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Leadership > The Change Process
Rewriting the Roles
Table of Contents:
Introduction
Teachers often feel seasonal ebbs over the course of a school year, like the weariness in the middle of a long, white winter. When we visited Lincoln High School during the week of October 18-22, 1993, as part of the School Change Study, we wondered if there was a comparable lull in Lincoln High School's push to improve itself. The place seemed calmer, quieter than it had before.
Located in the south-central region of the country, Lincoln High School is a middle-size, suburban high school, with approximately twelve hundred students. About 75 percent of Lincoln's students are white, 25 percent are black, and 40 percent come from low-income families. By this, our fifth, visit, we had become familiar with the challenges that Lincoln was facing. We were also familiar with the changes it had achieved since joining the Coalition of Essential Schools in 1988 and committing itself to work towards change according to the nine Common Principles. (See Appendix B for a list of the Principles.) Some of the changes the school has undertaken have included mainstreaming the special education students; implementing portfolios, other authentic assessments, and site-based decision making; and restructuring the schedule so that more than half the students are grouped into teams of about one hundred students and four or five teachers. The State School Improvement Act, a fundamental reworking of the state's entire educational system, enacted in 1990, has also pushed Lincoln to change.1 Most recently, Lincoln's involvement since spring 1993 in the Coalition's Fifty Schools Project has meant an intensification of reform efforts at the school.2
[Return to Table of Contents] New Challenges, New Changes
When we arrived for our visit, we noted that two of the volatile issues from the previous year, the expansion of teaming and the tangled master schedule, no longer sparked intense reactions. With the Fifty Schools Project committee busily considering a reorganization into houses for the 1994-95 year, no one overinvested in the teams when a new configuration might soon arise to modify or replace them. People also admitted that the three tenth-grade teams this year should not be faulted if they did little, because quite a few teachers and students had to leave the teams for part of each day. Whenever a school offers numerous electives, admits students with a wide range of abilities, introduces a magnet program alongside traditional courses (at Lincoln, the Public Safety Magnet), and lets teachers transfer in August, it is hard to create the ideal conditions for teaming, especially the long blocks of time when everyone stays together. Some outspoken dissenters had transferred, and their absence removed some turbulence. Chip Smoley, after vowing he would never be "driven off," accepted an offer from a well-regarded, local, traditional high school. Russ Michaels, tired of unmotivated students, also left. In contrast, the new recruits included a welcome mixture of rookie teachers along with experienced pros, including a Citibanker3 and a respected Lincoln math teacher who had tried working one year elsewhere and was glad to get back. The stalwart restructurers remained on the staff; and unlike the previous year, they voiced fewer complaints about inequitable workloads, a sore spot to several.
Everyone missed Ted Stewart, the history teacher, out for several months after quadruple-bypass surgery, but he could not stay away; he was roaming the halls on Parents' Night (the evening open house for parents) and popping in at other times, twenty pounds lighter and itching to get back to Lincoln. But just as marine life churns under a lake's smooth surface, so were the currents moving in and around Lincoln. Some of the activity was simply the periodic crisis that flares unexpectedly and then passes. During an interview we had with an assistant principal, for instance, his walkie-talkie announced that two students had just left the Zephyr team suite with ice picks. He excused himself, then returned five minutes later, relieved that the ice picks, apparently mislaid, had been found in a teacher's desk.
Not every unanticipated problem comes from the students, of course. At Parents' Night the principal, Valerie Taylor, stayed an extra two hours, until 10:30 p.m., to soothe parents upset with one teacher who had dozens of unhappy folks outside her door. The band teacher saw them going up and down the stairway to the teacher's room, "red in the face, frothing," in quite a contrast to the overall good will and satisfaction he had seen that night.
The new district superintendent stirred the waters soon after he arrived from another state. He wanted to tighten a few areas which struck him as too loose. Deadlines should be firm, he felt, not false dates which administrators could miss without consequences. The leave days for professional development--thirty-five thousand days last year, or an average of seven per teacher--would have to be justified persuasively. Statistics on all aspects of schooling would be sought more and used more. This is not to say he wanted to roll back the spirit or substance of the SSIA. He praised its egalitarianism, and publicly questioned the city's elite magnet schools as a form of tracking. He also seemed willing to restructure his own domain, especially the Lindeman Institute, the district-sponsored professional development academy, where he startled its staff by telling them, "If in the middle of the day I can call a meeting of 192 people and our schools can still operate, then there are too many of you." On the other hand, he had already created a new position to advise and coach district principals, and Lincoln's principal was asked three times to apply.
