Leadership Expressions

LEADERSHIP EXPRESSIONS FRIENDS COUNCIL ON EDUCATION

ACTION RESEARCH

Institute for Engaging Leadership in Friends Schools 2013-2015 Graduating Cohort Kathryn Park Cook Karen Cumberbatch Cameron Wade Francisco Elisabeth Gamble Tom Hoopes

Ben Horner Nicholas A. James Elise London James Miller Joshua D. Oberfield

Jeanne Phizacklea Jay Rapp Gwen Rino Christopher Sparks Shields Sundberg

Institute for Engaging Leadership in Friends Schools Action Research Summaries April 2015

What is the Institute for Engaging Leadership in Friends Schools?

Action Research

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 2013-2015 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.

Action Research - Spring 2015

Peer Coaches Network: Tapping Into Friends Schools’ Greatest Resources Background Research shows that teaching improves in a collegial setting where common goals are established and expertise is shared. For many years, I have been interested in teacher improvement and the school supports that will aid teachers in their professional growth. How can schools best create a culture of growth that encourages teachers to be more self-motivated and which prioritizes teamwork and self-analysis and reflection? By sponsoring programs that support this culture of growth, is there also an opportunity to develop teacher leaders as coaches and facilitators of this process?

Exploration/Learnings My initial explorations dealt with enhancing professional development opportunities for senior faculty at Moorestown Friends School (MFS), focusing on expanding our Critical Friends group network (already in place) and organizing school-wide collaborative research teams. To aid in my discovery process, I read numerous articles (in 2013, Educational Leadership magazine had a number of inspiring ones on evaluation and teacher leadership) and discussed them with my Associate Head of School. Joe Marchese hosted a visit to Westtown School so that I could learn more about the school’s successful model for teacher evaluation and support. I spoke at length with Janet Chance at Arcadia University (also a Leadership Institute graduate, ex-Sidwell teacher, and recent Penn Charter LS Director) about her research on coaching models and teacher evaluation.

Kathryn Park Cook Director of Innovative Programs Director of Summer Programs Moorestown Friends School Incoming Head Frankford Friends School Philadelphia, PA

Kathryn Park Cook has been an educator for 25 years. Since 2003, she has been a member of the Moorestown Friends School community, first as a parent and teacher, and then as Director of Innovative Programs and Director of Summer Programs. Beginning in July 2015, Kathryn will become the new Head of the Frankford Friends School.

After reading the Gates Foundation’s 2012 brief, Asking Students About Teachers, I also began to think about how students could provide information on the quality of the learning environment in each classroom based on their experiences. MFS students complete teacher surveys at the end of each school year, but the brief introduced the idea that student perception surveys could be administered early enough in the year to allow teachers to make adjustments that would benefit their current students. I redesigned the teacher survey process, working with department heads, piloting the new survey, and debriefing with both teachers and students. Teachers received valuable information from the survey, and I was struck by their desire to engage in professional conversations about their instructional practices, to look for opportunities for overall improvement, and to address the challenges and needs of their students. However, time constraints prevented most of the teachers from engaging in the discussions and teamwork that would help them to put new structures in place. In addition, most of the teachers looked for someone else to take a leadership role in facilitating these conversations while at the same time being reticent about voluntarily sharing weaknesses with those in supervisory positions.

Action Research - Spring 2015

Kathryn Park Cook

After speaking with Irene McHenry and taking some time to reflect and regroup, I revisited my initial queries of how schools could help teachers to embrace the essential elements of collaborative growth (developing trusting relationships, listening and questioning, conducting productive conversations, and gaining the necessary skills to refine and deepen their coaching skills). Was there a way to build collegial partnerships that would enhance the skills of individual teachers in a supportive, non-evaluative environment, build teacher leaders, and not require administrators to oversee the process?

This query opened the way to the development of the Friends Council Peer Coaches Program. Friends schools have a large number of talented people who can be connected in service as peer coaches in other Friends schools. Through the pairing of teachers with colleagues from other Friends schools, the Peer Coaches Program can address new teacher mentoring, in-school and one-to-one professional development, mediation of teachers who need more targeted feedback to address specific challenges, and leadership opportunities for senior teachers. Margaret Haviland, Dean of Studies at Westtown School, volunteered to co-lead with me the initial cohort of peer coaches, and Drew Smith, Executive Director of Friends Council on Education (FCE), offered support from Friends Council. The pilot program participants include coaches and coachees from a variety of Friends schools. We are developing coach/coachee protocols that will cultivate professionalism among colleagues who are committed to developing skills in self-analysis, reflection, listening, and collaboration.

The program outline follows: Participating schools will identify faculty interested in being peer coaches and teachers interested in or in need of having a peer coach from another school. Peer Coaches must be objective, collegial, and trustworthy.

Participating schools agree to allow their peer coaches to visit their coachees at their schools three times over the course of the school year and to send their peer coaches to Friends Council for training sessions.

Peer coaches and coachees will communicate through email and phone calls, and at least one of their visits will be a full day visit.

