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Teacher Development Through School Reform
and School Reform Through Teacher Development
(The Story of One Small Town Principal and One School)
Frances Schoonmaker
Teachers College, Columbia University
Teacher development is frequently talked about in terms of continuous learning, reflective thinking, developing an inquiry stance, and collaboration, but what conditions allow these characteristics to flourish? In this paper, I look at how leadership in development of school culture and environment is critical in supporting teacher development and argue that democratic cooperation around real issues can lead to teachers growing together as they become deeply invested in the life and work of the school.
The link between schools where teachers assume responsibility for reform and the success of school reform is well established in the literature (e.g. see Beachum & Dentith, 2004; Darling-Hammond, 1997; McLaughlin, 1990). While there are differences of opinion about how to foster this link, both the professional culture and the pedagogical practices that emerge from teacher participation in creating the rationale and practices they will use in bringing about school change appear to lead to teachers adopting constructivist practices (Becker & Reil, 1999).
However, most educational research on teacher professional development is focused on teachers in urban contexts. The unintended consequence has been to overlook thousands of small-town schools that are struggling with similar problems in vastly different social and geographic contexts (Carlson & Buttram, 2004). Research on urban schooling has examined an array of issues related to school structures, student achievement and teacher development and collaborative inquiry (Croninger & Lee, 2001; Darder, 1993; Darling-Hammond, 1985; Fine, 1986; Ladson-Billings, 2000; Cochrane Smith and Lytle, 1998; Lyons, 1994; Rumberger, 1995; Sachs, 1999; Sleeter, 1987; Skrtic, 1991). Yet we have little to guide us in understanding what appear to be similar problems in areas outside the complex urban centers of the country where nearly forty percent of America's school-age children attend public school. The challenges small-town and rural teachers face in their professional practice are important to consider if the success of all our children matters.
This paper draws on data from a study of how a racially, culturally, economically diverse grade 5-6 school in a small Midwestern town transformed itself from a school characterized by behavior problems, cultural divisiveness and low achievement to an exemplary school with highly professional teachers, and a curriculum that emphasizes the whole child while meeting the demands of a high stakes testing environment. It draws on themes present in literature on teacher development, offering a description of how teacher development occurred within one small-town context.
Study Method
This qualitative study is rooted in a social-constructivist perspective that assumes realities are created and negotiated by those who experience them. I've attempted to ground interpretations in what participants say or do (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) while allowing theoretical perspectives and the existing research literature help to pose questions of the data and test emergent understandings (Lather, 1991). Emphasis was on "purposeful conversations" [1] with and among participants, primarily school and Central Office personnel, and on available documents (e.g., newsletters, district publications). Analysis of data has followed standard qualitative research protocols with emphasis being on constant comparison and review of emergent themes from data--transcribed conversations, the researcher's log, critical incident reports and documents. All data and the analysis has been reviewed by participants and by members of a research group who provided an important outside perspective. [2]The paper is limited offers a partial and subjective view, limited to the experiences of insiders--teachers, principal, staff. [3]However, a subjective-insider perspective has meant open access to a complex, interactive, and a layered process of teacher development that must be understood within a particular social-political context over time.
Washington School Begins to Change
Washington School is a grade 5-6 center with approximately 20 teachers serving 300+ students. It is located in a middle-American town of approximately 8,200 residents. The district's web-site sets out a mission:Empowering All Students to Succeed in a Changing Society: The Middle-America Schools [4] exist to guide life-long learners in acquiring the skills they need to locate, access and evaluate information, to contribute positively to a changing world, to maintain a healthy life-style, and to respond productively to the challenges and opportunities of a global society.
Reflecting its community, the student body includes more than half Euro-Americans with Mexican-Americans, Native Americans, African Americans and Other/Mixed groups making up the remainder. Five years ago, Washington School was seen by the community as a problem school. According to a veteran teacher it was known for "Just out-and-out disrespect and students' lack of commitment to anything." Its location in a section of town populated largely by low-income Euro-, Mexican- and Native- Americans contributed to stereotypical images of the school. All children in the community attended the school for grades 5-6. And there were real challenges of disparity in achievement between cultural/racial groups. Most middle-class white students were siphoned off into a gifted and talented program, contributing to social inequities. Cliques, fighting, bullying, gangs, vandalism and the like contributed to the school's negative reputation. Furthermore, it was beset with leadership challenges and had a reputation for cliquishness among teachers, many of them long-term employees.
