Turnaround 4C Plan: Curriculum

Bryan Wright and Mark McBeth discuss part three of the Turnaround 4CPlan. 
Once Climate and Culture is implemented with fidelity, schools are ready for true academic change that is sustainable. This usually occurs in year three. 

For more information about the the topics discussed,
Bryan Wright: brwright44@gmail.com
Mark McBeth: mark@educationalrelevance.org

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Transcript

bryan_3_07-31-2024_095637: 0:00

Welcome to educational relevance. I'm Bryan Wright. I'm currently an adjunct professor at Concordia University. I have also served in a lead, administrative capacity in schools for 25 plus years. My partner in crime here is Mark Macbeth, who is also a turnaround principal in his own right, but also an author and has written books regarding, student leadership. Right now we're going to be talking about the third, leg of our Turnaround 4C plan, curriculum This is such an important piece, Mark, because this is when we see true academic change taking place in kids and in schools. The first thing we talked about with the Turnaround 4C plan is that we incorporated climate. and that's who we are. Then we talked about culture, what we do. Now today is going to be curriculum: how we do it. One last thing I will say before I turn this over to you, Mark, I want to make sure I get your your feedback on this is that we need to make sure that those first two pieces are, implemented successfully because we want to make sure we gathered a bunch of wins. We've seen some positive things take place. We have gauged our wins and losses accordingly. We think we got a significant higher number of wins and than losses. Now we're talking about true change in schools and how we going to deal with that. So Mark, I'm going to turn it over to you. what do you think about that?

mark_3_07-31-2024_095629: 1:18

culture, and now curriculum. The idea is, we also talk a lot about code. You, talked about your code and etc. That, code, has laid the foundation for climate to exist. Lays and embeds itself into culture, but it's really, really setting the tone for longevity how we get to longevity, how do we get to sustainability? How do we move to higher assessment scores? How do we higher learning? Is curriculum. I just would reemphasize, if principals who jumped straight to curriculum have not laid that foundation. That code is essential and the climate and culture to get to that culture. So inside a culture, want to talk about how we're teaching every day. What standards we're teaching every day, how we're assessing those every day. And how does that fit into our culture?

bryan_3_07-31-2024_095637: 2:19

Well, Mark, you know, one of the things that teachers are most protected of is their curriculum, what they're teaching. That's why it's so important that we establish those wins early and often that we've established winnings in climate that we've seen success as far as school improvement, we've embedded the changes we've had in any disciplinary ideas or any goal setting we've had. We want to talk about those goals as well. How those goals fit into the curriculum piece the goals we're talking about, of course, culture, a viable curriculum, student and staff engagement, and of course, leadership density, or at least capacity. So yes, each one of those things now become a key part of how we're going to incorporate the curriculum. And one more thing we want to make sure we talk about the connections piece. All right. And connecting all four pieces. So now when we talk about changing curriculum, we're saying, Hey, this is how each one of those goals is going to be affected positively in order to make sure teachers are benefiting and students are the most benefiting, benefiting from, the change that we're talking about.

mark_3_07-31-2024_095629: 3:25

And it's really curriculum is powerful for teachers because they know their content. They're a math teacher, English teacher, they're elementary school. They're, they're an all content teacher. They know that subject matter. And then, if a teacher that's been there three, four, five or longer years, they've kind of conditioned themselves to a certain methodology of teaching as well and what they want to deliver. You and I have been in schools where the butterfly unit really has no connection to the standards we're teaching, but the teacher taught it for 10 years already. It just feels, and the kids love it. But it really doesn't move them forward in the standard, and it's hard shift one of the things you said kind of made me think scaffolding. We do that inside of a classroom. A teacher with a curriculum scaffolds their learning. So they take this content, and they build on it, and they build on it, and build on it, and then all of a sudden the student's able to problem solve, and develop, and do higher order thinking, right? One of the things we need to keep in mind as a turnaround principle, your curriculum starts with that climate and then it goes, and then it goes to the culture and then it goes to curriculum. That is our scaffolding. are up what we're doing and if we don't scale, It's like trying to get, get kids to do higher order thinking without even having any sort of general knowledge or content even to relate to so you have to scaffold. We have to delay that foundation. So that scaffolding kind of came to mind when you were just talking that I think is pretty powerful. And I think it kind of summarizes some of what we've talked about before But one of the things I guess I'm asking you is what are some of the things that you do to start to embed longevity using curriculum in some of the schools you've been in? Because you've really turned around a lot of schools.