Peer observers will not be peer evaluators. They will collect observation data, provide feedback to the teachers they work with, and be there solely for the support and professional development of the coachee.

Next Steps Drew Smith has invited eight schools to participate in our pilot program. He will host a meeting at FCE in March. The agenda will include a presentation by Margaret and me, a threshing session during which attendees ask questions and give feedback, and a presentation by Drew on how this initiative fits in with his vision for the future of Friends schools. The expectation is that schools will confirm their intention to participate in the FCE Peer Coach program by the end of the meeting and identify participating coaches and coachees by the end of the 2014-2015 school year. Margaret and I will be ready to work with our first cohort of peer coaches for the 2015-2016 school year.

Action Research - Spring 2015

In Search of a Unified Quaker Pedagogy

Background My action research on the ways in which teachers at Quaker schools embrace and effectively implement practices that conform to the existing concepts of a Quaker Pedagogy came about as the result of the convergence of two thoughts. First, most Quaker schools, like most independent schools, do not require teachers to have teaching certification, but instead place a premium on expertise in content areas, experience, and a passion for children. For many, it is mainly through professional development conducted in their schools or peer exchanges that they expand their repertoire of teaching strategies. The result is a group of talented and dedicated educators whose approaches and methods of instruction are less likely to be consistent.

The second thought was the result of Sandy Spring Friends School’s (SSFS) recent work to develop a stronger, more unified narrative to describe our program and approach. While we were all clear about the importance of Quakerism to the development and implementation of our program, we found it more difficult to describe this in an “elevator speech” of two to three minutes. Often individuals described the Friends-related activities we engaged in like participation in Meeting for Worship or community service initiatives. Or, they would focus on the socio-emotional atmosphere we try to create that highlights Quaker testimonies like the close relationships we foster between students and teachers or the value we place on incorporating student voices when engaging in decision-making processes. It was not uncommon for there to be very little mention of specific day-to-day teaching strategies or a unified pedagogical approach.

Explorations/Learnings As a person who puts a high premium on acquiring information through existing research, it is important to me to collect and read before taking action steps.

Consequently, I spent a significant period reading a variety of writings on Quaker Education. There were several books that had been on my list for some time – The Courage to Teach by Parker Palmer and Growing into Goodness by Paul Lacey. I also read several pamphlets along the way like “The Peculiar Mission of a Quaker School” by Douglas Heath and “Quaker Education: Work in Progress” by Paul Lacey. My initial thought was that there was a clear blueprint out there, much like there are tomes that give step-by-step directions for how to teach in an International Baccalaureate or Montessori Program, that I could use as a guide to create a comprehensive program.

Karen Cumberbatch Head of Upper School Sandy Spring Friends School Sandy Spring, MD

Through a variety of positions, Middle and Upper School History teacher, Director of Multicultural Affairs, Dean of Students, and now Head of Upper School at Sandy Spring Friends School, I still find the greatest joy when I am able to work directly with students to bring to fruition a vision of their talents and passions. As a parent of two Friends-educated children, I witness the impact of Quaker Education on a daily basis. I am proud, not only of what they are accomplishing in their lives, but how they are doing it.

While all of the readings were valuable, when I read Nancy Starmer’s, “Toward a Quaker Pedagogy”, I thought I had finally found the concise guide used by other Quaker schools that I had somehow never encountered. Her identification of the use of queries, reflective practice, a specific rhetorical pattern for phrasing and

Action Research - Spring 2015

Karen Cumberbatch

investigating issues, a focus on listening to voices on the margin, action-oriented skill development, and collective truth-seeking offered me several concepts and specific language which I believed I could easily investigate. J. Harry Hammond’s work on “Pedagogical Design” in Readings on Quaker Pedagogy, gave me additional concrete information on specific instructional techniques that furthered the conceptual framework.

As I engaged in discussions with other upper school administrators regarding Starmer’s conceptual framework, I quickly realized that this single piece often was not the sole or perhaps even the primary writing which school’s used to develop their individual expectations for Quaker-oriented instructional practices. Instead, Friends schools develop their own unique interpretations of what constitutes a Quaker pedagogy in their context. That is not to say that the practices I expected to find were absent. Each school noted the institutional importance of reflective practice; however, schools differed in how this was implemented and whether the primary focus was on training and use of this strategy with students or teachers. Virtually all of the schools also noted the importance of skill development, especially collaborative inquiry, critical thinking, and meaningful application of learning to solve real-world problems.

My research also uncovered a plethora of vehicles through which Quaker upper schools convey their instructional expectations to new and returning faculty. Although varied, the common thread was an intensive focus on Quaker education and Quaker testimonies with new faculty to provide a foundational understanding. For returning faculty, schools tended to focus on collaborative exploration among teachers on a rotation of other important educational topics and strategies –differentiation, action-based education, design inquiry, and global education, for example – using the same key, foundational Quaker understandings as grounding concepts.

