The Graveyard of School Reform : Why the Resistance to Change and New Ideas 9781475814552, 9781475814545

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The Graveyard of School Reform

The Graveyard of School Reform Why the Resistance to Change and New Ideas William L. Fibkins

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Rowman & Littlefield A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB Copyright © 2015 by William L. Fibkins All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fibkins, William L. The graveyard of school reform : why the resistance to change and new ideas / William L. Fibkins. pages cm Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-1-4758-1453-8 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4758-1454-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4758-1455-2 (electronic) 1. School improvement programs—United States. 2. Educational change—United States. I. Title. LB2822.82.F53 2015 371.2'07—dc23 2015009672

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

This book is dedicated to my eight grandchildren: Kaitlin, Sophia, Kristina, Harry, Andrew, Jack, George, and Teddy. They have brought great joy to our family, and one thing they don’t need to do is “reform” their ways. They are just like many teachers and schools—just fine the way they are.

Contents

Preface

ix

Introduction

xv

1

The Myths behind Why Many School Reforms Fail

2

The Missing Pieces Needed for Successful School Reform

21

3

The Negative Impact of Too Much Reform on the Careers of Teachers

41

Providing Relief for Principals Leading Reform: Utilizing Teacher Leaders to Shore Up the Principal’s Role

61

How the Connection between Inside-Out and Outside-In Reform Can and Will Reform Schools from Within

77

4 5 6

The Personal and Professional Challenges for Change Agents When They Move on to New Settings

1

103

Conclusion

131

References

141

About the Author

143

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I wrote this book to help educators, parents, and leaders of reform better understand the reasons why many reforms fail in the public schools, what is missing in these efforts, and what needs to be done to deliver the reform students, parents, and educators need. A major focus of this book is the argument that local educators need to be awarded their equal place as partners with national and state reformers if reforms are to succeed. The potential, powerful role of local educators in making reforms work is often a hidden variable and glossed over when reforms fail. This book examines why the outside-in model for reform is leaving local educators out of the roles of leaders and collaborators and dooming needed reform. A model that combines the best ideas and resources of the outside-in and inside-out reform models is now needed. This book is not a rant against outside-in reformers but rather a call to include educators at the local level as valid team members and contributors to the reform process, working effectively inside their schools with the support of national and state reformers. As this book suggests, outside-in reformers need to hear this call for change, as the reform they offer requires the skills and strong involvement of local educators to make their ideas and plans for reform work. In the present world of reform far too many educators are sitting on the sidelines because the reforms being asked of them are not based on their own view of what changes are needed for “their” school. They need to be invited into the reform process as equal partners, not simply as subservient doers to carry out the ideas of others. However, when reform efforts fail, what is often missing are the real reasons why the skills, commitment, and involvement of local educators are not utilized to their potential. It’s similar to the case of a bright kid labeled as an underachiever and slacker who is isolated and not called upon by his teachers because he seems not involved or part of the class. The blaming of a student for his lack of connection to the class and teachers is similar to the blaming of local schools for the cause of failed reform. Uninvolved students, just like uninvolved local educators, are ix

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viewed as the problem, and they can’t be counted on to produce. They are easy targets to blame for lack of production and participation, but no one seems to provide the interventions needed to get them involved as contributors. In seeking answers for how to change the lack of involvement of students, adults, and in our case educators, we often view a lack of involvement as a sign of resistance, a negative, rather than the need to help them find “the” way that will enable them to be committed participants. As any effective teacher and change agent knows, you get reluctant individuals involved by getting to know them well, understand and accept their behavior, educate/sell them on the needed change, and get them on board as participating members. You don’t leave them alone, isolated, and labeled as resistant to any new idea or change. But that’s just what happens to educators who are asked to carry out reforms that are not of their own making and doing. It’s hard to develop motivation and commitment to a project hatched by strangers. You have to give them a lifeline of ownership and real possibilities for participation. For educators, being falsely labeled as “the” problem for many failed reforms is a criticism that is hard to swallow. It’s a public rebuke that is difficult to defend because this charge is constantly being communicated to the general public by some outside-in reformers, social media, and online/print news. As veteran teachers suggest in chapter 2, the voices of so-called reform experts, many of whom have never taught a day in their lives, and from politicians who use education as a platform for their personal success drown out the voices of educators. Yet as this book reveals, what is surprising is that the usual suspects being blamed for the failure of reform, such as local educators, are not the main culprits at all. Meanwhile, outside reformers are seldom faulted for their leadership and often escape responsibility when reform fails. However, blaming educators in local schools and national and state reformers for failed reform gets us nowhere. Blame only results in more finger pointing, building of walls, and resistance to reconciliation. Blaming may be cathartic, but it has limited value as a problem-solving mechanism. Rather, our work needs to be focused on what’s missing in our present reform model: a system that can connect the outside-in approach of reformers with the inside-out approach of local school leaders in a positive, noncombative way; a system in which both have equal status,

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able to deliver the specialized ideas, resources, and personnel skills each can offer; and a scenario in which both leaders of reform and local schools can see their ideas take hold and students, staff, and parents come out winners. And, of course, any connecting system needs a go-to person. This book describes such a role, a school-based teacher leader who acts as a change agent—an educator who is homegrown, highly skilled, chosen by his busy principal to lead the reform and develop a collaborative role with reform leaders. As this book suggests, this is a new role for highly skilled school staff members looking for a career change, with no interest in becoming an administrator. It’s also a new role for overworked building principals who are not only besieged by the increasing demands of their job but also by the constant flow of reform proposals from the state and national levels. It’s a marriage made necessary as principals are becoming more aware that they can’t do it all, especially in many of our large secondary schools with student populations of over two thousand students. They need to share their responsibilities with a trusted, skilled colleague they can count on to deliver the needed reform. In this role, the experienced principal serves as a mentor and model to help guide his teacher leader through the rough patches that come with reform and create political cover for the leader when what can go wrong goes wrong. In today’s school world there is no middle man (or woman), such as a teacher leader/change agent, to smooth the transition, implementation, and anchoring of reform plans. As a result, small problems become big deals. In this scenario, reform leaders are often too far away, housed in colleges and universities, foundations, think tanks, and state and national departments of education, to get a face-to-face, close-up view of what’s going on. At the same time, building principals are often too overworked and overwhelmed to keep up with the demands of reform. There’s no one in a leadership role in local schools to put out the fires that come with reform and be the go-to person needed to keep the reform on track. This book is unique in that it avoids the sourness and ranting rhetoric now found in the blaming game and turf wars between reformers and local school leaders that surround many reform efforts—an unfortunate blaming game in which local schools are often the culprits and cause of

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failed reform. This book suggests the problems of failed reform and the jousting between these unlikely partners are due to the lack of a coupling system and change agents to help make each side equal partners who know their unique role: partnerships in which local school staff members are the doers and sources of reform ideas that meet their needs; and reformers who are the thinkers, supporters, project cheerleaders, providers of resources not available to local schools, and who cover when the reform encounters hard times. In order to reach the goal of equal partners in this school reform model, an outside-in and inside-out combo, this book is organized around the following themes for the readers review: • • • •

myths behind the failure of school reform; missing pieces needed for successful reform; negative impact of too much reform on the careers of teachers; providing needed relief for overworked and overwhelmed principals; • how connecting outside-in and inside-out reform models can and will reform schools from within; and • the personal and professional challenges involved for experienced change agents as they move into new settings and uncharted territory. It is the author’s belief that this book will help move leaders of reform at the national, state, and local level away from the acrimony now common in many reform efforts and and instead create a mutual understanding that, while both sides are different and have different constituencies, they need to make peace and accept each other’s important role in order to serve their main customers better; the students and their parents. The path to successful reform requires each side to bury the hatchet that has brought them ill wind and replace it with an increased determination to know each other well and recognize they are bearers of special gifts needed to succeed. Knowing students well is often cited as the most important factor for teachers in helping their students succeed. The same formula needs to be applied to improving the working relationship between national and state reformers and local school leaders. What is required is a path to help both sides know each other well, work together as equals and team members, and each having a voice and place at the decision-making table. For too long the town-gown model has been the model for the relationship between expert reformers and

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local school leaders. The experts are the ideas and thinkers and the local schools are the doers who follow their plans and orders. What we have now is an unequal system in which the ideas and skills of local school staff often go untapped, and as a result they are uninvolved, left to stagnate, remain “just a teacher,” and feel that they are not participants or major players in the reform effort. This is not a winning scenario for either expert reformers or local school leaders. They both need each other’s ideas and resources. This book is about how to tear down the walls that are blocking successful working relations, communications, affirmations, and mutual support between these outside-in and inside-out reformers that can lead to successful reform, not failure. Finally, this is not a rant against national and state leaders of reform but rather an effort to uncover the hidden reasons why reforms falter and to promote an alternative reform model that can capture the strengths and assets of national, state, and local school reformers so they all have an equal contributing role in reform.

Introduction

An author of novels based on true stories was in search of a story focusing on battles for turf, power, and control that would include a heavy dose of intrigue, conflict, deception, failure, loss and gain, self-promotion, envy, winners and losers, and contrived professional/ personal relations. In sorting through possible topics, he was advised by a wise mentor that he might find all these hot issues by exploring some of the dark, often unspoken, stories of failed school reform. The author’s reaction was one of disinterest and disbelief. He replied, “The kind of material I am looking for is usually found in the corporate world, Wall Street, and organized crime. Why would I devote my time to a novel about school reform? I’ve never read much about conflicts in schools except for students acting out. “I don’t think a novel about this issue would sell. People want sex, violence, evil doings, and good guys winning over bad guys kind of stories. Plus, aren’t the interactions of teachers, administrators, and school reform leaders usually civil, aboveboard, and based on mutual trust? “I am looking for a story that has a bite to it and involves competition for turf, power, and control. Do you really think I can find these issues among educators and reformers, and would their story resonate with the general public? Besides, isn’t stuff written about school reform usually kind of dull and boring?” The mentor replied, “I think if you take on such a project, you’ll find more than you’re looking for and enough material for at least three books. As you will see, the journey for educators and reform leaders, the unlikely couple who are forced into a relationship to reform local schools, is often dominated by competition for ownership, influence, rewards, and success of the project, and a non-blame clause for reformers if failure results. “In the beginning, reform leaders are often seen as heroes who have received national attention and grants to deliver programs to local xv

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schools that will herald a new beginning in the way children learn, teachers teach, and administrators supervise and support. Theirs is a good news story the public can’t resist even though there are signs of selfpromotion at work for the reformers. “It’s a story of heroic reformers riding into local towns bent on improving their down-and-out schools that are administered by tired and overworked administrators. Administrators who appear powerless to improve the performance of laggard teachers who think only of retirement and a way out of their misery. “However, heroes such as education reformers often find their proposals don’t sit well with local educators. And they think, because their ideas are so needed and worthwhile, they don’t need to develop a bond with local educators. And, of course, there is resistance and also adversaries emerging who take on an underdog role. “Some of the adversaries are determined to put a stop to the reform even before it begins. They are not villains or bad guys but rather educators who are satisfied with the status quo and want no part of change that will rock their boat. “These are educators who have a long history of defeating any attempt at reform in their school and, as a result, are very skilled, well trained, and ready and set to fire a broadside shot across the reformers’ bow when reform plans arrive at their classroom door. “And there are less rigid adversaries who say they have been a part of too many failed reforms in which they have given their all and over time derailed their hopes and dreams for change. They say they want no more involvement. “But it is often a ‘no’ that can be changed. They can be brought on board the reform if guaranteed a place to offer their ideas and be at the center of implementing the project. “In my view, your story could be about the trials that occur between the reformers, the heroes, and local educators, the underdogs, as they face many challenges and obstacles and their roles collide, causing distrust and chaos on their journey. But more important, it might also be about sage educators who seize the opportunity to find ways to bring the reform leaders and their adversaries together as a united team, each learning how to respect, accept, listen, and communicate with each other. “In the end, the sage educator avoids taking on the role of hero or main character interested only in self-promotion. Rather, they wisely

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xvii

choose the role of a silent doer, devoted to winning this battle of needed reform and overcoming obstacles, real and imagined, when they arise. “I have sketched out a possible plot for you to think about. You may be surprised about what you will learn about the downside of the world of education and reform. Underneath all the professional niceness, it’s a battlefield. “In closing, please remember that reform efforts are not all about good intentions, exemplary ideas, and grand schemes to change schools and make them places in which students thrive, teachers become more effective, and parents learn to love their schools. “As I said earlier, many reform efforts have a much darker side where we need to shed more light and scrutiny if reforms are actually to succeed. A closer look at what goes on in reform will reveal a different, not always positive, story. “That’s your challenge. To take the innocence and naïvety out of how reforms are described and replace it with stories of conflict, constant maneuvering, and jousting for control. “This is a story that will hopefully expose reform efforts as complex endeavors filled with characters that are human and, as such, imperfect and vulnerable to the evils of self-promotion, false promises, and using others to pave the way for their success. “But it is also a story of characters that are dedicated to making reform work in turbulent school environments and that are prepared to quickly stamp out any efforts for change. “This is not a good guy versus bad guy story but rather a story of how human beings are able to give up their own self-serving personal and professional goals and seek common ground with others to do good work. “However, finding common ground is not a job for the faint of heart. Victories on behalf of students and parents don’t come easy. As you will see, if you decide to take on this project, there is a cost for not turning the other way and being up to the task of doing the messy hard work that is required in reform. “If change were easy, everyone would be doing it, wouldn’t they? Here is a possible plot and scenario for your review.”

ONE The Myths behind Why Many School Reforms Fail

The plot for the story of why many school reforms fail begins as most stories do with the search to find the truth that is hidden, buried beneath piles of reports and newspaper articles that blame the participants involved but miss the important clues and answers to the problem. It’s a story of the rise of myths to cover up failures that need not have occurred. The real losers in this story are not only needy children and parents but educators in local schools who feel isolated and trapped and see little opportunity for change in their future—a sad story that needs unraveling so the truth can be known, embraced, and a new door opened. There are many myths surrounding the issue of why so many reforms fail, particularly at the secondary school level. These myths have crept into the language of school reform and gained credibility among reform leaders and the general public. For example, local school leaders and educators are often blamed for their lack of understanding, know-how, support, and commitment when reform falters and lies in ruin. The blame game is the major weapon in deciding who caused failed school reform, and the local schools are at the top of the list of usual suspects. These myths have become a way of thinking among many reformers and influence their perception of local leaders of reform as not being up to the task of successfully leading their school through the many challenges of reform and, in the end, being responsible for its failure. These 1

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perceptions are seldom spoken out loud by reformers, but they are strongly held convictions. These myths present a major distraction for needed reform efforts as they encourage a negative mind-set among reformers. A mind-set that suggests resistance will loom large, and many school administrators and staff will hijack the proposed change and can’t be counted on if left on their own. In this scenario, the reformers are heroes who win the battle to bring new ideas and programs to needy children, teachers, and parents. The locals are viewed as a gang of inept bunglers who can’t be trusted. This mind-set focuses on the need for reformers to call the shots and dictate what has to be done rather than seek a collaborative venture in which local educators play an equal role in how to integrate reform in “their” school. As a result, local educators are often placed in an underdog and adversarial role. They are the last-place team, a long shot at best. The notion that in order for reform to succeed, local educators require the opportunity and invitation to buy into the reform, contribute their ideas, and have a shared responsibility with reform leaders in integrating and managing the reform as they know best is a notion that is often given little credence by reformers. What is needed is an understanding that reform moves at a slow pace and is incremental—a step-by-step building process. An intervention is best guided by the leadership of a local educator, not necessarily the principal, who has the skills, support, and backup of her peers, administration, school board members, parents, and community members while working hand in hand with reform leaders as equal partners. This is a “we are in this together, we are a team” model for success that is rarely utilized in the outside-in reform model. This is a model for a new leadership role for staff that both reformers and local school leaders need to consider if reform is to be successful. It is no secret that proposals for change are usually hatched by experts from government agencies, foundations, research and educational laboratories, and school of education leaders with only the superficial input of local school educators. The disease of experts knowing it all goes on. As a result, proposals for reform are often met by local school educators with disdain, lack of trust, and a myriad of questions such as, “What’s in it for us after the reformers have left town and fled back to their ivory towers?”

The Myths behind Why Many School Reforms Fail

3

Ideas developed by reformers from faraway places are seldom met with a welcome hand at the local level. Trust has to be earned. It’s not a given. As in all relationships, personal and professional, successful relations can only happen when the groundwork for mutual trust has been established, supported, and allowed to flourish between reformers and local educators into a model of mutual respect and meaningful collaboration. It’s no mystery why the gulf between reformers and local educators, the town and gown model, is often accepted as the norm between reformers and local schools and a major factor in the failure of reform. Reformers live in a very different world from educators: a world of ideas, research, publishing, grants, foundations, and wealthy patrons—for example, CEOs with an interest in education, charter school advocates, politicians, and leaders of social media, television, newspapers, and radio. These are “people of interest,” geared to self-promotion. They often possess excellent people and selling skills and are experienced at playing on the big stage. They are accustomed to being listened to, to others accepting their ideas, and to being shakers and movers. Local educators live in a different world, on a small stage. They are not “people of interest,” except when they are viewed as a poor teacher, a troubled person, a personnel problem, or a non–team member. Anonymity best describes their role, except if they receive an award for outstanding performance, which is rare, or a congratulation card from a parent for helping their child. Rewards and affirmations seldom find them, particularly if they are secondary school teachers. Secondary school teachers in particular are accustomed to going it alone, closeted in isolated departments, not sharing their ideas, and not being listened to by their peers. For most teachers it’s all about work, few pats on the back, waiting for an invitation to change and be involved in an exciting project that resonates with them, which seldom comes their way. It’s a prescription for anger and disillusionments to fester and grow. Over time some teachers unfortunately settle into a role of resistance to any new reform project if no new opportunity comes their way and has meaning for them. Many teachers describe themselves as “I’m just a teacher,” with no great expectations of any change coming their way. As a result, reformers and teachers appear to have little in common. Reformers are often seen as stars in the world of education while educa-

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tors are often seen as cogs in the wheel who keep the schools functioning. What is needed are more opportunities to reveal the real world of reformers and educators and to better understand what they have in common and can learn from each other. For example, both educators and star reformers experience stress, pressure, deadlines, career issues, failure, anomie, fears of burnout, and fears of being irrelevant and out of date. Being a star reformer can be a tough role: a walk on a tightrope, where one can easily fall off and overnight become the guy or gal who used to be famous. Being a star can also call for a daily grind of selling their ideas to would-be sponsors who can easily dismiss their ideas for reform as out of date and not doable in today’s world. A daily grind of selling has its costs for star reformers who must always fight to stay at the top—a fight one cannot continue forever as there is always newly anointed star reformers in their wake, anxious to dump them and take their place. Being an educator on a small stage may seem to have many more positives than being a star reformer as the former involves face-to-face relationships with children who need care, support, and affirmation, even when their behaviors suggest the opposite. But caring can also have its cost, particularly when one is asked to care for students who want none of it and challenge you at every turn. Transforming threat into caring can be a rough call for even the most skilled teachers. And there is the cost for many educators of being relegated to spend their entire career teaching the same subject, in the same grade, in the same school, without opportunities for change. It can be an isolated and isolating role with little opportunity to collaborate with colleagues and know them well. Over time their work is too often a daily grind and costly to their morale because of the lack of new learning opportunities. However, a closer look at the careers of star reformers and educators reveal that they have much in common when it comes to succeeding in their jobs. Star reformers need a degree of compassion and caring in their efforts to sell their wares. They have to be careful not to come across to their audience as uncaring bureaucrats. Their message must be able to connect with local educators and convince them that the proposed reform has something of value for their students, parents, staff, and themselves. And educators need a high degree of salesmanship in order to convince their students that they are in their corner and will advocate for them. Many at-risk students are suspicious of authority figures, especial-

The Myths behind Why Many School Reforms Fail

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ly educators who say they are out to help them. Their negative experience with adults, in particular, parents, family members, and do-gooders out to save them, have soured them against trusting adults in general. They often view offers of help and support as a manipulation to straighten them out rather than accepting them as they are: marginal kids in need of a safe, welcoming, supportive setting in school, a home away from home. However, in most cases of failed reform there is little opportunity for local school leaders and reform experts to find common ground, know each other well, understand what the work of the other really involves, and be clear on what each group can offer to develop a winning team and what’s in it for local educators if they come on board the reform project. A major issue that is often overlooked in planning reform is that many teachers are stuck in a stagnant role with little chance for change in the forecast. Many educators are desperately looking for opportunities to add new life and learning to their career, opportunities that may happen by their becoming actively involved in school reform. For educators making the decision and taking the risk to play a part in a reform effort has the possibility to present them with an opportunity, probably for the first time, to be a “somebody,” “a person of interest,” and a doer who is known for more than being “just a teacher.” However if they are not involved in all the phases of reform—the planning, implementation, and ongoing process—and relegated to a role as a doer, as in, “Here’s the plan, you carry it out,” their commitment to the reform is often at a low level. Why put their hearts, souls, and energy into a project in which they have no ownership other than to carry out the plan of some unknown expert. To prevent this scenario from happening they need an advocate to watch over them and make sure they own a piece of the reform, “their” reform, and not just be a servant carrying out the orders of faraway experts, also known as “bosses.” If educators are to teach their students about equality, they themselves must experience what it means to be equal among others: have a voice and part to play in decision making and be seen as a valued contributor and not viewed as second class and “just a teacher.” In order to develop a new persona as an equal and a contributor in the reform process, they need an advocate to guide, teach, and support them on how to take on this new role.

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And the model for this advocate is a local educator with the skills to lead a change process and involve staff members in a process of their own empowerment and, as a result, change their school. Self and institutional change is not mutually exclusive. Rather, they go hand in hand to provide positive growth for both educators and their school. And the same empowering process can hold true for leaders of reform from outside the schools. Sometimes outside reformers need a shake-up in their star role in order to put them in close touch with the real school world they are trying to change from afar. They need a touch of humanness that allows them to be known well by their allies in the local schools and also know their allies well. Becoming a real person rather than a signature on a reform proposal can go a long way in forming a positive and personal working relationship. And nothing works better than a return to working hand and hand as team members with local school reformers in the schools they are trying to reform: a participant observation role in which they can get to know the local staff and culture well, hear/observe their needs firsthand, and quickly act to provide them with the resources they need. The opportunity for immersion as an equal partner in local schools often comes about with the awareness that trying to make reform happen from afar can leave so-called experts sheltered and immune to the real issues, complexities, criticism, and human elements involved. Their world, while filled with political risks, lacks the jarring, turbulent, and always changing world of schools, particularly secondary schools. One doesn’t really know about schools without spending extended time as both a participant and observer; gaining credibility, being an expert; this knowledge only comes with ongoing real experience in the world you are trying to change. There is valuable truth in the axiom, “get out of the office in order to see what is really going on.” This new role is very different from being a star on the national scene, a person of interest, a seller of ideas, and an expert who seems to have all the answers about reform. Reformers who carry the label “expert” are not always welcome in the schools. It’s a role in which he becomes one of them, a team player, well known for his skills and what he can offer to the project. However, this new role is not a walk in the park. Star reformers are suspect. Resistance to their arrival and motives are to be expected. Questions such as, “is he here to write a book?” quickly emerge. This role requires the reformer to

The Myths behind Why Many School Reforms Fail

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build trust quickly and become accepted as a skilled person with one purpose: to help the local school staff believe in and succeed at reform. It’s a role in which they have to be known well, not be strangers. In this role, he is also a seller, no, not of reform ideas, but of himself as a bona fide contributor who is interested solely in their work and not in self-promotion. In the real world of school, displaying leadership skills, courage, and support of small, successful, incremental steps for reform counts more than having a great résumé and being the author of numerous books. Taking the risk to walk the walk, being thrown back into the trenches, and entering the world of reform at ground zero can help star reformers wake up to what they are asking of educators and to just how hard that path can be. And it can also humanize as well as threaten star performers, stripping them of their professional aura and cloak they have worked hard to build in order to shield themselves from criticism and attacks. The good news is that this journey into the real world of school can be what they require to renew themselves, avoid burning out and being irrelevant, and spur their learning on how reform really works far away from the ivory towers of academia and foundation life. One has to know the other and his and her world well in order to act as trusting adviser and guide. A truth successful teachers know well. These are important first steps in helping reformers and educators see each other in a more positive and respectful light and see local educators as the doers and contributors that many of them are. And that requires the debunking of the myths that now surround their world, a process that can help reformers view educators in local schools as allies, not enemies, or resisters. Here are a few examples of the myths that have been bought as truth by many reformers at the state and national levels, myths that lay the blame on the resistance of local schools and their inability to do the hard work to bring about necessary change: • Teachers are not interested in change; they prefer the status quo and doing what they have always done. • Building principals do not have the skills to get resisting teachers on board a change process. They also prefer the status quo and not making waves.

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• Newly hired teachers who arrive at their schools are seen as rookies with no real experience or useful contribution. They are there to learn the ropes and keep quiet. • Teachers who have been involved in many past reform efforts that have failed choose to stay on the sidelines rather than put their energy into a new change effort. They say that they are tired of too many reforms and want no part of reform and that reformers are out to make a name for themselves. • Teachers who have resisted participating in reform from the get-go will never buy into any reform plans that come their way. Their world is focused on one word, “resist.” Reformers need to cross them off their list of potential buyers as it’s a waste of their time and resources. • Teachers nearing retirement also choose to sit on the sidelines as they have been involved in too many failed reforms. They’ve been asked to step up too many times and want no more promises of better days if they get involved. They are counting the days to retirement and want out—no more promises and failed dreams for them. While myths have a degree of truth in them, the myths cited above often cloud the real reasons why many reforms proposed for schools falter in the leadership and implementation stage. In fact, these myths are often taken as truth by reformers, anti-teacher and teachers’ union groups, charter school advocates, the media, and many in the general public. These myths tend to create a negative bias that says that local schools are “the problem, resistant to change, and can’t be counted on to deliver.” It can seem like “doomsday” every day for educators in our mediadriven world. Given the many negatives piling up daily about the public schools, there is little faith among the general public that local schools are doing their best. Rather, many local schools’ staffs are viewed as slackers and out of touch when it comes to reforming schools. As a result, the public schools have become fertile territory for myths and negative stereotypes to take hold and grow. For example, this public discontent seems to be directed more to secondary schools, while many elementary schools come off as doers and giving their all to make school reform work. This should come as no surprise. Little kids, their teachers, and schools are often viewed as exist-

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ing in a peaceable kingdom where all is quiet, pleasant, peaceful, and most of all, controlled. Meanwhile, high schools, junior highs, and middle school kids and educators are not seen as a beloved group by the general public. Big kids cause big problems and can be tough to deal with, and secondary school teachers tend to be strong union members and not easily managed. Citizens often speak of large secondary schools as out-of-control places (some use the word “jungles”) where kids and staff cause havoc, while learning, if it does occur at all, is sporadic and only centered on the best and brightest kids. This kind of stereotyping sometimes becomes truth to reformers as they encounter resistance, failure, and defeat in a small sample of secondary schools. Bad news begets bad news and spreads like wildfire. While one size does not fit all schools, negative news sells, and there is no easier target than the public schools, especially secondary schools. This negative bias and stereotyping suggests little trust in the ability and commitment of local schools to bring about the reforms they are now required to produce. However, this negative bias is rarely spoken of out loud by national and state reform experts. It lies dormant under words of praise and great expectation for local schools. But it’s there. This negative bias and stereotyping of the ability of public schools to be effective agents of change runs deep and has its cost to successful reform. If school reform was a stock market brand, one would pause before putting all their money in a stock with such a dubious future. As a result, even before the opening bell of reform is rung, educators in local schools find themselves on the defense and the target of blame. When the early returns come in, and if reform begins to falter, the pile of blame only gets bigger and bigger. As a result of this gloom and doom scenario, good news of any successes never makes it to the light of day. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that educators often view the avalanche of school reforms heading their way as a constant interruption, invasion might be a better word, of their daily work and school culture. Using a sports analogy, public schools, particularly secondary schools, are forced to play defense without a break. Playing offense, putting their best foot forward and citing successes, rarely occurs. While there may be many small and incremental successes along the long, tedious road to reform, small successes don’t make news and the front pages. Often there are no rewards for the hard work and effort of

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educators involved in bringing about needed change. Bad news stories of failed school reform and incompetent educators grab the headlines and prime time on TV. It’s no wonder that educators on the front lines of reform tend to give up when all they hear is criticism rather than “good job.” Think of the model of how kids learn best. Their successes, even minute ones, are applauded and rewarded, and they hear the words, “good job” a lot. Why are we unable to do the same for educators working their butts off for reform and in need of affirmation and support? Why are we so reluctant, even stingy, to give educators the support they need to go on, when we are so generous with our affirmations with children? Part of the reason for the lack of focus on small, incremental successes is the pressure that accompanies reform efforts in local schools. The clock on reform efforts is always running, and running full speed. Expectations are often unattainable no matter how fast educators work to implement the many pieces of reform. As a result, local schools involved in reform find it hard to keep up. The pace is fast, with many bosses to please and respond to, even though educators have their regular day job of teaching, administering, guiding to manage. The name of the reform game is getting things done, and fast; show results, positive of course, develop a model that can be used in other schools, write the report and the book, and move on to another project, leaving the folks in the local schools to reflect on what this experience was all about. The role of being a leader of national and state reform efforts can be like a jockey using his whip unsparingly to make sure the horse crosses the finish line first. Results are all that matters. That’s what headlines and future grants are made of. The reform intervention effort is often seen by local educators as a manipulative effort to use the time, resources, energy, skills, and, let’s not forget, the hearts and minds of local school personnel to promote the reform group’s own self-interest and cause. Many local school leaders and staff feel like prostitutes in this system. Prostitutes deliver, and then the relationship is over. When the reform effort ends, the reform leaders don their professional garb and ride off to their ivory towers, education labs, foundations, state and national government offices, and college/university schools of education. If the reform efforts are successful, the reform leaders receive the bulk of the praise, and books are written. If the reform project fails, the

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local schools will be targeted as the bad guys and the myths cited above will live on. National and state reformers control the media machine, with the result that they never lose in the battle of school reform. It’s a case of losers winning when in reality they are often the main culprit for the loss. If the truth be known, many local schools and educators are not the major reason why many school reforms fail at the local-school level. In fact, a closer assessment of what really goes on with educators in many schools dispels these myths and reveals a different story. Local schools may be a part of the problem, but they do not deserve to be labeled as the main culprit in the failure of reform. In fact, fixing how local schools can better lead and implement school reform that ”they” have ownership in, believe in, and are committed to may be the easiest part to fix. Fixing a problem begins first with seeing the different parts of the problem clearly, not as myths or rumors. And that means demanding a halt to negative stereotypes and bashing of educators and reframing their roles in a positive, yes imperfect, way and becoming aware that many educators are not antireform or laggards but need assurance that they have a voice in the reform and an equal part to play. Educators are human. They can’t grow and thrive on a diet filled with negativity. What is needed is the acknowledgment that they have ideas; make important contributions to their students, parents, and school; and have been unfairly criticized and held responsible for the failure of some past reform efforts (with a guarantee that that criticism won’t happen again) and that they will have a local leader at their back whom they can trust, respect, and be willing to follow and who will show them how to overcome obstacles and distractions and keep failure at bay. This leader may not be the principal, but a staff member, chosen by the principal, who has the necessary skills and personality to share his or her leadership role with an emphasis on reform. Schools need go-to educators to lead and guide the day-by-day operations involved in reform. Many secondary principals have too much on their plate to provide the necessary oversight that complicated reform efforts require. They are overworked, and the future only holds more of the same, with the increase in state and national mandates.

