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By Dr. Harry Tennant
Sunday, September 16, 2012 Education Ride 365: The Challenge Of Building A Key Pillar Of Success For Continued Evolution Back in 2005 I became part of a school turnaround that was remarkable. A supervisor from my days as a teacher and administrative intern invited me to join her as an assistant principal at a struggling school where she had just been named principal. The other assistant principal had been there one year. He and I had taught together, so the three of us were familiar with one another...as we were with the school we would be leading, which was a feeder middle school for the high school we all cut our teeth at. So much went into taking this school from significant underachievement to remarkable achievement in a mere three years. A pillar to building the success we so quickly achieved was our efforts to re-institute accountability on that campus. The other assistant principal, my partner, had a very frustrating experience as an assistant principal of this school the year prior. He explained to me that the discipline volume was extremely high and the discipline approach was severely inadequate. As he explained, by the end of the week he had a thick stack of hand written referrals on his desk, on no standardized form, that despite his best efforts he had been unable to work through to any measure of sufficiency. Lacking any more productive option, he often resorted to filing unworked referrals in the trash at week's end in preparation for a fresh inundation over the new week. He and I agreed that this was a losing scenario. Student accountability could not be established absent all teacher referrals being addressed and resulting consequences being followed through 100% of the time. Teachers had lost confidence in the office, students felt emboldened by the system's inability to handle the volume, and all around the system was merely an edifice of functionality. We realized that willpower alone would not be enough to master this challenge. Luckily I had been the point person in some cutting edge computer automation and data management solutions at a couple of campuses I worked at prior to joining this struggling school. I had an association with computer programmers who could do remarkable things given insight into inefficient and inadequate processes practiced in schools now entering the 21st century, yet still utilizing 20th century methods. I set about developing a system that would help us get a handle on the volume and complexion of discipline cases on this campus. The tool we developed is now used in schools across America. It is EdClick's Discipline Manager. Over the years it has continued to evolve way beyond the remarkable utility it offered us in the early days. In those early days it professionalized our approach. It took a near unmanageable task and made it manageable. It closed communication breakdowns and increased teacher confidence in office followup on their concerns. In fact, it lent transparency to the process on so many levels. It served as a radar screen where we could see everything on our plate, the disposition of each case, the status of fulfillment, and so much more. It served to notify parents, as well as other staff members with influence over any given child or situation. Teeth grew on this relatively toothless system. Deterrence was established, lessening the number of students choosing inappropriate behaviors and, thereby, allowing us to further identify and hone in on those who were "frequent flyers" in the disruptive atmosphere that had come to characterize this campus. We turned that school around. After a mere three years it was named the (middle school) "Intel School of Distinction" for the entire country! Missing this pillar---the disciplinary climate that allowed for academic and social blossoming---this campus would have continued to be the weakest of 65 campuses in the district. Missing the Discipline Manager tool we developed, the pillar could not have been so solid. We still struggled at times to manage the volume and other aspects of a recovering discipline climate, but the task became workable and, eventually, mastered. Since then my partner and I have continued helping EdClick's Discipline Manager evolve. Major advances have been made over the years as we, and an increasing number of schools using it, contribute valuable insight into how this tool of a discipline process can become even more effective. Part of this evolution is what I referred to in my prior post...namely, functionality we have introduced to Discipline Manager allowing for more constructive, informed, and even individualized approaches to student discipline. Couple that with efficiencies the new functionality offers and you get a much more progressive approach to establishing a healthy discipline climate than even that which was a pillar of our remarkable school success story I introduced above. Exactly what that functionality is will be the subject of upcoming posts on this blog. Posted at 9:41 AM Keywords: Education Ride 365 , EdClick , Cycle Of Education , Discipline 0 Comments |