MOTIVATING CHANGE

I receive monthly the free online newsletter from Marv Marshall, the author of Discipline Without Stress. I often promote Marv’s work encouraging teachers to look at classroom structures focused on promoting student thinking, choices, and responsibility. The following appeared in his most recent newsletter:

In a classic study, scientists put two rats in a cage, each of them locked in a running wheel. The first rat could exercise whenever he liked. The second was yoked to the first and forced to run when his counterpart did.
Exercise usually reduces stress and encourages neuron growth, and indeed, the first rat's brain bloomed with new cells. The second rat, however, lost brain cells. He was doing something that should have been good for his brain, but he lacked one crucial factor: control. He could not determine his own "workout" schedule, so he didn’t perceive it as exercise. Instead, he experienced it as a literal rat race.

This experiment brings up a troubling point about stress.
Psychologists have known for years that one of the biggest factors in how we process stressful events is how much control we have over our lives. As a rule, if we feel we're in control, we cope. If we don’t, we collapse.

This exact point was made as it pertains to self-talk, victimhood thinking, and "choice-response thinking" on pages 14 - 17 in the book described at http://www.disciplinewithoutstress.com/.

In my work with student effort and motivation, I encourage teachers to examine how we can build more student control into the curriculum. Where can you give students more choices? How can you use technology to expand student control? Considering that cell phones aren’t allowed in most schools, many students “power down” and lose control as they enter our doors.
A recent article in Harvard Business Review, “When Economic Incentives Backfire”, connects thinking about control, reflection and satisfaction to adult incentives that I believe carries over to classrooms for students.

Organizations and societies rely on fines and rewards to harness people’s self-interest in the service of the common good. The threat of a ticket keeps drivers in line, and the promise of a bonus inspires high performance. But incentives can also backfire, diminishing the very behavior they’re meant to encourage.
A generation ago, Richard Titmuss claimed that paying people to donate blood reduced the supply. Economists were skeptical, citing a lack of empirical evidence. But since then, new data and models have prompted a sea change in how economists think about incentives—showing, among other things, that Titmuss was right often enough that businesses should take note.
Experimental economists have found that offering to pay women for donating blood decreases the number willing to donate by almost half, and that letting them contribute the payment to charity reverses the effect. Consider another example: When six day-care centers in Haifa, Israel, began fining parents for late pickups, the number of tardy parents doubled. The fine seems to have reduced their ethical obligation to avoid inconveniencing the teachers and led them to think of lateness as simply a commodity they could purchase.

Wow! I’d love to hear the conversations inside students’ heads when school rewards and punishments are placed in front of them. I am recalling a teacher who shared the frustration in motivating her high school son who had just realized that 90% was an A. He stated, "Do you know how much time and effort I’ve wasted getting 95 and 96%?"
Or, early in my teaching career when I confronted Jimmy, a struggling 6th grader, with the mandate that he could do the work I assigned or head to the office. He jumped up from his seat and said, ”I’ll see you later Mr. Barkley.” I guess that is similar to the women who decided to pay for being late; Jimmy decided to pay for not doing the work. (It took me too long to discover that Jimmy wasn’t able to do what I had assigned and paying the cost of the office discipline was easier.)
Here is one more example of the importance of control, reflection, satisfaction and responsibility in motivation and change:
In the March 11, 2009 issue of Education Week, Donald Gratz in an article titled Purpose and Performance In Teacher Performance Pay states:
"To believe that teachers will try harder if offered a financial incentive is to assume that they aren’t trying hard now, that they know what to do but simply aren’t doing it, and that they are motivated more by money than by their students’ needs. These are unlikely and unsupported conclusions, which teachers find insulting rather than motivating.”

As school leaders we must examine how we can empower student and teacher learners. Empowerment found through learning will motivate effort.

HOW ADMINISTRATORS SUPPORT INSTRUCTIONAL COACHES

“What does your principal do/say that supports your work with teachers?"

That was the question I posed to a team of instructional coaches I worked with recently. The coaches had sent me a list of scenarios that expressed some of the challenges/resistance that they were finding in their work, with a desire for me to analyze and model possible responses or strategies. I sent the question above because I believe that the answer influences how a coach would respond.

The following response from a coach suggests my question created valuable thinking:

Steve, this seems like such a direct easy question, yet I'm really struggling to define a clear answer as to how I know. And, now, I'm wondering if I really do know that she supports my work with teachers, or that I just want to believe she supports it?

And since she doesn't interfere, she must support me, right?? I do believe that our assistant principals are more vocal and involved in the asking of questions and wanting to be a part of what I actually do than the principal. I feel, sometimes, like the words of support are given, but not always getting the sense that there are actions to back up those words.

