Top LYS Tweets From the Week of January 17, 2016

If you are not following @LYSNation on Twitter, then you missed the Top 10 LYS Tweets from the week of January 17, 2016 when they were first posted.  And if you are on Twitter, you might want to check out the Tweeters who made this week’s list.

1. Leadership is about holding yourself accountable. You can't tell someone to do something you aren't willing to do. (By @justintarte)

2. Leadership is not dependent on your title, but on your ability to inspire people to follow you. (By @tgrierhisd)

3. Learning to say “No” is the most effective way to get out of and pay off debt. (By @clwilkens)

4. As a leader, it's your job to protect your team so they can do the work they're meant to do. (By @tgrierhisd)

5. If you know you are under-serving your most academically fragile students, then the same is true for academically more able students. (By @LYSNation)

6. Teachers should moderate all (political) debates. No one's better at keeping loud, disruptive and immature children on task than a teacher. (By @NicholasFerroni)

7. If you are enjoying your lesson, the students probably are too. Same goes if you are bored. (By @BluntEducator)

8. There's tough. And then there is outside recess when it is 19 degrees. Well played, Wyoming. Well played. (By @LYSNation)

9. Clarke Middle School faculty are geared and motivated to be a part of the "2% Best Lesson Closers" in 2016! Go Cowboys!! (By @WClarke_MS)

10. Great read to start a new semester. The Fundamental 5 by Cain & Laird. (By @DCS_Sec_CTE)

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...

• Call Jo at (832) 477-LEAD to order your campus set of “The Fundamental 5: The Formula for Quality Instruction.” Individual copies available on Amazon.com!  http://tinyurl.com/Fundamental5 
• Now at the Apple App Store: Fun 5 Timer (Fundamental 5 Delivery Tool); PowerWalks CLC (Networked Formative Observation Tool) 
• Upcoming Presentations: American Association of School Administrators Conference; National Association of Secondary School Principals Conference (Multiple Presentations) 
• Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation  and like Lead Your School on Facebook

Exactly Who is Earning the F

Earlier this week the Texas Senate has passed a bill that will publicly rate schools on an A-F scale. (Note: this bill still has to pass the House if it is to become law.)  The supposed reason for this bill is to better inform the public as to how their neighborhood school performs.  As if “Unacceptable, Acceptable, Recognized and Exemplary” wasn’t clear or “Did Not Meet Standard, Meets Standard” is overly complicated. 

So either the Senate believes that:

A. The general public is stupid.

B. This new system will further their real agenda.

C. Both A and B.

But that is an entirely different topic to explore. Instead I want you to consider the following.

A school’s rating is driven primarily by the performance of its most fragile learners. These fragile learners are the students that are predominantly poor (economically disadvantaged) and LEP (limited English proficient).  There is nothing “WRONG” with these students.  It is just recognized that due to circumstances beyond the control of either the student or the school, the fragile student is less prepared for academic success than his/her affluent and English as a first language peers.

Even though a school has little control over the external variables that affect student performance, schools work diligently to ensure that these most fragile of learners receive a quality education.  Along with instruction, schools provide transportation, meals, basic health services, student and family counseling, clothing, reduced class size, and extended day and extended week learning opportunities, all in an attempt to level the playing field and to ensure the success of every student that enters their doors.

Juxtapose this with the Texas Senate, a body that through its actions, has a more direct impact on the variables of student performance that schools do not control. 

• Meals: The state has made it more difficult for the poor parents of school children to receive welfare support.  This means there is an increasing number of hungry students on campuses. All things being equal, it is more difficult to learn when you are hungry.
• Housing: The state has made it more difficult for the poor parents of school children to receive welfare support.  This means there is an increasing number of homeless students on campuses. All things being equal, it is more difficult to learn when you are sleepy and stressed due to not knowing where you will live day to day.
• Health Care: The state has made it more difficult for the poor parents of school children to get health insurance. The state has purposefully decided not to expand Medicare. This means there is an increasing number of sick and unhealthy students on the campus. All things being equal, it is more difficult to learn when you are in poor health.
• Social Services: The state has cut social services to the bone. Drug counseling, child protective services, and mental health and mental retardation services are just some examples.  And though this exacts a toll on all families, it impacts the poor and marginalized families the most.
• School Funding: The state has significantly cut per pupil student funding.  This act has had a detrimental impact on all schools but the impact is felt the greatest at the schools that serve the highest percentage of students harmed by the state’s purposeful inaction.