In this environment, teacher development occurred, but it was negative development. Teachers learned to close their doors to the outside world and developed an array of negative teaching and management strategies in order to survive.
The changes at the school began when a new principal, Jan Stodden, [5] was appointed with the commission to "straighten out" the mess at Washington School. "The teachers were really whipped," Jan recalls. "They had gone through a lot of emotional problems on top of academic problems." Jan made it clear that she was there to support teachers. "We upped the ante on [student] expectations," she explained. Student behavior was out of control and a priority was creating a safe environment for teachers and students. "We didn't expect [students] to fight and if they did they were going to suffer consequences, in-school and out-of-school suspensions. We suspended a lot of kids."
By the end of Jan's first year, a half-time Assistant Principal, Dawna Mosburg, was appointed. With the exception of one year as half-time Assistant Principal in another building, Dawna had no previous training for the role of principal. Jan recalls that there was simply no time to give her the kind of intense internship in leadership she would have liked to provide. Dawna did "just anything that I did. We worked every single minute of every single day in the managerial stages of the principal-ship . . . dealing with students [who] were pulled out of the classroom in some kind of consequence for a behavior. . .It was unbelievable. You were dizzy every day. And the kids were dizzy."
Jan recognized that real change in student behavior would not come about without altering the school schedule. Focusing on discipline "wasn't very successful but it was because they were in an environment that was not age appropriate." It was a containment strategy that could not solve the problem. The environment for curriculum change required teachers who were involved, but to get teachers involved in curriculum change required a stable, appropriate environment.
Creating an appropriate environment was a multi-year process that Jan initiated but had not fully implemented when she resigned shortly before the beginning of her third year, due to personal reasons. Students were essentially on a high-school like schedule. Teachers were specialized, teaching a subject to a succession of children all day long. "Kids were switching every 40-50 minutes. They were losing their books, losing their backpacks and some kids would come in and wouldn't even know where they went and it might be October, but they just didn't have a clue, just going with the flow. They also weren't keeping up with their assignments," Jan recalled.
The first phase of the schedule change was to create language arts and reading blocks, with teachers paired to exchange students. This meant that for part of the day children were more contained. But they still switched classes for all other subjects. The school was still a troubled environment and teachers who had begun to feel reassured that Jan was somebody who would support them were deeply discouraged by news that she had resigned.
Bringing Everyone On Board
Dawna knew what a new principal would face. After a great deal of soul-searching and with more than a little reluctance, she took the position of principal on an interim basis. She had not been given enough lead-time to even think about how she might shape the school. But she had very clear ideas about teaching and learning, formed by her teacher preparation in constructivist methods. Her reputation as an outstanding teacher was well established in the community. Becky (5th grade teacher) recalled, "Dawna was the one everyone was telling about. When I started teaching she'd been a teacher, and I'd heard that she taught [with] units and that she was such a neat teacher."Dawna assumed from the beginning that everyone was part of the school team and began to try to build a school learning community much as she had built classroom learning communities. Laverne, a custodian, noted that she "uses input from the teachers. . . And there's a lot of times she'd go to principals' meeting and then she'd come back. Well, it was a ritual. She'd mention something, 'Are we doing that?'. . . because she didn't know."
By offering them genuine opportunities to make decisions that affected their school environment Dawna helped teachers become involved early and often in school reform. They collectively invented solutions to school problems and felt an interest in the outcome of their decisions.
Unfortunately, Dawna's first year was consumed by the same control issues that had claimed Jan's attention. She did not want to implement the second phase of the school reorganization plan for fear of upsetting teachers who were already "on the edge." Yet it became increasingly clear that no real change would occur without getting student behavior under control and helping teachers learn new ways of working with students. Denny, the school counselor, believed "It had to change. . . the bell would ring and it was chaos. There would be fights as children passed each other." Changing seemed imperative, but impossible. As one teacher pointed out, they'd been departmentalized for years, "and that's the way a lot of them were hired, just to teach one subject."