A significant and unexpected learning for me was the extraordinary value of connecting with my peers and colleagues at other schools. Still being somewhat new in my position, and feeling the relative isolation of a smaller peer group, having the opportunity to engage in meaningful dialogue sharing thoughts and strategies, has been invigorating. It has reinforced and deepened my appreciation for the support and genuine collaboration that is necessary as an educational leader.

Next Steps My next steps include exploration of a few key resources with upper school faculty and administration to ensure a strong foundational understanding of the work that has been done on the development of Quaker pedagogy and use of a common vocabulary. I will use that information to help construct a unique understanding of how these ideas should be incorporated to best meet the needs of SSFS students and program. One potential outcome is the creation of a guide to document our discernment for internal reference and use with new faculty.

My inquiry and reflection also have highlighted the gaps in our current new faculty orientation. In the fall, as a school we plan to add to the Quaker readings new faculty are given as a precursor to ongoing instruction on the expectations and framework the community will begin to create this spring.

Perhaps most importantly, my personal next steps include finding ways to carry on my research to improve my ability as an educational leader and faculty resource. The time I have spent in the Leadership Institute over the last two years has helped me clarify the concerns that have the most institutional value and should remain paramount.

Action Research - Spring 2015

Connecting North Carolina’s Quaker School Students from the Mountains to the Sea Background The Friends School of Wilmington (FSW) values connecting students to the natural world and our students are given many opportunities to experience the joy and beauty of nature. Our location on the southeastern coast of North Carolina, while resplendent with natural beauty, at times can create a feeling of isolation from other Friends schools. FSW is young at 20 years old. Many of our faculty, students, and families do not have past experience with Quaker education. Through my work with the Friends Council on Education (FCE) Leadership Institute, I gained firsthand appreciation for the benefits of connecting with educators from other Friends schools. This led me to create a program connecting FSW faculty and students to those from other Quaker schools in North Carolina through collaborative inquiry and combined educational camping trips.

Exploration/Learning Upon my first visit to Carolina Friends School (CFS) to spend the day with my leadership partner, Mike Hanas, Head of School, my action research project began to take shape. On that trip I was introduced to the Head of Middle School at CFS. In our brief conversation we both expressed an interest in connecting our schools.

This was the genesis of the focus for my action research.

In the first “action” phase of research. I emailed other Friends schools in North Carolina, assessing interest in collaborating on a new adventure. I made initial connections to local non-profit and environmental organizations in my own community. The broad vision of environmental stewardship, community involvement, and educational collaboration generated strong interest.

Over the course of the school year, most of my time was dedicated to new administrative responsibilities at FSW. One of my first learnings from the “reflection” step of the action research spiral was that there is a big difference between engaging others through a broad vision and finding the time to actively engage in the work necessary to build an entirely new program. I learned that in working towards the goal of a collaborative program between schools, one must be mindful of the workload and time of colleagues at other schools, as well as their students’ schedules. Clearly I needed to focus energy on creating a program with one or two other schools and that inviting additional schools to join an existing program would be more appealing after working through the creation process. With this in mind, I focused on my connection to Kip, MS Head at CFS, and began to push the process forward. Fortunately, a MS CFS science teacher, Tommy, had a connection with a teacher at Arthur Morgan School (AMS), another NC Friends school. The addition of this school as a partner created a true state-wide Friends school collaboration spanning from the mountains to the sea.

Cameron Francisco Director of Student and Academic Life Friends School of Wilmington Wilmington, NC

I’ve had the pleasure of spending my entire career at the Friends School of Wilmington (FSW). I moved to Wrightsville Beach after earning my degrees from the University of Tennessee with the intent of choosing a community, and waiting for a teaching job. Upon my arrival, I learned of an open spot on the FSW faculty, and the rest is history. I am grateful for the opportunity to work and grow, both professionally and personally, in a Quaker school for the past 12 years. The chance to connect with students, families, colleagues, and mentors in authentic and supportive ways made an indelible mark on me.

The next action step was a Skype session in July 2014 with Kip and Tommy at CFS. We reaffirmed our desire to connect our students, and settled on the type of data that our students would collect and share with each other. After this

Action Research - Spring 2015

Cameron Francisco

conversation, I created a shared Google Site for our project to share our thoughts and resources. It will be the electronic portal for students to record shared data about the quality of water in our respective watersheds.

In August, I found myself engrossed in the work of setting the stage for a successful school year. I was reticent to “bother� Kip and Tommy while they were busy with setting up their year. This led to another big lesson for me: collaborative projects require a consistent driver, and once initial agreements for collaboration are made it is not bothersome to others to have someone move things forward; in fact, my efforts were greatly appreciated. This was a big growth point for me as a leader. I recognized that I needed to own the leadership role in this project and trust in my collaborative team as I actively pushed us forward.

In December 2014, I met with the Director of Cape Fear River Watch (CFRW) with the goal of creating a partnership to support our new program. The mission of CFRW is to protect and improve the water quality of the Lower Cape Fear River Basin through education, advocacy, and action. We decided to revive a program called Creek Keepers. The curriculum, developed by River Watch, contains in-class lessons as well as field work in monitoring water quality in a local tributary to the Cape Fear River. Working in concert with River Watch, we settled on the creation of a year-long class as the vehicle for this curriculum and field research.