So if there is a need to rate a public entity that is under-serving the school children of Texas, it would be for the Texas Senate.  And right now the Senate has a long way to go before it earns an “A.”

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...

• Call Jo at (832) 477-LEAD to order your campus set of “The Fundamental 5: The Formula for Quality Instruction.” Individual copies available on Amazon.com!  http://tinyurl.com/Fundamental5 
• Now at the Apple App Store: Fun 5 Timer (Fundamental 5 Delivery Tool); PowerWalks CLC (Networked Formative Observation Tool) 
• Upcoming Presentations: TASSP Summer Conference (Multiple Presentations); TEPSA Summer Conference (Multiple Presentations); NAESP National Conference 
• Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation  and like Lead Your School on Facebook

Getting Ready for the First Round of Common Assessments

A LYS Assistant Superintendent asks the following common assessment / data analysis process questions:

SC,

We are giving our first three-week Checkpoint next week! (Note: now this week.)  My inbox is filling up with questions on minutia.  Most of the questions I have an answer for but this one has stumped me a bit.

(For a particular campus) The campus data determined that African American and White students are the Academically Fragile Student (AFS) groups.  So on the Checkpoint Data Analysis form the first column is for the AFS group.  The second column is for the Economic Disadvantaged (ED) student group.  On this campus there are teachers that teach only ELL students. These teachers will not have any African American or White students in their classes.  So do they leave the AFS column blank? 

If so, does that mean from a data standpoint, they primarily focus on Economic Disadvantage students?

Also, we want to add a Special Education column to the data analysis form.  On all of this, I just wanted your thoughts.

SC Response

A host of excellent process questions; which are my favorites.

 Here's the danger of adding additional student groups to monitor... at a certain point you are back to monitoring everyone again. Which, as you know, leads to confusion and work for work’s sake. That's why in our system, we track only two groups, those being the locally determined AFS group and ED students.  As you are well aware, the ED students are double and triple dippers when it comes to accountability so there is no wasted effort in monitoring them.  Then stick with your lowest performing sub-pop (the AFS group).  

On the rare occasion that a teacher doesn't have any of the monitored students in a particular class, that is OK. You will still have data from the remaining classes.  If a teacher does not have any of the monitored kids for the entire day, then they are a niche teacher.  For the teachers with the toughest to teach students (ELL, SpEd), this does not create much of an issue.  For the teachers with the least fragile student populations, you need to schedule them at least one section of tougher to teach students. Otherwise, what you get is a group of teacher who have the idea that the use of less effective practice is OK due to the false positives (from a data standpoint) produced in mass by more advantaged students.

There are campuses that eventually get to where they are monitoring SpEd and LEP students, but not in Year One.  The reason for this is that you have to get front line, regular education teachers experiencing the success of improved adult practice before you will ever convince them that the root cause of student performance problems isn't the result of faulty kids.

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...

• Call Jo at (832) 477-LEAD to order your campus set of “The Fundamental 5: The Formula for Quality Instruction.” Individual copies available on Amazon.com!  http://tinyurl.com/Fundamental5
• Call Jo at (832) 477-LEAD to order your campus set of “Look at Me: A Cautionary School Leadership Tale” Individual copies available on Amazon.com!  http://tinyurl.com/lookatmebook 
• Now at the Apple App Store: Fun 5 Plans (Fundamental 5 Lesson Plan Tool); PW Lite (Basic PowerWalks Tool); PW Pro (Mid-level PowerWalks Tool) 
• Upcoming Presentations: The Fundamental 5 National Summit (Multiple Presentations); NASSP National Conference 
• Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation  and like Lead Your School on Facebook

A LYS Principal Shares... Our STAAR Results

An old school LYS Principal shares her STAAR results.

