Mastermind: Unlocking Talent Within Every School Leader

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Welcome to Principal Center Radio, bringing you the best in professional practice.

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Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center and Champion of High Performance Instructional Leadership, Dustin Bader. Welcome everyone to Principal Center Radio.

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I am thrilled that my guest today is Daniel Venables. Daniel is an education consultant and executive director of the Center for Authentic PLCs, an organization committed to assisting schools in building, leading, and sustaining authentic professional learning communities. He's the author of How Teachers Can Turn Data Into Action, as well as The Practice of Authentic PLCs, A Guide to Effective Teacher Teams.

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And now, our feature presentation.

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Daniel, thank you so much for joining us on Principal Center Radio. And I wonder if we could start by having you tell us a little bit about who you are and what your life's work is.

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I started as a classroom teacher, as most folks who work in education do. And I taught for 24 years in the high school. And in that time, on and off, I had been consulting in schools, mostly in my content area, which was math. But I also was doing a lot of work with CFGs, I was trained by the Coalition of Essential Schools in the early 90s, which started this thing called Critical Friends Groups, CFGs, and it's sort of the first version of PLCs that we had in the country and spent a lot of time. So for 20-something years, I have been working with schools and their teacher teams, now most often called PLCs, although some are still called Critical Friends Groups in various places and in the country. So in 11, really out of need, I wrote a book called The Practice of Authentic PLCs, highlighting really three essential tasks that PLCs engage in, and that is looking at student work and teacher work, looking at data, reviewing and responding to data, and then also designing common formative assessments.

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From there, I was working a lot in lots of schools and districts, and it seemed that the most troublesome part of those three essential tasks was looking at data. And so that sort of gave birth or sort of spawned the second book having to do with how teachers and teacher teams look at data. And so the whole book is really sort of a blow-up version of the chapter that's in the first book having to do with teacher teams looking at data meaningfully. Teachers who have been teaching before No Child Left Behind legislation, which was, I guess, in 2001, had very, very little teacher training, certainly at the college level, in regards to how to look at data. And that all changed with the No Child Left Behind legislation. And suddenly we had these high-stake tests, which we still have, soon-to-be Common Core assessments in most places.

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And so all this data started coming in, and teachers who weren't really prepared or trained in how to look at it became quickly overwhelmed. And that was happening at the same time principals were saying, we need to raise our test scores. So there was a disconnect there. So I decided that I needed to develop a systematic way for teachers and teacher teams to look at data and then, of course, the most important part, to respond to that data and to make actual changes at the classroom level. It's no good if we just look at the data. We have to do something about what we see.

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And so that's really where the second book, How Teachers Can Turn Data Into Action, came from. As I was traveling to schools, I was seeing more and more need for a process and so the process I call the data action model and it's very logical and it's very teacher friendly and it pretty much walks teachers through and teacher teams through how to go from looking at the really big data to start off with what I call the macro data Like EOC scores, intercourse testing, the big stuff, state scores, soon-to-be Common Core assessment scores. And then from that, really whittling down to the more daily, smaller microdata that teachers can use to make decisions about their instruction.

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Absolutely, in order to turn it into action, as you said. Now, could you walk us through the essence of that process?

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So just your team start off by looking at the big data. From there, the macro, as I call it. And from there, they generate an exploratory question. And that is just simply a question that they want to know more information about. And so we have a big sort of big picture look at where kids are and where gaps might be. and that includes subgroups of kids because most data these days comes in disaggregated by students student groups and so we have lots of good information about different groups of students and their performance against the set of standards in question from the exploratory question that drives sort of a seeking out or gathering of additional relevant data.

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So the team literally goes forth after the meeting and they gather more relevant data, relevant defined by this exploratory question that they've agreed to. And they bring that to the fore, usually typically at the next data meeting or the next PLC meeting, and they sit down and in a very systematic way go through the data and try to identify student learning gaps that are relevant to this question they've posed themselves. After that, we need to look at how does that connect to instructional gaps. In other words, It's easy and quite commonplace for teachers to find all the gaps in their student learning. It's quite another conversation to have about what it is we're doing as teachers and as teams of teachers

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to contribute or to facilitate in some way, you know, unwittingly, perhaps, these gaps. So we can't just look at student learning gaps without also connecting those to, well, what corresponding instructional gaps are lurking in the background contributing to this issue or problem or gap that we're identifying in our students? In a nutshell, if you've got a learning gap, you've got an instructional gap. Once instructional gaps are identified, then we can set a goal for our students, where would we like them to be with regards to this gap, and then we make a plan for ourselves. What will we now do instructionally to change their learning? And that plan is followed by, of course, an implementation period.

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It's not enough just to make a plan. People make plans all the time. That doesn't do anything. We've got to actually implement it in the classroom. And the team is doing this through a two to four week period, depending on the size of the goal. And then we evaluate the success.

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Have we been successful implementing?

[06:46] SPEAKER_01:

And Daniel, you do quite a bit of on-site work directly with teacher teams. Is that right? Yes. As you do that work, as you train teachers on that model and have them practice that, what are the biggest misconceptions that you see when people get started?

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Well, I think that the first that comes to mind is that we teachers often think data are just the numbers, you know, the rows and rows and columns and columns of numbers that we get after kids take an end-of-course test. That is data, but there are lots of other sources of data, many of which are more impactful in making change in the classroom. The stuff that teachers get daily, formative data that they receive daily with their students, from their students, often paints a very clear picture about where their student learning is. And so one of the misconceptions is that we have got to get out of this box of thinking data is just numbers.

