[00:01] SPEAKER_01:
Welcome to Principal Center Radio, bringing you the best in professional practice.
[00:06] Announcer:
Here's your host, director of the Principal Center, and champion of high-performance instructional leadership, Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.
[00:14] SPEAKER_02:
I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm joined today by Joanna Michelson. Joanna is project director at the Center for Educational Leadership in the College of Education at the University of Washington, my alma mater, where I did my principal training. And the Center for Educational Leadership does some tremendous work that Joanna is here to tell us about today, in particular, about their Area of Focus Institute.
[00:39] Announcer:
And now, our feature presentation.
[00:42] SPEAKER_02:
So, Joanna, welcome to Principal Center Radio.
[00:44] SPEAKER_00:
Thanks. Glad to be here.
[00:45] SPEAKER_02:
I wonder if you could give us a sense of what is an area of focus, because we're all familiar with goal setting. We're familiar with reviewing data, with collecting student work, and with inquiry cycles and things like that. And there are a lot of different concepts that kind of overlap here. In CEL's model, the Center for Educational Leadership, and I know we'll probably use that acronym CEL, C-E-L, for our listeners, what is an area of focus?
[01:10] SPEAKER_00:
Great, great question. So an area of focus as we define it is what an individual teacher, or potentially a group of teachers, a team of teachers, chooses to work on in his or her instructional practice in relationship to the strengths and needs of the students in those teachers' classrooms that very year. And ideally, we want that area of focus to be tied to whatever the school or district has also determined as the focus instructionally for the year. What's most important in our minds is that the area of focus is determined by a teacher based on the needs of the kids that that teacher is working with that year. The whole idea of an institute around area of focus emerged as we've been training school districts across the country around the inquiry cycle.
[02:01]
And what we were finding as we were training people on how to have cycles of inquiry that were based on an area of focus where teachers work together to experiment with their instructional practice in service of improving student learning, checking in across the year based on data to see how they're progressing. What we were finding is the idea of an inquiry cycle made really good sense to people and they were starting to see that an inquiry cycle could drive learning for the whole school and individual teachers within that larger school. But there were a lot of questions about what would make a good focus area for an individual teacher. And that's why we decided that was fertile ground nationwide to open a conversation about what a strong professional goal really looks and sounds like.
[02:53]
And how it can actually be a lever in the work of closing the achievement gap, which is our ultimate mission as an organization. Yeah. Yeah. So we're finding that schools, you know, it depends on where it depends on the on the context of the state and what the focus is in that in that region. It's it's. not easy for schools to pick one focus for the whole year, for that whole school.
[03:18]
Although I think we're getting better at it as a profession. I think principals are using data strategically to identify where the strengths and needs are. Both teacher data that's possible through the new teacher evaluation process and student data. And we're finding that in places where schools can identify a school-wide focus, like for instance, we work with a school in the Seattle area that has a high percentage of English language learners, and the principal had identified that while the teachers were getting better around supporting English language learner development in writing, the ELL students, as we call them, were having trouble using academic language when they were speaking and then ultimately also when they were writing. So what this principal decided is school-wide, since she was identifying that as a student need and also as an instructional practice need, that everybody in the school would be working on that broad area of focus.
[04:16]
helping English language learners develop in their academic language use, both verbally and then in writing. And what we liked about that school-wide goal is it provided lots of entry points for individual teachers. So some teachers who were newer or had some questions about managing their classroom, they might be individually working after they got to know their kids and self-assessed on their instructional practice. They might say to themselves, I'd love to work on that goal. What I first need to do is set up a classroom environment and culture where it's safe for students to talk to one another. Whereas another teacher in the school who has a pretty strong classroom culture, students are talking to one another, that teacher has talk structures in place so that students can talk and there's a routine around that.
