A Showcase of Learners and Learning: Opening Keynote

Toward Cultures of Responsiveness

Fred and Patrick Renihan

March 1st 2007

Prince George, British Columbia

- Introductory Keynote -Unpacking the Model:

The Themes and the Strands

Keynote overview:

1. Contextual realities: The changing ecology

2. What works and what doesn’t work?

Perceptions of beginning teachers

3. Responsiveness through student empowerment and voiceThe simultaneous nurturing of membership and engagement

Keynote Overview:Continued

4. Responsiveness through Parent/community empowerment

5. Responsiveness through professional empowerment

6. Questions and interaction (20 minutes)

7. Synthesis: Cultures of Responsiveness

Compelling learning is constructed in

community; powerful communities connect learning; and the most

successful communities extend their learning

into the future

Connecting curriculum, instruction

and assessment

Providing learning in a continuum from

rural to urban context

Extending community

connections

Creating healthy

environments

Using technology as an invisible, seamless support

The Organizational Context for Schooling

Imagine that you are either the referee, coach, player, or spectator at an unconventional soccer match. The field for the game is round; there are several goals scattered haphazardly around the circular field. People can enter or leave the game whenever they want to. They can throw balls in whenever they want to. They can say “that’s my goal” whenever they want to, as many times as they want to, for as many goals as they want to. The whole game takes place on a sloped field and the game is played as if it makes sense.

And, if you now substitute in that example, principals for referees, teachers for coaches, students for players, parents for spectators and schooling for soccer, you have an equally unconventional depiction of an educational organization.

(Attributed to Karl Weick)

Recurring Organizational Challenges of Schools

• An uncertain technology

• Unpredictable participation

• Low interdependence of parts

• Low agreement on goals

Effectiveness Facilitators a Beginning Teacher Survey

(Renihan & Renihan, 2007)

• Strong leadership• Staff collegiality and support • Supportive parents • Sense of belonging/safety • Community involvement • Commonly held, clear vision/goals • Student involvement and attitude • Clear expectations and feedback

Effectiveness Inhibitors

• Problematic parents • Poor, unsupportive leadership • Low or inappropriate expectations • Facility limitations • Unprofessional staff attitudes and divisiveness • Limited resources • Poor student attitudes• Inconsistent goals

THE RESPONSIVE

SCHOOL

Culture of Distributive Leadership

Culture of Mindfulness

and Care

Culture of Parental and Community Partnership

Culture of Professional Collaboration & Interdependence

Culture of Internal

accountability

Cultures of Responsiveness

Nurturing student voice:

What would happen if we treated the student as someone whose opinion mattered?

(Fullan, 1993)

Examining our Assumptions

Students respond in kind to professionals’ assumptions about them. Educators have witnessed all too often the immaturity and disconnectedness with which students can respond when viewed as the objects of school decisions.

On the other hand, it is striking how enthusiastically they can engage, and flourish in their school lives when assumed to be partners in their own learning. Professional reflection concerning these assumptions is not merely a matter of good relations. It is a critical prerequisite to school success.

To My Teachers: Wilfred Wees

Goodbye my friends I leave you now

I regret I cannot call you all by name

But then, you knew me but as that boy

Outside row half way down who took to

Education as a hen to water

We really didn’t get to know each other did we?

You, I shall remember

When I was a little boy you willowed my mind I

Swung like a little bird with a red breast on the top of it

The day was the night was the year

I was the unfolding bud of spring

And every sweet minute of your love was the bloom of it

I shall remember you.

To My Teachers…And you, I shall remember, when I was twelveyou whipped my with the lash of wonderYou opened a heaven of freedom to my grasping mindIn each half hour with you the stars outshone the sunriseI shall remember you

You my friend, the third of three, I shall rememberJust last year it was, drugged with the miasma of words that schools exhale, I stumbled into youYou gave me first your arm of confidence to lean uponAnd then so quietly the antidoteI hardly knew that I was waking upYou listened, not just to me, but to all of usAnd soon but not too soonThe sludge that was our minds began to clearAnd we could thinkI shall remember you

To My Teachers…As for you others, What shall I say?I do not wish to hurt you as some of you hurt meWe weren’t really people to you were weJust the furniture of school slightly animatedYour painted on the varnish that you call educationCoat after coat but forgot the buffingSmeared on the thin veneer that you call cultureNow you truck us off to the market rooms of the economyFor sale to the highest bidder

Shall I tell you about people? Maybe notI doubt that you would understandIt’s just that I am me and you never even saw the methat’s IWould you see my now, one quarter of my life’s spanspent Behind the bleakness of the unfulfilledAhead so little between me and timeOh I will find a job…I’ll live! For what?

Nurturing student voice: What democratic schools do well

• They extend membership and engagement to all• They differentiate compliance from partnership • They question their assumptions about students• They elevate dignity and respect• They value student opinion• They invite and affirm student commentary• They start early, inculcating skills of voice in the early

years

Student Voice

• “I like the way that some of the teachers try to be our friends and just not a teacher all the time.”

