Students choose their own path!

Students work at their own pace!

These are both aspirational statements associated with competency-based learning. The idea is that in a true personalized learning environment, students have the agency to both decide what they study and the pace at which they study it.    

These statements help capture the student-centered vision at the heart competency-based learning.  But they can also be problematic.  Such statements suggest that the correlation between student agency and learning outcomes has no limitations or diminishing returns.  In other words, more student agency always equals more learning.  I don’t entirely subscribe to that belief.  Yes, there are experimental schools like Sudbury Valley and other “democracy schools” that are testing these beliefs at the extreme.  Most classrooms, however, do face very real constrains on both the path and pace of student learning.  Publically adopted standards, graduation requirements, and standardized assessments all mediate the relative freedom of teachers and students to chart their own path.

A couple years ago, I made the journey up to Lindsay Unified in Central California.  Despite its relatively small size, Lindsay has a well-known reputation as the school district that did away with grades in favor of a competency-based model.  Lindsay provides a fascinating study in the power of leadership longetivity and vision to transform a traditional school system.  They’ve been at it for a long time.

Some of the “old-timer” staff who had been there awhile told me that in the early days of the transformation, there was a lot of proselytizing about creating a learning environment where students could exercise broad control over both the path and pace of learning.   Certainly, some students thrived, pushing themselves to accelerate learning and master content.  Others, however, struggled to find their footing, falling behind what would be considered typical grade level work.  The idea of students moving at their own pace is a little less appealing when the pace of learning slows – sometimes dramatically.

Over time, a different motto has emerged in Lindsay: “teacher pace or faster.”  It’s a statement that brings the adults into the conversation as a source of high expectations for student learning.  It’s recognizes that some young people can greatly benefit from thoughtful structure and encouragement.  While it may be controversial to spoil what some consider the purity of student agency, in practice, I’ve found that adult educators play an essential role in supporting high levels of student learning.

At Advanced Learning Academy in Santa Ana, I recently saw firsthand what “teacher pace or faster” looks like.  In middle grade math class, the teacher launches each day with a mini-lesson focusing on a new skill that is on pace with grade level standards.  Once completed, students are free to move to application and practice problems that match their own level of competency.  Over 50% of the class is moving at the teacher’s pace, relying on the daily mini-lesson and correlated activities.  Other students, however, accelerate forward, and use the mini-lesson as a brief review time as they work ahead of the teacher pace. The carefully curated system of assessments allows students to test their learning wherever they find themselves within the curriculum – with meaningful feedback on performance.

Some students in the class have accelerated to the point that the teacher recommends them to move up to the next competency level – a different class.  Unlike missing an entire set of skills as can often be the case for students who skip a class, students in a true competency-based learning environment have had the opportunity to accelerate through the requisite skills at each level.

I often tell school leaders that the holy grail of their leadership is instructional improvement at the classroom level.  While great classroom instruction is indisputably the defining element of a high performing school, focusing on instruction can be quite hard to do and doesn’t always get you a lot of leadership capital with external stakeholders.  It isn’t flashy.    Building a teacher’s repertoire of instructional strategies – mastering quality think-pair-shares, or socratic seminars, or nailing a strong opening to class each day – can be hard to see and systematically measure.  It’s the technical core of the profession, and yet teachers themselves sometimes struggle to articulate their go-to instructional moves.  People get excited when a school offers a new club, elective, or sports program.  Those are easy to describe and market.  There is much less fanfare when a teacher masters a new instructional strategy.

That’s why we’re launching the Instructional Leadership Cycle.  The idea is to create clear focus on our work as instructional leaders.  We want to protect space to ensure that instructional improvement is the main course on our menu of focus areas as instructional leaders.  Here are a few of the key components of the cycle:

Key Performance Indicators

     We call them KPIs for short.  Our KPIs tell us what is important in terms of improvement.  You can’t improve everything all at once, you have to focus, and the KPIs reflect the areas of focus over the course of the school year.  

     The KPI also refers to a moment in time – a formative assessment  – when we pause to measure our progress.  We engage in two formal KPI visits during the school year, when a district team visits schools to discuss progress and engage in problem solving protocols – we call them consultancies – that address Problems of Practice you are facing with regards to the implementation of your improvement agenda.  

    The Principal Summit

    The principal summit is the public face of instructional improvement for the school, and formally launches the cycle.  The view from the summit captures the school leader’s vision for his or her school, and lays out strategic improvement plans to address the focus areas outlined in the KPIs.  It is a prime opportunity to practice and refine how the school leader talks about the school and focused efforts to improve.  The summit is a high level overview – what is the school focused on improving, why has the school chosen those areas of improvement, and what is the plan to make it happen? 

   Instructional Leadership Meetings

     A monthly Instructional Leadership Meeting is designed to rigorously focus on enhancing the instructional leadership capacity of certificated administrators.  As we engage in the Instructional Leadership Cycle, this monthly meeting becomes the space where we learn together, build our collective capacity to lead, and diagnose implementation challenges.  The meetings are designed to be fun and engaging, providing participants with protected time to reflect on their leadership, plan future action, collaborate with colleagues, and celebrate successes together.  

