Podcast for Leaderful Schools

Podcast for Leaderful Schools has had a series of conversations with influential people talking about how schooling has been affected by the pandemic, how we're coping with it, and how we hope to be coming out of it. Today's guest is Dr. William Pearson, Director of the Office of Partnership Districts in the Michigan Department of Education (M.D.E.). The Michigan Department of Education is the state’s administrative office that supervises education across the state.

Dr. Pearson proudly continues a family tradition as educators. To achieve his goal of becoming a superintendent, Dr. Pearson ensured he had both teaching and administrative experience at the elementary and secondary level. His career continued as Assistant Superintendent for Instruction in South Lyon and then superintendent there for 20 years. “I left South Lyon, actually retired but still kept on being a superintendent. The best move I ever made was to accept a position in Mount Clemens, in Macomb County, for two years where I was able to work with a high poverty district and we made some marked turnaround efforts. I was a superintendent at St. John's for a little bit, and then I worked for Munetrix, which is a data analytics company for a few months.” He had a chance conversation with Sheila Alles, who was Interim State Superintendent at the time, and offered to help out high poverty districts, resulting in his current position as Director of the Office of Partnership Schools for M.D.E. “When I was hired in December of 2018, I was also named the State School Reform Officer. There was only one in the State and the Legislature removed that position, so I remained the Director of Partnership Districts, and we currently are working with 26 districts around the state and 98 schools.”

Dr. Pearson provided historic context for his position. “In 2017-2018 Dr. Whiston, the previous state superintendent, decided that instead of trying to close schools, a new concept called partnership districts would be formed where M.D.E. would work with a district that had schools or a private school with a score in the bottom 5% of schools in Michigan. They began to have index scores from zero to 100 points that you would attain. Schools are identified based on their growth and proficiency rates which are 63% of the index score, with additional percentages added for English learner progress, graduation rate, and school quality and student success. Other categories which add percentages to the score are: K-8 access to media specialists, K-8 access to arts and P.E., the number of advanced classes for students in high school, and the post-secondary enrollment in some type of university or some type of college. All those percentages and numbers are input and the bottom 5% of the schools become C.S.I. (Comprehensive Support and Improvement). Once labeled C.S.I. you qualify to become a partnership school that includes P.S.A (Private School Academies), or a partnership district (with several C.S.I. schools). With approximately 830 districts in the state of Michigan at the current time, we have 26 districts with a partnership agreement and 98 schools.”

“The agreements are supposed to be three years in length. Within the partnership agreement there are benchmarks to attain in 18 months, which is halfway through the agreement, and there are three year goals to meet. There are goals that are based on proficiency or growth and benchmarks, and there are goals that are based on what percent you want to decrease the number of kids chronically absent for example, or what systems you need to put in place in your districts or what type of school improvement planning needs to be put in place to help a district become better equipped to meet the needs of students and get out of the bottom 5%. With COVID, the U.S. Department of Education gave us two years of accountability waivers which extended the partnership agreements to four or five years, depending upon if they started in 2017 or 2018. This spring everybody believes there won't be any more waivers and the students are going to be assessed in M-STEP and S.A.T., so we will identify new schools this fall for round four. We'll have new schools and new districts that we will be working with new three-year partnership agreements.”

Dr. Pearson noted, “There will be some schools and districts that will be re-identified and we're putting a new system in place with more intense support. A liaison from our office is assigned to that district to work closely with the district on systems that they need to put in place, interpreting data, changing systems for providing technical assistance. The state budget has awarded the Office of Partnership Districts $6 million each year that we approve and disseminate to districts, based on their needs and their plans to use the money. In terms of support, there's money involved and we have a liaison that works specifically with them. There are other offices within the Michig...

Dr. David Dulio, Professor of Political Science at Oakland University and Director of the Center for Civic Engagement, is often asked by local and state media to comment on how to best address contentious issues and work through community concerns. In this podcast, he provides perspective to the polarized political environment, explains how government representatives at all levels define their roles relative to the salience of the issue to their constituents, and recommends to school leaders the three behaviors that build trust with constituents. He advises increased transparency in process and information when responding to a potentially divisive educational issue.

