Breaking Ranks II: Strategies for Leading High School Reform

1. Breaking Ranks II: Strategies for Leading High School Reform • Educators work better when they collaborate, and “it is the principal who must lead -- better, orchestrate -- this collaboration.” • “Personalization of the school environment is a necessity.” • “Student anonymity must end, whatever it takes.”

2. Jim Collins, Good to Great “Disciplined people who engage in disciplined thought and take disciplined action – operating with freedom within a framework of responsibilities – this is the cornerstone of a culture that creates greatness.”

3. Meg Wheatley,Finding Our Way “The critical task for a leader is to increase the number, variety and strength of connections within the system.”

4. The Biological “Urge to Speak” “Above all, the brain wants survival. To survive we must be in control, or believe that we are. . . . And we survive by thinking, planning and deciding. We might say that our best chance to help another person learn is to find out what they want, what they care about.” --James Zull, The Art of Changing the Brain

5. An Emerging Consensus NASSP Breaking Ranks II: • “Each high school will establish a site council and other meaningful roles in decision making to students, parents, and members of the staff in order to promote student learning and an atmosphere of participation, responsibility, and ownership.” John Kotter, Harvard Business Review: • “Considerable research has demonstrated that, in general, participation leads to commitment, not merely compliance.”

6. Three Characteristics of Living Systems • They constantly create and recreate themselves. • They constantly reorganize themselves in unpredictable ways. • They constantly demonstrate their awareness by the way they interact with their environment.

7. Follow the Meaning Meaning doesn’t behave in mechanistic ways. Therefore, we can abandon many of our mechanistic assumptions about what is required for organizational change. We don’t have to achieve “critical mass”; we don’t need programs that “roll out” (or over) the entire organization; we don’t need to train every individual or part; we can stop obsessing if we don’t get the support of the top of the organization. Instead, we can work locally, finding the ideas and processes that are meaningful in one area of the system. If we succeed in generating energy in one area, we can watch how our other networks choose to notice what we’re doing. Who takes notice? Where have our ideas traveled in the organizational web? If we ask these questions, we learn who might be ready to take up this work next. -- Meg Wheatley, Finding Our Way

8. What Does the 21st Century School Leader Look Like? S/he is: • A Reflective individual, with a self-awareness and spirit of stewardship that always judges individual success on the extent to which others fulfill their potential; • A Systems thinker, with the skills and training necessary to diagnose problems holistically so schools can address the root causes, not symptoms, that hinder further student growth; • A Collaborative decision-maker,who welcomes all voices and recognizes that when people are effectively empowered to co-create their own work and learning environments, “buy-in” is unnecessary; • An Organizational change expert, who equips school personnel with the understanding, motivation and skills they need to continually, and at the appropriate pace, work with the forces of change; and • An “Urgently Patient” Steward of Democratic Principles, who nurtures organizational and classroom cultures that strike the right balance between individual freedom and group structure, allowing both basic human needs to be honored.

9. The School of the Future Imagine a place where . . . • students have the skills and self-confidence they need to be visible in their communities and throughout their lives; • teachers work collaboratively to help analyze, interpret and improve both their work and the work of their students; • administrators are focused on developing the capacity to create safe, intellectually curious schools that involve more people in the planning, evaluation and decision-making processes; and • all people involved with schools understand the importance of not just their individual rights, but also their civic responsibility to guard the rights of others – especially those with whom they most deeply disagree.

10. How Do We Get There? • Reflect (or, take the time to know “who’s there”) • Connect (or, make the connections that let you “see the whole board”) • Create (or, remember that “people only support what they create”) • Equip (or, equip people with the understanding, motivation, and skills they need to see their ideas through • Let Come (or, let the school’s shared vision come naturally into being)

11. Microlabs • What would a visitor to your school describe as its most visible features/values? • What would a veteran of your school culture describe as its most invisible features/values? • Based on your answers to the first two questions, what implications do you see for your work going forward?

12. Sam Chaltainschaltain@gmail.com703 851 7826 www.willwereally.com network.fivefreedoms.org