New York Voices; 329; A Year of Change: Leadership in the Principal's Office

The I am so tired of the excuses industry of public education. It's the kids. It's the test. It's the politicians it's this. It's never that we the people in the education business are doing the job. We should do. I don't want a culture of excuses. I want a culture of high expectations and performance. That's what a school leader can do. He's the mayor's man on education known for taking on Microsoft in the government's antitrust suit. He's now in charge of a complete overhaul of the largest school system in the nation. Good morning. This is an enormously exciting and proud day for us. Like everybody when you see your dreams

become reality. This is an exciting moment and this really isn't your team. That's part of the overhaul here Mayor Bloomberg have created the leadership academy initiative and opening day this past summer. Ninety men and women were officially inducted into the city's first ever principals boot camp. Thank you all very much. Let's get to work now. I got my letter of acceptance I felt joy and it was it was a really strange combination of of emotions you know on the one hand there is this joy at boy I made it. And on the other hand there was this oh boy I made it why am I going to do now when everyone already getting to know someone Tessa was extremely rigorous. And when I'm asked to describe it I said well it's like the Navy SEAL you know in the first week it's critical and push the limits even to make you

part of the challenge is how do I negotiate the pressures of the management aspect of the job with the creative instructional educational aspects of the job the amount of work we were getting was huge and it was all new to us over the next 15 months. Who watches these aspiring principals learn to eat. Funding for a year of change leadership in the principal's office provided by the Wallace Foundation supporting ideas sharing solutions expanding opportunities additional funding for New York Voices provided by Michael t Martin and the members of 13. Welcome to New York Voices I'm Rafael Pirro mine. You know over the next several years some 600 principal positions will open up in the city public schools and in the most ambitious

project of its kind. New York City will hand-pick in train the replacement the next generation of school leaders. Your voices will be looking at life inside this aspiring principals program the incubator where 90 would be principals begin their training. Six applicants have already dropped out. But those who succeed are hoping to take over their own schools to document this extraordinary event in the city's history. We'll follow our three aspiring principals all of whom are former teachers throughout the year. Here's our first installment from inside at the Leadership Academy. For generations the old courthouse was a symbol of government failure and corruption. But now the beautifully restored building is the newly created the Department of Education and home of the Leadership Academy. The workshop settings every day of the summer themes of the would be principal as master of the curriculum into the ditch problem solving. The over reaching also to create transformational leaders. We frame the role of the

principal as the instructional leader that their job is to align all resources time money staff parents everything in the interest of instruction and teaching and learning in the classrooms there were many many instances where I thought God if I were the principal I would never do that at the school where I taught. Issues that were really important in the school weren't instructional issues they were issues of behavior and conduct and discipline and it was really very sad for me as a teacher to see that from the top down the message that was being carried was well it's really important to make sure that the kids behave. And it's really important to make sure that the kids know that if they don't behave they're going to get punished. And it's really important that the kids understand what the punishment is going to be and the progression of the punishment. And really that's that's that was the school that that

was what the school was about. It wasn't about educating the children even though they said they were about educating the children it was about keeping the children down. And it angered me and I really wanted to change that. Alexander and her colleagues will get hands on experience to become agents of change. The aspiring principals receive a fictitious school of their own a fabricated collection of simulator problems waiting to snag them. This letter is clear. Principals have to play the hand they are dealt. Problem based learning really creates a simulated environment where participants get to practice being the principal they say by just doing shared reading and isolation. Read aloud an isolation guided reading and isolation we lose the whole of what the workshop model is which is a learning environment that is an active collaborative where children are self directed. If I am a teacher in this room and this in the school I am absolutely sure

this is it. Absolutely too much expect one year. All of this is beautiful and this is what we want in three years and that in our vision and we know it does happen overnight. You're learning to develop yourself personally emotionally intellectually and then there's the academic learning logistics of being oppressed. You have to build a lot of relationships in order to work as a team and work effectively. And that's regards itself and I was very lucky to have a great team. We created for them problem scenarios one for each school level so there was a school called Change elementary school which I wrote with a number of collaborators problem scenario that describe the school in great detail it included the history of the school the three principals that were in the building prior to you know the new principal. It had the staff and staff profiles of every single person on staff both teaching as well as custodial staff security staff. It gave them a sense of who are the individuals in my school and both personally and professionally

