Thinking in Three Dimensions

Background

The Ellison College Preparatory School, located in a Northeastern city, is a PreK-8 school that houses 624 students and 43 teachers and staff. The three-story brick school sits across from a large park and takes up an entire city block. There is a school vegetable and butterfly garden along the front; the back is dominated by a track and soccer field, and a large mural painted by local community artists. Inside, the hallways are broad and warmly lit; the floors shine. Artwork, a combination of professional murals and student work, is posted on the walls. In addition, the school includes multiple health services, arts programs, and community programs for families and children.

In all, 81% of the student body are eligible for free or reduced fee lunch, 74% are African American, and 23% are Latino. The student body includes 10% English language learners and 6% special education students. The average attendance rate (92%) exceeds the citywide average. The school has a high retention rate. By 2009-2010, 86% of the teachers had been there for more than 2 years, up from 65% 2 years earlier.

Matt Donaldson has been principal of Ellison for 11 years. In that time, the school has seen a dramatic turnaround in student achievement, teacher development, retention, parent involvement, and community relations. In 2009, 78% of students were proficient in English Language Arts (ELA) and 93% in math; 70% of students made at least 1 year of progress in ELA and 82% in math, demonstrating sustained growth every year. In a recent parent survey, 97% of parents were satisfied with the quality of education, opportunities for involvement, and communication.

This was not always the case. When Dr. Donaldson took over Ellison, it was one of the lowest performing schools in the city. Organized into a group of failing schools, Ellison and its leadership were under the direct supervision of a designated superintendent. After several years of close scrutiny, Dr. Donaldson was able to increase student achievement enough to be released from the label of “failing school.” In fact, the school is often called the “gap closing” school. Ellison has garnered national and international recognition and has been awarded several prizes for school improvement.

Dr. Donaldson is a youthful, African American and father of three, who proudly displays his doctoral diploma from a national university along with many local and national awards and recognitions. He grew up in the area and had always planned on returning. Dr. Donaldson’s prior district and middle school experience in turning around low-performing schools gave him insight into the stages and phases of school reform. He is aggressively entrepreneurial on behalf of his school, and has increased public and private support to enrich the curriculum in the arts, provide new playgrounds, and support standards-based professional development for all teachers while using distributed leadership for continuous improvement.

Case Narrative

Matt walked into his office and looked around to make sure everything was ready. His office was spotless as always; his desk was clear of any stray papers or piles. The screen saver on his computer reflected his favorite mantra, “Making the extraordinary, ordinary.” After a morning of meetings with his leadership cabinet and teachers, visiting classrooms, and fielding questions about the next visit by district dignitaries, he was glad to finally have a moment alone to think about the group of assistant principals coming to meet with him.

It did not seem that long ago that he was an assistant principal eager to take on a tough school. When he finally got his chance at Ellison, he grabbed it and did not look back. That was 11 years ago. In that time, he had stopped the decline in achievement, put an end to the exodus of neighborhood children to new charter schools, was awarded principal of the year, and earned his doctorate. He had used all his skill and knowledge into turning Ellison around and felt proud about the work he and his staff accomplished together.

But he could not let things lie, he chuckled to himself. He had to keep thinking and learning, and building “meaningful relationships.” So when the local administrative union asked him to mentor aspiring principals, he jumped at the opportunity. These were the people who were coming today, a group of assistant principals selected as “next in line” by the district. He liked having the chance to share the many essential details of his work that often got overlooked. These meetings forced him to reflect on what he did and why, and the group’s questions pushed him to think deeper about his assumptions of what makes a successful turnaround school.

There was a quick knock at the open door, and his assistant principal of 7 years, Ms. Walker, and the person he saw as his successor, briskly walked in. She carried five Ellison folders with her and put one in front of each chair. She looked at the clock and said, “They’ll be here any minute. You ready?” He nodded and reviewed a folder’s content. It included the school improvement plan, recent annual review, school brochure, and newspaper clippings of all the awards and high-level visits they received. “This looks good,” he said, and thanked her with a smile.

A sound at the door made him look up and there, looking a bit out of place, were the five assistant principals whom he would mentor this year. He waved them in and indicated the seats around the oval table. He took their hands in his firm grip saying, “Welcome to Ellison College Preparatory School.”