   The KPI Visit

The KPI visit occurs twice during the school year.  The visit is facilitated by a KPI lead from our district office in partnership with the school principal.  The visits are designed to last approximately 2 hours at the site.  The primary components of the visit are as follows:

• Self Reflection & Data Gathering – prior to the day of the visit, the Instructional Leadership Team (ILT) at the school completes a self-reflection and fill out the KPI data rubric.  For any quantitative measures, we provide a data dashboard where teams can access data.  At the request of the ILT, KPI leads can work with the team when questions arise with regards to the status of KPIs.

• Data Review – the first 45 minutes of the visit are dedicated to a data chat using the KPI data rubric that has been completed by the ILT.  The team collaboratively reflects on areas strength and potential areas of improvement in terms of KPI progress. 

• Consultancy Protocol – for the next 45 minutes, the team engages in a consultancy protocol designed to help the ILT think through a problem of practice related to their improvement work.  In general terms, the ILT shares a challenge they are facing, and the visiting team engages in a diagnostic brainstorming session to explore root causes and potential strategies to address the concerns.
  

• Classroom Visits – for the final 30 minutes, the KPI team walks the campus and classrooms as an opportunity to learn more and interact more broadly with the school, and see firsthand the improvement work happening in classrooms.
  

     Instructional Rounds

     In a rounds visit, we take Problems of Practice to the classroom level.  Using a rigorous observation and discussion protocol, we have the opportunity to gain insight into what is happening across the school in terms of a specific area of instructional focus.  The visit not only builds up to recommendations based on actual classroom observations, but has the potential to build coherency and momentum around focus improvement areas.

As I was walking into a classroom yesterday at #Círculos@ALA, the power went out.  That’s exactly what a teacher loves – power outtages.  Throw into the mix over 30 middle school students.   On Friday.  Just before Labor Day weekend.

To top it off, in walks me, the assistant superintendent for teaching and learning.  This is exactly how a teacher wants to spend a Friday.

The teacher in question happens to be one of our most talented competency-based teachers and thinkers in the district, and perhaps on the planet.  I’ll leave her identify anonymous until she reads this and gives me permission for the big reveal.  In fact, I was just sitting in a vendor demo yesterday, looking at a system of competency-based assessments and feedback built by a large ed tech company and thought to myself…this (insert amazing teacher) has already built that.  On her own.  In her spare time when she isn’t teaching.

In any case, I’m always amazed when a teacher has built such a culture in his or her classroom that the learning just keeps moving forward.  Students know what to do.  Power outtage?  No problem.

I walked a few doors down.  Same thing.  The teacher’s original plan involved a digital presentation.  Power outage.  Throw that plan out the window.  Okay, circle up for some academic dialogue.  While we might be known for our blended learning and competency based systems, we certainly know how to go old school.

As I was finishing my master’s program in school leadership, I started interviewing with schools around the country looking for the right opportunity to try my luck as a principal.  I made it into the district principal pool in New York City and Houston, Texas.  I applied to districts across the southwest, and was offered jobs in Boston, San Francisco, and my home town of Mesa, Arizona.  I’m not sure how many interviews I had that spring, but one of them has been seared into my mind.

It was a first round interview for a handful of turnaround schools in Tucson, Arizona.  To be honest, Tucson was not on the top of my list.  Mostly, my wife wasn’t keen on desert living if we weren’t close to family.  Yet the conditions of employment intrigued me.  The student population of predominately first and second generation Mexican immigrants, many of whom were English Learners, matched precisely the type of students and families where I felt my experience and contributions would be most useful.  Plus, the superintendent was launching an ambitious effort to turnaround some of the district’s most challenged schools.  It was a mix of conditions that was compelling for my particular vision for moving public schools forward.

Getting the interview with Tucson Unified was somewhat lucky in the first place.  I had applied but was initially screened out.  The reason for my exclusion from the interview phase was a lack of total years in education.  Never one to take no for an answer, I shot off an email to the superintendent, firmly but politely asserting my qualifications and preparedness for the challenge.  I got a call back shortly thereafter inviting me to interview.

By all measures, the interview was a success.  Eventually I was even offered a position, albeit for an Assistant Principalship at the school that I felt least matched my skills and interests.  I was only given 24 hours to decide in order to meet the board deadline, and ultimately I declined.  It was a learning experience to be sure, one of just many such learning experiences working with hiring timelines and public school boards.

The interview panels were well constructed – with a genuine mix of staff, parents, community partners, and even students.  They allowed me some time at the end to ask my own questions.  For many interviewees, these are seen as throw away questions – a last chance to reassert major talking points and politely conclude.  In fact, a mentor recently told me that I blew an interview precisely because I asked too probing of questions at the end of my interview.  In any case, I had some questions for Tucson Unified.  Why is this school a turnaround school?  Where had the previous administrators gone wrong?

The answers from the panel members stay with me.

The dismissed admin team, I was told, consisted of good people.  Well-intentioned.  In some cases, even well-liked.  But they didn’t move the school.  They got comfortable.  They knew how to run a school.  But they were too content maintaining the status quo.    

In other words, they were competent but not transformative.

When the interview concluded, I couldn’t get these recently unemployed administrators out of my mind.  I couldn’t shake the years of service that they gave their schools, only in the end to be dismissed as well-intentioned people who did little to improve outcomes for students.  I tried to imagine myself in their shoes – what mental rationalization would I employ to convince myself that I had been successful?  How might I avoid an internal verdict of leadership failure?  Or would I reject the analysis of my tenure out of hand?  Would I refuse to see what so many others saw – a well-meaning professional who was essentially going through the motions with no measurable impact?  I thought about the long days these people gave to their schools.  I can only assume that they went about the work as honestly as they could.

