Julie Storer: Powerful Teaching and Learning

An incredibly full day today and not even really "full" by Summer Insititue standards...we didn't start until 10:45am to allow for folks to attend Church or get a more leisurely start to the day than we will have the remainder of the week. I took advantage of some of the time to stick with my fitness goals and go for a run. Memorial Drive is closed to all but resident traffic on Sunday's in the summer, so I joined what must have been hundreds of folks on the street or adjacent paths and made my way in a loop that took me across the Charles River and back into Harvard Square. Then it was on to class where we worked with only limited breaks for lunch and dinner and did not finish with our final small-group discussion until 8pm.

We started with Powerful Teaching and Learning - what intrigued me most in the pre-reading last night as well as in the discussion today was the work of Carol Dweck on "Mindset Theory." This examines the impact of student mindsets - either fixed or growth - on their ability to succeed in the classroom. The question was raised "How do we instill a growth mindset in students at an early age to help them develop into confident learners in the face of the challenges of secondary and post-secondary school?

Then the highly regarded Richard Elmore (author, researcher, teacher - considered one of the top ten most influential people in education in the country) took over for the first of a three-part seminar on Introduction to Redesign. The data he presented was startling and presented a fairly bleak picture of the state of our current education system. In the research he presented data showed in the last ten years that as more academic courses have been offered for high school students we have:

1. less students meeting national standards for performance
2. less students graduating in four years from high school
3. more students taking remedial classes in college, and
4. less students staying in and earning their 2 and 4 year degrees.

He gave additional data on the increase in student acheivement at the elementary grades in the past 8-10 years paired with a significant drop-off beginning in middle school. Then arguably the most compelling data was a study that found that what class a student was in for a particular course (i.e. what teacher they had) had as much a 6 times the greater impact on students academic gains than what school they attended. This helped to lead us up to Part 2 and 3 tomorrow which are Improving the Technical Core of Instruction and Organinzing for Improvement.

We met with our small groups and facilitator after dinner for the first time and began discussioning our individual problem statements. I was not alone in feeling as though I could already make very meaningful changes in my problem based on what I have learned in just 1-1/2 days.

Julie Storer

Mike Goddard: Understanding Quality Education

I woke up early this Cambridge, MA morning to a significant amount of fog and overcast. Later in the day the fog lifted, the clouds dissipated and the sun began to shine. Little did I know that was symbolic of how my day at the Harvard Principal Institute would replicate that same pattern in my thinking and perspective.

Much of the day today was dedicated to the necessity to define and understand quality instruction. Not only the level of quality instruction, but in making sure you and your campus have a common language regarding quality instruction. You know it theoretically, but until you practice it and you fully recognize the lens that you see through, you can make no progress forward.

This afternoon Richard Elmore led us through data that showed the necessity for a sense of urgency in the way we are educating our students. One critical point that was drawn from our discussion was: are we an institution that of educational subtraction (meaning does our students intellectual capacity actually digress over time or remain stagnate) or are we adding to the value of the students educational experience.

It is critical that we "confront the brutal facts", as Jim Collins says in Good to Great . The facts on a national scale, a state scale, a district scale and at the most impactful level our own campus level.

Michael Goddard

Julie Storer: An Incredible Day

An incredible day! I started off with breakfast at Creme' on Harvard Square, then headed out again to find Currier House and our classrooms. This time I was successful and I got checked in with time to spare, which I used to finish up on my pre-reading assignment. Other participants began to trickle in, then by 1:30pm we headed as a group to the EDS for the opening session. Dr. Kay Merseth of the Harvard Graduate School of Education welcomed us, gave some background on the group (participants from Connecticut to California, Minnesota to Texas, as well as Ireland and Australia; all sizes of schools and all administrative positions as well as classroom teachers) and introduced keynote speaker and former Harvard professor Paul Reville, who will take the reins as Secretary of Education of the Commonwealth of Massachusets in two days (he's been interim for a couple of months).

He spoke on the politics of reform using Massachusetts as a case study. The statement that I found most profound was his analogy of school being a 100-meter dash: he said our current accountability system puts the finish line the same for all students, yet in reality some (the "low performers") start 50 meters behind the finish line and others (the "gifted" students) start 50-meters ahead. We expect them all to finish together at the same time. He also said that if we applied our current education practice in the medical field it would be like having a hospital where everyone we admitted had different diagnoses, but were given the same treatment. Would we expect our success rate in that setting to be very high?

Then James Nehring (Graduate School of Education at U-Mass) facilitated some small group work in which we began the process of refining the problem statement we had submitted as part of our pre-institute requirements. This was our first opportunity to interact and in our group from Texas (2), Connecticut and Australia we found common themes in spite of the diversity in our school settings -- concerns about improving the rigor of instruction in all classes, increasing the motivation of our students to achieve and preparing all students with 21st century skills to be successful post-secondary and competitive in a global market. My problem focused on increasing rigor with improved instruction and assessing the relevance of activities or "homework". From the work we did today I can already see I have some changes to make - we were encouraged to refine the problem throughout the week and I think most of us have already started!