[05:08]
However, that teacher might really be ready to work with some sentence stems or to get deeper into what would it sound like for a student to talk about a particular learning target and what would development towards learning talking about that learning target using academic language really look and sound like. So we see real potential when schools get clear about what they're working on school-wide and in that sweet spot of general enough based on data but also specific enough and with ideally some professional development offered to the staff to support them, then individual teachers can do really strong self-assessment around an entire instructional framework, but with that focus, with that lens of what the school is working on, and then design some formative assessments to find out where the students are, and then set a goal that is connected to the school goal, but is really deeply personal to that teacher and their practice.
[06:05] SPEAKER_02:
Yeah, and that seems like the holy grail of kind of aligned and coordinated goal setting at different levels, which is something we've been thinking about a lot lately at the principal center that, you know, we want to have well articulated school level goals and we want teachers individual goals for the year and their focus, you know, the focus of their efforts for the year. to be aligned with those. But at the same time, we know what each teacher individually is doing within their classroom is both at a different scale, a different level, and needs to be very differentiated based on their particular situation. So it's not as if we can simply take the big school level goal and, you know, chop it into 30 pieces and everybody has, you know, their piece to do. And then we've achieved that kind of strategic planning process. It seems like it's a tough balance.
[06:49]
What are some of the things that people can do to Maintain that connection between the individual goals and the school level focus and yet still make it personal enough, make it matter, because I think we've all had experiences where we've we've kind of been told, well, this is our focus organizationally. So, you know, apply that to your, you know, to your work or set a goal within that area or set a smart goal. And I think we've probably all felt that we've been in situations where it just hasn't connected or it's just been kind of an awkward fit. What are some things that schools do that really make that process work for the individual teacher?
[07:27] SPEAKER_00:
That's a great question. Yeah. And in some places, we also find that teachers have experienced the goal setting process as like a hoop, you know, so they don't necessarily think of it. Right. So you have to also think about and acknowledge that cultural dynamic as well. So we're finding that schools where principals can really set aside and dedicate learning time for a staff, for grade-level teams, for PLCs, to have some real in-depth conversation with some structures.
[07:58]
And part of what our institute aims to do is actually provide some sample tools to structure conversations about learning. both the school-level goal and classroom data. And it really just requires that time and that careful framing. We work with another principal in Washington State who developed, in a sense, a protocol that he walked his entire staff through in a staff meeting and then provided grade-level planning time for them to go deeper. But the protocol allowed them to First, take a look at the school goal, reflect on that school goal, and then work through a set of questions with colleagues about student work that they brought to the session that was related in some way to the school goal to identify strengths that their kids brought, needs that their students had, and then brought forward their district's instructional framework.
[08:55]
And as a group, had a good conversation about where they saw... their individual strengths based on potentially teacher, principal input or collegial input, and not rushing that process, but also carving out time early enough in the year to make it so that there's enough time to actually get into the work. So we really recommend that process starts in August and then continues into the early parts of the school year. So a big piece of it we think is well-structured time.
[09:25]
And coaching. And a principal may decide, you know, we did a pilot of our institute recently, and one of the principals who was there, he reflected that the goal-setting process, ideally, will be whole school. And he's thinking that for the for the first year of really trying to focus it, he may intensively work with a grade level team that's showing some great interest and some great potential to really model for the rest of the school what the process could look like, maybe the second half of the year or into next year. So we thought that was an interesting approach as well.
[10:00] SPEAKER_02:
So it seems like that that definitely is the hard part. And I appreciate your point that, you know, it does just require work requires time requires careful planning. Are there any types of school level goals or school level areas of focus that you found just don't lend themselves well to individual teacher planning in this way that you know, that there are certain types of goals that work better at the school level and certain types that maybe shouldn't shouldn't be set or used in this particular way?
[10:27] SPEAKER_00:
Yeah, that's another really great question. So one of the trends we're noticing as districts are getting their instructional frameworks and rubrics in place for teacher evaluation and also to create that common vision, sometimes an early strategy is might be to pick, for instance, a single dimension in our five dimensions, or if they're using Danielson, a single domain or even just a single small indicator, for instance. And so, for instance, we work with a district where everyone had to pick, in that particular district, had to pick a goal around student engagement or around talk. And it just felt too constrained and not tied to content area practice, actually. And so teachers were trying to write goals that didn't quite make sense.