and then talked about the interactions between the individuals what are the cliques in the school who is not talking to whom because we think they did last year or another you know we need them there on grade level we need them to talk to each other. We also gave them a budget for the school in case we have 11 classes. So obviously we have them we quit for four years. But that's the exercise that's all we're trying to work with. He won and I'm not saying by the end of this session and by the end of today you know people come over and say I can afford to repeat the exercise you need to work out the dollars your dollars to your resources and see if you can manage your budget. On this day small teams are cohorts of would be principals are looking for a mission statement that reflects where they want to go and how they want to get there. Moving teachers staff and students in the right direction.

When I get anything done on vision mission statement I want to be oh I'm going to do atmosphere I think I was fortunate enough to come from a school where my next one teaches materials with my materials and vice versa. It was a challenging process because we had six people who didn't necessarily agree didn't necessarily think alike but what we were forced to do is think what are our core values. What is it that we really want to impart. And when I believe this lesson. This is not a race. African American boys need that structure. We constantly revised it especially the parts where people felt a personal connection. I'm not saying that you shouldn't do it but if we're going to do it we have to do it fought so that it's meaningful. The moderator Sandra Stein pushes for results. As with all lessons of this academy the emphasis is not on merely are calculating a point of view but on action. A key component of leadership was a burning experience and reaching consensus

explaining our own values and that feeling that we were left out in any way even if it meant having a longer vision statement. So the point of that exercise of having them craft a vision statement in the very beginning of the program was twofold one was to think about how do you set a vision for a school and this was only after doing analysis of the school and what should the process look like so that everybody feels that that vision reflects their work. Some of the core values were the idea of community the idea of a learning community meaning that when we talk about teaching and learning we talk about instruction it's not just about the children in that community that need to learn the adults need to learn and the adults need to be the problem solvers as well because then we help children solve problems and we also help each other solve problems in terms of understanding how to help children learn. From

budgets to boilers the aspiring principals dealt with solving problems that might affect on this day. The issue was how do you change an uninspired teacher. So let's say you're working with somebody you know we want a teacher and we want them to consider a different approach. OK why can't we see somebody doing a very lecture we're hearing them talk to my son and yet feel like this you know question and that was the last. Right. OK tell the teacher in your mind have you seen this teacher ever in your town. OK so how did your mind and a question.

Want to tell you what your purpose of trying out a different type of instruction from first question I would ask how many of your students do you think were listening and how do you know they were listening. What did you do that told you that she wasn't like anything out of the equation or what took place in the class. Specifically I mean a listener which to me tells me that maybe your perspective they want us to have to ask questions and you know the first maybe saying what what you feel went well and then just leave it open and what you feel you would like to work on more and hopefully you get something from them. Now if you don't then I guess you have to be a bit more direct. There's an assumption I can tell listening not listening and usually you know like I was listening right now you know you're all not exactly why I give you my beliefs are

they to you. And what's the strategy for talking to them and they when they recognize that this is the way to go. Jack Weinman told me this story. Do you agree. Yeah it might be they might think that you're mocking my language my dear. During the course of the summer intensive they were having very intense conversations with one another where they were getting very good at stating their perspectives but not very good at getting to yes negotiating at really collectively problem solving and figuring out what the right question was to move the conversation forward rather than stating a perspective. Over and over again I will ask the question more important what you write because you can totally turn a person off and they can be friends.

