Listen to my Interview on Small Schools

Recently I was interviewed by Stan Goldberg for his audioblog, The Senior Dad Briefing Room, and specifically for his Teaching Methods Briefing Room. Here’s the intro and the link. I’d love your thoughts about what we discuss:

John Watkins, A Thinking Man’s Perspective

“When school districts create short lists to evaluate their progress with their small schools, or want a road map to move toward small learning environments, or a coach or consultant to help them refine their small school directions, these short lists have one thing in common. That common element is Inquiry and Learning For Change, based in Oakland, California. John Watkins, Principal of the firm joins me to talk about small schools and a wide range of topics about how our schools and learning environments are changing and the political conditions that may help or inhibit this process…”

Definition of Whole System Coaching/ What Whole Systems Coaches Do

 

I.               A Definition of “Whole System” Coaching

In order to define “whole system coaching,” we must first define “system.”  A system can be defined as the dynamic interplay of structures, processes, and beliefs/values/assumptions that reinforce each other through feedback to make certain things happen (and keep others from happening) as a routine part of the work of a school and/or district.  ”System,” as referred to here, includes those aspects “above the green line” (structure, pattern, process) and those “below the green line” (information, relationship, identity), as defined in the “Six Circle Model.”* A “Whole System” coach works in the following ways with such systems (no matter where that coach is situated in the system):

1.    Point of View:  The coach focuses on building the capacity of the client to operate and act within and upon a larger system

, and sees the client’s development in terms of how it can be leveraged strategically to achieve larger goals in changing the system.  The coach does not just focus on an individual client’s (teacher, principal, etc.) development of knowledge, skills, etc.

2.    Sees the Whole System and Sees the Parts and Sees their Interaction: Peter Senge put it this way:  ”Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static ‘snapshots.’ …. And systems thinking is a sensibility — for the subtle interconnectedness that gives living systems their unique character.”

3.    

Operating within an Understanding of Systems Architecture:  There are two types of “systems architecture” that a whole systems coach needs to understand:

a) the system as we traditionally think of it, that is, the explicit structure and dynamics of the district and school.  That includes both formal and informal communications, authority, decision-making, etc., and,

b) the non-traditional view, which comes from the field of system dynamics. That “system” is about structures, processes, and beliefs that interconnect to make things happen the way they do, and keep things happening the way they do.  Such a system acts that way no matter what we do with changing the explicit system unless we fundamentally change the underlying architecture.  At the surface are events, and we tend to be overwhelmed by and react to them.  Just below the surface are patterns that can be used to predict events, giving us some measure of ease, but not really the capacity to solve the real problems.  But deeper still is system architecture that explains why patterns exist that lead to events.  This is the deep structure.  Most of it is “below the green line.”

4.    Strategic Focus:  Many different moving parts need to be juggled in connection with each other, in a coordinated way, to achieve results.  Clarity about focus and goals should drive choices of strategy.  Strategy aims at pervasive, persistent, coherent, resourceful, focused action, across the various parts of the system (traditional and non-traditional view).  It is measured, using a variety of kinds of data, against purposes (and values), goals, and results.

5.    Intentionality of Action:  The whole system coach sees the whole picture, and is purposeful about situating decisions

 and actions within that whole in each and every interaction every day.  Clarity about theory of action (“theory in use” as well as “espoused theory”) is essential.

6.    Strategic, and Systemic, Choice of Interventions:  A coach chooses interventions based on their potential to achieve lasting impact and results at the system level, not just solve immediate problems.  In fact, often, solving immediate problems will only exacerbate the situation, as tempting as it is, as good as it makes people feel, and as much pressure as will be exerted on a coach to solve problems for people.  Lasting impact will be attained when the coach has helped people develop the capacity for systems thinking and a deeper analysis of problems based on seeing the whole system that they are part of, and seeing how they are contributing to preserve it, even if inadvertently.

II.              What Whole System Coaches Do

Based on our definition of whole system coaching, the whole system coach will do the following: THE WHOLE SYSTEM COACH BUILDS CAPACITY:

• The coach’s job is to build the capacity of the school and district to sustain ongoing improvement, not to build dependency on the coach.
• The coach works as a member of a team, not alone or in isolation, to extend the work strategically to effect scalability and sustainability.  The team may include other coaches across sites (districts, schools, classrooms, communities) as well as teachers, leaders, district staff, schools, and community members in supporting innovation, capacity building, scalability, and sustainability.

 THE WHOLE SYSTEM COACH UNDERSTANDS CONTEXT:

• The coach develops a broad understanding of the context and dynamics of the schools and district, in a strategic, efficient, and ongoing way.