[11:20]
Maybe they weren't relevant to them. Maybe it wasn't what they needed to work on in their practice. And it was it. took teaching, which we know is so complex and sophisticated, and made it too narrow, if that makes sense. So those goals we find challenging, although it is a place to start. And we think it's great that principals are starting to set goals that are anchored in a common instructional framework.
[11:44]
That part is very important. And if that's the way in, then take that first step for a first year. You know, another thing we're noticing is the level and quality of professional development offered at the school plays a big role in what kinds of goals can realistically be attained. And so if, for instance, if the principal I gave the example of earlier who focused the whole school on academic language for ELLs, if there was no professional development offered on that topic internally or available in the district, then those goals can become quite frustrating to teachers. They don't have the support they need to attain them. So it's another problem that we've encountered.
[12:29]
And then sometimes we'll see districts and schools setting goals that are very, very well-intentioned but too broad. So goals that are potentially based in data as well. A school might notice we really need to work on fluency at second grade based on our DIBELS data, or we need to work on comprehension of informational text in general. Again, depending on the professional development offered and the specific students in the class, those goals for the school might be a little too broad. They might be a starting place. But then we find that teachers need support bridging the more general, in some ways, smart goal, depending on how it's phrased, to what they can take on in their own instructional practice.
[13:18] SPEAKER_02:
Yeah, and I think that that issue of grain size is one that I think comes up a lot for people that, you know, we have to we have to actually pick a goal that we have a relationship to, you know, for example, in the second grade, you know, fluency and dibbles. You know, it's not going to be terribly effective for the fifth grade teachers to set goals in relation to that, because obviously they have no no possible way of impacting second grade scores. But at the same time, we do have this desire to, you know, to create coordination and to create alignment and to send the sense that even if there is a particular group of people within the school that are especially focused on this goal, we all want to contribute in some way. We want to be on the same page. Um, but having said that, that type of goal that's, that's so narrow or, uh, on the other end, as you said, so, so broad that, that maybe we need to break that down more.
[14:11]
Um, what you're describing of, of just kind of going through that process with the tools, with the protocols, you know, doing the work on the front end to pick a good area of focus. Uh, I think that there's, there's no shortcut, you know, there's no, there's no two word answer to how do you do that? So I can definitely appreciate that, that difficulty. I want I wonder if you could give us a couple of examples of areas of focus that you found are particularly rich that lend themselves well to the needs of different people as well as the organization as a whole. What are some types of areas of focus that you've encountered in your work?
[14:42] SPEAKER_00:
Yeah. So just recently we worked with a district, and this became a district-wide goal, where the system wanted teachers at each school to get better at communicating purpose in their instructional practice, communicating learning goals in their lessons. And they went more specific than that. That was the overarching goal. But what they ideally wanted is for teachers to get clearer about how to – bring that purpose through an entire lesson. So if you've communicated a clear learning goal that is attainable, that is student-friendly, that is measurable, that's tied to standards, which was the work for some people, that just getting that far, then Can principals help teachers, this was sort of the second part, make sure that their activities, the questioning strategies they were using in the lesson, even the way they worked one-on-one with students, the formative assessment, et cetera, were lined up with that overall learning goal.
[15:47]
And we found that that was broad and specific, and it applied broadly. cross-content. It was enough that any teacher could really latch onto it. And teachers that were farther along in their practice were able to go even further with that goal and do some work around helping kids understand their own specific aim in a lesson. They have the class-level goal, and then for them, specifically, what does that mean? And how do they advocate for their own learning if they're feeling like they can do more and they can demonstrate they can do more?
[16:21]
or if they're confused. So one of the interesting things about that particular goal is the principals and then the teachers could see that it actually cut across their entire instructional framework and mapped very nicely onto the content support that the district was also providing in Common Core. So it was robust, it was measurable, the teachers felt like it was attainable, And the professional development was organized in a way to really support them where they were. So that's just one example. Would you like another example or is that helpful?
