I often say that beyond classroom teachers, most people don’t think much (or probably care much) about instructional practices.  When families make choices about where to send kids to school, they are usually interested in what programs are offered, college-acceptance rates, or even more practical considerations like distance from home.  Of course parents want inviting, rigorous, and supportive classroom learning environments for their children, but they don’t necessarily pay much attention to the specific instructional practices being used by teachers.  I’ve never had a parent ask me “how are the think-pair-shares at your school?”

And then last month parents were forced into a more formal instructional provider role.  Of course, we have always seen parents as the first teachers of our students, but providing formal academic instruction is often done by a professional educator.  All of a sudden, everyone is starting to wonder – “how do I facilitate learning at home?” not to mention wondering how in the world a teacher manages to direct the learning of 30-40 kids in a classroom.

Basically, the black box of the classroom – literally what happens day to day in terms of instruction – has been broken open.  As an Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning, I have perhaps never been busier.  Every single aspect of the work that we do as teachers or administrators has had to be renegotiated.  How long should we expect students to do academic work on a daily basis?  How do we provide supports to address the social/emotional needs of our students?  How do we support children at different age and skill levels in the same household simultaneously?  How do we encourage and facilitate social interactions amongst peers?  All of a sudden, the entire community and even many of our professional staff need additional instructional capacity.

In some ways, this represents one of the most exciting moments in our professional lives as educators.  Of course what brought us to this point is absolutely tragic.  None of us wanted this pandemic, and the long term economic and social costs won’t be entirely understood for years to come.  But despite our current circumstances, we have to move forward.  All of a sudden, mainstream America is keenly interested in how teaching and learning works.  Yes, we must address the short term emergency situation we are facing.  That work has occupied a tremendous amount of time and focus during the past few weeks.  The more important question will be how do we learn from this situation and build more inclusive, engaging, and meaningful learning environments and experiences for our students in the future.

Jeannie Oakes, a prominent education researcher, introduced the concept of the “zone of mediation,” which is basically a term for the range of possible solutions that stakeholders with conflicting viewpoints are willing to consider.  In a sense, I believe that our current situation may move the zone of mediation for what parents, teachers, and even students will consider as realistic and desirable instructional environments and experiences for student learning.  While I don’t believe our current situation of virtual-only interaction will become the “new-normal” (nor would I want that for students), I do believe that this will open up opportunities to add some personalized learning modalities to the instructional toolkits of our professional educators. I also think it will raise awareness and interest in the instructional work that our teachers do every day to support the learning of our children.

Curation – it’s one of my favorite concepts.  Formally, it refers to the selection, organization, and presentation of a set of content for an audience.  Most commonly, we think of curation in the context of a museum, where curators carefully select and organize works of art or historical artifacts from a broader collection.  The curator works with a vision in mind, with the hopes of engaging participants in an extended discourse that explores key themes, concepts, and leitmotifs.   The curator is, at the heart, a storyteller.  Human beings are meaning-making machines, and the act of storytelling is at the heart of the human experience

When I began my graduate studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, then Dean Kathleen McCartney compared our experience to a lavish buffet spread.  The work of the college was to set the table for learning, providing the best options the school had to offer.  Yet it was up to us as students to take full advantage of the options and opportunities that lay before us.  The professors and professional staff curated the learning environment for our benefit, but the story of each student would be different based on our unique needs and interests.

It was no accident when we designed our Círculos super school in Santa Ana Unified that we envisioned positions like the “curator of projects and partnerships” and the “curator of talent.”  I remember our Human Resources department asking me what in the world we were doing with these “curator” positions.  So we explained – our curators are carefully selecting, organizing and sharing key concepts and instructional practices.  They are designing experiences and interactions with the end user – the student – always in mind.  They are trying to craft a series of experiences and skillsets that tell a new story for what the high school experience can be.

Now, with physical schools closed, every teacher is a designer of his or her online learning environment.  This has forced all teachers to take on the role of curator.  Rather than relying on direct instruction, the teacher is engaged in a process of selecting programs, interactions, and experiences designed to support the learning of students.  One of my favorite online resources is a “pop-up home school generator” put out by the forward-thinking school designers at Transcend Education.  The team at Transcend has carefully curated a list of free online resources that can then be remixed to meet the unique needs of students.

