Putting Students First and Putting Teachers First: The Ambidextrous Professional Learning Community

Part 7 in a series of posts on Ambidextrous Professional Learning Communities

In a previous post “The Ambidextrous Professional Learning Community” I shared it is the ability to embrace a duality in their thinking that builds an Ambidextrous Professional Learning Community. To hold two opposing ideas in their minds and reach a creative solution creates an ambidextrous PLC, making them more flexible, innovative, and effective. It is ability and, more importantly, it is an attitude.

Ambidextrous Professional Learning Community's thinking can have...

Systematic and Magical
Internal and External Focus
Bias Towards Thinking and Bias Toward Action
Put Teachers First and Put Students First
Focus on Teaching and Focus on Learning
Focus on All Students and Focus on Individual Students
Kaizen and Tenakaizen
High Levels of Teamwork and High Levels of Personal Accountability
We Have the Answers and They Have the Answers
Data Driven and Skeptical of Data
Predictable and Change is Normal

Today I will focus on Putting Students First and Putting Teachers First

Effective Professional Learning Communities put the needs of their students first. These PLCs seek to strategically align their resources, their instructional practices, their time, and their energy on meeting the needs of their students. Student first Professional Learning Communities implement systems like Response to Intervention to meet the needs of all students. They seek focused professional development to train themselves in meeting the needs of students.

Further student focused Professional Learning Communities find ways to extend the learning day to meet the needs of struggling students. They reorganize schedules and staff to better meet the needs of the students. Student first PLCs find policies, practices, perceptions, and habits that create poor results and eliminate them.

In short, students first Professional Learning Communities do whatever is needed, change whatever is needed, use whoever is needed, and create whatever is needed to meet the needs of their students.

But Ambidextrous Professional Learning Communities also put teachers first.

Michael Fullan, author of The Six Secrets of Change: What the Best Leaders Do to Help Their Organizations Survive and Thrive, says that we should consider if putting children first should be the case in school and that valuing employees is what should come first. Loving employees (teachers) is the first of Fullan’s six secrets.

“…children-first stances are misleading and incomplete.”

“A new report from McKinsey and Company focusing on the top-performing school systems in the world provides the central reason why we must value employees (in this case teachers) as much as customers (children and parents): ‘the quality of the education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers.’”

Fullan recounts the experience of Memphis City School District superintendent Gerry House. “The superintendents theory of education was to commit the district’s schools to select among seven so-called whole school reform models that had been sponsored by a national agency.”  In other words, the Superintendent House intended to put kids first.

“By 1998, 75 of 161 schools were involved, with more being added. House was awarded the 1999 National Superintendent of the Year Award. Yet within a year she resigned. What went wrong? The answer is very much Secret One foretold in a 1998 report by an external research team: ‘teachers and principals express fatigue and feel unappreciated’

Putting teachers first is more than just thinking about teachers first, but getting results by creating conditions that show they are valued and important.

“Secret one, then, is not just about caring for employees. It is also about what works to get results. It is about sound strategies linked to impressive outcomes. One of the ways you love your employees it by creating the conditions for them to succeed.”

“It is helping all employees find meaning, increased skill development, and personal satisfaction in making contributions that simultaneously fulfill their own goals and the goals of the organization (the needs of the customers expressed in achievement terms). If the fulfillment is not simultaneously for employees and customers, Secret One is not in place.”

Ambidextrous Professional Learning Communities seek to help team members fulfill personal goals alongside student goals. These PLCs know that there are tremendous burdens placed on teachers to meet the demands of education. The demands of NCLB, Race To The Top, state goals, county goals, district goals, school goals, and grade level goals leave little room for the individual teacher to seek their own professional goals and fulfillment. These PLCs come together to help ease the burden on each other through mutual aide and provide valuable moral support. These PLCs look out for each other’s personal, physical, spiritual, and professional wellbeing. These PLCs put each other first.

In other word, Ambidextrous Professional Learning Communities should put kids first and put teachers first. It’s a “yes, and…” situation. Yes we put students first and we put teachers first too.

Ambidexterity.

Comments

[Joel Zehring]

I don't hear much about loving people in education, even on the blogosphere. Lisa Johnson talks about a "paycheck of the heart," as a marketing strategy to reward customers, and I think the principle is applicable to the education system as well.

Besides "meaning, increased skill development, and personal satisfaction," I would add that teachers should be rewarded with increased influence over the decisions and direction of the organization. Teachers might not want to be completely in charge, but they might like to contribute to decision-making, and even take on some responsibility for the improvement of the school and even the district.

I don't see why admins couldn't pay these teachers a little bit more for their added responsibility, as well. The increased pay could be linked to specific responsibilities and outcomes, rather than vague labels and shifting test scores.

[Rob Jacobs]

Joel, I agree completely with giving teachers more influence in decision making. I would add, teacher need to give input into creating the accountability that goes along with the decisions being made.

Some schools I know offer stipends to teachers who are involved in leadership teams, grade level chairs, etc. The missing piece is that the extra money is not tied to outcomes.

A school that builds a powerful leadership team, takes input from all the teachers in the decision making process, develops meaningful outcomes, and accountability is going to be a place where teachers feel empowered. Feeling "loved" is not as easy, but it in part comes from knowing that you matter, what you say matters, and what you do matters.