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Mentoring occurred during this process through administrators talking with members of the team. I was approached often to discuss the next steps and staff responses with our assistant superintendent, principal, and assistant principal. These conversations were effective and positive because I was open to hearing their advice and listening to their directions and expertise. I believed in our administrators through this process. I knew they were giving us the control and trusting their teachers to make data driven decisions. I also knew that they were going to guide and support versus give directives.

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Pillar Practices for Growth: COLLEGIAL INQUIRY

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Pillar Practices for Growth: COLLEGIAL INQUIRY

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Collegial inquiry was highly present within this case study. Staff members came together with administrators to ask striking questions, discuss possibilities based on data, and make improvements to the school. The administrators used collegial inquiry to encourage discussions- tough conversations! Collegial inquiry was a tremendous part of this process and was the most important pillar in leading to effective, building-wide, collaborative, long term change!

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Pillar Practices for Growth: PROVIDING LEADERSHIP ROLES

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Pillar Practices for Growth: PROVIDING LEADERSHIP ROLES

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Leadership roles were significant in the growth of the teachers that participated in this project. Teachers who were a part of this endeavor were impacted deeply by the collaboration and shared joint ownership. This created informational learning that impacted the entire staff.  The teachers who most deeply impacted the building were the self-knowing learners who could take on others' perspectives, but also were confident to share their own (especially when their perspectives were backed up with evidence- school wide data). Teachers involved in the committee were able to positively impact others based on their learning. This achieved building wide positive change!

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Bolman, L.G., & Deal, T.E. (2013). Reframing organizations (5th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John: Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Burke, W.W. (2018). Organization change: Theory & practice (5th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.

Drago-Severson, E. (2009). Leading adult learning supporting adult development in our schools. Thousand Oaks: Corwin.

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The teaming for this committee was established from a group of three teachers and the administration. The team was developed to include "all walks of life" so to say, from our building. As previously noted, teachers from both fifth and sixth grade were included, special education teachers, and teachers who would fight for what was right, but also who would tell the truth and be honest about changes that needed to occur to move the building.

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Emily Sprenkle
My involvement in this process was as a teacher leader. My personal background concerning this school:
-Teacher in the school building for 7 years.
-Special Education Teacher
-Facilitator for various technology and co-teaching training sessions for staff across the district.

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In reflection to the formation of the School Improvement Team, there are several changes I would make to improve the way meetings were conducted, the perspectives of the team members, and the way building wide staff viewed the team.

In retrospect, the meetings were conducted, at times, in a very serious manner. The superintendent, assistant superintendent, and the principal had placed a great deal of importance on the developments that would come from this team. They also placed those expectations on my shoulders. I am a very passionate and committed person, therefore I set out to make the best out of the time we had. However, for me, this turned into very serious and structured meetings, while I probably needed to be more personable and light hearted at much needed times. I remember a veteran teacher once said to me, “You are so serious all the time.” At the time, I did feel it was personal, however she was the “straight shooter” of the team and meant no harm, rather she was being honest and open to me in terms of how the faculty viewed my personality when we presented. An improvement would be to weave in stories, jokes, and symbols at times to provide more inspiration and facilitation instead of direction and structure.

“Thinking on your feet” would be another improvement to note. The faculty throughout the school was asking questions, discussing the team, and providing a negative connotation about the School Improvement Team. As a team, the task of sharing information was to keep conversations positive yet truthful. We talked as a team about making sure we told our teammates what was happening and why we were meeting, in addition to having faculty time to share our findings and the work we were conducting to research what could be done to improve as a building. I reflect and wish I would have been quicker to responding to the negative opinions of the group. We took many hours from our students to research data across the school and try to make improvements for all, not just the team members involved in the process. Many times, I responded to the negativity with either no words or with, “Our scores are not where they should be.” I did not feel confident to stand up to the naysayers and often felt guilty for being one of the newer members of the staff and yet to have been heading up the team. Looking back, I needed to be more confident in myself while also, just being who I am. I needed to be more vocal and involved when other team members stepped up and wrecked progress we had made due to their decisions or their poor reputation with the staff.