So, let me try again to answer the question posed...
1) I believe that my principal supports my work with teachers by keeping my schedule free of extra duties knowing that those "before/after minutes" are the only times we can get with teachers.
2) She was instrumental in moving us from the faculty room to a real office space this year.
3) She recognizes the need for a flexible schedule.
4) When I ask about needed or new supplies/materials to help teacher(s), she hasn't turned me down yet.
5) She doesn't use us for sub coverage unless it's absolutely necessary, or in an emergency.
6) Acknowledging in faculty meetings how fortunate our building is to have the resources immediately available to our staff via the 2 instructional coaches.

In an earlier post, The Principal Coach Partnership , I listed the following areas of agreement for coaches and principals (Killon and Harrison NSDC)
The coach’s comments above fit in two categories.

Roles and Responsibilities
1) I believe that my principal supports my work with teachers by keeping my schedule free of extra duties knowing that those "before/after minutes" are the only times we can get with teachers
5) She doesn't use us for sub coverage unless it's absolutely necessary, or in an emergency
Timelines
Clients
Boundaries
Support and Resources
2) She was instrumental in moving us from the faculty room to a real office space this year.
3) She recognizes the need for a flexible schedule.
4) When I ask about needed or new supplies/materials to help teacher(s), she hasn't turned me down yet.
6) Acknowledging in faculty meetings how fortunate our building is to have the resources immediately available to our staff via the 2 instructional coaches.
Communications
Process
Confidentiality

What her principal does provides support for this coach. What else might extend that support? Here are a few of my thoughts:

The principal might volunteer to teach a teacher’s class and be coached. If this process were videoed and played for the staff it would illustrate the principal’s value of the coaching process.

Does the principal encourage other school leaders to model the value of coaching? What expectations would the principal have for department chairs or mentors to be the first people volunteering for coaching?

Can the principal coach the coach when she is modeling in a teacher’s classroom?

How often does the principal ask teachers how they are using the coach’s services?
This is different from sending teachers to a coach which often puts the coach in a supervisory position in the teachers’ eyes. The question suggests that utilizing the coach is a professional responsibility.

The principal can meet with the coach to identify desired instructional changes for the staff or groups of teachers, and then meet at intervals identifying observed changes and requesting ways to support the coach’s efforts.

As suggested in the earlier blog, communication between coach and principal is critical. If you are the principal ask your coach, “What things do I do to support your work? And what else can I do?” If you are the coach ask your principal,” How do you communicate your value of the coaching process? And “what can I do to support that message?”

INTEREST AND EFFORT

These were the key words during a recent day I spent with the students and staff at Twin Lakes Elementary School in Hillsborough County, Tampa, FL.
Each third, fourth ,and fifth grade class assigned two or three students to attend a workshop I did on the “effort formula” found in Tapping Student Effort… Increasing Student Achievement. These students latter in the week provided a workshop for their classmates on effort. Later in the month they will be presenting to kindergarten, first, and second grade classrooms.

I provided the students with a power point they could use in their presentations (email me at sbarkley@plsweb.com if you’d like a copy) and created an opportunity for them to create their own list of personal experiences that illustrated ability, effort, future goals, and the connections between the three. We also created a list of effort behaviors for studying, class work, and the upcoming standardized test…”What would be effort during the test?”
Lastly, I had them explore how they might put effort into their upcoming presentations.

The following comments from their principal, Didi Lefler, suggest that many of them decide to “effort.”

Steve
I just wanted to send you a quick note about the students you did the workshop with. It has been just amazing to watch them. The facilitators working with them have shared with me how excited and motivated they have been preparing for the presentation. Some groups have taken your presentation and kicked it up a notch. On their own, some groups decided to go back and ask the teacher if they could sit together at lunch to plan their lesson. Another group searched the internet for pictures of success to add to their power point.

I got goose bumps as I walked around to see some of the presentations. They were just adorable and inspiring. The interaction and engagement was outstanding. I feel these kids really got it!! I interviewed some of the students that were presented to and they had a pretty good understanding of the effort formula. This was such a worthwhile activity. I can't wait until they present to the primary grades.

I spent the afternoon with the staff at Twin Lakes exploring the connection between student interest and student effort. I found the following quote on the StateUniversity.com web site to kick off our conversation.

The challenge for education could be understood as one that involves figuring out how to get students to want to do what teachers want them to do. However this interpretation sets effort and interest at cross purposes and is not productive. Instead, the research suggests that educators should focus on the complementary qualities of effort and interest.
Providing students with conditions that will involve them in deepening their knowledge should position them to begin asking their own questions about a particular subject matter; recognize that they both have the ability to work on developing their understanding of, as well as their confidence about their ability to work with, the subject matter; and provide support for developing interest and effort that includes trying hard, asking for help, and/or participating. In fact, as John Dewey anticipated, it appears that when conditions to support student interest are in place, effort will follow.