SC,

Happy to report that once again, the Foundation Trinity has proven itself to be the Alpha and Omega of school improvement methods.  Check out our results and the results of our two closest peer schools.  And to increase the degree of difficulty (which is how Brezina and Brown trained me) I’m just going to share the results of our low SES students.  After all, they provide the best indication of the health of our instructional machine.

STAAR EOC (Low SES Passing Rate)	Reading	Writing	Algebra 1	Geometry	Biology	World Geography
LYS Campus	78% (1st)	59% (1st)	89% (1st)	100% (1st)	92% (2nd)	89% (1st)
Non-LYS Peer 1	62%	50%	78%	100%	78%	85%
Non-LYS Peer 2	53%	39%	84%	100%	95%	75%

We still have work to do.  But right now I think it is safe to say that our plan is working.

SC Response

We couldn’t be prouder of you and your team.  These scores are the result of a lot of sweat equity. And this was without the Fundamental 5, which as we both know, means that performance was left on the table. With the training and support that your staff will receive this school year, your peers schools will be falling further behind before they even get started.

We can’t wait to begin work with your teachers in August.

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...

• Call Jo at (832) 477-LEAD to order your campus set of “The Fundamental 5: The Formula for Quality Instruction.” Individual copies available on Amazon.com!  http://tinyurl.com/Fundamental5
• Call Jo at (832) 477-LEAD to order your campus set of “Look at Me: A Cautionary School Leadership Tale” Individual copies available on Amazon.com!  http://tinyurl.com/lookatmebook 
• Now at the Apple App Store: Fun 5 Plans (Fundamental 5 Lesson Plan Tool); PW Lite (Basic PowerWalks Tool); PW Pro (Mid-level PowerWalks Tool) 
• Upcoming Presentations: Livingston ISD Leadership Team Kickoff, Channelview ISD Leadership Team Kickoff, Bushland ISD Staff Kickoff, Canadian ISD Staff Kickoff, Highland Park ISD Staff Kickoff, Sunray ISD Staff Kickoff, Region 10 ESC Fall Leadership Conference (Keynote), Advancing Improvement in Education Conference (Multiple Presentations), American Association of School Administrators Conference
• Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation

A Reader Asks... Maintaining the Course

A long time LYS’er asks:

SC ,

I am having some struggles getting my new principal on board with a few LYS strategies because they don't jive with AVID, which is her major push. I think AVID is great for college readiness for struggling and disadvantaged students but I do not think it addresses school improvement issues as a whole.

I can report that we have made some significant gains the over the past year, which has come with focused disaggregation and instructional targeting with C-SCOPE and test data. Unfortunately, we did not make enough gains to change our rating. How do I convince my new principal that we are on the right track?

SC Response

I would agree that AVID is not a holistic school improvement program. AVID would fall under the umbrella of instructional delivery / teacher craft. Or the “Art” of instruction. The initial and primary focus of LYS is the infrastructure of instructional machine. And as E. Don Brown constantly reminds us, it the infrastructure isn’t there, the “Art” will not save you.

But the good news is that AVID does focus on improving options for academically fragile students. Meaning that philosophically, LYS and AVID are in the same ballpark. I think that it should be fairly easy to demonstrate that the LYS practice of using the performance data of the AFS to leverage sustained campus is valid and prudent. There is nothing that compares to the clarity of measuring success by those who succeed because of you, not in spite of you.

P.S. Send me your current contact information, I’m often in your neck of the woods and want to stop by and see you in action.

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...