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Here are tasks in which even very effective principals find themselves beleaguered and unable to deliver what is needed to turn failed reform into a winner: • • • •

find the time to sell reform to each of their staff; overcome the resistance that is sure to follow any reform proposal; get reluctant staff on board; navigate the reform through the pitfalls and mini-failures that are sure to arise; • identify and promote the small and incremental successes that occur so there evolves a mosaic of accomplishments and a sense that all is going well; • utilize feedback from the staff to adjust, add, or delete the original reform proposal so it can be more effective in their particular school; • maintain positive political, professional, and personal relations with reformers, local school leaders, teachers’ unions, staff, parents, and community leaders. What is called for, to ensure reform has a chance to succeed in local schools, is the development of a shared leadership role between the principal and a staff member designated to lead the reform effort. This requires a very trusting relation, a bond, between two skilled and competent professionals—a scenario in which it becomes clear to the principal that she needs to give up her reform responsibilities and share this role, or it will fail. However, giving up and sharing power doesn’t come easy. Finding a trusting partner whose main interest is supporting his or her principal and doing what they are no longer able to do can be complicated and tricky. But there are educators in our schools who possess the skills, temperament, experience, political know-how, and will to win (but not guided by self-promotion) to be leaders of reform and partners with the principal. Here are some requirements for these leaders: • Develop a strong, trusting, professional, and personal relationship with the principal • Be able to overcome strong resistance to their role by some staff members and over time win their support. • Be able to confront resistant-staff remarks and rumor mongering but not let them create an atmosphere of potential failure for reform

The Myths behind Why Many School Reforms Fail

• • •

• • •

•

•

13

that makes the leaders feel threatened into seeking shelter/escape from the barrage of negative remarks. Develop professional, and sometimes personal, relationships with each educator in school, honed by daily contact with them. Be skilled and willing to enter their world even when some educators offer a less than a friendly welcome. Be skilled and able to sell staff on coming on board the reform as active, supporting members and give them a role to play, convincing them they are needed. Be able and willing to confront educators resistant to the reform and get them on board. Navigate successfully through the pitfalls and failures sure to come. Play a low-key role and focus positive attention on the contributions of the principal, staff members, and reformers, not the leaders themselves. Work in close contact with reformers and appreciate their role as participant observers rather than being a boss in charge of the project. Downplay rumors of leaders’ own ambition and self-promotion to use their position as a career stepping-stone.

There are skilled professionals, such as guidance counselors and teacher leaders, who can be utilized part-time to aid their principals and, in the process, add a new career dimension to their work. But the role described above is not for the faint of heart. It’s a new role model and as such can be open game for disgruntled educators and citizens who are lying in wait to open fire on any new proposal for change. But the good news is that one of the positives of this new role is that it brings all the resistance to change and reform out in the open and identifies who the resisters are, their mode of attack, and where the reform leaders need to apply their intervention, person-to-person confrontation, and selling skills. All too often in reform efforts, resisters quickly steal the platform from local reform leaders by using threats, name calling, rumors, and professional and personal attacks to create a circus atmosphere. Often, local reformers, not used to such attacks and lacking the ability to win skills, quietly withdraw and leave the battlefield to the victorious resisters. Leaders of local reform soon learn that they are no longer members of the

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club. They are suddenly cast in a blurry new role where they are no longer seen as a teacher or counselor or an administrator. The question often raised by colleagues is, “what is this new role?” After all, educators are used to a simple organizational structure where teachers teach and administrators lead. Adding a new role can cause confusion, even if it is created to support the best interests of educators. Newly nominated local reform leaders face criticism and attack and they will have to rebuild their close relations with staff, one by one, if they are to succeed. In the beginning, this new position can be lonely and isolating. Leaders can get beaten up professionally and personally by resisters who are out to test their will to survive. Would-be friends can disappear quickly. Being out of the club can make local leaders of reform suddenly feel like a stranger in a school where just days or months before they were one of them—colleagues, peers, team members, and friends. Resisters are used to winning when reform efforts come knocking. They are good at the resisting game. They have a lot of experience in making sure the graveyard of reform efforts is constantly refilled. It takes one to know one to understand their strategies and confront them on their own turf to win them over or at least silence them to win reform. It’s dirty, combative work that many local reform leaders are not prepared for and for which they lack the necessary skills and the will to win these battles. Being successful local leaders of reform requires courage, persistence, energy, belief in the reform, tough skin to take the ongoing personal and professional attacks, time to engage staff, and a will to win. While this sounds likes a job description for a superhuman being, in the end one does one’s best to stay afloat in the choppy waters of reform that are always churning and turbulent. Knowing how to survive and keep going is the most important skill. Reform battles are all about who is in charge and who gets to play in the sandbox of reform or the sandbox of resisters. Often the good ideas and programs in reform end up buried under piles of sand, invisible in the sandbox of resisters. These are reasons why reform efforts need a new school-based leadership model that identifies a leader who is, or can be, a quick study in developing skills in selling the program, getting staff on board, chronicling and promoting the successes of the program, spreading praise and

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affirmations around to all involved, maneuvering resisters into a deadened corner where they have the opportunity to sign up or get out of the way, and developing a key awareness of school/community politics. Again, this is a wish list, and in most cases local leaders of reform are chosen by their principal because of two qualities: trust and ability to take risks. Debunking the myths about teachers and principals being slackers and the cause of failure for school reform then rests in the hands of local leaders of reform who are partners with the principal. It is their responsibility to build a new narrative and perception of secondary schools and the good work of educators. In today’s world, the negative perceptions of schooling stand unchallenged, and criticism, distortions, and negativity rule the conversation. There is a lot of good news available about the good deeds of educators and the positive impact many of them have on children, parents, and their community that is not being heard by the general public and that needs to be mined and promoted. Miracles happen every day for children in schools, but their stories, and the stories of educators who have helped and inspired them, often get lost in the blaring negativity of reports of low test scores, high dropout rates, violence on campus, teen alcohol and drug abuse, teacher sexual misconduct, and poor college admission rates, along with colleges saying schools are sending them unprepared students. There is, as well, the belief that educators have it too easy with summers off and going home each day free of work and worry. It’s a nasty diet for hardworking educators to swallow while trying to do their best each day. Here is a list of the kind of new narratives and perceptions that reformers at the local school level who are coupled with their principal and outside reform experts need to develop in order to spread good news about educators. The examples of the good work of educators are there to be documented and mined; they are case studies of how the intervention of educators is helping many kids learn, be saved from a world of abuse, be nourished every day with care, love, support, and a decent breakfast and lunch to feed their hope, empty souls, and stomachs. And learn, sometimes relearn after a very hard early life, to once again smile, laugh, have hopes and dreams, and be a part of a school family where they matter and can grow and become successful. The public schools are open to every child. That means students can and do bring along their need for help with their academic, well-being, and personal

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issues. Good schools invite students to find their path for success; they do not close the door to any nonacademic needs. The doors for help are open and these open doors do provide a chance for every student to be all they can be. Yes, schools and educators are imperfect, and some are better than others, but carefully planned reform, with the involvement and ideas of local school personnel, can improve schools so the truths listed below become givens throughout our country. Here is a more accurate picture, truths, not myths, of what the author has found concerning the thoughts and feelings of educators when it comes to reform. • Many teachers are interested in reform and change that they fully understand, believe in, and have an important role in that is doable for them, and believe will improve the education and lives of their students, parents, and themselves. • The daily tasks and crisis solving by building principals at the secondary level are increasing at an alarming rate. More students are arriving at the schoolhouse door with academic, personal, and well-being/health problems. The increase in school reform projects has increased the daily demands on busy principals. Are they overworked? Many are. What is needed is a staff member to be invited to take on a part-time role, with emphasis on reform, who is a skilled teacher or counselor, not another busy administrator such as an assistant principal. This requires the principal to share his role in reform so he can take care of the daily demands he faces. This is a vital new role in local reform efforts and a major key to their success. More on this role in later chapters. • Newly hired teachers may be more up to date on school reform than veteran teachers. As such, they need to be encouraged to participate, speak their minds, and share their knowledge and experience without feeling threatened. This requires the reform leader to address and, when necessary, confront veteran teachers who may have a history of squelching the valuable contributions of newcomers. • Many veteran teachers who have experienced many failed reform efforts have chosen not to sit on the sidelines and sentence themselves to a professional life of thinking and talking about retirement. But they often find no new challenge, opportunity, career enrichment, or alternatives to contribute to their own professional

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growth and to improve their school and lives of students. Many are waiting for the opportunity to be asked to be a part of a team and be a contributor to helping improve their school—a new path that will open up new doors and experiences and avoid being a guy or gal who shows up each morning and leaves each afternoon doing what they have always done and with no change in sight. • Teachers who resist participating in reform from the get-go and develop a persona as enemies who are ready and set to oppose any kind of reform often thrive in this confrontational role. Leaving them alone to work their misery does reform projects no good. Reform leaders at the local level are positioned to enter the world of these resisters and confront their negative role and at the same time encourage them to abandon their combative role and become doers again. • Finally, there are many veteran teachers nearing retirement who want to go out, end their career, being “somebody” once again and get excited about the opportunity for a new beginning, with a platform to share their years of experience with younger colleagues. When teachers near retirement say, “I’ve seen it all,” they may be mouthing an important truth. Veteran teachers often know from firsthand experience, success and failure, what works and what doesn’t. Experience does count and veteran teachers, like all other professionals, need an opportunity, a platform, to share what they have learned and how it can fit into the new ideas coming aboard with school reform. This book is not about the value or lack of value of school reforms, such as Common Core and No Child Left Behind, but rather about what’s missing from the model for school reforms now in vogue—missing for the national and state reformers leading the effort, local school educators charged with delivering the reform, and the children being robbed of better ways to learn that reform might bring and missing for parents forced to stand on the sidelines while reform proposals end up on the rocks due to battles over control and turf, poor planning and implementation, and self-promotion. After reviewing this plot for a possible new book, the author, perhaps foolishly, told his mentor he wasn’t interested in his proposal. He said, “Sounds too academic and professional to me. I don’t think there are a lot of potential buyers who care about failing schools.

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“The people I have talked to about this potential book tell me reform is really all about hype, cooking up one new idea after the other to keep satisfying the appetite of reformers, politicians, foundations, national and state departments of education, and publishers to keep new ideas for school reform coming at a fast pace so no one notices all the failures involved and why these reforms are failing. “It’s all about generating good news and quickly covering up the failures. It’s a story of cover-ups, but the general public seems uninvolved and not concerned. And the public seems to have this romantic faith that the national and state reform experts have this special wisdom and what they say and do is gospel. No one wants to hear they may be human, subject to error, and are part of the problem of why reform fails. This country loves experts and will follow them even when their wisdom calls for following a road filled with pitfalls. “The bottom line is I am not an educator and, while I appreciate your interest, I feel I should leave this idea for such a book to an educator who might be able to capture the interest of the public as to the hidden reasons why this race to reform the public schools never seems to stop and why the efforts often fail. This book needs an educator who has the passion for such an effort. A passion I lack and therefore cannot do justice to such a book.” The mentor replied, “Okay, but I think you’re missing the opportunity to bring to light the hidden issues that are blocking the reforms that are needed by kids and parents. It would have been helpful if you were able to investigate this issue and educate the general public that the battles for reform are far from being professional and civil. The battles are not always about what’s in the best interest of kids, parents, and educators but are really about who owns the schools and dominates their policies and agendas. “The question I wish you had tried to answer is, Are the local citizens in our country in charge of ‘their’ schools, or have well-financed reformers taken over? And if the answer is that well-financed reformers are in charge, then what can local school leaders do to find their rightful, equal place, in the reform process? I hope some educator can take up this mantle and expose the charade that kids, parent, educators, and citizens are in charge of their school’s destiny.”

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Enter this author who believes there is a need for a book to examine why many school reforms end up in the reform graveyard and what can be done to fix the problem and turn failed reform into success for both reformers and local educators. The pieces to repair the failing model of reform are clear, and making them operational is doable. This is the goal of the book and chapter 2 will begin this journey with what is missing in the present model for school reform.

TWO The Missing Pieces Needed for Successful School Reform

The missing pieces needed for successful school reform are not a mystery. In fact, these missing pieces become very apparent when the myths surrounding why education reform fails are exposed and replaced with the truths described in chapter 1. Here are some examples of why it is vital for our education system to bring these truths out of the closet, so they can become successful practices rather than myths that serve as barriers to change. Elizabeth Green, in her article “Why Does Everyone Hate the New Math,” 1 points out some of the missing pieces. While her main focus is on the teaching of math, her findings are instructive for all school subjects and for forming a successful model for school reform. Here are some of her observations: • The story of failed school reforms is the same every time; a big, excited push, followed by a mass confusion and then a return to conventional practices. The trouble always starts when teachers are told to put innovative ideas into practice without much guidance on how to do it. In the hands of unprepared teachers, the reform turns to nonsense, perplexing students more than helping them. • American institutions charged with training teachers in new approaches to math have proved largely unable to do it. At most education schools, the professors with the research budgets and deanships have little interest in the science of teaching. 21

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• The education scholar Suzanne Wilson calls it education reform’s double bind. The very people who embody the program, teachers, are also the ones charged with solving it. • Some of the failure of school reform can be explained by active resistance. For example, why try something we’ve failed at a half dozen times before, only to watch it backfire. • However, much more common are teachers who wanted to change and were willing to work hard to do it, but did not know how. • With Common Core, teachers are being asked to unlearn an old approach and learn an entirely new one, essentially on their own. Training is still weak and infrequent, and principals, who are no more skilled at math than their teachers, remain unprepared to offer support. • One of the lessons learned from the Japanese education system’s success with reform in math, shifting a country full of teachers to a new approach, is the importance of patience, perseverance, and belief in change. Green quotes Shinichiro Kurita, head of the Math Department at Setagaya Elementary School in Tokyo, who suggests perseverance requires: “Sit on a stone for three years to accomplish anything,” an old Japanese saying. • Most policies aimed at improving teaching conceived of the job not as a craft that needs to be taught but as a natural-born talent that teachers either muster or don’t possess. Instead of acknowledging that changes like the new math are something teachers must learn over time, we mandate them as “standards” that teachers are expected to simply “adopt.” A reply by Debra A. Ciamacca to Green’s article in the August 11, 2014, “Reply All” section of the New York Times 2 is instructive regarding the lack of preparation and time to carry out successful reform. Here’s her comment: Today’s teachers have no time to collaborate with colleagues, discuss best practices and learn new teaching pedagogies. Everyone talks about how important it is to improve education, but rarely do we talk about teachers needing time to collaborate. Teachers have become machines, churning out lessons after lessons. The voice of so-called experts (many of whom have never taught a day in their lives) and from politicians (who use education as a platform for their personal success) drown out the voices of teachers. Until

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teachers are treated like professionals, our education system will continue to struggle.

Green’s findings, as well as Ciamacca’s comments, are instructive and echo some of the truths, not myths, identified in chapter 1. For example: • The truth that reform programs move at a very fast pace and involve high expectations for local school teachers and administrators who often lack the necessary training and support from the get-go. This is a prescription for failure and, as Green suggests, nonsense to happen. • The truth that many teachers want to change, are willing to work hard to do it, but do not know how to, rather than the myth that sees the majority of teachers as resistant to change. • The truth that many principals are overworked and simply don’t have the necessary time and energy to lead a reform effort. They need the backup and support of a skilled ally to help guide the reform effort. • The truth that successful reform requires a belief in patience, perseverance, and possibility of change. Incremental examples of small successes must be highlighted, promoted, and sold to reform experts, school staff, and local citizens as a signal that reform is making progress, not failing. Recall the old Japanese saying, “Sit on a stone for three years to accomplish anything”; it says it all. • The truth that teachers, like other students, need to be learners and have ongoing opportunities for the training needed to be a competent teacher. That is, having the ongoing opportunity to develop their craft and persona as a skilled professional and not simply to identify themselves as “just a teacher”—as Green suggests, changing their whole conception of what it means to be a teacher. • The truth that there is often little time for teachers to prepare, collaborate, and learn new approaches when reform arrives at their doorstep. • The truth that so-called experts and politicians control the ideas, message, platform, and selling of reform initiatives, while the voices of savvy administrators and teachers, the developers and owners of best practices, are drowned out.

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Michael Fullan, in his book Change Leaders, 3 also adds many critical observations as to what is needed and what is missing in change and reform projects. Here are some of his observations: • Over the past fifty years, we have lost the capacity to build effective practice through the teaching profession and its leaders. Instead, we have politicians running around introducing ad hoc policies far removed from practice that have no chance of improving practice on the ground. During that period, the value of hands-on practical leadership has steadily declined in favor of distant CEOs and professional managers. • Ever since formal policy and research (theories distant from practice) became a prominent part of finding a solution, from 1965 forward, the United States has declined from being number one in the world in education attainment to its current status of about twentyfourth. • The decline is a function of superficial, silver-bullet solutions that actively disregard and disrespect practice. • Most change initiatives fail because (1) you can’t make people change (force doesn’t work); (2) rewards are ineffective; (3) inspiration is not the driver we think it is (fails to reach enough people). • Effective leaders use practice as their fertile ground. They never go from theory to practice or research evidence to application. They try to figure out what’s working, what could be working better, and then look into how research and theory might help. • Effective leaders find the “bright spots,” practices where people are seeing the benefits that are successful. • Effective leaders “walk the walk” and actually learn a lot more by doing. When you walk the walk, you demonstrate what comes first, share in the struggle and the risk, and gain firsthand experience, thereby learning more about the issues. Every moment offers an up-close opportunity to teach, train, and lead, and then others can see the steps you take. • Leaders have to possess impressive empathy, which helps them to understand where people who disagree are coming from, and thus figure out how to relate to them. What is “impressive” is the ability to put yourself in other people’s shoes, particularly those who hold values and experience very different from yours. Without impres-

The Missing Pieces Needed for Successful School Reform

•

•

•

•

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sive empathy, there is no other way to reach such people. Successful change comes when the masses get involved. If you want to have any chance of changing a negative relationship, you have to give other people respect before they have earned it. For example, if a leader enters a negative culture, he will encounter a situation in which people have learned to be disrespectful. You have to model and demonstrate respect even when it is not being reciprocated. Leaders with empathy do not see people’s behavior as necessarily fixed. Their empathy tells them that perhaps the behavior is situational: If you want to change people’s behavior, change the situation. Leaders know that they cannot become successful without the collective commitment and ingenuity of the group; thus collectivity is seen not as a nuisance but rather a necessity. Galvanizing motivation is the essential task of the change leaders. Positive movements for change begin with building relationships first.

Fullan’s observations add more specific details concerning the pieces needed for education reform projects to succeed. Here are some of the truths gleaned from his important work: • The truth that politicians, policy makers, CEOs, and researchers far removed from practice in the local schools are leading change efforts. • The truth that the voices, ideas, and wisdom of hands-on practitioners in the field, administrators and teachers, have been put on the back burner and drowned out. They are not players in the game of school reform and change except as doers to carry out the hard work of implementation of reform, sort of like a circus hand with the role of carrying the water to the elephants. A “don’t think, just do it” role. • The truth that current change policies actively disregard and disrespect practice at the local school level. • The truth that there are “bright spots” to be found in many school reform efforts—a story that needs telling, in order for small successes in reform led by administrators and teachers to be used to

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counteract the always-present bad news in the implementation phase of reform. • The truth that leaders in reform at the local level need to acquire a high degree of empathy and acceptance. That is “walk the walk” with teachers on the front lines of reform; put themselves in their shoes, offer them respect, even when they are disrespectful, and win them over by selling them on a new approach. • The truth that positive movement for change begins with building professional relationships and galvanizing motivation. While public schools have been vulnerable to reform efforts hatched by politicians, policy leaders, leaders of foundations, think tanks, and researchers far from the practices of local schools, David Tyack and Larry Cuban suggest, in their book Tinkering toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform, 4 that they still hold a commanding position in developing and making school reform work from the inside. Here are some of their observations. • We favor attempts to bring about improvements in the public schools by working from the inside out, especially by enlisting the support and skills of teachers as key actors in reform. • Better schooling will result in the future, as it has in the past and does now, chiefly from the steady, reflective efforts of the practitioners who work in the schools and from the contributions of parents and citizens who support (while they criticize) public education, not from external policy makers. • In planning reform in recent years, policy elites have often bypassed teachers and discounted their knowledge of what schools are like today. To the degree that teachers are out of the policy loop in designing and adopting school reforms, it is not surprising if they drag their feet in implementing them. • Teachers’ firsthand perspective on schools and their responsibility for carrying out official policies argues for their centrality in school reform efforts. As “street-level bureaucrats,” teachers typically have sufficient discretion once the classroom doors close to make a decision about pupils that adds up over time to de facto policies about instruction, whatever the official regulations. In any case then, teachers will make their imprint on education policy as it becomes translated into practice.

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• Reformers are often impatient about the time lag in educational reform because they operate on a schedule driven by election deadlines, career opportunities, the timing of foundation grants, the shifting attention of the public, or the desire of media people for the dramatic photo opportunity or sound bites. • Conversation about the purposes and character of schooling is not, and should not be, a matter for experts or visible leaders, outsiders who rarely factored into their plans a sophisticated understanding of the school as an institution or insight into the culture of teachers. They tend to treat schools as though they were made of Silly Putty, easily molded, whereas good schools are more like healthy plants, needing good soil and careful tending over long periods of time. • An undercurrent in much policy talk about reinventing schools is that existing teachers are a drag on reform, deficient if not dim. Some are inadequate, to be sure, and some resist change simply because it may create more work. But across the nation there are teachers who have the wisdom to reject fashionable innovations that violate their sense of what their pupils need and instead choose to experiment on their own terms with reforms they believe in. • Rather than starting from scratch in reinventing schools, it makes most sense to us to graft thoughtful reforms onto what is healthy in the present system. Good teachers reinvent the world every day for children in their classes. • When talking with civic groups about school reform, the authors asked people to recall their best experience as students in public schools. The people almost always say they remember the influence of a teacher who challenged them to develop their potential, who made a subject come alive, and who gave caring advice at a stressful time. • There is a striking parallel here with what teachers have said are their chief satisfactions and rewards in their work: seeing their students grow intellectually and mature as persons. Tyack and Cuban provide important observations and truths about the value of teachers working from inside out to bring about reform they view as in the best interest of their students, themselves, and their school. Here are the truths that need to be endorsed and supported at the local level:

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• The truth that key actors in reform are the support and skills of teachers. • The truth that school may be the most positive influence many children encounter. • The truth that, in the past, political elites have often bypassed teachers and discounted their knowledge. • The truth that, to the degree that teachers are out of the policy loop in designing and adopting school reforms, it is not surprising if they drag their feet in implementing them. • The truth that teachers have firsthand perspective on schools and responsibility for carrying out official policies argues for their centrality in school reform efforts. • The truth that reform of instruction by remote control has rarely worked. • The truth that some reformers believe teachers are deeply mired in ruts. They believe teachers are a drag on reform, deficient if not dim. • The truth that reformers are often impatient about the time lag in educational reform. • The truth that the purpose and character of schooling is not a matter for experts or visible leaders. • The truth that many adults almost always recall their public school experience by remembering the positive influence of a teacher. • The truth that the chief satisfactions and rewards for teachers in their work is seeing their students growing intellectually and maturing as persons. • The truth that the central purpose of reforms is to make encounters between students and teachers more common. • The truth that elevating the role of teachers as experienced practitioners who know something about their craft and have creditable ideas for needed reform is a work in progress. Teachers have faced serious obstacles to improving instruction from the inside out. As Tyack and Cuban point out, teachers have responded in myriad ways to reform. Sometimes they have spent a good deal of time and energy co-opting, minimally complying with, or resisting reforms they did not want. Plus, teachers have little autonomy and face federal and state regulations that have mushroomed in the past decades. And many teachers, accustomed to a solitary instruction

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in self-contained classrooms, lack the confidence and collegial support to try out new instructional ideas, as well as the knowledge and skills needed to make them work well in their classroom. And few schools give teachers the incentive and/or the time needed for curricular planning and staff development. Still, as Tyack and Cuban suggest, there is much to be hopeful about. Teachers have also embraced ideas and practices they see as useful and interesting, often incorporating them in unanticipated ways into their daily outline. The resulting hybrids were often well adapted to the local terrain. Yet there is a lingering resentment among many teachers that there is a rush to reform and for the never-ending appearance at their doorstep of a myriad of proposals that suggest that what they are doing isn’t good enough and a subtle warning that they had better raise the bar and do better. Many teachers view this assault of proposed reform as an insult to them, both personally and professionally, by reformers who have never observed their work, have no idea what they do, how they help kids and parents, and what it’s like inside their classroom and school. As teacher Debra Ciamacca suggests, many are now raising their voices to be heard. For example, Valerie Strauss suggests in her article “Seven Things Teachers Are Sick of Hearing from School Reformers” 5 that teachers have long been accustomed to “going along to get along” but increasingly are raising their voices to protest reforms of the past decade that they see as harmful to students. She provides the example of Georgia teacher Ian Altman, who reports that he and his colleagues are really sick of hearing from reformers. Altman is an award-winning high school English teacher as well as an advocate for teachers and students. Altman’s list of seven things speaks to the fury felt by many teachers who see their expertise being devalued and their profession denigrated. He argues it is past time for teachers to stand up for themselves and their profession. Here is an overview of some of the seven things reformers should stop saying to teachers: • “Don’t tell us that you know more about good instruction than we do. How about leaving instructional policies to us, the instructional

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•

•

•

•

experts? Good teachers are good because we know what we’re doing, not because we blindly follow instructional policies.” “Don’t talk to us about the importance of rigor and standards. I teach high school English, and I can tell you that language arts standards, whether the current Common Core Standards or some other set of standards, are neither rigorous nor non-rigorous. Everything depends on what individual teachers actually do with them.” “Don’t tell us about testing data. I do not believe that standardized tests have any value whatsoever, for anyone except those who make money from them. I believe the use of tests is inherently and necessarily damaging to all of us, including students who do very well on them.” “Don’t tell us ‘the research says . . .’ unless you’re willing to talk about what it really says. It’s not that we don’t care about the research, but that most often when research is mentioned in a school context, it is used to end legitimate conversation rather than to begin it, as a cudgel to silence conversation rather than as an opening to engage us constructively.” “Stop using education reform clichés. Here is a compendium of common education reform clichés: ‘After consulting the research and assessment data and involving all stakeholders in the decisionmaking process, we have determined that a relentless pursuit of excellence and laser-like focus on the standards, synergistically with our accountability measure, action-oriented and forward leaning intervention strategies, and enhanced observation guidelines for classroom look-for’s, will close the achievement gaps and raise the bar for all children.’ You can’t talk like that and expect to be taken seriously by educated adults.”

Altman’s observations join a growing anti-reform movement led by teachers such as Debra Ciamacca, cited earlier in this chapter, who are letting their voices be heard—teachers who believe needed change efforts should emanate from an inside-out, local school model led by teachers at ground zero rather than by so-called experts (many of whom have never taught a day in their lives) and from politicians (who use education as a platform for their personal success) who advocate an outside-in model— a model in which reformers dictate the process with little or no teacher

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input and where the voices of teachers who want and deserve to be equal partners and have a great deal to offer are drowned out. It is important to remember that teachers are the key actors to reform because once the implementation stage begins and teachers close their doors, they are in charge, and the reach of reformers is limited at best. The outside-in model of reform is problematic. It is a model that fosters conflict, choosing sides, self-promotion, power grabbing, controversy, ego development, control, intrigue, and a winners and losers culture and that is often centered on reform leaders who lack empathy for teachers, who are viewed as powerless, not a resource and thus unimportant to their mission. This model has the ring of a military officer who has little firsthand combat experience leading his troops into battle (telling them how to proceed and not receptive to their ideas and feedback from participation in many difficult battles) and who lacks empathy concerning their wellbeing and needs. His troops’ reaction, which might be, “Don’t tell us you know more about how to fight a war than we do,” seems to be a parallel for teachers finding their voice and taking action to be leaders, not followers and servants to carry out others’ ideas and mission. Mutiny can have its value. While it is true that some teachers do the minimal, the vast majority of teachers have the determination, know-how, and skills to help their students in conditions, cultures, and settings that would quickly frighten and discourage reformers, causing them to run for the nearest exit door as fast as they could. In his book The Management Myth: Why the Experts Keep Getting It Wrong, 6 Matthew Stewart provides some observations on gurus of change movements. He suggests they often cause mischief rather than solve problems. His observations can be applied to many gurus who lead the public school reform efforts. Here are some examples: • If you really want to profit from the gurus, listen carefully to what they say and then run fast in the opposite direction. • Gurus are easy prey for the all-too-human failing of hubris. • Gurus avoid getting prescriptive and giving people a list of what to do.

