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You can make changes to grow a growth mindset.

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You can make changes to grow a growth mindset.

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4 Steps to a developing a Growth Mindset

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We choose wether or not we will grow, change, or innovate.

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"This year we will grow our teaching practice"

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"This year we will grow our teaching practice"

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Positive way to make changes while keeping aspects that work.

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#147205418 / gettyimages.com I am so intrigued with the number of people that are jumping into principal positions as I think it is truly one of the best jobs in the world. It is also one of the [...]

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147205418 / gettyimages.com I am so intrigued with the number of people that are jumping into principal positions as I think it is truly one of the best jobs in the world. It is also one of the [...]

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The process of growth and change can seem daunting

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The process of growth and change can seem daunting

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Culture of Growth: Growth in Students | EL Education

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This collection illustrates practices and ideas to implement that foster a growth mindset in students. Though these practices and ideas can be implemented by individual teachers, there is power in consistency across a school community. You are encouraged to connect with your colleagues and leadership teams about your reflections and ideas about next steps for your schools.

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"If we create a culture where every teacher believes they need to improve, not because they are not good enough, but because they can be even better, there is no limit to what we can achieve." - Dylan Wiliam

NOTE: I am continuing to use my blog as a way to be transparent and share my learning within my professional growth plan. One of my goals is tosupport staff professional learning and drive learning forward through instructional leadership in the area of literacy. To view my current growth plan goals (still developing), click here.
During my years as an administrator, one of the big mistakes I have made is trying to do too much too quickly. This has caused burnout, disengagement, lack of focus... and an overall lack of progress. The staffs I have worked with have been very supportive and patient with me and provided me with regular feedback with how things are going. I remember in my first few years as a principal, our teacher-librarian pulled me aside and said, "Chris, we love the ideas you share... they are exciting and likely great for our school... but we can only do so much in order to do them well. How about we focus on one for a few months and then go from there." This feedback changed me as I realized that in order to do something well in a school, there must be focus, depth, collaboration, and commitment. By trying to do too many new things, I was actually moving staff away from the goals and ideas because I was stressing everyone out!

I met Simon Breakspear almost 10 years ago at a BC Principals Conference. I really liked what he had to say about creating change in education. I have continued to follow Simon and we have connected a number of times at various conferences and through various platforms of communication. His thoughts on "radical incrementalism" really resonated with me as a way to make small changes to create big growth. My friends Cale Birk (District Principal in Kamloops) and Neil Stephenson (Director of Instruction in Delta), mentioned the term "Learning Sprints" a number of times and recommended that I attend another session with Simon to check out his work on sprints. Last year, I attended a session with Simon and then I followed up this year at the BC Principals and Vice Principals Association fall conference to dive deeper into Learning Sprints.

From the Learning Sprints website:

Engagement in Learning Sprints supports the adoption of evidence-informed practices and enables educators to collectively plan, act and evaluate their impact. The approach is aligned with the existing research evidence into the features of effective teacher professional learning and the science of behaviour change.

...The process has been designed to be simple, relevant and manageable for already overloaded teachers and their leaders. Most of all, it is designed to be adaptable to your school context and focused on the challenges specific to your classrooms and learners.
(check out the site for free resources, videos, and support)

As I wrote in my last post, I moved to a new school this year and this school has a strong foundation of literacy and self-regulation along with an effective collaborative culture. The idea of Learning Sprints seemed like a good fit to build on the wisdom and strengths of the staff to help drive professional growth and student learning in the school. I also liked how the sprints framework encouraged small changes based on evidence-based practices while also focusing on instruction and involving a reflection and evaluation to see if the strategies were successful. The cycles of trying a new idea were short; if the strategy was not successful, the teachers could try again for another 6 weeks or move on to trying a new strategy. Simon talks about "failing small"; too often, we try a new strategy or idea for a long time (1 or more years) and then look back to see if it worked. The fact is that if the strategy is tried for a long period of time and does not create the intended outcomes, it is failing big because of the time and efforts taken to try something that didn't work. By running shorter cycles, we can "fail small" and if something does not work well within the context, we can reflect and then either pivot and continue or stop and move on to try something different. I presented the idea of Learning Sprints to teachers and they seemed to appreciate the autonomy to choose an area of needed growth for their classroom (as long as it worked within our action plan goal of reading) and they liked the idea of working collaboratively with colleagues to possibly learn new teaching strategies. We also discussed the idea of failing small and trying new ideas that involved less risk for students (and higher reward). The sprints process would build on the expertise within the school, use evidence-informed practices, have a short 6-week cycle focused on clear goals, encourage collaboration, and involve reflection and assessment.

At each staff meeting (we meet every couple of weeks) through the first 2 terms, we spent a chunk of time on our sprints. It is important to follow the phases of PREPARE (Design, Define Assess), SPRINT (Teach, Monitor, Support), and REVIEW (Analyze, Transfer, Reset). We were able to participate in two sprints this year (some groups chose to pivot slightly and continue on with the first sprint as well). As this was not only about the professional learning within the sprints but also about the sprints process as well, we had the following successes (based on observations and the survey with teachers) :

Focused collaborative learning teams.