They hastened to sit down, and a few looked around at the awards that hung on the walls amid student drawings indicating how much students loved “Dr. Matt.” He quickly scanned the group. There were three men, one White, one African American, and one who could be Latino, and two African American women. They seemed to range from mid-20s to early 40s. From the information he had received, he knew that one was a midcareer changer, two had taught for about 10 years, and two were on the “fast track,” having come through an alternate certification program. Each had been selected as an up-and-coming leader who would be taking over their existing school soon or was being tapped for another school.

Ms. Walker brought bottles of water and said, “That should be everything,” moving to make a silent exit.

But Matt would not have it, saying “Ms. Walker, take a seat. You’re as much a part of this conversation as I am. Sit, sit.”

Matt looked around at each face and saw eagerness, skepticism, and a healthy dose of fear. That is good, he thought. “So you want to be principals, huh?” They nodded. Then he asked, “What do you think is the principal’s most important job?”

One said, “Raising test scores.” Another added, “Instruction.” A third said, “Student learning.” “Teacher evaluation,” stated another. And the last one added, “Keeping his job.”

Matt laughed, “Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And Yes. Now how does the principal do all that?” The assistant principals looked at each other and shifted uncomfortably in their seats.

One finally said, “Isn’t that what we’re here for?” Another quietly said, “I don’t know.” Matt turned to that speaker and said, “That’s a good place to start!”

I could tell you the story of a young, first-time principal that goes to the worst school in the district and fights off dragons and enemies, storms the walls and saves the school from a fate worse than death, but that wouldn’t be a very good, or true, story. There’s nothing glamorous or easy or heroic about turning a school around. It takes lots of hard work, most of which you won’t get any recognition for, and it takes time and a good dose of staying power. It means creating systems and structures that didn’t exist before. It means thinking on several dimensions at once. It means building the capacity of your organization, the people in it, to learn. And it means knowing enough to know when you don’t know and knowing who to go for help. See, turning a school around isn’t about “superman,” it’s about understanding that every day makes a difference in the life of every child in your building.

He carefully looked at each assistant principal at the table, including his own, and said, “That’s the conversation we are going to have. So if you’re looking to be a hero or are looking for easy answers, there’s the door, because you won’t find that here.”

No one moved. And so he began.

Most people don’t “get” the work we do here, because they are thinking on one dimension at a time. Here at Ellison, we are working on multiple dimensions at once because they all intersect at some point and they all affect each other. It’s like the butterfly in Brazil that causes the tsunami in Japan. It’s all connected. All of our learning, mine, the leadership team, the teachers, the kids . . . it’s all connected. And learning in one dimension creates learning in another.

“If they are all connected,” one assistant principal asked, “where do you start?”

Matt replied,

Me? I start at the smallest system and then work my way out. But that’s how I think about it. Let me tell you how that happens here at Ellison. I meet with each of teachers 3 times a year, in what we call “one-to-ones.” That would be dimension one or individual learning. At the beginning there was real resistance because the teachers never had to talk about their own development with their principal before. In other words, this “system” didn’t exist and I was creating it with my teachers.

Over time, these one-to-ones became a formal structure. I have annual binders for all the teachers which I keep over here, pointing at the bookcase next to his desk.

In the first meeting, we look at their own student performance data from the prior year. We create goals and identify an area for improvement, how they intend on making that improvement, and what they need from me to make that happen. Together, we work out a goal-setting plan for the year, complete with measures of effectiveness, focusing on the student achievement goal, as well as personal and professional goals. I follow-up with each teacher in his or her classrooms and during two more one-to-one meetings throughout the year. At the end of the year, we reflect on what was accomplished and discuss a unique challenge each has experienced and what they have learned from it, particularly to inform instruction.

“How long does each session take,” asked one assistant principal?

“About 15 to 20 minutes per teacher,” Matt answered.

“Why do you spend so much time on this?” asked another.

“For several reasons,” replied Matt. “To foster meaningful relationships with staff, initiate and drive conversations around academic achievement, share information about the organization and provide ongoing support.”

“Do all teachers participate?” asked a third.

“Most are eager to share and hound me for their appointments,” replied Matt, “but a few do need to be chased down.” He looked at Ms. Walker and they both smiled knowingly.

Matt continued,

What you need to see, though, is how even this one system creates learning in several places at once. I learn about their strengths and challenges; they learn about my expectations. I learn how to support them; they learn to open their practice. I learn about teacher needs by grade; they learn to think outside their own classrooms. It’s one of those things that doesn’t take up that much of my time in the grand scheme of things, but gives me lots in return.