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• Gurus’ obsession is with the instability of the present and fears of what may happen if they don’t intervene. What they offer is a miracle cure for troubled times. • Gurus argue that in order to make their proposed solution seem all the more valuable, and to ward off critics who might accuse them of peddling phony miracle cures, they invariably insist that the medicine they prescribe will taste awful and be hard to swallow. Total transformation, they gravely inform us, is never easy. • Among gurus, as among spiritual leaders, only the hopeful survive. • Gurus often make an emphatic distinction between those who get it and those who don’t, between the saved and the damned. • In most cultures the guru is a special person. He benefits from unique access to the mysterious force of chaos lurking under the deceptive surfaces of the world. (Author’s note: the public schools are falling apart!) Thus, he has the ability to foretell our destiny. • He doesn’t have to prove what he says. He has the luxury of using “the argument of authority.” In fact a guru ceases to be a human being and becomes a representative of his own brand. Everything he does and says carries a symbolic weight. He does not speak in sentences but in pronouncements. To avoid the gurus of the school reform movement, we need to zero in on the skills and experience teachers have and make sure their stories are well-known to parents, citizens, voters, the media, and general public so “they get it” why the work of teachers matters. We need to put a face on the successes of teachers and explain in detail how their intervention and craft are making a difference in the lives of students and parents. Many teachers have skills and experience honed over many hours, days, weeks, months, and years of face-to-face interactions with students, parents, peers, and administrators. Thankfully, many are not self-promoting gurus, but professionals who know their craft and the ins and outs of the game of school. Experience does count for teacher leaders who walk the walk with students, parents, administrators, and peers can learn many valuable lessons about their school, staff, and themselves—lessons that are not available to reformers housed in faraway places. The question then is, who knows best about what goes on in the classroom and the local schools? As the work of Green, Ciamacca, Fullan, Tyack and Cuban, and Altman suggests, it is the teachers on the front

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lines of the school. Tyack and Cuban label them “street-level bureaucrats.” Teachers who come face-to-face daily with real kids know how to help them learn, care for them, and offer them the empathy, belonging, safety, and support they need to survive and grow. These observations are not meant as a bashing of expert reformers but, as Altman suggests, as a way to clear the air and create a new landscape in which skilled teachers can find their rightful place and take the lead in reform “they” view as needed, timely, and in the best interest of their students, parents, peers, administrators, and school. As is with all learning endeavors, and especially true both for children to be successful in the classroom and for their teachers to be seen as key actors and contributors in their school, teachers need to be given the opportunity to participate as an equal on level ground with their peers so their voices can be heard and valued. For teachers, that means being recognized as a vital cog in the mission of the school, part of a team, in the club, and someone who has ideas and hunches for how to improve the learning and lives of every member of the school community and who is willing to share these ideas and hunches with colleagues. Collaboration is a fertile field for new ideas and is needed for reforms to grow. That’s how inside-out reform begins, not from the outside-in reform model focused on telling teachers what they should do. However, collaboration among teachers remains a major missing piece in the inside-out model for reform. As Steven Johnson suggests in his book Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, 7 the most productive tool for generating good ideas remains a circle of humans at a table talking shop. Good ideas more readily find their way into others’ brains and take root there. A circle of humans talking shop creates an opportunity where information can spill over from one project to the other. When you work alone, your ideas can get trapped in place, stuck in your own initial biases. Johnson describes a model developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to increase collaboration and spark new ideas. The model was called “Building 20,” named for a temporary structure built during World War II, and somehow managed to last fifty-five years, in

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part because it had an extraordinary track record for cultivating both breakthrough ideas and organizations. An MIT press release commemorating the building’s remarkable history stated, “Not assigned to any one school, department, or center, it seems to always have had a space for the beginning projects, the graduate students’ experiments, the interdisciplinary research center.” Johnson also described Building 99, the headquarters for the Microsoft Research Division, which was created in 2007 from the ground up to be reinvented by the unpredictable flow of collaboration and inspiration. Building 99, like Building 20 before it, is a space that sees information spillover as a feature, not a flaw. “It is designed to leak, new ideas jostling against each other, generating a reliable flow of innovation in the years to come.” Johnson suggests good ideas arise in crowds, in liquid networks where connection is valued more than protection. Good ideas for improving public education abound in our schools but many lie dormant because in most schools there is no space, a Building 20 or 99, where teachers can come together, talk shop, and generate good ideas. Lacking such a space and time for collaboration that involves a sharing of ideas and hunches, the good ideas of teachers will remain trapped, isolated in their minds and solitary classrooms. As Debra Ciamacca suggests, today’s teachers have no time to collaborate with colleagues, discuss best practices, and learn new teaching pedagogies. It is no wonder then that reformers with their outside-in change model own the current reform movement. Another missing piece for making reform work at the local level is that, even if teachers are given the space, time, and opportunity to develop and share new ideas and approaches, they must learn by practice to shed their subservient-to-authority role and speak openly about “their” ideas. Like teaching students how to speak their minds, teachers also must be encouraged and taught how to speak their minds, that their ideas count and have merit, and that they no longer have to have their voices drowned out by so-called elitist experts who are viewed as “the authority on education and their classroom.” In fact, many teachers have never been asked for their ideas and opinions. They view themselves as “just a

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teacher,” confined to their classroom and not active players in any reform effort. Picture a faculty meeting being held after school in the cafeteria. In most schools, you will see the majority of teachers sitting silently, watching the clock, and maybe writing out a shopping list for a stop on the way home. They are “waiters” not “doers.” Silence is their mantra. They know they won’t be called on, nor do they dare offer an opinion on a new idea. They are “waiters” who will never hear their voices called for and heard. They have learned early on to be silent in order to go along and get along. As they do with and for their students, they too need to learn how to speak out, command attention, be listened to, and be respected for their ideas and contributions. Johnson’s model of the space in Building 20 and Building 99 can be adapted for schools and can provide an awakening for the vast majority of teachers stuck in silence. Teachers can learn to be participants, and even leaders, given a setting within their schools. There will be more on examples of such settings in schools in a later chapter. As Ronald A. Heifetz suggests in his book Leadership without Easy Answers, 8 there are people who daily go beyond both their job description and the informal expectations they carry within the organization and do what they are not authorized to do. At a minimum, these people exercise leadership momentarily by impressing upon a group, sometimes by powerfully articulating an idea that strikes a resonant chord, the need to pay attention to a missing point of view, a leadership position in which they represent something significant and which embodies a perspective that merits attention. For the inside-out movement to succeed on a larger scale, it requires a space in each school where teachers can collaborate, where new ideas and hunches can find fertile territory, grow, and reach fruition, where teachers can be “heard” and seen as the bearers and major resource for a never-ending supply of good ideas and be supported by a teacher leader who has the support of the principal. But becoming a successful teacher leader can have its risks. Here is a cautionary tale in which hubris and self-promotion co-opt once humble team players. There are teachers who become leaders in helping create successful reform in their schools and overnight find themselves the cen-

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ter of praise by the media, local, state, and national education associations, and the general public. They are swept away into a star role that is far removed from their role as a classroom teacher but similar to that of a national guru reformer. Not unlike guru reformers, they find themselves being invited to speak at conferences, write articles and books about their experience, and host educators who visit their school in droves to observe and praise their work. As a result, they become a brand and find themselves spending more time on the road than in their school, distancing themselves from the very work and relationships that made them suddenly famous, and leaving both their collaborators and projects abandoned. Like gurus, they are easy prey for the all-too-human frailty of hubris. In exchanging a full-time role as a classroom teacher for a consultant/ trainer/speaker role, they often think they can successfully help other school leaders replicate the creative reform project they developed. However, what they often learn is that every school is different, and their model for the reform proposed doesn’t fit with another school’s culture and organization. A one-size-fits-all education system doesn’t work. As a result, they become representatives, salespeople, of their own brand, even when that model is doomed to failure. It’s an old but timely axiom that in times of change, human beings often rely on their past behaviors rather than risk forging a new approach. As a result, they have been co-opted by the same outside-in reform model they initially rejected and have literally come full circle, first rejecting the outside-in model for reform, then developing an inside-out model in their local school and, blinded by stardom, falling into the trap of taking on the role of a guru promoting an outside-in solution rather than encouraging local teachers to learn how to collaborate, speak out, and utilize their own ideas and hunches to design reform that speaks to their needs. Advice from inside-out reformers: be careful to not let hubris and the bright lights of temporary fame blind you. Avoid reading your reviews and believing you are special. Taking on the role of a star rather than staying humble and a team member can be the first step for teacher leaders in destroying the reform they have helped bring alive. In his book Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking, 9 Malcolm Gladwell provides some important observations that can be transferred

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to the behaviors of teacher leaders chosen to guide reform efforts—facilitators who see their role as specialized with the focus on collaboration and helping their teacher colleagues contribute new ideas and hunches for successful reform. This specialized role for reform is new for the schools. It’s not the typical organizational role such as that of a principal or department head. Rather, it is a role that utilizes the facilitating skill of experienced teachers or counselors who are not interested in an administrative position but are ready for a career change that fits their skills and qualifications. They are locked into staying the course and creating new ways to respond to the ever-changing list of problems to be solved. Gladwell describes such a role and leadership behavior with the observations of U.S. Marines officer Paul Van Riper as “Creating structure for spontaneity.” Here are some examples: • As observed by fellow marines, “Van Riper had an office in our combat area, hooch, but I never saw him in there. He was always out in the field or out near his bunker figuring out what to do next. If he had an idea and he had a scrap of paper in his pocket, he would write the idea on the scrap, and then, when we had a meeting, he would pull out seven or eight little pieces of paper.” Van Riper is clearly a searcher for new ideas and alerts his troops that he is not only welcoming their input but expects it. They are a critical component in planning and involvement in the coming battles. • “He was somebody who didn’t sit behind a desk, but led the troops from the front.” • Van Riper describes his own view of leadership this way: “The first thing I told our staff is that we would be in command and out of control. By that I mean that the overall guidance and the intent were provided by me and the senior leadership, but the forces in the field wouldn’t depend on intricate orders coming from the top. They were to use their own initiative and be innovative as they went forward. We would use the wisdom, the experience, and the good judgment of the people we had.” • Once hostilities began on the battlefield, Van Riper was careful not to overload his team with irrelevant information. Meetings were brief, communication between headquarters and the commanders in the field were limited. He wanted to create an environment where rapid cognition was possible.

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• Van Riper had to place a lot of trust in his subordinates. It was, by his own admission, a “messy” way to make decisions. But it had one overwhelming advantage: allowing people to operate without having to explain themselves constantly enabled rapid cognition. Van Riper is an inside-out problem-solving kind of guy, his own man so to speak, who trusts his ideas and hunches and expects his troops to do the same. He is not married to the views and ideas of his commanders, many of whom prefer the outside-in approach to problem solving. He looks to his troops to offer new ideas and approaches. Never in his office, he is out in the field, highly visible, encouraging them to think quickly, not clouding their minds with useless data but training their minds and thinking processes to be fluid and to continually generate observations and solutions to their daily problems. He depends on his troops’ wisdom, experience, and good judgment rather than on orders from the top. His troops were encouraged to use their initiative and be innovative as they went along and keep their minds clear and fresh for new ideas to emerge. To that end, he did not burden his team with irrelevant information. His goal was rapid cognition for his troops. Van Riper’s military leadership model may not fit perfectly with the public school culture and setting, but many of its components are right on the money and reinforce the inside-out leadership model needed for successful school reform—the participant observer, change agent, facilitator, collaborator, and doer model. NOTES 1. Elizabeth Green, “Q: Why Does Everyone Hate the New Math? A: Because No One Understands It—Not Even the Teachers.” New York Times, July 27, 2014, 23–27, 40–41. 2. Debra A. Ciamacca, “Why Do Americans Stink at Math,” New York Times, Reply All Section, July 27, 2014, August 10, 2014, 8. 3. Michael Fullan, Change Leaders: Learning to Do What Matters Most (San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons, 2011), 5, 9, 11–12, 15–17, 20–21, 29–30, 32, 45, 48, 57, 61. 4. David Tyack and Larry Cuban, Tinkering toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 10, 37, 55, 59, 113, 132–40. 5. Valerie Strauss, “Seven Things Teachers Are Sick of Hearing from School Reformers,” available online at www.washingtonpost.com/blogger/answer-sheet/wp/ 2014/08/14.

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6. Matthew Stewart, The Management Myth: Why the Experts Keep Getting It Wrong (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007), 246–47, 265, 269, 272, 274. 7. Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation (New York: Riverhead Books, 2010), 2–3, 5, 9, 61–65, 247. 8. Ronald A. Heifetz, Leadership without Easy Answers (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 1994), 185. 9. Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking (New York: Little Brown & Company, 2005), 100–101, 118, 143.

THREE The Negative Impact of Too Much Reform on the Careers of Teachers

As Altman suggests in chapter 2, there are things teachers are sick of hearing from school reformers, things that fuel the growing distrust, conflict, and controversy between reformers and teachers in the field. Here’s an example. Jal Mehta, an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has some ego-busting observations about teachers and the public school system. 1 For example, in terms of transforming schools, Mehta states that the public schools are staffed by people who just do not know how to do the work well enough. Plus, he throws in data that suggests American teachers are intellectually challenged, saying the United States draws its teachers from the bottom two-thirds of young people rather than the top third of young people as in other top-tier countries. Mehta’s message appears to suggest that he views teachers as not only inferior workers who are not up to the task of carrying out successful reforms and but also not that bright or creative. His assessments might be perceived in some education circles as viewing teachers as slackers and unmotivated underachievers, not the kind of assessment that’s going to make teachers want to get on board a reform project in which they are expected to play a central role. He also suggests that we put reforms through our existing system, and when they do not work out as we hoped, we ask what is wrong with the reform when we should instead be asking what is wrong with the system. 41

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This is the kind of blanket observation that can make teachers furious and cause them to put up their defenses and walls to outside-in reform. Many teachers would probably view Mehta’s message as blaming them for the failure of reform, which suggests to them that reformers aren’t to blame; it’s the teachers who are screwing things up. Their take on Mehta’s comments would probably go like this: What else can you expect from these inferior workers, slackers, and unexceptional college graduates? It’s not a good approach to get teachers to support change efforts hatched far from their school and without their input. On the other hand, Frederick M. Hess strikes a more balanced and reasonable approach. Hess suggests that the challenges of implementation in reform projects have not come in for nearly enough scrutiny and reformers themselves may be a part of the problem. 2 Hess says, again and again, that attractive, sensible reforms have disappointed in practice, breeding impatience and cynicism and fueling the unending search for the next big thing. Here are some of his observations: • Policy makers can require interventions, but they cannot mandate that such interventions be pursued wisely. With remarkable regularity, self-styled reformers dismiss practical complications as excuses undeserving of attention. This makes the frustration and distrust of so many educators so easy to understand. • The success of reform is dependent upon leaders eager and well equipped to leverage new opportunities and run the accompanying risks, but our educational system is not well suited to producing or attracting such leaders. (Author’s note: think Paul Van Riper.) • Yet, as Hess suggests, when such leaders emerge and leverage their existing authority or find new ways to make reform work on the ground, they are rarely explained, highlighted, or celebrated. There are plenty of huzzahs in education circles for principals or superintendents who get test scores or graduation rates up, but remarkably little interest in anything other than airbrushed narratives of how they did so. • Popular accounts and professional accolades tend to emphasize the role of charisma, curricula, coaching, and consensus while skipping past the meatier questions of how to redeploy funds or alter teacher roles.

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• This inattention to the mean, gritty, regulatory, and practical stuff of execution is today nearly as pervasive in “reform” circles as it is elsewhere in the field. Advocates, funders, and reform-minded academics have a crucial role to play in changing this state of affairs. They can do vastly more to identify those schools and system leaders who are already doing what supposedly cannot be done, celebrate them, and document and disseminate information about what they are doing. • What is required now is a concerted effort to reduce the transaction cost that holds thousand of well-intentioned but ill-equipped and ill-trained leaders back and that hobble so many once-promising ideas. Hess’s observation that the challenges of implementation in reform projects have not come in for enough scrutiny speaks directly to the reason why many reforms fail but also to the frustration and distrust of teachers on the front lines of reform. Here are some of their stories: Teacher Josh Waldron: Fleeing from the perfect storm of ill-thought-out reform, budget cuts, and no one in leadership available to throw him a life preserver to stay afloat—a triple whammy with the message . . . “Run the other way.” Valerie Strauss of the Answer Sheet Blog reports Josh Waldron is an award-winning teacher in Waynesboro, Virginia, or was an award-winning teacher. 3 However, he decided to make the “tough decision” to leave the classroom after six years, during which he won four teaching awards. It isn’t that he didn’t love teaching. He did. Here are some of Waldron’s observations: • I made the tough decision to leave the classroom in June 2014 for good at the end of this year. The decision is a painful one, both personally and professionally. • When I first came to this area in 2008, I believed I would be a teacher for life. Words can’t really express how excited I was to land a teaching job with high school students, and invest in teenagers the way one teacher invested in me. • My first year coincided with the first round of budget cuts. Salaries were frozen and spending was slashed. This basic storyline has repeated itself for the five years that followed.

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• Over this time, I‘ve lost my optimism and question a mission I once felt wholly committed to. If this job was just about working with students, I couldn’t ask for a better or more meaningful career. The job, though, is about much more. Teachers spend too much time jumping through hoops. • I’ve seen teachers cry over Standards of Learning Scores. SOL tests are inherently unfair, but we continue to invest countless hours and resources into our quest for our schools to score well. • It’s tough to acknowledge that people in Washington, D.C., and Richmond (and sometimes decision makers in Waynesboro) develop systems and practices that affect my students and me negatively. But as they retire and sail off into the sunset, we’re the ones left with the consequences of ineffective measurements and strategies. • Our new teacher evaluations focus heavily on test scores. But while teachers are continually under pressure to be held accountable, there seems to be very little accountability for parents, the community, or district offices. (Author’s note: and reformers.) • Keeping a sixth-year teacher on a first-year salary is not looking out for someone who looks out for students. For those like me, there’s only a $100 difference in our December 2009 and January 2014 monthly paychecks. • What happens if I stay and dedicate my life to a place only to discover I’m part of their tenth round of budget cuts? Josh Waldron is a young teacher who entered teaching to invest in teenagers the way one teacher invested in him, often the reason why young people are called to a teaching career. They make a commitment to be like caring teachers who came into their lives and helped them navigate through tough times. But Waldron quickly came upon tough times as a new, highly motivated teacher, who had a gift for helping his teenage students. Clearly he was an exceptional teacher, winning teaching awards and, in 2014, the Waynesboro Rotary Club High School Teacher of the Year. The tough times came in the waves of budget cuts and the far reach of reformers in Washington, D.C., Richmond, and even his own administration, who developed systems and practices that affected him and his students negatively, such as the Standards of Learning tests. Like many young teachers, he found the job was much more than working with students. The part of teaching he loved and why he entered

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the teaching profession was teaching and helping kids the way he was helped. It comes as no surprise that he lost optimism and questioned the mission of his school as well as the promise and hope of his own career. A sad ending to a very hopeful beginning: finding a career in which Waldron thought he could give back to teenagers what he had received. How many other teachers have been lost to making a similar decision to leave a school where much is being asked of them while there appears to be little affirmations, support, and collegiality coming their way? Every professional needs emotional nourishment to feel they matter and are critical members of the school family and culture and that if they were to leave there would be a huge void left behind. However, it appears principals in schools like Waynesboro Area High School are often overwhelmed with dealing with ongoing budget cuts, never-ending pressure to raise test scores, and poor staff morale that accompanies long periods of dwindling resources. While these principals may want to intervene to help support teachers like Waldron, their job doesn’t leave time to offer the support they need. And in many cases, they have no control over the lack of resources such as adequate pay and ongoing training for their staff. It’s a sad commentary on the role of secondary school building principals in today’s world. Many secondary school principals go into education to help students and teachers to become all they can be. However, as later chapters will describe, they end up filling their days resolving ongoing crises, such as how to run a school with fewer and fewer funds and a staff mired in malaise and discontent. We often forget that school principals are human and need the same emotional nourishment, affirmation, and support that students and teachers require, but they often find themselves alone and the target of blame for all that goes wrong. One can guess that both Waldron and his principal were fighting to hold onto why they came into education: to help kids navigate through the problems of life and find their place in the world as responsible and contributing citizens. However, Waldron lost the fight and his principal was vulnerable to the same outcome. No doubt a quality teacher like Waldron will leave behind a huge void and many admirers, including students, parents, and colleagues. He leaves big shoes to fill, but he also leaves a lingering question. What kind of a culture have we developed in some of our schools that is souring

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teachers like Waldron who represent the best and brightest, skilled, talented, and creative thinkers? Where are the leaders, systems, and resources to provide the needed affirmation, belonging, opportunities for collaboration, new learning, and mentoring, and the creative space, culture, and environment required to maintain a high level of skills, competence, and professionalism that successful teachers require? Clearly, Josh Waldron needed that kind of support system but his school appears to have been stuck on a path where only survival counted. One of the important messages in Waldron’s story is that reformers based far away from local schools such as Waynesboro High School need to do a better job of acquainting themselves with what is really going on in that school and what that school staff is capable of handling, as far as a new reform goes. In today’s world, reform leaders are often like diners at a restaurant. They may have little awareness of what is really going on in the kitchen. It’s a scenario in which reform leaders place their order and may have little knowledge about how the chefs will prepare it (whether they have the right ingredients and are working as a team or a disparate crew simply watching the clock until closing time). Closer scrutiny of the performance of the kitchen staff is needed for a successful restaurant, just as it is needed by reformers guiding implementation in local schools. For example, as Hess suggests, policy makers can require intervention, but they cannot mandate that such intervention be pursued wisely. With remarkable regularity, self-styled reformers dismiss practical complications, such as Waynesboro’s ongoing budget cuts, pressure on staff to raise test scores, and poor staff morale and burnout, as excuses undeserving of attention. The failure to closely scrutinize what is really happening in many schools to teachers like Josh Waldron, and the challenges they face in implementing reform projects, tends to breed cynicism, frustration, and distrust. And failure to closely scrutinize also has the downside of missing the small successes that may be occurring even when failures, doom, and gloom seem to be the order of the day. Using a baseball analogy, you can’t be a contender and expect a winning record if your players are too banged up to deliver. In baseball, the fans may desert their team for its poor record, but there can be bright spots that show promise for a better future.

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Capitalizing on small, incremental change, the bright spots, highlighting the good works and deeds of some team members, can alter the way team members and fans view their team: a more positive, hopeful, wecan-do way. This is a way to provide emotional nourishment when the tank seems empty and being in last place feels like an eternity. The same can be said of reform in schools that are indeed problematic when it comes to reform. Creative use of gifted teachers like Waldron that requires little in expenditures can have huge payoffs for reform efforts. Closer scrutiny can uncover the talents and skills of teachers like Waldron that have been overlooked as a potential game changer in promoting needed reform and that could have given him a position of leadership, influence, and hope among his disillusioned peers—for example, if Waldron’s status as a gifted teacher and award winner was rewarded with a part-time role as a teacher leader. In a role in which his behaviors, skills, and practices were pinpointed, highlighted, and observed by his colleagues, he would have found a way to once again be optimistic and hopeful and jump start his waning career. And as important, it would have presented a way for him to collaborate with his peers and help them to be more successful teachers. Unfortunately, this path did not appear open to him at Waynesboro, and there seemed to be no “place” where teachers could gather, share ideas and hunches, learn from each other, and appreciate the expertise of teachers like Waldron that, thus, had remained unavailable to them. Unfortunately there is often a lack of close scrutiny in outside-in reform efforts to identify the leadership skills of local teachers and encourage them to see their role as not “just a teacher” but as a needed, equal contributor to the reform process. Patrick Welsh: Teacher, chronicler of decades of failed reform, an accidental reformer by default. One could say that Patrick Welsh had seen it all when it comes to decades of failed school reform. 4 He retired in June 2014 after teaching at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia. And what he observed doesn’t make for a pretty picture. For starters, Welsh recalls the story of Ellen Dietz. Dietz felt overwhelmed when she started teaching English at T.C. Williams High School

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two years ago, not because the twenty-four-year-old struggled to connect with students or handle the workload. Relentless, yet also patient and charming, she quickly became one of the most popular teachers at the Alexandria school. In June 2012 she received a state-funded Titan Transformer award for “outstanding work toward the goal of transformation” at T.C. But as Welsh suggests, she had issues with the increasing number of reforms making their way into T.C. What bothered her were the consultants, the jargon, the endless stream of new reform initiatives. “It felt like every buzzword or trend in education was being thrown at us at once. When somethinge didn’t work right away it was discarded the next year or even midyear,” she told Welsh over the summer shortly before she moved to Texas. Welsh suggests that her frustrations echo those of other teachers at T.C., and across the country, caught up in the politics of education reform. He reports that in the four decades between when he started teaching English at T.C. in 1970 and his retirement this year, he saw countless reforms come and go. Some reforms even returned years later disguised in new education lingo. Some that were touted as “best practices” couldn’t work, given Alexandria’s demographics. Others were nothing but commonsense bromides hyped as revolutionary epiphanies. All of them failed to do what Welsh believed to be the key to teaching: to make students care about what they’re studying and understand how it’s relevant to their lives. In his article, Welsh traces decades of school reform that he observed and participated in at T.C. Williams beginning with the comprehensive high school model promoted by former Harvard president James Conant and followed by “A Nation at Risk,” the Effective Schools concept, SPONGE and standard-based education (SBE), and Bill and Melinda Gates’s “small learning communities.” Welsh finishes his journey through failed school reforms with a description of T.C. undergoing a “transformation” because of low student achievement, which he describes as the T.C. staff entering an era of diminished expectations, an era in which the superintendent brought in a parade of highly paid consultants and introduced so many educational philosophies that it sowed massive confusion among administrators, teachers, and students.

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Welsh observes that more than four decades of reform didn’t make him a better teacher and hasn’t made T.C. Williams a better school. Rather, he suggests that the quick fixes promulgated by headline-seeking politicians, school administrators, and self-styled education gurus have in some cases done more harm than good. But there is good news amid the ruins of school reform as seen through Welsh’s eyes. He has learned some important lessons about what worked for him to improve his teaching skills and those of his colleagues in the English Department. Here’s some of his advice, advice that is essential to the success of the inside-out model for reform. Welsh observes that he found that the most helpful professional-development experiences involved fellow English teachers sharing their work in their classroom, always with the caveat, “This works for me; it may not work for you.” He says being with people who loved doing what he did and exchanging ideas without any professional jealousy was always invigorating. As the author suggests, the best models for reform may be the simplest ones to conceive and implement—for example, models described by Stephen Johnson in chapter 2 and echoed here by Welsh. Johnson notes that the most productive tool for generating good ideas remains a circle of humans at a table talking shop. Good ideas more readily find their way into others’ brains and take root there. A circle of humans talking shop creates an opportunity where information can spill over from one project to another. When you work alone, as most teachers do, your ideas can get trapped in places, stuck in your initial bias, one of which may be the view of many teachers that their ideas are not worthy enough to share with others. The straightjacket of seeing themselves as “just a teacher” often serves to diminish and strangle their worthy ideas. But all that can change through some simple changes in the teachers’ workplace, that is, by creating an attractive, safe space, for example, an empty or prefab classroom, where teachers can sit around a table, share coffee and ideas, collaborate, and learn new approaches. A setting where they become more than “just a teacher” and are seen as professionals who have ideas, skills, and valuable experience to share—and not necessarily a homogenous group made up of the members of Patrick Welsh’s English Department.