One final change that would be important to note is political. Surrounding this team, there was a great deal of politics happening both behind the scenes and during conversations with the team. The assistant superintendent and the principal would come to each meeting, insert their comments on occasion and watch the dynamics unfold. At times, they would add comments or perspectives to transform conversations. The assistant superintendent would talk to the co-chairs after the meeting privately. At times, the conversations would overstep boundaries. Such as, conversations about the principal or about certain colleagues. In reflection, I regret not being more vocal to end these conversations or at least be more careful in my response. I did feel uncomfortable at times because of these conversations, however, I also very much respected upper administration, and I trusted and perceived everything he was doing was to help the staff and ultimately the students. I still fully believe his purpose was not to overstep bounds, but rather to improve the school, starting with the teaching staff.

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From a structural framework, the School Improvement Team was developed based on what Bolman and Deal (2013) describe as, “putting people in the right roles and relationships.” The administrators involved, chose the original group of teacher leaders. Burke (2018) discussed the leaders role of “paying considerable attention to selecting and placing the worker in a job” and in the same way, the leadership placed certain staff members in the position to lead the team and also, to be a part of the team. Alongside the administrators, the teachers chose which key players would be involved in the new team.

Bolman and Deal (2013) discuss the human resources frame stating that, “Organizations need ideas, energy, and talent…” This statement applies to the assumption that the School Improvement Team encompassed faculty members with different perspectives across the building. These perspectives were brought to the meeting room to discuss ways to improve student performance at Spring Grove Area Intermediate School.

The administrators involved in the team motivated the teachers to “find meaningful and satisfying work” (Bolman and Deal, 2013), while the organization as a whole benefited from the data analysis and organizational change took place.

From the political frame, the School Improvement Team meetings often included heated conversations, explanations of personal perspectives, and at times, upsetting realizations. Bolman and Deal (2013) discuss this frame stating, “Goals and decisions emerge from bargaining and negotiation among competing stakeholders jockeying for their own interests.” This statement highlights some of the conversations that were challenged with the question, What does the data tell us about that? During the meeting times, personal perspectives had to be defended with evidence.

Through the political frame, teachers within the group had formed their own smaller teams of teachers with what Bolman and Deal (2013) note as the “enduring differences in values, beliefs, information, interests, and perceptions of reality.” Faculty members had emotional connections to the decisions discussed and the data presented at the meetings. Fifth grade teachers were appalled at the scores and felt vested in the numbers and figuring out which areas needed improving an how we could improve the structure of the system to get the students to improve.

Through the symbolic frame, there were rituals that the group took on as time passed. Rituals, as described by Bolman and Deal (2013), “Enacting a ritual connects an individual or group to something mystical, more than words or rational thinking can capture.” For example, committees sat together at the meetings even if they were not meeting that day, and each person sat in that same seat each time we met.

Another symbol throughout the time that this team met was certain sayings that the same teachers would say. For example, each team member took on their role in the team. There was a teacher who was the “deeply passionate” grade five teacher who would come to tears at times over the discussions. There ended up being the “time-keeper” teacher who was the on-task man and he would make sure we kept things moving. The team would joke about each of the roles the team members played while heated discussions took place. This helped the team to make positive progress, laugh in heated moments, and respectfully disagree.

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The change process was difficult. Team members grew angry at meetings. The team went through painful change phases. Burke (2018) cited Litwin’s 1985 model of unfreezing the system, movement in the system, and then refreezing the system. Through this idea, Burke (2018) states that first there must be a “shake up” when employees are “confronted with a compelling need to do business differently.” Through this “shake up” Burke (2018) recognizes that members must be “thawed,” “more malleable, and perhaps even vulnerable” to begin the change process.

Strategies discussed by Bolman and Deal (2013) to help with the new changes would be, “training to develop new skills” and “participation and involvement.” The School Improvement Team needed more training to develop a plan that would alleviate the problems that were uncovered. The team was in need of more guidance from the leadership. Through what Bolman and Deal (2013) called “distinctive sets of barriers,” there are essential strategies that the team needed to take: “communicating, realigning, and renegotiating formal patterns and policies” and “developing arenas where issues could be renegotiated.” Both of these strategies would have helped the team combat the frustrations of members. Guidelines for the meetings and realignment of the expectations needed to be reiterated often.

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The administrators in this case study were facilitators to get the team formed and get the teachers on board to make improvements. When the administrators had the support of the co-chairs of the team, they could begin taking more of an “alongside” role and less of an “in charge” role in the development of the team. As stated by Bolman and Deal (2013), the “top managers clarify the team’s charter, rationale, and challenge…” and this provided the co-chairs of the School Improvement Team with motivation to commence meetings and make progress, albeit complex and disappointing at times. This motivation or “case for change” as discussed by Burke (2018), was motivation from “the critical nature of organizations’ external environment and their dependence on it for survival,” in other words statewide testing scores that would impact perspectives from board members and stakeholders.