Allowed for deliberate practice with instruction.

Didn't feel like "one more thing" to add as it built on what we were already doing or hoping to do.

Created action/change in the classroom.

Led to positive results for student achievement

Led to more successful strategies learned to be added to the teachers' toolkits.

Was a good reminder of the importance of assessment

Allowed for ongoing, collaborative learning and a chance to spiral deeper in an area of professional learning

And the following challenges:

Narrowing down the learning outcomes (we improved upon this for the 2nd sprint)

Trying to maintain the focus on sprints through report cards, reading assessments, etc

Keeping the sprints goals at the forefront of instruction

Having clear assessments (at the start) to determine if the strategies were working (this was my error and something that we improved upon for the 2nd sprint).

Needed to spend more time in the REVIEW phase

We need to find a better way to include non-enrolling teachers and support staff in the process (music, learning commons teachers).

We need to use common resources for ideas on evidence-based practices (we will be using research as well as Jan Richardson's book, "The Next Step Forward in Guided Reading" next year).

The results of the Learning Sprints teacher survey were:

88% of teachers said that "Learning Sprints helped me to focus on a small, manageable idea/strategy with my students."

81% of teachers said that "The Learning Sprints process helped with collaboration between grade group colleagues."

81% of teachers said they "saw a positive impact on student learning as a result of our efforts within the Learning Sprints process."

75% of teachers said, "I was able to add a strategy to my teaching practice because of our efforts within the Learning Sprints framework."

Although this was a learning year for the Sprints process, we have already seen success and it is clear that teachers found the process to be helpful in driving professional growth and student achievement in the school. When we surveyed teachers about the successes and challenges of our school action plan, a number of teachers also shared on their own that learning sprints was a key piece that we need to continue with as we move forward into next year.

Too often in my career, I have seen schools, districts, and provinces make huge changes without really knowing if they will be successful. When we make large changes, we take big risks as these changes require so much capital (funds, time, resources, etc) and if we do not achieve the intended outcomes, it is a big loss for all those involved. Learning Sprints allows us to bring in evidence-based practice for a short cycle to determine if it has a positive impact in our context. If it doesn't work with our context, it is not a significant loss and we can pivot or reset to take a different path to support teacher growth and student learning. By making these small changes, over time, we begin to see big results... and a significant impact on school growth.

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School Growth: Small Changes Lead to BIG Impact

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"If we create a culture where every teacher believes they need to improve, not because they are not good enough, but because they can be even better, there is no limit to what we can achieve." - Dylan Wiliam NOTE: I am continuing to use my blog as a way to be transparent and share my learning within my professional growth plan.

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Innovation requires teacher change.
Innovation can produce student growth.

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Innovation in education: What does it mean to you? | Resilient Educator

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Innovation in Education: What Does It Mean, and What Does It Look Like?

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Things usually get worse before they get better. As old ways of doing things are altered, there is predictable awkwardness and loss of both comfort and confidence.

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You cannot trust innovation that you have not yet mastered. Old and familiar ways of doing things are safe. The willingness to risk trying something new will rest largely upon a persons trust in the network of support that accompanies his or her attempts to change.

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It is really hard to change student achievement. We have rarely been able to do it. It’s harder than anybody thinks.

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As part of the federal recovery effort to boost the economy after the 2008 recession, the U.S. Education Department suddenly had a big pot of money to give away to "innovations" in education. Since then, more than $1.5 billion has been spent on almost 200 ideas because Congress continued to appropriate funds even after the recession ended. Big chunks went to building new KIPP charter schools and training thousands of new Teach for America recruits to become teachers. Other funds made it possible for lesser known programs in reading, writing, math and science instruction to reach classrooms around the country. Many of the grant projects involved technology, sometimes delivering lessons or material over the internet. One "innovation" was to help teachers select good apps for their students. Another was for a novel way to evaluate teachers.

In order to obtain the grants, recipients had to determine if their ideas were effective by tracking test scores. Results are in for the first wave of 67 programs, representing roughly $700 million of the innovation grants and it doesn't look promising.

Only 12 of the 67 innovations, or 18 percent, were found to have any positive impact on student achievement, according to a report published earlier in 2018. Some of these positive impacts were very tiny but as long as the students who received the "innovative treatment" posted larger test score gains than a comparison group of students who were taught as usual, it counted.

"It's only a handful," said Barbara Goodson, a researcher at Abt Associates Inc., a research and consulting firm that was hired to analyze the results of the Investing in Innovation (i3) Fund for the Department of Education. "It's discouraging to everybody. We are desperate to find what works. Here was a program that was supposed to identify promising models. People are disappointed that we didn't come up with 20 new models."