And yet it wasn’t enough.

That interview stays with me.  It helps me to never confuse long days with effectiveness.  It helps me to never believe my own hype.  It helps me walk with the assumption that I’m focusing too much on temporary fires and not enough on the systems of performance and accountability that will shape the system in much more profound ways.  It keeps me humble.

Truth be told, leadership is not comfortable.  We can’t expect to transform a system we are doing everything possible to conform ourselves to.  We please too many people at our own risk.  Of course there is the opposite, turning up the heat higher than the system can handle, and getting ourselves marginalized or rejected in the process.  That’s not achieving our end goal of system transformation either.  But even as we pace ourselves, we have to continually question whether we are pushing hard enough and holding high enough expectations.  Riding that edge will likely be dangerous, but essential nonetheless to ensure that we getting enough traction to make a measurable difference.

“Sometimes you have to go slow to go fast.”  That’s one of those oft-quoted phrases that I genuinely don’t like.  Yes, perhaps sometimes progress can be slow, and yes, perhaps sometimes slow can be strategic and purposeful.  But I am one of those people who wants to see consistent, steady progress, and I want to see that progress as quickly as possible without sacrificing quality.

When we were formally awarded an XQ Super School grant last summer, I had a very ambitious vision for how things were going to unfold.  I already had it worked out in my head.  We would formally announce in August, by September we’d have a fiscal sponsorship agreement in place, by October we would have everyone hired and by the close of the first semester we would be rolling.

That’s not exactly how it turned out.  It would be easy to assume that the slower than hoped for pace was a function of working within a large bureaucratic organization.  That would only be a part of the truth.  Part of the learning curve when pursuing innovation in education – and perhaps especially so in the context of a public school district – is understanding how to engage and adapt the system.  It’s easy to throw your hands up and blame the “system.”  What people sometimes forget is that how we educate our children is contested space.  There are lots of opinions about the best way to teach our children.  The layers of state and federal law, local control, community and parent advocacy, non-profit investment, political interests and private industry, all push on the space we call public education.  No matter the vessel we ultimately deem appropriate for public education, the myriad opinions and interests don’t magically sort themselves out.  They just push on the new system.  Educational governance is messy business.

As I look back at the past year, an interesting narrative starts to emerge.  While we struggled to put together the big pieces – the funding mechanisms, hiring, and systems structures, a much more quiet revolution was taking place.   With virtually nothing more than vision and determination, we had three pilot sites that pushed forward the core innovations of Círculos at the student level.  We had classrooms where teachers brought students daily into a circle to discuss the challenges and goals of the learning day.  We saw students engaged in flexible learning environments, accelerating their learning pace and exploring increased ownership of their learning.  Of course seeing students engaged in these practices meant that we had teachers – curators of learning experiences – practicing and implementing new instructional practices and competencies designed to increase student engagement and authentic connection.

Perhaps most ambitious of all were the place-based learning projects.  We launched a set of remarkable partnerships with marquee partner organizations, the Heritage Museum of Orange County and the Segerstrom Center for the Arts.  Our Círculos @ Advanced Learning Academy students spent two days a week at the Heritage Museum.  I knew something special was happening when in May I stood and watched our 9^th graders lead 90 minute museum tours, dressed in period clothing, for a couple bus loads of visiting  elementary school students.  That feeling repeated itself when our Círculos @ Chavez students unveiled their installation artwork on the Segerstrom Center for the Arts campus.  The students envisioned and then constructed an immersive multi-media art installation that represented their unique perspective on what it means to activicate a community space through the arts.  The vision of Círculos has always been to enhance our students’ access to social capital – to facilitate entry to relationships and institutions that might otherwise feel inaccessible to our students.  These culminating moments belied the daily   planning and work that is required to make that access a reality.

Last week, we stood in a circle with students, staff, and aspiring candidates to join the Círculos staff.  We discussed the history of our shared journey, the core values that drive us forward, and the core innovations that define the program.  Integrating students into the interview protocol was a first for the district.  Closing the experience with expressions of gratitude as a team was a similarly strange sight for an interview day.   These were practices informed by our Círculos values, helping our system rethink what is possible.

Despite our progress, I can’t shake the feeling that it is not adequately ambitious.  For our kids, in our schools right now, it feels like the pace of organizational improvement cannot be fast enough.  Luckily, I am surrounded by teachers, adminstrators, community partners, and other colleagues who share that sense of urgency.  When I fall short or don’t fully deliver on my own expectations for this work (which happens more than I care to admit), there are others there on the team to push forward and hold the vision.

Which leads me back to where I started this post.  Innovation in education is not most accurately captured or told as a series of structural innovations or technical solutions.   It is a story of perseverance and tenacity – both from the students who take the leap of faith in designing and navigating a high school experience that breaks from tradition, and from the staff with the courage to allow them to try.

I often tell new teachers and new principals that they should write down as much as they can about their experiences during the first year on the job.  You never get back to that same sense of awe and wonder about the magnitude of the task at hand.

I should take some of my own advice.

It’s been three months since I started my new role as an Assistant Superintendent of Teaching & Learning for the Santa Ana Unified School District.  I haven’t written much.  Yet to say that I’ve been learning a lot would be a gross understatement.  The learning curve has been steep.  Of course I’m generally confident in my professional endeavors, and typically feel like I thrive in a face-paced working environment, yet even by my own standards the intensity and demand of my new role has been humbling.