In late February 2015, I shared the Creek Keeper curriculum with Kip and Tommy at CFS and planned a joint camping trip for this spring. I more closely connected to AMS, making plans to schedule reciprocal trips with our students from the mountains and coast. Much of the fruit of this collaborative labor will not be borne until the 2015-16 school year, but the very fact that three Quaker schools are already planning for combined educational student trips is rewarding to me. As I continue the process of action and reflection, I realize that the long-term success of a collaborative program spanning multiple schools takes time. I know that the planning process was beneficial, yet yearn for the day when colleagues from various Friends schools in North Carolina camp together with students near the ocean, a river, or mountain stream, engaging in authentic research and building a shared sense of joy in Friends education.

Next Steps The ultimate goal is to create a program that brings together students from every Friends school in North Carolina. The most immediate action step will be an FSW-CFS joint student-faculty camping trip in spring 2015.

We will include students and faculty from AMS in the 2015-16 school year.

In the fall of 2015, FSW students will become Creek Keepers of Burnt Mill Creek and its watershed, providing data to Cape Fear River Watch. After integrating this program into our curriculum and completing combined camping and research trips with AMS and CFS, I plan invite New Garden Friends School and High Point Friends School into this partnership.

Action Research - Spring 2015

Effectively Teaching Students with Diverse Learning Needs

Background Meeting the diverse learning needs of students at a small, independent school with limited resources is challenging. I have observed this since I first started working at the State College Friends School (SCFS) over 15 years ago. As a Quaker school, we have always done well at celebrating each individual, appreciating children for who they are, including each person as an integral member of the classroom community, and developing self-esteem. We get to know each child and recognize what each child does well and where each child needs support.

Students who need enrichment work or slight modifications to their work are relatively easy to accommodate within the flexible classroom setting. Finding ways to effectively help children who need professional support and/or intervention is more challenging. Classroom teachers must accommodate various learning styles, supplement lessons with remediation, enrich advanced learners, and maintain normal classroom lessons and routines. This works well as long as there are a reasonable number of adaptations that need to be made and the adaptations do not require expert input.

Lisa Gamble Teacher Incoming Associate Head of School State College Friends School State College, PA

I love learning through exploration and discovery. I began my career as an environmental educator and continued in education by home-schooling my children.

With a BS in Biology and an MS in

For my project, I wanted to develop a flexible protocol to serve as a guide to teachers in getting help when a student is struggling. I also wanted to develop a more comprehensive way for teachers to record actions taken and facilitate communication about a child including effective strategies, successes, growing edges. We needed a way to compassionately, yet thoroughly, communicate with parents about what we could do for their children and what services we are and are not able to provide. And finally, we needed a support system and resources for teachers trying to find ways to help a struggling child.

Experiential Education, I am commit-

Exploration/learnings I began my project by talking with key people in public and private schools to get a complete picture of services available to children enrolled in public school, students dual enrolled at SCFS and the public school, and services provided at our school by the Intermediate Unit. Having a complete and accurate picture of the choices available to parents for their children is important. I surveyed 26 other preK to 8th grade Friends schools with approximately 80-130 students about how they accommodate students with diverse learning needs. I found that most schools also struggle with this important issue and are finding various ways to address diverse learning needs. The 13 responses I received were invaluable for the ideas and encouragement they provided. Finally, I met with the various members of the SCFS community to discuss this topic. I received good support for this project from everyone I contacted. Teachers, administrators, and parents all feel there is a need for better communication, a more intentional educational plan, and a means of tracking progress. Teachers expressed a need for more support and coordination of these efforts, as well as a need for more expert guidance.

resources—are values I feel are

ted to helping children explore the natural world, understand its systems, and become stewards of our planet. Appreciating the richness of working with others, rejoicing in our similarities and differences, and understanding the importance of sharing—from toys to earth’s critical in education. I was fortunate to discover Quaker education at the State College Friend School, where I found an approach to education that was closely aligned with my own.

Over my 16 years at the school, my appreciation for Friends education has deepened, and I have had the opportunity to help many families and teachers new to our school understand and grow to love Friends education.

Action Research - Spring 2015

Lisa Gamble

Several schools I surveyed shared the protocol they follow and methods of communication with parents and between teachers. This information proved extremely helpful as I developed several documents: 1) "Protocol for a teacher to address concerns about a child"—articulates procedures for teachers to follow when they observe a student struggling. One step adapted from other schools surveyed is convening small committee meetings of peer teachers to serve as brainstorming sessions to discuss ways to help individual children and create an educational plan. This step provides some needed teacher support.

2) "Tracking form"—is a way to record the progress of a child. This shared document can be accessed, reviewed, and/or added to by anyone working with the child. This aids communication among those working with the child and serves as a record of progress from year to year.

3) "Educational Plan"—articulates learning goals with a time frame for each goal. It records strategies to be tried and accommodations to be made.

