Seeing this more and more in my work: Often, team dysfunction is not a relationship problem. It's a structural problem. Rational people respond rationally to invisible structural incentives. Change the structure, the behavior changes, too.
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Calvin Johnson
509 posts
Calvin Johnson
@CalvinFJohnson
High School Principal. Advocate for vulnerable young people. Sharing insights on literacy, leadership and education.
Katılım Ağustos 2013
712 Takip Edilen859 Takipçiler
@M_Dannenberg1 Great list. One more ingredient: Building-based leadership.
Effective principals create the conditions for everything on your list—without strong leadership, even great curriculum and teachers underperform.
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My K-12 ed reform recipe list:
1) Time- Think summer learning
2) Teachers- Better trained, better paid
3) Rigor- High standards & acctly for all
4) Relevance- Curricula that resonates & matches the research; &
5) Student Motivation- Policies that facilitate success
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@ChadAldeman’s substack has an analysis of the Obama K-12 education reform record. His take with which I agree is Obama was on the right path with Race to the Top but overreached with ESEA waiver driven teacher evaluation & spit the bit with ESSA. Where do we go from here? 1/2
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Thinking about this recently: You can't decide your way out of a structural problem. Most leaders see: "Our team keeps relitigating decisions."
They try: More processes. Better logs. Clearer protocols. Nothing sticks.
Why? Because you're fixing what's visible while ignoring what's invisible.
The real problems are below the waterline:
- Informal power structures
- Gaze hierarchies
- Voice activation gaps
- Hidden coalitions
You need to diagnose what's underneath.
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@MrZachG Yes to this! I'd add that making the prerequisite skills explicit (rather than assuming students will just 'figure it out') helps demystify learning for students who may have gaps. When we name what we're building on, we give all students a roadmap
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When you assume kids have prior knowledge and skills they don’t all have, you end up playing rewind and catch up through the whole lesson. When you review and pre-teach pre-skills and scaffold up, you move towards a model for lessons in which everyone can access the material.
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Been meditating on this all year: “Common sense is like oxygen: the higher you go, the thinner it gets.” —John Gaddis
I see it everywhere—leaders who know what’s right but can’t act on it. Gut instincts buried under performance.
Simple decisions made impossibly complex.
Does this resonate with you?
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This has been on my mind lately: The year before a new strategic plan isn’t neutral time. It reveals whether a district can build the habits and coherence a future plan will depend on. Strategy only works if the system is already learning how to change.
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Thinking: Many district/school teams think they have an execution problem when they actually have a coherence problem. All the implementation in the world won’t work if initiatives are pulling you in ten different directions.
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@BarryGarelick @JonMHenderson1 I appreciate this. It resonates as well. When HQIM designation prioritizes standards alignment over instructional effectiveness research, it does raise real questions about actual pedagogical quality.
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@CalvinFJohnson @JonMHenderson1 Exactly. I wrote about this as a guest writer for Rick Hess' column in Ed Week and AEI. aei.org/op-eds/do-high…
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HQIM doesn't guarantee strong instruction. The gap between design and delivery disproportionately harms vulnerable students.
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@JonMHenderson1 Amen. Don't assume the curriculum materials are actually good just because they're labeled HQIM.
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@CalvinFJohnson And sometimes the question must be asked, “High quality compared to WHAT?”
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I’m new to X, but I’m excited to build connections and community.
GIF
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We call principals “instructional leaders” but often give them no real system to lead. They’re told to improve teaching schoolwide without the tools, models, or infrastructure to do it. Spotting good instruction isn’t the same as causing it. That gap is killing coherence.
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@sneal1911 Well said. Sometimes doing the right thing as a leader genuinely sucks, even when you know it's necessary.
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Sometimes it can be hard but fair, then other times sad but true.
Terrance Hill ED.S@20THill20
Leadership Nuggets: 1. Communicate decisions clearly and early 2. Address performance issues promptly- don’t delay difficult conversations 3. Foster professionalism- support staff through changes but set clear expectations from day one
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All fair. But let me add ones I’ve been sitting with recently-All fair. Let me add one more—Regularly examine evidence of whether your decisions and expectations are improving student outcomes, and be willing to change course when they're not.
Terrance Hill ED.S@20THill20
Leadership Nuggets: 1. Communicate decisions clearly and early 2. Address performance issues promptly- don’t delay difficult conversations 3. Foster professionalism- support staff through changes but set clear expectations from day one
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@TroyMooney There's also something here about emotional labor. Leaders often avoid early feedback because we think we're being kind and extending grace, but we're actually transferring the emotional burden to the new person who has to wonder if they're meeting expectations
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If you have new people on your work team, don’t wait too long to address things they are doing that you don’t like. Telling them early is good clarity. Waiting 2 months to address something they started doing day 1 makes them wonder why “all of a sudden it matters”.
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Love this. We can implement project-based learning or inquiry methods, but if our students don't have sufficient background knowledge, they can't think critically about the projects. They're just going through motions.
Doctors need to memorize anatomy before they can diagnose. Lawyers need to know case law before they can argue. But the goal isn't memorization but rather building the knowledge base that makes expert thinking possible. Need that knowledge base.
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High-order thinking depends on a strong foundation of knowledge. Without this foundation, there’s nothing to critically think about. That is why teaching “21st century skills” and “critical thinking” in isolation does not work.
Let me explain with an analogy ⬇️
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@BarryNSmith79 I'd use the quote to reveal whether you've built adult competence. If your team hears it and makes excuses, you haven't. If they hear it and immediately know five things they can change this week, you have.
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School improvement. Focus on what goes on IN school. Do that really well. Attention to detail. You’ll be attacked. You can’t change that. You can change a lot in school.
Robert Greene@RobertGreene
Do not waste time on things you cannot change or influence.
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Teachers and leaders have to make hundreds of micro-decisions daily that compound into the culture they want to build in their classroom/building. Grand gestures and inspiring speeches don't create culture. Consistent small choices do.
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@BenisonMrs Competent instruction is the highest form of care.
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Yup!
We need to keep the main thing the main thing .
If we don’t teach kids how to read and write the impact of our help will be limited at best.
Parents for Reading Justice@Parents4RJ
We applaud teachers who feed, clothe & even braid hair—but the ones kids need most are those who can TEACH THEM TO READ. 📚 Especially kids in deep poverty. Every teacher deserves training in the Science of Reading. @SteubenvilleCity did it—your district can too! @ehanford @Reading_League @NationalParents
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@KJWinEducation What's devastating is that this child did exactly what she was taught. We teach kids to guess, they guess wrong, then we pathologize their frustration instead of fixing our methods.
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Teacher requested 'trauma-informed support' for a 2nd grader crying and yelling. What set her off?
Tchr, "What's this word? Look at the picture"
Kid, "Pony" (Word was horse)
Kid: She called me stupid
Tchr: She must get that racism from home
Poor reading instruction is a menace
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