What you're saying to me is that if I'm going to use language that could be perceived as a testing of your knowledge. But I've got to make sure I frame it first because it's going to trigger a defenseless response. Yes the program is very intense and very rigorous and really mirrors the work of the principal. And we have had some people in this first group moving through who have decided that they don't want to be a principal So to our minds it's better that they find out during the preparation phase than when they've accepted a job. The dropouts that happened early on I believe it was the first week you know where at least four people had dropped down and I think that at least in my group we actually felt like that the fact that other people had dropped out kind of strengthened our resolve that we weren't going to do that because we were committed to this program we were committed to the ideals of

this program. Any time that you put a group of people together and say Here do some work it sets up a certain dynamic and a certain tension. There are just some realities about working in schools that you just can't get away from. And I I think probably the harder you move up in the management the organization the running of schools. There are even more pressures that you just can't get away from. And I think the leadership but cademy has done an exceptional job of exposing us to some of the stress I'm trying to learn from this experience I'm really looking at the leadership styles and the systems that are in place to make the building work defectively to take place effectively and to see how community and is built and how relationships are status and how relationships are valued. As the school year began its summer intensive session at the academy to close

ranks the next phase of leadership training will be in these classrooms but in real schools throughout the city. Their job is to prepare themselves to be ready to open a school next year at this time. Now Xandra was assigned to the Bronx International Academy and spent every day with Principal surrounds her new mentor. Here I was meeting these people for the first time. I think my challenge will be that I am there to support them. I hear that there's a lot of tension and kind of struggle about regions and how the pressure is starting to come down about what are we doing to prepare the kids. And I thought that it might be useful for us to explore this this semester at the minimum maybe even for the whole year the idea of what it means to be successful. All the time you hear

the word succeed and success. What does it mean to be successful and I think that's a really important question for us to explore. When you want to do something and you know that you know you want to make you make money any different kind of situation then you can like you know what are you. If you believe in yourself you know you can make it. After several weeks of being immersed in the life of the school she answer and assess the challenges ahead this year in terms of becoming a leader. I'm sort of curious to know what your thoughts are on what is going well in terms of your work and what you want to work on. One of the things that I think I need help with as we as I begin to do this is I did I do feel that I need to really sit down and work on my ideas and just to make them clear to myself so that I can talk about them

clearly and effectively. When I see you doing it. You say the same things in many different ways and you really are very sure of what you're saying and I want to get to that point. You should always be listening to other people's way of presenting their work and what kinds of like points to they managed to hit that I feel resonance. You know and I grew up listening to them and then you can stay alive for the rest of the year will follow Alexandra Larry and Rafael love through their leadership training as they switch gears from academic settings to actual schools. We set down with the man in charge Bob knolling is the CEO of the leadership academy and I asked him how principals can create change when they face so many obstacles. You know I hope my answer doesn't flip. In this system today with all the constraints there are

a score of principles that in spite of all the barriers budgetary Union recalcitrant treat teacher it does not matter. There are people in the system today that in spite of those barriers get it down and get it done with excellence. Part of teaching people how to become transformational leaders is that you don't whine about the hand you've been dealt. You sort of look at your cards. You face reality that this is the hand I've been dealt what we're going to teach people is given the constraints how do you with what you control take control of your destiny and make it happen in spite of the barriers. That's what leadership is all about. All of us can sit and whine and a little cheese with this whine we have a nice pity party. This is not about talking about those things and that's not to say that we're naive in the academy. No we acknowledge those things up front. Kid's not going to understand was a barrier. He's not going to stand we have the money. OK so we've got to teach these folks how to become situational leaders to get beyond the constraints Mr.

Nolan what was the genesis of the leadership academy and why do we need. Well the system needed. Some form of reinvention relative to education reform if you look around the country at school systems urban school systems try to reinvent themselves. You know it's tough enough in the private sector to see a company try to re invent itself. You've got an unprecedented opportunity here with the fact that you will attrit over 600 principals in a three four year period that allows you the opportunity to change the mix. People who invent and live in a system are truly incapable of changing that system. So there has to be an accidental catalyst. So I can serve as the external catalyst the Academy can serve as an external catalyst that the aspiring principals that are participating in the leadership academy. What qualities were you looking for when you were selecting them. Well we actually had a fairly thorough process that said we were not looking in

