Adapting, Surviving and Thriving: A Context for Embracing Change

30, 000 feet above the ground, flying home from the 2010 NAIS Conference aptly themed “Adapt, Survive and Thrive: Unleashing the Superpowers Within,” I’m meditating on the idea, experience, and implications of change.

Over the course of three full days, I attended 10 separate workshops ranging from “Families First” with author and psychologist Rob Evans (on leading a school while living a balanced life) to “President’s Breakfast” with NAIS President Pat Bassett (on exploring the future of Independent Schools) and from “New Media and Its Superpowers” with researcher and author Mimi Ito (on synergizing social media, student peer culture and school culture) to “Innovation as Extreme Sport” with Stanford Professor, researcher and author Tina Seelig (on reimagining the way teaching and learning occur in schools). Regardless of the particular topic, the context was the same:

We live in a time of transformational change: As educators, what will we do not only to adapt but to lead and inspire our students and one another—to leverage emerging technologies as opportunities in positioning our children to thrive in a future we can scarcely imagine, much less predict?

With that in mind, and as the first in a series of posts on the meaning and implications of the conference sessions I attended, I want to explore a concept that, while not featured at the conference, represents a sine qua non of meaningful change in our schools:

“[G]ood schools—those that foster high achievement, moral understanding, and all around intellectual and emotional engagement—are schools that take adult learning as seriously as they do student learning.” (Drago-Severson, “Learning-Oriented Leadership,” Independent School, summer 2006)

To adapt, survive and thrive in this future we can’t predict, Independent Schools must exercise learning-oriented leadership—leadership that is built upon Drago-Severson’s “four pillar practices for growth” and that strategically leverages how the teachers—the instructional leaders in our learning communities—make meaning by creating authentic opportunities to be a dynamic learning community.

A Sustainable Infrastructure: Drago-Severson’s Four Pillar Practices for Growth
In her Summer 2006 Independent School magazine essay “Learning-Oriented Leadership: Transforming a School through a Program of Adult Learning,” Ellie Drago-Severson constructs “four pillar practices for growth” that support schools in developing into “dynamic learning communities”—precisely the kinds of communities that virtually every NAIS speaker called for.

Drago-Severson’s four pillars provide a context for what she terms a healthy “holding environment”—in short, a context comprised of practices aimed at supporting growth. These four pillars are, to my mind, essential to an environment that cultivates school change because they “challenge teachers to improve their skills and to grow. . .[by] facilitat[ing] adult transformational learning. . .[and] facilitat[ing] changes in their capacity to handle the complexity of their work.” In short, we cannot hope to inspire life-long learning in our students if we do not engage in life-long learning ourselves.

The following four pillars support adult learning in schools. And as school leaders we must articulate the expectation that we will, as a matter of living the mission of our schools, engage in these practices—and then we must actually undertake the challenging work of not simply deciding to do something, but of actually doing it:

Supporting the Practice of Teaming
• “Inviting adults to work in teams can open communication, decrease isolation, enable communities to share leadership, and enhance implementation of change.”
• “. . .working in teams enables adults to question their own and other people’s philosophies of teaching and learning, consider the meaning of the ways they implement a school’s core values in the curriculum and school context, reflect on their school’s mission, and make decisions collaboratively.”

Providing Leadership Roles
• “By assuming leadership roles, teachers share power and decision-making authority.”
• “. . .providing leadership roles offers teachers supports and challenges so that they can develop.”
• “[Leadership] roles invite teachers to share authority and expertise as they work toward building community, enhancing practice, and promoting change.”

Engaging in Collegial Inquiry
• “[Collegial inquiry is] a shared dialogue that involves reflecting on one’s assumptions and values as part of the teaching and learning process.”
• “Collegial inquiry provides opportunities to listen and to learn from others and, thus, develop more complex perspectives. . .[by] regularly think[ing], writ[ing], and talk[ing] about practice in the context of supportive relationships [that] encourage self-analysis and development. . .”
• “Through private reflection and public discussion, collegial inquiry facilitates adult learning and institutional growth.”

Mentoring
• “Program purposes [for mentoring]. . .can vary from ‘mission spreading’ to exchanging information to providing emotional support to new and experienced teachers and staff.”
• “Mentoring creates an opportunity for broadening perspectives, examining assumptions and sharing expertise and leadership.”
• “Mentoring enables adults to explore their own thinking and contradictions, and, in doing so, enhance self-development.”

Coda
Drago-Severson’s practical and powerful concept of learning-oriented leadership, and the construction of these pillars, are premised on our adult learners (teachers and administrators) understanding their particular ways of knowing (based on Robert Kegan's constructive developmental model): instrumental, socializing or self-authoring. These 3 different ways of knowing most common in adulthood--and their implications for change leadership in schools--will be the focus of my next post.