ActionResearch April 15, 2011
Voices of Leadership Institute for Engaging Leadership in Friends Schools 2009-2011
Melissa J. Brown Lauren Brownlee Shu Shu Costa Darrell Cotton Trefor Davies Alexa Dunnington Annette Hearing Christopher R. Kimberly Travis J. Larrabee Mary Ellen A. Newport Levan Payton Rachel Peterson Alexandra L. Rogers Russell Shaw Kirk Smothers
www.friendscouncil.org
ActionResearch What is the Institute for Engaging Leadership in Friends Schools? The Institute for Engaging Leadership in Friends Schools was created by the Friends Council on Education as a strategic network of Friends school leaders working together in a learning community. Throughout the two-year program, members strengthen their capacity and skills for the unique role of Friends school leadership and the peculiar art of sustaining the Quaker value-based ethos of a Friends school. Institute members collaborate as learning partners with heads of Friends schools and conduct action research projects that benefit the network of Friends schools. This booklet contains summaries of action research conducted by members of the 2009-2011 cohort of the Institute. What is Action Research? Action research is a dynamic process for conducting research over time using action and reflective learning to pursue understanding and, ultimately, change. The action research process is cyclic and spiral, alternating between action, critical reflection, and new action. It is an emergent process, continually evolving as understanding increases. It generally involves participation with those who actually inhabit the system in which the action research is conducted. The true measure of success in action research is learning and change at the individual level and the systems level. An “unfinished� project may, in fact, stimulate ideas for others and be useful in different contexts. The core of action research is the reflective inquiry approach, in which every turn of the spiral influences a potential transformation of practice. Through every cycle, a deeper understanding of the issue, the nature of change, and potential creative responses evolve from critically reflective learning.
Lauren Brownlee
Upper School History Teacher Sidwell Friends School, Washington, DC Profile I began at Sidwell Friends School in kindergarten and graduated in 2001. Throughout my time as a student, I was supported by the nurturing faculty who inspired me to love learning and live a life of integrity. I felt so at home in the Sidwell community that while I was in college I worked each summer at the school, and I was then thrilled to be invited to work full time in Sidwell’s Auxiliary Programs Office upon graduation. In my role as a camp director and Assistant Director of Auxiliary Programs, I learned that I appreciated the opportunity for leading within an educational setting, and I decided that I wanted to begin my journey on the path toward becoming a head of school. My first step was to begin teaching, which was soon followed by joining the Friends Council Institute for Engaging Leadership in Friends Schools. Both have been true joys and have taught me so much about myself, leadership, and my passion for Friends education. Action Research
Guiding a Friends School Community toward Answering to That of God in Everyone by Creating a Culture of Mentoring Background I have had much to be grateful for in the opportunities given to me by Sidwell Friends School. I had an experience as a student that shaped the adult that I became and then was privileged to come back into the community as a teacher. As both a student and a new faculty member, I received incredible mentoring. Now a few years into my teaching and advising, I wonder how the thoughtful support that got me through my tough teenage years and the adventures of being a new teacher can be an intentional part of our community and not only something that happens when the right people wander into each other’s lives. I sought to investigate how to create an intentional culture of mentoring among both the students and adults in the school. Exploration/Learning When my project first began, there were two areas of the school that I believed needed attention. One was new faculty mentoring and one was our advisory program. While taking the train back from visiting my mentor’s school, I entered a conversation with the woman next to me who leads workshops on mentoring in the sciences, and she helped me reach clarity on the fact that new faculty mentoring and student advising both fit within the mentoring culture of an institution. The first action of my project was to talk to the members of the administration who lead aspects of the mentoring programs we currently have. At this time, I also spoke to alumni of the school about the role that mentoring had in their experience at the school. What I learned from these conversations is that we tend to not be intentional in the ways that we implement mentoring or the Quaker tenet of answering to that of God in everyone, which is critical to the practice of mentoring. Based on my conversations, I was able to reflect to the administration what I was hearing about our current programs and where our holes are. I offered some suggestions about how we could do some easy improvements to some of our current programs, such as the lack of time for new faculty to meet with their mentors and the vagueness of our advisor description. I found a wonderful description of the ideal independent school advisory program prepared by NAIS, and shared that with administration.
One area that I was asked to look into further was our 9th grade advising program. It had been crafted three years earlier with the intention of being reviewed for its success in giving more attention to the 9th grade students, and that review had not yet happened. Ultimately, the administration asked me to broaden my survey to the advisory experience of all students. I found a well-crafted advisory survey online, and emailed its author to obtain permission to use it at Sidwell. I used that survey as the foundation for my own, and added some open-ended questions in addition to the numerical scale that the original survey questions were presented in. Older students were asked to rate their advisory experience both currently and as 9th graders. The survey suggested that further consideration was necessary for the 9th grade advisory program, and the students believed that we would benefit from more advisory time and that students would appreciate more clarity on the goals of advisory. I turned the survey results into a report that I shared with the administration. So far the results of my work have been twofold. First, the academic dean now regularly reminds the faculty of answering to that of God in each student, and includes that message in his new faculty orientation. Additionally, the new dean of students has used my suggestions about how to build more time for advisory into our schedule. These changes, although small, certainly make an impact on the culture of the school.
Next Steps Sidwell Friends School has a new head of school this year, and our Upper School has a new principal and dean of students, so the administration is taking this year to observe our current programs before taking action to improve them. However, I continue to be in conversation with the administration about ways that we can continue to be intentional about the ways in which we answer to that of God in everyone within our community and offer consistent support and mentoring. The principal has asked that I survey our peer schools about how they engage parents, and I have crafted a survey that includes that question along with others about mentoring practices. I hope to continue to be a voice advocating for mentoring in the school and reminding the community of George Fox’s wisdom.
Lauren Brownlee
Melissa J. Brown
Associate Director of Admissions and Financial Aid Wilmington Friends School, Wilmington, DE Profile I arrived at Wilmington Friends School eleven years ago after having strayed from education; WFS offered me an opportunity to work with families seeking the best possible education for their children. As Associate Director of Admissions and Financial Aid, I have developed close relationships with families through the admissions process and feel a close connection to the school community as a whole. I was once told by a colleague that I could not separate myself as a woman of color from my professional role at school. At that point I decided I should embrace both roles, and approach my work from the perspective of a woman of color, instead of trying to separate the two. Since then I have been working with families and children of color, hoping to enhance their experiences, and help them learn from my own. Action Research
Fostering a Connection with and Retaining Families of Color in a Friends School Environment Background Friends’ school communities tend to foster close relationships between constituents; the relatively small student bodies allow for a certain social comfort among families and staff. Before my children were enrolled at the school I was fully aware of the sentiment from families of color that they had less of a connection to the school than other families, causing some of them to part ways and seek an educational home elsewhere. Action research created a space to explore the developing relationships between families of color and the at-large Wilmington Friends School community.
Exploration/Learning During the spring of 2010, I was able to spend time gathering anecdotal information from my parent peers related to their experiences as parents/families here at the school. Overwhelmingly I learned of their disappointment and of their perception that families of color did not have a collective voice represented at school. With a focus on lower school families, I extended an invitation to join in conversation as an affinity group. The first meetings were well attended and generated wonderful ideas about making connections between home and school for families of color, but also amongst families of color as a whole. Follow-up during this current school year has lagged, scheduling is difficult and the schedules of our lower school parents often prevent them from being able to commit to meeting with any regularity. While interest still very much exists, the approach has shifted, and the group now focuses on insuring that there is ample representation of families of color at school-sponsored events. Emails provide reminders to families about upcoming opportunities such as the chance to actively participate in the process to appoint a a new lower school head.
During the summer of 2010, I was fortunate enough to attend the Equity Collaborative hosted by Georgetown Day School. The experience was inspiring and I returned to school with renewed energy and fresh ideas about helping families make the connection and continue to be part of Wilmington Friends School. Though parents were not able to commit to meeting times, children are here on campus, many of them during the after school hours. Since many classroom teachers present lessons in diversity throughout the year, it seemed to me that we could use some of the after school hours for activities that could reinforce ideas and language around being a diverse, inclusive environment. Out of that came Bridges, our program of activities that is designed to address a number of social identifiers through interactive exploration, shared literature and games. The main objective is to prepare students to understand differences and to equip them with the appropriate language to engage in conversation about the social identifiers. Parents and staff responded positively to the trial run of the program in the fall of 2010. For eight weeks the activity met for 45-minute periods once a week. Bridges will be fully implemented beginning in October of 2011.
Next Steps This summer will be spent with a small team working to design a curriculum for the lower school after school offering, Bridges. Specific focus will be given to designing a program that correlates with Anti-Bullying week, which will be implemented division wide in the lower school. Additional work will be done to reconvene an affinity group for families of color, with the aide of a newly hired director of diversity at the school.