Dr. Dulio offers insight into the origin of the Center for Civic Engagement. “I arrived at Oakland University in 2002 from Washington D.C., where I did graduate work at American University and worked on Capitol Hill for about a year as a Congressional Fellow, through a fellowship program with the American Political Science Association. When I was a graduate student I watched my mentor, James Thurber, at American University create the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies, bringing people together to talk about important issues. When I got to Oakland University I continued on the trajectory of a normal academic, but always had in the back of my mind that I’d like to start something like that. Fast forward 15 years, the idea of a Center on Civic Engagement fit with the University’s strategic goal and mission. What really drove the creation of the Center which launched in 2018 was recognizing that people don't know much about how their government system works in the United States, and more importantly, the clear indication and evidence that Americans can't talk to each other anymore. ”

“Polarization is one of the buzzwords today and the use of it is becoming greater, when in fact divisions in American politics are nothing new. Take the example of presidential job approval and we can see major division in terms of how people view presidents as far back as the 1960's; even John Kennedy saw some great polarization during his presidency. A lot of people think that it's just Trump that created this great divide in how people view the president. Certainly, Trump was polarizing and was someone who saw very divergent views of his job as president. Towards the end of his time in office, only 7% of Democrats had a favorable view of his job approval, whereas about 85% of Republicans did. And that might seem jarring, however, at the end of Barack Obama's time in office; he was only in the low teens in job approval among Republicans and had over 90% job approval from Democrats. The one time we see some more general agreements about the job the president's doing was Jimmy Carter, who had low approval ratings from everybody. When the president's doing well among one group of partisans, it’s not often that we see him doing well among the other group of partisans. A more important point is that disagreement, that divergence is long-lasting.”

“Polarization in terms of schools occurs because it's become a salient issue. Some data from Gallup at the end of last year showed nationally only 1% of Americans mentioned education as the most important issue the country was facing. As folks think about masking in schools, vaccine requirements, the school board issues, maybe it bubbles up a little more. However when that issue becomes very, very salient and when it becomes relevant to their lives in a very pointed way, it becomes a huge issue. Whether parents should have a say in what children learn in school galvanized and crystallized the issue of education for a lot of Virginians. It changed that gubernatorial race between Terry McAuliffe (D) and Glenn Youngkin (R), and it changed policymaking in Virginia in a lot of ways.”

How does this apply to local schools and school boards? Dr. Dulio explained, “Every school district is an elected government and school boards are the governmental entity representing the people. There are two dominant models for how people perceive their job as representatives. One is the delegate model of representation, where somebody who is a representative acts as if his or her constituents are present. The constituents are simply delegating the authority to cast a vote or make a decision, rather than empowering the representative to do something other than what the constituents want. The second model is the trustee model, where the representative may listen to constituents’ views, but they will use their own talents, opinions, competencies, beliefs, to decide what to do and how to vote. Whether we have a delegate or representative model depends upon the individual representative and how they see their job; the issue; and here is where we get back to the issue of education, the context surrounding the issue; and how important it is to the constituents. How important or how relevant it is at the time will...

Dr. Bob Maxfield and Dr. Suzanne Klein welcome Jay Westover, Chief Learning Officer at Innovate Ed and author of Districts on the Move, the subject of a multi-session book study conducted with educational leaders in southeast Michigan, sponsored by the Galileo Institute at Oakland University.

Jay Westover’s educational background followed a similar pattern to most administrators: classroom teacher, assistant principal, and principal. “I was lucky enough in my first principalship to meet Rick DuFour with whom I became good friends. My career continued at the district office and then in California, the County Office focusing on leadership development; keeping that idea of how we improve schools from Rick's DuFour’s vantage point. In about 2000, I noticed that most of the school improvement work wasn't sustainable, so I left my job and started InnovateEd, and was lucky enough to find another mentor, Michael Fullan, about 2013. The book, Districts on the Move, was something that emanated from working in partnership with Michael, and what we found was how to make coherence happen in action.”

“The idea of coherence or systems thinking is really using collaborative inquiry, which is how you seek out solutions in a way in which you really don't know an answer, to shape that coherent path of improvement. The key has to be district leaders with principals and teachers working together to find solutions, not only for their schools but for their district.”

“We found there are four key drivers that connect Fullan's work on coherence. The first key driver is clarity of focus. Using the analogy of a pendulum scale to determine the weight of a rock using pebbles, you need to work together to calculate it, work together to figure out how to move it, and keep working at it. So how do we work collaboratively to create movement or have an impact? The second driver, shared leadership, requires a very strong communication and collaboration model in order to share the vision and priorities to take action. The third driver is the idea of collective expertise or collaborative inquiry, but I think of it as more like improvement cycles. You know you can go all the way back to Bryk’s work, thinking about a short cycle of four to six weeks of inquiry; what's the problem, what's the solution, let's figure it out, what have we learned, and how do we keep moving in an agile manner? And that last driver which I think is most important, you have to have a feedback loop. If you want continuous improvement maybe every six to nine weeks, you have to come back together and as a system figure out: what's working, what's not working, and how you overcome problems of practice? I would say if you want to build coherence and be a systems thinker, you have to be very intentional in how you transform climate, shape culture, and build capacity to create coherence, and the end game has to be equity. That's got to be in the forefront and it's got to be your long-term focus.”

