Resistencia no violenta

suburban district remained in strong financial shape compared with many of the schools in the immediate area and around the country. District and building administration continued to fund professional development, material resources including both building infrastructure and

curriculum needs, and technology in their efforts to meet the new demands of looming Common Core State Standards. They were in their first year of the adoption of Ruth Culham’s Traits Writing program and were beginning the research into a reading series adoption which was a change in focus since they had been committed to the Readers Workshop model for almost 20 years at that point. Both of these curriculum adoptions involved teacher, administrator, and literacy coach input. All building coaches were given a generous budget at the end of this school year to purchase high quality book room books, in cooperation with the building librarians, to meet the Common Core shifts of increased rigor and more informational reading. In this

Component, Lakeside is, fortunately, well-situated to support literacy instruction improvement. Additional component A: Mental models. This discipline of Senge’s Systems Thinking may not be mentioned directly in Irvin’s action plan to improve adolescent literacy, but it crosses over all of the above components and deserves mention here in my review of the Systems

Thinking evident in Lakeside School District. According to Senge, “Mental Models are deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even pictures or images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action” (2006, p. 8).

Two different but important Mental Models that rose to the surface in this study were that of a learner and that of a member of a collaborative team who rely on each other to achieve the organizations goals.

Coaches are learners, as shown again and again in our interviews and my observations. They see themselves as professionals who are open to new ideas and who form tentative hypotheses about student achievement that can be revised as new information arises. Recall all the different examples of how coaches learn: from each other, the professional literature,

data from assessments and student work, among other things. Two of the assistant principals who had language arts classroom teaching experience, Mrs. Adams and Mrs. Jade, exhibited similar Mental Models. If more of the middle school leadership saw themselves as learners, I would suggest that the implementation of the CCSS would have gone even more smoothly and shown a greater impact on teaching by the end of the first year. Most of the administrators in this study relied on someone else to help them to learn what they needed about the new Standards and may have been unwilling to show their lack of knowledge in this case.

The other Mental Model that would contribute to the overall success of the district’s attempts to provide the necessary instruction to all students is that of a partner or a team member who shares leadership and learning with the other members. If administrators were able to put aside their pride and the need to appear as if they know everything, I believe that a stronger foundation of shared leadership would create a more effective organization. The only real example of shared leadership that emerged from this study was that of the female team at

Midtown: Mrs. Lane, principal, Mrs. Adams, assistant principal, and Missy, their literacy coach, who had forged a tightly knit team wherein the strengths and knowledge of each member support and uplift the other members.

An examination of my conversations with the district superintendent shows little to no evidence that he had adopted either the Mental Model of a true learner or that of a leader who cultivates shared leadership. This lack at the uppermost level of the district impedes the development of these Models in those who follow his lead.

According to Senge, Mental Models can both facilitate and impede learning and progress in an organization. This organization needs safe and honest ways to uncover and discuss the

current Mental Models of Lakeside’s leaders and then find ways to support and challenge them to improve them (2006, p. 167). I will address this in my recommendations below.

Additional component B: Systems thinking. It is appropriate, and even necessary, to conclude our discussion of the overall conceptual framework of this study through a Systems Thinking lens. Consider the Systems Thinking disciplines that have been referenced throughout this study: Shared Vision, Personal Mastery, Team Learning, and Mental Models. How do they fit together to help us better understand the learning organization in Lakeside School District?

Systems Thinking requires a “shift of mind,” or a way of “seeing the world anew” (Senge, 2006, p. 68), and it seems as if that is exactly what this school district needs in order to divorce itself from its historical and embedded ways of doing business. It certainly bears mention here that Lakeside School District is not alone in the field of education in this regard; most schools continue to operate under the archaic industrial model whose purpose was to create a civilized and productive society (Kafka, 2009, Little, 2003; Lortie, 1975). The actions of our study participants continue because that is the way they have always done it. Two of the building administrators with long tenures as school leaders describe the disquiet they feel knowing that their jobs have changed so drastically over the years (Interviews, October 17, 2012, and October 18, 2012). The entire education system needs a drastic overhaul that will rebuild it from the ground up as a true learning organization with a Shared Vision, the necessary Mental Models, and the Personal Mastery to foster Team Learning in which the efforts of the whole far outweigh the individual contributions of each member.

This overhaul requires Systems Thinking, “a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static ‘snapshots’” (Senge, 2006, p. 68). The ability to see in this manner requires a leader

who is willing to look forward to the new challenges that are facing his district as well as to look back on the pieces that are in place that can help the district prepare for the future.

