Leading With Intention

by Jeanne Spiller

  To build relationships with parents, collaborative teams can create frequent one-page summaries of what they are working on and an exemplar of grade-level expectations and strategies or practices parents can use at home to support students. (See the example in figure 8.1, page 162.) Students need to understand the learning goals, and they can help communicate expectations and their progress to parents. Being able to self-report grades includes providing opportunities for students to explain their learning targets and goals to their parents. Student-led conferences, electronic and paper portfolios, presentations, and other strategies are effective ways for students to demonstrate and communicate their learning journey to their parents, keeping parents in the know about what is going on in the classroom. We have seen many creative ways that schools provide opportunities for parents to be part of the school community. Here are some examples.

  FIGURE 8.1: Example of a weekly communication from a collaborative team to parents.

  • Schools create parent rooms as places where parents can come together for coffee and conversation. The door is always open.

  • Schools hold parenting sessions, information nights, and so on throughout the year to target parent needs as well as provide information on student learning and activities.

  • Principals host a coffee hour once a month with a group of parents. This is never a set group and is often an open invitation for parents who want to come in and informally talk with the principal. When it is by invitation, the principal is careful to include parents from diverse backgrounds.

  • Teachers hold student-led parent-teacher conferences in their classrooms during the school day. Parents choose a time to come in and sit with their child to learn more about his or her progress and work. Teaching and learning continue while these conferences are taking place.

  • Principals and teachers meet parents informally during morning drop-off, intentionally having conversations in an informal setting.

  • Schools implement a “walking school bus” strategy as a way to safely walk children to school, particularly in challenging neighborhoods. Parents often join staff members for the walk, allowing conversations and friendships to develop.

  Throughout the United States, much attention has been paid to school turnaround. In the lowest-performing schools, money and human resources have been provided to support school improvement. School Improvement Grants (SIGs), authorized under section 1003(g) of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), are grants to state educational agencies (SEAs) that SEAs use to make competitive subgrants to local educational agencies (LEAs) that demonstrate the greatest need for the funds and the strongest commitment to use the funds to provide adequate resources in order to substantially raise the achievement of students in their lowest-performing schools (U.S. Department of Education, 2018a). In fact, from 2010 until 2014, grants were awarded to low-performing schools and districts totaling over $550 million (U.S. Department of Education, 2018b). In addition to the money, in 2014, with the intent of creating understanding that school improvement should be made with a community, not to a community, the U.S. government released its Strategies for Community Engagement in School Turnaround report (Reform Support Network, 2014). Using research from eleven states, the report gives school leaders the following five recommendations for community involvement.

  1. Make engagement a priority and establish an infrastructure.

  2. Communicate proactively in the community.

  3. Listen to the community and respond to its feedback.

  4. Offer meaningful opportunities to participate.

  5. Turn community supporters into leaders and advocates.

  As we work with schools, we observe leaders who work intentionally to engage their communities, while others struggle with finding the time, resources, or the ideas for engagement. Leaders sometimes don’t believe parents and community members care enough to support the school. Sometimes, they feel helpless in how to involve others, especially when the students come from poverty and live in disadvantaged communities. Or, these school leaders often find it very difficult to spend time building community. In low-performing schools, there are so many other priorities that take their time and energy and, despite good intentions, they just don’t focus on building community. We understand these feelings; however, we strongly believe this work is possible and critical to school success.

  Some great starting points are simply to review your current communication strategies for informing parents and the community of your priorities, goals, and initiatives. As discussed throughout this book, creating an intentional focus and system will make the communication less daunting. Addressing the following items will help you develop this focus.

  • Develop effective communication practices that support understanding why you are doing what you are doing at your school.

  • Develop a parent and community newsletter that is short, frequent, and easy to read.

  • Keep your website up to date with your school’s many celebrations.

  • Invite community partners and parents to the school whenever possible.

  • Provide regular communication about academics, goals, and what support students need to succeed. Communication shouldn’t be just about sports!

  At Cherokee Heights Elementary School in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Principal Melisa Rivera is working diligently with her school to effectively use a federal school-improvement grant to increase student achievement (M. Rivera, personal communication, 2016 through 2018). One of the successful parts of her grant work is the tireless efforts of family and community coordinator Vicki Bohling. Ms. Bohling consistently creates opportunities for families and community members to be well-informed about school initiatives and to bring people together to support student learning. A focus for Cherokee is to support implementation of Academic Parent-Teacher Teams or APTT, a project of WestEd (https://wested.org). Saint Paul Public Schools (n.d.) describes the initiative:

  The goal of the APTT model is to promote family-teacher collaboration to drive student achievement. Teachers review and compile student data and share with parents skill building activities that can be used at home to support student learning.

  There are three APTT meetings per year held for seventy-five minutes each. One meeting replaces a traditional parent-teacher conference, but there is still one traditional parent-teacher conference per year. The meetings cover (Saint Paul Public Schools, n.d.):

  • A review of student progress data

  • The establishment of academic goals

  • A demonstration of activities to use at home

  • An opportunity for parents to meet each other and build community

  As a district, Saint Paul Public Schools provides training for teachers who volunteer to participate in this program. On site, Ms. Bohling is able to encourage parents to participate and support the teachers as she organizes and communicates with parents. During the 2017–2018 school year, Cherokee experienced a profound increase in the number of parents attending parent-teacher conferences, deepening their understanding of academic goals. In this school, parent engagement is a priority, and a structure has been put in place to support this work. When Karen is on site for coaching, she often sees parents informally visiting and enjoying time in the school, sitting with Ms. Bohling or talking with teachers or Principal Rivera. It is obvious that connecting with parents is an intentional focus in the school.