Jay Westover observed, “a lot of times in school districts, schools are doing good work in isolation and not necessarily in partnership with each other or with district leaders. We have to move away from an isolated model of schools improving by themselves into more of a network structure. I think that concept probably goes back to the idea of a community of practice. So if a district has nine schools they may be grouped into three groups of three, to work together on a problem of practice with a district liaison supporting them. Then they come back together throughout the year to learn across functionally.”

To establish communities of practice within and across districts, “we have to be open to partner and establish broader networks among school districts, especially if there’re areas which we all feel are important. We call that big idea collective impact; how you collectively try to find impact versus individually? If we can create that internal network of the districts, we can really accelerate change and improvements. I've talked to superintendents that said that they feel they've accelerated for example, math improvement by three to four years just by co-learning with others that might be already ahead of them.” When responding to overcoming individual school identity,the difference in talent distribution, and competition between schools and districts, Jay Westover clarified “part of that comes down to what's the purpose? Simon Sinek, we know The Golden Circle, talks about ‘the Why, the How and the What’. I think what you may have described is ‘the What’, where we feel good about our outcomes, about certain practices, but that moral imperative happens to be student equity or equitable growth. So some of those successful districts aren't seeing equal gains for all kids and John Hattie really pushes that idea. If we can find common ground which is how do we achieve equitable growth in student learning, then it becomes an i...

Vicki Wilson, the principal of the Monroe Elementary School in the Wyandotte, Michigan School District, and author of Lead with Instructional Rounds: Creating a Culture of Professional Learning, shares her views on why and how and when you use instructional rounds to both create a culture for learning, as well as support the teachers' learning.

Vicki Wilson recounted some of the experiences that shaped her approach as a school administrator and very passionate advocate for learning for both children and adults. As a fourth grade teacher, “I wasn't expecting the depth of the relationship that I had with students as individuals, but also that you have just with your class as a whole and the community that you build and the culture that you build. So that was the first thing that shaped me, is that realizing that it's so much more than sharing content with kids so that they learn it but it is about community and culture and family and getting to know each other."

The second experience Vicki Wilson recalled was as a principal in a school where she had been working previously. She visited the classrooms of teachers she knew and with whom she had taught and using a wider lens, “I realized that as I went into everybody's classroom I saw strengths that I did not know that they had and that changed me and shaped me dramatically. And I started to think about how can we leverage these strengths that are in classrooms.”

Moving beyond her walls and community and becoming an educational leader was the third experience that came later in her career as a principal. She became more connected, "reaching out beyond her district and joining the Michigan Elementary and Middle School Principals’ Association (MEMSPA) state association and building a professional learning network, getting active on Twitter and eventually writing a book."

The instructional rounds approach that staff took at Monroe Elementary School was to examine different research and best practices. “The research out of Harvard supporting ten minute visits with reflection and debriefing was a structure that felt good to us. We also like the work that Marzano discusses to be reflective educators, using the opportunities to observe colleagues to reflect on the practices you have in your classroom and think about them. Are you getting the impact that you want out of the class, out of those techniques that you're learning? Lastly we just wanted to strengthen our culture, so we looked at the research out of Gallup about strength-based employee feedback and how that contributes to greater gains. So, we made sure that we were very positive in the way we go about instructional rounds, and we talk about the positive impact that we're seeing with our kids.”

“We define it like this: instructional rounds is a process for educators, in small collaborative groups, to observe their colleagues teaching while reflecting on their own practices, followed by dialogue about the effective instruction and the impact on learning. I do believe that when adults learn more, students learn more also, and that was one piece that was really important. Are we growing ourselves as adults and knowing that there are strengths in all these other classrooms, how can we take that opportunity to do that? I don't believe we learn to our potential when we're in isolation as teachers, so how do we break down that isolation so that we can learn more?”