[07:42] SPEAKER_01:

So based on the work that you do in schools and what you've seen from helping thousands of teachers look at data and take action based on that data, what's one thing, since you're speaking directly to school leaders, what's one thing that you would like to see every school leader do, one action that you would like school leaders to take?

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The first thing that I'm thinking about is the implementation of what I call authentic PLCs. It's not enough anymore to have professional development divvied out by speakers who crack great jokes and then go their happy way. And the last thing, we know from research that this does not cause an impact in what happens at the classroom level, really where the rubber meets the road, if you will.

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So Daniel, every school leader knows we're supposed to have professional learning communities. We know we're supposed to provide time for our teachers to meet in teams, to look at data and plan instruction. What's your advice to school leaders who want to make sure that that process is effective?

[08:43] SPEAKER_00:

One of the things that I stress and one of the things that I spend a lot of time working with, I spend time working with and training the leaders of the PLCs. I work with the facilitators, which I call the PLC coach, the person who's been asked or in some way appointed the job of leading that team of teachers. And this is not necessarily a department chair. That's an old model. This is not necessarily the best teacher sitting at the table. That's maybe the case, but it's not a requirement.

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So I work with the PLC leaders and arm them with the skill set that they need, not only the knowledge about what a PLC should be doing and how, but the knowledge with how to pull this off with your colleagues and how to actually lead another group of other teachers. without being in charge of them, but just to lead them in the process of authentic PLCs and doing the important things that authentic PLCs do. One big thing, of course, is looking at data meaningfully and responding to it.

[09:46] SPEAKER_01:

So it's not enough for leaders to simply say, okay, we're doing PLCs and here is your meeting time and here's an agenda. You're saying that that leadership role within the PLC is also one that's critical to the process.

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Absolutely. I've seen it the other way where we have eight teachers sitting around and there's no real defined leader. And the learning curve is slow. And the progress and the effectiveness of that team, it could happen. But in my experience, it's more likely to happen if there is a person who has been trained in some way. and how to lead the team to greatness, simply put, and know what should be worked on and how.

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That doesn't make them the expert in everything that happens at the PLC level. They are the facilitator of the team. They make it happen.

[10:37] SPEAKER_01:

Well said, well said. Now when a team leader takes on that role, what are some of the problems that they're solving for the group that would go unaddressed if there were no team leader in the PLC?

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So some of the things that happen in this very human endeavor is there are interpersonal dynamics and those waters have to be navigated. And it's not enough to just simply look at content at the PLC level. The PLC coach is continually looking at the process. How are we looking at student work? How are we preserving safety so if the teacher puts something forth she would like feedback on, how is that experience framed so that the teacher is not attacked but yet the feedback is sincere and helpful? not just candy-coated, you know, the old model of show-and-tell where teachers showed what they did with each other and everybody said great and there'd be lots of applause.

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We're past that. We need to critically look at each other's work and we need to do it in a way that's safe for the teacher presenting. All those things don't happen without a very carefully trained and skillful facilitator to make sure that that experience is beneficial for everybody around the table.

[11:48] SPEAKER_01:

So Daniel, if school leaders are looking for ways to train their PLC facilitators to help them manage those interpersonal issues, those human issues in their PLCs, what's the best resource that you have for us to get us started on that process? And where can we find more about your work?

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The first book I've written addresses this in pretty good detail, the practice of authentic PLCs, and it's also in the second book because when working with the data component, of course, that necessarily bumps up against some of these same facilitation issues and implementation issues. We also, at the Center for Authentic PLCs, we offer this thing called the Grapple Institute, which is a three-day training. My website has information, so I won't bore listeners with all the details, but this is a place where PLC leaders can be trained to be really good PLC leaders and focus on the right things and the way to do those right things. As DeForest said, it's not enough just to ask, are they collaborating? But more importantly, what are they collaborating about? And I would add, how are they doing that collaboration?

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And so we help folks by doing these three-day institutes. But they can contact me through the website. The website is AuthenticPLCs.com. And they can either email me through that or look at other things going on that would help, I think, help them get more information on some of the stuff.

[13:13] SPEAKER_01:

Fantastic. Thank you so much. We will have a link to both books that you mentioned as well as your website. And Daniel, thank you so much for joining us for Principal Center Radio. It's been fantastic speaking with you today.

[13:25] SPEAKER_00:

Thank you very much for having me.

[13:27] SPEAKER_02:

And now, Justin Bader on high-performance instructional leadership.

[13:31] SPEAKER_01:

In today's interview, Daniel Venables pointed us to the importance of leadership within our professional learning communities. And I think it's so true that impactful collaboration doesn't happen automatically. It doesn't happen when we simply give people a common collaboration time and sit them down together with an agenda. It requires leadership, and leadership requires training. So what if you have teams that are up and running but don't have good leadership in place? What can you do as a high performance instructional leader?

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I believe we need to take advantage of the Pareto principle. The principle says that 80% of our results come from only 20% of our efforts. And as a leader, if you have professional learning communities that are not working well, chances are also that you have PLCs that are working great. So as you look for ways to strengthen the leadership in your professional learning communities, look for the bright spots that you already have on your staff. Now there may be teams that need you or your instructional coach to be at every meeting, but that's not going to be every team. So give yourself permission to focus on the teams that really need it and also look at the teams that are really working well and see if you can figure out how to apply their success to the challenges that another team is facing.

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For more information on how you can increase your productivity and multiply your impact, check out my 12-month online program, the High Performance Instructional Leadership Network at PrincipalCenter.com.

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Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.