We like to throw around the term “lifelong learning” a lot as educators, as if it is a typically quaint experience.  But real learning is hard fought.  It’s not really learning if it’s something we already know or are able to do.  It has to take us across a gap between our current understanding and capacity towards something greater and deeper.  As adults, I find we often don’t embrace that journey quite as enthusiastically as children.  Being a lifelong learner is an easy thing to say but is predictably challenging in practice.  I have been trying to genuinely appreciate the new challenges and learnings that have been coming my way, and thought I would share just a few of them.

Pacesetting as new learning

Sometimes, it’s not learning new things that is required of us, but simply a compressed timeline for production.  Adjusting to work in a faster-paced environment can certainly qualify as new learning.  Prior to joining cabinet in SAUSD, I felt like I was sustaining an urgent pace in moving the work forward.  My own honest self-assessment was to feel that my workload and level of production were both adequate, if not going a little extra.  I’m having to re-consider that assessment given what I am asked to do now.  Simply put, the pace has been overwhelming.

I shouldn’t be surprised.  I remember clearly my experience as a new high school principal.  I would go home every day with an acute sense of all the things I had left undone.  I was particularly vexed on those days when I knew I had spent my time fighting fires as opposed to doing the longer-term work of building and refining systems.  A student fight or a complicated parent complaint might take me off my game for hours, if not the better part of a day.  Over time, as I was able to get more systems in place, the workload slowly became more manageable as incidents that required my immediate attention were decreased and our organizational capacity to do good work was strengthened.

What is most interesting to me is that the compressed timeline has little to do with deadlines or expectations placed on me by others.  The work itself – the urgency to establish a clear vision, align key initiatives and guiding documents, and have those plans in place as we budget and allocate resources, is driving the pace.  My concern is not that I’ll get in trouble if I don’t follow through.  My concern is that if I don’t produce and build consensus quickly enough, the window of opportunity will close.  The work moves on, steadily and without mercy.  The natural rhythm of the school year, the planning and budgeting cycle, or even a single board meeting cycle, requires tremendous professional stamina and fitness.  The moment one deadline comes and goes, the clock starts ticking for the next one.

Prioritization & Delegation

This may sound a lot about my previous thoughts on pacesetting, but I think there are some additional lessons I have been learning with regards to setting my priorities.  Leadership is a lot about time management and where we focus our attention.  How we choose to use our time is a direct reflection of our priorities and vision for the work.  Perhaps more than ever before, I literally cannot accomplish everything that I would like to.  I’m a people person and a problem solver, and when people come to me with challenges or concerns, by nature I want to help them.  I think that is a good instinct and a positive leadership quality.  But what happens when those requests become so numerous that to follow through personally places other priorities in danger, like personal health, time with family, or even more important work for moving the organization forward.  Worse, what happens when that instinct to jump into action undermines the development of independence and capacity in others who are capable of solving their own problems and challenges if you would let them.

I have never felt so acutely the need to effectively prioritize my attention and delegate appropriately.  Yet, it has also been causing me genuine anxiety.  Part of my leadership identity, I believe, has always been about providing personalized attention and feedback to those I lead and serve.  Responding to phone calls and emails, reaching out when I know someone is dealing with a challenge, those are the traits that I think got me this job in the first place.  No matter how much I may want to provide personalized attention, the simple calculus makes it impossible.  I’ve been fighting that for several months now.

With that said, I still find that taking time, even a few minutes each day, to make a personal connection with those doing the hard work, is still essential.  A phone call, a quick visit, or even a handwritten note.  As long as I am consistent with this every day, then it feels like I am a little ahead of the curve.  One of our major areas of instructional focus is providing “personalization” for our students, and so I have to try to model that – imperfect though it may be.

I also recognize that the real solution to my time limitations is found in building a more responsive team, who over time, collectively builds a more responsive system.  This is where the art of delegation comes in to play.  Admittedly, I’m not a great delegator.  There is a tricky balance between building your team and dumping on them.  Often in a fast-paced environment, delegation is relegated to email requests.  It certainly feels good to clear the decks with the touch of a button.  But I know better.  I know that every task has a context that almost always needs a conversation.  It’s dangerous when we don’t take the time to build the shared understanding about why the task is necessary and how it will move the work forward.  Of course, sometimes there are simple compliance tasks that don’t require tremendous clarification or shared purpose, but I find that most work is improved when we take the time to build some sense of meaning for it.  If I don’t have the time to have a conversation with someone about a task or situation, then what does that say about my priorities?

New appreciation for law and policy

I’m not really talking about law degrees and bar exams.  It’s the skill set of precise analysis and attention to detail and nuance that seems so essential.  One of the common ways I describe my new job is to say that I spend my day doing leadership work – coaching, encouraging, and often engaging in difficult conversation and giving hard feedback.  At night, after I put the kids to bed, I become a lawyer, as I review contracts and Memorandums of Understanding, board policies, ed code, board resolutions, and legal and legislative updates.  I’m getting an intense tutoring in the laws, policies, and regulations that frame public education, in a way I simply have not experienced in the past.

To some, that might sound a little depressing.  How could you sell out so quickly?  Certainly a primary critique of school districts is that they have lost sight of the needs of our children because they are so focused on compliance.  The assertion is that creativity, personalization, and student-centeredness have been replaced by institutional bureaucracy.  There is certainly some truth to that.  But my new job has opened my eyes to the world around me.  More than ever before, I find myself reflecting on the foundations of our social compact – the written agreements of law and policy – and find it concerning that I was so disconnected from how those foundational documents play themselves out in schools and classrooms.