“To create a culture for learning for students and the adults in the school, it has to be safe for the adults to jump in and do it. You’ve got to put so much into the safety piece so that everyone can apply and compare and reflect and learn and process. It's really important for the leader to be involved in this work whether the leader's the facilitator or not. The principal needs to participate in the professional learning with their teachers and that in itself has an effect size of point eight four.“

“Teachers going on the rounds are in a deep reflective mind. They're walking in, they're observing, they're thinking about what they do with their students, and they're looking at what this person's doing. They're thinking about what we've learned about for best practices, rigor, and student success. As facilitator, my job is to step out with this group of teachers to talk about teaching and learning. I pose two strong reflective questions that will create some dialogue and discussion around the best practices we saw, the way the teacher executed it, that work that was positive and the impact that was having on the students. The teacher whose classroom we observed will get their feedback later.Upon completion of the rounds the staff that observed classrooms will write a note card to each of the teachers that we visited that validates a practice that they used with some very specific positive details and what we took away from it. The host teachers will receive five-six note cards in their mailbox tha...

Dr. Robert Maxfield and Dr. Suzanne Klein welcome their guest Dr. Mag Gardner, Senior Global Capacity Building Facilitator for New Pedagogies for Deep Learning and the featured speaker at the fall EdCON22, hosted by the Galileo Institute. Her background experience includes: secondary school teacher, principal, superintendent, and work at the Ministry in different settings around Ontario, and a little bit of work in England. Dr. Gardner noted, “Probably the most profound experience I had was leading deep learning in one of the districts in Ontario. It was such a magical experience that I've been able to join the global team of New Pedagogies for Deep Learning (N.P.D.L.) and help to generate the enthusiasm and the work around the world.”

Reflecting upon the impact of the pandemic, Dr. Klein referenced one of the N.P.D.L. papers entitled, “Defying Pandemic Gravity”. Dr. Gardner explained, “The pandemic presented some daunting complexities that are still constraining our schools and the pandemic made it really difficult to build capacity and advance learning for both kids and for staff...we asked ourselves, how can we support staff, so they can refocus that precious energy on student learning, and what was it that educators needed to jump start deep learning. So, our suggestion was really simple: to focus on the needs of staff, to build learning, capacity and culture in small deliberate moves.”

“The key words in that paper were all verbs like: dignify, gratify, simplify, clarify, amplify, and it just speaks to our own bias at N.P.D.L. (New Pedagogies for Deep Learning) where we have a bias towards action. So, for us, doing nothing was not an option. We advocated for just inching forward and investing in relationships and looking for the good that was all around us, knowing that change happens in those small micro moments. You know those little gestures, the small tweaks, the tiny moves like the moments of courage and love that snowball into life informing significance. And so really, that's what that paper was all about.”

Dr. Gardner encourages educators "to think six and four, which partners the six global competencies: character, citizenship, collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking, with the four elements of learning design: learning partnerships, pedagogical practices, learning environment and leveraging digital. The four elements provide a simple framework, where teachers can return to designing learning that's responsive to the students’ strengths and their needs and their interests, and that stimulates students, minds and their hearts. So when we look at the four elements: learning partnerships, learning environments, leveraging digital, pedagogical practices, we're talking about well-known strategies that engage learners and also stimulate thinking.”

Learning partnerships

“How we create partnerships between and among students, relationships with teachers, with families and with the wider community. There's so much knowledge that a teacher can't be expected to know everything, but should be invited to draw in lots of expertise within the classroom, inviting student voice and their perspective. Students’ rich and robust experiences can contribute to the whole learning opportunity. This is really about relationships, relationships, relationships when we're talking about learning partnerships.”

Learning environments

“We're talking about the third teacher (the physical environment) and creating lots of flexible, inviting, welcoming spaces, but what do we do with the culture, that invisible environment? How does it foster that sense of safety and the sense of belonging? Do students feel as though they are significant, that their presence and their involvement in the class matters? What we're talking about is the learning environment, the physical space; it’s that learning community, that climate and culture that enables students to flourish.”

Leveraging digital

“How do we leverage digital so it accelerates our knowledge and our understanding? Is there a way of using digital to go beyond those classroom walls and cultivate opportunities for collaboration and for creativity? Digital needs to be an accelerator, generating something new in the classroom; learning that couldn't be created without it.”

Pedagogical practices

“Teachers have well proven pedagogical practices to engage students, to really tap those six global competencies. It's important to acknowledge that there is good work happening everywhere. We're not asking teachers to throw all those good practices away, but rather think about how those other three elements can be incorporated into pedagogical practices to amplify innovation and to bring learning to a whole new level, and think about what's one next thing that they could do to move towards a much more fulfilling deep learning fram...