Melissa J. Brown
Shu Shu Costa
Director of Admissions, Lower School Division Coordinator Princeton Friends School, Princeton, NJ Profile I have been at Princeton Friends School for six years, as a parent, a teacher, and now an administrator. What inspires me as an educator at a Friends school are the same profound beliefs that drew me to the school as a parent: a belief in the divine essence of each child, a belief in the sacred work of education, and a belief that a caring, nurturing learning community lifts us all higher than we could go alone. In reflecting on my work in both admissions and in administration, I realize that my focus – and my joy – is to nurture our small community in a myriad of ways, great and small. To me, community is both the ground that we grow upon and the warm light that we shine out into the night. Action Research
How do school leaders create an environment that honors the strong commitment of faculty and staff to their own work and builds and nurtures a trusting, ever-advancing professional community? Background As often is the case in our schools, this action research project began out of crisis. At the last faculty meeting of the year, the pent-up frustrations of several staff members exploded, exposing fault-lines and chasms in our intentionally collaborative and intimate professional community. Princeton Friends is a small, pre-k to grade 8 progressive school with an annual school-wide Central Study theme, mixed-age classes, and close working quarters. Our third to eighth graders have individual schedules and move through departments. With two standing faculty meetings each week, and two or more departmental, team, or mentor meetings weekly, our staff depend on and work in a highly coordinated fashion to give students the rich program and individual attention that PFS is known for. This end of year blow up led to questions on a number of different levels. But for me, the core concern regards the health and progress of our professional community. In particular, I wanted to know in what ways do we intentionally create our professional community? What practical measures can we implement to reduce the every day stress of individuals within our community? And finally, how can we provide ways for teachers and staff to build connections through learning with and from each other? Exploration/Learning “Their qualities compelled by heart-conversation and laughter and mutual deferrings, shared reading, facetiousness alternating with things serious, heated arguments (as if with oneself), to spice our general agreement with dissent, teaching and being taught by turns…separate sparks into a single glow.” St. Augustine, on his first intellectual community, from Confessions.
In a study by the Consortium on Chicago School Research, when 30 of the most highly-rated schools were compared to the 30 poorest, one of the best predictors of success was the quality of relationships among teachers. In Quaker schools, these relationships have an even greater weight, combining academic success with the elements of a spiritual community and the modeling of Quaker values and behaviors that extend beyond our classrooms. As part of my exploration of our professional community, we examined the ways we intentionally create our community. Using the power of appreciative inquiry, worship sharing, and poetry, we opened our September faculty meetings by revisiting what we value about our professional community, and together, rewrote the section of our handbook on our professional norms and behaviors. We hosted two informal gatherings of faculty and staff, and engaged the entire community – teachers, staff, parents, and students –
in a new beginning-of-the-year celebration, the Hoopla. We have been more mindful this year of illuminating the hows and whys of our particular professional culture, reaching out more quickly to both veteran and new teachers as we struggle in this “messy human reality of educational excellence.” (Mike Rose and Deborah Meier) Finally, we’ve added more reflection to our faculty meetings, taking more time to connect with the Spirit, to check-in with each other personally and professionally, and to share the highs and lows of our common work. In more practical steps, we’ve worked to smooth out various systems to reduce the stress on the faculty. For example, in response to our year-end faculty survey, we changed the calendar to reduce the number of “special schedule” days that often require last-minute changes to classes and teaching hours. To make our shared time more productive and more collaborative, we created a faculty meeting agenda for the entire year, mapping out areas where we need greater curricular and extra-curricular coordination, giving us precious time for both quick snap shots and longer views of individual students, allowing us space to discuss and define our particular school culture, and adding time for professional growth in the form of fledgling study groups. In all the various ways we have sought to heal, re-define, and advance our professional community, our best moments together have been when we are focused on the students, sharing insights and observations, noting growth and setbacks. Because so many of us teach the same set of students, either in this current year or over a number a years, the differing perspectives around the faculty table often allow us, in true Quaker fashion, to illuminate a “third way” to reach a struggling student, to teach and to learn from each other, and to appreciate each other’s gifts. In those moments, through laughter and, yes, dissent, we transform our professional community, as St. Augustine puts it, “from separate sparks into a single glow.”
Next Steps The work of nurturing our professional communities is never finished. Among other ideas, I would like to explore ways to become more comfortable with disagreement and constructive criticism, to see the clash of ideas as a powerful way to advance our work and to enhance, not destroy, our trust in one another. I would like to find more places to share ideas and grow professionally, to open the doors into our individual classrooms and our practice. (One method, perhaps, to try is a more systematic schedule of peer classroom visits.) And, not unlike the model we teach our students, I would like to continue to find ways for every one of us to take responsibility for and play an active role in our collective growth as a professional community.
Shu Shu Costa
Darrell Cotton
Upper Division Head New Garden Friends School, Greensboro, NC Profile My professional career began in 1998 when I was hired by New Garden Friends School, and I have truly enjoyed every moment working in a Quaker school. I taught social science in our middle school. Working with young minds committed to change was a powerful learning tool for me and defined my philosophy of education and life. In 2009, I was asked to serve as upper division head of our high school program. Currently, I am in my second year as division head and it has been an awesome experience. I use the word “awesome” because many of the students at our upper division were once my students in middle school, and I get to work with these special people all over again. Being at a Quaker school is a transformative experience. I am thankful and consider myself fortunate to work with people that I consider family. Action Research
How to Improve Retention and Enrollment in the Upper Division Background Coming into my new position as an upper division head, my initial focus was exploring ways to encourage 8th grade students to continue their Quaker education on into high school at New Garden Friends School (NGFS). After purchasing a nearby independent school in 2004, NGFS expanded to include an upper school in 2005. Previously, this other campus had not enjoyed a positive reputation in the Greensboro community. At present, NGFS is in the middle of a major capital campaign to fund construction of a new Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified arts and athletic facility for our upper division. This will, over time, allow us to increase our projected enrollment to 170 students. When I assumed the position of upper division head in August of 2009, enrollment was only 58. Currently, we have 70 students. I believe continued efforts to retain 8th grade students will increase enrollment and help bridge the gap between campuses.
Exploration/Learning When I met with our associate head of school to further examine ways of improving retention among 8th grade families, we brainstormed ways to collaborate among the middle and upper divisions of New Garden Friends School. With the support of our head of school, I started a Toastmaster’s program for 8th and 9th grade students that met on Monday afternoons for two hours. Another action step that was taken to improve retention was allowing 8th grade students to travel to the upper division for elective classes on Fridays. These classes consist of students in grades 8 to 12 and include Art, Music, Film Studies, History through Film, Model UN, Personal Finance, Cooking, Karate, etc. These two initiatives were very successful, as they gave 8th graders a snapshot of our social curriculum, while establishing relationships with upper division students and faculty. We also hosted 8 informational dinners for 8th grade parents to raise awareness and promote understanding of our academic and social curriculum. Upper division students and faculty also participated in these programs, sharing their various perspectives. Our students were very effective in representing NGFS’s upper division to prospective parents. The first step of establishing collaboration between the middle and upper division was, by and large, successful.
Next, my focus shifted from collaboration to strengthening our academic program to meet the needs of our motivated students. I met with both students and teachers, and then began to contemplate incorporating more academically advanced classes into our curriculum. After talking with others in my Leadership Institute cohort during our spring retreat in 2010, I became convinced that by strengthening our academic program, we would make the upper division more appealing to prospective families, including our own 8th grade families. After meeting with the upper division staff to garner support for inclusion of more challenging coursework, we revamped our entire schedule to incorporate honors classes into our curriculum. The process took a little over a month, and we were able to achieve our objective. I also met with 8th-grade and upper division parents to present our proposal of honors classes. The new curriculum was widely accepted, with tremendous enthusiasm. My next goal was to present the proposal to students. Initially, they were shocked that we had revamped our curriculum in response to their desire for more academic rigor. By the start of the 2010-2011 school year, we were offering 32 classes, with seven designated as honors. These included Spanish III, Honors History, Honors English 9-10 and 11-12, Pre-Calculus, Calculus and Biology. We also introduced a new online program called Virtual High School, or VHS. This allows students to take classes that are not physically located on campus. VHS offers over 200 classes, many of them honors and AP. Although we currently do not have designated AP courses, our students, upon successful completion of an honors class and the AP exam, can receive AP credit. Our curriculum also offers dual enrollment, whereby students can enroll at an area college or university and receive high school, as well as college credit for courses. Next Steps We are going to revisit our curriculum, examining non-honors (regular) classes to explore ways to achieve healthy and equitable groupings of students, some of whom need additional accommodations and some of whom do not.