We’ve taken a similar approach with our teaching staff in Santa Ana Unified.  We see our role as district specialists to vet and and share learning options and tools that are both standards-aligned and age-appropriate.  Yet we still see the teacher as the primary curator of the learning experience for the students in his or her class.  This teacher-driven, district supported approach forms the core of our approach to distance learning.

In an era of ubiquitous information and infinite options, the role of the curator becomes increasingly important, and difficult.  The past few weeks have seen an exponential proliferation of free offers from educational content and curriculum providers.  I’ve easily received over 100 different email offers from potential education content providers.  The teacher retains the role of trustworthy coach and curator that students and families can look to for both targeted support and for access to a set of carefully curated interactions and experiences designed to boost student learning.

One of the primary goals of our application for the Circulos Super School was to create a school whose primary pursuit would be to develop instructional practices and student skillsets that would prepare graduates to thrive in our modern, hyperconnected world.   To accomplish this, we needed a team that could innovate at a high level, who would be nimble enough to provide flexible structures for learning on an ongoing basis.  This type of flexibility is surprisingly difficult to achieve in practice.  The “dailyness” of school screams for structure and predictability.  The systems employed in most classrooms are created precisely with the aim of mitigating uncertainty.

But uncertainty is the name of the game in our modern world.

Admittedly, the past few weeks have introduced a level of uncertainty that even the most flexible amongst us probably find unsettling.  If anything, this has served as a sobering reminder about where we need to take our educational institutions if we hope to provide meaningful, authentic learning for students regardless of their living circumstances.  Last week I posted about the challenge of the digital divide – a very real challenge for students living in poverty in places where the digital infrastructure simply does not meet the standard.  Yet even when students have a reliable connection, there is the additional question about what quality learning looks like in the digital space.

Across the Santa Ana Unified school district, we have seen examples of teachers and administrators who have quickly mobilized resources and tools to provide a meaningful platform for student learning.  This is particularly the case with our Circulos team.  Early into our school closures, the team launched a series of protocols for connecting regularly with students – “virtual circles,” if you will.  The team even posted a screen shot of their team meeting on social media, a la Brady Bunch, which went viral and was featured by both our local county office of education, and by the XQ institute.

This weekend, the team announced a series of online professional development opportunities available to teachers across the district.  The offerings focus on things like “Branding and Designing your Virtual Space,” “Cultivating Voice through Student Blogs,” and “Virtual Circles: Tools and Best Practices.”  The school’s motto of “come join our circle” extends to professionals who desire to up their digital game.  A big part of our initial pursuit of the XQ grant was precisely to demonstrate our ability to share the learning from Circulos across schools and departments within a large school district.  It’s very satisfying to see that happening in practice.

When I joined Santa Ana Unified almost five years ago, the district was in the midst of a massive “Access for All” campaign.  Over the course of two years, we went from fewer than 10,000 computing devices for over 50,000 students, to 1:1 Chromebooks for all students grades 3-12, and classroom sets of iPads for lower elementary classrooms.  Our 21^st Century Learning and Learning Innovations with Technology teams worked to systematically build capacity to meaningfully integrate technology into the classroom.  Hundreds of teachers received Google certification, and we piloted ground-breaking web-applications to provide daily learning feedback to students.  At the same time, our technology services department made tremendous investments in the network infrastructure.  We rolled out Canvas LMS, adopted Google Classroom, and were on the cusp of digital badging.  We joined the League of Innovative Schools and had numerous schools on the Getting Smart list of schools to visit.  It felt like Santa Ana was on the cutting edge of the digital revolution in schools.

Over the next two years, we distributed over 1000 hotspots to try to fill in the gap with families with poor or no internet service at home.  In our most recent surveys, nearly 90% of families indicated they had access to the internet at home, up signicantly from when the Access for All campaign began.  While we were not focused on technology integration as we had been in the past, we were still making efforts to diminish the digital divide for students and familes.