4) "Service Agreement”—records the educational support a child needs and compassionately but thoroughly communicates with parents about accommodations we can make for their child's learning needs and services we are and are not able to provide.

Faculty and administration review of these documents guided changes and enhancements. In my enthusiasm to implement this new system, I forged ahead too quickly. Despite the support for the ideas, people were not willing to take on the added tasks of writing an educational plan and documenting action steps. This was understandable, given teachers’ busy schedules. This can happen more easily once a support system for teachers and, if possible, a person to coordinate and document the efforts of teachers, support staff, and parents, is in place. We decided to start with the small committee meetings which can happen at times already designated as meeting times. This will begin to give teachers some much needed support. By starting slowly, one step at a time, we can begin to coordinate and document our efforts and with each step we take, the task should feel less daunting.

Next Steps The project has set in motion several next steps at SCFS. Our faculty has continued to discuss this issue and time has been allotted for small committee meetings as well as large group discussions during inservice times. Beginning next year, the Associate Head of School, the position to which I have been appointed, will play a larger role in coordinating services provided for children and supporting teachers in finding and developing needed resources. Over the summer, I plan to develop a resource library with easy-to-find-and-use suggestions for classroom and teaching modifications along with therapeutic materials to aid teachers in adapting their classrooms. Next fall, I plan to contact schools that have peer tutoring programs to learn more about training Middle School students for this role. The Middle School teacher is interested in pursuing this program as well.

This is a project that I hope is ongoing and continues to evolve and enhance the way we work with all our students at SCFS. I want it to help teachers at SCFS and other interested Friends schools to more effectively teach students with diverse learning needs.

Action Research - Spring 2015

What does leadership look like in strategic planning at a Friends elementary school?

“Leadership is taking initiative in relationship.” George Lakey

Background I began the Leadership Institute with an implicit expectation that my career trajectory would culminate in school administration; however, my experiences over the past two years have helped to deepen my conception of my own “leadership” to include trusteeship. I have newly appreciated that it is crucial to have committed and skilled people in roles that carefully and systematically plot the long-term navigational course of a school, so that the administration can steer the ship faithfully and effectively. I have also seen that my particular gifts and leadings lend themselves to this work, in a way that nourishes my own spiritual journey.

The timing of my Leadership Institute cohort coincided with the beginning of a planned strategic planning cycle at Plymouth Meeting Friends School (PMFS), where I serve as Clerk of the board. Strategic planning involves research, consultation, threshing, collaborative decision-making, and faithfulness to the mission of the school, along with the inter-related dimensions of financial planning, facilities, program, curriculum, governance, marketing, admissions, and alumni relations. This mix dovetails nicely with the aims of the Leadership Institute, so I chose to use the PMFS process as the basis of my action research project.

Tom Hoopes Religion Department Chair George School Newtown, PA

Tom Hoopes serves as Clerk of the School Committee (board) of Plymouth Meeting Friends School (PMFS), a preK-6 school just outside of Philadelphia. Both of Tom’s children went to PMFS, and Tom has been on the board for 5 years.

My personal and positional relationships within the overall PMFS ecosystem have evolved continuously, and my responsibilities for leadership have likewise. The Head and I are both students of good governance, and we also have a strong personal relationship. This combination has imposed on both of us the discipline of staying in our respective roles when relating professionally, while also being mutually supportive of one another’s personal life journeys. It is a nuanced process, which has required significant courage, honesty, and trust by both of us.

I have learned a great deal about myself and school governance along the way.

Tom now works as Head of the

I met with the Head last April, to think together about whether our system might be ready to undertake strategic planning again. We compared the costs – financial and otherwise – of going forward with the costs of not going forward. We knew that a strategic planning process would require tapping the time and energy of our most dedicated community members at a time when they were already stretched thin, due to an extended capital campaign along with the normal demands of a volunteer-dependent Friends elementary school. At the same time, we knew that delaying strategic planning for yet another year ran the risk of sending a signal to our community of a lack of commitment to a clear vision of the future.

the first edition of the Governance

Religion Department at George School, a Friends boarding, day, and international high school near Philadelphia, where he has been for 7 years. Prior to that, he was Director of Education for Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (PYM) for 10 years.

He co-authored, with Irene McHenry, Handbook for Friends Schools, a reference guide and operational manual for boards of directors.

After careful deliberation and discernment, we came to a shared understanding that the time was right. We brought our thinking to the Executive Committee of the board. The recommendation that emerged out of that group reflected the consensus of a diverse group of respected trustees. In May the whole board authorized the Head’s and my moving forward with initiating the strategic planning process.