Two articles from the Feb 2009 Kappan provide great insights to promote the interest effort conversation:

In Accelerating the Learning of 4th and 5th Graders Born into Poverty, Stanley Pogrow promotes two strategies that he describes as counter-intuitive:

-Reduce supplemental content reteaching and test prep in reading and math with Socratic interaction that develops a sense of understanding.
-Use “creative authenticity” to present content in meaningful terms of how students view the word and their role in it. Incorporate fantasy, adventure, suspense, fun, and drama.

In The Joys of Teaching the Upper Elementary Grades, Steve Reifman purports that students will fulfill their potential when teachers nurture intrinsic motivation to learn. That happens when we promote purpose, contribution, interest, challenge, success, inspiration, cooperation, trust, feedback, and recognition.

The vertical teams of teachers at Twin Lakes Elementary are exploring simulations and live event learning strategies during the remainder of the school year to tap student interest and hopefully increase student effort during the last part of the school year…increasing student achievement.

PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITIES AND COACHES

I found a few authors’ writings this week that reinforced the critical work that needs to occur in PLC’s and teacher/coach dialogues. The following statement appears in National Staff Development’s press release for the report Professional Learning in the Learning Profession:

Research shows that professional learning can have a powerful effect on teacher skills and knowledge and on student learning. To be effective, however, it must be sustained, focused on important content, and embedded in the work of collaborative professional learning teams that support ongoing improvements in teachers’ practice and student achievement.

Often, when I read public responses to newspaper posts about teacher professional development, I realize how many people “just don’t get it’. The complexity of learning and the constant adjustments that teachers need to make are foreign to many. Perhaps it is not understood by too many working in our schools or serving on Boards of Education or in the politics of education as well.

In an ASCD Inservice blog, Bob Marzano, author of The Art and Science of Teaching makes the following comments:

I can think of no strategy every teacher should use. They are all tools to be used in the service of student learning. That said, I realize I have probably contributed greatly to the burden of many teachers in schools or districts where certain strategies are "mandated." For that I apologize. In my defense, though, right from the beginning, I have warned against this practice. To illustrate, in the first chapter of the book Classroom Instruction That Works (2001), I said, " . . . teachers should rely on their knowledge of their students, their subject matter, and their situation to identify the most appropriate instructional strategies" (p. 9).

Accept things that you know work based on your experience. Reject things that don't work based on your experience, and try things you haven't tried before. Always keep student achievement as the criterion for successful teaching. If students are not learning well, then it is a professional educator's responsibility (I believe) to try something new, and books like The Art and Science of Teaching are intended to provide some guidance to that end.

I was recently working with a coach who was mentoring a new teacher who was struggling because her lessons which worked in periods 1-4 just didn’t work in 6th. Conversations with the coach led the teacher to discover that she needed to plan a lesson for 6th period students rather than trying to get the lessons she had used in the other sections to “work”. Because it “works” in period 4 doesn’t mean it's right for period 6.

In the February, 2009 edition of Phi Delta Kappan, The Journal for Education , Erin Young reports on the PDK Summit in an article titled, What Makes a Great Teacher. She highlights comments from Tom Guskey, Distinguished Service Professor at Georgetown College in Georgetown, KY.

But great teachers are not all alike, Guskey said. He asked audience members to think of a great teacher in their lives. About half of the audience selected a teacher who was harsh, demanding, and authoritative, while the other half selected a teacher who was nurturing, warm, and endearing. “In all of our research on effective teachers, it’s been very difficult for us to come up with any set of personality characteristics that defines a highly effective teacher,” he said.

To further complicate the issue, Guskey said, "Research in Tennessee has shown that a great teacher in one setting may be a poor teacher in another setting. Tennessee has a value-added accountability program that can show on average, for each teacher, how much the teacher’s students have learned throughout the year. “You would think we should be able to identify those teachers who are getting remarkable results, go and look at what they do, and just have everybody do the same,” Guskey said. “But what they’ve discovered is it’s not that easy.” Instead, he said, teachers who are effective in rural schools fail when they’re put into urban schools, even though they’re doing the same things they did in the rural schools, and vice versa. “They’ve really called into question this notion of best practices,” Guskey said. “Maybe best practices depend on where you are, the kind of students you’re teaching, the kinds of communities in which they live, the cultural background they bring to school…”

Teachers need a highly reflective environment to create the best possible learning for each student. Coaches and PLC Colleagues are important resources for that reflection.