The greatest external challenge came from the low state test scores in the spring of 1993. The dozen open-ended response questions counted for most of each student's score, yet comprised only a small fraction of the 160 items, with the 148 multiple-choice National Assessment of Educational Progress questions used to compute norms. Testing conditions at Lincoln--in the cafeteria, not classrooms--were not ideal, but the major problem was the lack of incentives for seniors to take the test seriously.
One of the monitors, Mary Beth Norton, urged students to write something, to at least try the open-ended questions, but many "just gave a lick and a promise," as one assistant principal put it. Mary Beth recalled, "They were tired of tests. It had no impact on their graduating. They saw no reason why they should exert themselves." Some took back their papers at her request and wrote one sentence in the blanks, apparently feeling, "I did 130 other ones, so what's the big deal?" As Brad Haber said, "I was tired of filling in circles. It didn't mean nothing to my grades. I just went tch, tch, tch
[making pencil checks rapidly]."
The school devised an improvement plan to raise the scores; all teachers were asked to use open-response questions in homework, paper assignments, and classroom tests. The gain needed in the spring of 1994 to meet the SSIA threshold is considerable, and teachers recognized the possibility that Lincoln could be a "school in crisis," at the same time that it would be designated a "model school" under the state's new pilot program for restructuring high schools.
That pilot program, which stems from the recommendations of a task force chaired by Lincoln's principal, contains far-reaching proposals: the end of Carnegie units, Exhibitions for graduation,4 an individual educational plan for all freshmen, no tracking, and other significant reforms aligned with SSIA objectives. The next few years would be full of new thrusts and fresh starts, and that anticipation of what is on the horizon was another reason why the superficial calm at Lincoln was deceptive. The awareness that a great deal of important work lies just ahead keeps teachers and administrators from complacency or lethargy.
Regardless of whether an individual at Lincoln feels the lull or the stirrings, it is evident that old roles continue to shift. The nature of work is changing for both administrators and teachers. Sometimes the transformation is obvious and extensive, as when a new team moves ahead and creates exciting interdisciplinary units; sometimes the metamorphosis is gradual and hard to detect, yet still significant in scope and consequence.
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Focusing the Snapshot
As we do each time we visit a school as part of the School Change Study, we created a "snapshot" of our fifth visit to Lincoln High School, based on the observations we made and the conversations we had with people in the school community during our visit. We decided to devote this snapshot to what happens when role changes occur because of the changing nature of the work. First we will discuss some of the challenges that go along with these changes in roles. Next we will present profiles of individuals and groups in the midst of rethinking their jobs and undergoing role changes in the school. We conclude with reflections on the snapshot and three "provocations" for the reader's further consideration. [Return to Table of Contents]
Meeting the Challenges When Work and Roles Change
We will look at three challenges that the staff at Lincoln face as their roles change as a result of the changes in their work: confusion, changes in working conditions, and misunderstandings concerning role boundaries and schoolwork.
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Coping with Confusion
Often the challenge posed by uncertainty over roles is learning how to cope with confusion. Sometimes the lack of clarity can be relatively inconsequential and accommodated effortlessly. One teacher said she could not figure out which committee meeting she was attending this week, because the same people came to different meetings, but she was not troubled or bothered by that. So, too, does another teacher accept the ambiguity about her new position as a "guidance teacher," doing work comparable to a counselor's, but classified and paid as a teacher.
At other times, the fuzziness is more significant and stressful. For instance, some folks see the Public Safety Magnet program teachers as another team, whereas others view the program as the heart and soul of the entire school (or feel that it should be that as soon as possible). The choice carries nontrivial consequences for Lincoln's recruitment, scheduling, and curriculum. We observed another case of meaningful ambiguity when we watched the Deming training provided to the Zephyr and American studies teams so they could learn the techniques of Total Quality Management. Was their time with a corporate executive intended to turn these teachers into trainers of their colleagues? Several teachers yearned to move the entire faculty forward by sharing the analytical skills they were learning. Others thought their own understanding and use of Deming's methods would be a huge achievement by itself. The group agreed to postpone a decision regarding which path to take.
