In education, we use phrases like master teacher, mentor, or expert teacher to describe a professional educator who has developed a wide and effective repertoire of instructional practices and classroom strategies.  In a profession that doesn’t always feel like it is treated professionally, these are hard fought skills and deserved recognitions.  But they also feel dangerous.

Yes, it is important to recognize and celebrate instructional expertise.  As an administrator responsible for teaching and learning across a large school district, instructional skill is one of the most valuable and needed skill sets I look for in our pursuit of dynamic, engaging learning environments and experiences for our students.

Real learning, of course, happens as we develop conceptual understanding and develop skills that we didn’t have before.  When learning happens, it changes how and what we think.  Learning builds on and sometimes replaces previous knowledge.  It assumes the acquisition of something we did not know or could not do before.

While we may proclaim ourselves to be lifelong learners, the more accurate truth is that we can sometimes get comfortable in our “expertness.”  We take things for granted.  We may get defensive when new approaches emerge, or we may interpret new ideas as a threat to our tried and true practices.

The key to being a model learner is to stay humble and eagerly pursue opportunities to learn.  Here are a few strategies for embracing the need to model lifelong learning.

Structure Your Discomfort

Learning takes time and exposure to new ideas.  You need to deliberately structure time and experiences that will force you to learn new skills and consider new approaches.  In the context of school, you could volunteer to take on a new club, teach an elective you haven’t had before, or take on a leadership role.  Sometimes, you just have to ask for the opportunity to help.  Perhaps you are a secondary teacher who would like to understand how master schedules are built, or an elementary teacher who wants to support recruitment or fundraising efforts at the school.  Even little assignments can stretch you and build your skill set.

Of course I recognize that teaching every day takes a tremendous amount of energy, planning, and determination.  Sometimes we may be looking for ways to buffer ourselves from additional assignments as opposed to seeking them out.  Yet we know that learning requires we place ourselves in new situations and in novel contexts.  By the same token, sometimes teachers get pigeonholed into the same assignments year after year precisely because they are good at the task.  Deliberately mixing it up can go a long way to encourage new learning and rejuvenate your professional aspirations along the way.

Question & Reflect

Perhaps the most important practice in being a model learner is constantly submitting your own assumptions and practices to scrutiny and review.  When I was preparing to submit a portfolio application for National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) certification, I participated in a prep class where we were constantly prompted to ask the question, “I do (action), which causes students to (action), which impacts learning by (outcome)?”  This simple phrase challenged me deeply to constantly articulate my theory about how my teacher choices and actions were impacting student learning.  How do you know what you are doing has an impact on learning?  What data are you using to draw your conclusions?

I acknowledge we work in a profession where teachers constantly feel performance threat; there are dangers to being vulnerable or acknowledging gaps in performance.  Teachers work with a full range of administrators, whose own instructional expertise and reflective practices vary tremendously.  It can feel dangerous at times to acknowledge where we are struggling or need improvement.  Yet public opportunities for reflection and learning remain essential.

Get Into Classrooms

That may sound ironic, owing to the fact that you already spend the bulk of your professional life in a classroom.  The true irony is that in the course of a school year, you may be able to count on one hand the number of times you spent in the classroom of a colleague with the purpose of observing instructional practice and learning new skills.  There are few activities as insightful to your practice as watching others teach.  If you are lucky, you are at a school where practices like instructional rounds or lesson study are already in place and where you already have ample opportunity to get out of your classroom to observe others.  If not, then you may have to get creative on your own with a group of your colleagues.  I would argue that if you haven’t been in other classrooms in several months, it is urgent that you make arrangements and set aside time to learn from your colleagues – and not just via collaborative discussions.  You need to see teaching and learning happening in real time.

Earlier this semester, I found myself in a large high school auditorium.  Hundreds of middle school and upper elementary school students sat expectantly with their teammates, parents and siblings anxiously waiting further back.  A buzz of chatter filled the room, a tangible sense of anticipation in the air.