It’s not always glamorous or pretty work.  At the cabinet level, we have plenty of discussions about accountability and compliance.  On more than one occasion, I have made a plea for an exception or special consideration given the unique circumstances of a student or school.  The retort is often “Daniel, our job is to understand and enforce the board policy – and so if you don’t like it, then you need to do the work to revise the policy.”  It has been sobering, and eye-opening for me personally.  This has forced me, in a short period of time, to become a serious student of law and policy, with the understanding that to move the work forward, I have to engage with the tools of governance – namely law and policy.  It doesn’t mean I’ve lost my innovative spirit or my willingness to find creative solutions to complex problems that a policy may never have anticipated.  It does mean that I’ve been learning a new set of leadership skills that are essential to do the work of transforming school districts at a deeper, more fundamental level.

If ever there were an education buzzword these days, it would be “personalization.”  Everybody wants to personalize the education experience for students.  I think that is a good thing.  Yet while we all might say it, we don’t often stop to really define our terms and describe what we mean.  Often, personalization is associated with particular pedagogies or instructional practices that we deem worthy of the title of personalization.  We might call these “personalization pedagogies.”  Things like design thinking, student adaptive content delivery, personal goal-setting and reflection come to mind as just a few of these so-called personalization pedagogies.

Another way we often think about personalization is with terms like “student ownership” or “student voice.”  This is the idea that education has historically been something we do to young people, as opposed to an experience that students design and shape themselves.  In essence, formal education is the “take your medicine because it is good for you and stop complaining” approach to learning.  If you went through the public school system, you may identify with this arguably negative perception of schools and classrooms.  In any case, our educational institutions are not renknowned for deliberately handing over autonomy and independence to young people.

For me, the true foundation of personalization is neither predominately about instructional strategies or even the degree of student ownership of the learning.  At its core, personalization is about relationships.  It is about students’ sense that the adults, mentors, and teachers in his or her life have a deep, authentic, and abiding belief in their ability as students to learn, grow towards their potential, and find purpose and fulfillment in life.   Students must know that they are loved.  Students must know that we believe in them.

As a principal in San Francisco, I led a high school that held student-teacher relationships at a premium.  Some teachers went by first names with students.  Most teachers shared cell phone information and encouraged students to reach out when they were either stuck with a homework problem or needed support navigating a personal crisis.  I know – most schools would discourage this type of interaction simply out of liability’s sake.  While I myself found some of these practices a little strange at first, over time I became convinced that teachers as a whole make themselves too inaccesible to their students.  In essence, our teachers embraced their role as advisors and life coaches for our kids – informal roles that our best teachers often take but that are rarely formalized or acknowledged as part of our profession.

Personalization was our institutional value that allowed our school to feel less like an institution.  Yes, we insisted on rigor and strong academic content – but it came on a foundation of genuine connection and care.  We held student “defenses” – individualized 60-90 minute presentations with question & answer periods at the end of the year, where each student would share and defend their growth and learning.  If ever there were a “personalizing pedagogy,” our student defenses would fit the bill.  In the ramp up to our student defenses, there was a lot of emotional release.  There were lots of tears and anxiety in the face of what often seemed a daunting academic requirement.  I often said that whereas most schools tend to wind down at the end of the school year, our school was just heating up.  The last 2-3 weeks of school were intense for everyone on campus.  But graduate after graduate would say that it was the combination of the academic rigor of the process with the intense human support and care, that instilled students with the fortitude and persistence to confront and overcome similarly intense hurdles later in college and in life.

Even the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) acknowledges the student/teacher relationship as core to the professional practice of high quality teaching.  The very first Core Proposition for NBPTS suggests that teachers must demonstrate a real and tangible commitment to their students and their learning.  In their own words, teachers must “adjust their practice based on observation and understanding of their students’ interests, abilities, skills, knowledge, language, family circumstances, and peer relationships.”  Whatever those observations and understandings may be, it is done on a foundation of an abiding belief that “all students can learn and meet high expectations.”

When I arrived in Santa Ana Unified in July 2015 to be the Executive Director of School Renewal, I quickly assumed the role as the innovation guy.  Admittedly, that was by design, and I deliberately took up some habits and practices that I hoped would invite principals and teachers to consider new programs and instructional approaches in their schools and classrooms.  I encouraged school leaders to go visit schools using new approaches, and offered workshops to introduce staff to principles of design thinking and project based learning.  I started blogging and sharing stories about teachers and administrators who are innovating in order to provide more personalized learning environments and experiences for students.  I even started riding my bike to work every day – a la silicon valley startup (in my defense, I really did walk to work nearly every day as a high school principal in San Francisco, and biking was already a weekend hobby).  In other words, I tried to encourage new ideas and new practices by trying things out and reinventing myself.    