  Reflection

  Is parent and community engagement an area that requires more focus? Could you ask your guiding coalition to consider how to best increase this practice? Are there staff who could lead this work with you? What are some daily intentions, for you personally, that would support an increase in parent and community understanding of your work?

  Use the tool in figure 8.2 (page 166) for additional personal reflection on parent and community engagement.

  FIGURE 8.2: Personal reflection on parent and community engagement.

  Visit go.Solution
Tree.com/PLCbooks for a free reproducible version of this figure.

  Community Outreach

  Equally important to strategically involving families and community in understanding the vision and work of the school is staff and student outreach to the community. Volunteering, attending community events, and ensuring the school has a presence in the community build respect and support. As one community leader tells us, “It is one thing for principals and schools to always look for us for support; it is a better thing to see students and staff giving back to our community” (L. Nelson, personal communication, June 2015). We understand how difficult finding time is in the busy life of a school leader; however, strategically selecting community events to attend and getting help from students and staff go a long way in creating a sense of community for the school.

  Some ways we have seen schools be successful in this outreach include district and school leaders taking community leadership roles (for example, in Rotary clubs, the chamber of commerce, and so on); students and staff regularly visiting senior homes with the choir or band or to do art projects, and so on; schools leading community clean-ups; districts and schools providing emergency relief shelters and support; schools hosting annual food drives, leading charity fundraising events, and providing free use of gymnasium and classroom space for community needs; and schools hosting health clinics with community access and providing speakers and organizers (students and staff) for community events. Activities such as these help schools be a part of the larger community, and they help students, staff, and parents see this connection as well.

  Wrap-Up

  In the beginning of this chapter, we quote from Block’s (2008) Community: The Structure of Belonging. In closing, we want to bring you back to Block’s research and writing. Throughout his work, Block (2008) reminds us of the opportunities we have when we collaborate and share with others—when we see relationships as a mechanism to problem solving rather than contributing to our problems. He writes about the need to live and be in a community, and what the bigger picture of this means to our understanding of developing human and social capacity. When school leaders see community as a benefit and asset to school improvement, communicating and building relationships become priorities. As Block (2008) states, “The essential challenge is to transform the isolation and self-interest within our communities into connectedness and caring for the whole” (p. 1). In schools, connectedness and caring create conditions for learning. And, in the spirit of whatever it takes, we must prioritize anything that will increase learning for students (Block, 2008).

  Wrap up your examination of developing community and relationships by completing the “Making an Impact in Eight: Developing Community and Relationships” reflections (pages 168–170).

  Making an Impact in Eight: Developing Community and Relationships

  The following eight ideas provide opportunities for further reflection and action. We provide five reflections on what great leaders do and avoid doing to gain focus, as well as three considerations for how to make an impact in eight minutes, eight weeks, and eight months to guide your leadership planning and practice.

  Afterword

  Creating the Future

  Build an organization that can tackle the tough things and keep moving.

  —Geoffrey Canada

  You are the architect. You are the designer. You are the motivator. You are the planner. You fix things. You truly are the builder, the creator of futures, and the keeper of dreams. You are responsible. You have impact. You are a school leader.

  In educational consultant Cathy Lassiter’s (2017) book Everyday Courage for School Leaders, she invites readers to consider the benefits of purposeful practice as part of leadership focus. She defines purposeful practice:

  Purposeful practice has well-defined goals in the specific skills you identify. It involves a series of baby steps, focused on one at a time, toward a greater long-term goal. This way of practicing will take you out of your comfort zone, which is an important aspect of the work. During purposeful practice, you have to anticipate and accept feeling uncomfortable throughout the process. (Lassiter, 2017, p. 138)

  Throughout this book, we asked you to purposefully consider your leadership practices. We invited you to acknowledge what you should do and what you should stop doing, and to make an action plan for continuous improvement. We challenged you to be intentional in your work and to consider the vision you want for your school with every decision you make. We know you go to work each and every day wanting to be your best. We seek to support this desire and strengthen your resolve to do the work that will move your PLC forward and help you grow professionally.

  Lassiter (2017) also reminds us in Everyday Courage for School Leaders that “Engaging in purposeful practice is important for people who want to be excellent at their work. It transitions you from general improvement to specific improvement on discrete skills” (p. 138). We want you to develop the specific skills you feel need improvement. If you are unsure of your vision and purpose as a leader, then begin a plan of action to gain this clarity. If you need to clarify your priorities, then create a picture of the school you wish to lead. If it is your desire to use evidence to make better decisions, then work on that skill. If it is communication and relationship-building skills you wish to improve, then use this book to focus on that practice. Take what you need from this book when you need it, and use it to take small steps toward your bigger goal of improvement. Be prepared to do intentional, focused, and purposeful practice.

  At no time have we implied that you have to be an expert at everything, nor do we want you to think you must know every page of curriculum, every instructional strategy, every supervisory best practice, all your staff’s potential professional learning needs, or the nuances of each and every family and community member. But we do want you to understand that you must pay attention to these drivers and understand your impact on creating the conditions for learning and motivation for change in your building. In his book The Principal: Three Keys to Maximizing Impact, Fullan (2014) describes the most central role of a principal as “one who models learning, but also shapes the conditions for all to learn on a continuous basis” (p. 9). In the cycle of continuous learning in a PLC, adults improve, so schools improve, and student achievement improves. And that really is what we are about: supporting you so students improve.

  When you turn the number eight on its side, you have the symbol for infinity. Your leadership possibilities are infinite. The influence and impact you will have on students, staff, and families are endless. We honor your efforts and respect the deep commitment you have to your school. And, most important, we have confidence in you. Create your vision and build the school of your dreams!

  References and Resources

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