We ended today's session with a reception and dinner back at Currier, then I came in here to the dorm computer lab to write these reflections on the day. Unbelievably I have already -- in 8 hours -- collaborated with educators from New York, Connecticut, Texas, Massachusetts, Arizona, California and Australia.

Julie Storer

Julie Storer: Johnson City to Cambridge

I got two hours of sleep last night after staying up to put the final touches on my Campus Improvement Plan and Student Handbook. Both were due yesterday, but with the last-minute interviews, hiring, even a two-day tech training I had scheduled myself to facilitate before my acceptance into the RYHT Leadership Program, the drafts I presented in our administrators meeting were extremely rough. I sent the last email to my secretary with a list of work that needed to be done in my absence at about 2:30am, paid the bills online that would be due while I'm gone and then crashed until the alarm went off at 5am.

Luckily my husband was driving me into the city to catch my plane and I was at my gate with a breakfast taco and coffee with 30 minutes to spare. I used the time to call my friend and co-worker (my bosses' secretary) and thank her for the sandwich she had bought me for lunch yesterday that I ate for dinner around 6 last night -- so much for visiting over lunch! The last thing I did before I turned off my phone to board was to text my boss -- Superintendent David Shanley -- just a quick "I'm off - thanks for letting me go!"

I spent the time in flight reviewing the pre-institute materials and getting more and more enthused about the upcoming week. I had put off the pre-reading assignments just because I had so many loose ends to tie up on campus before leaving, so I read thru the articles and started on Elmore's School Reform from the Inside Out.

On arriving in Boston I got my bags, then decided to make the most of the whole Cambridge experience (quite a different setting from Johnson City, Texas) so I found a schedule and map for the T, hopped on the airport shuttle to the Government Springs station and successfully navigated transitions from the Blue Line to the Green Line to the Red Line which put me on the front steps of the Charles Hotel in Harvard Square. I checked in, got into my running gear and set out to locate the Currier House Dormitory, our general meeting place for the Institute, and the Episcopal Divinity School (EDS) where most of our classes are to be held. I ended seeing most of Cambridge, although never found what I was looking for. I enjoyed the workout, the delicious deli sandwich I bought on the way back, and the beautiful architechture of the city, but returned to The Charles unsure of where I needed to go in the morning for registration.

Julie Storer

Attendance List

The attendance list for the Leadership Program can be viewed by clicking on the titles below.

Improving Schools: The Art of Leadership
Leadership: An Evolving Vision
National Institute for Urban School Leaders
Redesigning High Schools for Improved Instruction

Posting to the RYHT Leadership Program Blog

Remember when you were a kid and you would send your friends and family postcards from summer camp? We are providing you a similar experience while at Harvard, except now you will have the ability to share those postcards with everyone on the Raise Your Hand Texas Leadership Program Blog.

We invite all selected principals to share their stories and experiences with us so we can publish them on our blog, as they happen! If you are interested in participating in the RYHT Leadership Program Blog, email your stories to Curtis Thomas at cthomas@ryht.org.

We're asking principals to:

• Share their experiences and what they have learned
  
• Send photos from the program
  
• Comment on their fellow principals' blog posts
  

Your hotel will have a business center that provides access to computers and email. Once we receive your stories, we will format and publish them on the blog for you.

If you have any questions about posting to the RYHT Leadership Program Blog, please contact:

Curtis Thomas
E Marketing and Projects Coordinator
512-476-4178
512-476-4021 (fax)
cthomas@ryht.org

RYHT Leadership Program at Harvard

Recognizing that quality campus leadership is a key component to the success of public schools, a unique opportunity is being afforded to a group of public school principals from across the state of Texas. Raise Your Hand Texas announced a plan for 100 principals, representing a diverse cross-section of school district demographics, to attend one of three leadership seminars this summer at Harvard University.

The largest initiative of its kind in the state, Raise Your Hand Texas will send Texas principals to the Summer Institutes at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Recognized as the gold-standard of training, the Institutes will expose Texas public school leaders to the foremost national and international experts in the fields of education and leadership, as well as offer them a hands-on opportunity to work alongside renowned educators from across the country. Founded in 1981, The Principals' Center at the Harvard Graduate School of Education has dedicated itself to the support, development, and improvement of school principals.

We received over 400 applications for the Raise Your Hand Texas Leadership Program. At this point all positions for the program have been filled, and we will post a list of selected candidates shortly.

We would like to thank everyone who took the time to submit an application to our program.