“Having watched Dr. Donaldson for a number of years now,” Ms. Walker added,

I know that he gives a consistent message and focus and in what he does, or else the teachers would see through it and know that it’s not really that important. But because he places such high value on these conversations, on the process, so do they. So every meeting is an opportunity to improve.

“That by itself won’t do the trick,” continued Matt.

In my 5th year I was attending a conference when it hit me that we have to somehow integrate grade-level teams with vertical curriculum teams. The grade-level teams had been working beautifully for a couple of years. Teachers were planning collaboratively, visiting each other’s classrooms, and requesting resources or help by grade. But I was still seeing some gaps between grades. And where teachers used to be “territorial” of their classrooms, now they were acting that way by grade. We needed to find a way to break that down or else we would never get to that next level or dimension two, building group, organizational capacity.

He paused to let that sink in. He noticed that a few were taking notes. “I’m sure you see some of that in your own buildings,” he said, while several nodded in agreement. He continued,

That’s when we moved to the vertical content teams. But the vertical teams would be a different kind of conversation, of focus; so we needed to create a new system for that. Some university colleagues of mine had been working with a process they called “collaborative inquiry,” using it with principals as professional development. I thought it just might provide the right structure, so I asked them to help me think this through.

“You mean you relied on outside experts to tell you what to do?” one asked.

“No, not really. I knew what I wanted to do.” He replied,

I just wasn’t sure how to do it. And I knew that they would listen to the needs of my school and help me come up with a plan that would help me meet those needs. They didn’t try to “sell” me a product or program. They really wanted to help me figure out what was best for my school.

Ms. Walker nodded,

When they first came here, they did a lot of listening, asked a lot of questions and then they helped us think about what we wanted to do. These weren’t “experts” who thought they knew what we needed. They realized that we knew what we needed and they were really respectful of that.

“Yes,” added Matt,

And that’s what I needed: someone to help me think differently or better about what I wanted to do. That’s where my learning was. If I got an external person to do the work for us, well then we wouldn’t learn or build any systems that we could sustain once those folks left.

“Wow,” another assistant principal said, “that’s thinking at a whole different . . . ” and the assistant principal paused, “dimension,” she said at the same time that Matt did. The group laughed.

Okay, so they helped me to realize that one teacher from each grade had to be a part of a team that would use collaborative inquiry, or CI as we call it, to look at each curricular area. And each team used CI to examine what was happening in their content area across grades. Each team decided how they wanted to look at their content area, what their inquiry question would be, but they had to use CI as their process and they had to present their findings and recommendations to the whole school at the end of the year.

“And how long did these teams last?” asked one of the group.

“Well that question has two answers, really,” said Matt. “The short answer is that they met for 2 hours once a month. The long answer gets into the next dimension of our work.”

The assistant principals looked confused, and Matt smiled saying, “That’s the challenge of this work. You have to get used to moving across a couple of different dimensions. Stay with me!” They laughed again.

So dimension three addresses the question of “how long these teams lasted,” but has more to do with distributing leadership. Keep in mind that this was a 3-year effort! In year 1 these colleagues actually facilitated these vertical teams and helped them learn about the content area, how to use CI and how to have these kinds of conversations. Each team had a “cochair” that helped coordinate each team’s work and communicate within the team and with the facilitators.

Matt continued,

At the end of the 1st year, each team presented their work and made recommendations for changes in their content area, requested resources they might need and identified their inquiry question for year 2. This public sharing helped to make teams responsible to the organization and their peers, but it also helped to change the culture of the school by focusing on learning for all.

One assistant principal who had been taking notes looked up and asked, “So the 2nd year built on the 1st?”

Matt replied enthusiastically, “Yes, and the 3rd year built on the 2nd!”

Ms. Walker added,

That way we worked on improving each content area for 3 years! We aligned curriculum across grades and created a much more effective delivery system from kindergarten to eighth grade. When the teachers saw what each group did and how their worked evolved from year 1 to year 3, they were really amazed!

Another assistant principal whistled and said, “Yes, I can imagine.”

Matt continued,

But we still haven’t gotten to the really interesting part. So in year 1 the facilitators really took the lead in getting the groups to work. In the 2nd year, we had the cochairs take the lead with the facilitators acting in a support capacity. We had cochair meetings, with the facilitators, to debrief and problem-solve together. Cochairs and facilitators communicated before each meeting to come up with agendas and to go over whatever had come up in the previous meeting, but the meetings themselves were run by the cochairs.