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Instead, a setting is needed such as MIT’s Building 20 that encourages a gathering of heterogeneous groups made up of professionals from many different parts of the university who in their daily work seldom interact with each other—a sought-after destination with a brightly lit sign that says, “All are welcome here to think, share, and create.” Our large high school organizations, some schools with twenty-five hundred students, present the problem of isolation and anonymity, not only for students but also for teachers. Therefore, in order for reform to find fertile soil and grow, it is important to bring teachers from many different areas and departments together to overcome the isolation that is prevalent in the large departments in our secondary schools. It is, for example, the isolation in which a teacher like Welsh can go through the day only seeing and interacting with his English Departments colleagues and have literally no contact with other staff members except at the requisite once-a-month faculty meetings. Faculty meetings are not known for interaction, conversation, and collaboration, rather settings where most teachers opt out mentally and watch the clock for the time they can escape. It appears that Patrick Welsh has a great deal of resentment about the impact of many decades of failed reform on his school, colleagues, and himself. Welsh, as a teacher who cares deeply about his school and colleagues, can’t be blamed for having deep-seated emotions about the betrayal that ill-conceived reform has brought to T.C. Williams High School. But amid the ruins of the stagnating piles of reform proposals, Welsh fortunately didn’t overlook the kind of reform model that worked for him and his colleagues. His criticism of failed reform has given him the opportunity to tell us that he knows firsthand from his own teaching experiences the key to successful reform, that is, being with people who loved what he did and exchanging ideas without any professional jealousy. A simple idea, philosophy, and way of being can create an opportunity for others and a place where good ideas can find their way into others’ brains. As Welsh’s story suggests, sometimes ideas for successful reform are to be found right before our eyes in the daily, often creative, work of teachers. Yet it seems far too easy for school administrators to overlook the many examples of the good work of teachers in our local schools and instead be romanticized by the allure of the next big reform project with

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all its sirens and bells drawing and luring teachers’ attention away from what they know works for them and their students. Unfortunately, this is a path that can take successful teachers away from what they do well and believe in and place them in subservient roles where their ideas and voices don’t count. What we need to be about is encouraging teachers to use their own initiative and be innovative in their everyday work. As Marine officer Paul Van Riper states in chapter 2, “We would use the wisdom, the experience, and the good judgment of the people we had.” However, in order to look more closely, examine with more scrutiny what works and doesn’t in our local schools, we will need to identify and groom teacher leaders for the role the author and Van Riper are suggesting. As we shall see in later chapters, that role may be right before our eyes in the person of teacher leaders already at work. Elizabeth Hinde speaks to the important role of teacher leaders in successful reform when she states that the importance of leaders in the change process cannot be overestimated. 5 Many reforms have failed because of the lack of quality leadership. Hinde suggests that it is important to note that school leadership is found in a variety of places throughout a school; the principal or chief administrator is only one source of leadership within the school. In fact, a respected and articulate colleague who supports the reform initiative (Author’s note: and is a leader of inside-out reform) can serve to keep teachers refreshed and enthusiastic about the change. Principals are vital to the change process, but teacher leaders are no less important. Hinde stresses a key point of this book when she reminds education leaders of the simple truth that a competent principal in collaboration with respected teacher leaders is a critical ingredient in any change initiative. Hinde also suggests why teacher leaders are important in successful reform when she observes that all real change involves loss, anxiety, and struggle. Things can get turned upside down. As the author experienced in reform suggests, what was a “normal” and “safe” path with bright lights showing the way for teachers often becomes a foggy, unsure path in the implementation stage of a new reform. But with the presence and support of caring teacher leaders, upset feelings associated with change can be managed and given credibility, allowing the change to proceed even when challenged by resisters.

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As Hinde observes, resisters can also provide insight into the proposed reform that may facilitate the change and reveal otherwise overlooked hindrances. Their role can be as vital as that of supporters. Hinde also echoes the author’s recommendation for the need to provide a professional space for teachers where they can share ideas and skills and collaborate and speak their minds about the issues in a change project. But as she suggests, often gatherings where teachers can share and talk are too often dismissed as “pointless philosophizing.” However, the charge of “pointless philosophizing” can also be seen as a way to stop empowering teachers, drown out their voices, disparage their professionalism, and paint them as slackers wasting taxpayer money and spending time gossiping—a charge that often results in teachers being denied the opportunity, time, and space to collaborate. As the author has experienced when inside-out reform has had the chance of becoming a reality, personal and professional attacks, such as teacher collaboration being “pointless philosophizing” and teacher leaders being “self-promoters and only interested in climbing a career ladder in order to become an administrator,” raise their ugly heads. Personal and professional attacks come with the territory of reform and are aimed at turning well-thought-out reform ideas designed by teachers into self-promoting gains for the teachers involved. Teacher leaders need to be not only caring and supportive of teachers involved in reform but also tough and resilient enough to take the hard shots and abuse that are certain to come their way and not let faux charges become truths. Teachers need protection when they enter the political world of reform, a world in which they have little experience and know little about how rough the politics can get. Thus, a top requirement for successful teacher leaders is having the political skills to successfully navigate through attacks on reform projects from many sides, some unexpected. Reform projects almost always bring about battles for turf and power. Not everyone in the school and community and among outside-in reformers will embrace and support teachers when they begin to find their voice, speak their minds and ideas, and venture forth to change “their school.” As Hinde reminds us, change involves loss, anxiety, and struggle. Thus, successful reform requires a leader, as Hess suggests earlier in this chapter, who is eager and well equipped to leverage new opportunities and run the accompanying risks.

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These are opportunities such as ensuring that teachers have a place they can call their own where, as Hinde suggests, they can relate to and collaborate with colleagues who are in similar situations and involved in similar reforms (in order for change to be discussed in practical, classroom verbiage and not in the theoretical or hypothetical terms that nonpractitioners employ). Unfortunately, the collaboration that now happens in many of our large secondary schools is limited to isolated departments, as with Patrick Welsh’s sharing of his work and ideas only with his English Department and, as a result, never getting to know other teachers well and hearing their ideas. It is an outmoded organizational pattern that encourages anonymity and isolation and a school culture fixed on separate departments and department members, an organizational pattern common in our large high schools that creates many separate mini-outposts when what is needed is a common space such as Buildings 20 and 99 for more interaction, conversation, and collaboration among diverse departments and constituencies. Hinde reinforces the need to remove the barriers that now separate teachers from coming together to better know each other and share ideas. She suggests that it is unproductive to associate only with like-minded individuals while in the process of change. Relationships with supporters and detractors are essential to the change process. It does seem ill advised that, while school leaders and staff in many schools do work hard (to bring students of all walks of life, family types, cultures, color, race, intellect, and behaviors together to increase understanding, acceptance, valuing of the other and their unique diversity to reduce bias, isolation, and stereotyping), they do far too little to bring about the same outcomes for teachers in our highly departmentalized, large secondary schools. Think for a moment just how limited are the opportunities for positive interaction among teachers from different departments. There are the usual suspects: faculty meetings, separate faculty rooms for each department, Friday afternoon bar get-togethers, and workshops or conferences for a day or two a year. These are hardly settings to get to know colleagues well who are literally strangers from other departments and groups. It is important to remember that teachers, like their students, have their cliques and often

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remain isolated within “their” own crowd. Students cling to their cliques but so do teachers. Of course, this isolation is heightened in our large secondary schools, many with student populations of over two thousand. But surprisingly enough, there is often no common space or venue in the school that provides an ongoing opportunity for educators to know and value each other and reduce the isolation caused by the bias and stereotyping that is often rampant among teachers, particularly in schools with low morale, budget problems, and staff being laid off. As a result, when reform is planned for problematic schools like this, it often provides fertile ground for bias and stereotyping to increase and be filled with demeaning, hurtful, and nasty comments—the kind of comments that, made by students, would cause them to be sent to the assistant principal’s office and be forced to enroll in a bully-prevention program. Here are some examples of what goes on in the teacher’s grapevine when there are limited opportunities to better know and accept each other: • “We math teachers work a lot harder than the jocks in the physical education department who spend their time sitting around while the kids run wild all over the gym. They have no discipline, and the program should be eliminated. They are unprofessional, lazy bastards who are ruining our reputation as an academic school.” • “All you hear is the advanced placement teachers are superior to the rest of the staff. I am sick of their superior attitudes and looking down on us in the Technology Department as if we are a bunch of bozos. They walk around in white coats calling each other doctors because most of them have a PhD. They act like they are professors in college or work at some high-class private school like Andover. The bright kids and parents suck up to them so they can get a good college recommendation. They don’t even eat lunch with us in the cafeteria. It’s like their shit doesn’t stink!” • “Those teachers nearing retirement in the English Department should be forced out to make room for new blood. All they talk about is the good old days, how great the school was then, and how bad it is now. If it’s so bad why don’t they leave? Just trying to boost their retirement pension. If they get any more burned out, they are going to go up in flames.”

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• “What goes with that young teacher, Scott Franco, in the Social Studies Department? He needs to cool it and stop acting like God’s gift to teaching with all his awards for writing articles on how schools can improve. Who the hell does he think he is? An expert and guru after only five years of teaching? Plus, how come he gets all this time off to give speeches at conferences? I know why. He has something going on with the sexy new assistant principal. Someone said they are writing a book together. Probably doing most of their writing between the sheets.” The lack of a venue to provide opportunities for teachers to know each other well, share ideas, and collaborate on new approaches on an ongoing basis not only creates the negativity and conflicts noted above but is also a major determining factor in teachers settling for being “just a teacher,” rather than aspiring to be a highly skilled and valued educator. In the author’s experience, when skilled teachers try to step out of the role of being “just a teacher” and try to become a teacher leader, they often become targets of many of their disillusioned peers, who are quick to remind them “you aren’t special so don’t try to be a ‘somebody’ when you are after all just a teacher.” It’s sort of like a very bright student, wanting to take difficult academic courses, held back by peer pressure from his friends who are lost in a pattern of failure. Exiting from a clique or group is not only hard for students but also for teachers. Being viewed as “just a teacher” is a well-known pattern in our schools and similar to what happens to students at the margins of school life who feel they have no place, no way out, to become accepted members of the school community and be valued for who they are, what they know, and what they can contribute to “their school.” Teachers who feel they are “just a teacher” and students stuck at the margins of school life have a lot in common. They both spend much of their time looking for ways to get out of their rut and become doers. But often they find there is no place in the school to connect with other doers and become a contributor. The doors for renewal and new beginnings are closed to them. That’s how dreams die for both teachers and students at the margins. They spend their time on the outside, looking in, wanting a place, fertile soil, where they can grow and become a doer and contributor.

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That place, that venue, that model to spark growth and belonging is doable and one shouldn’t have to wait until one is in heaven to find it. As Jeffrey Mirel and Simona Goldin observe, teachers spend only about 3 percent of their teaching day collaborating with colleagues. 6 The majority of American teachers plan, teach, and examine their practices alone. Mirel and Goldin say teachers want to collaborate with one another to enrich teaching and support student learning and argue that we need to find the resources and opportunities to help them do so. In closing this chapter, it is the author’s belief and experience that we already have the model, the resources, and opportunities in the majority of schools to help teachers collaborate and expand and invigorate their professional and personal lives. Developing a feeling of belonging can do wonders for all aspects of the professional and personal lives of teachers and help them overcome the feeling of being “just a teacher.” Just think how stultifying and alienating being limited to 3 percent of their day for collaboration and socializing with others can be for teachers. Being with kids all day can be draining for the body, mind, and opportunity to generate new ideas and see the world as filled with possibilities. Absent space and time for collaboration that involves a sharing of ideas and hunches, the good ideas of teachers will remain trapped, isolated in their minds and solitary classrooms. Perhaps a better description of the world of many teachers would be “solitary confinement” or “guaranteed.” In chapter 2, Debra Ciamacca reinforces this isolation of teachers and the resulting subservient role when she says that today’s teachers have no time to collaborate with colleagues, discuss best practices, and learn new teaching pedagogies. It is no wonder then that reformers with their outside-in change model own the current reform movement. That being said, while this book may appear so far to be a rant against and bashing of reformers and a boost for local school teachers and leaders to play an equal role in reform, this is not the usual “us versus them” rhetoric of the school reform debate. Rather, the goal of these first three chapters is to provide the necessary background information to clarify what both reform experts and local school leaders are missing to make reform work for students and parents and how they can silence the ongoing vocal, sometimes emotional, provocative, and sensational charges made about them and their failures.

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Instead, the author believes that the most important theme in this book is that both reformers and leaders in local schools have much to gain by becoming more aware of the contribution each group can offer to bring about needed reform. A rapprochement is needed. Clear boundaries need to be set. A partnership is within reach. For example, this book so far described the problems with reform projects and their implementation and the importance of leaders in local schools being invited to play a central role in reform by creating paths to facilitate reform endorsed by their staff. Theirs can be a complementary role with reform experts, a role that is necessary for the success of both reformers and local school leaders. While local school leaders and expert reformers may appear as the odd couple, there is much at stake to make reform work for students, parents, educators, and reformers themselves. The bottom line is that no one likes to fail. The reform experts and local leaders need each other to successfully navigate through the problematic path of change. They both need to embrace and accept what each other brings to the learning and change process and come to terms and agree that neither group owns the process. Most important, to accomplish this goal they need a process to know, respect, and accept each other’s gifts. That getting to know each other’s process involves arriving at a better understanding of each other’s differences and contributions and mapping out a scenario in which both can play a major role. It’s like a relationship between two people who need to be equals in sharing power, control, support, and the platform that comes with success. As such, it can be a rocky, conflicting role but necessary for each person to be seen as vital to the relationship. What we know is that reformers have the strength of good ideas and resources but may be weak in the areas of how to intervene and get local school leaders on board as equal partners, honestly assessing the barriers local schools face in taking on a reform project and the resources needed in the project, particularly in the implementation stage. While local school leaders may be strong in knowing their unique school culture, the needs of staff, students, and community and what needs improvement, they are weak in identifying the vehicle and venue needed to actualize the reform process, knowing how to create and promote their role as equal participants and contributors to reform, and

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securing the funding and resources needed (hello reformers, funding needed). The authors argue that reformers (the outside-in crew) and the local school leaders (the inside-out crew) are both needed if a reform project is to see the light of day. Each group has something important to offer, and without their specialized input, reform usually sputters and dies an early death. Reformers are needed because they can offer ideas and plans and monetary and staffing resources. Local school leaders are needed because they understand the particular culture, turf, and issues in “their” school and can guide the reform through the perils involved in the integration and implementation stage. When reformers and local leaders act as a team, they can quickly resolve issues that neither side can do alone. For example, when reformers arrive at the schoolhouse door with what they see as exciting plans for reform, local leaders can use the resources of reformers to create a setting such as Building 20, a place where teachers can collaborate, assess the parts of reform that fit their needs, and plan together the best steps for implementation. In this scenario, the monetary resources of reform experts can be used to provide release time for teachers, by hiring substitute teachers to cover their classes, so they can collaborate, thereby ensuring they are not left alone, out of the loop; as a result, they are vital members of the reform team and process. Waynesboro’s Josh Waldron would have been an ideal teacher leader for such an intervention. Reformers can also aid the integration and implementation process by assigning well-trained and skilled members of their staff to join with local leaders to support their effort in the early stages of the project. However, as the author has experienced, this joining together of outside-in and inside-out professionals can create a dicey situation. But as chapters 5 and 6 will illustrate, it can proceed smoothly if the reform staff views their primary role as supporting the teacher leaders, being in their corner, getting them the resources they need, and acting as confidantes and sources of needed feedback when problems arise—in other words, understanding they are there to help, not lead and unilaterally dictate how to proceed. They are, in a word, partners that know how to fly below the radar, remain in the background, and play a humble role. Their role can be critical to the success of the project.

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Local leaders will need the feedback and help of such skilled allies to be able to assess how the project is progressing, what the problems emerging are, and how to proceed. Allies who have some emotional distance from the project can be an invaluable asset to the teacher leader. They are not part of the school culture and community and therefore can sometimes see things more clearly than a local leader who sees things through the lens of many years of experience in the school. And of course local leaders need to agree with such an arrangement and trust that these new members to their team are not going to be in competition, act as a threat, and be a source of backbiting. They are needed visitors serving both as observers and participants. As in any other relationship, it involves the give and take of knowing each other well, what the boundaries are, and what each person needs to make the relationship work. In the next chapter, the author makes the case that principals in many of our large secondary schools are overworked, overwhelmed, and unable to provide the leadership and energy needed to guide reform projects to a successful ending. Many are too busy putting out fires, resolving crises, promoting their school, and shoring up staff morale. Asking more of them, such as leading complicated reform efforts, doesn’t make for good policy when many have little left to give and need the support of skilled colleagues who can take on the leadership of critical projects. NOTES 1. Jal Mehta, “The Future of School Reform: Five Pathways to Fundamentally Reshaping American Schools,” American Enterprise Institute, November 14, 2012, Available online at www.AEI.org/outlook/education/K-12/systems-reform/the (accessed July 23, 2014). 2. Frederick M. Hess, “The Missing Half of the Reform,” National Affairs 17, July 9, 2014, available online at http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/print/themissing-half-of-school-reform (accessed August 1, 2006). 3. Valerie Strauss, “I Have Very Real Concerns about Sustainability of Public Education—Virginia Teacher’s Painful Decision to Quit,” The Answer Sheet Blog, available online at www.washingtonpost.com/local/-i-have-very-real-concerns (accessed July 14, 2014). 4. Patrick Welsh, “Four Decades of School Reform” Washington Post, September 27, 2013, available online at www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fourdecades-of-failed (accessed August 26, 2014).

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5. Elizabeth Hinde, “Reflection on Reform: A Former Teacher Looks at School Change and the Factors that Shape It,” Teachers College Record, August 3, 2003, available online at www.TCRecord.org/content.asp?contentid=11183 (accessed September 3, 2014). 6. Jeffrey Mirel and Simona Goldin, “Alone in the Classroom: Why Teachers Are Too Isolated,” The Atlantic, April 21, 2012, available online at www.theatlantic.com/ national/archive/2012/04/alone-in-the-classroom-why-teachers-are-too-isolated/255976 (accessed August 17, 2014).

FOUR Providing Relief for Principals Leading Reform Utilizing Teacher Leaders to Shore Up the Principal’s Role

The author believes that reform leaders need to give closer scrutiny to encourage local superintendents to view alternatives to principals leading reform and consider staffing arrangements described in chapters 5 and 6. As Paul Van Riper explains in chapter 2, “We would use the wisdom, the experience, and the good judgment of the people we had.” Earlier, in chapter 3, Elizabeth Hinde offered some wise advice, saying it is important to note that school leadership is found in a variety of places throughout a school; the principal or chief administrator is only one source of leadership in the school. However, it can be a dicey situation if the building principal decides to call on a trusted colleague to take over the leadership role in reform. For example: • The principal has to be aware and accept the fact that he has too many projects and issues to be the reform leader that is needed. That takes a special person. An open, honest person who realizes that he needs help and asks for it. • This sharing of his role and power can be seen as risky, unorthodox, and peculiar by staff, parents, and community members, as principals are seen as being in charge. It’s a highly politicized deci61

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sion and critics will suggest he is no longer up to the job and looking for a quick exit. • The staff member invited to come on board must be seen as having no interest in an administrative position or self-promotion, such as promoting their career opportunities or authoring a book about the reform project and have positive relationships with staff members from the various groups in the school, especially those who will resist reform, and hold a high degree of trust among members of the school community, be humble, stay in the background, avoid the expert label when things go well, and make it a priority to credit teachers with bringing about the successes in the project. Big egos need not apply! Team builders, collaborators, and professionals uninterested in their reviews are needed for this role. Collaboration between beleaguered principals and a teacher leader who is a trusted, skilled, and selfless colleague and ally is much needed in today’s school world. Here are some reasons why. The role of high school principal is best characterized as one of having “too much to do.” And there are few “super principals” capable of being successful in all the essential tasks required in their work. Something has to give. David Dunaway suggests as much in his article “Myth of the Super Principal.” 1 Dunaway suggests that in many principals’ experiences, a typical day is composed of a series of fifteen-minute problemsolving segments interspersed with interruptions of tragedy, hilarity, anger, and noise. In the middle of all of this, the principal is expected to set the vision of the school, increase parental engagement, know the names of all the students, know the birthdays of the children of faculty members, know the number of students on free and reduced lunch by sex and ethnicity, and be able to recite the statistics of the leading scorers from last night’s boys and girls basketball games. The principal is expected to develop strategies for increasing test performance, convince faculity members who have little desire to solve school problems that they should help solve them and enjoy doing it, protect the constitutional rights of every student, and be able to quote special education law, chapter and verse. Add to this the time required for teacher observations, with pre- and post-conferences, and the hours required to write up these observations. Just the paperwork associated with the evaluation routines for a large faculty is astonishing.

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One also must not forget that the principal is expected to be at every athletic event and club meeting and to participate in the civic life of the community after the school day is over. And being a model parent with a model family life is another community expectation. To these expectations, add the paperwork required by the central office and staying up to date on the latest instructional materials, teaching methodologies, and discipline strategies. With the increasing emphasis on responding to email and telephone messages promptly, some school systems are beginning to measure the response time from when a parent makes a request until that request is answered. Dunaway reports that Robert W. Hetzel wrote in 1992, “Principals face a variety of tasks in an environment where the normal length of interaction or activity ranges from two to three minutes, and less that 15 percent of all tasks last more than nine minutes.” One might ask if anything has changed since 1992 to improve this situation. Unfortunately, it has only gotten worse. And one cannot be surprised to find that a focus on the knowable managerial aspects of the job too often takes precedence over the much less predicable and inherently more risky aspects of focusing on the core leadership function of the principalship; improving teaching and learning. Thus has been perpetrated on unsuspecting school leaders the myth of the super principal. And the essential tasks of high school principals can be daunting. Here’s a list of “essential tasks” for the job of high school principal in the Virginia Beach Public Schools: 2 Principal, Senior High School General Responsibilities The position is responsible for the leadership, administration and supervision of high school and its programs. Essential Tasks (These are intended only as illustrations of the various types of work performed. The omission of specific duties does not exclude them from the position if the work is similar, related, or a logical assignment to the position.) • Develop and maintain an effective educational program consistent with the State and Federal guidelines and the philosophy, policies, regulations and strategic plan of the School Board; maintain records and files; meet and confer with students, parents, faculty and staff.

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• Establish a professional learning culture through a solid foundation of shared mission, vision, value and goals. • Develop a collaborative culture for improving student achievement. • Establish and maintain an effective learning climate in the school. • Initiate, design and implement programs to meet specific needs of the school. • Ensure implementation of the Virginia Beach Public School’s approved curriculum. • Direct and monitor the development of the school’s instructional program. • Ensure the development of 21st century skills with all students. • Plan, organize, and direct implementation of all school activities. • Make recommendations concerning the school’s administration and instruction. • Assist with the preparation of the school’s budget and monitor expenditures. • Prepare or supervise the preparation of reports, records, lists and all other required information and data. • Coordinate and work with the central administrative staff on school needs, problems, and/or effectiveness. • Assume responsibilities for the implementation and observances of all School Board policies and regulations by the school’s staff and students; interpret and enforce school divisions policies and regulations. • Schedule classes within established guidelines to meet student needs. • Assist in the development, revision, and evaluation of the curriculum. • Supervise the guidance program. • Monitor all dimensions of the special education program in the school to ensure compliance with federal, state and local mandates and guidelines. • Monitor the student Support Team process to ensure appropriate and timely interventions for students and subsequent referrals for other services if needed.

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• Maintain high standards of student conduct and enforce discipline, as necessary, according to School Board policy and the due process rights of students. • Attend special events held to recognize student achievements; attend school sponsored activities, functions and athletic events. • Maintain and control the various local funds generated by student activities. • Supervise the maintenance of accurate records on the progress and attendance of students. • Supervise all professional, paraprofessional, administrative, and non-professional personnel assigned to the school. • Develop leadership skills, particularly instructional leadership, of the assistant principals assigned to the school. • Participate in the selection of all school building personnel. • Evaluate and counsel all staff members regarding their individual and group performance. • Supervise the daily use of the school facilities for both academic and nonacademic purposes. • Supervise and evaluate all activities and programs that are outgrowths of the school’s curriculum. • Perform related work as required. A look at the essential tasks of a high school principal in the Virginia Beach public schools confirms our assessment that the current role of high school principals is a daunting one. This assessment is also supported by a Public Agenda report, “Rolling Up Their Sleeves: Superintendents and Principals Talk about What’s Needed to Fix Public Schools.” 3 The report suggests educational leaders are being asked to do more, much more, with fewer resources. Getting by with less is the name of the game in today’s school world. As a result, the report suggests that many of the essential tasks of secondary school principals are not focused on their most important work: educating students. It should come as no surprise that high school principals are being forced into a marketing role to help ensure that school budgets are passed and their policies are seen as effective. However, this role of the principal as the chief promoter and marketer of the school’s brand has a dark side: diminishing the instructive and educative role of the principal and lowering his expectation to help

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underachieving students because other priorities demand his attention. There are casualties in the battle to survive. For example, there are often costs to low-achieving students who are not a part of a college-bound culture in which the benefits flow exclusively to those students who receive a particular education and have highly marketable tokens they can use to acquire the most expert services a school can provide to get ahead and stay ahead. Successful students and high achievers are the main source of ongoing good news that principals need to dispel criticism and attacks that are a constant in their daily work. Marketing and promoting the school’s success and brand has become a full-time effort for many principals and leaves little time to deal with the never-ending mandates and reform proposals arriving at their desk and how best to educate the growing number of low-achieving and atrisk students. Here are some key elements of the Public Agenda report: With public schools racked by state and local budget crises, it is hardly surprising that principals and superintendents consider money to be their number one problem. Creating reliable budgets for complex organizations is never easy; meeting the bottom line is always rough. Today’s economy is sluggish, and taxpayers can be a notoriously cranky and unappreciative lot, even in much brighter economic times. Money is a big problem for school leaders, and they don’t hesitate to say so. But just beneath the surface of their money concerns is one aspect they find especially galling: the cost of obeying state and federal laws that require them to put very specific services or policies in place. According to school leaders, there are far too many of these mandates. They come in regularly from federal, state, and local governments. Most don’t come with sufficient funding, and even when the money is there, the mandates are often abstruse, time-consuming, and out of sync with laws and regulations already on the books. Asked to choose the most pressing issue facing their district, 70 percent of superintendents and 58 percent of principals say it is “insufficient school funding.” By contrast, mere handfuls say that “poor teacher quality” or a “lack of strong and talented administrators” is their top problem. One in five superintendents (20 percent) and one in three principals (33 percent) choose “implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act” as their major challenge, although lack of adequate funding is one of the major complaints school leaders have about the law.

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Moreover, school leaders say, money problems are more severe than in the past. The number of school leaders who say funding is their top problem has risen in recent years, and 85 percent of superintendents and 80 percent of principals say the situation in their own district has gotten worse. In fact, 27 percent of superintendents and 23 percent of principals say lack of funding is such a critical problem in their district that only minimal progress can be made. Yet, as perhaps further evidence of their “can do” spirit, nearly seven in ten school leaders (68 percent of superintendents and 68 percent of principals) say “lack of funding is a problem but [they] can make progress given what [they] have.” John Fensterwald, in his article “Overworked, Undertrained Principals,” 4 also laments the increasing role of principals in school reform that is adding to their already stressful workload. He suggests school reforms on the books or in the making are piling on significant responsibilities for school principals. For example, they are being asked to conduct more intensive teacher evaluations, be the CEO of site-based budgeting, and guide the transition to Common Core Standards. Fensterwald cites a new study by the Center for the Future Teaching and Learning at WestEd that warns that California principals are already lacking staff, untrained for new responsibilities, and stretched in many directions. They’re working sixty hours per week on average, with fewer office and support staff members around to lighten the load, according to the center’s survey of six hundred principals. The center’s survey found half of principals overall have been principals for no more than five years, and 53 percent have been in their current job fewer than three. The principals who are relatively new to the job reported that they are feeling increased pressure from federal accountability sanctions in Title 1 low-income schools and the No Child Left Behind program. Given this rise in the responsibilities that come with being a principal, the central question being asked in this chapter is: Which staff member is filling in to share the staff development leadership that has long been the principal’s role? And the answer to that question in far too many schools is, “No one.” If the truth be known in today’s world, principals, particularly in large secondary schools, don’t have the time and energy required for this role, and the increasing number of reform proposals arriving at their desk

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makes it even harder. They are too busy scratching out good news among their faculty and students that will help them and their school survive. But telling the truth can be a risky approach for principals. Sharing the truth that they are feeling overwhelmed and overworked can be seen as weakness and invite attacks and criticism from staff members, parents, and citizens always looking for the opportunity to take their principal down or even out. But sometimes the truth can resonate with respected staff members, district administrators, and union leaders and be the process, as Hinde suggests in chapter 3, to identify other leaders on the staff—for example, teachers or counselors who are well respected and have the skills to support their principal by taking over the staff development role, even if it is on a part-time basis. As Larry Cuban observes, everyone wants principals to be instructional leaders but no one wants to take away anything from the principal’s job. 5 Because principals have limited hours and energy, they face tensions over what they should choose each day. Thus, choices become compromises to ease tensions in their teaching, managing, and politicking roles. Tensions between managerial and instruction duties of principles never go away. Seldom mentioned are important political tasks in working with parents, mobilizing teachers, dealing with community social service agencies, and police, and so on. What does change are expectations of principals: today CEOs, tomorrow political actors in the community, the following week, instructional leaders. As Cuban suggests, in the face of all of these demands and choices the principal must make, most principals want to be instructional leaders. Their main tools are spending time in classrooms, supporting and supervising teachers, school-site professional development, and face-to-face conversations about curriculum and lessons. But just getting into enough teachers’ classrooms to get an accurate sample of their work is nearly impossible. Michael Fullan also reports that 75 percent of principals feel their job has become too complex and half of all principals feel under great stress “several days a week;” the percentage who say they are satisfied in their work has dropped from 68 to 59 since 2008. 6 Meanwhile, teacher satisfaction has declined 24 percent since 2008 when 62 percent reported feeling “very satisfied”; within five years, only 38 percent were saying that. Ful-

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lan notes that teachers and principals are keeping pace with each other, but in the wrong direction. Fullan suggests that principals feel a huge burden of accountability. The new Common Core State Standards (CCSS) curriculum will make these tensions unbearable because so much more will be expected of schools and principals. We have put the principal on a pedestal and now we expect miracles; a few can pull it off, but mere mortals have little choice. Kathleen Trail details why it is becoming more difficult to pull off the role of principal. 7 She quotes Lee Sherman, who says, Research tells us that principals are the linchpins on the enormously complex workings, both physical and human, of a school. The job calls for a staggering range of roles: psychologist, teacher, facilities manager, philosopher, police officer, diplomat, social worker, mentor, PR Director, coach, cheerleader. The principalship is both lofty and lowly. In one morning you might deal with a broken window and a broken home, a bruised nose and a bruised ego, a rusty pipe and a rusty teacher.