Action Research - Spring 2015

Tom Hoopes

Exploration/Learning In June the Head of School and I, as Clerk, interviewed two potential strategic planning consultants, and after a deliberative process, we made a choice. In July we outlined a strategic planning process with the consultant. I brought this proposal to the board in early September for consideration. The proposal identified the following over-arching goals of our strategic planning process: 1. To create a strategic plan that is both inspired and eminently practical; 2. To achieve high quality results in a manageable time structure; 3. To broaden leadership in the PMFS community, expanding capacity for generative and strategic thinking, ardent philanthropy, and sound governance; and 4. To reconfirm high community confidence in a thriving future at PMFS. Along with these goals, we mapped out a timetable for action steps, starting immediately. The board had a fruitful discussion, in which trustees began to take ownership of the process, recognizing that it would affect them quite directly. Their approval signaled that they had come under the weight of it, too.

The Head and I cultivated a Strategic Planning Steering Committee (SPSC) that would have primary responsibility for leading the process. She identified a current parent who is a respected marketing professional who served on a fundraising task force last year. Perhaps he would be honored by the opportunity to step into a bigger role supporting his children's beloved school? Imagine my delight when I got the news that the answer was “yes!� Once we had a solid clerk of the leadership group selected, the task of populating the rest of the SPSC fell into place.

Between October and December I participated in four meetings of the SPSC. By early December, we had mapped out a timetable that culminated with publication of the newly-completed Strategic Plan the following September. The board approved the timetable with enthusiasm. I felt a real sense of satisfaction at our shared ownership of the work.

Next Steps Our strategic planning process is well underway. The February community gathering drew a large and diverse group together on a cold winter’s weeknight, and the predominant tone was one of celebration of the past, affirmation of the present, and optimism for the future.Our consultant developed a helpful internal report summarizing key themes from the one-on-one interviews. This report echoed all of the positivity of the community gathering, and also included a number of constructively critical points, which will help us to frame a productive agenda for the upcoming strategic planning retreat.

Postscript: In January, we received a gift from a donor that finally brought the capital campaign to a close.

This gift sent an unambiguous message that PMFS is worthy of the inspired generosity and dedication of people who can truly make a philanthropic difference in this world. Was it purely a coincidence that it came after we had demonstrated our confidence in the future with the public announcement of our strategic planning process? I wonder. I am reminded that even in the arena of Quaker sensibilities, nothing succeeds like success. Onward.

Action Research - Spring 2015

How can the adults in a Friends school community best support Lower School students’ experiences of Meeting for Worship?

Background In the eight years I have taught in the Lower School of Friends Seminary, I have always enjoyed Meeting for Worship in the 15th Street Meetinghouse. Maybe it’s the vast structure of the room, or perhaps it’s the communal feeling of us all sitting together every Wednesday morning. Meetings are well attended: around 300 students and teachers and 100 parents. Once everyone is seated, the Meetinghouse takes on a very satisfying fullness. Alumni identify Meeting as the defining feature of their experience at Friends Seminary. With Meeting holding such an important place in student memories, and Lower School being the foundation of the school’s program, investigating Meeting at this level is compelling for Friends schools.

In my school, the Lower School division head takes the lead in organizing Meeting.

Teachers are encouraged to sign up to lead a Meeting for Worship (MFW) once during the year. Teachers value a sense of community in sharing the framing of Meeting, yet some are anxious about the public speaking aspect. In my eight years at the school, Meetings have followed a programmed model: students are read a story or poem and then asked to think about a query during the short period of silence that follows. Sometimes Meeting feels calm and settled; sometimes a chorus of coughs dominates. Sometimes the period of silence dominates and sometimes the story time overshadows a short silence at the end. I’ve wondered what kids experience during MFW. Do they focus on the adult’s words? Do their minds wander? Do they feel settled or distracted?

I focused my research on these two questions: 1. What are MFW best practices for Lower School students?

2. How do “what the adults see and hear” and “what the kids experience” in Meeting compare, and how might this affect how the adults frame MFW? Exploration/Learnings I started by researching Lower School Meetings and Quakerism in Friends Journal and the Pendle Hill bookstore. Martha Bryans’ paper, “Children’s Thinking about Meeting for Worship,” inspired how I would later phrase my questions to children.

I discovered that my questions were not new, but had been investigated before in other schools. My project’s value would be in focusing on students’ experience within my own school community.

Ben Horner Lower School Science Teacher Friends Seminary New York, NY

I’ve been teaching for 10 years, the majority of that time spent at my current school, Friends Seminary, in New York City. Much before that, I attended Westtown School, and even further back I remember going on Sundays to Downingtown Meeting, near where I grew up.

When I attend Meeting now, it’s more than a time to notice the textures of the space, but I am always reminded of my memories of the Downingtown Meetinghouse: the room’s simple design, unadorned off-white walls, ancient windows with lumpy glass and wooden benches so well worn from years of use that they feel almost soft to the touch. Now when I sit in any Meetinghouse, I instinctively look around for details.

It’s that simplicity and wandering search for detail that settles me; those textures are still soothing.