[Return to Table of Contents] Coping with Changes in Working Conditions
Even when role changes are fairly clear-cut, there are a wide range of consequences which follow the shift. Sometimes the consequences that follow a shift in roles make a job easier or harder than it was before. For instance, some public safety teachers with previous experience in vocational schools now have tougher working conditions. In the past, they taught fewer students in shorter days. Many classes only had a dozen kids, motivated and diligent. With time lost to bus travel to and from their home schools, or to afternoon coops, the teaching day was short--often four hours or so. The lunch break was long, and at Lincoln, a custodian used to cook lunches for the faculty in a kitchen installed years ago by a previous principal. But if they now find life at Lincoln demanding, they could ask Fran Murray about her year at another high school nearby. When she left Lincoln after seven years, she thought the middle-class students she would teach would not present the massive challenges many Lincoln students bring with them. To her surprise, the students she taught were less respectful than Lincoln's. There was more theft too; she could not leave her markers on the overhead projector without losing a few. Perhaps the basic issue is not whether any job became harder or easier, but the types of differences faced as people take new positions. In August, Cindy White became the "tech prep coordinator" when Alice Hansen took an assistant principalship elsewhere. Cindy writes and oversees grants, helps Valerie with special projects, and escorts the stream of visitors around the campus. In the first few months, she began to view her school in new ways, learning that the principal knew more about the day-to-day details than she would have guessed, seeing that discipline was better than she had imagined, and sensing how the various programs, initiatives, and grants interconnected on behalf of Coalition Principles.
Initially, she was not sure whether the school had changed or if her new perspective explained this grasp of "the big picture." Valerie reassured her that classroom teaching is so consuming that it's hard for any teacher to step back and see the big picture. Although Cindy sometimes worries that her overview could be "the first fateful step on the path to the ivory tower of administrative isolation," she feels too busy to be isolated. Because the principal delegates much and trusts Cindy, she has freedom and leeway, although there is as little "down time" as there was when she taught. Her responsibilities now make it impossible to continue carpooling with other Lincoln teachers, but when she does drive with them, she tells them about positive developments within Lincoln they would otherwise not know. [Return to Table of Contents] Dealing with Misunderstandings about Role Boundaries
For the counselors, the big challenge of their role is overcoming others' misunderstanding of what their role is. As part of the administrative team putting together each year's master schedule, they see the constraints on who can be where with whom. Electives, certifications, numbers, and other considerations keep them at school for many days during the summer, including unpaid time, hammering out the schedule. They are not out of state at Coalition institutes or special workshops. Yet some teachers feel that if there are problems with the schedule at the start of school, then the counselors did not work hard enough over the summer. Because the counselors know the parameters of the schedule, they often point out barriers or problems with proposals teachers put forth to create houses or expand teaming. "If we discuss the nitty-gritty too much, we get looked at as resisters
[to change], when we're really not. As a matter of fact, we were instrumental in developing the teams." They cannot always attend those meetings where teachers dream and plan, sometimes because they have school activities to sponsor. Their response to the teachers involved in planning is, "We'd love to see all of you at Homecoming, too." Misunderstanding also marked an unusual faculty meeting where one student stepped into the role of evaluator. As a student council representative from Lincoln, Ron attended a district meeting where the superintendent spoke, urging students to think as consumers: Are you getting your money's worth? What grade would you give your teachers? Are you shopping at Wal-Mart, or worse? Ron was fired up by the superintendent's talk, and he was also astonished to see several Ivy League recruiters at the high school where the meeting was held. When Ron asked the recruiters why they never came to Lincoln, they responded, "Where's Lincoln?"
Ron asked Valerie if he could speak at the next faculty meeting. He gave her an outline of his points. The student council advisor agreed to sit in the first row and signal Ron if he was overtime or off track. Ron's talk lasted twenty minutes, signals notwithstanding, and the tone was "accusatory," one teacher observed, as he railed at the staff for much more than the absence of Ivy League admissions officers. He declared there was too much "fun and games" in classes, that "new ways of teaching" were needed, and that discipline should be better. He also made inaccurate or misleading claims, such as the assertion that everyone disappeared before 3 p.m., when in fact many faculty put in hours after the last bells. As he spoke, he apparently sensed the mood turning resentful, but instead of retreating he attacked harder, pointing a finger and warning, "I'll be watching you."
