Collaboration: From Me to We

The Iowa Teaching Leadership and Compensation symposium took place on 8/4/2014 at DMACC in Ankeny.  It really was an amazing experience, with more than 500 people in attendance, talking about collaboration, teacher preparation, and re-imagining schools. The Honorable @TerryBranstad and the Lieutenant Governor, @KimReynolds, as well as Department of Education leadership showed their commitment to the process by spending the entire day, listening to noted speakers talk about a shift in schools. The state has taken its first steps to re-imagining education, with 39 districts already funded, and a large funding pot to come over the next three years.  In the morning, speakers like Vivien Stewart and EE Ling spoke about transformation in other countries; the afternoon showcased some #stuvoice, teacher, and principal panel discussions.  A final session with Barnett Barry from the Center for Teaching Quality reimagined what Iowa would look like if one-of-four teachers becoming a teacher leader. Tweets throughout the day provided a variety of perspectives and Scott McLeod curated an excellent synthesis of the resources shared.

Over and over, we heard words like leadership, but by far the biggest word out there was simply:

Collaboration

The word echoed through my brain during the day, and later as well.   
More collaboration time.

But that's a truly hyped word.  WHO needs more collaboration? WHAT will they do with it?  That's where it gets sticky.  Because it has to go beyond department meetings.  It has to result in teams that know that they depend on one another. That's a two way street, and it requires a special type of transformational leadership.  It is also fraught with some strong challenges.

Challenge #1:  Teams are not built on superstars.  Win as a team, play as a team, lose as a team.  That means that the coach generally has some authority, but that comes from the respect of the players, not the operational definition of a title. I often wonder if teachers realize that they are a sleeping giant; with ten times the number of  teachers as there are administrators in the country, what happens when teachers collectively demand change and opportunity to lead without leaving their classrooms? Administrators sharing leadership create win-win solutions that allow teachers that desire nontraditional leadership while still staying in the classroom to do so.

Challenge #2: Changing our beliefs about time. As a partially online teacher for the last four years, my paradigm has shifted.  I no longer believe that teaching is a job or an 8-4 passion or even that I am the only one who can teach students; neither do I believe you can make analogous statements about administrators.  It really is a vocation, a profession, a mindset.  As a result, the answer is not to say,  "Teachers cannot lead.  They are a teacher 100% of the time" any more than saying,  "Administrators must lead.  They are an administrator 100% of the time."  We all juggle some of these multiple roles constantly, with no break:  serving as parents, community stakeholders, caretaker, board member.  Teachers and principals and superintendents often work sixty hours or more when school is in session, melding work and life together.

Challenge #3:  Shifting boundaries. What if administrators surveyed their to-do lists, collaboratively matching and asking for help with those tasks meshing with the passions of staff members (as well as their certifications and licensure)?  What if that time that Adam Hartung calls 'white space' was really carved out as a way for improvement and innovation to occur?  What if, as he says, there were opportunities for blurred or flattened leadership, where multiple individuals attended conferences and the administrators could get back into the places where they used to teach?  The alternative often involves ego or what Dan Heath cautions against in his WRAP decision-making process,  where talented people are boxed in, labeled problematic, and isolated from leadership based on emotional factors, including a challenge to the status quo.  

Challenge #4:  Transparency and Shifting Roles.  Teacher leadership, or perhaps starfish leadership,  will have to go two ways:  from the bottom up, as well as from the top down, to become nimble and flexible enough to radically change the ideas.  That's doesn't seem transparent, but it is, in the same way clear water lets us see the entire depth of a still pool.  What happens in interactions among staff members, stakeholders, administrators, and students spreads out in ripples, undercurrents, and ideas.  And so the districts that succeed in this opportunity will know that muddying water obscures the starfish, and trust comes from listening and remembering that we might not have all the answers..

Collaboration: From Intent to Practice

It appears that many things need to be present to shift a system from one that has followed us through the industrial model to something new.  One thing all of them will have is ever-increasing collaboration.