It was not a process that teachers, left to their own devices, were likely to have implemented. They were too deeply into the situation, keeping their heads above water and there was no history of the kind of self-consciousness and self-criticism--that might enable them to explore the deeper questions of what was good, right, or just in their context (see Phenix 1981, Rodger 1996). While they intuitively understood that In School Suspension (ISS) and suspension from school did not address the real issues that prompted disruptive behavior, they were trapped in a cycle that, in effect, blamed the student.
Rocking the Already Rocking Boat
By the end of Dawna's first year as principal, two things happened to disrupt the patterns of interaction within the school. She made the top-down decision to implement the reorganization plan and the School Superintendent insisted that she implement the new inclusion policy for gifted and talented students--a plan that he had for creating stronger school programs and breaking up de-facto segregation within the district. Dawna was furious with him for forcing the plan at a time when her teachers seemed fragile and teachers were furious with her for reorganizing.Interestingly enough, most teachers do not remember how hard the decision was at the time. As one expressed it, "I don't recall people being upset about it. I mean, it just seemed to happen. We just kind of lived with it. We accepted it, and that's the way it was." Sue Ann (6th grade) believed that since the language arts teachers had already experienced some rescheduling they believed reorganization could work. Adding reading was not such a stretch. "But for a person who had just taught math, and then had to teach science and social studies their first year; we had to work hard to make that transition. And I think it was harder for them."
Madeline (ESL/ELL teacher) and Dot (Extended Studies) remembered that while a few teachers were unhappy initially, the staff was progressive in outlook and wanted to do what was best for children. "And worked together to do it," Madeline said. Dot underscored, "If there were problems, we worked to try to solve them." Jay, a new teacher at the time, believed that teachers "had discussed it so much the previous year, because they knew the change was coming, that if they had any hard feelings, most of them had already worked it out."
But it wasn't so easy at the time, as one recalled. Teachers felt things were better because they could send children out for disrupting the classroom and expect support. They didn't want anything to rock the boat:
[Teachers] didn't have faith in it at all. There was a lot of criticism and it challenged Dawna and [there were] a lot of feelings . . . she can handle that when it comes to discipline and dealing with her staff, but it comes to that type of a change, that was hard . . . They reminded me of some of the students sometimes when you tell them they need to do this, they roll their eyes.
When Dawna appeared in the teachers' work room or the hallway where teachers were clustered to talk, "It'd go quiet right away. That was tough. After feelings are hurt, I guess like most human beings, you get angry." People got angry. But Dawna intuitively realized that democratic leadership sometimes requires use of top-down discretionary power, just as it is non-directive in other circumstances (Frowe, 2005; Lewin, 1941). By the end of Dawna's first year it was clear to everyone what the changes would be and that changing was not negotiable.
It Isn't "Teacher Island" Anymore
Putting teachers into teams for subject blocks at each grade level required them to do a great deal of rethinking about teaching. Some had never taught the full range of elementary school subjects and everyone had the children for longer blocks of time. But that was not the only change. Another dramatic effect on the schedule was the decision by the Superintendent to move away from the traditional gifted-talented program and do more mainstreaming, following the special education inclusion model. Teachers who were somewhat protected from the challenges of the regular classrooms were now going to be expected to work in a different way, and with all children. Faced with having to take on responsibility for teaching in areas that they had not taught for years, if at all, teachers looked to each other for support. Evalynn, who had been teaching gifted and talented students remembers,My job totally changed. At the beginning I think my feelings were hurt . . . Why didn't [they] find out what our feelings were? And it was just, this is the way it's going to be. I think parents also--and I was really kind of torn. I didn't do anything, because I was loyal . . . we just made the best of it, you know. Dawna allowed me to go to other schools and visit and find out what they did, and I had a big role in what my job was going to be. . . so that was a positive thing.
Becky felt somewhat at an advantage because her preferred way of working was through an integrated curriculum. She could see that others "definitely struggled with that." Teachers had different styles. But "everyone was open to try it." Teachers got together as a team to help each other and "after the first year there just wasn't any question; no one asked, no one said that we should go back."
