work.  We HAD to believe that every student could learn, and we had to recognize that it was our job to ensure it.  More importantly, we needed to build classroom and school-wide structures to become a school of hope with high aspirations for every student.

The Math Department actually printed these words on a poster and had it on every math classroom door: "Math is hard work. You can do it. We will help you."  Imagine the message that sent every student as they entered math class.  Soon, one by one, more teachers embraced this commitment as their own motivating mantra to engage students in believing that yes, they could learn and would learn.

Embracing "effort-based ability" and overtly teaching effective effort strategies to our students helped transform our school into a school of hope.  More importantly, our teacher-student relationships strengthened with a commitment to learning.  We changed from individual teachers communicating and teaching content to collaborative teaching teams communicating to students that we do important work, they can do it, and we will not give up on them.

As principals, we also realized the importance of communicating this same belief to our staff as they continued to engage in our PLC journey.  Adults, as well as students, need to know that this work is important, they they can do it, and that we will not give up on them.