The graphic organizer, developed by Drs. Marsha Speck and Marty Krovetz, Professors of Educational Leadership at San Jose State University, offers the prerequisites that must be coming into place to support a school creating the conditions to support student success. Just like “coming” and “creating” end in “-ing”, the components of this model are evolving processes that may have a clear beginning, but have no ending.

First Things First - The Head

Any effort to improve the quality of life and learning for students must begin with an examination of our underlying beliefs. This requires a much deeper look than the usual efforts to write a school vision statement, by consensus, across various segments of the school community. School leaders need to carefully exam their own underlying beliefs about why they come to work every day and what they believe about students as learners, and then cause their colleagues to undertake the same careful examination.

Implicit in this reflection is the collection of data, especially student work, that is examined to learn if student work offers evidence that the beliefs one professes are in fact occurring in practice.

If a school staff says that it believes that all students can use their minds well, then a visitor to that school should see evidence:

• Lots of student writing based on students thinking about issues that are relevant and important to students;

• Teachers using questioning strategies that require students to think more deeply;

• Students at work in classrooms, rather than students listening to teachers working;

• Student assessment strategies that evaluate the student’s depth of thinking;

• Teachers modeling critical thinking through their own engagement in action research projects designed to improve their own practice.

If a school staff says it believes that all students can learn to use their hearts well, then a visitor that school should see evidence:

• Students working cooperatively in groups in which every student is participating, and individual accountability is clear;

• Students serving as and receiving peer and cross-age tutoring;

• Students engaged in service learning activities;

• Students engaged in learning about and contributing to the solution of real issues of concern to the students and to the community;

• Teachers modeling by working together as peer coaches and reviewing student work together;

• Principals modeling by engaging teachers, students and parents in meaningful work on school, district and community issues;

• Recognition programs in place that reward cooperative achievements rather than individual achievements.

Please note the depth of change in school practice and in school culture required. Fostering resiliency is at the core of schooling.

The Right Leg: Collegiality

Schools will not be successful if teacher practice is primarily based on working in isolation from other adults. Teachers need to know each other and each other’s work well. Outstanding schools are not composed of 1000 individual points of light, but instead have a clear beam of powerful, focused light starting from 1000 sources.

The Left Leg: Professionalism

The redesign of our schools, more than anything else, is a quality of life issue. Teachers and principals need to believe that they are more than “just teachers” or “just school principals.” Teachers and principals need to be seen and recognized as professionals; they need to see themselves and recognize themselves as professionals. They need to believe that what happens inside their classrooms, each and every class period, each and every day, is of critical importance, and just as important is what happens outside of their rooms - in other classrooms and throughout the school - and they need to believe that they can influence what happens inside and outside their rooms.

The Arms: Managing and Leading Change

Being part of a school that truly assesses its underlying beliefs, that practices collegiality, that respects employees as professionals, that truly is working to be a resilient learning community, is courageous work. School leaders need to have the skills, knowledge, attitudes and behaviors to lead this effort. Session Seven focuses on this in more depth.

The Heart: Resiliency

Keep reading!!

What’s In It For Me?

A nurturing school climate has the power to overcome incredible risk factors in the lives of children. What is far less acknowledged is that creating this climate for students necessitates creating this environment for all school personnel. (Benard, 1993, p. 48)

Resiliency is about building a community that is rich in the protective factors of caring, high expectations, purposeful support, and ongoing opportunities for participation. To accomplish this it is important that we adults support our own resilience; we need these protective factors too.

What’s in it for me, whether I am a teacher, an administrator, a parent, a student, a grandparent, a school board member, a community member, is the opportunity to help build a community, with and for my neighbors and for myself, that is rich in the protective factors so that we all can have a more hopeful future. Self-reflection: “I am a teacher; I was an administrator; I am a parent; I like to think that I am always a student; I am a grandparent; I sit on several boards; I am a community member. I want to live in a place where people care about each other, where expectations and support are high, and where our participation is valued. I want this in my home, in my work place, and in the community where I live.”

If I am a professional educator working at a school rich in the protective factors of resiliency, the following benefits will be at the core of the school culture:

Collegiality

I think that the problem of how to change things from “I” to “we”, of how to bring a good measure of collegiality and relatedness to adults who work in schools, is one that belongs on the national agenda of school improvement - at the top. It belongs at the top because the relationships amongst adults in schools are the basis, the precondition, the sine qua non that allow, energize, and sustain all other attempts at school improvement. Unless adults talk with one another, observe one another, and help one another, very little will change. (Barth, 1991, p. 32)

Bring a group of educators into a room for a professional development activity, and you cannot shut them up. They do not want to listen to a presentation. They want to talk with each other! Why? Because teachers and administrators have very little time to engage other adults in meaningful conversation. Teachers and administrators have little expectation and little time to share ideas, successes, or concerns with each other. Practice is very private.

An important part of building a resilient school community is to create the time and expectation for teachers and administrators as professionals to be with other teachers and administrators in order to know each other and their work well. True professionals share practice and generate much of their own knowledge base; engineers do this; doctors do this; lawyers do this.

