Leading School Change: Start with a Framework
Article
Getting everyone on the same page is of primary importance for a school leader.
Working toward a common goal, such as all students making at least one year’s worth of growth in reading during a school year sounds excellent on paper. Why wouldn’t anyone strive for this and rally around the cause?
And then the questions come up.
What specific goal should we focus on within reading?
How do we measure one year’s worth of growth?
What if we don’t reach our goal?
Our reasonable worries deflate the momentum we might initially achieve after planning for excellence. Change stalls and we feel like we are back where we began.
Related, the problem with “smart” goals for leading school change is that they are focused almost exclusively on outcomes at the expense of process. Yet it is the process that ultimately leads a school toward realizing their vision for excellence.
The Importance of Frameworks
Instead of first developing an arbitrary goal, consider adopting an instructional framework within the school.
According to David Perkins and James Reese, frameworks provide “a common perspective and language while allowing adaptation to different subjects, levels, and students.” They describe practices most likely to lead to student learning and success.
Why frameworks? Because they are adaptable to a variety of teaching and learning styles. Perkins and Reese note that this is especially important for school cultures with embedded practices and a history of delivering instruction a certain way.
Significant change challenges existing practices and creates discomfort. The simple path expects teachers to comply and eventually get comfortable with the new practices, like getting used to a new suit. But it does not recognize how deeply teachers are committed to their own sense of craft, which they may have developed over many years.
So it’s really not change if an educator does not shift their beliefs to adopt new strategies as part of their practice. Compliance is not the same as ownership.
Examples of Frameworks
In the two schools I’ve served as principal, we have adopted the Optimal Learning Model. It’s an iteration of the gradual release of responsibility (also a framework), developed by Regie Routman and featured most recently in Literacy Essentials: Engagement, Excellence, and Equity for All Learners (Stenhouse, 2018).
The terminology offers a common language about practice. For example, “guided practice” can include guided reading, book clubs, conferring with pairs of students, and collaborative projects.
Other examples of frameworks include Understanding by Design (Wiggins & McTighe), the Workshop Model, and Interactive Modeling (Responsive Clasroom).
Clarifying and Reinforcing a Framework
When educators meet to discuss teaching and learning, having a shared understanding for instruction ensures people are on the same page. I have found only presenting a framework and not revisiting it often leads to faculty members falling back to prior, possibly less effective practices.
To clarify the language of a framework, I model it during professional learning sessions. I will go as far as announce something like, “For this part of the session, I am doing a shared demonstration of how to break down a standard into objectives.”
In addition, I highlight classroom activities that serve as strong examples of one element of the framework in my weekly newsletter.
I’ve gone as far as creating photo montages with iMovie that clarify for everyone what the framework looks like in our classrooms, recognizing and celebrating our work.
To reinforce an instructional framework, I utilize instructional walks. These informal, nonevaluative classroom visits are my opportunity to provide personalized feedback and coaching that is focused on the practices that will lead us toward excellent work.
Limits of Instructional Frameworks
If frameworks are so great, why aren’t they more common in schools? I’ve noticed three limits - rigidity, institutionalization, and initiative fatigue - that can inhibit innovative instruction if teachers and leaders leave frameworks unchecked.
Rigidity
This occurs when schools and districts adopt a framework, call it “best practice”, and then expect every teacher to adhere to a hyper-specific understanding and application.
Lucy Calkin’s Units of Study appear susceptible to this rigidity. Part of it might be the long descriptions of how lessons should unfold. Leaders might be expected by central administration to make sure teachers don’t go “off-script”, even if the teacher is responding to students’ needs.
Frameworks are designed to be flexible and fluid. This allows for responsive instruction as well as better buy-in from faculty. As Perkins and Reese note, “teachers are more likely to warm to frameworks they can adapt to their personal styles and circumstances.”
Institutionalization
While we want to create clarity around common language and practices, the framework itself is not the purpose for our work. It serves the larger goal of student independence and empowerment.
As an example, one framework that can become an institution onto itself is guided reading. Teachers get into the habit of meeting with small groups of readers while the rest of the class works independently or in pairs. This becomes problematic when we are teaching guided reading instead of teaching students. The whole point of guided reading is to support students to become independent.
Guided reading is also not the most efficient practice. We are working with a small minority of the students in our classroom. What if half the class could benefit from a strategy lesson? Why not teach that half of the class through an interactive read aloud or shared demonstration? Now we have more time to support more students.
Initiative Fatigue
A big reason I have brought the Optimal Learning Model with me to my current school is how it allows for other frameworks to fit within it.
For instance, more of my teachers are exploring the workshop model for reading instruction. Because they are both based on the gradual release of responsibility, we can fold one within the other. See my sketch as an example, which combines Regie’s OLM with Cris Tovani’s and Samantha Bennett’s workshop model.
Frameworks can and should be adjusted over time to reflect new thinking.
Unfortunately, if a new initiative that is introduced from administration does not take into account a school’s current framework for instruction, educators feel overwhelmed. They don’t know which approach to take in the classroom. Teaching is complex enough on its own; we need to be creative and try our best to honor promising thinking from the past.
“You’ve got to focus on something.”
In my previous school, we served as a literacy lab. Our focus was on the reading-writing connection. Other schools would come to observe instruction in our classrooms and take ideas back to their respective buildings.
This program was supported by our state’s Title I department. Consultants from the DPI would join us for some of these visits. During one conversation with a consultant, I asked her what she saw as a common thread among the various host/lab schools.
Well, you don’t all focus on the same thing, but each school focuses on something.”
This focus can start with a framework.
To review, a quality framework:
Should be based on current best thinking about instruction.
Creates a common language that faculty can adopt and adapt to their work.
Benefits from repeated efforts of creating clarity around it.
Allows for flexibility within constraints.
Guides teachers toward the larger goals of education.
Supports future initiatives if thoughtfully introduced.