Chapter 6Doing the Right Work

BY AMBER KELLER

Objective:We will view and discuss various key points throughout the power point on chapter 6.

We will gain and greater understanding of what “ the right work” is through analyzing chapter 6 in School Leadership that Works from Research to Results by Robert J. Marazano, Timothy Waters, and Brian A. McNulty.

We will state one program within each of our current schools in which the concept of the “right work” has been unsuccessful.

I will brainstorm ideas that will allow myself to better utilize programs within my school that will allow me to attain the “right work” concept.

What is the Right Work?• One critical aspect of the leadership that was not evident from earlier

chapters was the type of work a school selects as its focus. Each year, every school in the United States formally or informally identifies something it will work on to maintain or (ideally)to improve student achievement.

• Know the RIGHT thing to do is the central problem of school improvement. Holding the schools accountable for their performance depends on having people in schools with the knowledge, skill, and judgment to make the improvements that will INCREASE student performance.

• For Elmore, the downfall of low performing schools is not their lack of efforts and motivation: rather, it is poor decisions regarding what to work on. So the problem in low-performing schools is not getting people to work, it is getting people to do the “RIGHT WORK”.

Misconceptions by the public and or those NOT in the “trenches”….•Elmore points out that the school reform effort in the United States is plagued by falsehoods, one of which is that schools fail because teachers and administrators don’t work hard

enough and that they are lazy, unmotivated, and self serving…..

USING the CSR Model• One approach to selecting the “right work” is to adopt a

Comprehensive School Reform Model (CSR).

• What is the SCR? It is a federally funded program that provides grants to schools that adopt proven comprehensive reform models that provide research based approaches to enhancing student achievement focusing on low-income schools.Examples are as follows:

Direct Instruction developed by Siegfried Engelmann

The School Development Program developed by James Comer

Success for All developed by Robert Slavin and Nancy Madden

CSR Model• The CSR model must stick with the same model for a

minimum of five years.

• Schools should expect a steady gain in achievement for the first four years with a dramatic increase in student achievement by the fifth year.

• This model will only be successful if it is adapted to the situation at focuses on the specific situation that will positively effect student achievement. Rigid CSR model implementation has been proven to be less successful than those that are flexible with the specific school/ district needs.

Design a site-Specific Approach• The 2nd approach to identify the “right work” to

undertake in a school is to design a specific intervention-to create or identify an intervention that addresses the specific need of the school.in doing this, the team will address the characteristic need of that school specifically.

• To design a site-specific intervention, a school must begin with a model or framework of those factors that can be altered in a school to enhance student achievement.

• This approach has been broken down into eleven specific categories:

Factor 1: Guarantee and Viable Curriculum• This factor addresses two interrelated aspects of the

curriculum in a school- the extent to which the curriculum is guaranteed and the extent to which is viable

• Viability refers to whether the stated curriculum can be adequately taught in the instructional time available to teachers

• Simply stated, state standards documents usually identify far more content than teachers can adequately teach in the instructional time available.

• Once curriculum is trimmed to the point where it is viable, it can be guaranteed.

Factor 2: Challenging Goals and Effective Feedback• In a review of almost 8,000 studies it has been

concluded that feedback is the most powerful tool available to educators.

• Currently, there is software that allows a teacher to report such feedback but it must be requested and maintained throughout the school year as well as carried over year after year to provide appropriate aggregation for transcripts.

Factor 3: Parent and Community Involvement• This factor looks at the following:• Communication

Communication refers to the extent to which a school had developed good lines of communication both to and from parents and community.

• Participation

Participation refers to the extent to which parents and community are involved in the day to day running of the school.

• Governance

Governance refers to the extent to which the school has established structures that allow for parents and community to be involved in decision making relative to school policy.

Factor Four: Safe and Orderly Environment• A school that has a safe and orderly environment

is one in which students and teachers alike are safe and perceive that they are safe from both physical and psychological harm.

• Schools will establish procedures and consequences for those in general education, SPED, and those with additional disturbances such as ED ( emotional disturbance) issues.

• Schools will establish programs that encourage self discipline and responsibility

• Schools will establish programs that will allow for early detection of those dealing with violent behaviors and so forth.

Factor Five: Collegiality and Professionalism• Collegiality and professionalism refer to the manner in

which the staff members in a school interact and the extent to which they approach their duties as professionals.

• Put simply a district handbook would suffice coupled with training, introductions, and follow-up sessions.

The first 5 factors deal with actions steps for “school wide” interventions…

•Factors 6,7, and 8 will deal with

“day-to-day”

classroom life.

Factor Six: Instructional Strategies• Teachers must covey and Mary Poppins bag of tricks.

Each facilitator should have an array of instructional abilities to address the multi-intelligence's of their classes.

• Administrators should provide teachers with an instructional framework for planning units that employ research based strategies.

Factor Seven: Classroom Management• Some may argue that classroom management is the

foundation of effective teaching.

• Marzano and Pickering identify four aspects of effective classroom management:• Monitoring progress, balancing individual work with group work,

reinforcing effort, and celebrating success

• Assessing final goal attainment and celebrating success at the end

• Helping students understand and assimilate new information that is presented to them

• Helping students review, practice, and apply content

Factor Eight: Classroom Curriculum Design• Classroom curriculum design refers to those decisions teachers make to

adapt to the content found in textbooks, state standard documents, and district curriculum guides to the needs of their particular students.

• This is a necessity because now room or even student is the dame. The days of cookie cutter classrooms, students, and instruction are long gone with the black and white photos they were attached to.

• A teacher must:• Distinguish what is the focal point of instruction

• Identify activities to use to ensure that students are exposed to new content multiple times in a variety of ways

• Identify skills that need to be mastered and how to present the information

• The final curricular decision a teacher must make is how to provide students with complex tasks that require them to apply their new knowledge in ways that expand their original knowledge. An excellent example of this would be PBL or project based learning.

The last three factors are labeled “student –level factors”. They represent characteristics that are part of the general background students bring with them to school each day.

Factor Nine: Home Environment• As the heading states, this represents the extent to

which the home environment supports academic achievement.

• 1st- parent have effective and encouraging communication that occurs on a regular basis

• 2nd-homes in which parents and or guardians monitor their child’s activities such as homework, what they do before and after school and time of arrival, how much television is watch and what specifically is watched.

• 3rd-authoritative, authorial, and permissive.

Factor Ten: Learned Intelligence and Background Knowledge• Learned Intelligence and background knowledge gets its

name from the fact that one of the strongest predictors of academic achievement is the background knowledge students have regarding the content being taught.

• Two techniques can be utilized:

Direct and indirect approaches

Direct involves out-of-school activities that are academically oriented

Indirect experiences are those that generate “virtual” experiences that enhance students’ academic background knowledge

Factor Eleven: Motivation• This refers to the extent to which students are

motivated to be engaged in academic tasks from both external and internal sources.

• This involves various concepts such as providing game like tasks for students to involving students in creating a PBL based on the content being focused on.

• In addition, see feedback slide for additional reference…

SUMMARY• The school leader’s ability to select the “RIGHT WORK”

is a critical aspect of effective leadership.

• Teachers may be working hard but not necessarily working smart

• Whether a school uses this model or some other model, employing a site-specific approach involves designing an intervention that is specific to the needs and context of a given school.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2D8jwyBJa50