And then COVID-19 closed our schools.

The closing of schools brought into immediate and sharp focus the remaining gap in access.  For those families without internet access at home, the connection to school was largely shut off.  Yes, our teachers are reaching out via telephone.  Yes, we’ve developed and distributed learning enrichment packets for families.  But a packet and a phone call are simply not the same as the daily interactions, access to software applications, and ongoing feedback that come with a solid internet connection.  We’ve also found that the quality of those internet connections also varies – broadband accessibility in central Santa Ana is uneven.  We have a lot of families reporting that connectivity has been a challenge during the school closure.  Even for those with internet access, connection speeds are sometimes slow and frustrating. 

For a district that serves such a large number of students living in poverty or homeless, distance learning is much more complicated than simply sending home a device.  I probably had two dozen people send me a link last week from a local internet provider offering free internet for 60 days.  Of course when we did some additional research, it became clear that families would have to provide billing information and that the trial period would automatically roll over into a monthly charge.  When you work with a community like Santa Ana that has come to trust our recommendations, we have to vet offers carefully.

We still don’t know how long schools will remain closed, or the long-term impact that the COVID pandemic of 2020 will have on our schools.  What is certain is that the digital divide is still a major challenge to students and families who want and need equal access.

It’s been a little while since I last rode my bike to work.  Before joining executive cabinet, I bike commuted at least 2-3 days each week, but the pace and demand of my job has made that increasingly difficult during the past couple of years.  Now, I typically drop off my oldest two kids at school on my way to work, and ride my bike only on rare occasions.

I miss it.  I love riding through Santa Ana on a school day.  Being at street level I get to see families and students making their way to school.  I ride past the tamale carts where students grab a last second chance for breakfast.  I see countless moms holding hands with their little people as they cross intersections, or pushing strollers with fussy babies inside.  Santa Ana is a walk to school kind of place, and the city is most alive as students and families make their way to and from campus.  It’s as predictable as the ocean tide, predictably filling up the streets with humanity each morning and afternoon, all in the name of education.

After all, Santa Ana really is all about school.  “Education First” was the city motto for nearly 20 years.  Amongst large urban school districts, Santa Ana boasts one of the highest daily attendance rates in the country.  Our schools are embedded and integrated into our daily life and consciousness.  Even in the summer our schools are kept busy with enrichment and intervention programs and activities across the city.  We have more students in summer school than the vast majority of districts have students.  We have Wellness Centers on every campus, connecting families with educational opportunities and resources from a wide variety of community partners and service-providers.  Food pantries set up shop each week in our parking lots, and many nights and weekends are filled with district sponsored arts and athletics events.  All of it happens in the small geographic footprint of Santa Ana that we call home.

But this morning, things were quiet.  Schools are closed.  We are still operating food distribution centers around the city to ensure our students have access to food, a critical service for our most vulnerable families.  We’ve rushed to print enrichment materials and distribute any available hotspots during the shutdown for the small percentage of students who do not have internet access of any kind at home.  Essentials functions at the district office continue.

But those operations are a far cry from a normal day in Santa Ana.  It felt a bit eerie riding through the city, practically by myself with exception to the light car traffic on the streets.  It was a sobering reminder of how central to life schools are in a place like Santa Ana.   

This past Saturday was our 4^th annual district Speech and Debate intermediate school championship tournament.  At the end of the day, I sat in a packed auditorium, the largest in the school district, as students and parents excitedly awaited the announcement of the champions who would be traveling to the national tournament in New Mexico later this year.  The energy was palpable. Anyone can tell you that in SAUSD, Speech and Debate has become one of our prized programs, with championships and recognitions at both the state and national level.

Earlier that same Saturday, I found myself walking from venue to venue in downtown Santa Ana for our annual Boca de Oro festival of literary art and culture.  We had hundreds of students performing, sharing their creativity and talents with our Santa Ana community.  The outward celebration of our students’ collective brilliance masked the huge logistical lift of making the festival a reality.  Our coordinator of Visual and Performing Arts, Robyn MacNair, could certainly tell you some stories about just how hard it has been to take the festival from concept to reality.