Dan added that they shared concerns related to children as well. "We share ideas. . . about what we needed to do with a certain child or how he's reacting, and what we need to do to get him to where he needs to be." This idea of doing what is right for children appears over and over again in teachers' conversations.
Getting together in teams did not just happen. Collaborative planning and decision making depended on opportunities for people to meet together, another pressure on scheduling. Denny (counselor) remembers long hours after school, working with Dawna and shedding tears over how to make the schedule work. However, Dawna believed that "Each year we worked and improved on things." The district provided funding to take teachers to a retreat experience in the summer prior to the schedule change. Their time together before and after sessions was a team-building time and they began their initial discussions of how to make the reorganization work. Almost everyone pointed to this experience as pivotal in their thinking about holding high expectations of children and how they could work together to make it happen.
Though changing the schedule was not optional, Dawna involved teachers in almost every other decision related to the school program and involved them in special efforts to solve problems facing the school. She left the details to them. Teachers collaboratively invented new ways to shape the school that range from 1) instituting a morning meeting to bring the whole school together, 2) creating structures that help children learn how to take responsibility for their own behavior--such as rethinking how the cafeteria was run, to 3) projects that bring in the larger community--such as decorating the building to make it a more aesthetically interesting and pleasing environment to 3) figuring out how to provide greater individualization through team efforts. Each of these initiatives has had the dual focus of building community and addressing the needs of the whole child.
John recalled being brought in half day to do In-School Suspension (ISS) work sometime after the reorganization. He found himself being recruited to become part of the math teams. He described his colleagues as "amazing," how much they love the children and what they can get children to do. Teachers who used to be assigned to the gifted and talented and special education programs come into the classroom rather than pulling students out for math and reading enrichment and support. "Kids go way, far beyond what they would have before. . . it lets students who are struggling and need help, get that help."
The changes that teachers talk about are more than superficial or "cameo" roles (Bernauer 1999). They are involved in real work that leads to professional growth and improvement in student learning. Staff development that occurs around working out real problems of practice has the multiple advantages of bringing teachers into the intellectual life of their work, providing realistic solutions that are specific to the context, and spilling over into a model for life-long learning that students both observe and experience.
One teacher remarked, "It just seems like . . . we have all grown-- I don't know, maybe it's a combination of who's here now, too . . . I feel more like I'm coming into work with my family now. I'm old enough to be some of the teachers' mother, and some of them are a little older than I am, you know, like having sisters here. It's just like a big family."
Another pointed out that their attitudes toward helping each other develop have changed dramatically. "I mean, in the past, there's teachers even at our school that we would have chalked off, too, if it would have been up to the majority of the teachers. We would have voted them out, if we could--if they'd had Teacher Island or something like that, you know, where you vote them off if you don't think they're doing a good job. And Dawna, through her - oh, the way she looks at things, and perceives things, and says, find their strength."
It Isn't Just About Program
Sometimes finding a teacher's strengths involves one-on-one work. For example, Becky had been teaching Spanish. Becky recalls that Dawna took her under her wing and helped her learn how to teach "the way I wanted, through units of study." Jay, new during Dawna's first year, recalled that it was rough. Dawna apologized for not spending the time she wanted with him the first year. "She would drop in a few times, just kind of poke her head in the door, and check to see how things were going. She does that more now, much more now, than she did that year. . . she didn't have as much time to come down and check on all of us." But while Dawna couldn't always get to Jay because she was still involved in getting discipline beyond containment, his team mentored him.Cheryl recalled that she had been at the middle school 15 years when she was transferred to Washington School as a resource teacher for Native American students. "I thought, you've gotta' be kidding me. I don't know if I want to do that." But when she got to the school she found everyone unbelievably supportive. Instead of putting each other down, teachers "put you up," encouraging each other and students, "It was like a breath of fresh air." The Washington school she dreaded no longer existed.
Teachers talked about district-wide staff development opportunities, about making decisions regarding curriculum, about learning from each other, and about Dawna's individual help. From Dawna's perspective professional development involved deciding on "areas that we want to target and what areas we need help in, and [teachers] also help me. I have certain professional growth meetings here, not just district-wide, and they help me come up with what they feel like they're needing and lacking."