Call Jo at (832) 477-LEAD to order your campus set of “The Fundamental 5: The Formula for Quality Instruction.” Individual copies available on Amazon.com! http://tinyurl.com/4ydqd4t

Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation

Come visit us at the LYS Booth at the TASA/TASB Fall Conference on 9/30/11 and 10/1/11

Attend the LYS presentations at the Texas School Improvement Conference on 10/26/11 and 10/27/11

A Reader Writes... (Special Case Common Assessments)

In response to the 10/21/2010 post, “Special Case Common Assessments," one of the pioneer practitioners (and LYS Principal) writes:

SC,

You know I couldn’t let this one go. Have you mellowed? Where is the risk taking maverick that took no prisoners? I guess it’s up to me to give the person who asked the question the straight take.

Your top students taking advanced courses will probably be OK no matter what you do on common assessments. I assume from the scenario you presented that you are working in a junior high/middle school.

In my mind the important thing is to devise a method to collect true information (not just data) from the common assessments. This can be very tricky. I would give you the following recommendations:

1. Don’t fixate on 70 as a passing rate.

2. Use common assessments to close your achievement gap.

3. If you don’t know how, ask Cain for my personal e-mail address and I will give you the tools I have developed over the past 6 years to make sense out of common assessment data.

SC Response

Get out of my head, old man! The writer’s school is fast tracking through the learning (pain) curve. They are using 80 as their cut score and they are only tracking the academically fragile. Then they are doing “no BS” one page data analysis to back fill their deepest holes on the fly.

Some of them still have the “deer in the headlights” look, but for just one exception, the principals didn’t jump off the roof after the first assessment (remember that experience?). And even more promising, most of the teachers are trying hard to rise to the challenge.

If anyone asks for your e-mail, I’ll gladly pass it on. After talking to you, I’ll look like the nice and reasonable one. How often does that happen?

P.S.

If you are attending the Texas Charter School Conference on today look me up. At 3:45 pm, I’ll be presenting on the first steps of school improvement. The session title is, “Broke to Better.”

You can also catch me on the TEPSA Webinar on tomorrow at 11:00 AM (central time). The topic, “Effective Working Relationships: A Primer for Principals and Assistant Principals."

Follow the link below for more information.

http://www.tepsa.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=282

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...

A Reader Writes... (Latest School Rankings - Part 5)

In response to the post, "Brezina Writes... (Latest School Rankings - Part 4...", a reader writes:

“At our school, many teachers say that students are put in their classes to cause a teacher to fail. If that is a strategy that is being used, that is unprofessional and can only harm the entire school. It causes dissension among the teachers that have had this done to them to those whom have not had that done and creates an almost hostile environment toward those teachers and then those same teachers use the system to keep their jobs or to cause more harm to others. Then you have an administrator that has not used LYS to cause success and positive interactions. You just have bad management. When this type of system is in place it only causes a school to fail."

SC Response
First, let me say that I have never worked with a campus leader that has scheduled students in a class for the purpose of making a teacher fail. I have yet to meet a principal that is willing to write off a whole class of students just to run off a teacher. In fact, I find the opposite to be true. Almost every principal I have worked with does their best to make sure that student exposure to bad teachers is minimized and exposure to good teachers is maximized. That means that often the best teachers are assigned the toughest kids. What I remind principals is that when they do that, they have to keep the heat on the teachers that don’t have the tough kids, otherwise you are punishing competence and rewarding incompetence.

Now what I have seen is a principal move a teacher she doesn’t like to cover the ISS class. This earns my immediate scorn and displeasure. My belief is that my absolute best teacher (Hello, Coach Boyd) has to be my ISS teacher. After all, that is where my most academically fragile students congregate.

In regard to your campus, what you have to consider is who is doing the complaining. Is it the rookie teacher who has the toughest intro level classes? Or is it the tenured teacher who is asked to teach a tough section along with an advanced or honors section? Some teachers feel that they have “earned” the right to teach senior AP English, and then convince themselves that those classes are successful only due to their “master teacher” status.

If it is the latter, my advice is to do your best to ignore the chatter. They will eventually get happy when their students start to perform, or they won’t and they will leave. It will depend on what they value more, student success or adult comfort. On the student centered campus, in the long run, both options are acceptable.