Trail also notes that the job of principal can indeed be staggering in its demands, particularly in the context of school reform. The picture that Sherman paints of the “new” principal is a far cry from the traditional administrator of decades past. The job has evolved significantly over the last twenty years, and today’s principal is constantly multitasking and shifting roles at a moment’s notice. The principal’s role has become a dysfunctional one. It’s sort of like a love affair when two people enter a relationship feeling confident that they will be able to share a happy life together but still stay involved in the things they enjoy and that matter to them as individuals. But often, life intrudes, and the issues that arise with problems associated with finances, family, children, careers, and so on, take the fun out of life. Over time the things that were important and mattered to each partner take a backseat to dealing with the myriad of problems that come their way. They face tensions over what they should do each day and in the process make compromises. They become doers by necessity rather than lovers guided by what first brought them into the relationship. They lose what matters to them as lovers and as individuals. Their beginning thoughts on the virtues of being a partner lose their initial glow.

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The same can be said of principals. Many entered into their career with the dream of becoming instructional leaders, spending most of their time in classrooms supporting and supervising teachers, and involved in school-site professional development and face-to-face conversations about curriculum and lessons. But early on they found, as did Waynesboro teacher Josh Waldron when his teaching time with students was being overtaken by the demands of school reform, that the job as they envisioned it was far different and more demanding and increasingly left no time to be involved with teachers in the classroom, helping them improve their craft with staff development opportunities and face-to-face conversations with teachers about curriculum. The things they loved about their work vanished. They became doers of necessity, no longer lovers of their work. There was no Building 20 or 99 where they could escape to and collaborate with their staff about their ideas and hunches to improve the school. They became trapped in the isolation of their office, seeing their ideas, hopes, aspirations, and career dreams die a fast death. As Cuban poignantly describes, just getting into enough teachers’ classrooms to get an accurate sample of their work became nearly impossible. Reformers often talk about the need to know our students well, but there is little talk and emphasis on knowing our teachers well and how to go about it. That is doing what effective teachers do with their students: getting to know them on a personal basis—their hopes, dreams, successes, fears, failures, family life, friends, relationships with peers, and so on. When students are given the opportunity to be known, they are presented with an opportunity to lower their guard, feel welcomed, wanted, and safe. As a result, they often become more motivated to learn and become productive students. Of course, this axiom holds true for teachers as well. Like their students, in order to grow and be successful, they need the opportunity to learn and collaborate with other professionals in settings such as Buildings 20 and 99, a setting where a skilled teacher leader, substituting for his busy principal, can welcome and encourage their involvement, ideas, and concerns on a regular basis. A facilitator-colleague knows them well as persons and professionals, what their classroom is like, how they view their career as a teacher, what they do well and what they need to improve, their ideas and hunches to

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improve themselves and their school. Teachers need these conditions for growth in order to create and sustain them for their students. Teachers who are not cared for, affirmed, encouraged, and presented with ongoing opportunities to learn new skills find it difficult to offer their students what is being denied to them as professionals: the care, affirmation, encouragement, and opportunities to learn new skills. Students and teachers are joined, as they both need fertile soil to grow and be matured. Teachers can’t give to students what is being denied to them as they remain isolated and stuck in their classrooms, thirsting, looking for someone to arrive whom they can talk with, that is, have adult conversations with about their thoughts and concerns, and collaborate. Yet they know that their principal is far too busy to appear at their doorstep except for a brief evaluation of their work. He has no time for face-to-face conversations because in his busy day conversations require more time than he is able to give. “He’s always too busy” is a familiar assessment of their principal. It is time to revisit the important but limited notion that the only responsibility of public schools is to educate and develop students. In today’s complex world, schools also have the responsibility to educate and care for teachers, administrators, and support staff: all members of the school community who are vital in creating and sustaining an effective school that works well for all. Every professional in the school community can be at risk and headed toward the margins of school life at some point in their career, not just students. And by “at risk,” the author is describing teachers who have problems that impede their success, get in the way of their becoming a competent professional, and don’t get better over time. Like students, professionals need ongoing opportunities for renewal and change. In today’s schools, that requires recasting the role of principal as the leader in reform and renewal, a role many principals can no longer fulfill. What is needed is a reorganization of staff to provide a role for a skilled teacher leader to help provide change and renewal opportunities that once were solely the domain of now overworked principals—and in the process provide a new career ladder for skilled teacher leaders interested in being the change leader described in chapters 5 and 6. Today’s principals need help to address their increasing responsibilities. But all is not doom and gloom. As Kathleen Trail suggests, help may

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be on the way. Kathleen Trail suggests that we need to begin seeing the role of principal as “collaborator.” For example, Trail argues that there are many benefits to sharing the responsibility and the rewards with teachers, with the most immediate benefit that principals not only share the lead but share the load. However, as Trail wisely observes, while it can be difficult to trust in the decision-making ability of others and to give up some of the power of the position, there is also a kind of freedom in the process. The weight of important decisions is carried more easily by many shoulders. Trail also says that another reason why shared leadership is critical is its potential for engaging stakeholders, especially teachers, more fully in the reform process. The sometimes overwhelming demands of being a principal make the strengths that come with shared leadership a vital resource. And in facing the demands that go along with implementing school reform, strength may be the most important characteristic for principals to have. Chapter 5 involves an example of why shared leadership is important and how it can work to bring about successful reform. It is a story of an overworked principal of a large junior high school (2,200-plus students) who turned to a skilled counselor, the author, to share his leadership role of chief reformer, change agent, and staff development expert and take on leadership of a reform project initiated by a nearby university to increase teacher involvement and collaboration in the school. The principal shared his role because, as this chapter reveals, he had no time to be the staff development leader he wanted to be. He had 2,200 students, parents, budgets, staff problems, and promotion of the good works in the school to manage. And he also had to spend the time to successfully navigate through the ongoing political scene he faced that was filled with critics who were out to sabotage his school and his staff and show him the door when rumors of any mishap or wrong turns surfaced. He needed a confidant, someone he knew well and trusted to share his work and world, a trusted colleague/friend who could take the “pulse” of his staff and maintain a personal connection with them. And someone who had the skills, courage, and political savvy to face the challenges of the new reform proposal, run with it, overcome resistance, make it work, and in the process garner support and accolades for his

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school, staff, students, parents, and community members—a person who had experience with agency and the motivation to get things done. Most cases of failed reform are not necessarily the fault of reformers or leaders in local schools but rather of the lack of a connecting system, a designated collaborator between the ideas, strategies, and personnel of reformers who often have little awareness of the workings in the individual schools they are involved with and leaders in local schools who are often too mired in the everyday business of running their school to absorb all the minutia and details in complex reform proposals. As chapter 5 suggests, what is needed is a designated leader, as Hinde and Trail suggest, who is not necessarily the principal, but a trusted teacher leader and ally who is charged with collaborating between the two groups, who are often miles apart both in geography and substance—designated collaborators who can help realign, integrate, and implement the reform effort. However, without a skilled, designated teacher leader in local schools ready and set to find ways to get teachers involved, what often takes place to introduce reform are district and county meetings, involving every teacher, that are held in large centrally located county center auditoriums or universities. The meetings feature an expert speaking about reform, while the majority of teachers sit passively, remaining silent and uninvolved. They know they aren’t participants and their role is to do their best to pass the time by looking interested. So they write to their children in college, do their grocery lists, visit the ladies’ or men’s rooms, talk on their cell phones, and ignore the speaker by talking loudly with colleagues about how boring this entire presentation is. In these forums, the expert speaker doesn’t stand a chance and neither do the so-called participants. Instead, it is what is required—a mandatory duty to show up with hopes that something resonates with the masses present. As in most meetings, teachers attend such a faculty meeting and conference and sit quietly, their voices on hold, never heard, just like in their classrooms where they lead a solitary life; in most schools their voices are usually silent. This is not a setting where teachers can talk, learn, and consider their role and the implications of the proposed reform, such as how it affects them, their colleagues, and their school. Ovetta Wiggins described such a meeting, 8 an effort by Prince George’s County, Maryland, to require all teachers to participate in a

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system-wide, daylong session on Common Core. The training featured Sandra Albert, the Director of State and District Partnerships and Professional Development for the New York–based Student Achievement Partner. All of the teachers who work in the school system participated. The main presentation was held at Northwestern High School, but teachers were also assembled at high schools used as satellite locations across the country. This is a big deal. Prince George’s school district employs 18,000 staff members, which includes an estimated 9,000 teachers. 9 It is the second largest school district in the state of Maryland, and it’s one of the twenty-five largest school districts in the nation. In a crowd of 9,000 teachers, there have to be resisters. As Hinde suggests in chapter 3, resistors can provide insight into the proposed reform that may facilitate the change and reveal otherwise overlooked hindrances. Their role can be as vital as that of supporters. That is, if they are given a platform and are listened to. But as Wiggins observed, the day for teachers began as it does for many students across the country. Some of the teachers-turned-students arrived late. Some talked in the back of the class, making it difficult for others to hear. Others were distracted by cell phones. “We can sometimes be the worst students,” said one teacher who spoke anonymously because she didn’t want to upset her colleagues. A valid opinion, but maybe the resisting teachers weren’t the “worst students” but rather teacher-students resisting being forced to attend a dog and pony show stressing the wonders of Common Core. Some would probably say, “I’d be happier in my classroom than here, trapped for the day.” In the author’s experience, the key element in what was touted as an information and learning experience for teachers was that it probably was neither. Rather, it brought together some teachers who weren’t going to play the role of “everything is fine and, oh gee, we are just dying to get our teeth into Common Core stuff.” Instead, they resisted by coming late, talking over what the speaker was saying, using their cell phones, and basically doing what kids do at assemblies they don’t like; they try to disrupt. They did whatever a teacher or student who has a mind of their own would do if they had no interest in what was being passed off to them as being exciting, interesting, and vital to their survival.

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The only teachers signing on probably were those who always say “yes,” never resist, play the good soldier, find it uncomfortable, even dangerous, to think on their own, look to leaders to get their marching orders, and are always prepared and ready to follow. These kinds of large meetings for teachers are really political in nature, not about helping teachers learn how to embrace reform and make it work for them and their students. They are about making sure everyone hears the message that reform is coming and, more importantly, making sure no teacher can say, “I didn’t hear that. Nobody told me that.” It’s a message that is not about doing but more about you’ve been told, so “stop complaining, and resisting, get with the program.” It’s a coveryour-butt maneuver so critics know they’ve been forewarned. While it is hoped that most of these teachers can return to “their” school and have a designated teacher leader to provide them with the opportunity to talk about their understanding of their role in Common Core, the implications for them, their students, parents, colleagues are to share their ideas and hunches to make this reform work in “their” school. However, the chances are they won’t find the collaborator-teacher leader role on board. Yet as chapter 5 stresses, this model for leading change efforts is available and doable in most schools, as Hinde and Trail suggest we need to be about finding additional leaders who can help principals by sharing their role and workload. NOTES 1. David Dunaway, “Myth of the Super Principal,” available online at http://cnx. org/content/m20832/latest/ (accessed August 8, 2014). 2. Virginia Beach Public Schools, “Essential Tasks, Principal, Senior High School,” available online at www.vbschool.com/hr/job-desc/principal%20hs.pdf (accessed August 23, 2014). 3. Public Agenda, “Rolling Up Their Sleeves: Superintendents and Principals Talk about What’s Needed to Fix Public Schools,” Public Agenda (2003): 11–12, 16–17, 45–46. 4. John Fensterwald, “Overworked, Undertrained Principals,” available online at www.SVEfoundation.org/2011/12/gotsource/13/report-overworked (accessed July 20, 2014). 5. Larry Cuban, “Principals as Instructional Leaders—Again and Again,” available online at www.larrycuban.wordpress.com/2010/12/01/principals-as (accessed September 2, 2014).

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6. Jossey-Bass, “Michael Fullan’s New Book The Principal—an Excerpt,” available online at www.josseybasseducation.com/teaching-learning/ichael-fullan (accessed July 6, 2014). 7. Kathleen Trail, “Taking the Lead: The Role of the Principal in School Reform,” available online at www.sed.org/csvd/connections/oct00/welcome/html (accessed September 5, 2014). 8. Ovetta Wiggins, “Pr. George’s Hold Districtwide Training for Teachers on Common Core Standards,” available online at www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/ pr-georges-hold (accessed July 18, 2014). 9. Wikipedia, “Prince George’s County Public Schools,” available online at www. en. wikipedia.org/wiki/pgcountypublicschools (accessed July 13, 2014).

FIVE How the Connection between InsideOut and Outside-In Reform Can and Will Reform Schools from Within

Roland Barth observes that to promote personal and organizational renewal is a risk. 1 To create schools hospitable to human learning is a risk. In short, the career of the lifelong learner and of the school-based reformer is the life of risk. Barth suggests that the possibility that schools can and will reform from within rests squarely on whether and how much teachers and principals are willing to risk in the name of good education for youngsters. We educators will improve schools only when we take risks. It’s that simple. Barth asks why the culture of risk taking is so crucial to schools of the twenty-first century. Because human learning is most profound, most transformative, and most enduring when two conditions are present: when we take risks and when a safety strap or belaying line supports us when we fall, so that we don’t get killed. Barth suggests that neither of these two conditions is present in schools. However, a refreshing few educators see the connection between leading, learning, and risk taking. This chapter focuses on change from within at two schools: a large junior high school on Long Island, New York, and at a New York City public school in Queens, New York. The reform effort at the junior high was coupled with a nearby university school of education. In the relationship, the school was wisely given 77

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the main leadership role, while the university took on a low-profile supportive role as provider of personnel, resources, and a safety strap or belaying line of support when failure began to surface in the early implementation stage as it does in so many renewal efforts. The major goal of the reform project was to provide a daily in-day training program for teachers and support staff to improve their skills. The program would provide daily workshops for staff during their lunch and prep periods. The majority of workshops would be led by teachers in the school with support by university staff members. The workshop themes would be based on data gathered from staff regarding their needs for improvement. The team organized to head up the project would be led by a counselor who would be released part-time from his regular duties to guide the project. His efforts would be supported by a staff member from the university who would facilitate the project’s relationship with the university. The principal would still remain at the center of the project but not take on a day-by-day role. Most important, the setting for the training would be in an attractive space just off the staff luncheon area, which would include a mini library, television, audio and video capability, and comfortable furniture. Not your typical faculty room with boring pictures of past presidents and used chairs brought from home or yard sales. The goal of creating an attractive and welcoming setting was to provide a space that would serve to encourage staff members to interact in a comfortable professional space, get to know each other well, listen to the expertise of colleagues who until now were known only as “just a teacher,” and generate good ideas to improve their school—a model similar to Building 20 at MIT which was a space created for new ideas, hunches, and beginning projects. Keep in mind this school had a population of over 2,200 students, many of them minority students who came from low-income homes with a single parent or both parents working two jobs. The majority of students were in great need of care, support, guidance, adult models, and intervention to improve their learning, health, and problem-solving skills. They needed skilled teachers and support staff who, as adult role models, could connect with them as learners and teenagers and who could unleash their hidden dreams and hopes, offering tough love when needed.

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The teachers and support staff were also in need of change, renewal, and opportunities to shine their light and share, show off, their skills, knowledge, and talents. They needed a platform that could offer them the opportunity to be viewed by colleagues as not “just a teacher” but rather as a professional of substance. They also needed the opportunity to know their colleagues well and in a more intimate setting than the faculty room and faculty meetings. Remember that the junior high school was a large setting with over two hundred staff members. Teachers were assigned by departments, a system in which they tended to remain isolated from interacting with colleagues in other departments. One could say it was a system divided into departmental fiefdoms rather than a school community where members could meet on a regular basis and have conversations and exchange ideas. And as in many schools, the support staff, custodians, monitors, clerks, and so on, were isolated from the professional staff. They were also in need of an opportunity to learn new skills and join in building closer relationships with the professional staff. Their involvement was needed to build an effective outreach to students and parents, especially those headed toward the margins of school and community life. The coupling of the school and the university proved not only valuable for its low-key support but also for the credibility and political cover it provided to give the school the leading role in an important reform effort that had both state and national interest. It was a reform model that was very different from the usual outsidein approach to change in which the leaders of reform are outsiders such as university-based research experts and professors who call the shots on how the reform would evolve. The philosophy of the dean of the School of Education that reform works best from inside-out at the local school level with the support of the university proved to be invaluable to the project’s success, as he was not interested in personal or professional gain for himself or his department. He wanted to help students and educators build a more effective school. This reform effort was also unique in that the principal enlisted the support of a guidance counselor who was trained and experienced as a change agent to lead the reform—a colleague he could trust with the

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challenges that would come with overcoming the resistance of staff and the issues that would emerge with the involvement of the dean of the University School of Education and his staff. The reform effort in Queens had a group of powerful supporters but also powerful detractors: for example, the support of the chancellor of the New York City Department of Education and the president of the New York City Teacher’s Union who helped launch the reform effort, giving it credibility, a safety strap when failure emerged, and political cover that included media coverage of the project’s successes. The project also had the support of the school principal, who understood the importance of playing a low-key supportive role and encouraging the two teachers leading the project to follow their own ideas and hunches, knowing that she would provide the safety strap that would encourage their risk taking even when resisters launched their critical attacks. The reform project was part of the bold experiment (in PS 35, the school involved in this chapter, and nine other schools in District 9) that the chancellor of the New York City school system believed would reinvent how teachers are trained to do their jobs, by carving out a new role for veteran educators and paying them to fill it. The vision of the chancellor was to create a team, a group of master teachers, compensate them, and give them a leadership role. PS 35 was a small elementary school with over six hundred students enrolled. Under the program, thirty-six veteran teachers became lead teachers who worked in pairs, sharing one class and spending the other half of their time mentoring and being a role model for less experienced teachers. Two veteran teachers at PS 35 were chosen for the lead teacher roles. These new roles for veteran teachers to work side by side with newcomers to improve their skills were focused on individual schools, not an entire district. They employed lead teachers who were an integral part of the school community and known for their skills and leadership abilities. They were homegrown. But early on, the project had its critics in high places used to wielding power. One of the biggest critics of the project was the president of the New York City Principal’s Union, who said, “I don’t believe in taking teachers out of the classroom to be lead teachers for reform. We already have staff developers, coaches, and assistant principals to do that. You are taking your best teachers and removing them from the classroom.”

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But lead teachers are different from staff developers, coaches, and consultants, who appear infrequently at local schools and are based in district offices, state education departments, and college and university schools of education. These are strangers who are not part of the school community and offer little or no long-term continuity and support. PS 35 had a school staff with many veteran teachers who enjoyed a tight-knit, close relationship. They were well positioned to help pave the way for novice teachers who often need close by, easily accessible help, to navigate through their early years and not have to wait for their call for help to be put on hold until next week or month. The reforms on Long Island and in Queens had much in common that helped them to be successful. Here are a few key examples: • They were inside-out projects aided by the ideas and resources of flexible outside-in reformers. • The projects were given credibility, political cover, and a safety strap by the powerful presence of a university school of education and a visionary school chancellor. College-school collaboration has not always been successful. Often school personnel look at university schools of education as outsiders staffed by all-knowing experts—experts who in turn view school personnel as a major reason for failing and ineffective schools. This was not the case, due to the wisdom and school-based experience of the dean of the School of Education. • The principals involved were able to play a low-key role and utilize the skills of veteran teachers/counselors in a new organizational pattern to lead the projects—in other words, as Paul Van Riper suggested in chapter 2, depending on his troops’ wisdom, experience, and good judgment rather than orders from the top. • Both projects provided an alternative career ladder for skilled veteran educators who were looking for renewal opportunities—opportunities rarely available to educators locked into the one job-one career model that often leads to burnout, boredom, and diminished interest in reform and new ideas and who are focused solely on counting the days to retirement. • These projects also demonstrate that reform efforts implemented in large secondary schools, which often breed isolation and anonymity, and smaller elementary schools, which tend to offer student and staff more intimate contact and caring, call for different ap-

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proaches. For example, large schools with over two thousand students and two hundred staff members need a setting where staff can gather, meet, better know each other, and collaborate on new ideas and approaches. Many elementary schools, like PS 35, already have this kind of collaborative system in place and, as a result, reform may proceed at a faster pace. • However, even given these pluses in making school reform work from within, the process always comes with risks; personal and professional attacks on its leaders and supporters, failures, false starts, erosion of support, bad media coverage, and false rumors. • The paths to successful reform call for focusing on small gains and successes that come with staying focused, determined, open to negative feedback and suggestions, and persevering even when the future looks dim. It can be a lonely road for leaders of reform, especially local leaders who lack “expert” qualifications to fall back on when their decisions and efforts are being challenged. • Again, the expression “I’m just a teacher” rings clear and close to home when attacks by critics make local reform leaders feel vulnerable, at risk, not up to the role of being a reformer. Resistance often creates a longing in the minds of local reform leaders to go back to what was remembered as a comfortable and safe role as a teacher or counselor. Local leaders of reform often stumble when they learn reform can be a brutal game. They are no longer dealing with children but with adults who may not want to get on their bandwagon and see their new role as opportunistic and as a promotion of their career ambitions. It’s a road the author knows well from his own experience as a reformer and change agent in local schools. Sometimes you just want to run away or pull down the shades and close your eyes until the nightmares that sometimes come with reform failures and road blocks disappear. It requires a lot of courage, commitment, support, and belief that what you are doing is important and valuable for your school, staff, students, parents, community, and yourself to keep going on. As Barth suggests, schools are cautious and confusing cages where teachers, principals, and students try to create pockets of safety and sanity for themselves, reluctant to leave these safe quarters for parts unknown. Schools are also storehouses for our memories. To radically

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transform them is not simply risky; doing so can feel like institutional suicide. Barth asks if we can reform something to which we have been for so long deeply attached. Do we want to? Altering the way we have always done things carries the costs of not only risk and failure but also sadness and loss. In order to change and move to the new, we must accept and grieve the loss of the old. So the toughest question for those who would reform their schools remains: Just how much are you prepared to risk what is familiar, comfortable, and safe for you in the name of a better education for others? Barth suggests that the trouble is that if you don’t risk anything, you risk everything. Here are two case studies of risk that worked. THE BAY SHORE PUBLIC SCHOOLS—STONY BROOK UNIVERSITY TEACHER CENTER Engaging Teachers One By One to Create Conditions for Renewal In my book An Administrator’s Guide to Better Teacher Mentoring, 2 I describe the origin of the Bay Shore Public Schools—Stony Brook University Teacher Center and my role in the reform project. Michael A. Ballin, president of the Clark Foundation, advises school reformers that addressing the system rather than the specific actions of individual teachers leads us to commit the cardinal sin of education— confusing treatment with cure. I have only one bit of advice to aid escape from the futilities of school reform. Stop trying to make schools great schools and take up the task of trying to make teachers great teachers. We engage in school reform teacher by teacher. Engaging teachers one by one on their own turf can play a major role in breaking down resistance and opening up new, exciting doors for teacher renewal such as mentoring. I learned this lesson the hard way when I helped found and became director of the Bay Shore Public Schools—Stony Brook University Teacher Center in Bay Shore, New York. Here is my story and the personal anecdotes that were so important to me in my personal and professional life. It was an experience that inspired me to study and explore a variety of helping interventions for teachers.

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The evolvement of the center and my interests in teacher development, and how to overcome teachers’ resistance to change began with receiving my PhD from Syracuse University. I was excited about returning to the junior high school from which I was on leave for two years. My dream was to start a unique teacher training center. I envisioned a center that would offer workshops during the school day that teachers, support staff, and administrators could attend on their lunch breaks and during free periods. My vision was that the majority of the workshops would be led by the school staff, with outside resources such as faculty at Stony Brook University also on board as workshop presenters. Teachers who volunteered to lead workshops would be released from their teaching duties for the day. A grant from the university would enable the school to hire substitute teachers as replacements. The plan was for teachers to offer their workshops at each of the three lunch periods and be available during the other periods for informal conversations with interested faculty. My initial goal was to encourage teachers to decide on what workshops would help them to be more effective in the classroom. It was a homegrown effort specifically designed to meet the needs of teachers at the junior high, a reversal of the usual staff development offerings, which usually involved in-service workshops focused on meeting the goals and mission of the entire school district. This was an exciting idea that was given full support by my principal, George Forbes. He understood that the project could have a major impact on improving the morale and effectiveness of teachers. Teaching at the junior high was not easy. The community had more than its share of lowincome and at-risk kids. Forbes, a former counselor and school psychologist, knew the staff needed an infusion of new ideas and training and that the center might be the vehicle for change. He understood that he couldn’t take on such a project himself. Forbes told me, “I am so busy with everyday crises; I have no time for staff development. I am hoping your experience at Syracuse can help us out in the area of teacher renewal. And I like the idea that you have cultivated a relationship with Stony Brook University. That relationship gives us some credibility with the district office, the school board, and the teachers’ union. Maybe we are in the beginning of offering courses here toward a master’s degree and certification. Wouldn’t that be great for our

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teachers? Save them from having to take courses at night at some faraway campus.” He could see opportunity for change and knew to get out of the way. Forbes reduced the demands of my student assistance counseling job, allowing me a half day to help set up the center. I was also supported by the involvement of a cadre of teachers who were involved in an in-service course I was teaching at the school on teacher burnout and by the education department at nearby Stony Brook University. A graduate student at Stony Brook came on board to help facilitate our growing relationship with the university. Full steam ahead, I thought. But as you know, good ideas are not always successful. The good feeling that evolved from implementing a grand design that everyone would love quickly turned sour. One can send out memos, program descriptions, and clear goals and speak to the converted, but not everyone is going to buy into your plan. And so it was when we opened the center in a room next to the faculty room, an attractive room with comfortable furnishings, coffee brewing throughout the day, and a beginning library of education books and journals. It was a professional, welcoming setting. Our initial programs featured workshops led by supportive teachers and university faculty. We were ready and set, we thought. Reality soon sank in. The only teachers who showed up for the workshop were members of the in-service course I was teaching. Even they were ambivalent because of pressure they were getting from veteran teachers who questioned the project. Ninety percent of the teaching staff chose to ignore our efforts, especially the veterans. They made comments such as, “Hey, Fibkins, oh excuse me, Dr. Fibkins, are you using this job to get on the faculty at Stony Brook University?” I was labeled as a person interested only in promoting himself. Rumors abounded. “He changed big time since he got his doctorate.” “Who is he to think he can waltz in here after being gone so long and expect us to like his big ideas?” “He’s not in the classroom so what does he know about us teachers on the front lines?” Some veteran teachers were intent on driving me away and getting me off my game. At one faculty meeting, where I was making a presentation on the center, a group of them got up and turned their chairs back-

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wards to my talk. Welcome to the real world of school, Bill Fibkins. But I learned. And that learning was a gift. Here are some of the lessons I learned that helped me to understand the world of veteran and novice teachers: • “Outsiders,” even ones who have roots in the school, are often not trusted or quickly accepted by the teaching staff. One is tested anew, sometimes very aggressively, by veteran teachers who are suspicious of educators who want to invade their turf, even if it involves a former colleague. I returned to Bay Shore different in the eyes of many teachers. I had a PhD, had written professional articles and spoken at district, state, and national conferences. In the minds of many staff members I had become a star educator, a somebody, focused on using them and their school as a steppingstone for my career. Nasty stuff, far distant from my own goal. Although I saw myself as humble, eager to help others shine their lights, and definitely not self-promotional, in the eyes of many teachers, particularly the veterans, I was no longer in the club. I had moved on while they remained in the trenches, teaching the same subjects in the same rooms for years with no hope for novelty or change. In their eyes, I had escaped. The school grapevine was active with doubts: “Why should we get behind a program to support a star who is probably going to use this experience to move on to some big job at a university or at the Department of Education?” • Because many teachers have little opportunity for positive affirmation, they are at risk for and vulnerable to anger and resistance to any colleague who appears to have, as one teacher described it, made it out. I learned firsthand that the anger and resistance to me and my idea for the center was not so much about me as a person and a professional, but were reserved for anyone who had gotten out of the sometimes stagnating daily grind of teaching. • For many veteran teachers, even though they feel trapped and without novelty, the opportunity for change is also anxiety producing and risky. For example, offering teachers the opportunity to lead workshops for their peers and to be released from their classrooms for the day was frightening for many. Many felt uncomfortable teaching their peers. Some anticipated negative feedback and

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rejection. It is not easy moving from teaching kids to teaching adults who know how to tune you out. Adults can’t be silenced by threats such as, “You’re out of here. Go to the office.” Education reformers sometimes think they are helping teachers by opening new doors to opportunities and renewal, but help is in the eye of the beholder. Reformers with good intentions to be of help to teachers need to understand that they are dealing with many professionals who have never experienced a world outside their classrooms. While they may know their stuff, they don’t see themselves as having something to offer their colleagues. They are not star teachers, experts, conference presenters, or authors. Their first inclination, when asked to be a workshop leader, is to run for cover and say, “Are you sure you have the right person? I’m just a teacher.” This sense of risk also exists for novice teachers who, just out of undergraduate or graduate school, do come on board with knowledge about new practices. However, they don’t see themselves as contributors and are hesitant to take on this additional role. As one novice teacher told me, “I can’t take a chance on telling the older teachers what to do. I could risk not getting tenure if that group turns on me. Got to keep my mouth shut.” Being a workshop leader, or, in my case, an education reformer, can get you thrown out of the club, subject to name calling, and at risk of appearing to dare to think you know something more about the teaching process. Most teachers in the school culture march to the same drum and it’s risky to step out in front of the parade. Support, and plenty of it, is necessary for educators to extricate themselves from the sameness and lack of challenge in their work. In that respect, the teachers at Bay Shore Junior High, both novices and veterans, and I had much in common. We were all trying to escape the risks of stagnation and boredom, yet at the same time hesitant to open a new door and take our place in a new kind of club. Cynicism is very de-energizing. One has to believe that what you are doing is important. That what you have to offer has something good for them. Cynicism can reign in places where teachers congregate and be an obstacle to believing what you do is important and what you have to offer has something good for the teachers. Teachers, like dancers, have to be told in person and often that what they do matters. They

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have to hear that message loud and clear in order to drown out the cynicism that clouds their daily lives. The creation of a teacher center was my way of helping to erase that cynicism and have teachers believe in themselves. • I could play a teaching role by modeling helping behaviors for the school staff. For example, while many teachers reported being concerned about the well-being of a teacher having problems in the classroom and his own personal life, they didn’t see it as their role to intervene to help that teacher. Some said it wasn’t their job and they didn’t get paid to be a counselor. However, their reluctance to become involved in helping a colleague going through tough times was more about not knowing how to offer support. They lacked the skills to intervene and help direct colleagues to sources of help in the school and community and to stay with them in their time of need, gaining the understanding that they too might need the same kind of support someday. • Over time I came to realize that in modeling these helping skills at the center and in other interactions with teachers, I could play a role in teaching helping skills and making these behaviors part of the school culture. Simple helping queries can make teachers aware that they can be the brother’s or sister’s keeper. For example, say, “I notice that Gerry has been out of school all week. Someone said she is going through a difficult divorce. Maybe we should call her and offer her our support,” or “How is Harry doing? Every time I walk past his classroom it seems the kids are out of control. Has he talked to anyone about what’s going on? Maybe one of us should get involved.” • Teachers need to be called on to help and be taught simple skills in order to be successful in the helping process. Called on means encouraging teachers to take responsibility for the care of each other, not look the other way. This process at first seems alien to them and somehow far removed from what they conceptualize as their teaching role. They have to learn that not only is it okay to help, but it is a responsibility that comes with being a member of a caring community. Learning helping skills adds a new dimension to their work with both students and colleagues, not letting one member fall through the cracks.