Conclusion. When we look at Lakeside District through the lens of my theoretical conceptual framework, it is clear that it has many of the component pieces of a system to improve adolescent literacy instruction in place. They have a framework for a literacy action plan in the Comprehensive Literacy Model, a strong curriculum department and literacy coaches to support teachers in improving literacy instruction, an ample amount of both state and local literacy data to inform instruction, an understanding of the importance of building leadership capacity, and adequate resources to support literacy. And yet, they continue to struggle to build the capacity of all staff members in order to move ahead as a cohesive learning organization. In the end, it is the lack of Systems Thinking that prevents this school district, and many just like it, from achieving true change that will make a difference for all our students.

Zoom in on Answers to Research Questions

Research question 1. How do middle school building administrators and literacy

coaches understand and enact their own shared instructional leadership responsibilities in the process of implementing Common Core State Standards?

Any good researcher (or teacher) will always ask herself this question of any objective: What will it look like when it happens? If you go to all the trouble of attempting to achieve something worth its effort, you need to know how it looks when you get there or what evidence to look for as your strive toward approximation of your goal. I had hoped, through this question, to actually hear and see shared instructional leadership in action in my school district. In my

interviews, I first had to ascertain what the participants’ understanding of instructional leadership might be.

While I saw evidence of the understanding of this concept, I found variations of the enactment of this in the first year of the Common Core rollout. At the district level, the superintendent, the assistant superintendent, and the two language arts curriculum specialists viewed the literacy coaches as a vital part of the implementation of the new Common Core Standards, used them as a “think tank” to develop and hone presentations, and expected them to support their building administrators as they took the lead on sharing these with their staffs. Further, the district expectation that was communicated to the principals was that they were expected to use their literacy coaches to support the rollout as a way to share leadership with them. The major concern that arose here was that the lack of literacy background of some of the building administrators would compel them to delegate this work to the coach, thereby missing an opportunity to act as the instructional leader. This expectation played out in different ways at the building level.

As described in Chapter Four, there were three versions of building administrator/coach shared leadership enacted at the three middle schools during the 2012-13 year. First, the shared leadership at my own school saw little change with the incumbent principal and assistant

principal, but the introduction of a new assistant fresh from the classroom gave us an opportunity to begin to build a productive shared leadership relationship. Next, at Southside Middle School, the new literacy coach, Amanda, appeared to be the catalyst they needed to begin to forge a strong shared leadership team that was already making headway by the end of her first year, the year of this study. Finally, Midtown’s strong team of a female principal, an assistant principal with a solid language arts background, and their coach, Missy, continued to build on an effective

relationship that utilized the strengths of all three and most likely was creating the strongest understanding of the new Common Core State Standards.

At Northside Middle School where I was the literacy coach at the time of this study, the shared leadership did not change significantly in the face of this major school improvement initiative. The principal’s and the coach’s responsibilities remained the same in the Common Core rollout: he took the lead on management issues with occasional interest in instructional leadership, and the assistant principals and the literacy coach shared responsibility for enacting literacy directives with the support of the district language arts specialists and the assistant superintendent of curriculum. In our final interview, the principal, Mr. Rand, was discussing his plans for the following year, which would include a new literacy coach as I prepared to move out of state, when he said, “I have to be close with her in helping to guide those individuals that may or may not be [fulfilling] the [instructional] expectations. And I don’t think I’m there yet”

(Interview, May 3, 2012). Considering that this principal, a self-described building manager, had been a middle school administrator for 20 years at the time of this study, I believe this offers evidence that he had, at best, a tenuous grasp on the practice of shared instructional leadership. In contrast, we had a brand new assistant principal that year in Mrs. Jade, who had recent classroom literacy instruction experience; she and I created a new partnership to support and improve literacy instruction across the curriculum. At the end of this school year, she reflected on our work together and compared it to that of the principal and coach in her former school:

…you and I have shared [the work of Common Core rollout] the whole year, and we’ve been pretty consistent with how we’ve done that. [At my former school,] our

administrators would come to PLCs (team meetings) most of the time but they were really more observers, and [they did] none of the planning…that was the literacy coach

on her own. Here I think you and I worked more as a team than [they] did…but I think without the coaches’ role, we’d have been in trouble because you guys did a lot of the learning, a lot of the legwork. (Interview, May 14, 2013)

Unfortunately, both of us left our positions at the end of the year, so the new hires will have to start over again in this endeavor.