What is the appropriate faculty role in a situation where a student oversteps his boundaries? The faculty reactions were varied. One walked out of the meeting, disgusted. A few laughed it off. Several said that his speech was far more coherent than anything he had ever presented in their classes. Valerie later observed that Ron didn't realize that he was an example of Lincoln's success, not failure. What other school would trust a special ed student to go to a district-wide student council assembly? Some teachers were incensed and angry. Several wanted to grieve, but against whom? One slipped an anonymous note to Ron under a classroom door, taking him to task for outrageous comments.
The episode raises questions about what is appropriate from a superintendent, a student, and his teachers, and suggests how a widely used slogan, "Students are our customers," can lead to unanticipated and possibly hurtful consequences. The slogan by now is quite familiar, but this form of customer feedback was novel and jarring. Misunderstanding also marks many students' notion of the portfolios which they must accumulate in math and English. The error stems from preconceptions of what constitutes schoolwork. Students think of the portfolios with reference to familiar ideas and definitions of what a test is. A group of tenth-graders talked about the makings of a good portfolio by speaking of effort and diligence--"go into detail, write a lot, and take your time"--rather than quality, and that premium on trying was how they thought about success in other assignments. Some wondered why the final portfolio, unlike all required work, is not graded for course credit. Others knew it is evaluated but think it's "only to make the state look good," or, they said, so "we can see it in the newspaper." Students tended to rank and curve each other's work, giving the best papers ratings of "proficient" or "distinguished," regardless of the traits spelled out by the rubric. Students, teachers, and administrators all face new roles in the wake of change. The transformations can take many shapes, and this section touched briefly on some dimensions of those shifts: confusion, ambiguity, harder work, unanticipated insights, misunderstandings, and preconceptions. The emotions shown varied considerably, from pleasure, to anger, to frustration.
[Return to Table of Contents] Profiles of People in New Roles
What is encouraging about Lincoln High is that many people who are changing roles persevere with good spirits and undiminished idealism. In the next section, three profiles highlight folks who combine willingness to break out of old routines and norms without totally abandoning structure and organization. Sometimes reformers are scorned as too scattershot and chaotic. It is important to consider the individuals who can strive for both order and flexibility.
[Return to Table of Contents] Jane Merrill, Assistant Principal
After nineteen years and three Teacher-of-the-Year awards at Lincoln, Jane Merrill began as an assistant principal four years ago with the traditional view that no student should ever want to come to her office: be tough, discipline, evaluate, take care of problems, and oversee books, buses, and cigarette butts.
A couple of months of that and I was miserable. I never taught that way, and I never raised my own children that way. I never used fear as a way of getting anything out of people. You use reason and logic, and model trust. I felt terrible in that rigid role, so I decided to do it my way. And if teachers thought I was too easy on kids, that would be something I'd have to live with. I do get that criticism sometimes. When kids come in here, I'm going to reason with them. The second time I see them, then yes, discipline and punishment may kick in, but I think my job is very close to being a counselor. Fear cannot be in my repertoire.
Jane believes her redefinition parallels the changes endorsed by the SSIA, which nudges administrators away from issuing top-down edicts to serving instead as facilitators. She knows that redirection rarely satisfies everyone. Some teachers yearn for the old-style assistant principal, who hollers at kids and backs up every single referral with swift, tough punishment. Another group, which craves more influence within the school, gets the chance to make decisions. She said of this group:
Then if things aren't happening, they'll say, "You're not organizing meetings for us or setting agendas." [I answer,] "You told me you didn't want me to do that." [They respond,]
"Oh, okay, I guess we don't." They don't always know exactly what they want me to do.
She also works with teachers who want independence and autonomy, yet when a problem on their team arises, they ask Jane to solve it. "On any day, it can switch. I have to do a balancing act as to how directive I'm going to be."
That is a particularly timely finesse, in light of the Fifty Schools committee work. Some teachers feel her presence and participation overshadow teachers' opinions, but other teachers think her absence deprives the group of crucial information about the intricacies of the master schedule. The committee needs to know the ins and outs of the complicated schedule, which cannot be handed off to a clerk or entrusted totally to a software program. One committee person said:
By the time you tell MacSchool everything you need to tell it, you've already made the schedule! When you say, "This subject is only for the eleventh-
and twelfth-graders," or "This can only be fourth period," or "I can't have those two teachers on the same team," the whole schedule is just about in place, because you had to work it all through in your head to know that it can only be in fourth period.