These types of celebrated programs share a similar origin story.

New initiatives must grow through a start-up phase, when success is not guaranteed and the stakes feel high.  When we hired Sal Tinajero as a program specialist to launch Speech and Debate, for example, he was given a small budget and few systems for guidance.  During those early days and weeks, every small hiccup felt like it might derail the vision.  How are we going to hire coaches?  What about schools that don’t want to participate?  Where do advisors fit in the collective bargaining agreement?

One by one, the team collaborated and brainstormed and tried to move the work forward.  There were moments when we had to circumvent established bureaucratic protocols that simply couldn’t address our needs – and certainly not in a timely manner.  At times, we had to create entirely new systems and processes.  It felt a bit dangerous.  We reminded each other to just keep moving forward.

It takes vision and a lot of hard work to bridge the start-up gap.  You have to push through both self-doubt and resistance.  You have to press against the inertia of such a large bureaucracy.  I have watched this process play itself out over and over again.  It’s the difference between those projects and programs that thrive, and those that quietly die off and disappear.  The redesigned film academy and studio at Santa Ana High School was nearly derailed a half-dozen times, but now stands as one of the premier learning spaces in the district.  Our Círculos superschool project started off as little more than a community design team, and has led to one of the most ambitious instructional programs in the country.

Saturday afternoon felt incredibly rewarding.  Seeing the exceptional work of team members who had a vision for what our kids can do, and then persevered to see it through, brings me tremendous satisfaction.

Just a few weeks into my new job as a high school principal, I pulled into the school parking lot following a central office meeting to find all of my students evacuated from the school building.  Apparently, there had been a trash can fire in the bathroom.  Classic.  This happened three weeks later, again on the morning of my regularly scheduled central office meeting.  What had started as an isolated incident was morphing into a crisis, and my credibility as a leader was increasingly on the line.   

Nobody wants a dumpster fire.  At best it’s a crisis situation that monopolizes your limited time.  At worst, it spirals into a mishandled incident that can cause injury and damage, draw negative attention, and lead to prolonged investigations and lawsuits.  The irony is that a momentary distraction or incident, if not addressed appropriately, may become an ongoing saga.  Spend too little time addressing the crisis, and your leadership will come under fire, and sometimes may even cost you your job.

Use Your Time Wisely

When a crisis hits, it can quickly take priority over whatever good work was previously planned.  Data chats are postponed.  Classroom walkthroughs are cancelled.  A crisis takes us away from our strategic priorities while simultaneously threatening to insert anxiety, panic, and additional stress.  My advice to school leaders is to always schedule the most essential, transformative work first thing each morning.  Getting priority work done before a crisis situation has the chance to emerge is always the best strategy.  Start the day off in classrooms.  Schedule time for strategic thinking and planning early in the day.

Be Prepared

Crisis situations, while both unfortunate and distracting, are inevitable in the work of leading a school.  It pays to plan ahead and to take seriously the opportunities for practice and discussion before the crisis hits.  Know the proper protocols.  Seek out guidance and support when you have questions about how to handle different scenarios.  When the crisis hits, you’ll typically find yourself in the role of incident commander, and your poise and guidance will be essential.

We’re incredibly blessed in Santa Ana Unified to have specialized teams – police services, crisis response teams, clinical counselors, specialized maintenance crews – to assist schools and school leaders when a crisis occurs.  Not all school leaders have those types of resources just a text message away.  So, you need to know what resources you do have access to, and how to mobilize them when needed.   

Communication is Key

One of the most important elements of crisis preparation is clear and timely communication.  Even in cases where you get the immediate crisis response right, you might fumble the communication and find yourself on the defensive with parents and other stakeholders.  Ironically, just at the moment you need to get the message right is also the moment when time is short and the stakes are high.  Having communication templates at the ready that address a range of common issues and incidents can save a school leader valuable time when a crisis hits.  It’s also essential that you have an understanding of how to manage your channels of communication.  Mass e-mails, robocalls, and hard copy letters are often part of the communication strategy.  Yet many situations develop after hours, when key staff who typically handle communication distribution may have already gone home for the day.  You need backups to your communication strategies to ensure you can get the message out promptly.