bryan_3_07-31-2024_095637: 5:20

Oh, well, Mark, thanks for asking that question. We want to make sure two things. One the goals we set, and that's why I said the goals are such an important piece. It's not the fact that we didn't have a viable curriculum. We still had a viable curriculum even as we were incorporating climate and culture. There still was a curriculum there, but what we want to do is twofold. One, we want to make sure we eliminate the Inner workings of a program so that we can focus on nothing but the academics, i. e. that's about discipline. You know, a lot of schools I've gone to there's a thought that since discipline was out of control, school was out of control with some degrees of discipline, then that was

mark_3_07-31-2024_095629: 6:02

Yeah,

bryan_3_07-31-2024_095637: 6:03

negatively enhancing instruction. So what we had to do was eliminate those things, as far as discipline is concerned, incorporate the, five step plan, incorporate a discipline matrix so that we can say, okay, now. We have successfully implemented this idea, these structures. So now we think you can focus on instruction. Then the second thing we want to make sure we talked about is that when we talk about culture, okay, we want kids to realize, Hey, we're here for your academics. Now for you, we're not here to throw you out of school. We're here to enhance your instruction. We want you to be ready. So in four years, if you in a high school and you start ninth grade, we want you to start thinking about post high school education and make sure I say one more thing when I say post high school, we're not talking about this as a college, Mark, we're talking about post high school education

mark_3_07-31-2024_095629: 6:49

right.

bryan_3_07-31-2024_095637: 6:49

as going into a trade, no, going to college, is that what you want. Hey, we tell somebody, we think you're just as important to us. If you're going to March tool and die as you are going to Harvard, we want you to go and be successful after you get out of our building. So these are things we want to make sure that's why the culture is so embedded. So we still have a viable curriculum, but right now we're talking about intensified individual programs that we think can enhance your school, make sure all kids are benefiting. We've always had a, one or two teachers that wanted to try some pilot program. We said, sure, go right ahead, as long it's consistent with what we're trying to teach With everybody in school you can do that, but now that third year is when you start talking about making some adjustments and changes

mark_3_07-31-2024_095629: 7:33

kind of work on in that third year, really establishing that timeline. Is there something that, that you experience to know when you can really shift to a stronger curriculum movement? Is there something that you feel when you're in a school as a principal that says, Hey, they're ready?

bryan_3_07-31-2024_095637: 7:50

Oh, absolutely. As a matter of fact, there have been situations and there's been some research based on this situation. So you can make a change in 12 to 18 months in the school And you're thinking that you can make those changes in the school 12 to 18 months and you said climate and people taking to the climate in a hurry and you see some immediate changes and all of a sudden they fit and they're ready to go. Then in that second year, I've done this in a school and I'm just using this as an example. In a second year in a school, we did a standards based grading as a pilot program for the district. And we were the first school to ever do that. And we incorporated that with a, minimum negativity because teachers felt, comfortable in how we were going to do it and they felt at ease, even some of the naysayers felt like, okay, we implemented in a way where you can still have some ideas of how you want to implement your own grading system. and during that year, We actually asked for, a computer for each one of our kids We got it through our, board of education. Those are two, just two examples of how we implemented curriculum type pieces in a second year. I felt successfully because the first year we had quite a high degree of success.

mark_3_07-31-2024_095629: 9:02

Yeah, that's

bryan_3_07-31-2024_095637: 9:02

success the first year.

