Winter break already! The pace of school never seems to change. It's either fast or faster and another semester is whizzing by with adults and students either clutching the safety bar, holding on for dear life or soaring, arms raised in triumph, having the time of their lives with exciting new experiences in teaching and learning.

This just seems like the time of year to pause and ask the questions, "Who is still struggling?" and "Who's not on board at all?"

A number of you have had your fall review, and so you have a recent outside perspective of your school's progress. Others of you have previous reviews, feedback from site team visits, and a variety of data, including your own collection of evidence. Now is a good time to assess the impact of leadership by determining where people are.

In every school there are those who are immediately won to the work, those who come along when they begin to see the impact of changes, and those who prefer to watch the parade from their windows. In our enthusiasm to work with the ones who first step up, we must be careful not to ignore the less eager, simply because they are unable to move forward on their own.

In the spirit of leaving no teachers behind, principals and coaches must constantly assess (and reassess) where teachers are. Drawing on the work of Frances Fuller, we offer the following as guidelines for assessing teachers' stages of concern so that leadership teams can develop a plan for mentoring the whole school.

Awareness
Teachers and are aware of the Cornerstone literacy initiative, but they have little concern about or involvement with initial change efforts.

Informational
Teachers have general awareness of the initiative and interest in learning more about it. They seem unworried about themselves in relation to the change, but are interested in substantive aspects such as general characteristics, effects, and requirements.

Personal
Teachers are uncertain about the demands of the initiative, their adequacy to meet those demands, or their role.

Management
Attention is focused on the processes and tasks of the initiative and the best use of information and resources. Issues of efficiency, organizing, managing, scheduling, and time demands are foremost.

Consequence
Attention focuses on impact of the initiative on others (like students!) in their immediate sphere of influence. The focus moves away from the individual and out toward others.

Collaboration
The focus is on coordination and cooperation with others, with implications for leadership at every level.

Refocusing
The focus is on exploration of more universal benefits of capacity building for literacy learning and school change, including the possibility of major revisions or replacement with a more powerful alternative.

It's one thing to assess where people are, but then the more important role of leadership is to move people from where they are (including those who are already good) to a place where they are doing their best work and growing. This is mentoring the organization.

For principals and school leadership teams, the work of mentoring the organization is addressing the needs of people at all levels simultaneously. The work is both creating awareness at a basic level of faculty readiness to change their classrooms while at the same time preparing them for their role in changing the district. The work is also collaborating and cooperating through the turbulence of change, accepting both the privileges and responsibilities of leadership, and making the commitment to leave no children or adults behind.

This should go without saying, but if the leadership is still at the awareness stage, we have a problem. It takes capacity to build capacity. The good news is that leading and learning go hand in hand, so principals, teacher leaders, and other faculty can build capacity together.

Trying to build capacity absent leadership is the best way to guarantee that school change will not occur. New beliefs and behaviors thrive only in environments where they can be practiced, expressed, and nurtured-environments created as a result of effective leadership.

Cornerstone is a literacy initiative, and it is also a school change initiative. We want significant improvements on state tests, but this initiative is about much more. It is about dramatically changing the way children and adults learn, the way teachers, parents, and principals teach, the way adults in all roles lead, and the way public education in general prepares each child for full membership in a civil, prosperous, and democratic society.

Everyone in the school community should experience the thrill of an exhilarating ride to children's brilliance, extraordinary teaching practice, dynamic new definitions of parent engagement, and leadership driven by a moral imperative to honor the supreme mission of public education. This just seems like the appropriate time of year for a leadership team meeting with one agenda item: "Who's on board?"

References:

Fullan, M. (2003). The Moral Imperative of School Leadership, Corwin Press, Inc.

Kelehear, Z. (2003). "Mentoring the Organization: Helping Principals Bring Schools to Higher Levels of Effectiveness," NASSP Bulletin, Vol. 87, No. 637