[16:57] SPEAKER_02:
Yeah, well, let's talk about one more example. But if I can just check my understanding here, it sounds like it needs to be the kind of topic where as you peel the onion, there's always more there. Yeah, it's not it's not the kind of thing where you can be successful at it and you can check that off your list and then there's really no more depth to it. You know, the deeper you go, there's always more to it and more, as you said, connection to other things rather than just just being kind of one narrow thing that can be kind of mastered and and moved on from.
[17:25] SPEAKER_00:
I think that's very well said. Right. And because ideally, the area of focus is about teachers growth in service of student growth. That's what it's about. And that's not an you don't just accomplish that. Right.
[17:37]
It's about a year's worth of questioning and experimentation or a half year's worth anyway. So exactly a goal that is rich enough on multiple levels. I think that's well said. Yeah. So another set of goals we're definitely noticing are more closely tied to the language of common core, the higher academic standards in general. And we've seen a few systems set some goals around things like justification of thinking, that that's the goal, students need to get better at that.
[18:08]
which is also general enough. It can apply across content. It can apply across grade levels. You can organize professional development around it. It's complex. It can last the whole year.
[18:20]
Other systems are doing work around things like not only justification of thinking, but anchoring your thinking in text evidence, which also has broad implications. So not so narrow that only second grade teachers can work on it, but has very big implications for the broad shifts in Common Core and clear ties to the instructional framework and what can be measured along the way.
[18:47] SPEAKER_02:
Makes sense. So back to our idea of this taking some work up front to choose the right area of focus, because we know if you choose the wrong area of focus, then the rest of the process just is not going to work as intended. Tell us about the work that you're doing to bring people together. And I know you're in the Seattle, Washington area. What does the Area of Focus Institute look like and who should come to that and what do they do when they get there?
[19:11] SPEAKER_00:
Yeah, great question. So coming up September 23rd, we're offering an institute in Renton, Washington at the Puget Sound Educational Service District office. And although we also can offer this institute at districts, we can bring it into other districts and regions. It's a one day training and it's open to everyone. Anybody, we find ideally with trainings like this, we'd want teams of principals with lead teachers, coaches, and interested teachers, essentially, from a single school. We find teams have a better experience than individuals in general because they can collaborate clearly and they can bring the work back to the schools.
[19:56]
And we think of the day as a work session, essentially. We do some... work in the very beginning of the day to lay the groundwork. We discuss what inquiry really means.
[20:07]
We present some research on teacher learning and the ways to tie teacher learning to student learning. We also do some review of the different kinds of data that schools may be using to set goals and we We emphasize the importance of both qualitative and quantitative data. And then we launch into the work. And ideally, teachers come to the session with a couple things. They come with understanding of what the school and district goals are and what the professional development offerings will be for their system. And we ask teachers to bring student work.
[20:42]
We have some guidelines, but honestly, at this point, bring whatever is helpful to you or you think will be helpful to you. Some sort of early in the year formative assessment that shows where your students are in relationship to something relevant to you and your teaching could be. It could be relevant to what is assessed in your district or your classroom. It could be relevant to the school goal, ideally. But just bring something. So teachers bring student notebooks.
[21:14]
They might bring a cold writing sample that they ask their students to do early in the year or a complex task they had students engage with in math. Could be a transcript that a teacher captured or even an audio recording of a classroom discussion, just to give you some ideas. Pretty open-ended, formative assessment that can give a ton of data. And then we take teachers and principals through a process of looking at that student work, identifying strengths and needs that they can see in relation to education. The school goals, we really believe strongly in working from strength. So we want to know what strengths the students are bringing initially.
[21:53]
And then we help them also self-assess against their district's instructional framework or rubric. So that's another piece teachers should definitely bring or have access to those documents. And then we have a series of questions that help principals and teachers link those pieces. So if this is where your students are, and this is what your school is up to, and this is where you are instructionally, and the support that's going to be offered to you ideally through professional development is this, what is an attainable goal? And we use this sentence frame. If I work on blank in my practice, the result in student learning will be what?