"That's the dirty secret of all of education research," Goodson added. "It is really hard to change student achievement. We have rarely been able to do it. It's harder than anybody thinks." She cited a prior 2013 study that also found when education reforms were put to rigorous scientific tests with control groups and random assignment, 90 percent of them failed to find positive effects.

Why is innovation so hard in education?

To Goodson, who has specialized in early childhood education research for 40 years, the problem is that learning is ultimately about changing human behavior and that is always difficult for adults and children. And so many other things - like nutrition, sleep, safety and relationships at home - affect learning. "We've known for the longest time that economic background characteristics swamp any education intervention," she said. "We're starting out with only being able to make a small difference in how people do. The lever of education is only operating on a small slice of the pie."

In some cases, the current measures of effectiveness, generally standardized assessments, may be too broad to capture the targets of these innovations, Goodson said. For example, a phonics program might help some kids read more fluently. But the ability to read more fluently might only be indirectly captured in a reading test that's focused on comprehension and vocabulary. An intervention aimed at soft skills, such as the ability to persist and try again, can't be measured at all on these conventional tests.

Many interventions target kids who are several grade levels behind. A seventh-grade math test might not pick up on how a student progressed through two year's worth of math from third-grade multiplication of single digits to fifth-grade addition of fractions. Instead the test might suggest a minuscule academic improvement because the student flubbed most of the seventh-grade questions on solving for x and graphing equations.

A more sensitive yardstick for measuring innovation would require creating and administering more tests to students. That's a hard sell to principals, teachers and families who may already feel that there's too much testing in schools.

Saro Mohammed, a partner at the Learning Accelerator, a non-profit organization that supports using technology to tailor instruction to each child, says that it's sometimes hard to prove that an innovation works is because of unintended consequences when schools try something new. For example, if a school increases the amount of time that children read independently to try to boost reading achievement, it might shorten the amount of time that students work together collaboratively or engage in a group discussion.

"Your reading outcomes may turn out to be the same [as the control group], but it's not because independent reading doesn't work," Mohammed said. "It's because you inadvertently changed something else. Education is super complex. There are lots of moving pieces."

Mohammed said the study results are not all bad. Only one of the 67 programs produced negative results, meaning that kids in the intervention ended up worse off than learning as usual. Most studies ended up producing "null" results and she said that means "we're not doing worse than business as usual. In trying these new things, we're not doing harm on the academic side."

Mohammed also pointed out that learning improvements are slow and incremental. It can take longer than even the three-to-five-year time horizon that the innovation grants allowed.

Eighteen of the studies had to be thrown out because of problems with the data or the study design. In some cases, too many students who tried the innovation were ignored in the final figures. When you exclude kids with disabilities, for example, that can skew the results upward. Too many of the early-stage innovations weren't tried on enough students to produce statistically significant results. That means even when the students in the intervention produced larger test score gains than those in a comparison control group, the researchers still had to call it a "null" result if the odds of reproducing such a positive result were no better than flipping a coin. (One of the reasons that many small education studies cannot be replicated is because they were lucky flukes in the first place.) In more recent grant making, Goodson says the small studies have been "powered up" so that the results will be statistically useful. (They're now called Education Innovation and Research grants.)

This grant program was also a first test of using rigorous scientific evidence as a way of issuing grants in education. Proven concepts received the largest $25-50 million grants. Ideas with the least evidence received less than $5 million to help them build an evidence base. Ideas in between might get $15 million. Among the 48 least proven ideas, only 4 were found to increase student achievement. That's a low 8 percent success rate. (Links to all the publicly available evaluations for each program are here. Appendix D of the report lists the academic results for each program.)

But programs in the highest tier were supposed to have a proven track record and only two of the four - the KIPP charter school network and Reading Recovery - generated stronger test scores.

Michael Hansen, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, characterized the results as "discouraging" but cautioned that high failure rates are not a reason to give up on educational innovation. "This is the nature of R&D," he said. "If we stop giving out grants, then we stop innovating."

This story about innovation in education was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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The 'dirty secret' about educational innovation

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Get important education news and analysis delivered straight to your inbox As part of the federal recovery effort to boost the economy after the 2008 recession, the U.S. Education Department suddenly had a big pot of money to give away to "innovations" in education.

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Comes off as disrespectful and devalues hard work from previous years.

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#147205418 / gettyimages.com I am so intrigued with the number of people that are jumping into principal positions as I think it is truly one of the best jobs in the world. It is also one of the [...]

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147205418 / gettyimages.com I am so intrigued with the number of people that are jumping into principal positions as I think it is truly one of the best jobs in the world. It is also one of the [...]

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Professional Growth is Intimate and Personal. 

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Professional Growth is Intimate and Personal. 

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Most people will not risk change unless someone they know and trust is already succeeding and will help them as they try to master new skills.

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6 Tips to Help Students Develop a Growth Mindset in the Classroom | Lexia Learning

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Don’t have time to read? Listen Now » Between two students, one with the motivation to persevere after a mistake and one...