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...

A Reader Writes... (Instructional Discussions - Part 5)

In response to the posts addressing, “Instructional Discussions,” a reader writes:

"I have yet to learn how to mandate excellence. Once you have a vision, like the LYS crew does, you have to find a way to achieve excellence. One way is to get buy-in. I have mixed feelings on buy-in. I am not against having it, but I am against spending too much time developing it. Why in education do we expect people to buy into the jobs they have been contracted and paid to do?

The other approach is to have measurable expectations and to hold people accountable. Identify the non-negotiable issues up front and do not falter. My advice is to use a combination. Get as much buy-in as you can as quickly as you can but don't fixate on it.

Warning: In terribly dysfunctional schools you are likely to get ZERO buy-in.

Once you have the buy-in you are going to get, set expectations and hold people accountable. How much time should you spend getting buy-in? Some say a year. I have never seen a high school where the students could spare a year. This is a balancing act that is part of the art of leadership, so there is no formula. Ideally I would work on buy-in and training over the summer and hit the ground running with expectations when school starts."

SC Response
Sounds like the voice of experience. You touch on two very important points. First, buy-in is over-rated and actually doesn’t mean anything. Tell me that I don’t have to come to work but you will still send me a paycheck and you have 100% of my buy-in. Everything beyond that point is simply a function of higher order economic metrics. Instead, I’m a believer in the “do / don’t do” proposition. “Do” and you live to fight another day, “don’t do” and rapidly become obsolete.

Second, as adults we have all the time in the world. Our students do not. And as the world get flatter and hungrier; every instructional second becomes even more precious.

Finally, define the success of your organization by the success of your most academically fragile students and you will not only quickly solve your “buy-in” issues, but you will also separate your campus and/or district from your demographic peers. You don't need to mandate excellence once you start out performing your neighbors.

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...

A Reader Writes... (Brezina's Rule Commentary)

In response to answer for the question concerning Brezina’s Rule, a reader writes:

“This was a brilliant analysis and spot on. I just did my first master schedule and all we (me, the other AP, and the Principal) talked about was how to strategically place the weak teachers where they would not do the most damage and how to give them the worst conference. At the end of the day we were still not satisfied because some of our lazy teachers got to "piggy-back" on lunch for their conference period and that burned our butts.

You are exactly right. We spew rhetoric about what is good for kids and we never live up to it. If we ever truly put kids first, oh what a day that will be. Our hypocrisy knows no bounds apparently.”

SC Response
The first step in solving a problem is being aware of a problem. The easiest thing for any of us to do is to fall into habits and routines. As a species, we are hard wired to do just that, for survival. So our problem is two-fold. 1 - We naturally fall into habits (to which we become blind). 2 - We have the innate need to promote our own self-interest.

Just to reach this level of understanding is difficult, It requires us to face some uncomfortable truths about who we really are and the real motivation for the things we do. Most people aren’t willing to do this. Fortunately, these same people generally do not become school leaders. School leadership does require an above average capacity for empathy and self-reflection. As the reader writes, “Our hypocrisy knows no bounds.” This is not the realization of someone who is unaware and does not care.

So, if you agree that there is a problem, the question becomes, "now what?" Here is the three step process for breaking the cycles that cause the problem.

1. Get an external coach to work with you and your system. Why an external coach? The external coach isn’t subject to your habits, routines, and biases. The external coach asks why you do things (you will be surprised how many times you answer, “I don’t know, that just what we do”). The external coach speeds up your learning curve. And the external coach stands in your blind spot, helping you address the things you can’t see.

2. Build a system that removes choice. There is an entire book I will one day write on this concept, because what you need is a flexible, adapting system that removes choice. But today you just get the short version. As humans, when we are given the choice between doing what is easy, vs. what is right, over time the majority of our picks are “easy.” We cannot help ourselves, it is basic human nature. So you have to build a system that removes the “easy” choice. The system has to present us with only one option, do what is right.