I wanted to better understand the larger context for Lower School Meeting within my school, so I attended some Middle and Upper School Meetings at Friends Seminary. I discussed the practice of Meeting with Quaker colleagues and members of the school’s Religious and Spiritual Life Committee, later joining the committee to facilitate further thinking. I surveyed colleagues about their impressions of MFW, asking about its purpose, their expectations for students, and behavior guidelines. Everyone responded that the purpose of MFW was silence, Action Research - Spring 2015

Ben Horner

reflection and/or community--the consistency of these themes wasn’t a surprise, as I would think the simple activity of MFW makes these objectives clear. I co-facilitated a Lower School faculty discussion about Meeting, focusing on our students’ practice and appreciation of silence. I learned that teachers never formally discussed how to lead Meeting, so our conversation was a good start. I was also surprised to learn that Lower School Meeting has been in place for only a little over ten years, in that Friends Seminary recently celebrated its 225th year.

I interviewed students throughout the school, focusing on Lower School classes and chatting with 12th graders for perspective. I worked with the alumni office to survey our alumni. I searched through Friends Seminary’s well-documented archives, gaining further support for sentiments about Meeting that seem to be perennial. One recent senior stated it most succinctly: “In Kindergarten [silence] was always sort of a hassle if anything. It was sort of a pain in the neck to have to sit in silence for 20 minutes. And then, you get into Middle School and it becomes a time that you can relax. And then you get to Upper School and it becomes a reflection period” (Notes on Silence, News From Friends, Spring 2011). Still, many of the lower schoolers reported the same degree of settled feelings in their experiences now. When I asked, “What was going on inside of you during Meeting,” I heard: “calmness and very very peaceful” (Kindergartener) “feels like no one is there when it is quiet: just sitting there” (1st grader) “there’s just like this bubbling of feelings inside of you and you try to find what it means” (3rd grader) “after Meeting now I feel more relaxed” (4th grader) The greatest amount of data I collected came from the survey that I sent to Friends schools to gather information on their MFW practices. The survey, “Friends School Meeting for Worship Practices,” yielded more than 80 responses. In the end, I used input from 35 Friends schools, with a Lower School focus.

I found it interesting that the majority of programs have Meetings for longer than 20 minutes. I’ve been told that Meeting should be short in Lower School because the children are too young to handle a longer period of silence; and yet, so many Friends schools have longer periods of silence. I was interested in the fact that the majority of meetings at Friends schools are unprogrammed, where queries or stories are not read to guide students’ use of the silence. The survey data will be an interesting point for future conversation.

Next Steps 1. I look forward to continued conversations with Friends Seminary faculty, administrators, and parents about how we facilitate MFW. 2. I would love to see Friends Seminary create something like Friends Select’s MFW handbook, “Seeking the Light.” It could be useful for teachers, students, and parents, and for admissions and marketing.

3. If a MFW “best practices” resource does not exist, perhaps the Friends Council peer network on Quaker Life in Lower and Middle School could address this.

4. I’d like to explore Lower School student speaking in MFW.

Action Research - Spring 2015

Developing Core Competencies for Learning about Race Background A few years ago, I visited Upper School English classes at Friends Select School (FSS) by teachers’ invitation to speak with students about the African-American literary tradition, specifically themes such as identity, and the complexities of race in history and society. The invitation emanated from several incidents with racial/cultural undertones that took place prior to my joining the FSS faculty.

I jumped at the opportunity and spoke to several Upper School English classes about the inextricable link between history and African-American literature, from slavery to the present day. I talked about Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and how the intricacy of that particular text changed my life and ultimately led me to want to be an educator. I asked students to reflect on how race and racial language impacts their daily lives. Immediately, I noticed that there was a contrast between those students passionate about the discussion and those more reluctant to participate – some unnerved by and others uncertain about how to engage the topic of race in society (and in the classroom). So, the source of this action research project emerged.

Nic James Middle School Dean of Students & Teacher Friends Select School Philadelphia, PA

Nic is the Middle School Dean of Students at Friends Select School.

He has taught English and Social Studies at the middle school level, and has developed and taught upper level English courses in African

The original goals of this research were to achieve a clearer understanding of the ways in which our school is utilizing African-American literature in the English curriculum, to develop an African-American literature course for FSS, and to explore ways in which themes from the literature could enhance conversations on race in our school. However, it became clear to me that more work around a process for developing skills for students and teachers to have these conversations was essential.

American Literature and Hip-Hop

Explorations/Learnings Two books were central to my understanding of core competencies for learning about race: Talking Race in the Classroom by Jane Bolgatz and Promoting Racial Literacy in Schools by Howard Stevenson. Reading these books was my first action step. Both books suggest that for difficult discourse on race to take place, three things are essential: (1) engagement from both adults and children in the community, (2) a context (historical or current, experiential), (3) a space to explore discomfort in order to eventually achieve comfort and competence.

2015, Nic will become the new

Studies. As a child, Nic attended Friends Select School and graduated in 2000. In addition to teaching, Nic loves reading, enjoys writing and critically studying hip-hop culture, and lives with his wife and two sons. Beginning in July Assistant Head of The Crefeld School in Philadelphia.

