We spent the majority of the day in the car, taking our son to a two-week precollege camp at his #1 university choice.
Not a lot of time spent online at all, let alone social media or email.
Leaving things alone sometimes is the best ways to support growth.
Beyond leaving my son alone in a new city with strangers as an example, consider this survivor from last year's harvest.
I am presuming it is a pumpkin plant. It's not growing from the mound in the middle where I planted new seeds.
Last fall, I dumped all of the pumpkins we had either grown or purchased on our raised beds. The idea was, I would allow them to slowly compost over fall, winter, and spring. Then in summer (now), up would spring a few seedlings from last year's harvest.
My theory was in doubt when a friend of mine, a former vegetable farmer, explained that pumpkin variants did not naturally reproduce from a previous plant.
That I have a sole survivor hear shows that there are always exceptions to the rule.
Relating this metaphor to instructional leadership, cultivating growth is an intentional act. Principals, coaches, and other leaders can't simply accept the state and the conditions in which their schools are in. There has to be some purpose, even some strong persuasion, in how an organization will improve from its current situation.
The sweet spot for this growth seems to be somewhere between assessing the situation and disrupting the entire ecosystem.
A new colleague and acquaintance shared some of her insights with me on this topic.
Part of her work was helping leaders and teachers create structured opportunities to observe each other's practice and learn from one another. She was advocating for "free PD".
She noted the following:
"One of our greatest challenges was getting the principals to go into classrooms themselves to do what we were doing or, at the very least, to monitor what the teachers were learning from our PD. They too often welcomed us as "fixers" who would help the teachers improve their practice while they took care of more urgent matters in the building, and we had to work hard to change that mentality."
This is the constraint of consultants and other outside support: as helpful as they are, they eventually leave. What structures, systems, and supports will remain to ensure improvement becomes part of the DNA of a school?
I think it starts with a close monitoring of the system, both as a whole and at an individual level. Not to evaluate or to supervise, but to simple notice what is happening and organize this information in order to engage in some sense-making.
Once patterns emerge, principals can be helpful in what they do more so than in what they say. They can take action in indirect ways that allow for teachers to participate in self-improvement on safe terms. For example, as a school leader I would facilitate schoolwide writing assessments. I would serve as the note taker and conversation guide when faculty would like at student writing across the elementary grades. When I captured the strengths and areas of growth based on what we noticed, I was more likely to ask questions than to draw conclusions. I wanted to promote thought instead of solutions.
In a somewhat similar fashion, the new colleague I mentioned before promoted peer observation as a tool for continuous improvement. She found an even more basic yet no less profound role for the principals.
"We always suggested that one or more administrators cover the classes for the observers. At first, we did that because the principal was often the only one in the building who had the flexibility to do it, but we also knew that teachers really liked it when the principal took over their classes. They felt the principal was "walking in their shoes" and getting a better idea of just what they faced every day. Usually, the principals just had to supervise a straightforward activity while the teacher was out of the room—the teachers made it easy on them!—but just the fact that a principal was willing to make a collegial observation possible by pitching in as a substitute teacher enhanced the principal's reputation."
Both of these examples remind me of Viviane Robinson's classic research on the influence of school leadership. She found that principals leading and participating in professional learning for teachers to have the highest impact on student learning, compared to other influential behaviors.
I am an engaged gardener. Not doing something can be the same or better than doing something. Supervision or evaluation is not always a welcomed intervention. All of these actions/nonactions are founded on a cultivation of one's presence, of one's capacity to pay attention to what's important while resisting the sirens' call of urgency.