COACHING TEACHERS TO GREAT WORK

This week my colleague, Sandy Washmon, sent me a link to a video clip that features an upcoming book from Michael Bungay Stainer, a senior partner at Box of Crayons: Find Your Great Work

The video clip led me to download (free) the first three chapters of the book. A quick read caused me to connect that the work of coaches in school should lead to teachers finding more great work. Teachers doing great work should also lead to students finding great work (a later blog posting).

Here are Stainer’s definitions for bad, good, and great work:

Bad Work
A waste of time, energy & life. Doing it once is one time too many.
In organizations it shows up as bureaucracy, the meetings that go on forever, the outdated processes that waste everyone’s time, the habits and ways of doing things that diminish rather than grow.

Good Work
The familiar, useful, productive work you do and do well. This is how you spend most of your time, and there’s nothing wrong with Good Work. This is work that blossoms from your training, your education, the path you’ve trod so far…all in all, a place of comfort. You always need some Good Work in your life. At an organizational level, Good Work is the company’s bread and butter...the efficient, focused, profitable work that delivers next quarter’s return.

Great Work
The work that matters, inspires, stretches and provokes. This is both a place of deep comfort – “the flow zone” – and discomfort. The comfort comes from its connection, its “sight line” to what matters most to you. The discomfort comes because the work is new, is challenging and as a result, there’s an element of risk and possible failure – and it is work that matters, work that you care about. For organizations, this is the work that drives strategic difference, innovation, “blue ocean strategy” – and longevity.

Those of you who have been in my coaching presentations have heard me suggest that the biggest problem that most principals face is having too many GOOD Teachers and that moving teachers from GOOD to GREAT is a challenging job.

Finding Your Great Work has five foundational principles. Here they are with some of my connecting thoughts on coaching teachers.

#1 Things only get interesting when you take full responsibility for your choices…..

Coaches often cause teachers to reflect and identify that they do have more choices than they initially think. Creativity generates choices. If I chose not to think outside the box, I am limiting my own choices. I recall the time I sat and listened to a teacher in the staff lounge complaining that the system took away recess and students now couldn’t get the movement they needed. Looking out the window, I saw kids on the playground. I excused myself and went out to ask the teacher if her kids were at recess. She quickly replied, “Oh, No! We are not allowed. We are doing hopscotch math. We just finished running for reading. You have to give kids movement.” Teachers make many choices in a single day. Reflecting on those decisions is critical to improving.

#2 Changing your focus changes what is possible.

Just this week a teacher shared this example:
A coach observed my problem class and one of my other classes. Asking me about the way I used my rewards for desired behavior, the coach caused me to discover that seeing the class as a problem caused me to miss seeing the students who were exhibiting the desired behaviors. Missing the desired behaviors, I wasn’t rewarding them…. creating my own downward spiral. As soon as I shifted my focus, I saw the behaviors, rewarded them and saw an immediate improvement in the students in the class.

I was coaching a principal this week as she participated in a professional learning community. A teacher in the group took a negative tone “shot” at a past principal decision. The principal responded defensively. She quickly sensed the defensive comment needed to be explained to the rest of the group. Soon she realized she was”digging the hole deeper” and losing the meeting’s momentum. When we debriefed, the principal suggested she needed to keep her focus on the group and the future more than the individual teacher and the past.

#3 You need to make a full choice…what do you say yes to? … what do you say no to?

One of the difficult decisions in moving from good to great is that I often have to stop doing good things in order to experiment with things that could take me to great. Past success tempts me to go back and get the same (old) good results. Coaches often keep one connected to the full choice.

#4 If everyone is happy, you aren’t doing great work...

I was doing walkthroughs with a principal this week and as we were debriefing, she said she wanted everyone to be comfortable with her presence. I suggested that she consider that what she really wanted was for them to be comfortable with the discomfort. Her presence in a classroom should cause teachers to be conscious. That consciousness usually, naturally creates discomfort. Some discomfort is generally needed for improvement, moving toward great.

That is pretty similar to teachers who raise expectations. Increasing rigor in students’ work...necessary for students to find Great Work…. unlikely to initially make students happy.

#5 Great work is not a solo act…

This week I was working with the Memorial Elementary School in Desoto County, FL. The staff is at the end of the first year of implementing vertical teams. We held a hot dog dinner to bring parents in for a presentation on why students would stay with a team of teachers as they moved from first to second grade. A slide on the power point said, "Teaching is a team sport". Here are some benefits teachers presented:
-Know students, better and sooner
-Connect with parents
-Link grade to grade curriculum
-Expand teaching strategies

As a teacher coach,you are on the teachers' team! Actually, when Sandy sent me the link to the Find Your Great Work site she showed she is on my team. Thanks, Sandy.