 THE WHOLE SYSTEM COACH TAKES A DEVELOPMENTAL APPROACH:

• The coach takes a developmental approach to building capacity, using explicit strategies to assess and understand where the schools and district are currently in their improvement efforts, and identifying entry points consistent with that current state.  This is ongoing work.

 THE WHOLE SYSTEM COACH BUILDS AND MAINTAINS RELATIONSHIPS AND PROVIDES EMOTIONAL SUPPORT:

• The coach builds and maintains trusting relationships with key people in the setting.  That includes providing emotional support for the difficult work of improvement.

 THE WHOLE SYSTEM COACH STRATEGICALLY LINKS ACTIONS TO RESULTS WITHIN A CLEAR THEORY OF ACTION:

• The coach strategically links a focus on concrete actions situated within a clear theory of action with intended outcomes and results for significant improvement in student achievement.  The coach focuses this work with adults in the school and district expressly on achieving results for those students who traditionally have not succeeded in school.  Merely focusing on improving adult relations (collaboration structures and culture) is not sufficient.

 THE WHOLE SYSTEM COACH SITUATES WORK WITHIN AN OVERALL IMPROVEMENT PLAN:

• The coach links work with individuals and groups (teachers, leaders, community members, etc.) coherently and strategically with the existing or developing overall district improvement plan and any reform agenda that is part of the district agenda.

 THE WHOLE SYSTEM COACH BROKERS ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

• Often a coach must be a broker or linker to other resources beyond what s/he has the capacity to provide; knowledge of these resources or of how to find them is essential.

 THE WHOLE SYSTEM COACH TAKES A CLEAR VALUES-BASED STANCE AND ACTS CONSISTENTLY WITH INTEGRITY AND AUTHENTICITY:

• The coach is clear about her/his stance, “who she ‘be’” as a person in the work.  The coach acts with integrity and is authentic and genuine about what s/he believes to be the case about: 1) the nature of coaching work, 2) the nature and possibility of the people in the system to engage in successful district and school improvement, and, 3) the nature of the capacity of the students to be successful learners.  The coach is also clear about his/her values and beliefs about equity and the purposes of public schooleducation with regard to equity.  These values and beliefs are explicit in the coach’s work.  The coach stands for, and holds, a strong vision for positive transformation at all times.

 

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*Tim Dalmau, Dick Knowles, Myron Kellner Rogers, and Meg Wheatley, 1983-1995.

 

The Predictable Failure of Educational Reform: Can We Change Course Before It’s Too Late?

In 1993, Seymour Sarason wrote the book, The Predictable Failure of Educational Reform: Can We Change Course Before It’s Too Late? The question resonates (well, actually, it’s like standing in the belfry as the matins bells are rung, that is, it’s deafening) these days as I read more and more stories of districts that got federal money to restructure their comprehensive high schools into smaller learning communities, botched the effort, and often before the end of the grant, had their communities storming the walls of the district office and school board meetings to demand return to the status quo. Why should that be the case? What are we all doing so terribly wrong? I don’t think it’s all about the football team.

The research on effective small schools is overwhelmingly positive. Even the less autonomous SLC’s in many places have had success in personalizing teaching and learning, reducing absenteeism and disruptive behavior, and increasing graduation rates and college attending rates, even if not showing some gains on state and NCLB mandated tests. So, I repeat, why the predictable failure rate?

I’ll stick my neck out here. It’s simple. Poor leadership that lacks a real understanding of the why’s and wherefore’s of the conversion process (signing on to the latest fad), poor efforts at community (and union) engagement early in the process and continuing throughout implementation, bad communication planning and execution, poor design process, lack of attention to existing research on successful efforts and failure modes, no effort to visit existing successful districts that have model small school and/or SLC’s to show off, a complete and utter lack of understanding of the complexities of the transition from design to implementation, and horrible to non-existent implementation planning and support. And I have to say, the feds certainly could be more directive here. I know of some districts that got money for “wall to wall” SLC conversions whose design was nothing more than advisories, and advisories that meet 20 minutes once or twice a week. The comprehensive high school of the 1960’s with homeroom.