3. Focus on the most academically fragile students in the system. Most systems make victims on the most academically fragile students. Don’t believe me? Who teaches your weakest ninth grade math class? Is it your best math teacher? Who staffs your ISS classroom? Is it your best motivator? When you put the success of your most fragile students first, it forces you to make decisions that improve the overall system, whether you want to or not. Consider the scheduling example that the reader used. If you put your weakest English teacher in the 12th grade AP English class, you would quickly get parent complaints and central office heat. You would have to do something and do it quick. You would have to coach that teacher to success or you would need to fire the teacher. Welcome to system based, student centered leadership.

Think. Work. Achieve

Your turn...

An Interesting AP Quote

Here’s an interesting quote from Trevor Packer (Vice President for AP Programs – The College Board).

"When AP was only attracting self-taught students, it was okay for teachers to deliver traditional college lectures. But that's certainly not what teachers are saying is going to help them now."

This quote is interesting on multiple levels, but in this post I am only going to address three points

1. I take a significant amount of flack (I'm not complaining, I volunteered for my job) when I point out the quality of instruction is fairly uniform, regardless of setting. And the predictable result of this uniformity is that academically fragile students struggle with testing and students who are not academically fragile do okay with testing. The bottom line is that the perceived success of schools has more to do with the relative wealth of the zip codes served than the quality of the staff. The above Packer quote provides additional validation (for the masses) that this observation has merit.

2. Many veteran teachers jealously guard their “right” to teach upper level classes. Often this is because those classes are either easier to teach and/or the quality of the student overcomes the quality of the instruction. Essentially the teacher’s need for ego fulfillment and professional security are validated by the “false positives” that high SES students provide. The above Packer quote provides additional validation (for the masses) that this observation has merit.

3. The landscape is changing (not as fast as it could, but changing none the less). For a variety of reasons the doors of more rigorous classrooms are opening up for more and more students. This is forcing systems to respond in order to address this reality. This is a good thing. The above Packer quote provides additional validation (for the masses) that this observation has merit.

When I work with high SES campuses, if there are nay saying teachers (generally the very VETERAN teachers and/or the upper level teacher), they focus on one of the following two “facts.” Either I’m accused of not caring enough about teacher feelings, or I’m accused of not validating their prior “success” enough. All I can do, is state the following: This quote is from one of your own… "When AP was only attracting self-taught students, it was okay for teachers to deliver traditional college lectures.”

Now, let’s quit whining, so we can focus on improving.

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn…

A Reader Asks... (Brezina's Rule)

In regards to the Brezina related posts, a reader asks:

“Why is it so hard for school systems to understand the exact quote...'If it is not right for kids, it is wrong.’”

SC Response
This seemingly simple question has a very painful answer. The belief that schools are about students is a myth. Schools are really about adult convenience. Now before you get indignant, I will present three common (and near universal) proof points.

Proof Point #1: The master schedule. Master schedules are built for adults, not students. If master schedules were built for students, we would shuffle the schedule many times a year to address student needs. Instead, schedules are built to reward, punish and/or reduce the workload of adults. Ask anyone who worked for me and they will tell you that the schedule was a fluid instrument that changed at any time there was a compelling student need (this is also why all of my staff had at least two certifications).

Proof Point #2: Annual appraisals. Annual appraisals have next to no correlation to student improvement. Notice, I didn’t write student "performance"? Let me explain. Was the performance of your campus essentially the same as last year? Did you receive any “exceeds expectations” ratings on your annual appraisal? Why? If your system is about students, then the performance of the prior year is the new expectation. To exceed that expectation, you must significantly improve. Otherwise, I appreciate the effort and at best you met my expectation.

Proof Point #3: Teaching assignments. How are teaching assignments doled out on your campus? Let me take a wild guess. The most experienced teachers teach either the highest grade levels, and/or the most motivated (GT, Honors, AP, etc.) students. The rookie teachers teach the weakest students and the weak teachers are shuffled off to non-tested subjects. If your campus is about students, the best teachers teach the weakest students, always. I always put the best teacher I ever worked with (Coach John Boyd) with my most academically fragile students. ALL DAY LONG. And all he produced was successful students, semester after semester.

