Something that I thought I would share was a quick bit of information from the Q&A section of the November 2008 The Learning Principal newsletter from the NSDC. The topic was PLCs change school culture, but I found the last couple bits of information the most helpful. Below is a summary of the featured principal's responses to the two questions (as part of getting their PLC into action).
How much time do you spend in classrooms? 5-5-5, five classrooms a day, at least 5 minutes in each classroom, 5 times a week. If paperwork seems to be your excuse, drop your brief case first thing and get visiting before anything else.
What impact have you seen? Discipline referrals dropped from 1500 to 300, 8% to 49% pass rate on state writing test in 5 years, reading 37% to 66% and math 46% to 72%.
The bottom line, school leaders need to involve staff, integrate PLC initiatives into their school improvement plans, participate as an active team member in making change happen, GET INTO THE CLASSROOMS regularly and results will follow.
I'd love to know how much time you (school leaders) out there spend in classrooms and thoughts you have on what is the right amount. Share your thoughts.
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Check out the February 2009 article in ASCD's EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP entitled, HIGH-LEVERAGE STRATEGIES FOR PRINCIPAL LEADERSHIP. The article is by Richard DeFour and Robert Marzano. Both claim that the key to student achievement is for principals to spend more time working collaboratively with teacher teams by examining evidence of student learning and analyzing the implementation of effective learning strategies versus traditional observations and classroom walk throughs. It is a good article that I am going to share with my leadership teams (district level and regional middle-level leaders).
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