Professional development should be based upon teachers sharing their work and the work of their students. Teachers need to watch each other teach, serve as peer coaches, develop curriculum together, plan instruction together, assess student work together, and engage in collaborative action research. Teachers should work together to develop expectations for what every student needs to know and design multiple assessment strategies to help demonstrate when students are meeting school standards and guide strategies for helping students who are not. (See Speck and Knipe, 2000)

Parents, community members, students and classified staff (an often left out, valuable member of the school community) also should to be involved with the school professionals, sharing concerns and expertise, also getting to know each other and their work well. This involves school professionals truly getting to know and understand the cultures that exist within the communities we serve.

Intellectual stimulation

In a school rich in the protective factors, adults challenge each other to be reflective, to share ideas, to ask good questions, to read widely, to think deeply. Adults challenge each other to know each student and her/his work well and, just as importantly, to know each adult and her/his work well.

If the primary purpose of schooling is, as Ted Sizer (1985) says, to learn to use your mind well, then it must start with the school professionals. Few of us have had school experience in using our minds well. Few of us have developed the habits of mind that I would put as the focus for student learning. Even with my Phi Beta Kappa key, as a student I was expected to do very little serious, rigorous work until graduate school. I became very proficient at memorizing and giving back to the teacher what had been lectured to me. How can we ask students to do that which we cannot? Debbie Meier offers the Meier mandate:

No school shall have graduation requirements that cannot be met by every professional working in the school, and therefore these requirements shall be phased in only as fast as the school can bring its staff up to the standards it requires of its students. (1995, p.183)

Respect

Most schools are not very respectful places.

• Teachers and classified staff do not feel respected by students, administrators, parents or the community.

• Students do not feel respected by most adults in school and, for the most part, do not feel respected by the community and at times not by their parents.

• Parents do not feel respected by school personnel and too often do not feel respected by their own children.

• Principals do not feel respected by most teachers, students, parents and district office personnel.

In a resilient learning community, the culture of the school is built on respect. If teachers and administrators know each other and their work well, if students, classified staff, parents and community members know that they are valued as participants in the school, if the conditions are in place to support students learning to use their minds and hearts well, if students and their work are known well, school personnel will feel recognized as professionals, parents as collaborators, and students as the central focus of the school.

Voice

It is unlikely that any school will foster resiliency unless the members of that school community have significant voice over the workings of that community. This is particularly true for teachers. Teachers currently have the traditional voice over their classrooms that comes with the privacy of practice that results when a teacher shuts her classroom door. They should also have voice in the work of peers that comes from knowing colleagues and their work well. Teachers are professionals, and professionals should have collaborative say over their work lives. When teachers know that their voices are valued in the daily workings of the school, they are much more open to the voices of students, parents, classified staff and community members.

Increased job satisfaction

When teachers and administrators work to know students and student work well, when they commit to help every student learn to use her/his mind and heart well, the conversation changes. You no longer hear badmouthing of parents and students. You no longer hear badmouthing of peers and administrators. As the protective factors of resiliency become central to a school community for the children and the adults, you can see, hear, feel, taste, and smell the difference in a school. You see teachers and administrators engaging peers, students, parents, classified staff and community in the support of student learning. You hear decisions being made based on what is best for students, based on consideration of the needs of individual students. You feel the satisfaction that teachers sense when talking about how rewarding it is to work with their students because the students are growing and are appreciative, as are the parents, the principal, the community. You can almost taste and smell the satisfaction when members of the school community repeat Maria’s words, “They really trust me here.”

Obstacles

Key obstacles to creating resilient learning communities are:

1. Deeply held beliefs and practices that indicate that not all students are believed capable of using their minds and hearts well.

2. Schools that are too large to support knowing each student well.

3. Schools that are too large to support teachers, staff, administrators and parents knowing each other well.

4. Lack of time for professional educators to know each other and their work well.

5. Lack of time for professional educators to know students well.

6. Popular public belief that public schools are failing and that the solution is outside of the school - top-down solutions.

#2 and 3 should not be major issues in small alternative schools. However, the other four obstacles still are unless leaders are proactive in building a school culture focused on fostering resiliency.

Why me?

We all make compromises in our lives that help us cope with the obstacles that confront us. We also decide what is worth fighting for. Whenever any of us compromise on our commitment to the youth of our community, the future for our youth becomes less hopeful. All youth - all people - need the protective factors of resiliency in our lives. We need them in our family, community and school. Let this serve as the sermon for the day.

What do I do first?

1. Self-assess

Assess and challenge your own deeply held beliefs about whether you believe in your head and in your heart that all students are capable of using their minds and hearts well. Assess and question your deeply held beliefs about how you learn. Require that you collect real evidence to back up your initial thoughts on this.

2. Talk, talk, talk

Hold what I call “essential conversations” with whomever will reflect with you. As you challenge your deeply held beliefs, ask hard questions of yourself and your friends. Ask hard questions within your family, community and school. Require evidence when people make definitive statements. The more you talk and particularly listen, the clearer your own belief system will become.

3. Read, read, read

The bibliography with this module offers numerous suggestions for books and articles you can read that will challenge your belief system. Pass the readings on.

4. Talk some more

Keep the essential conversations alive.

5. Prepare to lead

Do not allow the typical compromises that educators, students, parents, and the community make because of lack of will to occur within your family, community and schools.