But, truth be told, I’m a bit of an institutionalist and a skeptic.  I graduated from Berkeley for goodness sakes, where they teach us to believe nothing until you have the cold hard data.  Question everything.  When I interviewed for the Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning position with the district executive cabinet, I tried to come clean.  When it comes to instructional practice, I’m more meat and potatoes than I sometimes let on.  I love a classroom where the teacher knows how to use her skill and authority with confidence and precision.  I like homework.  I like a teacher who pushes kids to work hard.  I like the word rigor.  I like a teacher who doesn’t put up with nonsense.  In other words, I love great teaching – and believe that it is skill, and not just enthusiasm, that gets kids to learn in powerful ways.  I’m a huge advocate for student ownership of learning, but not at the expense of adult mentoring.  In other words, I believe that great teaching is at the heart of powerful learning.  From project-based, competency-based and blended learning, to small group, workshop or direct-instruction, the conditions for learning are created by skilled and caring teachers who themselves model what it means to be a learner and deepen their skills and repertoire.

My time in Santa Ana has taught me how to bring these two parts of my professional identity into one place.  Yes, I’m a National Board Certified Teacher who can get a little snarky when the latest curriculum adoption or instructional craze gets presented as the cure-all for student learning.  But I also brought together an XQ super school team right here in Santa Ana with the rallying cry that we need to rethink the school experience for young people in our country.   We need both.  Tradition and innovation.  We leverage the tried and true instructional practices to push student learning, while simultaneously embracing the opportunity to learn, practice, and master new protocols and strategies that have the potential to engage students in even deeper and more authentic ways.

In my opinion, nothing blends this belief in both proven practices and innovative potential and possibility than our framework for teaching and learning.  I’ll be doing a few posts related to the framework, but simply note here the central role it will continue to play in my approach to the work.   The framework highlights four key areas of emphasis in our approach to instruction: 1) how are we valuing and building on students’ languages and experiences to promote deep understanding?, 2) how are we providing frequent opportunities to collaborate around complex tasks to promote deep thinking?, 3) how are we personalizing learning to meet the needs of diverse learners?, and 4) how are we sustaining academic rigor to prepare students for college and career?  These four areas – language and cultural context, collaboration, personalized learning, and academic rigor, are our collective aspiration.  Within SAUSD, we already possess a tremendous amount of knowledge and expertise around these four key areas, while simultaneously having much still to learn, and even more to share across classrooms and schools to ensure that every student receives an engaging, transformational education.

We don’t need a brand new vision for teaching and learning and Santa Ana.  Yes, we need to deepen and refine our instructional skills, including our ability to encourage rigorous academic discourse amongst our students and to provide personalized feedback on their progress.  Yes, we need to value and celebrate the diverse experiences, assets, languages, and gifts that our students and their families already bring to the table.  Above all, we need to strengthen and share our belief that the students of Santa Ana, every last one of them, has the potential to achieve great things – in college, in their careers, and in their lives.  We have to aspire for the students of Santa Ana, our kids,  the same things we desire and expect of our own children.

It is in that spirit of purpose and solidarity that we do this work together.

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to spend a day with the team at AltSchool in San Francisco.  If you aren’t familiar with their story, AltSchool is a B-corp educational enterprise, meaning it’s a private business with a double bottom-line.  Yes, they intend to make a profit.  But they also hold themselves accountable for their positive social impact.  The entire genesis of the B-corp financial structure is an interesting topic in and of itself (should all businesses aspire to do both?), but that’s a post for another day.

I’ve long been intrigued by what I’ve heard about AltSchool.  The basic overview has always been something to the effect of “AltSchool is trying to build the best digital platform in education, and they have Google engineers in their classrooms to help them build it.”  I’m a little embarassed to admit that it has taken me so long to get up to see what they are working on, and I am certainly glad that I did.

Here’s the basic overview.  AltSchool is about 4 years old.  They currently run 4 private micro-schools, 2 in San Francisco and 2 in New York.  Originally, their plan of action was to develop their digital platform and then scale up the number of micro schools that they run around the country.  Recently, they had a change of heart, and determined that they could have greater impact if they made their platform more widely available, including to public schools, and not focus exclusively on running schools themselves. That led them to shutter two of their schools in favor of focusing attention and resources on scaling out their learning platform.

So, what are they up to?  Here are a few of my big takeaways after visiting one of their schools and spending time at their home base.

Making Learning Visible

The AltSchool mission statement is similar to most schools’ statement of purpose – we help all students reach their potential.  It’s a good mission and I wholeheartedly agree, but it is not terribly different from the aspirations of most educational institutions.  There was a second statement espoused in AltSchool’s overview materials that caught my attention and proved much more compelling.  “Making learning visible for students, educators, and parents.”  That’s a powerful concept for education for a number of important reasons.

I often refer to the classroom as the black box.  There is a tremendous amount of knowledge and understanding in teachers’ brains – about what students need to learn and about how well each student is learning it.  But there is an information bottleneck – it’s up to the teacher to try to get as much of that information out to students and parents as he or she possibly can.  In high quality classrooms, the teacher has developed all kinds of systems to share this information.  In my daughter’s former kindergarten classroom, for example, the data manifested itself as writing samples, coloring exercises, and art projects all over the walls.  I could literally see every student’s progress towards the basic academic outcomes of the class.  In fact, when I walked into the classroom on Open House night, I quickly realized that student seat assignments were determined by ability level, just by noticing the work quality of students whose desks were grouped together.   It was as data rich a classroom as I have ever seen.  But even with my wife standing next to me, she couldn’t necessarily see at first how I was drawing my conclusions around the teacher’s systems of organization and performance monitoring.  It was all over the walls.