So, what could we be doing better, other than just throwing the baby out with the bathwater and starting from scratch? How might a school district avoid these obvious pitfalls? I think all of this is avoidable. I think the simplest answer is to find (and commit to working with over the long haul) a consultant/coach, or better yet a team of them, who know more than how to coach a leader to develop his or her personal leadership style and be a better instructional leader, or how to coach a teacher to teach better. Coaching and consulting skills and experience with systems change, not just leadership coaching and instructional coaching, is essential for SLC or small school conversion efforts to succeed. Districts need outside assistance (better yet, they need to develop inside assistance systems) to plan and manage a conversion effort so it’s research-based, coherent, engaging of the community from the start, based on an understanding of successful practice, understood as more than a change in curriculum, that is, as an organizational change effort, thorough as to its design planning, even more thorough as to its implementation planning, focused at the district level, with policy changes that are necessary to support the new configurations at the schools, develops district capacity to engage in continuous improvement, and provides skill development coaching for all the new roles and responsibilities. Not to mention a radically different understanding of teaching and learning that is more than advisories once or twice a week, that permeates the intimate relations between teachers and students, and among teachers, and among students.

What does such coaching look like? I’ve begun that discussion here before. Now I’d like to add some thinking from my own research reviews and experience. The next post will lay out what I see the research on effective systemic coaching as involving. I hope you will read what is here and add your own perspective and insights. Let’s build the dialogue about coaching’s role in successful school and district change.

John

FUSD SLC District Leadership Network Diagram

 This diagram shows the structural relations of cross school and district teams that support SLC conversion/implementation in FUSD.  It accompanies the post below by Robert Curtis describing the work in FUSD.

 FUSD SLC District Leadership Network Diagram

School Leadership Networking, Coaching and School Reform

Robert Curtis wrote this for the blog at my request.  Here he describes how he is combining coaching strategies with networked systems of learning groups to support SLC conversions in Fremont Unified School District, in the San Francisco Bay Area.  In addition, I am attaching a diagram he sent that shows the structural relation of the various teams supporting the SLC conversion.  What I see is how using networks of teams and coaches across school sites and traditional district “silos” is creating a new culture of learning and innovation…  Read further… 

 School Leadership Networking, Coaching and School Reform

Robert F. Curtis

School Reform Project Director FUSD

 

In Fremont Unified School District we have received our third SLC grant as a district and currently have three comprehensive high schools of about 2000 students each working together to implement these SLC reforms.  My role is as district project director to help bring the schools together to identify areas where we can work together to support leaders and build leadership capacity for this reform work.  Each school has a leadership team and has created positions for leaders such as a site coordinator, data coordinator and interdisciplinary team’s coordinator. We have attempted to create a networked learning community model (See: National College for School Leadership in the UK) for these leaders from across the district and have used coaches from a local organization to lead help facilitate these meetings and workshops.

 

A few of the challenges in doing this work and developing leadership capacity is finding the right coaches who have the right skills and knowledge that the leaders need.  Coaches take quite a bit of time to get a sense of what the school and leaders need and often never quite “get it”.  In addition when doing work as a district, often a coach may be good for one school or set of leaders but not another.  Yet you also don’t want too many coaches who are coming at this in an uncoordinated way that adds confusion to the process. 

 

My job has been to work with leaders to set up structured formal meetings and workshops on a regular basis for them to meet, learn and work together.  Working collaboratively with the leaders we have finally found a set of coaches that we think are working well with our leaders and school sites.  However this didn’t come without some serious effort and costs and mistakes by me.  We were initially using coaches from one organization that was not local and did some large workshops with them, but because they were not local and could not be available regularly this lead to them not understanding the needs of the leaders and schools and me having to spend much time attempting to get them up to speed. These coaches because of their distance never developed real relationships and connections with the staff but more so with me.  This lack of connection lead staff and leaders at these schools to see this as a “district thing”.  In addition coaches and support organizations often come in with a template and many assumptions which may or may not be relevant to our situation. The importance of coaches and support organizations developing in depth knowledge about the real issues that are currently being faced or may be coming down the road is critical. This requires the development of relationships.

 

Relationships have been critical for our leaders and their meetings and workshops. One of the most important things leaders have mentioned is how great it is getting to know each other on both a professional and personal level by having regular meetings.  Initially most of our meetings were “check in” type meetings of just sharing out what was going on and sharing a few ideas. By using coaches and particularly having 2-3 coaches that we use as a district has really helped move us to deeper work.  For example we have a coach who works with our data coordinators and has helped give them some tools and strategies for collecting and using data.  They have taken these strategies such as a “score board” or “dashboard” and have adjusted them to their particular sites or issues but have also shared out with each other and served as critical friends to help further develop this tool and sharing strategies of how to use it.  For our site coordinators we now use a consultancy protocol each meeting for part of the meeting to allow one leader to share a particular issue and to get some concrete feedback from the other leaders.  Coaches have been crucial in providing these tools and strategies that are allowing our leaders to do more in depth work and that are surely building up our leadership capacity.