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• By meeting teachers face-to-face in their classrooms, things can change for the better. In these kinds of exchanges, Dr. William Fibkins, the new PhD became Bill Fibkins, a colleague and sometimes mentor and friend. I became a colleague who was convinced that what I had to offer teachers was important and had something good for them. In visiting many teachers’ classrooms early in the morning before the first classes began, I could quickly assess if that teacher believed I had something to offer and where resistance or opportunity existed. Knowing staff members well is equally important as knowing students well. • A five-minute conversation can tell you a lot. Does the teacher seem ready, involved, motivated, confident, and eager to teach students? Does she or he appear healthy, energetic, ready, and set to deal with the resistance some students are sure to offer? Or does he or she seem uninvolved, not confident, and unready for the challenges that await beginning with the first period? Is the classroom clean, organized, and welcoming, a place that kids want to come to, or is it shabby, worn, and piled with books and papers that never seem to get put away, with pictures on the walls that haven’t changed in years? If a former student came back to visit, would he or she find the classroom the same as it was when he or she was a student ten years ago? • Classroom visits can assess how a particular teacher feels about your project. In my case, inviting a teacher to the center, asking for ideas for workshops, and also floating the idea that maybe she or he might offer a workshop could help with the assessment. The teacher’s verbal feedback and body language can tell you if he or she is with you, against you, or maybe a little bit of both. That data is critical in helping to develop a plan to get the teacher involved, most often involving a soft sell. Showing up in a classroom early in the morning before students arrived, I could share idle chatter, weather, sports, vacation plans, and so on, then gently share information about the day’s workshop at the center and convey a message that I wanted the teacher involved. • This kind of interaction is not confrontational, but is carried out with the expectation that you can win this teacher over if you can begin to develop a personal relationship with him or her, with the understanding that it is OK for the teacher to reject you and your

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ideas, but also with the understanding that if you keep coming back and developing a relationship, good things can happen. When we began the center, over 90 percent of the teachers boycotted the program. When I left five years later, over 90 percent of the teachers were participating as workshop presenters and learners. Patience in accepting others as they are, persistence, offering a soft sell while searching for openings to bring about involvement, and being able to share information about my personal and professional life brought about needed change. Change is all about numbers. By going to teacher by teacher in person, striving to reach the tipping point where we had the majority of teachers involved, we shifted the balance in the direction of reform. Meeting teachers face-to-face, calling on them to act, and encouraging their support helps build a caring, involved community and reduces isolation. Reformers need to always work to remember that many teachers are isolated and lonely and despite their blustering and resistance are looking for a way out of their chains and cages, to be free to learn and renew. Leading a successful education reform effort, such as opening a teacher center, can’t be accomplished without having the time and support necessary to get the job done well. School administrators are so involved in a number of complex leadership issues that they simply don’t have the time to lead and sell staff development programs. Yes, they need to be involved on a number of levels, such as getting funding, selling the program to district administration, developing support from key teacher and union leaders, and serving as a political cover for the program when it comes under attack. They know the political world they inhabit and understand how to leverage a good idea, but they don’t have the time to put together all the nuts and bolts. Principal George Forbes understood his role and what he could and could not do. He was so secure in himself and able to delegate his staff development role to me. Why did it seem a no-brainer for him? We had established a level of trust between us. He knew I was interested in developing the center, not in becoming the next principal or building a résumé so I could move on and become a teacher center guru.

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We were both committed to the job at hand: improving the professional lives of teachers, improving the school climate for students and parents, and training/affirming members of the support staff whose helping roles were often taken for granted. Secretaries, custodians, cafeteria and hallway monitors, and teacher aides are seldom given positive feedback for all the help they give to students. George Forbes selflessly turned over part of his role to me and, as my mentor, freed me to do what I did best: listen, engage, involve, support, and help others. And learn new lessons about what it takes and requires to weave a welcoming that can be embraced by many of the different personalities and temperaments that are part of any school staff. Like me, Forbes enjoyed helping others to shine their light; he was a mentor in the truest sense of the word. But as stated earlier, one of the most important lesson for me and, over time embraced by the school staff, was to arrive early every morning and visit each classroom in the school. I made my presence known. Many of these visits involved a simple conversation and invitation: “Good morning. How are things going? We are having a workshop today on discipline. Mike Wallace, the eighth-grade teacher, is leading it. Hope you can drop by. Got any ideas for workshops? I hear you are taking a course at Stony Brook on at-risk children. Maybe you could share your learning at the center. Give it some thought.” But sometimes my visits took on a more personal note. Some teachers needed an ear, someone to talk to about problems with kids, parents, colleagues, or the administration. As my daily routine evolved and the level of trust rose, there emerged conversations about personal issues such as aging and ill parents, trouble in their own families such as divorce or conflict with children, health and wellness issues such as substance abuse or obesity, and among veteran teachers, fears and concerns about aging. I realized that in visiting the room of every teacher each morning, I was not only opening a door for each teacher to get involved in the center but also becoming a confidant on personal issues. I was a regular presence in their lives and a good listener, had training in counseling, and could be trusted to keep their stories private. But while honoring their privacy, the themes in the personal issues they described were also themes that could be explored via the workshops we offered at the center. I was learning a simple truth: the personal

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concerns of teachers, more pronounced in the lives of veteran teachers, were often more important than professional academic issues and were not isolated to a few staff members. Teachers of all levels of experience needed both an ear to talk to about their personal issues and a resource, such as the center’s workshops, to gain more problem-solving information. To my surprise, concerns about aging and avoiding stagnation were at the top of the list for veteran teachers. It was true that I had “gotten out” of the day-in-day-out routine of school life as we know it and found a new role for myself. And in the beginning, many school staff rightfully asked, “What is this guy up to and what does he do? He’s not a teacher, an administrator, or even a fulltime counselor.” My role was a little mysterious because neither the teachers nor I had a grand design of where we were headed together. We were both taking a risk, buying into a new vision and trusting it would benefit the staff, students, and parents. It was not an easy role for me. Rather, it was one filled with anxiety, self-doubt, rejection, and a few victories to make each day a challenge. I had no script to follow, just a hazy vision of creating a helping setting for teachers and reducing the anomie so prevalent and so destructive. In my daily visits I was a living example for veteran teachers that things could change. I was not only expanding my mission and role in new ways, but I was also providing a resource for teachers to help them to explore new dreams. In a sense, it was a missionary work, asking teachers to join me. I needed them and believed they needed what I had to offer. The teachers and I had something to gain from each other. However, no matter how one tries to open up new doors, there are some teachers who dig in their heels and won’t buy the education reform you are selling. There are some veteran teachers who are polite and appear to listen, but who, as they say, want out of the school door as soon as retirement day comes. One keeps trying to involve them, but at some point it is a standoff. One can’t win everyone over in school reform efforts. THE LEAD TEACHER REFORM PROJECT AT PUBLIC SCHOOL 35 In his article “Veteran Teachers in City Schools Help Colleagues Sharpen Skills,” David M. Herszenhorn describes a project at PS 35 to give novice

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teachers the training and support to survive and then thrive by utilizing the skills of lead teachers who were veteran members of the school staff. 3 First a little background. Jewellyn Holder, the teacher described in this story, is a graduate of the New York City Teaching Fellows program and a former hospital administrator. Employed as a third-grade teacher at PS 35 in New York City, she is fortunate to receive mentoring two days a week from veteran teacher Lori Gordon. Holder is an example of why novice teachers need a veteran teacher nearby to serve as a mentor, teammate, and friendly shoulder to lean on. It’s a case of the novice needing the wise mentor and the wise mentor needing the opportunity and challenge to guide the novice. Holder says many of the teaching fellows she sees at weekly meetings and in her graduate class feel unsupported in their schools and jealous of the extra help she is getting. Holder says, “I just say, ‘Thank God I’m in this school.’” Jewellyn gave up her job in 2009 at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx to try her hand at teaching in the New York City public schools. To ready herself, Ms. Holder enrolled in the NYC Teaching Fellows program for people who wanted to change careers. According to Education Department statistics, the odds were against her. More than half of the career changers entering the schools quit after three years. But Ms. Holder, who teaches third grade at PS 35 on East 163rd Street in the Bronx, says her second year is even better than her first, and she plans to stick it out. She says her resolve is largely due to Lori Gordon, who has taught for seven years and spends two days a week in Ms. Holder’s class as a mentor. New York Times reporter David M. Herszenhorn followed the career of novice New York City teacher Jewellyn Holder and tells her story beginning with the remarks from New York City Public Schools chancellor Joel I. Klein and the staff at PS 35 involved in the proposed reform. Teachers and students at PS 35 and nine other schools in District 9 in the Bronx are part of a bold experiment that Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein believes will reinvent how teachers are trained to do their jobs, by carving out a new role for veteran educators and paying them to fill it. For the new teachers the goal is to improve the abysmal retention rates, which have reached their highest levels. For the veterans the hope is to give them a reason not to retire or to leave the city for higher paying jobs in the suburbs. . . .

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The program formalizes something many principals say they have done informally for years, find someone to take over a dynamic teacher’s class for a period or two so that teachers can go and be a role model for others. . . . [Chancellor Klein says that] “If you create a team, a group of master teachers, and you compensate them and give them a leadership role, it’s going to pay long term dividends.” Under the program, 35 veteran teachers like Ms. Gordon are now lead teachers who work in pairs, sharing one class and spending the other half of their time mentoring less experienced teachers. They observe lessons, dispense advice, demonstrate teaching techniques and generally offer an extra pair of hands. The job pays $10,000 above their regular salary and also requires them to attend four hours of training a month. The stakes are significant. More than 40 percent of city teachers quit within three years and nearly half leave within five years. And studies have found that more teachers leave because they feel unsupported. But teachers and principals involved say the program offers numerous benefits . . . [such as] increase credibility because the mentors are not outside experts but veteran teachers in the same school and the program was leading to more conversation and collegiality among school staff members. At PS 35 Ms. Gordon . . . shares a fourth grade class with Lauren Koster, a 10-year veteran and while one is teaching, the other is mentoring. . . . Graciela Navarro, the principal at PS 35, said that having the lead teachers allowed her to focus her attention elsewhere rather than worrying constantly about the newest teachers on her staff and frequently dropping in on them. “I trust Ms. Gordon and Ms. Koster,” she said. I will go in there but I feel I don’t have to spend an extended amount of time. It gives me the opportunity to focus on another teacher and another grade.” Chancellor Klein said that . . . “Because of the extra money you can attract people,” adding that the higher pay might also keep more talented veterans from leaving. Carmen Vargus who has been a city educator for 32 years, said becoming a lead teacher in PS 72 in District 9 has changed her mind about retiring, not because of the money but because of the more rewarding role.

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“Being able to help these new teachers makes me feel my 32 years of experience have finally paid off,” she said. “Veteran teachers, we don’t want to leave the system but we want to feel we are needed.”

Herszenhorn offers the following observations concerning how the project evolved and what key players had to say. “Randi Weingarten, president of the New York City Teachers’ Union, said the program was succeeding in District 9 largely because of community support and the strong partnership between the community, the union, and the school system.” But as Herszenhorn reveals, the program does have its critics. “Jill Levy, the president of the principals’ union, said the lead teachers were little more than a different version of the coaches, staff developers, and more traditional mentors. [She said,] ‘I don’t believe in taking teachers out of the classroom. We already have staff developers who do that, we have coaches that do that, and we have assistant principals who do that. You don’t waste time by having two teachers in one room. You are taking your best teachers and removing them from the classroom.’” One can understand the reluctance of some central office and building administrators to adopt the lead teacher program. One senses that they are guarding their territory and protecting the mentoring roles and jobs of staff developers, coaches, and assistant principals. It makes sense that Ms. Levy would be leery that programs such as the ones that utilize lead teachers could take root and diminish traditional mentoring roles that they supervise. After all, new roles for veteran teachers who work side by side with newcomers to improve their skills are focused on individual schools, not an entire district. They utilize lead teachers who are an integral part of the school community and known for their skills and leadership abilities. They are homegrown, as the saying goes. This kind of school reform can be seen as threatening by some principals and central office staffs that see staff development as their domain, not the domain of classroom teachers, no matter how skilled at the mentoring process. But lead teachers are different from the staff developers, coaches, and consultants, who appear infrequently at best from district offices, state education departments, and college and university schools of education. These are strangers who are not part of the school community and offer little or no long-term continuity and support. They are not around when

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novices need, as Lori Gordon says, a mentor, teammate, and friendly shoulder to lean on. Their role is different from Ms. Levy’s observation that “we have assistant principals who do that.” Lead teachers are not supervisors, nor do they have any formal supervision role. Nor do they have an evaluation role that can become part of the process of retaining or firing a nontenured teacher. The role of the lead teacher is as a caring partner in helping young teachers get better at their craft. It’s a one-on-one process where trust and mutual respect are key and where risk taking in trying out new approaches is encouraged. As Ms. Gordon implies, the role is multidimensional, ranging from being a mentor to a teammate and a friend, not an administrator-supervisor. However, it is understandable that the lead teacher role will bring forth resistance from some administrators as they watch experienced, veteran teachers assume a leadership role, one that they might find threatening and in competition with their own supervisory role. It’s threatening because it puts into play an easily accessible mentoring model that has the potential to limit the more traditional role of staff developers, coaches, and assistant principals. And it has the potential to shift staff development resources and jobs to local schools. Loss of jobs and control of staff development resources translates into loss of power and control for centralized bureaucrats. In almost every case of a challenge for turf over who is in charge, there emerges resistance along with the warning, “Don’t touch my stuff.” People in high places get there by being politically savvy and skilled at guarding their turf. They are used to fighting turf wars and winning. As Ms. Levy’s comment, “I don’t believe in taking teachers out of the classroom,” strongly suggests, the traditional role of teacher is to teach students, remain in their classrooms and not venture out their door and become mentors—a very clear warning to those interested in change to be careful of what they are asking for. If veteran teachers do begin to divide their time between their classrooms and mentoring, some administrator’s inclination might be that it’s best to keep the lid on this kind of school-based mentoring to ensure the jobs of their own staff development team. Protecting our own makes sense to those in charge. Yet Ms. Levy’s comments represent a helpful and important piece in our discussion about the need for new roles for veteran teachers. The

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voices of building and central office administrators will have to be heard and reckoned with by educators promoting the lead teacher models. They have to be sold on any kind of reform that they perceive as taking away some of their power and staff in a suffering economy. However, the selling part becomes a lot easier when it’s done at the highest levels by leaders such as Chancellor Klein and union president Weingarten. As Herszenhorn observes, Chancellor Klein is convinced of the potential benefits of the lead teacher project and expanding it is his top priority. Klein’s position adds a wallop to the selling process and enrolls support of critics as well as the support of union president Randi Weingarten. Fortunately, PS 35 principal Graciela Navarro doesn’t see the lead teachers as competition. Being on the front lines of the program, she is able to grasp the positive benefits of the leadership role, not only for her novice teachers but for her own job. She has not become defensive, making sure the program doesn’t take root. Clearly, we will need more principals like Ms. Navarro if this model is to take hold in our schools. Here are some highlights of this model that offers a win-win situation: • Highly skilled retirement-eligible teachers are given a reason to stay and use their skills to mentor new colleagues in their home schools. Their hard-earned experience is being rewarded. • Mentoring is offered to teachers in their home schools by veteran teachers who have taught for years. They are a known quantity, not outsiders from a university, a staff developer, or a retired teacher. • They are given a new dual role: a part-time leadership role as a mentor and a part-time role as a teacher. • This new role carries a stipend that demonstrates that the school district values the work and wants to compensate for it. • Inexperienced teachers from both teacher education and alternative certification programs are given the same mentoring so they can succeed in the often traumatic first years on the job. There is no pass for prior training or graduate degrees. • The mentoring role is shared, thus offering the two mentors needed support from each other and providing a source of new learning. They are not alone or isolated. • This mentoring role also allows building principals the needed support to use their skills and leadership roles to increase supportive contact with other teachers, support staff, parents, and community

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members. They are not isolated and alone but have mentor colleagues available as sounding boards. Principals are often isolated and on their own. • This new mentoring role reduces the isolation of teachers, building principals, and the mentors themselves, whose skills can now be transferred to colleagues as well as students. • The program helps to reduce isolation and division between young and veteran teachers as well as between teachers and administrators, bringing about more collegiality among staff. While the mentoring program has come under criticism from the principals’ union, it has support, financial backing, and political cover from five key constituents: the community, teachers’ union, school system, school principal, and supportive members of the school faculty. This is necessary cover when new roles such as the lead teacher are seen as challenging the traditional staff development intervention roles that have been in place for decades. Transformation efforts, even minor ones, usually bring out an army of resisters. LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE LEAD TEACHERS REFORM PROJECT Utilizing veteran teachers to mentor and guide novice teachers is a winwin solution. Herszenhorn’s article provides a concrete example of how both novice and veteran teachers benefit. Novices such as Ms. Holder get the mentoring and support they need to make a successful transition from being an anxious rookie to being a competent teacher. Veteran teachers such as Lori Gordon and Lauren Koster get the opportunity to use their experience to mentor and support fledgling teachers like Ms. Holder. The New York City lead teachers program is an example of how to solve a major problem facing our schools: retaining novice teachers by utilizing veteran teachers as lead teachers, giving them a reason not to retire. It’s an intervention process that takes place in their home school on a weekly basis. It is a win-win situation for the entire PS 35 school community, novice teachers, veteran teachers, administrators, students, and parents. However, the author has found that what early on appears to be a win-win

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solution for reform projects often flounders because the projects lack a niche to successfully mesh with more traditional programs. However, in the case of the PS 35 initiative, lead teachers had the protection of a niche that enabled them to be seen as an added resource and benefit for their school, administration, staff, students, and parents— a niche that made it possible for lead teachers to be seen as having one foot in the traditional role of a classroom teacher and the other as a mentor to help staff be more effective. In this dual role, lead teachers remain as colleagues, in the club, peers, but also agents for change. The author knows firsthand what can happen when one changes roles, especially when it’s a new role that has never existed in the faculty, such as the lead teacher’s role; even if the role is part-time, it can cause resistance from colleagues who feel jealous or angry because they feel stuck and dead-ended in their role. “Getting out” can stir up resentment from colleagues and personal fears of leaving a close group one has been aligned with and going out on one’s own, leaving the security and comfort of the nest. One is left with two choices: face the fact that resentment is part of life and deal with it, or give in to the resentment and stay put, avoid being seen as “out of the club” and different. Bear in mind that veteran educators who take on new roles will not have the support of every colleague. They may find themselves out in front on their own until there is concrete positive feedback that what they are doing does help veteran colleagues as well as novices. For would-be change agents, moving on has its risks but risks are what make second acts in one’s career possible. You can’t get to second base with your foot still on first base. As these case studies of two schools describe, putting oneself on the line and taking risks are a part of their evolvement as caring, highly skilled educators. Experience counts and their experience has taken them on a path that has encouraged them to lead this reform and follow their dreams of what can be, what is possible, rather than staying on the sidelines and allowing their ideas to drown in the negativity that occupies the corridors and faculty rooms of so many schools. Their experiences have taught them that they are doers, have the necessary will and know-how, and are the leaders needed for this reform to work. As such, their unique vision, ideas, and plans for reform emanate

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from their hearts, souls, and minds and are a reflection of who they are and what they believe school should and can be. They have a special calling for change that is focused on their school. In a sense, their being, existence, is identified as a symbol for the reform success. Their persona and the reform are forever tied together as one. However, the reality of reform transformation is that if and when these change leaders move to another school setting, the reform they helped create often dies a quick death as there is no leader with the skills required waiting in the wings. It is, after all, the story of life: birth, renewal, and death—a process that is repeated over and over in both people and organizations. As a result, replication of reform successes in one school are rarely identical to those tried in other schools. In the author’s experience, efforts to replicate successful reform have a poor track record and often do not work at all. Successful reform is not simply a do-over that can easily be adapted to other schools. Each school setting is different, with its differing culture, politics, staff, students, and parents. One size does not fit all. Successful reform has its own unique story and its own leadership style. Therefore, in reviewing these successful reforms, it is important for change agents considering a similar reform in other schools to try not to mimic what worked for them in the past. In a move to another school setting, they should strive to adapt successful strategies that are needed for their new setting, focusing on the new rather than settling for what they know from their past experience. A continuous educative process involving new learning, new skills, and new risks is required for them to stay current and avoid the curse of becoming the guy or gal who settles and always talks about their glory days in past reform, rather than taking on new risks. They become victims of only focusing on and reading their past stellar reviews, rather than throwing them in the trash, old stories that have no currency in their present world. As Barth suggests early in this chapter, educators will improve schools only when they take risks. It’s that simple. To promote personal and organizational renewal is a risk. To create schools hospitable to human learning is a risk. In short, the career of the lifelong learner and of the school-based reformer is the life of risk. Chapter 6 will deal with a case study of what happens when the leader of a local reform project moves on and is faced with the challenges

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of what to leave behind and what to bring to his new school setting. Issues such as how to overcome the loss of what was and how to create a new vision, model, and set of skills for his new school will have to be faced. Prior successes, stellar reputation, and a glowing résumé as a successful reformer matter little. It’s a little like a divorce or death of a loved one. One has to forge a new life or slowly over time die emotionally trying to hold on to what was. The danger in forging a new life and role is that we attempt to install the model for what was onto our new life, and, as we all know, one size does not fit every situation. This is a cautionary tale for successful change agents. It is a tale that says to be careful to avoid bringing your past successes with you and failing to see that this new life, this new school, is not the same one you left and loved and where you succeeded. You have to bury your old successes, memories, and the voices of the past so you can be open to listen and understand the “new” and what the new needs, not be fogged in by memories. Advice for change agents: be careful not to let your past blind you to a new future. NOTES 1. Roland S. Barth, “Risk.” In The Jossey-Bass Reader on Educational Leadership, edited by Jossey-Bass Publisher (San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2007), 215–16, 218. 2. William L. Fibkins, An Administrator’s Guide to Better Teacher Mentoring. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011), 180–87. 3. David M. Herszenhorn, “Veteran Teachers in City Schools Help Colleagues Sharpen Skills,” New York Times, November 1, 2004, available online at http://nytimes. com/2004/11/01/education/01teach.html/sq=teacherretention&st (accessed September 9, 2014).

SIX The Personal and Professional Challenges for Change Agents When They Move on to New Settings

This chapter begins by acknowledging the fact that successful reforms are not built to last forever. Many are shooting stars that shine brightly for a brief time but then burn out. There are many reasons for the demise of successful reforms but none more important than the exit of the project leader. These are leaders who over time have realized their dream of successful reform, and put in the necessary work to sustain the effort, but find themselves ready for the kind of change they have made possible for their school, staff, students, parents, and community—change in projects and settings that could offer them the opportunity to be learners again, try out new ideas and hunches, and learn how to collaborate with a new set of professionals, students, parents, and community members. However, as existing leaders soon learn, moving on has its costs for them and their school. They are giving up a successful project they helped build, close relationships with colleagues whom they have helped become positive and productive members of the reform, and administrators who have served as mentors and given them the opportunity to shine and be leaders of reform. And they are giving up the comfortable surroundings of a school and community they have known for years and where they enjoy a prominent place and platform as a successful leader and change agent. They are 103

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known as people of substance, risk takers, and homegrown products who have emerged as local, state, and even national leaders of reform. In addition to this personal loss, there is the loss from the ending of the reform project once the leader moves on. While there are efforts to maintain the high quality of the project, it is often a losing game. In the author’s experience, what often happens is that a less experienced educator who has strong political connections or an ineffective teacher the administration wants removed from their classroom role is chosen as a replacement. Not good choices made to guarantee success. However, their hiring has the effect of negatively changing the interpersonal dynamics of the project and the benefits the school staff were receiving from the existing leader. It’s often a losing role for the replacement who, no matter how hard they try, cannot replace the charisma and leadership style of the leader who helped make the reform work. The coalition built by the leader tends to dissolve within a short time. Successful reform leaders at the local school level are often change agents who are unique individuals with special skills. There is no easy formula to replicate their role. They have a calling and vision to improve the lives of staff, students, and parents. They hold a strong belief that they are made for this role and can accomplish it no matter how strong the resistance of others, are willing to risk and give up the comfort of a safe job, and are doers and learners. Yet they are human with their own needs and can sense when it is time for them as a person and professional to move on and leave behind what they know, even love, for the unknown where they will again be tested, perhaps tested in ways they have not experienced before. Such was the case for the author when he left the Bay Shore Stony Brook Teacher Center to help facilitate a reform project at Public School I.S. 227, the Louis Armstrong Intermediate School in Queens, New York. The project was sponsored by a coalition made up of the New York City Board of Education, Queens College, and the United States Department of Education. The author’s role was to help develop a community-school project that would bring disparate groups in the community together, utilizing the school as a center, a hub, where they could get to know each other well, reduce their isolation from each other, and learn new skills such as parenting skills to better prepare them to be successful parents and citizens.

