I’ve recently completed Michael Fullan’s new book, The Principal: Three Keys to Maximizing Impact. It is a wonderful look at how site based administration can best leverage their time and energy on those initiatives and practices that are best linked to success in schools. I think we can all agree, and research would support us, teachers make the largest impact on learning in a school. If this is the case how do principals bring out the best in their staff. There is a real push in the province to look carefully at teaching practice. It comes from the idea that if we an make teachers even better than they are, this will bring about better learning for our students – that makes sense to me. Better teachers – better learning. In an effort to stretch teachers many school administrators have chosen the option of getting into classes, to see what’s going on and have frank open dialogues with the teachers about what they have seen and maybe ask those pivotal questions that will make teachers question why they do things the way they do. That sounds practical. Any time we have deep discussions about our practice, we get better. Fullan puts a different lens on teacher evaluation though. He suggests that while these deep conversations have there place, think about how long it would take for a principal to get through all the teachers in a moderate size school. If there are 25 teachers in a school, and a principal drops into a class for a prolonged visit of 40 minutes and then spends 15 minutes debriefing that visit, that’s 55 minutes per visit. When you multiply that by 25 teachers, that’s close to 25 hours to do one visit per teacher. That’s good but, Fullan suggests, how far does that visit take you? Perhaps not far at all. Once the quick dialogue is over, the principal leaves and the chance of a follow up on the conversation becomes slim as the principal is off to the next teacher and has a backlog of other duties to attend to. Fullan offers what he believes to be a better solution to the problem of affecting change in practice. If a principal were to invest the time taken to visit classes into creating cultures of learning and growth in the building through strong Professional Learning Communities, working with peers and team teaching, the principal is not simply affecting one teacher but creating a whole school culture of improvement. That idea makes good sense to me. Teachers working with teachers, in a non-evaluative way, will have stronger impact on practice than an hour visit and conversation from someone in an evaluative position. I am not suggesting that principals should not be getting into classrooms. Not at all. What I am suggesting and agreeing with Fullan on, is that creating cultures of change and growth in a school will get teacher practice evolving far faster than one hit discussions. So, drop in to classes by all means but prioritize culture building. Support teachers to meet during class times by covering classes, allow teachers to team teach. Support the important work of Instructional Coaches as they support the changes in classrooms. These are the initiatives that will create cultures of excellence and growth. Keep on learning, Dave
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