Sometimes these systematic efforts to share information come in the form of parent newsletters, or intricate data systems on the wall with stickers and measuring sticks.  Indeed, anyone on my Twitter feed knows that data bulletin boards in elementary classrooms are some of my favorite pictures.  In the secondary classroom, these efforts to make learning visible sometimes look like daily or weekly grade summaries on the wall.  Getting students enough useful information about what they are learning and how well they are learning it is requires a tremendous amount of thought and dedication, and it many classrooms, it simply doesn’t happen that well.

We talk about student ownership of their learning quite a bit these days in education.  But it is genuinely difficult to provide students with ongoing data and information about what we expect them to learn and where they stand.  Yes, most classrooms have traditional grading systems.  But we all know that in many cases, grades reflect a broader capacity to “do school,” and do not necessarily reflect an objective assessment of student skills as they are developing.

This is the genius of the AltSchool platform.  It’s trying to democratize information about how students are progressing.  Yes, it is a work in progress.  As with any good software product and user experience, the platform is constantly being improved.  The team of engineers and designers at the enterprise are open about the need to provide more robust tools to facilitate students’ ability to navigate within the system and provide goal setting streams and pathways that make sense.  Yet on the whole, the system is out there setting the standard for what it can look like to marry content delivery, assessment, and learning trajectories in a common system – and making that process as transparent to users as possible.

Aesthetics and User Experience Matter

I have often had a practice of taking my public school teachers and staff into sought-after private schools.  There is a design aesthetic and attention to detail in the way such places look and feel that we often miss in public school settings.  Yes, I’m aware that funding is different.  But my message is often that there is much, much more we can do in our public education spaces to embrace good design and curate welcoming, student-centered learning environments.  Quality private schools have to pay careful attention to the curation of their physical space, and that was certainly the case at AltSchool.  When I walked in the front doors of their Yerba Gardens campus on Folsum Street in San Francisco, I immediately noticed the television screen directly in front of me, scrolling through unique enrichment opportunities and other after school experiences students and families could sign up for.  Capoeira classes, a seminar for parents on safe internet use, etc.  To my right was a frosted glass door – opaque at eye level but then clear above.  The two-toned glass construction was eye-catching and allowed for students to have direct site lines to the sky and surrounding buildings from the classroom, while blocking passers-by from being able to see students directly.  There was an access keypad next to the door – a Kinder/1^st grade classroom.  A young African American boy walked in as we waited for the elevator nearby.  He quietly punched in his access code and walked into the classroom.  Students are welcome to arrive anytime between 8 – 9 am, with instruction formally getting a start at 9.  Attention to detail is probably the best way to describe the campus.  It wasn’t grand or sprawling, just thoughtful.

The AltSchool Platform has a similar dedication to aesthetics and an enjoyable user experience.  From basic design elements like a soft color palette and intuitive user controls, you get a clear sense that the engineers behind the software are constantly channeling their inner design-conscious user.  A number of team members I spoke with referred to a deliberate effort to maintain a sense of simplicity within a system that supports a rather complex set of content, assessments, and goal-setting tools.  Content is organized into what AltSchool calls content “cards.”  These cards represent mini-lessons or mini-units, and can either be used in supplemental ways to what is happening in the classroom, or as the primary delivery method of instruction.  I spent some time building some “cards” myself, and the process was quick and easy.  Within 30 minutes, I had converted one of my thematic units into a short series of cards.  I already had my own playlist.  For a project-based learning teacher like I was, this was the system I wish I had access to when I was in the classroom.

Teacher-centric

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of my visit was the central nature of the teacher in both the AltSchool platform and in their micro-school classrooms.   I think I was expecting the AltSchool instructional model to be primarily tech-driven and more openly skeptical of the the importance of the teacher.  Certainly, some of the accusations that are made about an enterprise like AltSchool is that they are trying to use technology to replace teachers.  The opposite was true.  In fact, AltSchool has two teachers in every classroom.  I didn’t necessarily expect that I’d be greeted by robots or have to wear a virtual reality headset, but I certainly thought I would see kids looking at screens in every classroom.

That wasn’t what I saw.

What I did see was nurturing learning spaces, small group instruction, center-rotation (yes, with some teacherless centers using software to drive student learning), and reading and writing workshop.  As the students got older in age, I definitely saw more screens.  When asked explicitly about screen time, AltSchool said that in the early grades, it is no more than 5-10%, maxing out around 25-30% by the time students are in the middle grades.  This makes sense too.  Most of the middle to upper class families that can afford a private school education have serious concerns about over-exposure to screen time during the course of their children’s school day.  The AltSchool platform reflects this attempt at a blended balance.  Yes, a student could theoretically spend all day on the software, but it isn’t designed as a replacement for the classroom experience.  It’s designed to help organize curriculum, pace and monitor student learning and progress, provide tools for goal-setting, and allow for more feedback to both students and parents.

I don’t really see my work life in terms of good or bad days.  On the whole, I genuinely enjoy the purpose and challenge of my work.   I feel deeply satisfied with the idea that I’m giving my best energy, thinking, and labor on a day to day basis to the task of creating powerful learning environments and experiences for kids.  Of course I’m still a human being who feels disappointment with setbacks, and I’m no stranger to frustration when confronting organizational inertia or unnecessary obstacles.  But across the board, I feel a persistent satisfaction in my work.

And then, sometimes, I really do have a distinctively good day.