Darryl Cotton
Trefor Davies
International Baccalaureate Coordinator, Mathematics Teacher Brooklyn Friends School, Brooklyn, NY Profile When I first entered Brooklyn Friends School, it was the echoes of a small Quaker camp from my youth that energized me to become a teacher. Over a decade later, I am deeply committed to Friends education. At Brooklyn Friends, I have taught mathematics in the middle and upper school, chaired the Mathematics Department, and, most recently, served as the coordinator of our new International Baccalaureate program. I also had the opportunity to serve as a trustee of our school, broadening my understanding of what is essential for a school to be healthy, from governance structures to financial considerations, and this awakened my desire to move into administrative roles. Action Research
How do schools create reflective spaces for teachers to encourage professional learning? Background In my fifth year of teaching, I remember finding a test that I designed and gave in my first year—in some ways a time capsule of my creativity and priorities as a teacher—and noted, depressingly, “Some of this is better than what I’m doing now…what happened?” Before I starting teaching, I worked with cognitive scientists who were researching student and teacher learning. I led professional development activities for experienced math teachers, helping them to become more reflective about their students’ understanding and their teaching. When I became a teacher myself, in the first hectic years I was constantly thinking and reflecting, exhaustingly so, just to figure out what I should do the following day. As I gained experience, I had more concrete knowledge to rely on (activities created the previous year, understanding of students’ typical misconceptions), and more of my practice became automatic. Such a progression is critical to make teaching sustainable; however, I wasn’t thinking as much. I was more efficient, but without on-going reflection my teaching was at risk of becoming a progressively paler copy of the previous year. In summers, I thought much about this issue and the irony of my previous professional development work. I would have lofty thoughts about creating a new model of professional development, featuring regular reflection, embedded in my practice—different from the typical, episodic conference attendance. Generally, my plans fell by the wayside as the school year started and the pressures of “doing” trumped reflection. How do we provide teachers opportunities for reflection, embedded in their teaching practice, that lead to ongoing learning?
Exploration/Learning While this is a career project in some sense, the first part of my action research was situated in my school’s Professional Development Committee. Our committee was doing important work, primarily on developing structures that would make professional development less haphazard and connected to yearly reviews. Out of these actions, my reflections were: This is important, but it does not necessarily change the model of professional development in which we are engaged. And personally, it was not addressing my need for more reflection on my day-to-day teaching. That is what I was missing. Some of my colleagues at BFS were forming a Critical Friends Group (CFG), and I joined as my next action step. It was fantastic. Sitting regularly with my peers, reflecting together over student work and our
professional dilemmas, guided by protocols that aim to help the presenter unravel his or her own truth, it was the type of reflective space that I desired. It has been a supportive, challenging, and growth-inducing experience. My next action was to talk with Russell Shaw at Abington Friends. I had heard that Abington had recently started Critical Friends Groups (along with other Professional Learning teacher groups) and it was making a major impact. As faculty became involved in such reflective experiences, a culture of professional learning was emerging. It was happening on a large scale, and faculty excitement was palpable. It was inspiring. (For more information, read “A Faculty on Fire,” Shaw, R. Oak Leaves, Fall 2009, http://www.abingtonfriends.net/CampusLife/Publications). After more reading and discussion with my CGF colleagues, our reflections were: We are ready to take this to the whole school. Still, this sits within, and will be impacted by our overall professional development program. These two different reflections sparked two action spirals. On one level, I then helped to coordinate an all-school professional development workshop on Critical Friends, where the current GFG members demonstrated our groups in action, shared our experiences and excitement, and encouraged others to join. As a result, more groups have been created, and CFG is growing. Growth has forced us to reflect upon issues such as: conflicts of interest, i.e. we want to be open to administrators, but how will this connect to evaluation; group facilitation, should all members facilitate as in our initial model, or should experienced members become permanent facilitators for new groups; and scheduling, how can we make this work within our teaching lives? On another level, I also volunteered to clerk our school’s Professional Development Committee in order to be more directly involved in the formulation of our overarching program. CFG is just one possible initiative to expand professional learning, and all such initiatives depend on school commitment and tangible support. This year, the Professional Development Committee’s initial task was to clarify our school’s professional development goals and collaboratively write a mission statement to state these priorities. Currently we are crafting a guide that will describe the opportunities we encourage. Next, we will clarify our funding for different types of activities, and ascertain how well our allocations match our priorities.
Next Steps Regarding CFG expansion, we need to continue to experiment with how to best structure our growth, and despite our desire to keep its initial grassroots feel, where teachers were choosing to reflect together and improve their own practice, perhaps we need to incorporate more formal structures as we grow. The new groups created this year have had more difficulty becoming established. As clerk of the professional development committee, I see that there is important work to be done to help initiatives like CFG become further established within our professional development model. Providing release time from teaching can formally move such efforts from being extra commitments to being regular practice. Lastly, in this research project, discussions with other schools such as Abington have been extraordinarily helpful. What we are creating internally at BFS—a clear statement of our professional development priorities and encouraged activities, along with funding information—would also be helpful information for other schools. I would like to collect such information from many schools in a booklet that showcases our various professional development models and priorities. Such a booklet could be a starting point for schools as they reflect on their own professional development programs and look to improve.
Trefor Davies
Alexa Dunnington
Middle School Language Arts Teacher, Administrative Advisor Friends’ Central School, Wynnewood, PA Profile My Jewish maternal great grandparents were fortunate to escape persecution in Europe during World War II. They arrived in Philadelphia in the 1940’s and, along with many other refugees, were immediately assisted by the American Friends Service Committee. Their gratitude and belief in the faith and practice of the Quakers led them to become convinced Friends. My grandmother was awarded a scholarship to the now nonexistent West Philadelphia Friends School, and so began a long odyssey of my family’s involvement in Quaker education. I am now the fourth generation Friends school teachers in my family, following proudly in the footsteps of my great grandmother (Friends’ Central), grandmother (Friends Select), and mother (Germantown Friends). I have taught at Friends’ Central for seven years, and my belief in Quaker education has only grown stronger. In fact, it is difficult for me to imagine not teaching in a Friends School. In addition to the challenges and rewards of teaching seventh graders language arts, I have been a coach, advisor, and member of various committees. I have enjoyed immersing myself in all aspects of school life and building relationships with the students, families, faculty and staff that comprise our community. Action Research
How does curriculum coordination and development occur in a school culture characterized by teacher autonomy? How can such coordination occur in a way that acknowledges the culture, while encouraging the kind of collaboration that improves the educational experience of students? Background In 2009, after six years of teaching language arts, my middle school principal gave me the opportunity to become an administrator. My new position would include, among other things, the responsibility of facilitating curriculum coordination in the Middle School, which had been one of the areas of improvement outlined in our recent accreditation process. The prospect of taking on curriculum coordination for a fifth through eighth grade middle school of approximately 280 students, in addition to my work as a full time classroom teacher and advisor, was exciting and daunting. I spent the ensuing months thinking about how to approach coordination in a manner that would be reflective, collaborative and supportive of my colleagues. As the new school year began, I realized that the task before me was far more complicated and nebulous than I had even anticipated. Without any existing structures in place to encourage such coordination, such as departments or a curriculum committee, the issues of limited common planning time and well-established norms of teacher autonomy were significant challenges. One of the wonderful gifts of a Friends school is the amount of freedom that teachers have to determine the specific content of their curricula and the instructional methods they use in the classroom. This latitude was something that I also valued deeply as a teacher, and I began to wonder if it was actually possible to have curriculum coordination within a school culture where teacher autonomy was paramount. Were they mutually exclusive? This became the focus for my action research project. My goal was to grapple with my respect for our culture of teacher autonomy, while helping to facilitate increased coordination of our course content, skills and instructional practices. Successfully reconciling them, I felt, would ensure the best educational experience for our middle school students.
Exploration/Learning My first steps were to talk with faculty and determine what they wanted and needed in the area of curriculum coordination. At the same time, through personal reflection, I thought a great deal about the culture of our community and what would be possible. I created a survey, sent to faculty and administrators at several Friends and independent schools the Philadelphia area, to gather information on how different schools went
about the complex process of curriculum coordination. The results of the survey were neither helpful nor encouraging. Every school went about coordination differently, admitting to various levels of success and accountability, with one administrator noting that comprehensive coordination was as mythical as a unicorn. Upon reflecting on the survey answers and my discussions with various colleagues in my school, I resolved to make my efforts specific, targeted and direct. Through conversations, reflections and data, I refocused my goals; my role was one of facilitator, rather than coordination, and I would work to encourage reflective practice and provide resources for continual curriculum development. Calling ourselves “The Fantastic Four,” a group consisting of me, the assistant principal, another teacher and our learning specialist began meeting regularly to create curriculum-related programming for faculty and in-service meetings. In one faculty meeting, for example, we asked teachers to articulate the skills they expected students to have upon entering their classrooms and those they felt students would have upon leaving their classrooms. The skills that were listed most frequently, such as notetaking, then led to further efforts to coordinate the direct instruction of those skills across the curricula of grades 5 through 8. Since those first meetings, we have tackled topics like assessment and reading comprehension, the latter with the help of the Penn Literacy Network. Last summer our entire middle school faculty read Rethinking Homework by Cathy Vaterott, and we have discussed how we might better align the purpose, frequency and expectations for homework in our respective classes. With the help of my Fantastic Four colleagues and another new administrator, we have been able to add time in our schedule for curriculum coordination and development efforts. Our middle school is organized in grade teams, and each team meets once a week to discuss students’ progress and well being. This winter, we convinced our principal to turn one team meeting per month over to the teaching teams for the express purpose of coordinating their curricula and developing interdisciplinary projects/units. We have also moved to shift faculty meetings to focus more on professional development related to curriculum and instruction, and to convey announcements that do not require discussion via email. In October, the assistant principal and I started a PLC (professional learning community) that has been meeting regularly to discuss questions of pedagogy and curriculum. Throughout my action research project, I have been both frustrated and fascinated by the challenges associated with curriculum development in a school culture characterized by teacher autonomy. I do not think that curriculum coordination and autonomy in the classroom are mutually exclusive, but to accomplish coordination while allowing teachers the freedom to make choices about the content and instructional methods of their classes, I believe there must be high-level administrators leading the way. This makes it more likely that there will be time and resources alotted for such coordination, in addition to it being openly supported and encouraged by the school leader(s).
