HSIG Planning Grant Final Report 2005

Part I - High School Improvement, Creating a Hedgehog Concept

The idea of a school improvement grant was first presented to the AHS faculty in June of 2004. In January of 2005 the staff was reintroduced to the idea through a principal's memo. Faculty members were more fully informed about the Arlington Schools Foundation grant at an after school meeting in March, and all were invited to participate in a School Improvement Subcommittee (SIS). Fourteen faculty members submitted forms to be included on the team, and all fourteen were accepted. The SIS consisted of a varied team of novice, mid-career, and veteran educators -- eight teachers and seven administrators. All members of SIS were given a copy of Good To Great by Jim Collins to read as a core text before the first meeting.

The SIS meetings took place on May 11, May 18, June 1, June 4, June 8, June 15, and June 22. The meetings were extremely enjoyable and productive. We used the Good To Great formula of looking at the "cold, hard facts" of our organization to find an idea, concept or action that we could use as a focus for the work that was to come. It was due to the team's honesty and seriousness that we found the core idea (called the hedgehog concept in the Good To Great) by the end of the second meeting - communication.

The theme of each of the SIS meetings was fairly similar; there wasn't enough communication for people to be sure of what instruction was supposed to look like from class to class, what discipline rules were followed throughout the school, and what safety rules had meaning or application on a day to day basis. It was wonderful to see that teachers took the chance to be honest and administrators did not become defensive as these ideas were shared. It was clear that this was a committee of people who deeply cherish the Arlington High School community specifically and teaching and learning in general.

Since the SIS represented teachers and administrators from varied departments and areas of the school it seemed logical to believe that our concerns for more communication and consistency would reflect the concerns of the entire school community. To ensure that the school community felt the same way, we used the final Tuesday faculty meeting on June 14th to get input and reaction from the entire AHS staff.

We brought the staff together and gave them a brief overview of our work. Each member of the SIS team then met with a small break-out group of staff members to ask them what they thought were the school's strengths and weaknesses and what we needed to do to improve. The feedback was virtually the same in the small groups as it was in the larger SIS. The clear need and desire of the entire staff was for more communication between and among staff, students and parents and more consistency in the application of procedures and school rules.

Part II - Moving Forward; The Flywheel Effect

The most startling, and yet very reassuring, fact that emerges from reading Good To Great is that the companies that became great did not do so through a gimmick, slogan, or specific campaign. Rather, they chose a concept and made decisions that reinforced that concept and became great. This is known in the book at the flywheel effect. Each action you take to advance your concept is another turn of the flywheel, creating more forward motion and energy towards a specific goal. In order to advance communication at AHS we plan to do the following:

• Schedule as many teachers as possible to meet for common planning time during the school day.
• Use common planning time to allow teachers to share successful teaching strategies, look at student work, and discuss student issues.
• Rewrite teacher and student handbooks to provide clarity and consistency around the issues that most frequently distract teachers and students from positive learning environments, i.e., tardiness to class, food in the classroom, and the appropriate use of electronic devices.
• Update our emergency protocols so that the entire school community knows what to do or whom to contact in specific emergency or life-threatening situations.
• Send two administrators to Power School University to learn the communication capabilities of the new scheduling and communication software recently adopted by the Arlington Public Schools.

As each of these actions is lived out on a daily basis, we will increase communication and improve instruction at AHS.

Part III - The Arlington Schools Foundation and School Improvement

Improving instruction through common planning time requires the funding of a full-time academic coach and increased funding for substitute teachers. The academic coach is a classroom expert who knows a wide range of teaching strategies across the curriculum. The academic coach works with teachers to set an agenda for common planning time so that staff sees the time as profitable and worthwhile. In addition, the academic coach sets up classroom situations where teachers can view one another's teaching and debrief about what they observed. This peer observation and review is powerful practice that is used in most other professions, but almost unheard of in teaching. Teachers are too often isolated in their own classroom and completely unaware of how other teachers handle classroom management or curriculum issues. With ASF funding, we can increase teacher communication and observation.

The academic coach would also work with individual teachers and provide professional development after school. The academic coach would also have access to two year-long substitutes. The substitutes would be used to cover teacher's administrative duties, i.e., study classes, so that the teacher would have that time available to meet or visit classes rather than cover a study hall. Our new superintendent and assistant superintendent are very supportive of the teaming process and increased professional development for teachers. They see these issues as pivotal for improvement in teaching and learning.

The introduction of common planning time and the use of an academic coach are necessary developments in the modernization of education. Without this kind of open communication and collaboration between and among teachers, we are prolonging a factory model of education where teachers worked in isolation. This isolation allowed for a teacher-centered model of education where the teacher was the expert and the most important person in the classroom. Coaching and common planning time put the focus on students. The effectiveness of teachers' practice is no longer measured in how much material they cover, but rather in the richness of the work that their students produce. As teachers look at student work and share the strategies that helped their students produce that work, teachers grow and become more effective. In addition, more and more students reap the benefits of best practices, not just the few students who are lucky enough to have landed in the classrooms of the "good’" teachers. Collaboration and coaching will improve and equalize instruction at Arlington High School. These practices are important next steps as we move to make Arlington High School a truly great twenty-first century school.

Part IV - Budget