One area that concerned Dawna was achievement of African American students. After a district-wide meeting where she heard author and lecturer Almas Jamil Sami [6] she invited him to visit the school. That was the beginning of a continuing relationship with the school. San Antonio-based Almas had grown up in Middle America and in a meeting with the School Superintendent talked about his interest in giving back to the community. In his initial visit to the school Almas was "thrilled to find such a place existed--I couldn't believe it." Children were involved in learning and it was a happy place. But he also recognized there was room for improvement, "especially in teachers learning to hold African American kids accountable." Teachers thought they were being compassionate when "they were just letting them get by doing nothing." Almas became a cultural interpreter helping teachers to understand student behaviors and parent expectations. Support at the school was underscored by community support through a newly formed academy that provided tutoring and enrichment programs for African American children. Dawna credits Almas with helping turn around teacher expectations for African American children and, consequently, their achievement.
Geraldine noted that Dawna is consistently supportive. She doesn't back away from telling teachers they could do better, but "It just seems like, oh, that's a good idea. You know, it's not like you've been beaten when you walk out of the office door. It's almost like, oh, well, I helped come up with that. I mean, she makes you feel good about yourself." Supervision was a positive opportunity to work together. "She makes me feel like I'm worth something," another teacher observed. This was a teacher who had been the target of "improvement" in years past and left demoralized by it.
Dawna believed that her strength as a supervisor was finding it in others:
I try to find each teacher's strength and build on it. Every teacher . . . everywhere has weaknesses, and something that they can improve on. But, you've got to build up what they do correctly and what they do right, what they're good at and then you can…it's so much easier then, to work on those areas of improvement. I just think it's really important to let the teacher, the staff member contribute to this school.
She expects the best, but "Dawna doesn't micromanage," Ann (secretary) explained. When decisions are to be made she tells people how to be in on the decision and if not, "don't complain about what we decide."
Getting Around the "Organization Paradox"
Having a particular program--and the school has experimented with many--may not be so important as working together to figure out what is good for the school. The process of inventing solutions, experimenting with them, and arriving at collaborative decisions creates an environment for learning that spills over into the classroom. Carolanne summarized, "We did a lot of discussing about the curriculum, what needed to be changed to make it better. . . Teachers became more aware of each other and what their goals were. I think they started relying on team building. . . and I think they learned how to do team building among their students."Teachers who are actively engaged in learning are more likely to engage students in learning (Fullan, Bennett, and Rolheiser-Bennett 1990). Development of teacher skills is the kind of long-term investment in improvement that Hargreaves & Fink (2003) refer to as one of the ways to build for sustainable school improvement.
Shelly's recollection summarized the process for most staff:
I would say once we got past the shock of just totally changing everything. You know, once it was into play - the first year, truly, was the hardest, because everything was new and everything was different, just getting a new mindset. But gosh, after three months, I can remember people saying, look at this change already! This is better, you know? So it was a short amount of time to know that it was already better. . . within a year, we were all very comfortable.
There was more to it, however. Neither "getting over the shock" nor the progressive outlook of staff is sufficient in explaining the dramatic outcome. Most of the teachers had done their best in an adverse environment for a period of years. Their solution to a problem getting increasingly out of control was to stay behind classroom doors and away from the office. A top-down decision to change the schedule was unlikely to reverse these habits and might have destroyed trust had Dawna not already involved teachers in important decisions about the curriculum. As Harris & Chapman noted, "Both structural and cultural change are necessary for school improvement but with schools in difficulty, unless relationships and trust can evolve positively within an organization, its internal capacity to improve will be severely hampered" (2004, p.429).