Next Steps I plan to continue facilitating professional development opportunities in faculty and team meetings. The PLC we started is small, but it is going strong and we have been enriched by the experience of viewing student work, giving feedback on lesson plans and observing each other’s classes. Since I have learned that it is both easier and more effective to introduce frameworks that can be used across the curriculum, such as Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe’s “backward design” methods, the assistant principal and I are currently strategizing about how to introduce the concepts of Understanding by Design to our faculty, particularly the use of essential, overarching questions for individual curricula. Our idea is that teachers would create their own questions, maintaining their autonomy, but then we could see where there is overlap and, perhaps, see how questions might align vertically or horizontally. As all educators know, the quest for change and improvement in schools is a complicated, nonlinear and unending process. However, doing my action research project while making my first foray into curriculum coordination has helped me to maintain perspective and persevere despite the challenges. I am confident that action research’s cyclical process of looking, thinking, acting, and reflecting is one that I can employ in a variety of situations and contexts moving forward.
Alexa Dunnington
Annette Hearing
Lower School Principal Westtown School, West Chester, PA Profile I was introduced to Friends education and Quakerism when I enrolled my oldest child in Media-Providence Friends School. My four children were educated there, I served on their Board, and when I shifted careers to education, I began my teaching career at MPFS. After five years, I moved to a non-Quaker independent school to broaden my experiences. I was delighted to move back "home" to Westtown School nine years ago. When I chose a Friends school for my children, I wanted a place where they would be cherished and challenged. I learned, as I was drawn to Quakerism myself, that what I wanted was that my children's teachers would see and respond to that of God in each of them. That remains the central theme in my career as a teacher and leader in Friends schools. Action Research
Healthy Dynamics of Leadership and Involvement in Parent Groups Background At Westtown, all parents automatically belong to the Lower School Parents Council. As a teacher, I would sometimes see a small group of parents talking with the principal in our gathering room. I would often hear afterwards how complex and/or difficult the interactions of the meeting had been. In the year before I became lower school principal, there had been a particularly uncomfortable year of parent leadership in this group, with monthly meetings at which the Lower School principal was sometimes put on the “hot seat” about a topic that the few attendees felt passionately about, usually in a negative way. Hoping to make my life easier, my predecessor established a new leadership model, a co-clerkship of the Parents Council. Each year, one person would remain and the other would rotate off, bringing continuity to the leadership. To solidly establish this new model, the two co-clerks had agreed to serve for two consecutive years, after which one of them would rotate off and another co-clerk would be brought in. At the time we began thinking about action research, the co-clerks were in their second year and it was time to start thinking about the upcoming year and a new co-clerk. While the co-clerks were dedicated and loyal, they were not representative of the diverse population at the school. I had just attended a Parents Council event in which over 50% of the year’s dues had been used to pay for a wine and hors d’oeuvres party at an upscale restaurant. Only about thirty of the 200 parents attended the weeknight event. Thinking about all that seemed wrong with that event, I saw the opportunity to conduct action research on how to establish a healthy dynamic in the leadership of a Parents Council representative of the entire community.
Exploration/Learning I began my action research by visiting my mentor's school on a day when he was giving a presentation about the school to interested parents. There was wonderful parent attendance at the event, but I noticed that there was no racial diversity among the parents who attended that morning. It made me think about the parent events I had attended at my own school in the past year, most of which had not shown any racial diversity. I began to think that maybe my action research should be about how to diversify the attendance at parent events. I then interviewed our school-wide diversity coordinator. I also met with two members of the leadership team of our Families of Color group. One parent leader told me that she and her family felt connected to the lower
school community but that her family had little time outside of work and school, and that they were involved with other families in events like sports teams or play dates that were invisible to me. That was important learning for me as I thought of how we judge things in terms of visible connections and that I needed to think beyond my own vision. The other parent leader told me quite plainly that she didn’t feel connected to leadership of the parent group, either racially or economically. The diversity needed was racial and economic diversity. Together, she and I decided that it was important to work towards an economically and racially diverse co-clerk for the Parents Council. She agreed to see who she could identify. We remained in conversation over the following weeks. Finally, she found someone willing to step forward into a leadership role, but not for the entire Parents Council — just for a specific weekend family event. I was delighted until I realized that I needed to convince the remaining co-clerk that I had a leader for our most popular family event. After considerable conversation, the co-clerk agreed that we should send out a request for volunteers to help in Parents Council, rather than just select a co-clerk who met our fancy, and that the request should identify all the roles one could play. I put together a form, and then collected and collated the results. One parent expressed a “possible willingness” to co-clerk the Parents Council. The co-clerk was very "uncomfortable" with the parent of color who had volunteered for many reasons—“don't know her,” "she's really busy with young children,” "this is the most important family event of the year and she may or may not be reliable." I needed to be quite insistent and she agreed reluctantly. We then moved on to an even more difficult topic—the next co-clerk who would work with her this year and replace her next year. The parent who expressed a "possible willingness" to co-clerk would be a wonderful addition to the leadership. While not bringing racial diversity, she would bring some economic diversity to the mix. The current co-clerk wanted to ask another "high end" (my term) parent to co-clerk with her. Eventually I just had to just say "no" to her choice. The difficult conversations left our relationship strained, but we had some diversity in place for the upcoming year. I then began thinking about the parent who told me that many families had two working parents who couldn't attend daytime events for parents. I worked with this year's co-clerks to plan three parents events for the fall, two in the evening and one in the daytime. The first evening parent meeting was a presentation about our new math program. The attendance was quite good; the second evening event was a presentation about Quakerism, volunteering, and the budget. It was very poorly attended. As a result, the interest in scheduling a third fall event waned among the co-clerks and we didn't have a third daytime parent event. My thinking now includes the importance of "topic" to the attendance. In addition, I've had parents tell me that they wish they could have attended one or the other program, but couldn't because of other obligations. As a result, I posted the Powerpoint presentation I had put together for the math evening on our website. I'm working to see if we could capture any future programs and put them on our website for those who can't attend.
Next Steps My thinking is evolving again, in two ways. First, all of the orchestrating of change has come from me. How do I get others interested and involved in working to diversify our leadership and find topics/events that will be of high interest to all parents? Second, what protocol could be established to make sure leadership in Parents Council is not self-perpetuating and that all parents feel equal access and representation? I plan to survey parents to identify topics of interest. I also plan to survey peer schools to see how they maintain a parents' organization that is healthy and dynamic.
Annette Hearing
Christopher R. Kimberly
Upper School Principal Moorestown Friends School, Moorestown, NJ Profile I have been dedicated to the field of education for fifteen years, and I have been involved with the Religious Society of Friends for an even longer period. However, it was not until recently that I was able to combine my passion for both areas when I joined the community at Moorestown Friends School. I firmly believe that learning is best when the experience is balanced, which often requires one to hold onto seemingly contradictory goals (e.g., academic rigor and spirituality, responsibility and compassion, firm standards and individual considerations, etc.). Friends schools are ideally suited to offer this educational balance, and I feel fortunate to not only work at one but to also have my children attend. Action Research
Stewarding the evolution of an established and multi-faceted program: How do you hold onto meaningful elements of the past while allowing a program to grow in operational and strategic dimensions? Background Intensive learning (IL) is a program that happens each March at Moorestown Friends School. We take six days away from the classroom to engage the students in various non-traditional experiences ranging from service learning in Costa Rica to performing maintenance on an oyster schooner in the Delaware Bay. Historically, the program has been run in a decentralized way: individual teachers or small groups of teachers develop and implement their programmatic ideas each year. The programs were grade specific and theme based (e.g., all 9th graders go to Philadelphia to learn about homelessness and work with community-based groups). However, when the upper school was expanded from 48 students per grade to 72 students per grade almost a decade ago, it made grade-specific programming more difficult. Gradually new, small-group programs were added that pulled students away from the original full-grade (e.g., AP English students touring London), and the program began to lose its unity and connection to a single theme. Since I was new to the Moorestown Friends School community last year, my action research with the IL program began with learning about the program’s history. As I learned more about the program’s past, goals, and current operation, it emerged as a good topic for action research. My work has focused on both the operations of the IL program along with ongoing attention to the program’s mission.