 

However problems still persist when trying to do larger workshops together because the three schools are at such different stages of development in terms of the SLC reforms. It has been difficult helping the more advanced schools see the benefit of working together with the school just beginning the reform work. In addition, the school just beginning doesn’t want to always feel like they are being mentored and taught and not contributing to the learning of others. There needs to be an openness to learning from one another that historically has not existed between schools in our district.  There is a history of competition between the sites and not a culture of collaboration as a district.  We are starting to change this but it has been a very slow process.  Lastly coaches are seen as “outsiders” and obviously cost money. This makes it important for sites to be able to see that coaches are helping with the issues they are currently facing and not just coming in with their own agenda and “formulas” for success.  Coaches need to spend a lot of time listening before they can begin coaching and this has not always been the case and has lead to some doubts about the usefulness of coaches. It has also been important to have someone who can point to what organizations or coaches might fit the school or district and who can organize and find areas that make sense for schools within a district to work together. In my role as district SLC project director, I have been able to have the same coaches who are coaching our teacher leaders also provide coaching to the administrators during their principals meetings and this has also brought in other schools who did not have the SLC grant. This alignment and coherence has often been lacking in our district and has lead to many coaches coming through our schools who have had little or no lasting impact on leadership or teaching and learning. However this new structure seems to be making some in roads in part thanks to the exceptional coaches we now have working with us.

From the Small Schools Listserve…

Mary Beth Blegen’s honest and reflective post on the small schools listserve (see below) on her experience with Small Learning Communities in St Paul unfortunately does not represent an outlier in the national school reform experience over the past decade or two (or three).  People with the best of intentions, who are committed to improving learning for their students and the quality of professional lives of teachers, and who manage to get the funds to enact a reform plan (SLC’s being just one of the efforts funded over the past several decades) still face immense obstacles to their success.  A lack of knowledge of the complexities of the change process in large organizations like high schools (and the districts in which they are situated), an assumption that structural change is sufficient (or the opposite, an assumption that only improving instruction in the absence of structural and policy change is sufficient), a failure to take into account the need for effective professional development in how to build professional learning communities or communities of practice with the time built into the regular schedule to look rigorously at student learning and teacher practice, understanding the needed changes in teacher practice and student assessment, all of this and more makes the challenge almost insurmountable.

 

What is often left out of the stories of success and failure across the nation is the role of outside service providers who either do or don’t have the knowledge of all of these dynamics and the skills to provide coaching and consulting advice and support for addressing these complexities on an ongoing, over-the-shoulder basis for folks like Mary Beth.  When high quality and knowledgeable coaching is provided on addressing not just classroom instruction or instructional leadership, but also these larger system change issues, the chances that the effort will make measurable progress is greatly enhanced.  But too often that story is left untold, and as a result, schools and communities are left thinking that the simplistic stories they read in the newspapers about successful SLC’s or small schools magically blooming in an educational desert after being given funds to restructure their high schools are true.  Or they find themselves spending a few painful years struggling and then the public gets tired of the whole project and they go back to the old system out of frustration.  Or they hire one of the many packaged outside programs that promise results but do not address the complex contextualized realities of the local setting, only to find themselves several years and many hundreds of thousands of dollars down the line with little substantive change.

 

I have been wondering about this missing piece of the dialogue on change for awhile.  Of course on the small schools listserve, we hear from people like Mike Klonsky and Joe Nathan and Dan French and the folks at CCE in Boston, and occasionally the folks from the Small Schools Project, or at BayCES or CES about the programs that they have in place to support small schools and school change.  The recent report Joe posted there about the successes in Cincinnati hint at the role of the outside consultants (and one assumes lots of coaching) in that effort.  Yet the dialogue does not seem to me to go deep enough or broadly enough for us to be able to offer guidance to someone like Mary Beth about what sort of coaching would have gotten her effort off to a good start and sustained it over the long haul.  Really, I do think we know how to do this work.  But the knowledge is hidden in little enclaves, small networks of practitioners, an organization here and there.  I am hoping we can bring it all out into the light of day and really spend some time rigorously digging into what makes for successful coaching and consulting in these efforts, and what are the pitfalls to avoid.  What does a highly qualified coach do who is able to address all of the issues that plagued Mary Beth’s effort?