mark_3_07-31-2024_095629: 9:03

I don't know if there's a percentage or not of when you say. teachers are ready, but if there was, it would be that 70-80 percent of your staff is on board to move to that next stage for standard based grading. What they're doing is they're having those conversations around our code, mine, student learning first, rigor, relevance, relationships, generates results. unless they adopt that code they're not willing to have standard based learning, or standard based grading because they're not putting learning first yet. But if they are, then they're ready to move. And that's why you were able to be so successful with that.

bryan_3_07-31-2024_095637: 9:46

You know, in the school, we're talking about, and I can talk about another, but let's start with this school we were so successful that we won an award by the state that first year. And in that criteria of earning that award, 86 percent of my teachers said they were satisfied with the changes that we

mark_3_07-31-2024_095629: 10:02

Right?

bryan_3_07-31-2024_095637: 10:02

implemented. That first year. So you had 86 percent of

mark_3_07-31-2024_095629: 10:06

staff felt Yeah, that's

bryan_3_07-31-2024_095637: 10:07

feeling pretty positive with what's going on. You can make changes you felt that second year because you felt most of the staff was in agreement and it was ready for the changes that we wanted to implement. So that was very comfortable in that regard. Now, that being said, that doesn't happen to every school to make sure I'm clear, but at the same time that's why, we want to make sure you, give it some opportunity and some time. So you don't want to rush the process as it were, as we're discussing these years. That's why I said year three is usually when you have time because the first two years, you really want to implement with some degree of fidelity, both the climate and the culture.

mark_3_07-31-2024_095629: 10:41

Let's touch on

bryan_3_07-31-2024_095637: 10:41

And then that culture piece that you want to do.

mark_3_07-31-2024_095629: 10:43

12 to 18 months a few times. Michael Follin is who I always adopted. He said that we could turn around in school in 12 to 18 months. I think what he really means within that is we got them on the right path in 12 to 18 months. Doesn't mean that sustainability, we can leave the school and everything's good, right? What it means is that we got them on the right path or they're thinking forward. They're thinking within the code they're moving forward. That's the key within that. So let me give you an example of what some people might say, because it deals with instruction and deals kind of with assessment and et cetera, is I worked in school in, Missouri. And we also got recognized by the state for being the most improved school in math, both in middle school and high school. I was principal over both and also in science and then in middle school language arts. But here's all I did. I got the teachers to start using the correct vocabulary that was associated with the testing, which is testing vocabulary. That is a cultural shift. It is not curriculum. I did not create sustainability at that point yet. I think that's the difference is we're incorporating, those things in during those first few years, but now what we got to do is go back and say, okay, now, what are the standards we're teaching now? Why are we teaching this? How are we going to assess those? How are we going to get kids to think at a higher order? Just getting kids to know the vocabulary was not higher order thinking. It was not problem solving. It didn't mean the kids knew the curriculum better. Okay. It's just, they knew how to test better, if that makes sense. it was a gain and it was essential in moving the culture forward to be able to talk about curriculum.

bryan_3_07-31-2024_095637: 12:36

Well, one point that you brought up so clearly in that example, Mark, Was that you had a small thing you implemented but trust was built first and teachers felt trusted, they trusted you enough So that when you made that change But teacher said hey if Mark's saying we can do this to help us out They felt comfortable in making that change and making that adjustment So you had already built up a positive climate so that change could be implemented quickly And that's the good thing about what we're just talking about, making that, making sure. And again, and two more things I want to bring up while you're talking about this first one, when you talk code, that is the byword of everything we do and everything I've done in the academics is about code and mine of course is Respect is earned, not just given, but common courtesy demanded of everyone. But then, but the second thing you talk about when you talk about code and the development of what we're doing, man. You landed out right there, as far as the changes we can make quickly and the changes we do, so that the connection piece is there where we talk about climate now begets culture, culture begets curriculum, and as we talk about this and then the connection piece, which we'll discuss later on, we'll bring all that together. But yeah, so I'm so glad you brought up those two points, Mark. I really appreciate that you doing that.

