What Matters Most: A Plea for Focus

It's hard to imagine our profession becoming more complex or demanding and yet, as I write the September Ellin's Corner, another school year has begun with more burdens and distractions for teachers - more demands that steal time away from planning for and teaching children.

Friend and colleague, Bruce Morgan, and I had a conversation recently about his return to teaching full time after two years as a Reading Specialist. He laughingly told me his "in box." was two inches thick with documents requiring immediate attention. It included a treatise on the four pillars of a professional learning community, a list of the assessment processes he is required to administer this year, a request for him to write his ideas for the school's vision and mission (by next morning), a checklist to be completed on every child requiring him ... And the list went on and on. Toward the bottom of the pile was a form he was to complete outlining his professional goals for the year. When, exactly, is Bruce or any teacher to focus on his professional learning and its effect on student learning? Would that be before or after completing the student profiles, sitting on the hospitality committee, reading the article on new thinking in math pedagogy and conducting 25 parent "goal setting" conferences?

When I hear Bruce describe the conflicts he faces when trying to clear time for meaningful planning, I wonder how less experienced teachers manage. I can't help but wonder if teachers in Cornerstone schools regard their participation in the initiative as yet another set of demands. Cornerstone coaches leave notes in their "in boxes" asking for participation in study groups and suggesting they co-teach some literacy lessons based on the Cornerstone Literacy Framework. Do teachers view these offers for help as another demand on their time - a demand that drags them away from their most important work, planning for and teaching students?

It's early in the school year and I am suggesting that Cornerstone coaches, principals and staff adopt a slightly different stance toward the work in the coming year, particularly with teachers who have overstuffed "in boxes". Our colleague Edna Varner often reminds me that we can all choose our own attitude, choose our outlook on any conflict before us. What if we adopted a wholly new way of looking at the demands we face? Let's look at leadership - coaches' and principals' - as a true effort to focus on what matters most.

From the beginning, Cornerstone has been about working smarter, not harder. It has been about focusing intently on that which is most essential in classrooms. Cornerstone's goals have and will continue to converge on going deep, guiding students to study a few concepts of great import over a long period of time in a variety of contexts.

Cornerstone differs from other national literacy initiatives in that it does not provide a menu of prescriptive lessons and procedures for teachers to follow. We have synthesized the research on literacy learning and captured that which is most essential to children's elementary literacy learning in the Cornerstone Literacy Framework. The Framework is designed to support teachers who make decisions based on children's needs as well as what they know is essential to literacy learning. It is designed to emphasize simultaneous instruction in deep and surface structure systems. Deep structure systems focus on the tactics used to understand and communicate coherently. Surface structure systems focus on ways to use conventions and solve problems in reading and writing, speaking and listening. With an understanding of the three deep and three surface structure systems, planning and instruction can follow in a focused manner.

In addition, the Framework emphasizes four essential daily elements for reading, the same four for writing, speaking and listening and suggests environments, materials and learning experiences that enhance literacy experiences for children. It suggests that children can benefit from large group instruction, called Crafting sessions; prolonged daily opportunities to read and write; small, needs-based groups known as Invitational Groups in which they can focus on problem areas; and opportunity to share with and lead other students in learning what they have learned - Reflecting sessions.

The Framework: Six systems that define what students need to know and be able to do to be literate and four classroom structures in which that learning takes place. That's it! Those simple structures lead to clarity in the madness of daily professional demands. Those simple structures provide the means by which teachers can come to view themselves as confident and knowledgeable decision makers in their classrooms. Those simple structures guide coaches and principals in providing focused leadership for teachers with "in boxes" far too full.

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If we chose to look at leadership in the coming year as a process of helping ourselves and colleagues focus on what matters most and plan thoughtfully based on those priorities, we must ask these questions: Are we clear in explaining the Framework by helping colleagues understand that within the Cornerstone Framework, they must discern what matters most for their children's literacy learning and should focus on those elements? Can we sit down with colleagues and lay out a quarterly plan defining the one or two deep structure systems on which they'll focus their instruction and a corresponding set of 9 or 10 surface structure intentions on which they'll provide instruction? (See Tool Kit # 4.6 for a tool to help you in this process) Are we knowledgeable enough about what matters most for student learning to say what matters less? Are we confident enough to support teachers focusing on a few issues of great import, leaving other objectives untaught? It may be the latter that is most important when teachers are trying to do a little bit of everything to satisfy all those who make demands of them.

How can any of us presume what doesn't matter as much in children's literacy learning? No one should make such proclamations on his/her own. But, we can rely on decades of research that make startlingly clear what matters most. We can depend on the understandings replicated by researchers and skilled classroom teachers thousands of times.

That is exactly what the Cornerstone Literacy Framework was designed to do. The Framework is not a compilation of philosophical statements or objectives culled from state standards documents. It is a synthesis of myriad studies conducted by hundreds of researchers over many years. It does not represent a philosophy or particular pedagogy. It represents, simply, the most essential elements for children's literacy learning and suggests a classroom structure where it can best take place.

Do all of our colleagues understand the opportunity the Framework presents? The Framework presents an opportunity all too rare in the No Child Left Behind era, a rationale to slow down, focus, go deep and not flit from teaching one skill to another in a disconnected fashion, using a vast repertoire of activities someone once mentioned at a conference somewhere. The Framework provides the scaffolding we need to teach children how to read words, decode new ones, understand how text fits together and spend vast amounts of time in school exploring meaning, learning to think deeply about text and write cogently and compellingly. The Framework makes it possible for teachers to ensure that children understand the conventions they need to use in writing, but have venues to explore their thinking through speaking and writing.

I've visited plenty of Cornerstone schools where the poster-sized Framework intensions and outcomes hang on the wall. We have referred to those posters often, and in some cases extraordinary effort has gone into aligning the teaching intentions with local and state standards. But has that work resulted in teachers teaching with more depth and focus? That is the critical question we must ask in this, the most vital juncture of this project - its fourth year.

Coaches and principals must feel the weight of the world - or at least the weight of Cornerstone - on their backs! Your inboxes are piled high. It's difficult to know where to begin. We have a fervent desire to do well for colleagues and students and are overwhelmed with creative ideas and urgent mandates. May I suggest that we release some of that burden to a simple process? If we trust that the Framework is the most up-to-date, well-grounded curriculum or standards document we can use in our schools at this time, then we owe it to ourselves and our colleagues to devote a great deal of time to planning for instruction based on it. We can provide 10,000 demonstration lessons, but if colleagues don't know why those lessons were essential or where to go next, even the most thoughtful lessons are for naught.

Coaches, sometime in the next month, sit down with a team of teachers and talk about wiping the slate clean - putting some priorities aside for a razor sharp focus on a few teaching intentions planned in great depth over a long period of time. Then, plan the demonstrations and co-teaching you can use to make those intentions come to life in classrooms.

Principals, sometime in the next month, gather the faculty and talk about the need to focus their instruction on fewer teaching intentions of greater import. When you're walking around the school, ask this question - does the instruction I observe deeply matter for the students' lives or are they being asked to attend to skills and processes that won't matter in a month's time? You are the vital link in the process of letting go that which matters less. Our colleagues need to feel that focusing on a more in-depth curriculum is permissible and will benefit students. Teachers who have not read the research may not yet be aware of this vitally important fact.

We can choose the way we attend to the "in box." We can confidently turn our backs on the trivial and focus on that which matters most. Cornerstone staff are here to support that process and are confident that the results will speak for themselves. In the end, we will find children, who read, write, think critically, reason, analyze and evaluate information, communicate effectively in a variety of forms, and inquire systematically into any important matter. I wish you a focused year!