 

That was the reason I started this blog.  Already some of you have visited it, but I would like to see a dialogue begin here that addresses the implicit questions that Mary Beth asks, which are, What could we have done differently?  and, Why did we not know that then?  These are embedded in the questions I posed in my first post, and which I would like to see us all contribute to discussing now.  Those are:

• What is whole system coaching?
• What do whole system coaches do?
• What do high quality coaches need to know and be able to do to be effective?
• What sorts of professional learning systems do coaches need to be effective?
• What results in schools and districts constitute “being effective?”
• What kinds of communities of practice, or professional learning communities, or coach collaborations currently exist and how do they support coaches to be effective?
• What sorts of communities of practice and networks can you imagine creating that would enhance existing ones and enable greater shared learning and innovation in coaching?
• What sorts of organizational arrangements best support effective coaching, both in schools and districts and in outside providers?
• What kinds of knowledge management systems best support effective coaching?

Might we start that dialogue now?  I am going to post something on the first two questions soon…

 

Thanks,

John    

 

Mary Beth Blegen’s post to the small schools listserve:

 

As our work in Small Learning Communities now recedes, we have learned much. I am hoping what we have learned can provide good questions for those who are now engaged in the work.Six years ago, when we began the work, we assumed too much about high schools and change. We assumed that the opportunities presented by SLC grants (both Federal and Gates) would be received in a much different way. We assumed that scrutiny in the high schools would be welcome.I almost giggle now when I think of my naivete, considering I taught in a high school for 30 years.We focused far too much on structure and far too little on instruction. I believe that if we have 15 teachers in an SLC located in a hallway, but that they don’t know how to talk to each to each about student achievement, little can happen. I believe that without focused conversations in buildings for which time and support are provided, little will change.Little will even change with the conversations without expectations and goals, monitoring and evaluation.Ah, yes, we have learned. If we were entitled to a second go round, the focus would be on student learning, measured, discussed and adjusted.I have hopes for the professional conversations, but we have a very long way to go there, too. 

Ever the optimist, I think we can still get this right. 

Announcing Whole School/ Whole System Coaching Blog

Question:  We discuss school reform strategies all the time on various lists, blogs, etc., with an aim to share our work, agree and disagree, and learn from one another.  Why is there no substantive discussion of coaching, one of the major strategies we all use to support it?

 

Across the nation, schools, school districts, and support organizations employ many strategies to support urban school improvement.  Among the most often used in more successful efforts, and least often used in less successful efforts, is coaching, and in particular, coaching that focuses not just on instruction or leadership, but on the whole school or district as a system.  Organizations such as BayCES, CCE, the Small Schools Project, the Small Schools Workshop, NSRF, CES National, and many more continually discuss their methods internally, and increasingly these organizations are developing research and evaluation approaches to study the efficacy of their particular approach to coaching.  Yet little or no national dialogue exists across these organizations and the organizations that employ their services, and no meta-analysis, that I am aware of, of coaching effectiveness.  I am creating this blog to stimulate that discussion and analysis.

 

Assertion:  We need a national dialogue and we need a national professional coach network and community of practice.   We might even find ourselves developing an emerging consensus, while valuing the diversity of our differing approaches, about effective high quality coaching, and what coaches need to know and be able to do to be effective.  That could lead to a dialogue about an emerging set of professional standards of practice for coaching.  All of this could make coaching better and of more value to those doing it and seeking its benefits to their reform work.

 

This blog hopes to start an ongoing national examination of whole school/ whole system coaching.  Such a national dialogue could result in a larger learning community of practice and network among coaches, one that might enable coaches to share and learn from each other, one that might result in some national consensus about what high quality whole systems coaching is, and what such coaches do.  While valuing the diversity of experience and opinion about the topic among coaches and those employing them as part of a reform strategy, some increasing clarity about these questions could help to develop innovative understanding about what coaches need to know and be able to do to be effective at supporting whole school/ whole system change.  Networks of diverse practitioners working on similar problems innovate at a much higher rate than individual organizations; larger networks innovate at an exponentially higher rate.  This blog herein begins such a dialogue that will continue beyond this space into the creation of a web-based coaching network and community of practice, where we will engage together in “critical friendship,” dialogue, collaboration, innovation, and knowledge management.

 

Some Questions for Discussion on this Blog:

• What is whole system coaching?
• What do whole system coaches do?
• What do high quality coaches need to know and be able to do to be effective?
• What sorts of professional learning systems do coaches need to be effective?
• What results in schools and districts constitute “being effective?”
• What kinds of communities of practice, or professional learning communities, or coach collaborations currently exist and how do they support coaches to be effective?
• What sorts of communities of practice and networks can you imagine creating that would enhance existing ones and enable greater shared learning and innovation in coaching?
• What sorts of organizational arrangements best support effective coaching, both in schools and districts and in outside providers?
• What kinds of knowledge management systems best support effective coaching?

 

Stay Tuned:  Your contributions to discussing these questions, and generating others, will fuel future topics, and help build the network…

I hope to see you all here.

 John