Here, he paused to let it sink in.

“And were they still meeting every month?” someone asked.

“How did the teachers react?” another asked at the same time.

Yes, we kept meeting every month. There were things that we had to figure out along the way and some we are still working on. For instance, the teachers who stepped up as cochairs were some of the newer teachers. So this created a strange dynamic within the teams. Eventually, the teams realized that it was the work that was driving them not the cochairs and that the cochairs were really there to facilitate. The other rough spot was our specialists. While some content area skills can be integrated into the different specialties, it was such a stretch, really, that it never quite worked to have these specialists at every meeting. I always thought that it didn’t help them in their professional development. I still struggle with that.

“So what happened in year 3?” one of the group asked.

Oh, yeah, year 3. We phased out the facilitators completely over the year. The cochairs continued to meet to brainstorm and problem-solve and they began acting like curriculum leaders. I already had a “cabinet” of my assistant principals and instructional coaches, but then we expanded that to include the cochairs and they became my leadership team. The cochairs became involved in deciding the direction the school should go in terms of instruction and they became a communication conduit between the vertical content teams and the grade-level teams. It was a thing of beauty!

He leaned back and smiled.

I could sit here and tell you that I had planned it like that all along, but that would be a lie. And that would really give you a false impression of the importance being “adaptive,” you’ve heard of that right?

He chuckled.

Of being open to the learning that is absolutely necessary in order to get beyond the technical parts of our work and move into the more interesting and powerful adaptive elements of it. I learned along the way and listened to what my teachers and assistant principals and colleagues were telling me about what was going on, what was working, what wasn’t. And as I learned, I asked new and better questions. That’s what I meant when I said, “I don’t know” is a good place to start.

The rooms fell silent. Finally, one assistant principal asked, “So how do you know it’s working?”

Matt laughed and said,

The easy answer is that I know it’s working because our kids leave our school happy every day, because our scores continue to improve and because we’ve had very little teacher turnover in the past 3 years. The more complicated answer is that the quality of instruction has improved dramatically and teachers continue to push themselves. I can be out of the building for a whole day and not get a frantic phone call or feel the need to check-in, and feel completely confident that everything is being taken care of.

He looked over to Ms. Walker who was nodding and smiling.

We have the community surveys that tell us that parents are very satisfied with the kind of education their children are receiving, with the school environment that honors and respects their children and with teachers who are meeting their children’s needs. We collect a lot of different kinds of data in this school and we use it all to get feedback on how we are doing. Some of it is actually in your folders, I think.

He stopped again, pensively.

“Looking back, Dr. Donaldson, what would you do differently?” one of them asked tentatively.

That’s a good question. I’d pay more attention to how what we were learning as a group got disseminated in individual classrooms. Some teachers were slower to see the connection between what we were doing in grade and vertical content teams and their classrooms. I also think I’d do more prework around facilitation with the cochairs. Some of them thought that they were running regular meetings rather than a collaborative inquiry. And I think I’d have teachers collect more data from students. I remember one group interviewed students as part of their inquiry and we were all amazed at their insights and honesty. It really blew us all away. That should become part of our regular practice, checking in with the kids.

“Can I come work here?” one asked.

Everyone laughed and Matt said, “Sure! Other questions?”

“How much longer are you planning on doing this?” one of the group asked.

Matt paused a moment, thinking carefully.

I’ve always thought that I would leave this school under one condition, and only one condition: that they didn’t need me anymore. Remember, the three dimensions that I’ve been talking about are individual learning, group capacity and distributed leadership, right? What’s important is that you address, think about, and prepare for all three dimensions of your leadership.

They all nodded.

So these systems and habits of mind, let’s say, are so ingrained in the culture of this school, of the work that goes on that really, they don’t need me here anymore to keep doing what they’ve learned how to do on their own.

“That’s not true, Dr. Donaldson,” said Ms. Walker, “and you know it!”

Matt laughed, “There’s a difference between needing me here and liking to have me around!” Everyone joined in the laughter.

Matt looked at the clock and said, “We’ve got the rest of the year to really go deep into why these three dimensions matter.” They nodded again. “Now I can talk about this, forever, but let’s go see some of this in action, huh?” All the assistant principals agreed eagerly, gathered their things, and filed out.

“Come on, Ms. Walker, you too,” he said, letting her pass before him. As they left, he looked back at his office with a sense of satisfaction knowing that his school would be just fine without him.