Exploration/Learning My action research began with an effort to learn how the IL program operated and to untangle its complicated history. I met with several teachers and administrators to hear their perspectives about the program and learned that members of the school had wide-ranging and often disparate thoughts about the program. However, one issue consistently emerged from these meetings: the orchestration of the IL program (i.e., teacher assignments, student placement, introducing new program offerings, etc.) needed to be clarified and streamlined. As a result, I discarded my plan to wait a year before implementing changes and instead clarified and formalized areas of the program’s operation in time for spring 2010.
Student and teacher surveys at the conclusion of the IL program last spring were largely positive; the changes were well received. However, the survey results pointed to other operational areas that needed attention (e.g., earlier assignment of students and teachers to allow for the purchase of international airline tickets, clearer guidelines to help teachers develop student applications for the programs in high demand). With the survey results to guide our planning, I worked with a small group of faculty to adjust the IL planning schedule. We implemented the earlier time frame last fall. In addition, I worked closely with certain faculty to develop a clear student application process for their programs. The earlier time frame helped with the planning of international trips and allowed students to see the full range of IL program options at the outset. (In the past, students applied for the international IL program options before they knew what the domestic alternatives were, because the latter options were developed months later.) Anecdotal feedback regarding these changes has been positive, but it has become clear that the program’s mission needs to be more clearly defined. A clearly articulated mission for the IL program could be used to guide program development (e.g., which trips are appropriate and which are not?) and to guide student placement (e.g., criteria used in student applications).
Next Steps I have recently formed a task group to work with me in refining the mission of the IL program. We are in the midst of sorting out the various goals: service, leadership development, pursuing student passions/interests, reflection, broadening one’s perspective by experiencing different cultures, etc. In future meetings, we hope to identify if/where these goals might be emphasized. Should all ninth graders participate in the same experience? Should the senior experience focus on leadership? Might seniors play a role in developing the programs? With the mission clarified, it will be important to return to the mechanics of the program. How will program ideas be proposed and evaluated? Where choice is involved, how will students be selected for each program? How do we ensure that the adult leaders for international trips are addressing all the many important aspects of planning such a trip? When I first began engaging with the IL program, I envisioned a much more linear change process. However, I have found that the action research model, while at times messy and seemingly less efficient, has proved to be a thorough and effective technique for bringing about thoughtful change.
Christopher R. Kimberly
Travis J. Larrabee
Upper School Director William Penn Charter School, Philadelphia, PA Profile Sixteen years in education at several great schools have allowed me to become a better teacher and administrator. Penn Charter is now helping me become a better educator. In this Friends school, simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality, and stewardship are not buzz words in a mission statement or an educational strategic plan. These core values are the education; they are the mission. As a leader in a Quaker school it is impossible to ignore these foundational principles. However, in our increasingly materialistic, impatient, and fast-paced world, we must be vigilant in upholding these values. A mentor once told me that good schools, in their essence, should be “counter-cultural.” In that vein, I have become very interested in the testimony of simplicity and how that applies to today’s Quaker schools, particularly at the secondary level. Action Research
What role does Simplicity play in the life of a Friends secondary school? Background Since I began working in independent secondary schools in 2003, I have been amazed at the complexity of the lives of adolescents and the schools they attend. The academic options are becoming increasingly rich and diverse, not to mention the wide array of co- and extra-curricular opportunities at play. Often, the tough choices students and families must make involve what not to do. In many respects, the wide array of options is incredibly positive, as it offers multiple avenues to accessing a great education. There is, however, a darker side to this phenomenon. For a variety of reasons, some students try to do too much and set unreasonably high expectations for themselves. The college application process has decidedly mixed influences on the choices of students and families, and schools too often add interesting and exciting classes and programs, without giving thought to taking anything away. The resulting pressure on time and schedule is significant. This leaves many students, families, faculty and administrators feeling overwhelmed, harried, and stressed. Educators have many conversations about the complexity, competing pressures, and stress associated with independent secondary school education. These can be thoughtful, interesting and cathartic interactions, but very little changes as a result. Having developed a better understanding of Quakerism and Friends education, I wanted to learn more about the testimony of simplicity and the role it plays in the life of a Friends secondary school.
Exploration/Learning To learn about the Quaker testimony of simplicity, I first consulted Quaker Faith and Practice and A Quaker Book of Wisdom. The concept of simplicity was not very simple; there was quite a range of definitions, implications, and applications. Early on, the concept of simplicity was a protest against indulgence and opulence, be it in attitude, dress, or material possessions. It was a contribution in Faith and Practice by Thomas Kelly that truly captured simplicity as a reaction to a hectic, complex pace of life. Kelly wrote in 1941, “Too many of us have too many irons in the fire. We get distracted by the intellectual claim to our interest in a thousand and one good things, and before we know it we are pulled and hauled breathlessly along by an over-burdened program of good committees and good undertakings….Quaker simplicity needs to be expressed not merely in dress and architecture and the height of tombstones but also in the structure of a relatively simplified and coordinated life program of social responsibilities.”
A series of conversations with our associate head of school, Stephanie Judson, helped me see that simplicity also involves being careful not to attend to things that take one from one’s center, from one’s relationship with God. Stephanie also linked simplicity to another Quaker testimony – integrity. If we are distracted or consumed by things that take us away from our center, then our integrity might be more easily compromised. As a query from Yardley Friends Meeting posed, “How do I manage my commitments so that over commitment, worry, and stress do not diminish my integrity?” It was time for me to begin to explore how simplicity was or was not applied to our work in Friends schools. I began with my upper school faculty, and the results were not surprising. During an hour-long session at an evening faculty meeting, I read the Thomas Kelly quotation and a few others out loud. I then gave the faculty several minutes to reflect individually on questions relating to their own definitions of simplicity and how it did or did not apply to their personal and professional lives. I then engaged the faculty in an activity centered around the statement, “We practice and model simplicity in our upper school.” Of the approximately 65 people at the meeting, 60 stated that they either slightly or strongly disagreed with this statement. The other 5 faculty members stated that they slightly agreed with this statement. We then had a discussion about what led us to these opinions. Citing packed schedules, advanced classes, overemphasis on college choice, parental pressure, and trying “to be all things to all people,” the vast majority of the faculty felt that we could better practice and model simplicity. We did discuss places and programs such as Meeting for Worship, advisory, assembly, and service where the school intentionally provides the time and space for community members to take a breath and re-establish and re-engage our center. There were two other important threads of this faculty conversation. The first was a sentiment expressed by a few that as a large, independent, college-preparatory school, complexity and a fast pace was all but inevitable. Related to this point was a statement that a busy life and simplicity are not mutually exclusive concepts. My next step was to expand this conversation and seek the views of another Friends high school faculty. At Wilmington Friends School, I met with the head of school, the director of the upper school, and a group of eight faculty members. I ran a discussion similar to that described above, and the results were similar. Many felt that simplicity is not well understood, and that it should be practiced and modeled better in the upper school. As at Penn Charter, the feeling was that simplicity was seen as important to the school community, but not often enough lifted up as a priority. My conversations with these two faculties were productive and enlightening. Reflecting on them, however, I became worried that I was falling into the same trap that had led me to this action research project. I was having great conversations about the stressors in our school lives, but was I leading any efforts to alter the dynamic? I wanted to do something that would lift this issue up and broaden the conversation. When I read about a documentary called The Race to Nowhere, I decided to act, and I organized a screening for faculty and parents at Penn Charter. The film shines a spotlight on the stress felt by adolescents, parents, and teachers as a result of being over-scheduled and over-extended. About 450 people (about half were from Penn Charter) came to the screening, and I facilitated a discussion after the film. While I do not have the space here to relay all of the issues discussed in the film and ensuing discussions, I feel that I successfully accomplished my goal of lifting up the issue and beginning a discussion about how a school community, particularly a Friends school community, can begin to address some of these concerns.
Next Steps There are many more steps to take, including bringing the students into the loop on conversations and potential solutions. While I do not yet have many tangible results from this action research project, I do have a much better understanding of simplicity. I also have greater clarity on the challenges Friends schools face in honoring, modeling, and educating our students on making choices and leading lives that do not steer us away from our center and what is truly important in our lives. And, I have engaged others in keeping this conversation alive, so that we can support each other in staying centered and addressing related concerns.
