Teaching As Leadership

The Highly Effective Teacher's Guide to Closing the Achievement Gap

Steven Farr

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780470593066
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Leadership in Education

A road map for teachers who strive to be highly effective leaders in our nation's classrooms

Teach For America has fought the daunting battle of educational equity for the last twenty years. Based on evidence from classrooms across the country, they've discovered much about effective teaching practice, and distilled these findings into the six principles presented in this book. The Teaching As Leadership framework inspires teachers to: Set Big Goals; Invest Students and Their Families; Plan Purposefully; Execute Effectively; Continuously Increase Effectiveness; Work Relentlessly. The results are better educational outcomes for our nation's children, particularly those who live in low-income communities.

• Inspires educators to be leaders in their classrooms and schools
• Demystifies what it means to be an effective teacher, describes key elements of practice and provides a clear vision of success
• Addresses the challenges every teacher, in every classroom, faces on a daily basis

An accompanying website includes a wealth of tools, videos, sample lessons, discussion boards, and case studies.

1
Set Big Goals

REFLECTING ON WHERE their students are performing at the beginning of the year and holding high expectations for their true potential, highly effective teachers develop an ambitious and inspiring vision of where their students will be academically at the end of the year. They set big goals informed by that vision—goals that when reached will make a meaningful impact on students’ academic trajectory and future opportunities.

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“By the end of the year, my first graders will read, write, do math, and behave like third graders.”

LIKE MANY OTHER NEW teachers in underresourced schools, Crystal Jones was initially dismayed by her first graders’ skills coming into her classroom. Many of them had not attended kindergarten, and few knew all of the letters of the alphabet. Some did not know how to hold a book. On their very first day of school ever, they were already behind.

Determined to put them on track for academic success in the future, she tapped into her students’ obsession with wanting to be big kids. She rallied them around the idea that they could and would learn not just first-grade material this year, but also second-grade material.

The day before spring break, Ms. Jones’s first graders giddily “graduated” to second grade in a “pomp and circumstance” ceremony in her classroom. All of her students had earned those diplomas by having tested on a second-grade level. Her first graders proudly called themselves “second graders” for the rest of the year.

Crystal Jones, First Grade, Georgia

By year’s end, 100 percent of Ms. Jones’s students met or exceeded the first-grade reading standards. Despite beginning the year lagging well behind incoming first graders in higher-income communities, 90 percent of her students were now a full year or more ahead of state standards, reading on or above a third-grade level. The rest were reading on at least a second-grade level.

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“My students will think, speak, and write like world citizens as defined by our rubric, and 100 percent of them will pass the New York Regents Exam for Global History, earning a classroom average of at least 80 percent.”

MR. DELHAGEN SAW THE outrageous statistics of the achievement gap playing out in his students’ lives. His students—most of them students of color whose families had immigrated from countries in the Caribbean and many of whom lived in or on the edge of poverty—were far behind in their academic progress and struggling to juggle school with significant responsibilities at home. He knew that the stakes in his classroom were high: passing the Regents Exam is a graduation requirement in New York State, and if his students did not graduate from high school, their life opportunities would be significantly limited.

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“All of my students will grow at least 1.5 years’ worth of reading growth (as measured by the Developmental Reading Assessment) and will master at least 95 percent of ambitious, rigorous, and carefully tailored IEP [Individualized Education Program] goals, which are designed to move them toward the ultimate long-term goal of independent living.”

MANY OF KATIE HILL’S sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade students had been diagnosed with moderate to significant cognitive disabilities, with IQs in the thirties and forties. When she first met them, they were, on average, reading below a first-grade level, and some were still unfamiliar with all the letters of the alphabet. Most of them were unable to give personal information such as their parent or guardian’s name, their phone number, their address, or their lunch identification number.

In addition to the challenges posed by their learning differences, Ms. Hill’s students were seen by many as unable to learn basic academic and functional skills and incapable of ever living independently. Ms. Hill however, was determined to ensure that her students made significant gains in the knowledge, skills, and sense of self-efficacy and self-advocacy they would need for successful independent living.

Ms. Hill committed herself to achieving this big goal with her students and worked with students’ families to rewrite their IEP goals to include these academic and functional targets. With these individualized big goals driving her every decision, her students made, on average, 1.6 years’ worth of reading growth and approximately three years of growth in math by the end of the year. They also mastered 83 percent of the grade-level standards they were shooting for as a class. Under her leadership, in one year, her students made more academic progress than they had in their previous six to eight years combined.

Katie Hill, Middle School Special Education, North Carolina

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Passing this exam was a daunting challenge. Not only did his eleventh graders lack many basic skills (with some reading on a fifth-grade level), but Mr. Delhagen had only one year to teach two years’ worth of material. He committed himself and his students to this audacious big goal.

Taylor Delhagen, High School Global History, New York

At the end of the year, Mr. Delhagen’s students had fulfilled his vision of becoming “global citizens,” embodying the qualities of rigorous thinking, eloquent speaking, and effective writing he had set forth in the first weeks of school. On the Regents Exam, his students beat the city average for students in communities who took the same course over the traditional two years. His students outperformed every other class in the school taking any Regents Exam. Fifty-one of his fifty-seven students passed the exam on their first attempt, with a few students just missing a perfect score.

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Students make dramatic academic progress when their teachers begin the year with a clear, ambitious vision of student success. Highly effective teachers know exactly where they want their students to be by the end of the year. Teachers like Ms. Jones, Ms. Hill, and Mr. Delhagen realize that a bold (and some might say crazy) vision of student success can actually foster student achievement.

Virtually any successful leader in any context tackles massive problems in this same way, starting with a mental picture of a new and better reality. The United States was the first nation to land on the moon, for example, because President Kennedy made the bold (and some said crazy) declaration that it would be. While most of us (including Ms. Jones, Ms. Hill, and Mr. Delhagen) might be reluctant to compare ourselves to President Kennedy, these teachers are in fact employing leadership techniques when they develop and communicate their vision of a different reality as a means of driving dramatic change. As James Kouzes and Barry Posner found in their worldwide study of qualities of leadership, successful leaders are able to “envision the future, gaze across the horizon of time and imagine the greater opportunities to come. They see something out ahead, vague as it might appear from a distance, and they imagine that extraordinary feats are possible and that the ordinary could be transformed into something noble. They are able to develop an ideal and unique image of the future for the common good.”¹

If you are a teacher working to close the achievement gap who wants to maximize your impact on your students’ life opportunities, setting a big goal for student learning is a launching point for the single-minded focus and urgency that will drive your and your students’ hard work throughout the school year.

Foundations of Effective Goal Setting

Strong goals are founded on three ideas. First, like all other strong leaders, highly effective teachers insist on defining and measuring achievement so that progress and success are clear. In our context, that principle takes the form of ambitious standards—aligned and quantifiable goals—targets that help students see their progress and appreciate the benefits of their hard work.

Second, the highly effective teachers we have studied expect the best of those they are leading. In our context, this means demanding and seeing that their students reach their full potential, holding high expectations that actually raise student performance. The best teachers, in our experience, refuse to accept and instead set out to disprove the myth that students in low-income communities are destined for lower achievement and fewer opportunities than children in higher-income communities.

Third, like other great leaders, st...