Being about students is hard work, everyday. Most people don’t want to work that hard. And if leadership does not commit to the concept, our most academically fragile students die a death of 1000 convenient cuts.

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn…

A Reader Writes... (A Fatal Flaw - Part 4)

In response to the post “A Fatal Flaw,” and the subsequent comments, a reader writes:

“I agree with Cain on the “Every Marine a Rifleman” concept. You can build an elite organization around just such a hedgehog concept. So the question for us as educators is, “What is our rifle?”

I have given it a lot of thought and I believe the answer is, “Instruction.”

If instruction is our rifle, then “Every Educator an Instructor,” works. You can substitute other words; I tried curriculum, teacher, leader, and others, but none of them captured the actual essence of our business like “instruction.”

Instruction is to an educator what a rifle is to a Marine. When push comes to shove, it is the skillful use of the rifle (and maybe the bayonet, for emphasis) where a Marine actually does the work of being a Marine. For us, it is the skill with instruction (no bayonet needed) where educators do the work of education.

For those who understand, there is no other military command that carries the absolute weight of “Fix Bayonets.” It rings loud and clear. It is elegant in its simplicity, and is an example of perfect communication. There can be no misunderstanding the intent of the leader. I wish we had an equivalent in our profession."

SC Response
Upon brief reflection, I think the closest we get to “Fix Bayonets” is “Focus on the Academically Fragile.”

If “Every Adult a Teacher,” and “Instruction is Our Rifle,” then the performance of our most academically fragile students is the best indicator of our skills and success.

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn…

A Reader Writes... (Innovation)

In response to the post, “People are Listening,” a reader writes:

“Your second point, ‘The needs of our academically fragile students fuel the drive to innovate.’

This point hit me like a ton of bricks. I have been a Brown guy for a while now. I have known SC personally, even longer. A simple truth is that the mother of all innovation is necessity; need is what truly drives invention. Knowing that; it has to follow that the NEEDS of education have to drive the innovation (invention) and we certainly know where the needs are.

Over the last 6 months, I have had conversations with two state senator staffers. The more we write and speak out, the better chance we have of making change. We are surrounded on all sides by long standing traditions and beliefs that are actually bad for kids. Our task is formidable, but failure will be disastrous for generations, and therefore, is unacceptable.

Examine your practices, and the practices of your school, and then determine if they truly meet the needs of your academically fragile kids. Or, are you and your staff simply following the traditions and practices that promote the needs of adults.”

SC Response
Obviously, I agree with the writer (as he mentions, we have worked together for a number of years). But, I think that it is important to point out that he is touching on the fact that there is a “Knowing-Doing” gap. A huge step in identifying and creating the need to innovate is to bridge the “Knowing-Doing” gap. It is one thing to know what we should do (I think that level of understanding is evident in about 50% of the educators in the field). It is quite another thing to commit to doing it. I hate to sound cynical, but I think that those who commit to aggressively bridging the gap represent less that 5% of active educators. A view has been confirmed in conversations with some of the “who’s who,” in education research and theory.

Here’s the rub, if you are not aggressively trying to reconcile daily practice and best practice, then you don’t know what you don’t know. And it’s the need to know what you don’t know, that positions you to create an innovation at the right time and in the right place.

Finally, the 5% statement seems insulting, but it’s not meant to be. It’s just the recognition that it’s easier to go along than to stand up and fight. A fight that many of you, the Lead Your School readers, are fighting every single day. That is one of the reasons why I started this blog. Because I am on your campuses, I see what you are trying to do. I see a cadre of loosely dispersed, motivated change agents. You see yourself stuck on an island with the masses entrenched and unwilling to change. It is my privilege to remind you that you are not alone, and though they may not thank you, your students and staff are better off because of you.

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your Turn…