When the first chord of Also Spracht Zarathustra rang out from the auditorium speakers, the students burst into spontaneous and enthusiastic applause.  All eyes were on the front curtain.  As the music continued, the curtain slowly rose.  The deliberate coordination of music and stagecraft drew the crowd from excited applause to feverish delight.  The full exposure of the awards table on the stage was timed perfectly to coincide with the resolving chords of the music, and the auditorium burst into an ear thumping roar.

Hard to believe this level of excitement was for a Speech & Debate awards ceremony.

For the past 3 years, Santa Ana Unified has invested heavily in a Speech & Debate program that is becoming is the envy of the nation.  The defending middle school national champs call Santa Ana home.  We’ve recruited college level Speech & Debate champions from around the country to come coach our students after school and over the summer.  Surrounding schools district have been paying to get in on the tournament scene.  Virtually every intermediate and high school has a team, and many of our elementary schools are starting their own teams.  Sometimes it seems like there is a competition every weekend, be it a high school regional, a district semi-final, the elementary championships, or an annual trek to Harvard or nationals.  We even hosted the National Forensic Association competition back in April, with college students descending on Santa Ana from universities around the country to compete for the national championship. 

When I got to Santa Ana 4 years ago, Speech and Debate wasn’t really a thing.  We had a handful of small high school teams.  The local Kiwanis club approached district leadership with some interest in starting something more robust, and together recruited a local city councilman and educator Sal Tinajero who was coaching an award winning team up in Fullerton.  We poached Sal from our neighbors with the expectation of building a strong program in the district.  The initial budget was modest but there was an appetite to see the program grow with time.

It didn’t take long.

At first, building the program felt a little dangerous.  As can be the case in a large educational bureaucracy at times, there were rules to follow.  Sal came into my office on multiple occasions, panic on his face when it seemed an event reservation was going to be bumped, when a check for visiting tournament judges hadn’t been cut, or when we didn’t have a job description for college coaches coming to work with our students.  Sal always kept the faith, used some political muscle to elicit support when necessary, and steadily an idea became a full fledged success story.  Speech and debate now is part of our district identity.

The rise of Speech & Debate in Santa Ana reminds us all that transformational change can and does happen.  It reminds us that the recipe for dynamic opportunities for students requires a potent mix of political, financial, and organizational will power.  When those forces come together, transformation really can (and does) happen.

It’s hard to contain the joy of the last week of school.  Memorial Day weekend gives us a little taste of what is just around the corner.  Students are giddy.  Teachers even more so.  Energy and anticipation is high.  Celebration assemblies and awards ceremonies fill the calendar.  It’s hard not to break out in a broad smile.

Unless you are a principal.  Yes, you share in the enthusiasm.  You are likely to give out more congratulatory high fives, handshakes, and hugs in the final days of the year then at any other time of the year.  On many levels, watching your students finish out the year and prepare to transition for their next challenge is deeply satisfying.  It speaks to the reasons we became educators and administrators in the first place.  Graduation and promotion ceremonies are major rites of passage, and our communities build tremendous meaning and celebration around these traditions.

But the end of year experience can be deeply bittersweet as a principal.

First off, the end of school year is when your logistical skills are most clearly on display and open to scrutiny. Families, community partners, district officials and board members are all in attendance.  You are pulling off a series of highly visible and well attended events, from awards ceremonies and celebration breakfasts to the granddaddy graduation ceremony itself.  On the surface you are all smiles, but underneath is a simmering anxiety that you combat by trusting your support team and investing in good planning and lots of practice.    

Even more difficult, and rarely seen by others, are the extremely difficult conversations with students (and their families) who have not met graduation requirements.  At least for me, this is one of the most difficult parts of the job as a secondary administrator.  It is extremely difficult to watch students and their families as they wrestle with the consequences of unmet expectations.  To further the agony, these situations typically highlight gaps in your systems of support and communication as a school.  Parents and students under threat of exclusion from end of year festivities are extremely good at pointing out where you and members of your team have fallen short.  Yes, the student does bear responsibility for failing to meet the standard for graduation, but so too do you as the leader of a system that has similarly failed the student.

In the end, the exuberance of graduation will triumph.  It is virtually impossible not to share in the authentic joy of the moment.   Yet for a student-centered school leader, the end of the school year is often punctuated with difficult decisions and moments of deep disappointment.