particular for guidance counselor or an AP or a teacher but someone who aspires to get to the principal's job and perhaps the traditional role road of perhaps seventeen and a half years in the system and finally getting to that job who wants it now who has an aspiration to be the building leader today. And so there was not a set criteria in terms of who could apply. You're looking for someone who has a vision someone who has a set of values someone who can articulate a desired state and then at the end of the day whether you're a principal a CEO a business owner we're all about the business of how do we enlist people to our point of view to our agenda to our outcome of making something happen either by delivering a product to the market a profit to a shareholder or turning children into high performers typically in school systems there's not a lot of premium placed on being a true transformational leader. But what's going to happen over a 15 month period is we're truly going to help you assess where you are in terms of strengths and weaknesses.

We're going to work with you to develop your leadership capabilities. We're going to equip you with tools and mechanisms and processes so that you can reach into the tool bag as you get into situational problems and be a heck of a lot more effective than you were. Before you came to this process. When will you know. Yep this is working. Like you know when you were you know running were being a change agent for corporations you could tell because profits or costs were down. How will you know when will you know when this is working. Well principals are coming back from experiences in the academy and are saying I'm different and my approach is been altered in terms of what I'm going to do to maximize to the Chiba. Now the hardest part about all development and I use the analogy of a church I haven't found too many people who are bad people on Sunday but when it comes to have to put that into application on Monday morning we sometimes fall a little short. What we've got to do

from the workshop setting where we're doing this intense sort of development it's got to translate into what do you do differently on the job Monday morning. And that's the task of a school system. It's the same challenge that I face in the private sector in one way or another. Mayor Bloomberg Chancellor Klein Mr. Welch and you yourself all come from the corporate world. How do you transfer the skills and perspectives of the corporate world to the world of New York City public schools and I find it interesting that people in the school system or a little bit intimidated by businesspeople coming in and I've gone into many of our training development workshops where people have said up front I'm not so sure that there's anything that business people can teach us. And I would just tell you I think that's a very narrow view because let's take the words education business away from it. It really doesn't matter what industry we talk about there are best practices that go on in organizations and enterprises all the

time. What the school system need is and this could be New York City it could be other school systems. We need to learn how to shop to pick up best practices from each other. We need to learn how to not be seduced into the notion that if it wasn't invented here it can't possibly be good. Here's an important point two schools sitting in the same proximity of a two block radius in the city any borough. It doesn't matter where we go. The ability of those two schools to learn best practices from each other is nonexistent for two reasons 1. There is no collaboration. And two it's a system that in the past she held your information close to your vest. Now someone told me Bob it's even more profound than that you can have three schools in the same building and there is no best practice sharing. Well the hallmark of the private sector is we learn from each other. Imagine what would happen to Jack Welch if those businesses had not been boundaryless.

I mean it's the cornerstone of all of the greatness that happens in the private sector. We've got to do that in the school system and that's where the Academy is going to become the repository for best practices and the organization that will facilitate that kind of meaningful discussion. So will you ever be able to know that in fact you did succeed in what you're trying to do with a leadership academy. I know that at the end of the day there's only one metric that counts. That is did we move student achievement. And when I say move not incrementally move but did we substantially improve over a period of time. Student achievement. If you believe in the premise that there's a direct correlation to student achievement to the leadership capacity of the building leader in the academy it's only measure has to be that. Now there are some interim sort of things that we should see in terms of the language the tone the morale in the environment coherency in terms of how the teaching and learning takes place. But over the long haul it's got to be that we

lifted the system. We'll be following our three aspiring principals throughout the academic year but also be offering analysis of the program and its future impact on the school system. More information visit our website at 13 that orry for all of us here do your voices how Raffael of your own mind. Thanks for joining us. Funding for a year of change leadership in the principal's office provided by the Wallace Foundation supporting ideas sharing solutions expanding opportunities additional funding for New York Voices provided by Michael t Martin and the members of 13.