It took several years for her to see all the twists and turns of the schedule, so it is unsurprising that some well-intentioned, gung-ho members of the Fifty Schools committee are frustrated by the barriers they bump into as they plan clever new rearrangements of twelve hundred students.
Jane knows that more than the master schedule is at the heart of significant instructional change, which she hopes will be the focus of the current school year. "The structure alone will not improve teaching," she asserted, and she thinks the frequent changes in the recent past gave a few teachers a handy excuse to avoid rethinking their own pedagogy. She is excited about the potential effects of planning backwards5 (which the Zephyr team modeled in a fall workshop for the entire faculty). She yearns to see in every classroom a visible display of "what you're working on, what the child has to know and be able to do, and how they're going to be assessed. If you focus on outcomes, kids have to know where they're going." Jane admits it is hard work, and recalls her own tests rarely came at the start of a new unit. At the end of Macbeth, she would pick up her old tests, look them over, and patch together a new test with pieces from the old ones. She says, "[That is] not how I would teach today. That assessment would be up there the first day. I think if we just do that one thing, the rest of it is going to be easier." Jane understands the anxiety in reformers' hearts. One good teacher once told her, "I feel like I'm going to jump off a diving board, and I hope somebody puts water in the pool." Jane wants all the administrators to send this answer: "We're all jumping in. We know there's water under us. We're real good at doing other dives, but this is a brand new dive. If we practice enough, we'll be able to do this one too." [Return to Table of Contents] New Blood, New Teams
An important role at Lincoln is being filled by younger teachers who quickly win respect for their interest in teaming, cooperative learning, cross-disciplinary units, and other instructional approaches in sync with Coalition ideology. These rookies often graduated from local teacher-education programs imbued with the spirit of the Coalition, so they come prepared, rather than experiencing conversion later. Some student-taught at Lincoln, and some found in their first year a mentor or teammate who encouraged them. Valerie's skillful hiring has recruited enough "new blood" that their presence is seen as one major way Lincoln sustains the momentum of change. They find all the attention exciting and a bit scary. To be offered opportunities early in their careers is exhilarating. To be seen as the wave of the future and held up as examples is dizzying, especially when they readily admit they are still finding their way, making mistakes, learning from experience, and seeing rough edges in what they try. One said, "Last year I went to my first Fall Forum and thought, hmmm, this is neat. Now this year, I'm presenting. Twice!" Not only are they wary of being lionized too quickly, they also know the risks of taking on a label or stereotype as "Coalition teachers." They realize that triggers knee-jerk reactions from a few colleagues. "If it's called 'Coalition interdisciplinary,' then to some people it's automatically O.K., and to others it's automatically not." They don't want to be aligned with or subsumed in any crowd or faction within the school. If they were, it would be too easy to lose touch with some teachers who they know contribute much to Lincoln. For instance, Ms. Hiebert, the math teacher, who recently learned just how many extra hours the coaches she eats lunch with devote to the school, says, "It's no wonder they don't do all these Coalition meetings." She adds, "I've started to appreciate those extracurricular hours they give." In one of their planning periods, it seemed as if one team with three young teachers had found a nice balance between improvisation and following guidelines. An ambitious unit, centered on a crime, had crept up on them, so they were scrambling to work through the preparations necessary to get it under way in two days. Ms. Hiebert admitted to some anxiety about the math component: "We should tell them the same things, but I'm the least involved, and I'm not sure what to say."
The team spent much of the hour piecing together how they would introduce the unit to their students: post the goals tomorrow, divide classes into four groups, then ask them to pick the roles they want to play in investigating and prosecuting the crime. The group backed up to discuss what needed to be defined at the outset: Use a mimeographed sheet? Post the definitions? Let them learn new words on their own, as they need and use them in the unit? They agreed to introduce a few key terms and let them learn the others as needed. Much of the discussion focused on individual students, as team meetings often do. They carefully reviewed the students who should not be in the same groups, and Mr. Houser suggested that they also divide their best kids as well as their rowdiest. Later in the hour, they realized they had to set aside the crime unit to review one girl's request to switch English classes to get away from another girl. They checked to see who had space, were told, "That's a good class, I could handle one more," and presto--the switch was done, at a speed which team planning makes possible. Throughout the hour, the importance of the chemistry in a class came through--the mix of kids and how a shift of just a few could alter the work ethic and disposition of the twenty-seven others. Just as "new blood" in the faculty can reinvigorate and energize, so can "bad blood" among students in one room powerfully affect what happens. That insightful awareness of the strengths and weaknesses of individual students was as much a testimony to the new blood as the ambitious crime unit they earnestly planned.