The administrators in this development were also involved to support the teachers’ efforts by providing substitutes and school day working times, promised funds to provide lunch or breakfast for the committee, and funds for executing the team’s decisions. Bolman and Deal (2013), discussed this type of leadership that “by giving a team clear authority and then staying out of the way, management releases collective energy and creativity.”

Lacking in the development of the team structure was, as described by Bolman and Deal (2013), “a focused, cohesive structure” and rather the team faced moments of failure when the “group structure constantly generated inequity, confusion and frustration.” Early team meetings were unsuccessful. Team members left feeling unaccomplished and defeated.

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Over the course of many months of meeting, several things took place:

1. Administration did not lead the meetings, but they were in attendance. Meetings were led by two teachers, a grade five teacher, and myself; at the time, I was a grade five/six special education teacher.

2. Discussions were messy, confusing, and frustrating. Agendas were provided, and we would get “stuck” on the first few items (especially in the early stages).

3. In the early meetings, there were arguments, tears, and a lot of conversations that deeply impacted some team members emotionally.

4. Faculty members questioned the data, often! Faculty members questioned everything: administration's catch for us to being a part of this and concern for if they would really let us make the changes we saw fit.

5. Committees were formed with their own set of criteria for analyzing data, finding conclusions and developing solutions based on what they saw. Some of the subcommittees were more successful than others.

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An assertion to be considered is the perspective of the teachers who said, “But the state doesn’t judge us fairly” and “We can’t trust the data from the state to determine if we are failing.” These teacher perspectives represent what Burke (2018) called “planned change” that is “ill fated” and “comes from honest, intellectual differences or genuine beliefs, feelings, or philosophies that are different.” At the time, achievement and growth were the two key factors in determining a school’s performance. Additionally, the school had shown a consistency of mediocre scores in grade five math, reading, and writing. Can school districts trust data from the state? What weight should be given to the state-wide testing scores?

Negative teacher perceptions demonstrate what Bolman and Deal (2013) discuss as, “coercive power” and “alliances and networks” when the discuss sources of power. Within the team of teachers, there were alliances and networks that formed immediately based on Bolman and Deal’s (2013) idea that having “friends and allies makes things a lot easier.” Teachers sat in the area of the room with their groups of people and made negative comments against the evidence that change needed to happen. The coercive power, as discussed by Bolman and Deal (2013), developed as teachers decided whether or not they would interfere with the team or block the progress of the team following the difficult meetings. During the forming of the team, coercive power and alliances and networks destroyed progress that was made during meetings. These negative pockets of energy were resistance to change or as Burke (2018) discussed it as “a resistance to losing something of value to the person” in which “feelings of anxiety associated with such change are quite normal.”

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At our first meeting with the chosen faculty members, a lot of difficult conversations transpired. Faculty members invited to be a part of the committee were chosen based on experience and representation from all areas of the building. Each staff member that was invited to be a part of the committee, joined. Several members were veteran teachers who blatantly refused up front, and refused to support that the data meant anything, but finally, each person asked joined. The first meeting was touchy, yet encouraging. The assistant superintendent and superintendent began the meeting with thoughts and support for the teachers, thanking them for their time and commitment to improve Spring Grove Area Intermediate School. Meetings were conducted during school hours and lunch was provided.

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Two of my colleagues and I attended a half-day, data analysis training at the Lincoln Intermediate Unit 12. We were accompanied by our principal, assistant principal, and assistant superintendent. This training was led in part, by the Pennsylvania Department of Education to guide administrators and teachers to analyze data effectively within their school. Through this training, the teachers were presented with shocking data that clearly showed gaps in both grade five and grade six. Not only were there gaps, there were also significant concerns because based on the data researched, the Spring Grove Area Intermediate School was being placed on “warning.”

Following this meeting, the three of us, teacher leaders, spent the remainder of our day analyzing data and discussing what organizational change needed to occur to improve the situation, or as it was discussed in our meetings, “the crisis.” We were charged by the assistant superintendent to be leaders of a School Improvement Team. Through this process, as the teacher leaders, we were asked a few questions, “Who will be the chairperson of this team? And which faculty members should be a part of this group? And What data supports our inclinations about what teachers are doing in their classrooms?