Frowe links trust to caring, noting that it involves use of discretionary powers (2005, pp. 34-35). Frowe argues that using discretionary powers requires exercise of judgment that is tacit and individual. Evoking creativity and self-expression in teaching and learning "requires an atmosphere of trust and security" (p.52 )
Dawna and her staff built a common vision, first from necessity, and later from commitment to the project in which they became more and more invested. In doing so Dawna found her way around what Moos described as an organization paradox in the literature: "how can staff be led in ways that enable them to become autonomous followers?" (2003, p.19, 23). In Dawna's case, necessity and inclination seem to have been well matched. Her style is akin to feminist perspectives that implicitly challenge assumptions about how the concept of leadership is understood in educational administration and policy (Gunter, 2001, p. 101). It is relational, situational and based on dialogue. Dawna tries to be flexible. "We're out to make their lives easier." Jenny (former secretary) recalls "She told me we spend so much time away from our families, away from our home at a job, that it's a shame if you don't enjoy that job."
One teacher summarized, "I think [kids] have changed because the teachers have changed. And our atmosphere's changed. And the kids have the freedom to fail. We don't always succeed the first time. And when they fail at something, we try to, instead of criticizing, talk to them and find out why they're failing. What needs to be done? Does it need to be re-taught, what's missing?" This approach to children--freedom to fail, refraining from criticism, and trying to name the problem, if not solve it--has been an important part of teachers' development, too.
A Concluding Word on Shared Leadership
Brenauer noted that any "reasonable hope of sustaining a focus on improvement requires full realization of the critical role of teacher-leader. Most educational reforms fail because administrators do not share the mantle of leadership with teachers" (2002, p. 90). By involving teachers and the whole staff--custodians, secretaries, cooks--in democratic and collaborative decision making regarding authentic issues and problems, Dawna was able to encourage and sustain the development of a professional culture where teachers see themselves as leaders. And it gave her the cache to make the top-down decision to reorganize without destroying their trust.Dawna drew on teachers' basic commitment to doing what is right for children. This helped teachers through the bumpy places as they struggled to adjust to a new organization and learn new ways of doing and being. A growing trust in each other and their success in building an environment that represents the kind of place they would like to be every day lifted the school out of a cycle of failure and helped people to not only feel, but be successful.
These observations about Washington School may be most important in reminding us that the problems school people in small-town contexts experience are not all that different from those in more heavily researched urban school contexts. Washington School belies the myth that small-town America is homogeneous and supports the notion that caring environments matter.
Schools are too often angry, stressful places where people have bought into "an antidemocratic transformation of learning and teaching, curriculum, teacher professionalism, the relationship between schools and the wider community, and school developmental processes" (Wrigley 203, p.91) driven by a narrow conception of accountability. Washington School offers a more hopeful possibility that encourages investment and engagement in teaching and learning in ways that are holistic. Perhaps the lesson for the rest of us, who reside elsewhere, is that among the many other things we know about making schools work, helping people create hospitable environments that allow them to be true to themselves is no trivial add-on to a crowded reform agenda.
Notes
1 Purposeful Conversations is a term that emerged in another study by [Author] et al (2005). "Purposeful conversations" are dynamic, focused on how meaning is constructed by participants and how a participant's meanings are linked to those of other participants and the researcher (a collaborative partner)—a method akin to an interactive interview that is active, open and connected to a context that is subject to interpretation (Denzin & Lincoln, 2003).
2 The research group was comprised of doctoral students at [university] who were enrolled in an advanced seminar on supervision and curriculum improvement, Spring term 2004.
3 In the interest of full disclosure it is important to note that the principal researcher was reared in the area and is related to Dawna. Choice of Washington School was not random, but prompted by curiosity and Dawna's reports of her frustrations and joys in its development.
4 Since teachers at the school have not yet decided whether or not to use their names in reports of the study, pseudonyms are used with the exception of the principal Dawna and Washington School.
5 With the exception of the principal, Dawna Mosburg, all names are pseudonyms. Teachers at the school had not made the decision to use their own names at the writing of this paper.
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Frances Schoonmaker is a professor of Curriculum and Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia. She is the author of several books and many chapters and articles on curriculum , teaching, and supervision. Her most recent book is Growing Up Teaching: From Personal Knowledge to Professional Practice.
Email professor Schoonmaker at schoonmaker@tc.columbia.edu
©April 2006 New Horizons for Learning
This information is provided by:
Office of State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Special Education
P O Box 47200
Olympia, WA 98504-7200
(360) 725-6088
Fax (360)586-1631
E-mail: dgill@ospi.wednet.edu
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