[Return to Table of Contents] Andrea Marler: Teacher as Facilitator
A new role for teachers is asking questions in a Socratic seminar, a format popularized by Mortimer Adler in the early 1980s and introduced to many Coalition schools by workshops at the recent Fall Forum. At Lincoln High, there were several days in June 1993 for staff development with a trainer, Bert Plum, including practice sessions with students in the summer school classes. The time and dollars spent on Socratic seminars were an example of what Lincoln administrators meant when they said that this year was a time to focus on instruction.
One of the enthusiastic advocates of Socratic seminars is Andrea Marler, who appreciated the Fall Forum workshops and had taught with Bert Plum for three years at another school. She hopes the technique will help her students become more comfortable, skillful speakers, willing to answer questions in front of others. For herself, whom she calls a "talker," she sees it as a challenge to say less, even though her typical class features little lecturing and frequent student group work. Her second Socratic seminar of the fall examined a fourteen-line poem. The first half of the class took up a two-page, xeroxed reading as background information, about which Andrea asked the students questions. Both halves of the class period concentrated on the topic of the removal of the Indians west of the Mississippi River during President Jackson's term. Along with the two-page excerpt, Ms. Marler passed out a mimeographed sheet with ten questions on it. The first twenty minutes of class were devoted to reading and answering questions. The class was generally quiet. One group of five boys was not very engaged, so Andrea lingered near them to be sure they were not disruptive. In that group was a blind boy, who got along well with the other four. The boy next to him read him the excerpt. Andrea walked around elsewhere to see how others were doing. She reminded them to keep that day's mimeographed worksheet for a quiz on Friday, and also reminded them that on Wednesday and Thursday they would watch a movie.
An assistant principal, Claude Young, came by with a visitor. He and Andrea had taught at the same school before. She asked him to sign a guest book, and the visitor remarked on how nice the rug in the suite looked. Andrea asked her student teacher to walk around, check on student work, and award points, as she spoke with the visitor. Andrea explained how they used the early twentieth-century costumes displayed against the wall. After the guests left, Andrea reviewed the ground rules for the seminar. "Please say 'pass' if you don't have an opinion or don't care to answer a question. There are no endings or right answers in a Socratic seminar. They aren't about closure. We will just stop when it's time to do some group processing." She asked them to take a few minutes and read a fourteen-line poem, "If We Must Die."
Without relying on notes, Andrea posed several dozen questions to explicate the poem. The queries concisely directed students to different sections of the poem: "Who's the 'we' in this poem in line one?" "What do the first two lines refer to?" "What happened in the Trail of Tears that we read last period? How would they have responded to these two lines?" "Tristen, what are your thoughts?" "Look at line ten. What does that mean?"
"Can you think of times that has happened in our history?" "Who are the monsters? Tyisha, would you explain lines eight and nine?" "Hector, what do you see in line eleven? Sherita, do you agree?" "Can someone explain line twelve?" "OK, let's look at the last two lines."
As those quotes suggest, the Socratic seminar revolved around a series of questions Andrea asked the students in fairly fast succession. The students were very quiet and attentive, and someone answered every question. Andrea purposefully did not praise or criticize their responses. She sometimes repeated what a student said without revealing whether or not she agreed. She tried to call on students who were quiet, and gave others an opportunity to speak by asking, "Does anyone want to add to that?" Once she got a response, she turned to another part of the poem and asked more questions to move them through the fourteen lines.
The hour ended with a debriefing. She asked the students to give their opinion about the seminar, and everyone had a chance to speak. The positive comments ranged from "pretty good" and "interesting" to "better than the last one" (a seminar on a tough e. e. cummings poem). The only critical comments faulted silent students who had not participated. All in all, the class seemed to enjoy the seminar.