Travis J. Larrabee
Mary Ellen A. Newport
Assistant Head of School and Director of Admissions Olney Friends School, Barnesville, OH Profile I trained as an evolutionary biologist, and if I have any expertise in teaching (7 years) and administration (10 years) it is what I have learned from exemplary colleagues and supervisors. The “life all in one place” aspect of boarding school has been fulfilling, overwhelming, productive and challenging. After my third year, I moved from Dean of Academics to Director of Admissions. Action Research
New Directions for Olney Friends School Background Olney Friends School is a well-kept secret of Friends education. The school has had a farm and an international student body for 60 years, long before these programs were selling points. The school was “laid down” by Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative) in 1999 and re-opened under a new Board of alumni trustees. The school maintains a vibrant academic program with a faculty dedicated to offering an excellent curriculum that celebrates the fantastic environment we are in. Three main issues complicate the enrollment picture: ongoing deferred maintenance on the physical plant, location near a small town that has limited social and recreational offerings for young staff and students, and a small endowment that is not used for operations. Since the year 2000, enrollment has grown (from 25 students to a high of 68 in 2008, average of 59) and fundraising has grown substantially ($750,000/year on average in the last 10 years). The school has come to rely more on international students for tuition (40% international in recent years), has had to award more financial aid in order to enroll Quaker students, and has come to rely more heavily on the annual fund. Enrollment has dropped to 46 students. Exploration/Learning Exploration 1: In November 2009, Olney Friends School administrators gathered for a strategy session on future financing of school operations. I created a model showing linkage between enrollment, average percent financial aid award, and annual operating income. We agreed that the tuition-funded model of independent schools was not a viable one for Olney. The school was in need of “something” that would generate outside funder interest, create income, or both. Olney could stay afloat, but it would be difficult to get ahead with the current funding scenario. Action 1/Reflection 1: It was clear to me that Olney needed outside help to assist the board in creating a new way forward. I created a plan to develop a Summit on the future of Olney Friends School, and the admin team agreed. We asked the Board if we could plan the next retreat in order to make the case for an alternative funding scenario. Aside from an influx of ideas, a Summit could generate wider interest in the school and increase the pool of candidates for leadership positions. I suggested that a portion of the retreat could take place at the home of Head of School, Rich Sidwell, in order to showcase a possible resource for the school (1000 acres of Raven Rocks property 20 miles from the school) and allow a more reflective space away from school.
Action 3/ Reflection 3: The next day, the Admin Team invited the Board to host a Summit on the future of OFS in October 2010. I felt strongly that school leadership needed outside help: energy, ideas, leadership and creativity. The school would invite entrepreneurs, environmentalists, artists, educators, and interested others to help the Board scheme about a new vision for the school. We brainstormed whom to invite to campus, divided into planning committees and directed our Director of Communications (DC) to write grants in support of a Summit. Then we rested, but not for long. As we anticipated taking the plan for a Summit to the faculty and the student body, I explored the Quaker process of threshing as a method for corporate discernment. Action 4/Reflection 4: My powerpoint presentation to faculty and students explained financing concerns, the Summit, and threshing. Despite initial enthusiasm, I was curious about how difficult it was for faculty and students to keep clear about the purpose of the Summit. The Admin Team explored ways to empower the staff to participate. In the end, they were eager to help. Our DC developed a website with opportunities for community interaction, including an invitation to submit ideas for the future of Olney. Invitations went out to our parent, alumni and supporter constituencies. Heads of Friends schools across the country were invited. We had three keynoters and four sets of panelists, who gave exceptional presentations. Before, during and after the Summit, over 70 ideas were presented for the Board to consider. We had two threshing sessions, with participation across all groups invited to the Summit. Students were delightfully vocal. The Board took the outcomes of the Summit to their January 2011 retreat. Consensus emerged that “Olney should stay Olney,” with increased focus on serving the needs of international students, including the possibility of developing a summer program for English language learners. The Board directed the Admin Team to increase enrollment, increase annual fund donations and write grants in support of program improvement. Reflection 5: I observed that we had not provided enough time for panelists and speakers to interact. In the context of what I now know from Switch (Heath and Heath, 2010), the Board was likely confronted with too many choices in order to move forward in a novel direction. I wish the Admin Team had reviewed with them the data and documents from the January 2010 retreat before going into the January 2011 retreat. My prayer throughout the process has been “ask the Olney Spirit for help,” and I am hopeful that the plan for the future of the school is still unfolding.
Mary Ellen Newport
Lee Payton
Social Studies Department Chair William Penn Charter School, Philadelphia, PA Profile In many ways, Quaker education has been the story of my life. I was a “lifer” at Friends Select and I am now in my 10th year in the Social Studies department at Penn Charter, my first as chair. My experiences in Quaker schools led me to the teaching profession, and later to become a “convinced” Friend. I even met my wife at a Quaker school. It should come as no surprise that I think Quaker schools are important institutions. They have shaped my personal and professional life in ways that are too numerous to catalogue here. It is with this understanding that I undertake my work at Penn Charter. Quaker schools are truly impactful institutions. I feel honored to follow in the footsteps of those that have shaped my life as a student and as an educator and I pray that my small contribution to the long history of Friends education will be felt by others. Action Research
Creating a Truly Interdisciplinary Team-taught American Studies Course Background My action research was motivated by the desire to make good on an institutional goal that had seemingly gone away after an initial burst of energy several years ago. The prior institutional goal was to develop interdisciplinary experiences within our curriculum. There were some early attempts at this in different quarters of the upper school and there are a small number of electives that are interdisciplinary in nature, but like many ideas in schools, there was not enough sustained energy to integrate this model more fully into our curriculum. So the goal of my work here was simple: create a truly interdisciplinary, team-taught American Studies course, combining English and History. I hoped to explore, with a colleague, how we might plan such a class, make a formal proposal, and begin the work of preparing the course for the following school year. I wanted to see how various members of the community would respond to a new idea. I wanted to explore what it would be like to share in the thinking, planning, and eventual implementation of this course with a colleague from another discipline. I also wanted to think carefully about how students might benefit from a more holistic approach to learning as opposed to the more formal discipline specific mode in which many of our courses are taught. Exploration/Learning My first few steps in the process involved communicating to various administrators and a few colleagues my desire to teach the course and the reasons I felt this would be a good fit in our curriculum. I anticipated a certain amount of hesitance. Not only was this something that was new for our program, it involved sharing teaching responsibilities in ways that rarely occurred at our school. During this initial round of conversations, I was pleased to find that those I spoke to were open, supportive, and even curious. It seems that they were intrigued by the idea of a close partnership between teachers from different disciplines. They also seemed to respond positively to the sheer possibility of doing something different. These initial reactions were affirming, not just for the course itself, but personally, as I attempted to implement a significant change in our curriculum. With positive winds in my sails I turned to my counterpart in the English department and we began exploring all of the potential benefits of approaching American history and literature in this interdisciplinary format. It became clear that having both perspectives in the room (the historical and the
literary) would benefit our students immeasurably. What better way was there to seek a full understanding of a text like Invisible Man than to discuss the historical era that surrounded the events in the story and the writing of the novel itself? It was the answer to questions like these that began to take over our planning meetings. My colleague and I would set out each week to make practical plans for the course, like what periods to study and what books to read. However, as we began our conversations, we inevitably veered into some of the most enriching and stimulating conversations I have ever had with a colleague. Each conversation was like weaving the strands of a rich tapestry. It didn’t take long for my colleague to recall historical events and for me to critique aspects of literature that we hoped to put in front of our students. We quickly learned that our own conversations about these issues would be a powerful model for our students and could even be a powerful model for our faculty colleagues about partnership and cooperation. As the actual planning of the course continued, I began the more formal process of proposing the course for the upcoming school year. While I knew I could count on the earlier enthusiasm I received for the course, this process would require far more strategic thinking. This was a wonderful experience as this was completely new territory for me. While I had created elective courses prior to this, the American Studies course would be a full year endeavor and required a number of levels of approval before it could ultimately be taught. Envisioning numerous scenarios and how the course could be implemented was key in this process. Staffing considerations, the impact that a cohort model would have on students, to the impact the course would have on how we approach the humanities in general all had to be addressed. Many bases had to be covered and this kind of process is not usually the way I operate. The methodical planning and thinking that I engaged in were “out of preference” for me (at least according to my Myers-Briggs profile), and I was surprised that I was able to do so well in a domain that is not one of my strong suits. However, it was this kind of thinking and planning that led to the course’s ultimate approval.
Next Steps There is still much work ahead to make this course a reality. First and foremost, the staffing arrangements necessary to offer the course must be made. This is a decision outside of my purview. Also, the course will be offered as an elective, so its offering will be contingent on getting a critical mass of students to sign up. If both of the above work out in my favor, there will be much time spent preparing for the course. In other words, a lot of reading. Further down the road, if this course is as engaging and powerful as I feel it can and will be, it may change the way our school looks at interdisciplinary teaching. It may push the English and Social Studies departments closer together and encourage others to seriously consider these kinds of partnerships.