Like yesterday, for example.  It’s hard to explain, but every so often I have a day that surprises me in terms of both the actual work I accomplish and my emotional state as I pass through that work.  I don’t think you can precisely engineer good days – often there is some luck involved – but my experiences yesterday got me thinking about some of the common elements of a good day at work for me.

Culmination

The most defining characteristic of a notably “good” day, is when I experience some degree of culmination, hit a major milestone, or enjoy some closure.  My definition of culmination is when we experience some palpable sense of progress or success.  Yesterday, for example, I had an advisory council meeting for one of the projects I lead.  For months, we had talked about adding key strategic partners to our team.  We had discussed launching a redesigned website.  On multiple occasions we had planned to formally file for incorporated status with the state of California.  Each subgoal brought with it countless tasks, from making calls to potential partners to drafting agendas to reviewing bylaws to sitting down to actually create a website.  It’s a project that in many ways never has real closure.

But yesterday, over the course of our monthly 90 minute meeting, I felt an incredible sense of culmination.  We sat with an expanded team.  We received the draft of our fledgling organization’s website (which I had created).  We finalized our intention to incorporate – and we paused as necessary to send the reminder emails, calendar the follow-ups, and ensure we were locking in our progress.

Of course there are moments when we hit clear milestones that bring concrete closure.  Graduation ceremonies.  A job promotion.  A birthday celebration.  Often, those events become some of our best days.  But even without a full stop or external recognition of success, we have those days where things come together and put a smile on our face.

Deliberate Connection 

Leadership is not primarily about writing strategic plans, reviewing documents and providing feedback, or even making data-driven decisions – as important as all of those tasks might be.  Leadership is about developing and shaping an organization’s culture and consistently pointing everyone towards excellence.  It’s about setting a vision and then reinforcing that vision through ongoing interactions and conversations.  Yes, there is important technical work inherent to moving the organization forward, but transformational leadership implies moving people towards heightened levels of engagement, skill, and commitment.

On my good days, I take time to connect with the people I have the responsibility to lead.  I have the opportunity to learn about the work happening at all levels of the organization, and reinforce my vision through the corresponding conversations.  Yesterday, for example, I started the morning by informally seeking out members of my team, connecting briefly about the weekend, and then learning about the tasks and potential obstacles they were facing at the outset of the week.  I tried to provide encouragement, redirection, reinforcement, and sometimes tangible support.  These conversations were short, and within 45 minutes I felt like I had a good pulse on our collective trajectory for the day and week.

Of course sometimes I have pressing tasks that bring me straight to my desk.  That turns the tables where my team members have to come to me when they get stuck or need clarification.  I feel much more in control and purposeful when I’m initiating the interactions and offering support before others feel the need to come ask it of me.

Successful Prioritization

I am somewhat religious about a daily checklist – it’s a practice that has persisted across both digital and handwritten platforms for me.  And almost without fail, I put more on that list than I could possibly hope to accomplish given the time and commitments of the day.  You would think that after so many years as a working professional, I would have disrupted my own counterproductive tendency to over plan my time, but I haven’t.  In my defense, I have developed a useful practice of identifying what I call my “big 3” – the three most important tasks of the day that I try to knock out before moving on to other things.  But still, I experience daily, unnecessary emotional tension when I haven’t checked off everything on my list.

On a good day, like yesterday, I was courageous about removing commitments that simply weren’t moving my work forward.  I cancelled participation in a webinar.  I was honest with some colleagues about a project I had committed to that was drawing on my attention and time but that I felt was not adding adequate value to the organization.  In other words, I said ‘no’ a few times.  I took things off the to do list – to be forever unchecked.  Of course any truly good day has to feel deeply productive at its core, it’s not just about saying no.  But to a large degree my ability to focus on the most important, high-leverage projects is dependent on my willingness to walk away from less important work.

Re-energize

A lot is said about the food courts, lounge rooms, and flex schedules of Silicon Valley startups and tech companies.  As with anything, I think reality might not exactly match up with the sometimes exaggerated picture that is painted in the media about the work cultures of some of the best places to work.  Yet I do think that some companies have learned to harness the best thinking and creative energy of their people by building flexibility and adaptability into their schedules.

For the most part, schools have incredibly inflexible schedules. While most work places did away with punchcards and whistles a long time ago, schools still use bells to signal start and stop times.  Kids cycle in and out of classrooms on highly routinized schedules, and there typically is not much room for flexibility.  As educators, our  lives are dictated by the master schedule.  Part of my core work is focused on helping teachers and administrators rethink some of these traditional constraints, but even in the tightly managed work day on a school campus, I think there are ways to find space to re-energize.

Some of my best teachers had firm commitments to lunch time spent on a basketball court or walking the campus.   Whether it’s a spin class immediately after school with colleagues, or a long run when the final bell rings, a lot of educators find that they have better energy when they find ways to get moving and sweat a little throughout the day.  Similarly, I wasn’t afraid to use 20 minutes of my lunch for a quick nap when I felt my energy waning.

Yesterday, I used my lunchtime to squeeze in a short workout in the small staff gym.  It was by no means a full strength or cardio circuit, but it was enough to energize my afternoon.  In addition to the physical stimulation, I enjoyed the psychological boost of knowing that by mid-day I had already knocked out some major tasks AND done a little exercise as well.  It started to free up some of my mental space for planning out my evening, knowing that instead of needing to find time to exercise after putting the kids to bed, I could choose to work on a home project or just relax.  Add just for good measure, since it was a good day, I put that evening time to use cleaning out in the garage.