[22:32]
And we have teachers work with that sentence frame for a good chunk of time, articulating a link between, so if I work on my ability to confer one-on-one with my students who are struggling with their justification of their thinking, The result in student learning will be that by the end of the semester, this particular group of students who I'm focused on will see that they have increased their ability to justify their thinking in writing and they'll identify how they'll know that. And then we take people through a process of developing look fors for themselves. What will they be looking for in their students? What will they be looking for in their own instructional practice? And what's the support that the principal can provide? So that's the day.
[23:18]
And it really is a full day. And people will leave with ideally a draft area of focus for an individual teacher. And at minimum, an understanding of the process itself. and what they could take back and adapt. You know, it's not a process meant to be done literally. You can adapt it to fit your situation.
[23:39]
And then we expect that they'll know what they need to do next, even if they haven't completed the entire process.
[23:46] SPEAKER_02:
Absolutely. It sounds like a busy day and an ambitious agenda, but a way to get a ton done in terms of establishing a focus and sounds like a terrific opportunity. So that's September 23rd, 2015 in Renton, Washington. Is that right?
[24:00] SPEAKER_00:
Exactly correct.
[24:01] SPEAKER_02:
And if you are listening to this after that date, you can find information about future events on the Center for Educational Leadership website. And Joanna, could you remind us the URL for the CEL website?
[24:13] SPEAKER_00:
Absolutely. So www.k-12leadership.org.
[24:20] SPEAKER_02:
And a shortcut that I discovered, if you Google instructional leadership, you guys come up first.
[24:25] SPEAKER_00:
Well, that's great news.
[24:27] SPEAKER_02:
Well, Joanna, thank you so much. It has been fabulous to speak with you today about the Area of Focus Institute. Have a great day.
[24:33] SPEAKER_00:
You too. Have a great day. Take care.
[24:36] SPEAKER_01:
And now, Justin Bader on high-performance instructional leadership.
[24:40] SPEAKER_02:
So high-performance instructional leaders, what did you take away from my conversation with Joanna Michelson about choosing an area of focus? Now, the Center for Educational Leadership does some very in-depth work on this and a lot of other topics around instructional leadership. And as I said, if you Google instructional leadership, you come to their website, and there's a very good reason for that. So one thing that I took away from our conversation is that there is depth to this work. Anytime we're getting into instructional leadership, anytime we're getting into teaching practice, there's depth there. We peel that onion and there's more there.
[25:15]
And I think one source of data or one source of feedback for ourselves as we're delving into a topic in terms of instructional leadership is, is if that turns out not to be the case, if we dive into the topic and we realize we're hitting bottom pretty quickly, we're reaching the bottom of the pool, and that's kind of all there is, I want to suggest that that's good feedback that we're not approaching it in the right way, or that basically that we're doing it wrong. And If you talk to your greatest experts internally, if you talk to your instructional coaches, your lead teachers who are really going into depth in their own practice, that's who can help you get to the more deep wells of expertise and really take a deeper dive into a particular topic, a your instructional framework, whether you use CEL's 5D framework or the Charlotte Danielson framework for teaching, there's always more depth to look at in terms of practice.
[26:16]
And I think historically, as instructional leaders, we've tended to choose things that are kind of least common denominator, like student engagement. Are all the students paying attention in terms of their eye contact? Are they all looking at the front of the room? Are students answering questions? We tend to look for things that are a little bit shallow. And if we're engaging in a goal setting and strategic planning process that's also looking at shallow things, we're going to find that there's not the depth we need to really drive deep goal setting on the part of each individual teacher.
[26:46]
So my challenge to you today is keep looking, dig deeper, and as you peel that onion to find the depths of a particular topic in instructional leadership, go to those resources, go to those experts, go to those frameworks, And if you're interested in learning more about the high-performance goal-setting process, you can learn more in the High-Performance Instructional Leadership Network at principalcenter.com slash leadership.
[27:12] Announcer:
Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.