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In the author’s vision, the project would offer programs starting early in the morning with breakfast for students; present workshops during the school day offered by local social service and health leaders, university staff, and teachers from the school, and offer an after-school recreation and tutoring program for students. The school would also be open in the evening and offer high school equivalency courses, undergraduate and graduate Queens College courses, employment, health, personal, and immigration counseling resources, and recreation activities for students, parents, and community members. The school would be in operation from early morning until late in the evening and be partnered with the regular school program for students. The author would teach Queens College graduate-level education courses in the evening. While the author was feeling a sense of abandonment in leaving the Bay Shore reform project, he also knew the lessons he learned as a leader of the project might be utilized in his new role—no, not to mimic or try to replicate the project but rather to zero in on the variables that seemed to be constant in the success of any reform. For example, at Bay Shore he envisioned that the first step in developing a teacher training center would be the creation of an attractive space where teachers and support staff could get to know each other well and reduce their isolation from each other and be a place where they could collaborate, learn new approaches, serve as workshop leaders for their peers, and generate good ideas. The model would be built on MIT’s Building 20 model, which was a space where staff and graduate students from various departments could meet informally to share ideas and begin projects, with the belief that good ideas rise in crowds. The teacher center at Bay Shore was built on this model, a hub for the sharing of ideas and building new learning opportunities for students and staff. In the Queens school community project, he envisioned the Louis Armstrong School as also serving as the center, the hub, for sharing ideas and learning opportunities for a variety of groups and individuals in the community. The only difference in the concept and intervention model was that the Bay Shore Teacher Center focus was on renewal of staff members, while the Queens College project focus would be on education, collabora-

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tion, and renewal for individual citizens, community groups, and school staff. Both reforms would be based on the MIT Building 20 model. Although the participants would come from different constituencies, their goal would be similar: a place to learn, gather information, try out new ideas and projects, and join together with others to collaborate and take on new leadership roles and, as a result, reduce their anonymity and isolation. As in Bay Shore, the hub for contact and interaction at I.S. 227 would be an attractive classroom situated near the entrance to the school with attractive furniture and resources provided by the college—a large setting where people from the community would feel welcomed, be made comfortable, be encouraged to talk about their concerns and issues, be able to create new projects, and be guided to sources of help in the community and college. The author felt somewhat secure in being successful in his professional role at I.S. 227, but he had many personal concerns about how he would do, even survive, in this new environment and culture that was very different from his suburban Long Island school. For example, he would be a stranger in a very complex setting: urban, with diverse citizen groups and people of many races and cultures speaking many different languages; with the roar of the subways, taxis, and traffic; and with streetwise parents and students, some new to this country. Also, he would be working with I.S. 227 and college staff, the chancellor of the New York City public schools, New York City Board of Education, college administration, and representatives from the U.S. Department of Education. Plus, there was the added dynamic that I.S. 227 would be required to fulfill an NAACP lawsuit requiring the New York City Board of Education to integrate the school under a court order by Judge Charles P. Sifton because of forced segregation in nearby School District 24. There were many unknowns: strangers and new programs presenting a lonely, even daunting vista for the author in a little known and understood place. Queens may represent the most varied ethnic mixture in the country. The author was no longer going to be the homegrown guy. But the good news was that while he was being asked to help resolve a new set of problems and issues, his concept of the school as a hub to help educators

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and community groups solve pressing problems and forge new paths would still be a constant, and this is something he knew about. The I.S. 227 hub would not be a stranger to him as it would be a place to make contact with others, spend time with them, talk about new ideas and where to go for expert advice, and expand networks of friends, colleagues, sources of information, and supporters. It was territory he understood and knew how to navigate and where he believed new ideas for change would emerge by being a nonthreatening place for casual contact for different groups. But he also saw his change agent role as taking the pulse of the community by visiting the settings of various groups and organizations in the community, such as the Langston Hughes Library and Cultural Center, which included a Black Heritage Center. His vision also included making face-to-face contact with the New York City Police Department, youth recreation centers, social service agencies, medical facilities such as East Elmhurst Hospital, local and state politicians such as the Community Board members, religious centers, and various schools within Queens College that could serve as resources to the project. He believed this personal contact would help build relationships with the school and university, relationships that could help bind the varied elements that made up the East Elmhurst community and reduce the isolation that existed at the time. Knocking on doors, shaking hands, flesh meeting flesh, and engaging in conversation always comes as a surprise to community leaders who are accustomed to interacting with others through e-mail, Twitter, mail, and other social media venues, not face-to-face personal exchanges. The author understood the importance of personal interactions because of his experience in building the Bay Shore Teacher Center. At Bay Shore, he would arrive at school early each morning and visit each teacher’s classroom, telling them about the day’s training and workshop and invite them to come to the center and participate. Local politicians, which change agents need to be, have this routine down pat. They show up at community meetings, kiss babies, send congratulatory letters, attend funerals, and routinely enter the personal space of their constituents. The author understood that all politics is local. This awareness of the vision and skills he could bring to the project helped to reduce his anxiety about the move to I.S. 227. It helped to buoy

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his confidence and made him to feel he was not alone. He didn’t know anyone in this new setting except his mentor, education author Seymour Sarason, a Yale professor who was a consultant for the project. But he had his experience and ideas to carry him along. They were his friends. Game time was approaching. Here is the case study of the I.S. 227 school-college-community collaboration. The word community is added here by the author as it was an important part of the project’s success. The case study is chapter 6 in the book When a College Works with a Public School: A Case Study of a SchoolCollege Collaboration. 1 I.S. 227 is located at Junction and Northern Boulevards in East Elmhurst. It is a twenty-minute subway ride from Manhattan (on a good day) and a half mile from LaGuardia Airport and Shea Stadium. It is located on the “Mason-Dixon” line in East Elmhurst. On one side is a black community that has had roots in the area for many years. On the other side is a predominantly white, middle-class neighborhood. Louis Armstrong lived here (I.S. 227 being named in his honor). Queens College, the cosponsoring institution in the I.S. 227 agreement, is located ten miles away in Flushing. As I drove in from my Long Island suburban home in Bayport for an interview and approached the bridge in Flushing leading into East Elmhurst, I was struck by all the activity around the school area. Planes were taking off and landing at LaGuardia. A baseball game was being played at Shea Stadium. Yet as Northern Boulevard left Flushing and worked its way into Corona-East Elmhurst, I found myself becoming upset by the condition of the neighborhoods. There were few public buildings, except for the Manpower Development Center and the Langston Hughes Library. There were lots of churches and a rundown business section. The area between Shea and Junction Boulevard was the black area and it appears that some policy maker had decided to forget about it. The streets were dirty and in poor repair—not a thriving area. And there was the school: four stories of concrete and paved play areas with a huge fence. It was a large building squeezed into a corner across from a bar and a park named after a veteran of World War II. The neighborhood on the west side of Junction seemed to be Latino, Asian, and middle-class white. Farther west was another elementary school and a number of apartment buildings. To the south was a large Colombian

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area and the subway. To the north was LaGuardia, more small homes, and Elmcor, a community adult-learning and recreation center. As I parked my car, I felt uneasy. This was a new place, a new neighborhood. How would I fare? Most of my experience had been in the suburbs at teacher and counseling centers. This was a different ballgame. As I walked into the school, my first impression was that it was clean, with no graffiti. It was the first year of the school. At the office I asked for Dr. Trubowitz, the Queens College director of the project at I.S. 227. Dr. Trubowitz discussed what had been accomplished at I.S. 227 so far and the work required to keep the school moving in the right direction. The school had been opened the previous September and all the hiring, ordering of supplies, and curricula development were being done as the school moved along. There were only four hundred students at the time, but the school would eventually have an enrollment of twelve hundred. Dr. Trubowitz reported that there had been some community resistance to opening the school on a voluntary desegregation plan available to all students in Queens. Some of the local community members, both black and white, had wanted the school for their children. However, the court order under which the school opened pretty much prevented many of the local black children from enrolling. There were hard feelings and I hoped that I could mediate some of the conflict and introduce adult and student programs for community members. Dr. Trubowitz said that he was impressed with my work in teacher training and desegregation programs and that he would set up a meeting with John Lidstone, dean of the School of Education, and Saul Cohen, president of the college. On a tour of the school, I was struck again by the cleanliness of the building. The principal, Anthony Sanfilippo, greeted me on my way out. My first impression was that he was an energetic, fast-moving person, a doer. Walking outside, I wondered what the perception of members of the local community was about this new school. If students were coming from all over Queens, what avenue was available for them to participate? How did they feel about having a shiny new school in an area that was clearly hurting for services and not be able to send their children there to use the building? How receptive would these people be to a white man from the suburbs, like the author? Queens College is a day college, part of the City University system. The college, particularly the School of Education, had suffered a large

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number of cuts. Saul Cohen, who had assumed the presidency only two years before, was making a real impact in revising the spirit of the college, and he seemed to have a special interest in public education. Meeting Cohen was an experience. A bright person, quick to arrive at the point, he made no bones about his commitment to I.S. 227 and the need to make it very different from the “same” old school. He wanted student teachers intensely involved with students and School of Education faculty exploring new approaches at the school. He saw I.S. 227 as an opportunity to demonstrate that voluntary desegregation could work if people had a valid choice in selecting a good school for their children. Cohen was clearly a strong force in shaping and support of the school. It was decision-making time. Should I take the I.S. 227 position or remain as director of the Teaching Center at Bay Shore? It was both an easy and difficult decision. Over a period of ten years, I had helped to develop the Teacher Center into a nationally recognized teacher renewal program at Bay Shore Junior High. Although the center continued to receive national recognition, I wondered if it was time to apply my experience in a new direction. At Bay Shore, I had become convinced that the public had almost no understanding of the real world of teachers and that there was little dialogue between school and community groups about ways to act together to save our public schools. The position at I.S. 227 would give me a firsthand opportunity to expand my ideas for a school-community coalition based on the development of mutually satisfying projects. But this was also a high-risk position because, although I was going to teach a course in human relations as part of the Administration and Supervision program, I would not be teaching on a tenured track. My contract would be on a grant, and I would also be outside the board of education and community networks. I would be giving up a tenured position at Bay Shore with excellent working conditions, and most important, I would be leaving all of the close friends and relationships I had developed there. Yet, I was filled with enthusiasm. I did not realize all the hours the position, teaching at the college, and commuting would take. In reality, I would have two full-time jobs: one at the college teaching six hours and another at I.S. 227. I spent the month of July on vacation, yet it was difficult for me to put the project aside. It was at this time that the real questions concerning the

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project became clearer for me. Would I, would we (whoever the we would be), be able to: • Help the school and college to be truly responsive to community needs? • Demonstrate that voluntary desegregation could work? • Facilitate the development of a positive coalition among the different constituencies making up the project (students, teachers, administrators, college staff, community, parents, interested others such as the United Parent Association or Advocates for Children)? • Enable Queens College faculty members to play a significant role at I.S. 227 and in the community? Significant, in my mind, meant faculty members being in the school working with teachers, students, and administrators, but also being active in supporting local community projects. • Develop a psychological sense of community in which each member and each constituency were clearly involved in the I.S. 227 community education project at some level? So with the encouragement of my mentor, Seymour Sarason, I rolled the dice and took the job, not really knowing how it would evolve. The role and job to be created had no outline or plan. I soon realized I was building the plan and project by the seat of my pants as I went along. I threw myself into the work and began a summer orientation program for new students and their parents. With the help of a few school staff members, we organized games, field trips, and parent workshops to help ease the students and parents into their new school. Many of the students and parents came by subway and bus from all over Queens. I wasn’t the only one brand-new to this new setting. In the meantime, I was busy planning my next projects: creating a teacher-training program, a parent education program, activities for single parents, an evening counseling program for parents and community members, an adult education program, a series of community forums that could help staff and community be more aware of each other’s needs and resources, a series of community-based curriculum projects for students, and an ongoing program for senior citizens in the school that could help in tutoring students and with courses for the seniors.

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I also envisioned a type of leadership and peer counseling program for students to help develop positive outlets for anticipated racial problems; and finally I envisioned early bird and after-school programs for students whose parents worked. I knew that if these programs were developed, there would be a steady flow of parents and community members into the school and of teachers and students into the community. The first step was to get to know the various constituencies in the school, community, and college. I began with the school. During August, the process of setting up the new student- and parentorientation program helped me to begin to know the school staff and how things were done. My first impression of Anthony Sanfilippo, the principal, was that he was a doer and that he was in charge, but I was not absolutely certain that he was strongly committed to community involvement. I sensed that he viewed my suburban school credentials with more than a little suspicion. He was, after all, an insider and made it clear he was in charge. His vision was that my role was to help provide an early-morning and after-school program for students, mainly along recreational lines. I immediately saw that we were not on the same page. I saw myself as a planner and implementer of many more activities. In the school, Anthony had complete support from his assistant principal, Bernie Alfant, and two teachers, Barry Wiesenfeld and Ken Greenberg, who helped out in the office part-time with scheduling and special projects. Anthony was referred to as “the boss.” The teaching staff, numbering around sixty, represented different groups. There were the old-timers who had come to I.S. 227 from a variety of tough schools in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Manhattan and who seemed jubilant to be in a school that was safe, clean, and known as an “experimental school” with a direct line to the chancellor. This did not always prove to be the case. Although the school seemed to have few supplies, books, and paper in the first year, the teachers seemed to enjoy working with many students, who also spoke of being “saved” from enrollment in other schools that they reported as being overcrowded, understaffed, and poorly administered. Yet there was the ever-present fear that this school, in spite of its newness and special relationship with Queens College and the chancellor, would also go down the drain and become like their “old school.”

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Many staff members voiced concern that the doubling of the enrollment that year to 800 and the next year’s increase to 1,200 would have a negative impact on the school. The next year, the students would also be older, and they would be more trouble—and then there were the new teachers, many thankful that they had landed a job, and in a good school no less! Some were graduates of Queens College and had served at the school the first year as student teachers. Many were inexperienced and would need a great deal of help with everyday classroom management and discipline. There were also approximately twenty student teachers each semester, a cafeteria staff of five who prepared breakfast and lunch, and a secretarial staff in the principal’s office. There was also the college staff. Associate dean Sid Trukbowitz, director of the Queens College Center for the Improvement of Education in the Middle Grades, served as liaison between school and college. Clarence Bunch, chairman of the Department of Secondary Education, was the specialist in the arts, and Dean John Lidstone, a very kind and sensitive person with a strong interest in developing good alternatives to the present junior high system, gave his constant support. This group was at the school almost each day, working with the teachers, the principal, and the student teachers. Bob Edgar, a remarkable teacher with many years at Queens College, seemed right at home in the social studies classes, helping teachers and students. Art Salz was working to set up an alternative program in the fifth and sixth grades called the “Family.” He had many years’ experience in open education and liked being at the school. Debbie Elkins, a retired Queens College professor, was working with the language arts teacher. A wonderful woman, with a very helpful manner, she welcomed this new opportunity. There were other faculty members at the school, but in my opinion these people were the core of the college mission. In looking at the constituency that made up the school and college, I saw that it was a white, male leadership group: John, Sid, Clarence, myself, Anthony, Bernie, and Kenny. How did this appear to the community, which was African American, Latino/a, Asian, white, and many more ethic groups, whose homes and community organizations were often headed by women who were hard workers, self-reliant, and not

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easily co-opted? I realized that any hiring of staff had to acknowledge the immediate need for minority women in leadership positions. The constituencies made by the I.S. 227 communities were quite disparate. The parents represented neighborhoods throughout the borough of Queens, and they had a variety of different agendas for the children. Some wanted a safe school, describing I.S. 227 as a “kind of private school.” Others were fleeing schools that were tipped too much in the direction of one ethnic or racial group. They wanted a school that represented, as many reported, “a healthy mix of blacks, whites, Asians, Indians, etc.” Other parents were interested in the Queens College involvement in the school. Then there were the new immigrants who, by word of mouth, sought out the best schools and did whatever was necessary to get their children into a good school like I.S. 227. All of these parents had a common interest and desire to have a good education for their children, and they believed that was possible at this school. They were not going to settle for less. They were high risk takers who would not accept bureaucratic mandates in place of good education. Their energy and commitment made I.S. 227 a very special place. Then there were the local parents who, because of Judge Sifton’s ruling, had to enroll their children in other schools. Although they lived near the school, they did not fit into the court-mandated racial quota. These people were pushing I.S. 227 to provide afternoon and special programs for their children. There were also local political leaders and citizens who were very skeptical and suspicious of the school. Here in “their” neighborhood was a school that had children from all over Queens but, in fact, had very few local children. What was the school going to do for their community? Would the community be able to use the library, gym facilities, and so on? And there were the other public and private schools, teachers, and administrators in the area, many of whom were angry and jealous of the new facilities, staff, and the special relationship with Queens College that I.S. 227 was enjoying. These schools were being viewed as having less worth than I.S. 227. They viewed themselves as the poor, overlooked, kids on the block.

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Clearly, demands were going to be made on the college and administration at I.S. 227 to share the school’s resources, but some community and local school leaders viewed cooperation as less than likely. And there were many visitors to the school. Almost daily there would be people from other schools asking about the program, visiting classes, and so on. At times these people took far too much of the time of John, Anthony, Sid, Clarence, Bernie, and Ken! The college and the school had become famous overnight and it seemed educators from all over New York City, the boroughs and Long Island, were interested in visiting. As experienced reformers know, there is a downside and an important lesson to be learned. When experimental schools become a quick success, the leadership stops doing and creating and instead becomes salespersons for their project, and hubris takes over. The good news was that the author was left free to plan and create while the other members of the team were selling this new brand. As a result of this freedom, I was available early on to receive queries from many community leaders who were anxious to come on board this new project and help make I.S. 227 work. Betty Felton of the United Parents Association was committed to helping parent groups take a strong role in school policy and curriculum. Jeff Aubrey of Elmcor, a local adult’s and children’s education and recreational center, was interested in sharing school and community resources. Ivan Lafayette, a local assemblyman, wanted to have I.S. 227 work with other schools in the area. And there was Andrew Jackson of the Langston Hughes Library seeking to share the library’s extensive ethnic literature section and to establish exchanges with the school faculty. Susan Jones of Single Parent, Inc., had plans for developing programs for single parents at the school. Ellen Libretto of the Queensborough Public Library worked toward integrating the activities of the library and school. Donald Steward of the NAACP was dedicated in helping the school complete its mission as a source of support and education for black children and parents. Mary Sarro and Helen Vauruska of the local Planning Board 3 had ideas for developing community projects with the school. Spencer McLaughlin and Bill Lynch of the New York City Commission on Human Rights saw I.S. 227 as a way to help stabilize neighborhood housing and serve as a place for parent information on tenant rights and student education in racial equality.

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Finally, there was longtime resident Rose Hershenson. She was coordinator of senior citizens in the East Elmhurst area and was interested in senior citizen programs during the day at the school. She conceived a workshop series involving recreation, language, psychology, and literature that could be taught by people from the college, school, and community. Others, such as Ann Morse, educational assistant to Queensborough president Donald Manes, and Helen Sears, district leader in the 34th Assembly District, wanted to support the development of good schools. On the whole, there were many others who were interested in the school, others too numerous to mention. And the positive perception of the school gained from great reviews from the fifth-, sixth-, and seventh-grade students and parents coming from every possible ethnic and income group—kids with packs on their backs who came from across the borough on the subways and buses. For the school was a “good school,” a place where they could learn, be safe, get involved with the college, take field trips, see visitors, and be asked over and over again why they liked I.S. 227. They were glad to be there, but they also feared that the school might get too big and become like their old schools. But they would probably be gone before that happened. Only the teachers and the community would remain to face the more difficult question of how you keep a good school good, as the newness, shine, and the aura of the college involvement wears thin. The author sensed from all of these various constituencies involved in I.S. 227 that somehow the hopes and aspirations of the project would be shattered and this experiment, too, would become like the old schools. Behind their hopes for the project there lay feelings that this was too good to be true. Every one of these constituencies had leadership people who had been through too many programs, projects, and schools that had manipulated or misused their trust and commitment and failed in their mission. In the beginning stage, I.S. 227 represented a place where children would be safe, where one could learn and teach, a place to develop support with school and community, a place to stop running. The opportunity for a different life was here. Would it work?

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BUILDING MY OWN CONSTITUENCY After a month on the job, I realized that I would be interacting with a group that had already worked together for a year. John, Sid, Clarence, and Anthony were “the” team when I arrived, and I was not a New York City schools or Queens College guy. My previous experience was quite different from that of others in the school. I knew I needed to build my own constituency and demonstrate that what I had to offer would be vital to the success of the school. No one was going to open doors for me. While people knew I was supported by Seymour Sarason, a friend and colleague of the college president, Saul Cohen, I was an outsider. I had a strong résumé, but could I deliver? Reformers soon learn the hard truth that new guys on the block often are not given a lot of time to produce, especially if they are not a bona fide member of the team in charge. In that sense I had no specific job description, simply a mandate to gain support for the school by bringing many disparate groups on board as partners. I had a strong track record as a change agent, and I understood that the development of trust and mutual respect among groups would be my first mission. I also understood that this would take time. It was a lonely task, and for many days I wondered why I had left the comfort of the Bay Shore Teacher Center. There seemed to be so many groups at I.S. 227 that had little contact with each other. I had to work hard to remember that my beginning days at the Bay Shore Center were also filled with the same professional anxiety. The excitement of I.S. 227 was different, but the need and caring of the people were not. The basic question was still the same: What are the needs of the people, and how do I help them to develop projects to help themselves and others? I realized that the personal question associated with the project, “Would I win here, or would I merely survive?” would always remain. In a real sense, the needs of the different constituencies in the project were very much tied to my own. If I could empower groups to seek out trusting and mutually satisfying relationships with “other” groups—parents, students, I.S. 227 and college staff, community leaders, Latinos, African Americans, whites, Asians, women, and so on—then my own mission would make a difference.

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE COMMUNITY RESOURCE ROOM In order to encourage the different constituencies to share resources, we needed a home for our project. We needed a comfortable place that was easily accessible to the school staff, students, college staff, the community, and the school administration. It had to be suitable for teacher training, parent training and education, adult education, and counseling and serve as a comfortable drop-by center where people could get to know each other in an informal way. Most of all, I wanted a place near Anthony so I could involve him in our process. He suggested a classroom right across from his office that could be converted for our use. THE SUMMER INSTITUTE The summer institute for students and parents new to I.S. 227 was my first project in constituency building. The last two weeks in August had been set aside to provide an orientation and arts program for new students and to provide workshops for their parents. I was surprised by the enrollment: over one hundred students and their parents showed up each day, eager to participate. Clearly, they were worried about the school and how they would do. In our workshops, one parent after the other voiced concern about their children traveling by subway or bus so far from home. But these very same parents stated that they were not willing to have their children receive an inferior and unsafe education in another school. They were afraid, but they were making a commitment to I.S. 227. They were taking a chance with their children, but it was their best bet. Grandparents, Indians, Asians, African Americans, whites, and so on, all showed up, anxious for some of the magic and excitement promised by a school guided by Queens College and the chancellor of the city schools. Even the teachers came, although school was still two weeks away. Bringing in supplies and checking their rooms, they stopped by the community resource room for coffee and met parents and new students. It was an exciting time, but it was also a sad time. Each day we had fifty to one hundred students from the neighborhood hanging around the schoolyard fence, asking if they could play. Not enrolled in the school with no real chance in the future, they spent hours talking with me. Many voiced anger that they could not get into the school and resented kids

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from other neighborhoods coming to what they viewed should be their place. I made a promise to myself to set up a program the following summer to include all the kids, whether enrolled in the school or from the neighborhood. What a disparity: children and parents fortunate enough to enroll in I.S. 227 felt unsure but excited about this adventure, while outside were disappointed children. I WANT THE BEST FOR MY CHILDREN During the summer institute, I witnessed the tremendous interest of parents in I.S. 227. Anthony’s office was filled with parents trying to get their children into school. The phone rang constantly with inquiries. But only a small percentage of these parents would be eligible. The openings, according to Judge Sifton’s formula, left room primarily for white students. Anthony and the guidance counselor were gracious and helpful to the parents, but there was little they could do. This experience will always remain with me as I continue to encounter those who say that parents do not care about what happens to their children in school. HIRING THE COMMUNITY ROOM STAFF It was proposed that we should have a community education specialist, a resource room aide with counseling skills and the ability to speak Spanish fluently, and a secretary. Two areas were particularly important to me. First, I saw early on that we needed more women and minority members in leadership positions. Second, I wanted the community education specialist and resource room aide to be knowledgeable about the local community and to be strongly committed to desegregation. We placed an advertisement with the New York Times and the Amsterdam News and were overwhelmed with applications. The budget crunch at the federal level was just starting, and many people in government projects were out of work. In the interviews, though, it was hard to find people with experience in community involvement and with the special knowledge of East Elmhurst. After going through September with little luck, I was fortunate to come across a bright African American woman, Johanna Duncan, who had community education experience and knowledge of Corona-East

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Elmhurst, where she worked in a day care center. We also found a community resource room aide, Terry Obradovich, who could speak Spanish and had a great deal of experience as a PTA president and as a member of the United Parents Association. Both women came aboard right away. Our secretarial position was filled by a parent at I.S. 227, Claire Press. Claire’s experience was particularly important because she had been a leader in the school’s recruitment drive the past year. Working with Bernie Alfant, the assistant principal, she became our chief recruiting person, spending many days and evenings at the Board of Education and at feeder schools. It was a good team: a suburban, white psychologist, an assertive black woman with good planning skills, a Hispanic woman committed to local school and community improvement and to assisting immigrants, and a white woman who wanted to make I.S. 227 into an exemplary model for other schools to follow. THE EARLY BIRD PROGRAM The first order of business for the school year was to reestablish the Early Bird program. With the help of Barry Wiesenfeld, the school’s administrative assistant, a number of student teachers were asked to develop activities for children whose parents had to get to work early. A number of faculty members were also hired to set up a game room, counseling activities, and extra-help classes. By the end of September, we had set up a chorus, audiovisual club, guitar and recorder club, storytelling circle, crafts club, music club, disc jockey club, classes in drama, origami, painting, modern dance, and English as a second language, as well as a game room, reading clinic, basketball games, and discussion activities. Each morning before school, the cafeteria was filled with students having breakfast and then, from 8:00 to 8:40, participating in one of the Early Bird clubs. Children who participated received an Early Bird pin designed by Clarence Bunch, of the college staff. This program was important because it brought children together in fun activities, helped working parents who needed a supervised place early in the morning to leave their children, and provided a lab for student teachers to experiment with short-term, high-interest activities.

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Most important, it provided a time for children from different neighborhoods and ethnic groups to meet and learn to be with each other. THE AFTER-SCHOOL PROGRAM In September, we also began to develop an after-school program. It was designed to provide additional time for students to get to know and respect each other. From approximately 3:45 to 6:00, children were able to participate in a school musical, dance groups, basketball, swimming, printing, school newspaper, volleyball, peer tutoring, gymnastics, opera appreciation, international dance, and media production and to receive counseling and career information. In addition, there were activities planned to utilize the Queens College Computer Center and gymnasium and the Environmental Teaching Center at Caumsett State Park. THE MENTORSHIP PROGRAM By November, we were able to begin a mentorship program for students. Non–teaching periods were arranged so that interested teachers would be able to meet with four or five students to work on individual investigations of real community and school problems. Headed by Dave Sills, an exceptionally able language arts teacher, our hope was to involve students in issues confronting the school and community: crime, police protection, mass transportation, immigration, adult literacy, technology, desegregation, neighborhood stabilization, and tenant rights. THE ADULT EDUCATION, PARENT EDUCATION, SINGLE PARENT, AND COUNSELING PROGRAMS By November, we had also received many requests for single parent support groups, counseling, and adult education programs. By opening the building four nights a week and on Saturday mornings, we were able to develop a variety of services. With the help of a local assemblyman and the director of the Queens College Adult Program, we arranged an adult education series emphasizing English as a second language, typing, consumer rights, and health courses two nights per week. On other nights, parent education courses

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in adolescent development, single parent education, and counseling were available both to parents and community members. The community resource room was the site of many of these activities and became a center of school-community interaction, both during the day and night. Terry Obradovich was invaluable in handling the questions asked by Spanish-speaking parents. Johanna Duncan and I found our skills were best utilized in heading up the parent education workshop series. When this activity became too large, we were able to call on Sue Fallon, a graduate of the Queens College Marriage and Family Program. Her work was later supplemented by Sue Jones of Single Parents, Inc. The counseling program was headed up by a wonderful, kind person, Dr. Luis Antonelli, a member of the Queens College Counseling Education program. Dr. Antonelli was able to develop a counseling program utilizing interns from Queens College. At the same time that these programs were going on, I was teaching a Queens College graduate course in human relations at the school for teachers from I.S. 227 and neighboring schools. Finally, at the college, Clarence Bunch was able to develop a Saturday arts program. This program was again open to children from both I.S. 227 and the community. Many of the students were kids from the neighborhood I had met in the summer who could not participate because they did not go to I.S. 227. We were moving to make serving their needs a part of our mission. GETTING THE STUDENTS OUT OF THE BUILDING AND SEEING A NEW WORLD The community held many opportunities for curriculum projects for children and teachers. A quick tour of the East Elmhurst and Queens College area suggests a host of interesting projects for students: LaGuardia Airport, Astoria Film Studio, Kennedy Airport, Con Edison Energy Plan, Bulova Watch Company, Steinway Piano Factory, and so on. Terry, Johanna, and I encouraged teachers to take their classes on visits to places of interest in our community. We set up a series of trips to the Queens College Environmental and Teaching Center at Caumsett on Long Island. Working with some wonderful teachers, such as Fran Urso, a science teacher at the school, a num-

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ber of students took overnight trips to the Old Marshall Field estate at Caumsett that overlooked Long Island Sound. Many of the students had never been outside of Queens and were in awe of Long Island Sound, the parks, greenery, and space. Under the direction of Dr. Philip White, Caumsett had developed exceptional nature-study and teacher-training programs. Supported by an excellent staff, Dr. White took a special interest in our school and our children. Many students had never been away for an overnight program, but Dr. White made them feel like the estate was their home. We helped prepare the food, waded through the marsh, took nature walks, told stories by the fireplace, and drank hot cider at night. I saw how frightened some of the children were to be away from the city. The suburbs seemed to represent another world, and they did not trust all the peace and the quiet. Many did not know how to swim. Although only twenty-five miles from I.S. 227, Caumsett represented a totally different way of life. FORMING A GESTALT By December, we had begun to form bonds among the different constituencies in the school and community. The evening and Saturday adult education, parent education, single parent, counseling, and arts programs had demonstrated both to the parents and the community members that we were interested in their needs. The Early Bird, mentorship, and after-school programs provided new ways for students to get to know each other. The resource room offered a place for different groups from the staff, college, and community to meet informally. Although Anthony still seemed to question the efficacy of our work, he was spending more time in our room and was supportive. Just prior to Christmas, we held a party in the resource room, inviting members from each constituency. It was a wonderful experience to see Queens College president Saul Cohen talking with a group of senior citizens and the local planning board negotiating with Anthony to use the building. We were beginning to develop our niche. A good example of an unanticipated issue can be seen in the special education crisis that occurred in the fall. At that time, two special classes were sent to I.S. 227 because of poor conditions at their previous school.

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This move was made without consultation with Queens College staff, a move that could enormously complicate an evolving and fluid situation. The college staff appealed to Saul Cohen, who threatened to pull out unless the chancellor rectified the situation. When this happened, many college staff and school staff were both angry and at loose ends. It proved that one directive by the New York City Board of Education could change the whole relationship of the college with I.S. 227 and wreck everything that had been done. School staff talked of the “same old thing” and saw the move to place these classes in the school as the first step to making this special place just “like the old school with all the fights.” The situation was so tenuous that, in spite of all the programs and momentum, it was like skating on thin ice. And what about the poor special-class students and teachers who came to the school under these circumstances? Viewed as intruders and a threat to the spirit and safety of the school, how could they be treated fairly and be cared for? In the subsequent negotiations, only one class came, with the promise to find a solution in the future. To their credit, many of the I.S. 227 staff and students came forward to help the specialclass students and staff. But the event showed the vulnerability of the project. Another issue we faced was a possible cutback in federal funding: Would money for desegregation be slashed? Where could we get new funding? Without positive momentum for the school, the college staff would be in no position to encourage their colleagues to teach courses at the school and take a more active role in research activities being fostered by this project. Despite everything, however, college faculty members Bob Edgar, Art Salz, and Debbie Elkins kept the positive momentum. ESTABLISHMENT OF COMMUNITY FORUMS TO HELP SHORE UP SUPPORT In the early spring, the author’s sense was that we needed an additional path to connect with our community groups and leaders. Over thirty invitations were sent out. The meeting was scheduled for the community resource room from 10 a.m. to noon with a lunch following the meeting. What emerged in the meeting were strong feelings on the part of some community representatives that I.S. 227 was not serving their needs.