• “I would like to see some of the textbooks updated. One of my textbooks is from 1972! My dad recognizes it!”

Student Voice

• “The administration is a joke. Detention has drastically increased over the last 2 or 3 three years. Ever heard of the saying ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?”

• “I like the teachers because they make learning fun.”

• “I like that we get Jim one hour a day.”

Student Voice

• “I hope that our school will stay as it is and not get any worse.”

• “This school should be egged once, so teachers understand we want to have fun.”

• “I’m not exactly sure if bullying is a problem, but I want it stopped.”

• “This school rocks! I feel welcome here.”

Schools’ Commitment to Membership:

• A healthy, respectful, and caring environment• Strong communication• Active assistance in helping all students experience

success• Active help in assisting students make the link

between school and society• Positive relationships with adult professional role

models outside of formal classroom interaction

Includes all of those actions and interactions which Includes all of those actions and interactions which enable students to become focused on academic pursuitenable students to become focused on academic pursuit

Preconditions for Engagement:

• Strong academic focus• Commitment to improved student learning• Commitment to results• Commitment to evaluation

Learning Conditions:ENGAGEMENT

Teacher-Learner Reciprocity

There is an urgent need for reciprocity in our schools and classrooms.

Without such reciprocity, without some form of mutual emotional satisfaction between teacher and taught, the curriculum remains simply an idea in the mind of the teacher – it lacks relevance even though the teacher teaches and the students go through the motions of

scholarship activity.

Michael Marland, Pastoral Care

Impediments to Educational Engagement:

• Non-motivating course work and instruction

• Dissonance between learning and teaching styles

• Unremitting preoccupation with course coverage

Effective Content-and-Language-Rich Instruction

We do a terrible disservice to low-income children when we narrow our curriculum to its most procedural elements. There is no joy in learning about the letter N, despite any protests to the contrary.

(Neuman, 2006)

Professional Leadership, Values, and Empowerment

We need to be clear about what empowerment and what it is not

• Empowerment is not necessarily a top-down leadership phenomenon

• Empowerment is not kidding teachers into thinking that preplanned initiatives were their ideas. That is entrapment

Empowerment

Empowerment is Rather:

Giving teachers a share in important organizational decisions. Giving them opportunities to shape important organizational goals. Purposefully providing forums for staff input. Acting on staff input, and giving real leadership opportunities in school-specific situations that really matter.

(Renihan & Renihan 1993)

Culture of Internal Accountability

Elmore (2004) Internal accountability precedes external accountability and is a precondition for any process of improvement.

Modes of Parental Partnership (Henderson, Marburger & Ooms, 1986)

• Parents as passive audience

• Parents as supporters

• Parents as advisors

• Parents as collaborators

Affirming Parents

• Meaningful involvement

• Recognizes the value of the spectator

• Appreciates the efforts of the supporter

• Provides an opportunity for dialogue to the advisor

• Provides time and receptivity to those with the desire to collaborate

A Question

Our assumptions about parents, teachers and students dictate the way in which we work with them. Given this, what things should we be doing in order to provide more equitable learning opportunities for all students?

Parents and Schools: Seven Partnership-Building Principles

• The principle of flexibility

• The principle of inclusiveness

• The principle of variety

• The principle of opportunity

• The principle of openness

• The principle of clarity

• The principle of monitoring

Synthesis: Cultures of Responsiveness

Responsive schools nurture:

• Cultures of parent and community partnership• Cultures of professional empowerment and

collaboration• Cultures of internal accountability• Cultures of distributive leadership• Cultures of mindfulness and care

Extending Learning Into The FutureThe powerful learning community:

• Focuses thinking on long-term solutions• Emphasizes interconnectedness of issues• Places learning and assessment literacy at the centre • Provides continuous support for the ‘instructional core’ of school

activity• Strives for a deeper understanding of those being served by the

school• Nurtures leadership capacity within the school• Celebrates the work and commitment of teachers

Teacher

By Rabbi Zev Shostak

I am that most fortunate of men for I am eternal

Some people live in the world of today.

I live in the world of tomorrow

Some feel meaning in the temporal and transient

I find purpose in the eternal and the enduring and the

eternal

For I am charged with that most sacred of missions

To transmit all that our parents lived for and loved for

and died for the next generation

Teacher

By Rabbi Zev Shostak

I span the generations

Making the wisdom of the past live now so that the

future will have meaning

I make wisdom live

For I am no mere bearer of knowledge

I do not simply teach the mind – I reach the heart

And when I reach the heart I touch the soul

Teacher

By Rabbi Zev Shostak

To those who say two generations hence what shall

I be if but a distant memory I respond:

Though the mind fades memories linger

Though the body fails the spirit prevails

Though the scroll burns the letters dance in the air