At Southside Middle School, they also were building shared leadership from the ground up with a new literacy coach this year. I’ve reported on how the trust and respect among the building administrators and Amanda grew over the school year, and this appeared to impact the entire staff as they engaged in book studies to learn more about Common Core implementation. In addition, this leadership team was making headway in consistent administration and

collaborative scoring of common assessments which led to improved analysis of the resulting data and discussion about its impact on instruction. When I interviewed the principal, Mr. Marks, on May 2, 2013, he listed these and other ways he was working with his literacy coach to build staff understanding of and commitment to the instruction required by the new standards. He described his work with Amanda on the CCSS rollout by saying, “We’re providing professional support and development, and we’re putting it on their backs (holding teachers responsible for the learning)…I think we’ve done a good job of building the people up and preparing them…I think they’re ready to go.”

At the end of this school year, the literacy coach left her position for an assistant principal’s job, so although her experience held promise for her new school, it left Southside administration in the position of starting over again with a new coach.

That leaves us with Midtown Middle School, which was the singular exemplar of shared leadership that I found in this study. The shared leadership forged among the principal, one assistant principal, and the literacy coach provides us with a lesson on how to work together to make an impact on the students and staff, as well as on the broader district education community that surrounds a school.

All three, in separate interviews across the entire school year, corroborated each other’s stories about the ways they combined their talents and shared the responsibilities for high expectations for their teachers as well as job-embedded support for the learning teachers needed to meet those expectations. All three cited their enthusiasm and excitement for the Common Core because these shifts aligned with what the team had been working toward together since Missy joined them four years earlier.

The assistant principal, Mrs. Adams, described her own version of collaboration in relating a common occurrence when the coach would come to the administrators to express a concern, for example, about the frequent interruptions in language arts instruction time when students are pulled for additional support services or lessons. The administrators worked with the staff to create a new schedule that protected their literacy instruction time. When the assistant principal and coach approach the principal, Mrs. Lane, with their concerns about teachers who are struggling with instruction, the principal will meet with the teachers and help them

brainstorm ways that the coach can help them realize a goal they themselves wanted to achieve. The three of them attend conferences together in order to “build a common philosophy and a common idea of where we’re headed,” according to the assistant principal, Mrs. Adams. They return to the building to meet with teams to help them devise ways to incorporate new learning into their own grade-level curriculum, such as Inquiry Circles after listening to Smokey Daniels

speak. “We don’t do our jobs because it’s a job. It’s a passion, and it’s a commitment, and we live it. We read it, we write it, we do it every day” (Interview, October 5, 2012). Mrs. Lane, the principal of that school believes that, “It’s super important…that she (the literacy coach) can come back and talk to me and something’s going to happen…That’s how much I trust her word” (Interview, October 30, 2012).

Interestingly in their school’s rollout of the Common Core, they were the only middle school where the coach did not have a part in the presentations. The principal thought this was important because she wanted the staff to see that the administrative team was leading the charge and that this was vitally important to them. “I don’t want them to think it’s coming from [the literacy coach] – or even from the district people. This is us saying, ‘We are going to do this together, and I’m going to help’” (Interview, May 21, 2012). And as for the coach, you may recall in Chapter Four that Missy stated that she has “the full support…the full backing” of both of her administrators and that it “opens a lot more doors for me” in her coaching efforts

(Interview, October 15, 2012). The same correlation of evidence of mutual admiration and enthusiasm for their work does not appear in the interviews with the other two

administrator/coach teams in my study.

I would like to posit that this effective shared leadership resulted in a better reception among Midtown’s teachers than was found in either of the other schools. Although the principal, assistant principal and coach all agreed that they still had a long way to go in this area, all three reported teacher excitement as early as January when staff was given the opportunity to share some of the activities they were trying out in their classrooms and also began to make plans in team meetings for how to incorporate more of the Common Core instructional shifts into their daily work.

And yet sadly, I must conclude this exemplar tale with another illustration of the instability of leadership in schools. Michael Fullan has completed several meta-analyses on whole school reform research and concludes that “one of the most powerful factors known to undermine continuation is staff and administrative turnover” (2007b, p. 103); if that is true, then the changes that Lakeside District has seen since the conclusion of this study do not bode well for continuous improvement. Recently, both the principal at Midtown Middle School, Mrs. Lane, and her assistant principal, Mrs. Adams, left their positions for various reasons, while the school