Build Capacity

We say that school safety is a top priority, but the proof is in our calendars and budgets.  Are we identifying time and resources to provide meaningful planning and professional development for staff in matters of safety?  Our school board and community have clearly identified safety as a district priority.  As a result, we instituted a safety day across the school district, with instructional videos and discussion prompts as part of an effort to build our collective capacity to handle crisis situations.  We have an active risk management team and police services department that constantly push to keep issues of safety and security on the learning agenda for staff.

This morning, I sat in one of the most inspiring spaces in our District Office.  What for many years had been a neglected storage area for musical instruments, had been transformed into a professional learning space whose purpose was now to remind us all that creativity and attention to design are essential professional competencies.  The arts are not simple elective courses or curricular add-ons, but rather serve as fundamental elements of a rigorous core academic program.  Even the storage function of the space had been redesigned to enhance inventory management and provide quicker student and teacher access to instruments and arts materials.

As I sat in the newly designed center for the arts and athletics, I was surrounded by members of our SAUSD community – students, parents, community partners, teachers, & support staff – all coming together to reflect on our progress towards the implementation of our district strategic arts plan – a plan approved and championed by a Board of Education that has emphasized access to the arts for all students.  The collective desire to deepen the work was palpable.

It felt like a celebratory moment.  Five years ago, our Board adopted its first ever strategic arts plan.  There was plenty to reflect on as evidence of success.  From alignment of coursework to new arts standards, to construction of state-of-the-art creative spaces at multiple sites around the district, to the launching of the SanArts conservatory, to the expansion of elementary arts programming, there was much to celebrate.

But, this group clearly wanted to go deeper.  It is a guiding coalition that sees equity of access to the arts as its north star.  And so, the work begins anew to take stock of where we’ve been, celebrate where we’ve grown, and double our resolve to integrate and deepen an arts-enriched and arts-informed learning experience for all of our students.  Over the next three months this VAPA team, under the direction of our coordinator of VAPA, Robyn McNair, will arrange focus groups and listening sessions in order to ensure that the strategic arts plan for the next five years is as inclusive and transformative as the previous one has been.   

I sometimes am guilty of rambling about how the struggles of education have a lot more to do with poor leaders than they do with poor teachers.  We sometimes scapegoat teachers for the struggles of an education system designed as much to keep costs low as it is to help young people learn.  While it may be true that improvements to the system can at times be undermined by teachers who care more about autonomy than high quality professional practice, I tend to believe that administrators and policymakers hold primary responsibility for the struggles of public education in our country. 

In defense of school administrators, leading and managing a school is very difficult work.  I learned that for myself as the principal of an urban high school.  Yet difficult as it may have been, my time as principal convinced me that our schools can be transformed by increased public investment and strong leadership. 

Perhaps the best way to illustrate my point is to share one of my first challenges as a new principal.  It was not long into my first year as principal that I recognized a small handful of classrooms where the teacher was clearly struggling to be successful.  I began doing what any serious first year principal might do: I told the teachers that their performance needed to improve dramatically or they would be at risk for losing their job.  While I am certain these teachers were angry and perhaps confused by my ultimatum, much to their credit, their immediate response was to ask a simple yet genuine question – “what can I do to get better?” 

That question rang in my ears.  It became clear that while it might be easy for me to diagnose a struggling classroom, articulating a vision for what I expected to see was much more complicated, to say nothing of the challenge of developing systems that would build the capacity of my teachers to meet my expectations.  As an organization we had some tools for teacher evaluation, but they lacked a clear instructional vision, and I was just getting familiar with them.  I could see no short-term solution, and so I tried to provide sufficient observation and coaching for my struggling teachers to have enough evidence to feel justified when it came time to make final staffing decisions.  Some might argue that if students are struggling to learn in a classroom, that is all the justification you need.  In my mind such an approach seems more of an admission that leadership does not have the skills to develop and support novice teachers. 