mark_3_07-31-2024_095629: 13:59

a slightly different topic is, within this is last week we talked about culture. One of the things we said was we, should set professional learning communities as a stage, the idea that we get teachers through the procedures of talking, just get, getting them into the mode. When we moved the curriculum, now that that learning community of teachers is having deep developmental questions about how kids learn. That's that shift. And we can't have that conversation early on. But when we hit curriculum, when we're at that stage, now we can have those teachers having that deeper development question inside those learning communities. So sometimes people try to adopt learning communities too early in that climate in the culture stage, and that just doesn't work for the teachers They're having conversations about stuff that they don't have a value system associated with yet. They don't have the core understanding of what instruction really means we're higher order thinking really means. I think I wanted to go back and kind of touch on that, that's when we got teachers really engaged, teacher leadership is really being developed or enhancing the opportunity that it's more than us. It's more of us as a facilitator, and them more as leaders.

bryan_3_07-31-2024_095637: 15:20

That brings back the whole goal of leadership density and leadership capacity as we talk about it and building up others to be leaders besides ourselves. What you just described Mark is a post COVID 2024 way of thinking. Make sure we talk about that. You know, too many schools, when they came back, we talked about that last week, they really wanted to jump into the curriculum piece early, but they did not set up the culture. They did not realize kids had to feel safe in their environment. They were going to learn. So now what you're talking about, when you talk about the connection piece and the learning communities, Man, now, now they set up those safety nets that kids feel comfortable back in them schools. Now that piece you're talking about, man, that's going to be so powerful and it's going to resonate so well with not just the teachers themselves, but how they communicate with the students they have. So I think that's a great piece. And I think that I'm so glad you brought that up, Mark. I think that works real well right now and how we're trying to do it. Mm

mark_3_07-31-2024_095629: 16:19

And I have mentioned also a few times higher order thinking. I just want to catch on this before we move out of a curriculum, we did have Jerry Valentine on. Outstanding conversations about the I. P. I. And then just higher order thinking higher order thinking collecting the data through the I. P. I. Gets us having those right type of conversations. Once again, the teacher's got to be kind of to that point where they're ready to have that, that learning. He mentions that also that sustainability. But when, we're ready for curriculum stage, teachers will have those conversations about higher order thinking, deeper thinking type of questions for kids. And so that's another stage that you're thinking about is when teachers aren't ready to have that conversation, then you're still in culture. And then when you're, when you're ready for curriculum is when

bryan_3_07-31-2024_095637: 17:11

hmm.

mark_3_07-31-2024_095629: 17:12

have that conversation more about, Oh, the data from IPI is showing us that we should. We should really change our instructional methodologies to incorporate more deeper and higher order thinking. So you might go back and listen to Jerry

bryan_3_07-31-2024_095637: 17:28

Well,

mark_3_07-31-2024_095629: 17:28

the couple episodes we had earlier because they were pretty good as well.

bryan_3_07-31-2024_095637: 17:31

Well, I'll tell you what, most of our guest speakers have been so solid, especially when we're talking about when we had Sue Knapp on, she spoke about curriculum. We had both the two superintendents on, Dr. Sarah Jerome and Ms. Sue Alexander. And they've discussed about as, as superintendents, how they incorporate student learning and their guise as leaders in the districts. So I think each one of them brings certain pieces to the table. And then when we talk about connection next week, I'm sure we're going to talk about Frank Davila and talk about the connection piece that he brings to the table and how it was so successful and actually got something called G.I.S.T. I like to talk about what we discussed that next week, but in the future, Mark, I think we hit curriculum pretty well today,

mark_3_07-31-2024_095629: 18:10

time we hit it really well, I thought there was some good, good analogies, good examples today. Next, connections. We're going to try to bring everything together. That's the next essential step to create long term sustainability, which we want to have.

bryan_3_07-31-2024_095637: 18:23

Absolutely. Thank you very much for listening to our part of educational relevance on a curriculum, and we'll continue our series next with connections Thank you very much.