In her new role as a facilitator of a Socratic seminar, Ms. Marler cannot follow a script or fly on autopilot. Even if she keeps her mind on a few goals--don't say too much, don't evaluate student comments--there are many other issues to think about in the future. When is it appropriate to focus on one student and push his answers with follow-up probes, just as Socrates roped his interlocutors with a series of questions? What is the best size of the circle of desks, a ring small enough so everyone can easily hear each other speak, yet not so small that anyone feels cramped? How many students share the view of Tammy Wearne, who saw the class as traditional, an exercise in answering her teacher's questions? Besides a debriefing, what summary is needed to underscore the lessons learned? There are many features of a Socratic seminar, many questions to ponder, and Andrea yearns for a once-a-month discussion group where Lincoln teachers could constructively raise such questions with each other.
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Reflections and Provocations
As we consider all the efforts that staff have made towards improving student learning, including all the changes the staff have been experiencing in their work since we first began to visit Lincoln in 1991, we note the particular qualities that have seemed to sustain them.
[Return to Table of Contents] A Role for Humor and Caring
As roles change, and even after they have changed, the transitions can be stressful and trying, yet the Lincoln faculty seems to share a reservoir of good humor and cheer, which is one of the least studied and most underrated qualities necessary to sustain meaningful whole-school change. This was apparent at a late afternoon reception during the Fall Forum for the three schools in the School Change Study. Wendy Campbell, charter member of the Zephyr team, called her boisterous and chatty table the "BD kids." Pat Clark saw parallels, too:
It's interesting to see how our faculty is so much like our kids. We are absolutely irreverent--disjointed, unfocused, and seemingly inattentive--but not a single joke escaped our notice. Pat Wasley [a senior researcher at the Coalition and director of the study]
was speaking and thought we were all tuned out, but everybody at our table was right there .æ.æ. a bunch of guttersnipes .æ.æ. but creative, energetic, dimensional, and, by gosh, we care! We care as much as anybody cares for our kids, who come burdened with so many problems.
That nurturing role, highlighted in our first snapshot two years ago, is one role that has not changed.6 It seems as vibrant as ever.
[Return to Table of Contents] Provocations
- What emotions other than humor and caring are necessary to stay sane and persevere in the hard work of school reform?
- In what ways did the teachers and administrator profiled in this snapshot balance spontaneity and pre-planning, so that both improvisation and organization were honored?
- What role changes do you see within the high school in the next few years? What challenges will those changes present?
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Notes
- See Robert Hampel, "Possibilities and Priorities: Choices for Change," Studies on School Change (Lincoln No. 4), Coalition of Essential Schools, Brown University, Providence, September 1993, for a fuller description of the impact of the SSIA on the state and on Lincoln High School.
- The Fifty Schools Project, started and directed by the Coalition of Essential Schools, began in spring 1993. Lincoln was among the first schools chosen to participate. This project selects up to fifty schools that work in a supportive relationship with at least one other school in the cluster. These clustered schools commit themselves to pushing the reform agenda especially quickly. Their goal is to become exemplary schools that put all nine Common Principles into daily practice.
- A Citibanker is a teacher who is part of the teacher cadre of the national Re:Learning faculty of the Coalition of Essential Schools. Re:Learning, a partnership between the Coalition and the Education Commission of the States, provides schools with funding and support as they work on whole-school change.
- The term Exhibition is described in the sixth Common Principle as "a final demonstration of mastery for graduation." It is a culminating, interdisciplinary project that shows what a student can do, as well as what a student knows.
- In recent years, the Lincoln staff has been engaged in a process which Coalition senior researcher Joe McDonald calls "planning backwards." This process involves envisioning what a high school graduate should know and be able to do, and then planning the school program with the aim of attaining that goal.
- See Robert Hampel, "The Limits of Caring, the Rigors of Change," Studies on School Change (Lincoln No. 1), Coalition of Essential Schools, Brown University, Providence, March 1992.
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The Lincoln research team was headed by Robert L. Hampel, professor at the University of Delaware and author of The Last Little Citadel (1986). The other members of the Lincoln team were Laraine Hong, a former elementary and college teacher, now working for the Bellevue, Washington, school district and author of a forthcoming Teachers College Press book recounting a stormy year in her elementary school; and Neill Wenger, a cognitive psychologist who has taught in elementary school, consulted for the Pew Foundation, and is currently co-authoring a multimedia textbook.
Price: $6
Code: LI5
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This resource last updated: June 10, 2002
Database Information:
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Publication Year: 1994
Publisher: CES National
School Level: All
Focus Area: Leadership
STRAND: Leadership: the change process
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