Current PLCs are the starting point of leadership to something else, but it will vary.  District DNA and culture, of course, give us multiple pathways, including the pilots for TAP in VanMeter and Central Decatur, teacherpowered schools, efforts by ISEA to inspire and develop new leaders, or applications of flex time and online courses.

One thing seems clear, though: we know what doesn't work:  the current system.

Capacity building opportunities across the state will need the creativity of all to carve out these types of positions, and to go beyond the current method of  100% teaching responsibilities.

There must be teacherpreneur stories across Iowa waiting to be curated; I'm excited by the possibilities of looking for them and showcase how they are invented in Iowa.  After all, I was inspired by the vision set forth on Monday's conference:

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What happens if education doesn't change? Reflections on #iacomped

I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the CBE conference sponsored by the Iowa Chapter of ASCD on 6/23 and 6/24.  Guest speakers I heard included Tom VanderArk, Scott McLeod, Lillian Pace, Katherine Prince of  KnowledgeWorks and Doug Finn of  Reinventing Education 

My reflection upon the sights and sounds is found below....gleanings, you will, of a newbie to a new paradigm.   My opinions, as always, are my own, not those of my employer.

Culture

• There is a huge difference between individualization and personalization, and that may or may not be related to technology.  It is, however, definitely related to the engagement of the student, and who (teacher, parent, student)  is controlling the questions and problems to be solved.
• We need our communities and the expertise that they bring to the local area to make this real.  But that means that communities need to be down in and using our students.  
• We are focused on our own knowledge, but that also opens us up to our own biases.  What we feel comfortable with and what the culture and knowledge need may differ. 
• Parents are part of this conversation, but the way they learned may not be appropriate for all learners today. Education, how people learn, and metrics for measurement have also changed.
• We can have the best technology in the world, but that does not guarantee a competency-based framework.  That has to come from hard work and systemic design.

System Redesign

• Teacher roles need re-imagined for things to happen and change from factory models.  This shifts preparation and training.
• Content resource facilitators (not sit-and-tell teachers)
• Brain and body fitness coaching (brain research and organization)
• Community Intelligence Mapping (resource development)
• Leadership becomes everyone's responsibility in a system redesign, rather than the purvey of one CEO at the top.
• If we don't start with the student and move upwards by building empathy and interest for relevant learning, we will continue to get what we have right now--silos of content where an adult makes the majority of the decision.  Imagining this shift is a big change in mindset.
• Modeling and creation are part and parcel of what we are doing to create meaning in our lives.  They are not necessarily part and parcel of what we do in school at this point, but we need to shift.
• We will fail sometimes. This is not the end.  This is the point of iteration and improvement.

Barriers to Change

• Policy barriers, including testing, are creating dual systems.  That is, we may build a system that we think works, but reporting may be done on totally different metrics. How do we scale the framework to be useful and adaptable?
• We must become our own advocates for system change.  We must communicate an advocacy message for our students, highlight our teachers who are trying, and work to bring the community into the workplace.
• Cherry-picking leads to difficulties because it weakens the model.  Adopt, or don't adopt.  Halfway doesn't cut it.
• The status quo is a difficult starting point.  Without sustained buy-in (75-80%) the model will slide back to the initial position.
• The readiness level for change is a function of the leadership of the system.   Permissive leadership does not work in this model.  We need student voice, educator expertise, and community buy-in.  That is what the role of the leadership must consider.

What happens if we don't change?

That's always the million dollar question, isn't it?  What if we do.... nothing?  And I don't have a crystal ball, but it seems to me that

• we are at a point where we can leverage education and learning using a technology tool that has come into its own as a connector of resources across physical boundaries.
• we are building CBE connections to already developed tools, like College and Career Readiness standards,  universal constructs/21st century fluencies  That means, to me, at least, that we do not need to always reinvent the wheel.
• we may need to move faster than our comfort zone.  Of the four fastest-growing trends in ed-technology, the one we have embraced most readily is the big data collection.  These other pieces, which change HOW education is being delivered, actually may be more important to our students.