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It was clear that information about many of the community programs at the school was not reaching the leaders in the community. The meeting also seemed to be a new experience for the teachers and college staff who attended and previously had little direct contact with community workers. When I asked each participant to talk about their needs and resources, it became apparent that there were many direct and concrete venues within the school, college, and community that could be attended to by members of these groups. Clearly they needed more information on what we were doing and how to involve their members. At the close of the meeting, I asked the participants if they wished to continue and asked them to write down the projects they might want to become involved in. At the luncheon, many of the participants stated that they felt honored to be a part of such a program and were committed to helping I.S. 227 make it. During the next two weeks, Johanna Duncan and I visited each participant and were able to talk more extensively about the school and the importance of their involvement in the process. With this input, a second forum was scheduled for late spring at the borough president’s office. Its purpose was to identify the various projects related to I.S. 227 being carried out by forum members and to raise the question of how to replicate the Queens College–I.S. 227 project in other schools. In May, a third forum was held at the Langston Hughes Library in Corona. Our purpose in holding the forum at Langston Hughes was to help solidify the relationship of I.S. 227 with community organizations. Over fifty community, school, and university representatives were invited, including staff from local public and private schools, the Advocates for Children, the United Parents Association, Single Parents, Inc., parents from I.S. 227, and NAACP representatives. At this meeting, plans were made for the I.S. 227 drama class to present a play at the library and for other students to become involved in child care at the local day care center. A plea was made by a group of senior citizens to have ongoing classes in exercise, psychology, literature, and language at the school in the fall. Plans were made for the summer institute at I.S. 227, which would include parents and children from the local community. What was amazing in this forum process was the number of people who turned out for each meeting and who made a commitment to develop resource exchanges between the school and community. The meetings

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were exciting, fun, and concrete. By holding the meetings in different neighborhoods, we were able to demonstrate the special value and contribution of each group that made up the I.S. 227 community. For the school and college staff, it provided a way for them to demonstrate their value to the community and also to learn firsthand who knew more about what “their” communities were all about, their needs and leadership. For other public and private schools, it provided ways for them to utilize the resources of Queens College and I.S. 227, and vice versa. My aim in developing the forums had been to offer community members opportunities to form a clearer picture of just what the school had to offer and what they needed. My plea was, “Do not expect everything, but understand, challenge, and support what is being developed. There is a lot at stake and we do not want I.S. 227 to be one more casualty or example of a school with grand ideas and notions that killed itself because of overinflated promises and expectations.” To the community we said, “Be in the school, be present, know us and let us know you. Let’s recognize our self-interests and see if we can mobilize our resources to help each other.” These meetings helped the leadership group to become more aware of what those different constituencies wanted and the very great importance of meeting their needs. TEACHER TRAINING The second major project in the spring was to allow teachers to reflect on their experience this year and plan for the coming year. What were their needs and what resources would they require? Although he was not in favor of giving teachers release time to plan, Anthony, to his credit, agreed to allow, on each school day in May, four teachers to be at Queens College to take part in a planning session that I would lead. Each group would come up with a summary statement of needs and suggestions that could be translated into a document for the entire school. Four substitutes would be hired each day to cover the teachers’ classes. Clarence Bunch was most helpful in recruiting the substitutes from the student and teacher group, and John Lidstone, as always, was supportive of the plan. In these sessions, I found that the most important staff need was the opportunity to talk about their concerns and to get to know each other.

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Over and over again, I heard teachers saying that there was no time and place in the school to share issues and problems and seek support. There were few common prep and meeting times that could be used for such team planning. Also, I found that discipline and teaching in a heterogeneous class were pressing issues. Many of the teachers were new and needed strategies to discipline children. Many felt at a loss to teach children with so many different abilities. The teachers were also worried about how children were relating to each other. There had been fights in the cafeteria, and some students were isolating themselves into white and black groups. Recently, when a number of students began wearing pins to symbolize support for the black children found murdered in Atlanta, some white students had ripped them from their clothing. Would this terrible situation in Atlanta give rise to increased racial unrest in the school? In each group I heard the staff ask for more training, a clear definition of the school’s discipline policy, more counseling for students, and more parent involvement in alleviating racial unrest in the school. One teacher reported, “Hey, I’ve been through it all in Brooklyn and the Bronx. This school is a dream compared to the places I’ve been in, at least I can teach here and be safe. Why should I get involved in all this stuff? It will be ten years before things get bad here and I’ll be long gone.” But we were all in the same boat. We had to make choices here in East Elmhurst. What kind of community were we building? Would we opt for short-term personal gains or make a commitment to do the things we needed to make I.S. 227 a setting that would endure once the newness vanished? Would the students only see the school as a temporary haven that would help them get into a select high school? Would the parents ignore a commitment to strong parent involvement and let the PTA be another cake-and-coffee group? Would the teachers settle for safety and let the school’s discipline and curriculum needs drift? Would Anthony and the college faculty promise too much to their early efforts to develop college and Board support and gloss over important curricular, disciplinary, and staff development issues? Would the community and politicians allow I.S. 227 the time to develop a real school-community support network, or would they be quick to blame teachers, Anthony, and the college for what they did not do?

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How could we encourage a commitment to developing a supportive, inclusive community with so many people existing in such a tenuous situation? Could we dare to be different at I.S. 227, or would their commitment and trust be absurd? We struggled each day with this most fundamental question in the project. A LOOK BACKWARD AND FORWARD In July, I decided to leave I.S. 227. It was a very difficult decision. We were at the edge of change. In June, John Lidstone and I, with the help of David Ramage of the New World Foundation, put together an exciting proposal involving the other public and private schools in the East Elmhurst area. With the support of Mary Sarro and Mary Vauruska of Planning Board 3, the Advocates for the Children, and the United Parents Association, we wanted to organize a coalition that could share resources to make each of these schools a good school. Queens College faculty, I.S. 227 staff, community members, parents, and students in each of the area’s six pubic and three parochial schools would commit their resources to the improvement of each school and try to stabilize rapidly diminishing student enrollment in the public schools and hold down parochial enrollment, which was skyrocketing beyond capacity. Every school a good school was our aim. It was extremely difficult to step aside from such a plan and from what had happened at I.S. 227. I had experienced a year of change beyond my innocent dreams and questions of the past summer. Even though I was an outsider from the suburbs of Long Island, I saw that I could bring together others in the school and college to become truly responsive to community needs. I saw that voluntary desegregation would work if people believed that the school was safe and could educate their children. I saw that a coalition could be developed among students, teachers, parents, administrators, community members, and college faculty to support a school. I saw that a college could play a leading, but equal, role with other constituencies in the coalition. I saw that a plan could be developed so that other schools in the area might have the chance to become good schools. Most importantly, I saw that students, teachers, administrators, community groups, and college faculty could endure together in spite of their

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differences and events beyond their control. Anthony left the school in July to take over his old superintendency. The school did not collapse and programs continued on. I would like to think that if there is a strong coalition for support of the school and community, then neither crisis nor loss of an exiting leader will deter the coalition from building a good school. If the teachers, students, parents, and community members believe the school is a “good school” (as most people at I.S. 227 believed) then leaders from any of the constituencies can come and go. No one is indispensable. What is paramount is that an active coalition of these various constituencies continues to exist and with it the capacity for developing exciting and novel alternatives. The programs developed at I.S. 227 can be translated into other settings without a Saul Cohen or Frank Macchiarola or a federal grant. What is required is an active coalition of parents, students, community members, teachers, and administrators who can say clearly what they want their school to be. The lesson of I.S. 227 is that the different constituencies that made up the school were also able to contribute their ideas and to make sure that alternatives were created to meet their needs. But sometimes the success of building a new reform project can blind reformers like the author, leaving them to think the successes of projects such as those of I.S. 227 are possible in many settings. This is also a case of hubris for successful reformers like the author. Telling/selling others that replication is simply a matter of doing the same thing over and over without forewarning them of what might happen can have things go wrong, quickly. When I am thinking more clearly and putting aside my idealistic self, I know that continued support of projects such as I.S. 227-Queens CollegeNew York City Board of Education-U.S. Department of Education have no guarantees. For example, projects based on grant money and the resources of colleges, universities, federal and state governments, and foundations can quickly disappear. Also, the original creators, the doers and thinkers, leave for other vistas, and hubris sets in, convincing school leaders that their success is eternal and there is no need to keep working hard to excel. Reading your positive reviews, even if they have turned yellow with age, becomes the norm. Instead, the work, hard work, is focused on selling the value of a

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school project that once was creative and unique but is now just a hollow image of what it once was. So I say to others who are inspired by this experiment and committed to developing good schools, yes, believe that you might succeed with the resources at hand but know change can be hard and may not last, remembering there are no guarantees. Enjoy what worked, even if it was for a short time. It’s magic and, as magic, it may have no future, replications, or currency beyond the “now.” Also remember that making America’s schools work is “everybody’s business.” That’s why I.S. 227 worked. That is not the usual scenario in most reform projects. We must remember that it is not only the responsibility of reform leaders but also local citizens, parents, teachers, and administrators. It’s not enough just to worry about what’s wrong with public schools. People and groups such as those in East Elmhurst need to be heard, called on to participate, encouraged when things don’t go right, and taught how to do something about improving them. They have to have a part to play and be equal partners. They need to understand they are not just a cog in the wheel for change but the wheel itself. NOTE 1. William Fibkins, “All Eyes on the School.” In When a College Works with a Public School: A Case Study of a School-College Collaboration, edited by Sidney Trubowitz (Boston: Institute of Responsive Education, 1984), 91–110.

Conclusion

As this book argues, both reformers and educators come in for blame when reform efforts fail. Administrators and teachers are blamed by some reformers for not being up to the demands of reform, targeted as slackers and not the brightest light in the room, and labeled as resisting any change and as defenders of the status quo. Reformers also get their share of blame from education critics who say reformers are all about self-promotion and are constant generators of fuzzy proposals that overworked school principals and teachers say have nothing to do with meeting the needs of their students, staff, and parents. As a result, there is an ongoing, often heated tug of war, and the blame game between the two groups that tends to overlook the real reasons why many reforms never make it to the finish line. In the author’s assessment, the main culprit is that there is no system in place to connect the proposals offered by reformers with the needs of the constituencies in local schools who feel many reform proposals are someone else’s game plan they are charged to implement. Such a system would involve building principals and teachers as active participants in the reform and provide a setting in their school where they could hash out the details of reform, assess how they can match the reform ideas with their own school’s needs, and serve as advisers and supporters of colleagues who face difficulty navigating through the demands of new reform. The involvement, commitment, and active participation of teachers cannot be obtained by gathering them in huge groups, such as the Prince George’s County workshop, to inform the nine thousand teachers in the county about Common Core—a large group model that is often used by reformers to sell their wares in the fastest, most convenient way. However, reform ideas usually don’t win the support of teachers who are fighting the good fight on the front lines of their school in such a crowded environment and unfriendly atmosphere far from their own school. Rather, it is a setting that serves to contribute to their feelings of isolation and anonymity when it comes to who counts in the reform. 131

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They see themselves as being “just a teacher” whose role in reform is similar to that of circus hands who carry the water buckets to the elephants, rather than being star performers. They do the messy, dirty work required during implementation but get little reward and attention for their effort. In large information presentations for teachers, such as what happened at Prince George’s County, the teachers are lectured to by experts from state education departments, consultants, and researchers from foundations and think tanks. Meanwhile, as most teachers do when told what they need to be doing and to shape up, they sit quietly with little or no opportunity to offer their views on what the proposed reform means for them and their students, and on what will be asked of them. This scenario is what usually happens when the media present pictures of teachers at conferences. Many are pictured sitting quietly, seemingly attentive and well-behaved, while expert speakers do their spiel. It’s as if they have been given drugs to make them passive and an agreeable, docile audience. There are no pictures of disinterested teachers acting out by talking loudly, carrying on conversations on their cell phones, doing their budget and grocery list, hitting the men’s and ladies’ rooms, and hanging out outside for a breather, maybe a cigarette, and gossiping about the evils of this reform. No, that would tarnish the “we are in this together” motif the leaders of reform want to promote. It’s a little like a navy captain commanding his sailors to take battle stations when they have already decided to abandon ship. This is not the kind of opener for a reform proposal designed to sell teachers on why they should get on board the reform, why their active participation is needed, what their role is going to be, how this reform will be rolled out, and if their students, parents, and they benefit. If this kind of presentation is the best pitch in the reformers’ arsenal, they had better start waving the white flag of surrender. These kinds of introductions to reforms are often the first blow to reform, not only in this Common Core example but in many other reform proposals. The goal is to inform teachers and get them involved, but what often happens has the opposite result. These large meetings are not territory where teachers feel welcomed, involved, comfortable, and safe and where they can learn and be contributors. For them it’s a setting where information is blasted at them, and

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then they are told to go back to their school and put into action what they’ve been told. Real learning for teachers best happens in their own backyard, their school. They may not all be happy workers or love their school, but it is where they hang their hat each day, and many do their best to help kids and parents; it’s home to them. As such, the local school is the key setting reformers need to focus on, lend their resources to, if they want to get teachers on board the reforms they are asking teachers to support. Successful reform efforts need to engage teacher by teacher. As this book suggests, local schools, with the help of resources from reformers, can create a new system in which teachers come together in an attractive setting to talk, get to know one another well, collaborate with one another on new ideas and reforms, and support one another in new projects. And this new local system needs a homegrown champion and change agent such as the author, PS 35 veteran teachers Lori Gordon and Lauren Koster, and principals like George Forbes of Bay Shore and Carmen Vargas of PS 35. And it needs savvy educators who have a vision that is supported by powerful reformers at universities, colleges, and school district leaders, such as Dean Mort Kreuter of Stony Brook School of Education, Saul Cohen, president of Queens College, and New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein, who provided resources, a safety strap, and the cover of credibility needed by a fledging project. These kinds of informal settings can become hubs, centers of information sharing and activity within the school as was the Bay Shore Teacher Center, the small and intimate environs of PS 35, and the Community Resource Room at I.S. 227. As the reader is probably thinking, many schools do not have an attractive learning space available for teachers that reduces isolation and encourages face-to-face exchanges. But change agents can create movable hubs that offer teachers renewal activities such as before-school and afterschool coffee klatches and lunchtime brown bag discussions. And regular meetings of teachers, such as faculty meetings, can be altered so that there is a regularly assigned time for teachers to gather weekly in small groups with rotating membership. Intimate small groups that focus on creating opportunities for getting to know each other better, collaboration possibilities, and highlighting the good things, shining their

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bright light, that are going on in their classrooms and lives as teachers and persons, and in the school. To accomplish this goal, teacher leaders as change agents need to look at their school in new ways, not just a series of classrooms or offices, just physical spaces. They need to replace this vision with a more up-to-date version that focuses on where, when, and how ongoing learning and renewal can take place for teachers and gain the necessary support to create these learning venues—learning spaces, whether they be a permanent space or a moving hub that operates in many parts of the building. In developing a series of possible learning venues, a savvy teacher leader already knows what she is about to find, that her school has few of any such venues for teachers. What she will probably find are the traditional faculty and department meetings that focus on survival issues such as passing the school budget, budget cuts, dealing with crises, classroom size, and furloughing of young staff members due to defeat of the school-district budget. Not the kind of good news that creates optimism, raises morale, and sends teachers home hopeful and renewed. And this is not to overlook the often negative environs of faculty rooms which are often settings filled with nasty gossip, vendettas, and personal rumors about acting-out students, staff members who are burning out and should be fired, do-nothing administrators, and talk about personal lives of staff members in crisis and ideal places to retire. These are not places that are venues for learning, renewal, and positive human interaction and certainly not venues where, when a teacher leaves, they feel new energy and zest. They are instead places that traffic in the inessentials of life and where teachers settle for less and become less so as not to be alone and lonely in their everyday work. It is far too easy to lose the passion and spirit that may have brought them into teaching, especially with a daily dose of negativity of faculty room talk. Rather, the teacher leader/change agent vision needs to be about creating spaces that offer a welcoming and valuing and the support teachers need that is the antithesis of the dim lights of venues such as faculty rooms with their decaying furniture, old travel magazines, faded pictures of former presidents, outdated refrigerators, microwaves, and coffeepots from another era, and professionally eroding conversations. Creating new ways for staff to come together that shines brightly requires preferred destination and an alternative to the stifling venues

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listed above where teachers, support staff, even principals, and needed reform can find fertile soil and grow. Teacher leaders as change agents are in the end the pulse takers of the school, an important and needed role that busy principals simply can’t fulfill. They build direct links to the many teachers and formal and informal networks these teachers create. Their role is one of a participant observer who knows what is going down in his school and in the process uses this data to create ongoing hubs of learning opportunities for staff that ensure novelty, communication, and the testing of new ideas. These change agents are unique professionals in that they believe that what they have to offer teachers and support staff matters and is of use to them. They believe that most teachers want sound advice, useful feedback that makes sense, the opportunity to learn new skills, and to be successful. They believe they are the right person at the right time to help teachers reach these goals even if, as lovers often do, they say no when they want to say yes. Resistance is often the first reaction to a new idea and relationship. It is a given that teachers, like all human beings, demure, resist, when change is upon them. The old seems better, more comfortable, than the new, and if we are honest they may be right. But the gifts of effective change agents include the skills to sell educators on the bright side of proposed reforms, why they are needed, honestly sharing the hard work and burdens that are sure to come, and where and how they will be supported and recognized for their effort. These are both simple and complex answers to what is missing in reform. For example, welcoming settings like Building 20 and teacher leaders serving as change agents who can help teachers make sense of complex reform so it is understood and doable to them has a role for their expertise to shine, and where they can be seen as competent professionals, not “just a teacher.” While the author’s emphasis on the new roles for teacher leaders is still in infancy it is gaining support. For example, a 2014 report by the Aspen Institute Education and Society Program, “Leading from the Front of the Classroom: A Roadmap for Teacher Leadership that Works,” 1 calls for the expansion of a teacher leader role in our schools. Here are some of their recommendations regarding the importance of teacher leaders:

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Conclusion Our educators are under duress. Principals have to conduct more teacher evaluations than ever before, a process that yields valuable information but requires an unprecedented amount of time. They have to figure out how to help their teachers bring an entirely new set of standards to life in the classroom and chip away at a stubbornly persistent achievement gap, and to face a constant struggle to keep top teachers from leaving in the face of these pressures. It has become clear that this burden is too much for administrators to tackle on their own. If schools are to be successful at preparing all students for a rapidly changing world, they must distribute leadership more broadly. By developing leadership roles and skills for teachers, schools and school systems can make it easier for principals, teachers, and above all, students to succeed. Through new roles and responsibilities, effective teachers can collaborate with and influence colleagues and principals in order to shift school culture and advance teacher, learning, and student achievement. Teacher leadership can also be a part of a career ladder that rewards top performers, improves the chances of retaining them, and supports the recruitment of others like them. Additionally, teacher leaders can sometimes influence practices throughout the system and state so that policies are more likely to benefit students.

The creation of these settings and change agent roles can serve as anchors for reform at the local school level when the waters of discontent rise and ill winds threaten to sink the reform before it reaches the shore. As middle school teacher Elizabeth A. Natale suggests in her article “Why I Want to Give Up Teaching,” 2 the waters of discontent will continue to rise and destroy needed reform unless the voices of skilled veteran teachers are heard. Surrounded by piles of student work to grade, lessons to plan and laundry to do, I have but one hope for the New Year: that the Common Core Standards, their related Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium testing and the new teacher evaluation programs will become extinct. I have been a middle school English teacher for 15 years. I entered teaching after 19 years as a newspaper reporter and college public relations professional. I changed careers to contribute to society; shape your minds; create good and productive citizens; and spend time with youngsters lacking adults at home with time, energy and resources to teach them.

Conclusion Although the tasks ahead of me are no different from those of the last 14 years, today is different. Today, I am considering ending my teaching career. When I started teaching, I learned that dealing with demanding college presidents and cantankerous newspaper editors was nothing. While those jobs allowed me time to drink tea and read the newspaper, teaching deprived me of an opportunity to use the restroom. And when I did, I was often the Pied Piper, followed by children intent on speaking with me through the bathroom door. I loved it! Unfortunately, government attempts to improve education are stripping the joy out of teaching and doing nothing to help children. The Common Core standards require teachers to march lockstep in arming students with “21st century skills.” In English emphasis on technology and nonfiction reading makes it more important for students to prepare an electronic presentation on how to make a paper airplane than to learn about moral dilemmas from Natalie Babbitt’s beloved novel, “Tuck Everlasting.” The Smarter Balance program assumes my students are comfortable taking tests on a computer, even if they do not own one. My value as a teacher is now reduced to how successful I am in getting a student who has eaten no breakfast and is a pawn in her parents’ divorce to score well enough to meet my teacher evaluation goals. I am a professional. My mission is to help students progress academically, but there is much more to my job than ensuring students can answer multiple choice questions on a computer. Unlike my engineer husband who runs tests to rate the functionality of instruments, I cannot assess students by plugging them into a computer. They are not machines. They are humans who are not fazed by a D but are undone when their goldfish dies, who struggle with composing a coherent paragraph but draw brilliantly, who read on a third grade level but generously hold the door for others. My most important contributions to students are not addressed by the Common Core, Smarter Balance and teacher evaluations. I come in early, work through lunch and stay late to help children who ask for assistance but clearly crave the attention of a caring adult. At intramurals, I voluntarily coach a ragtag team of volleyball players to ensure good sportsmanship. I “ooh” and “aah” over comments made by a student who finally raises his hand or earns a C on a test she insisted she would fail. Those moments mean the most to my students and me, but they are not valued by a system that focuses on preparing workers rather than

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Conclusion thinkers, collecting data rather than teaching and treating teachers as less than professionals. Until this year, I was a highly regarded certified teacher. Now, I must prove myself with data that holds little meaning to me. I no longer have the luxury of teaching literature, with all of its life lessons, or teaching writing to students who long to be creative. My success is measured by my ability to bring 85 percent of struggling students to “mastery” without regard for those with advanced skills. Instead of fostering love of reading and writing, I am killing children’s passions— committing “readicide,” as Kelly Gallagher called it in her book of that title. Teaching is the most difficult—but most rewarding—work I have ever done. It is, however, art, not science. A student’s learning will never be measured by any test, and I do not believe the current trend in education will lead to adults better prepared for the workforce, or to better citizens. For the sake of students, our legislators must reach this same conclusion before good teachers give up the profession—and the children—they love.

There is a cautionary tale that needs repeating as we end this concluding chapter. A reminder that teacher leaders need to be wary and on guard against the powerful persuasive role of outside-in reformers who are accustomed to promoting reform proposals that serve their own agenda and overlook the needs and ideas of local school staff. These proposals dictate to local school leaders what they need to do, give them their marching orders, and push/promote their own agenda. In these situations, it is critical that teacher leaders not fall into the role of becoming shills who energetically sell, promote, and lure staff into buying into a reform that doesn’t meet their needs and in the end is about promoting the self-interest of outside-in reformers. It is a role in which teacher leaders are used by reformers to take the lead in selling their proposals and subtly offered the possibility of joining the reform team if all works out well. Being lured into selling out one’s colleagues for one’s own career gain after all is only human. Teacher leaders need to understand they too can fall into the trap of hubris and self-promotion. Therefore, it is critical that teacher leaders serve as a protector and support the needs of local school staff and carefully assess what part of the reform proposed will actually be helpful to them, parents, and students.

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Otherwise, the role of local school staff is similar to that of a prostitute whose only job is to satisfy the needs of their patrons. If teacher leaders abandon the role of change agents for their school and instead become the in-house agent to promote the agenda of outsidein reformers then this masquerade cannot honestly be labeled a teacher leader role but rather a shill acting in their own self-interest. A role absent of any responsibility to colleagues who have been promised an advocate to help their voices and needs to be heard, but instead are sold false promises by a pitchman. We are all human and as such teacher leaders need to understand that their role can be at risk not only from resisters from with the local school but also by outside reformers who require their acquiesces and support of their agenda. NOTES 1. The Aspen Institute, “Leading from the Front of the Classroom: A Roadmap for Teacher Leadership that Works,” The Aspen Institute Education and Society Program, 2014, 2. 2. Elizabeth A. Natale, “Why I Want to Give Up Teaching,” Hartford Courant, January 17, 2014, available online at http://www.courant.com/opinion/hc-op-nataleteacher-ready-to-quit-over-common-cor-2014117-story-html.

References

Aspen Institute. “Leading from the Front of the Classroom: A Roadmap for Teacher Leadership that Works.” Washington, DC: The Aspen Institute Education and Society Program, 2014. Barth, Roland S. “Risk.” The Jossey-Bass Reader on Education Leadership. Edited by Jossey-Bass Publisher. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons, 2007. Ciamacca, Debra A. “Why Do Americans Stink at Math.” New York Times, Reply All Section, July 27, 2014, August 10, 2014. Cuban, Larry. “Principals as Instructional Leaders—Again and Again.” Word Press, December 1, 2012. Available online at www.larrycuban.wordpress.com/2010/12/01/ principals-as. Accessed September 2, 2014. Dunaway, David. “Myths of the Super Principal.” Available online at http://cnx.org/ content/m20832/latest. Accessed August 8, 2014. Fensterwald, John. “Overworked, Undertrained Principals.” SVE Foundation, December 13, 2011. Available online at www.SVEfoundation.org/2011/12/gotsource/13/ report-overworked. Accessed July 20, 2014. Fibkins, William, L. “All Eyes on the School.” In A College Works with a Public School: A Case Study of a School-College Collaboration. Edited by Sidney Trubowitz. Boston: Institute of Responsive Education, 1984. ———. An Administrator’s Guide to Better Teaching Mentoring. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011. Fullan, Michael. Change Leaders: Learning to Do What Matters Most. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons, 2011. Gladwell, Macolm. Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking. New York: Little Brown & Company, 2005. Green, Elizabeth. “Q: Why Does Everyone Hate the New Math? A: Because No One Understands It—Not Even the Teachers.” New York Times, July 27, 2014. Heifetz, Ronald A. Leadership without Easy Answers. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press,1994. Herszenhorn, David M. “Veteran Teachers in City Schools Help Colleagues Sharpen Skills.” New York Times, November 1, 2004. Available online at http://nytimes.com/ 2004/11/01/education/01teach.html/sq=teacherretention&st. Accessed September 9, 2014. Hess, Frederick M. “The Missing Half of Reform.” National Affairs 17, July 9, 2014. Available online at http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/print/themissinghalf-of-school-reform. Accessed July 31, 2014. Hinde, Elizabeth. “Reflection on Reform: A Former Teacher Looks at School Change and the Factors that Shape It.” The Teachers College Record, August 3, 2003. Available online at www.TCRecord.org/content.asp?Contentld=11183. Accessed August 13, 2014.

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Johnson, Steven. Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation. New York: Riverhead Books, 2010. Jossey-Bass. “Michael Fullan’s New Book The Principal—an Excerpt.” Available online at www.josseybasseducation.com/teaching-learning/michael-fullan. Accessed July 6, 2014. Mehta, Jal. “The Future of School Reform: Five Pathways to Fundamentally Reshaping American Schools.” American Enterprise Institute, November 14, 2012. Available online at www.AEI.org/outlook/education/k-12/systems-reform/the. Accessed July 2, 2014. Mirel, James, and Simona Goldin. “Alone in the Classroom: Why Teachers Are Too Isolated.” The Atlantic, April 21, 2012. Available online at www.theatlantic.com. national/archives/2012/04/alone-in-the-classroom-why-teachers-are-too-islolated/ 255976. Accessed August 14, 2014. Natale, Elizabeth A. “Why I Want to Give Up Teaching.” Hartford Courant, January 17, 2014. Available online at http://www.courant.com/opinion/hc-op-natale-teacherready-to-quit-over-common-cor-2014117-story-html. Public Agenda Foundation. Rolling Up Their Sleeves: Superintendents and Principals Talk about What’s Needed to Fix Public Schools. New York: Public Agenda, 2003. Steward, Matthew. The Management Myth: Why the Experts Keep Getting It Wrong. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007. Strauss, Valerie. “I Have Very Real Concerns about Sustainability of Public Education—Virginia Teacher’s Painful Decision to Quit.” Washington Post, The Answer Sheet Blog, June 9, 2014. Available online at www.washingtonpost.com/local-i-havevery-real-concerns. Accessed August 14, 2014. ———. “Seven Things Teachers are Sick of Hearing from School Reformers.” Washington Post, The Answer Sheet Blog, August 14, 2014. Available online at www. washingtonpost.com/blogger/answer-sheet/wp/2014/08/14. Accessed September 7, 2014. Trail, Kathleen. “Taking the Lead: The Role of the Principal in School Reform.” Connections 1, no. 4, October 2000. Available online at www.sed.org/csvd/connections/ oct00/welcome/html. Accessed September 5, 2014. Tyack, David, and Larry Cuban. Tinkering toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. Virginia Beach Public Schools. “Essential Tasks, Principal, Senior High School.” Available online at www.vbschool.com.hr/job-desc/principal%20hs.pdf. Accessed August 23, 2014. Welsh, Patrick. “Four Decades of School Reform.” Washington Post, September 27, 2013. Available online atwww.washingtonpost.com/opinions/four-decades-offailed. Accessed August 10, 2014. Wiggins, Ovetta. “Pr. George’s Hold Districtwide Training for Teachers on Common Core Standards.” Washington Post, June 30, 2004. Available online at www. washingtonpost.com/local/education/pr-georges-hold. Accessed July 18, 2014. Wikipedia. “Prince George’s County Public Schools.” Available online at www.en. wikipedia.org/wiki/pgcountypublicschools. Accessed July 13, 2014.

About the Author

William L. Fibkins is an author and consultant specializing in helping secondary schools provide many open doors for help and support, Circles of Wellness, for students, parents, staff, support staff, and administrators who find themselves troubled and in need of intervention. Fibkins argues that, given the large number of troubled teens entering our schools, it is vital that we train teachers, support staff, administrators, parents, students, and community advocates serving on the front lines of our schools to identify and help/refer them before their troubles get out of hand. More information on Fibkins’s work/books can be found on his webpage, williamfibkins.com. He holds a PhD in Counselor Education from Syracuse University and degrees from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

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