The time is now

"In pursing perfection we can achieve excellence."

The time is now.

It is 2016, and we are well into the 21st century.  I spent 15 years of the 21st century as a high school administrator, and nine of those as principal of one of America's highest-performing high schools by a number of external indicators.  

These include being named a Blue Ribbon High School, one of only 21 public high schools in the nation to be named so in 2010.  We also took the PISA, and our students outperformed the highest-performing school district, Shanghai, in all three areas of the test, reading, math and science. We also ranked highly in our state perennially on the state graduation test.  Our staff's dedication and commitment to Professional Learning Community principles resulted in our recognition as a National Model PLC at Work School.

Being result-focused helped crystallize our mission of changing students' lives.  Frankly, it is one thing to say you are a great school; it is quite another to work it prove it over and over again in a cycle of continuous improvement.

Today, I enjoyed lunch with one of our recent graduates.  With great joy I listened to his hopes and dreams for his future as he enters college as a first-year student with sophomore status. I loved hearing about his reflection on being an International Baccalaureate Diploma graduate.  His insight into what high school was and should be was an impressive discourse on our high school and on our educational system.

Our school opened in 2004 as a Professional Learning Community and our success at focusing on student learning increased as we came together as a school community of students, parents, and staff. We did business differently than most high schools by focusing on the four questions of PLC work, and our results blossomed as a result, as did our student engagement and efficacy. 

Part of the reason is that we opened with a sense of urgency, as our students came from our community's other two high schools.  Our community has high expectations and values education, crucial to our students' success, and as a new school we had no credentials.  We had no secondary school report, no list of colleges and universities that our graduates attended, no average ACT or SAT scores, no AP scores, and no Ohio Graduation Test data.

We also had zero years of engaging in the best instructional practices, the best educational research, and our professional learning community work.

And so for us the time had to be now.  The time was now to start our PLC work, to start our data history, and most importantly, to start changing student lives.

Why? Because each one of the students who were in our classes every period every day deserved the best education we could collaborate with our students and their parents to create and provide.

Now, in my work with other districts, other administrators and staff, and other buildings as an Thought Leader, I most want to encourage this same sense of urgency.

The time is now to improve our schools.  We should be working with a sense of urgency.

Photo courtesy of sheelamohan, freedigitalphotos.com

Research states that substantive change in high schools takes 8-10 years, middle school 6-8 years and elementary 3-5 years.

It is too long.  We must change now. Why? For the students who in less than a month will enter our doors all over the nation.

For some reason we feel we must take time to research, discuss, collaborate, reflect, and take baby steps so that the adults in our buildings can become comfortable and better own the change. As professionals we want to discourse and debate.  And certainly we must learn together as a professional learning community and utilize our data to inform our practices. 

But for a high school that is starting the change process now that means it may be 2024-2026 before substantive change occurs.  That is too late for the thousands of students who will graduate in that time.

The research is clear. Professional Learning Community work affects positively a whole-school focus on student learning. John Hattie's Visible Learning is clear on what truly affects student learning in classrooms.  Dylan William's Formative Assessment work on effective feedback also positively affects student learning. 

Now is the time to come together and implement it.  We must act, today and tomorrow. Every day take a step to change ineffective instructional and systemic practices in schools and districts that have little or zero effect on student learning.

August is coming.  Are you ready to change?  The time is now.  We must have the vision to see what needs done, the faith to believe we can do it, and the courage to do it.

Differences, disagreements and dislikes: what can we do?

When my daughter graduated from The Ohio State University, former president Bill Clinton served as  the graduation speaker. All politics aside,  I had never heard him speak before and looked forward to hearing not only his message but how he would deliver it to a stadium crowd of students, faculty and parents.

A mesmerizing speaker, one quote has always stuck in my mind.  Encouraging the students to embrace others in life, he stated, "Just because you are different from someone does not mean you have to disagree, and just because you disagree doesn't mean you have to dislike."

The quote returned to my mind yesterday during a four-hour flight from Phoenix to Columbus, returning home after visiting my family.  While still on the ground in Phoenix at the airport, their faces were fresh in my memory and the time we had spent together shopping in Scottsdale, sitting at the Rusty Spur, enjoying lunch at the Tempe Loco Patron that my niece and husband own and manage.

I reflected on our laughter and joy in hosting her baby shower to help welcome her son due in October and the girls' trip to the Diamondbacks game.  I am blessed to have such a loving and fun family.

As the plane ascended higher and higher into the clouds, I could see the homes below get smaller and smaller.  What a grand country we have! But why did much of our visit involve conversations of another police ambush, this time in Baton Rouge, a coup in Turkey, and hatred and violence in our world.

The view from the air of our country -- we are more alike than different.

But from above I reflected on the hundreds and thousands of homes we were flying above.  As we flew east shades of brown and mountains yielded to plains of green and crisscrossed roads.  Though I could not see individuals or families, I knew they were there.  Different cultures, different races all looked the same from high in the clouds.  As we neared Indiana and then Ohio and began our descent, rooftops and automobiles on roads became clearer.  Again, so many similarities from above.  Home after home, highway after highway.

So much of America is beautiful.  It became so clear to me.  We are all more alike than we are different.  We smile, have friends, families. Certainly we have different structures for homes, different incomes, schools, religions and races, but the same basic human needs and feelings.

As we turned to land, I looked down more closely and wondered why we were so quick to disagree with someone from whom we are different, so inclined to dislike those with whom we disagree.

The closer we get to each other seems to illuminate our individual differences.

As a high school principal I also saw the potential for these negative reactions each day in our high school.  Schools, particularly high schools, are microcosms of our society.  Our children are inundated by negativity on social media, their news sources.  Even in our Professional Learning Community work, some staff same-subject teams seemed plagued by disagreements leading to dislike. We focused as adults on our own positive motivation, work culture and climate in our professional learning community.  It was vital work for our success. But what about our work with students?

As building leaders and educators, how can we work to promote a culture of hope and caring in our schools?

1. Build a culture and climate where every student counts every day in words and deeds.  Look at the leadership teams in clubs and organizations, even in your own Principal Advisory Committees.  Do they reflect the diversity of your building?  Does your staff promote diversity in ability, race, gender, and culture when advising student organizations and in the selection of their leadership teams?  What about non-academic student recognition? Do they also reflect the diversity of the student body? If we are to create schools of hope, we must make sure each student feels recognized and respected.

2. Continue to focus on student learning every day.  Not every student is likable every day in some teachers' eyes, and in student eyes neither is every teacher.  If your culture focuses on learning every day in every period, teachers focus on student success in a caring culture and climate.  PLC work also fosters creative and improved instructional strategies that heighten student engagement.  Our same-subject teams collaborated and implemented experiential learning opportunities that helped make learning relevant and important.  As a result, our school discipline problems and student-student, student-teacher conflicts dropped significantly while student achievement increased.  The more students who succeed in their goals the more positive the school culture and climate.

3. Create casual spaces within your building where students can gather informally.  Is your media center inviting?  Do you have furniture grouped around your building so that students can collaborate formally and informally, getting to know other students on a personal level as well as collegially? Having conversations with others fosters trust and caring among students.  We enacted incentives for students who continued to make good academic and behavioral decisions that allowed them the freedom to go to various seating areas, enhancing our culture and climate of trust and caring.

While we cannot necessarily solve our problems of hatred and violence so prevalent today in our country in the world, we also cannot ignore it.  Making students aware that we are all more alike than different, and that we do not have to disagree and dislike in our schools may just help change the world one person at a time,