That experience left me severely disappointed – both with myself and the education system that claims to prepare and develop teachers.  I decided that at the very least, teachers in my school should know what I expect from them, and there should be a system for professional development capable of building their capacity to be successful at meeting those expectations.  As a result, we developed a new teacher development guide to make our shared vision for teaching and learning as clear and explicit as possible.   Of course a training manual can never be completely comprehensive nor could it contain all of the practices of strong teachers.  It could, at least, serve as a point of departure – an outline of the basic skills and standards of professional practice for our school. 

Schools have what I consider to be a moral and professional responsibility to build the capacity of their teachers to impact student learning in powerful ways.  Indeed, if we are to hold teachers accountable for what students learn in a teacher’s classroom, then we as school leaders should be held accountable for what teachers learn in our schools. 

It’s been just over a month since our new superintendent Jerry Almendarez took the helm in Santa Ana Unified.  One of the clear themes that has already emerged in his approach to leadership is constantly asking people what they are doing to bolster their professional skills and boost their capacity.  You shouldn’t be surprised if he starts a conversation by asking you what you are currently reading.  Another way that conversation unfolds is to ask about what podcasts you are listening to.  He’s bordering obsessive about employing adults who love learning.

I have something of an addictive relationship with podcasts.  I love a long drive or a long run while listening to an interesting podcast, including and perhaps especially in disciplines and areas of interest that lie outside of education.  I’m sure my poor wife is tired of hearing me reference the latest podcast I am listening to.  Perhaps it’s a vice.

Even so, you can imagine how I lit up when asked directly about which podcast I’m currently listening to.  How can I choose just one?   Here are a few that I particularly love at the moment:

Harvard EdCast

I’m listing the Harvard EdCast first, not because it’s #1 on my list or even my favorite, but in terms of salient issues pressing in education, it’s essential.  One of the most incredible parts of a Harvard education is how thought-leaders around the country and the world somehow seem drawn there.  The level of access is unrivaled.  As a student, in just a year, I engaged in conversations with current and past U.S. Secretaries of Education, presidents of Universities, superintendents in some of the largest urban districts in the country, heads of major philanthropic organizations, etc.  The Harvard EdCast is designed to make these conversations and interactions accessible to a wider audience, and provides powerful insight into what is happening in education.

The Daily

There are a lot of ways to get the news.  My favorite is the New York Times’ “The Daily.”  Instead of your typical news rundown, The Daily goes deep for nearly 30 minutes on a single topic, integrating interviews, audio reporting, and historical background to provide a depth of context and insight that is hard to find elsewhere.  Basically, the NYTimes gets to tell you the most important story of the day, and do so in a way that leaves you feeling like something of a mini-expert on the topic.

The Outside Podcast

I love being outdoors, and am fascinated by the stories of athletes and explorers that find themselves at the center of the Outside Podcast.  To be honest, I never can really tell what the focus on the podcast is going to be.  Sometimes they tell stories about near-death experiences in the wild.  Other episodes are dedicated to the science of exercise.  The topics range from the politics of the US Interior department to a forensic breakdown of a plane crash in the Andes.  Perhaps that’s why I love it.  It introduces me to people, places, and professions that often lie far outside my day to day realities and experiences.  For me, it’s escapism at its best and keep me dreaming about future adventures.

MacPowerUsers

I love technology, but don’t necessarily consider myself a true power user.  I don’t code (yet).  This is a show that is unapologetically focused on Apple products.  Apple happens to be ubiquitous in my life, as it is in the lives of lots of people.  MacPowerUsers is my strategy to learn about the tools that are already in my pocket and backpack.  Thanks to this podcast, I’ve set up a local server in my house, set up automated back-ups, installed media servers and had the confidence to address IT challenges that I simply could not have tackled previously.  Even the software I use for writing my blog posts (Scrivener) came after listening to an episode of MPU.  Of course there are some episodes that are a little beyond my skill set or experience, but I think that’s the point.

Rebel Force Radio

Don’t know how two guys can talk about Star Wars every week for 14 years.  A quick listen to Rebel Force Radio will give you an idea.