Lee Payton
Rachel Gomez Peterson Director of Community Service Friends Seminary, New York, NY
Profile What drew me to work at Friends Seminary was the line in the school’s mission adapted from Faith and Practice: The Book of Discipline of the New York Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (1974), "Guided by the ideals of integrity, peace, equality and simplicity, and by our commitment to diversity, we do more than prepare students for the world that is: we help them bring about the world that ought to be." I’ve always been an idealist, and, as an educator, believe that schools are unique places where students, teachers, and parents work together to plant the seeds of tomorrow in the minds of young people. When I was a classroom teacher, my goal was to make the connection between the classroom and the world beyond through engaging students in a critical study of the past. Today, I work with teachers K-12 and across all disciplines to develop meaningful service-learning opportunities, ultimately connecting students with the world beyond Friends Seminary. Through the curricular framework of service-learning where students engage in meaningful study of the context in which we serve, performing community service in New York City and beyond, and encouraging the development of student service initiatives in the middle and upper schools, students are through experience looking at problems facing the world today and developing solutions to ‘bring about the world that ought to be.’ Action Research “A curriculum as it develops should revisit the basic ideas repeatedly, building upon them until the student has grasped the full formal apparatus that goes with them.” - Jerome Bruner
Developing a meaningful Middle School Service Program that Serves as the Link Between the Lower School and Upper School Programs Background Prior to the creation of the Director of Community Service position at Friends Seminary, the focus of the community service program was counting the number of hours students in the middle and upper schools completed each year. While there were a few student-service initiatives in the upper school, and service-learning projects in the lower and upper schools, they were in place mostly due to student or teacher interests. A committee was formed in 2005 to research community service programs at other schools, Quaker and non-Quaker, and develop the position I currently hold. Working with the Faculty Committee on Community Service, we created a three-pronged program in the upper school that consisted of community service opportunities, service-learning opportunities, and student-service initiatives. The rationale for each facet was to first introduce students to problems facing the world today through meaningful community service activities, then help students understand why it is important to serve by providing opportunities within the curriculum to explore the context behind service work, and, finally to support students in developing creative solutions to social problems through student-service initiatives. If this is the end goal, empowering students to create the world that ought to be, what then should the program look like in the middle and lower schools to arrive at this point?
Exploration/Learning After two years of focusing on the lower and upper schools’ service programs, I began to study the middle school. It became clear that the “weak link” of the Friends Seminary Service Program was the absence of truly meaningful service opportunities in the middle school. Not only meaningful service opportunities, but also opportunities that built upon the topics studied in the lower school and prepared middle school students for what lay before them as they move on to the upper school at Friends Seminary. In working with the middle school head and the then middle school community service coordinator we launched what was to become a semisuccessful advisory service program in the 8th grade. Clouded by our own excitement at developing a potential solution to the lack of service in the middle school, we asked advisors to participate in a program that required their leadership but did not include their voice. The year ended with a number of successful advisory projects, but a frustrated faculty. In developing a pilot middle school advisory program, we overlooked input from the faculty who would be primarily responsible for overseeing this new program. As one would expect, there was much resistance and resentment at being handed a program that included no input from key stakeholders. While the advisors moved forward with overseeing some successful projects, we did not foster the buy in or excitement the program would need to move forward. When we asked for feedback at the year’s end, this was the primary feedback we received. Most advisors felt that including a service project as part of the advisory curriculum was a good idea, however they expressed serious concerns about the initial process. In considering how to balance the need to develop the Middle School Service program with honoring faculty input, I decided in the fall of 2010 to ask the Academic Team (the principal, division heads, and other upper level administrators) for the permission to create an ad-hoc committee consisting of key Middle School faculty to develop a comprehensive middle school program. While the Administrative Team would not provide time during the school day for this committee to meet, they did agree to a stipend to compensate faculty time. The only common time for those who agreed to serve on the committee to meet was the first day of winter break. The five of us sat around the table and engaged in one of the more productive meetings I have been a part of during my time at Friends. Central to our discussion was the question, how can we best serve the students and work towards realizing the mission of the school through incorporating a more comprehensive service component to the middle school program. The program developed by this committee of interested and committed faculty recognizes the connection between service work and our school’s mission while at the same time honors the complex lives of teachers and students at Friends Seminary. The program seeks to provide the professional support necessary to encourage teachers to incorporate service-learning into the curriculum through a professional grant program and placing service-learning at the center of all curriculum-revision conversations currently taking place at Friends. The recommendations also take into consideration the importance of students working collaboratively to identify a need either within in the Friends community or beyond it and develop a plan of action to address that need. Finally, the committee recommended to the Academic Team to create a Middle School Coordinator of Service position to support further development of the overall Community Service Program at Friends Seminary.
Next Steps At the time of writing the summary for my action research project, the recommendation made by the ad-hoc Middle School Committee have been presented to the assistant principal and middle school Head. They will take the recommendations to the Academic Team to determine what is feasible for the upcoming year. The student programming pieces of the plan will be presented to the middle school faculty at the next faculty meeting for feedback.
Rachel Gomez Peterson
Alexandra L. Rogers
Third Grade Teacher Sprague Elementary School, Wellesley, MA Profile I worked in a Quaker school for six years before entering public education. My time in a Quaker education setting deepened my understanding of social justice education and anti-bias curriculum work to support the development of an equitable and supportive classroom for all children. I believe that helping students and their families understand a shared human experience across cultures and beliefs prepares them to enter the world as thoughtful and compassionate citizens and community members. Action Research
Closing The Gap: Supporting Urban Students and Families in Suburban Schools Background The Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO) is a state funded voluntary desegregation program. It was established in 1967 and has a director for the K-12 program and coordinators for the elementary, middle and high school levels. The three primary goals of the program are: to provide new and diverse learning experiences for suburban children, to provide greater understanding and cooperation between urban and suburban communities and to provide an opportunity for quality integrated public school education for urban children from racially imbalanced schools in Boston and Springfield Massachusetts. Sprague Elementary School is a relatively “young” school in the Wellesley, Massachusetts public school system. It was established in 2002. Each morning students are “bussed” in from Boston to go to the Sprague School. Each afternoon the same students are “bussed” back home. Between 3-3:30 p.m. “Boston Bus” students wait in one classroom in the school to be picked up by their bus. Two teachers staff the “bus room” on a rotational basis from Monday through Friday. Recently, regular conflicts have arisen during the after school time that students wait for their afternoon bus. To counteract this, students have been separated from one another; two or three students spend time with their classroom teacher or the school principal instead of joining the larger group each day. I am interested in how schools successfully support and meet the needs of all students and their families, who are inevitably from diverse backgrounds with varied needs and realities.
Exploration/Learning My transition from a Friends educational setting to a non-friends setting naturally brought with it comparisons between the two. I had initially intended to look at faculty culture in a Friends school setting. When I left the Friends school setting my research transformed into how the non-friends school culture supports students and families without the explicitness of an anti-bias curriculum and race-based affinity groups. The Friends ethos of reflection and support of students and families from diverse family structures and racial backgrounds was something I carried with me as I entered the new institutional setting. As a new member of the Sprague School community, I was immediately struck by the demographics of the population that both attends and works at the school. The school is almost entirely white. As a staff member who is required to staff the Boston Bus room one day per week, I was also struck by the difficult dynamics and
tensions that exist between the students involved in the METCO program. All of the METCO students are black, most of them are boys. Observing these demographic facts, the “age old” segregation of power of white adults over a small group of black, mostly male children, made me wonder how this program was successful and in what ways was it challenged? During my time at Cambridge Friends School, I had the opportunity to participate in multiple anti-bias trainings. I also had the opportunity to work in a school where there were race-based affinity groups. As a white staff member at the school, I was educated about my role, which is to be an ally to both faculty and students of color and to create a culture that supports learning and development of all children. The primary piece of learning I took from these experiences was that the most fundamental component of creating an equitable classroom and supportive school community is building relationships both with individuals and broad constituencies. There were many “side happenings” and learnings that developed during the course of my research. I took the opportunity to speak to a former FCE Leadership Institute participant to discuss his transition from a Friends to a non-Friends educational setting and the differences and similarities he experienced in terms of culture. He reflected that he missed the unifying quality of working in a faith-based, mission-driven school. He noted that at times it was difficult to “leverage” a shared vision among a divergent group of individuals to move a programmatic goal or agenda forward. I realized that if I were going to build relationships with students in the METCO program, it would require having some portion of time to get to know them in a less “charged” setting. I also realized that valuable time could be added to their academic learning by taking 20 minutes at the end of each day to work on academic tasks that they found challenging in the classroom. I initiated an action step of meeting weekly with one student who is a student at my grade level, but not in my classroom.
Next Steps There are many ways for me to continue to learn about this topic. I plan to continue my work with the individual student I have been meeting with and see where this work leads me in terms of possible programmatic input I may offer to the director and coordinators of the program. I also plan to approach other white educators in the building to discuss the ways in which we can help support the mission/aims of the METCO program within our school. Time is a precious commodity in any school. Relationships require diligent commitment to their growth. My hope is that the opportunity to have additional time with students and commitment of educators to build relationships with students and families will yield positive results for the METCO program.
