WHEN VOICES ARE HEARD THAT ARE USUALLY STILLED

By

Bill Martin

“What I enjoy most is that consensus p***es off those who dominate, and when   voices are heard that are usually stilled. Change has begun and pride and prejudice have shown up. The concept will take awhile to be understood as it blows away outmoded structures of thought.” ChristchurchTeacher

 

Every school staff is a unique, living, breathing organism whose collective life experiences give them the knowledge to create magnificent schools, if only we would get out of their way and let them do it. Too often, school faculties are like a box of firecrackers where each teacher is brilliant in a unique way. If a lit match is dropped into it, they all explode in many different directions. The result is the school goes nowhere. What if we took those firecrackers and wrapped them all with duct tape so they would be aimed in the same direction then lit them with a match? Those aligned firecrackers would create a force of dramatic power. This is the power of shared visioning.

The International Network of Teacher Designed Schools is using the process of shared visioning to create magnificent schools across New Zealand and Australia. The fundamental belief underpinning this Network is that the most powerful resource in any school is the experiential knowledge and values of the people who work in that school. The Teacher Designed Schools process provides teachers with the absolute ownership for the creation of the school they have always wanted.

The key characteristics of the Teacher Designed Schools process are:

·         The school develops a shared vision, which comes from all staff through powerful processes designed to draw on their collective intellects and values.

·         Teachers are passionate about doing the necessary school-based research to turn their shared vision into a reality over time.

·         A long-term school development plan based on their research is owned by staff and leads them to perform at the highest professional levels.

·         The process celebrates autonomy and interdependence at the same time.

·         The process develops a culture of leadership throughout the school.

·         Teachers take ownership for their own performance and for the continuous improvement of the learning in the school, both for staff and students.

·         The process is highly economical in that it makes financial decisions very clear and provides a seamless school-wide professional development program.

There are three phases in the process usually covering three years:

PHASE 1 - Formation of a shared vision

PHASE 2 - Development and initiation of the long-term school development plan.

PHASE 3 - Continuous improvement and ongoing growth.

These three phases encompass the components described below.

Phase 1 – Formation of a Shared Vision (Year 1)

The journey begins with the school gathering together the contextual data on the current situation and any plans for the future. This data is used to design a set of eight Inquiry Probes.

SAMPLE INQUIRY PROBES

·         What activities by teachers most impact on deep student learning?

·         What benefits do we expect from parent and community involvement in our school?

·         What are the major characteristics you need to be an effective teacher in our school?

·         What are the best ways to ensure that we have an appropriate balance in our lives?

·         How do we design for the success of all students in our school?

 These are questions designed to tap the rich personal experiences, beliefs and values of the staff. Between them, these probes cover the key aspects of life in the school. The staff then comes together for the Inquiry Probes Workshop. This is done using two key processes that are fair, equitable and transparent: classic brainstorming and a consensus-generating tool (10-4 voting). The staff work in teams of eight or fewer to do this work, and an internal facilitator leads each team. Overnight draft shared visions are written based on this rich data. These vision statements are about one page in length and are a rich description of what the school will be like when the vision is realized. They are written in the present tense. Quickly the staff is given the draft vision statements and a summary of the priority data they created by consensus in answering each Inquiry Probe. They then use a critique process to provide rich feedback on the draft visions, choosing one as the basis for further development. The staff feedback is used to prepare a second draft of the shared vision. The staff goes through continuous cycles of critique of the shared vision until general consensus is reached.

“I really enjoyed the inquiry probe process as it almost completely eliminated ego noise and blustering, which is so common here.” AucklandSecondary Teacher

 

As the draft shared visions are being written, the emerging themes that will become

the focus for the school-based research in the year ahead is identified. The staff decides on the final research themes and forms their research teams around these themes. Every staff member except the principal is a member of a research team.

SAMPLE RESEARCH THEMES – LARGE SECONDARY SCHOOL

·         OUR NEW BASICS: Literacy and numeracy; social interaction skills; thinking skills.

·         Living our values in all of our work: honesty, tolerance, love of learning, and respect for others.

·         Forming rich partnerships with businesses, with parents and with other schools.

·         Creating quality professional life: balance in our lives.

·         Creating quality learning environments.

·         Systemic Structures: what systems and structures can we put in place that will promote efficiency?

Commonly there are between five and seven themes. In the following year, the staff members drive themselves through continuous action research iterations, resulting in a set of formal recommendations for action supported by deep research. Each team appoints its own leader and has a member of the school’s leadership team attached as a sponsor. Sponsors assure alignment to the vision and ensure any necessary resources are available for the Research Team.

PHASE 2 – Development and Initiation of the Long-Term School Development Plan (Year 2)

At the beginning of PHASE 2 the staff comes together for a defining moment in their history. Each staff research team reports back on the outcomes of their yearlong research. This is in the form of a set of recommendations for action, with associated documentation and research justification. All staff with one of two possible outcomes critiques each team’s research recommendations. The recommendations will either become part of the Long-Term School Development Plan immediately, or the staff will require that further research be conducted to fully justify inclusion. These decisions ensure that all work done during the research period is validated. The leadership team uses the approved recommendations for action to draft a Long-Term School Development Plan. Each recommendation is analyzed based upon the amount of training required to implement the recommendation, the cost of implementation, how long it will take, and the impact on the school. Following the analysis the recommendations are sequenced for implementation over time. Usually, these long-term plans require three to seven years to complete. Once the leadership team has drafted the plan, they publish it to staff one time for feedback. As a result of this feedback the Long-Term School Development Plan is finalized. The final step in PHASE 2 is for the school leader to conduct a personal stewardship conference with each staff member. This is a critical moment in the shared visioning process. During this one-on-one meeting, the school leader and the staff member agree on their individual commitment to the aspects of the shared vision they are willing to create, and they agree on what the leader will do to help the staff member do this work and achieve his or her personal vision. These stewardship conferences, usually lasting thirty minutes, prove to be a powerful accountability tool for the entire school community.

PHASE 3 – Continuous Improvement and On-going Growth (Year 3)

The third year commonly involves further broadening staff repertoires in emerging areas of focus, focusing on better understanding of the realities of change in this particular context, and fine tuning the processes already learned so they are deeply embedded in the everyday life of the school. This requires the processing of deep reflection on what has been experienced over the two years to date and understanding how to adjust systems, structures and mental models as necessary. The staff engages in a process to revisit the shared vision to ensure that the journey is still the path the staff wishes to follow. Checking the alignment of all school systems and structures is completed. Ensuring that rich data sources are in place to ensure a match between the espoused theories and the theories-in-use is central to this process. High-level processes for driving action learning forward are matched against the data emerging from the implementation experiences.

One of the best sources of power in organizations is the power of expertise. Shared visioning allows school leaders to unleash the expertise of every staff member over a sustained period of time. When the power of expertise is aligned to a shared vision, the school has the fuel to rocket anywhere they desire.

“I have so enjoyed these two days; it reminded me why I wanted to become a teacher and refreshed my vision of myself as a teacher. It was wonderful to see our vision emerge. I cannot wait to get started and build the school we have envisioned.”

 

Leadership raises the grade

KATHY GRUBE
Education reporter,      Mercury, The Voice of Tasmania

August 18, 2006 12:00am

A LEADING United States educator says an ideal school is one that replaces management with leadership.