Alexandra Rogers
Russell Shaw
Head of School Georgetown Day School, Washington, DC Profile I joined the Leadership Institute cohort while serving as Middle School Director and Assistant Head of School for Academic Affairs at Abington Friends School. Shortly after the first Leadership cohort retreat, I was named Head of School at Georgetown Day School in Washington, DC, where I am currently in the first year of headship. I have worked as an instructor for Voyageur Outward Bound School in Minnesota, a social studies teacher at Thornton Friends School in Maryland, and Dean of Students at Woodside Priory School in California. I am a graduate of Yale University and Columbia University’s Teachers College. My wife, Rabbi Shira Stutman, and I have three children. Action Research
Navigating the Transition to School Headship Background The focus of my action research has been my transition into my new Head of School position. I’ve lived this transition daily, beginning when I entered the search for the GDS Head of School position in August of 2009, accepted the position in November of that year, and began preparing to assume my new role in the subsequent months. My Leadership Institute journey has paralleled my transition out of Friends schools and into a rich, rewarding, very challenging experience as a new head of school. Exploration/Learning In preparation for my transition, I drew on the wisdom of several current and former heads of Friends schools. I am indebted to Rich Nourie (Abington Friends), Bruce Stewart (Sidwell Friends), Darryl Ford (Penn Charter), Bryan Garman (Wilmington Friends), Woody Price (formerly of Abington Friends), Lisa Darling (formerly of Wilmington Friends), Rob Lake (formerly of Wilmington Friends), Matt Glendinning (Moses Brown), David Felsen (Friends Central), Rose Hagan (Friends Select) and Dick Wade (Germantown Friends) for sharing a wealth of wisdom with me about the role of Head of School. In-person or phone interviews with each of these heads provided me with a range of insights and perspective in preparation for beginning my new role. Several of those listed have continued to provide insight and support in recent months, as I’ve taken on the challenges of a new headship. One of the most inspirational quotes that I refer to each day came from Lisa Darling, recalling the first year of her first headship. “Each night when I went to sleep, I would tell myself, ‘that’s another day I don’t have to be a first year head of school!” While it would be trite to say that “everything I needed to know about running a school I’ve learned in Friends schools,” there is no question that my work at GDS is informed daily by my experiences in Friends education. The silence of Meeting for Worship reminds me that in the whirlwind of my job, taking time for quiet, to center and reflect, is critical. I’ve also brought with me the idea that Truth emerges from a group—that no one individual owns the right answer when grappling with challenging and complex issues in school.
Next Steps I have noticed the challenge of translating the collaborative decision-making style I used easily and comfortably with a middle school faculty of twenty-five in a Friends school to a school of 220 employees on two campuses.
I continue to believe deeply in process. I am exploring the new terrain of decision-making in a large, nonFriends School deliberately—recognizing that there are some decisions that need to be made with full community buy-in, and others that simply need to be made. Georgetown Day School has the distinction of being the first racially and religiously integrated school in Washington, DC, and has been a national leader in social justice and equity work. There is resonance between this work and the values that inform so much of the essence in Friends education. As I navigate a Washington, DC culture that can sometimes tend toward reflexively taking strong positions on one side of an issue or the other, I am striving to hold complexity, embracing the spirit of continuing revelation. At the heart of my work is to recognize the Light in others with whom I come in contact, even in the most trying circumstances. This is a daily mindfulness practice, one that I call upon again and again, and even remembering to trust in my own Light and knowing that can sometimes be muddied or dampened by the pace and scope of my new responsibilities. A spiritual connection, to the spirit within me and within the others with whom I work and serve, is an essential ingredient to my leadership. And so while I no longer work in a nominally spiritual school, calling on a spiritual foundation is proving essential to my work.
Russell Shaw
Kirk Smothers
Upper School Director Mary McDowell Friends School, Brooklyn, NY Profile I spent most of my career in secular progressive schools that shared many values with Friends education. As a Klingenstein student, I completed research for my Ed.M. degree entitled Are Quaker Schools Friendly: An examinationof Quaker teachers’ satisfaction regarding faith and practice in Friends schools. I have been a teacher, college admission officer, director of college counseling and division head. I first came to Mary McDowell as a trustee and later was invited to become the founding director of the upper school. I am a member of Brooklyn Monthly Meeting and the father of a Brooklyn Friends School student. Action Research
Founding a Quaker Upper School for Students with Learning Disabilities Background Mary McDowell Friends is one of the foremost schools in New York City for students with learning disabilities. The school grew from five students in the basement of the Brooklyn Meetinghouse in 1984 to roughly 200 elementary and middle school students in two school buildings in 2007-2008. In response to requests from parents, the Board undertook a yearlong discernment process to consider adding a high school. In the fall of 2008, the Board announced that the school would add an upper school, making it the first K-12 Quaker school for students with learning disabilities. Exploration/Learning The opportunity to create a high school program from the ground up has been a gift. The overall project is too large to detail here, so what follows is an accounting of the building blocks (vision, curriculum, admissions, and the search for space). The mortar between the bricks (hiring, financial planning, public relations, school politics, and other aspects) has been essential, but doing it justice is not possible in this report. My action research began during the Board’s discernment process about whether to add an upper school. Initially, I was a trustee and co-clerk of the Upper School Exploratory Committee, so I was intimately aware of the vision for the new division. The Board spent a year examining questions such as: Would the existence of a college preparatory upper school negatively affect the ethos, curriculum or other aspects of the existing elementary and middle school programs? Was there sufficient demand in the New York City area for another high school for students with learning disabilities? Would a Mary McDowell upper school offer something worthwhile and substantially different from what is offered by other area schools for students with learning disabilities? Through visits to other programs, consultation with other educational leaders, and discernment, the Board came to consensus that a Mary McDowell upper school was needed. Indeed, the school’s practice of joyfully embracing students with a particularly wide range of learning disabilities, and its independence from the Regents curriculum led to the conclusion that a new upper school would be an invaluable addition to the city.
From the beginning, the vision for the upper school has been to provide a college preparatory program that is flexible enough to meet the needs of students with diverse learning profiles. I formed a committee early in our planning year made up of middle school faculty and administrators, which examined the graduation requirements and curricula of twenty mainstream and LD schools across the nation. We also focused on core values articulated by the Coalition of Essential Schools, Landmark School’s publication such as Teaching Independent Minds, and many other resources. We outlined curricula in the arts, English, math, science and social studies. Later, we added Spanish and American Sign Language to the program. In addition, the Field Studies program was developed to extend learning beyond the four walls of the classroom. With the vision and framework for the curriculum in place, we were ready to initiate a full recruitment and retention program. In spite of the fact that many Mary McDowell families had been pushing for the creation of a high school, retaining a sufficient number of our own eighth graders became one of the greatest challenges. All but a few of the twenty-seven students in the grade applied to other schools. Some felt that they had been at Mary McDowell for a long time and they wanted a change. Others came from families who had struggled for years to pay tuition and they were hoping for placements in appropriate public high schools. Still others felt that they had overcome their learning disabilities and that they were ready for a mainstream environment. Finally, some families felt uncomfortable being pioneers of a new program. Ultimately, we won over many in the grade. We were also successful in attracting sufficient interest from new families, and we opened with twenty students, half of whom were returning students. We met our enrollment goal for the first year. Another essential part of planning was to find a facility. The real estate search began in earnest in July, fourteen months prior to the opening of the division. The Board created a Real Estate Committee comprised of trustees, parents with related expertise, other senior administrators, and myself. Later, consultants and architects joined the committee. We engaged a firm with expertise in commercial real estate to facilitate the search and we received two pro-bono services grants from Deloitte to assist in the search and planning. Location, size, rental costs, renovation costs, and other factors were priorities. The committee considered over twenty locations. In mid-winter, a large loft-like space was selected and for months the school worked to negotiate an acceptable lease. Negotiations became challenging. Fortunately, a preferable location surfaced in a former parochial school. We conducted parallel negotiations on both locations, to secure the best possible deal, and eventually abandoned the first site in favor of the parochial school. At this point, the lease has been signed on one of two buildings that will comprise the upper school campus of over 32,000 sqft. The first phase of renovation will conclude in the coming summer.
Next Steps Admissions and retention continue to be among our greatest challenges. At this point, we have met our enrollment goals for the second year and hope to exceed them before the end of the summer, but this has taken hard work. The search for space is over, but the need to secure sufficient donations and financing remain. Success in this area will enable us to undertake the full three-phase renovation plan, which will also reinforce our ability to recruit and retain students. As the student body grows in number, so will the faculty. The curriculum will also be continually augmented and refined. Finally, we must graduate students and place them in appropriate colleges or other options to establish our reputation for success. With hard work and no small amount of good fortune, nearly every brick has been well laid and the mortar is holding it all firmly together.
Kirk Smothers
Mission Statement The Friends Council on Education provides leadership in drawing Friends schools together in unity of spirit and cooperative endeavors. The Council's work nurtures the Quaker life of schools, strengthens the network of support across schools, promotes Friends education through consultations, programs, and publications, and assists in the establishment of new Friends schools. The Council helps Friends schools maintain their Quaker identity and ethos, and their relationship with the Religious Society of Friends. The Council promotes professional growth for trustees, heads, administrators, and faculty to further the goals of Quaker education, and serves as a voice for Friends schools in the national dialogue on education.
1507 Cherry Street Philadelphia, PA 19102 215-241-7245 Info@friendscouncil.org www.friendscouncil.org
www.friendscouncil.org