I discovered that among student groups like the upper school Black Student Union and the faculty/staff diversity committee, many steps are being taken at FSS to ensure that these conversations permeate the school community. But I also discovered that these conversations hit a roadblock in the classroom. From this perspective, and through discussion with educators at other institutions exploring similar problems, I decided to employ a “backwards design” model for getting at the “how/why” for this research project. Using readings and conversations, I developed what I call “Four Core Competencies for Learning about Race.”

Action Research - Spring 2015

Nic James

These core competencies propose an endgame for students, if we are properly and productively engaging the topic of race in the classroom. They are: (1) to think critically about the topic of race, (2) to understand historical foundations of race, (3) to apply knowledge of the topic of race in multi- and interdisciplinary settings, (4) to engage in critical and complex discussions on the topic of race. Using these as a potential rubric for students to learn about race, the process would incorporate conversations with and feedback from teachers at FSS on where we are as an institution on these competencies and what we can do to achieve them.

Next, I shared these core competencies with our Head of School, our school’s Diversity Coordinator and our Humanities departments (History and English). I created a survey, giving teachers the opportunity to consider how the topic of race is encountered in the classroom. The survey was targeted to teachers in the English and History departments for 7th – 12th grades. The survey questions included: Do students encounter the topics of race, racism or racial inequality in any of your courses?

Do students analyze and compare creative/artistic/textual modes of expression and cultural production concerning race and civil rights in any of your courses?

Do students examine the historical foundations of race in the United States/globally in any of your classes?

Do students engage in discussions about issues and themes on the topic of race openly and honestly in any of your classes?

Do students demonstrate the ability to be open to differing perspectives on the topic of race in any of your classes?

If teachers responded “yes” to any of the questions, then follow-up questions included the name of the course, how often the course was taught and to what grades, was the course required, and, which units taught and/or resources/materials/texts used supported student learning regarding the question being asked.

Analysis of the survey results suggest that in the Humanities department at FSS, a valiant effort is made to expose students to multicultural and multiracial themes in the middle and upper schools. Highlights from the survey include: 100% of the responses suggest that students encounter topics of race, racism, or racial inequality in our Humanities curriculum; 73% of the responses suggest that students examine the historical foundations of race in our Humanities curriculum; 82% of the responses suggest that students engage in discussions about issues and themes on the topic of race openly and honestly; a lesser 64% suggest students demonstrate the ability to be open to differing perspectives on the topic of race. A striking piece of feedback from post-survey conversations with teachers suggested that in many of the Humanities classes, the topic of race is touched on, but not necessarily as it relates to the lives of our students. Some of the classes where students are more reflective about race in society are not required courses. I wondered if we are missing valuable opportunities to develop and enhance student competency on this important, charged topic.

Next Steps The next step for this project is sharing the survey analysis results in focus groups with teachers to gather more anecdotal data, which would enhance the discussion on how to make progress in this area. Ultimately, I hope to use data from the survey and the conversations to explore developing a scope and sequence for learning about the topic of race in the classroom. Another next step I am considering is incorporating the Lower School into these conversations to develop a scope and sequence that spans the whole school – Pre-K through 12.

Action Research - Spring 2015

Crafting Effective Structures of Feedback: Who is the audience for a narrative comment?

Background At Carolina Friends School (CFS), students in the Upper School do not receive grades but instead receive narrative evaluations at the end of each term. As the only college counselor, I was the one person in the school who read all of the reports. These narratives varied tremendously in structure and feedback style.

Some were addressed directly to the student, while others took a third-person formal tone. Some included only test grades and comments on papers written, while others looked more broadly to skills yet to be mastered. Some included charts or rating schemes that seemed to easily translate in to letter grades, while others were solely narrative in structure. I was fascinated by these differences, but also eager to find a more effective way to provide feedback to students.

I wondered: Who was the intended audience for each report? Even when reports were written for the student audience, did other individuals need to glean information from the narrative evaluation? Did different audiences (parents, students, administrators, college counselors, teachers in the next level of a class) all want to get the same things out of a narrative comment? What did students gain from their evaluations that helped them improve as learners? Did narratives provide a way to support student achievement while encouraging students to take risks with their learning?

Elise London College Counselor St. Mark’s School Southborough, MA

I was fortunate to spend thirteen years at Carolina Friends School working as a teacher and advisor, the College Counselor, and eventually the Dean of Students. I love how Friends schools honor the individual while supporting the existence of a continually revealed truth. Now that I have moved away from a Friends school, I continue to hold onto these

Exploration/Learning I started by gathering information within the Carolina Friends School community.

Through several clerked conversations with the entire Upper School staff, which happened to coincide with all-school work on assessment related to an accreditation self-study, I was able to gather useful feedback about the ways the process of writing narratives could be improved to be more efficient for teachers and more effective for students. I also had meetings with Mike Hanas, Head of CFS, and Renee Prillaman, Assistant Principal for Teaching and Learning at CFS.

principles in my work at St. Mark’s.

I gathered large samples of narrative reports from two peer schools (Poughkeepsie Day School (PDS) and St. Anne’s School) that also use narrative as the sole means of course evaluation and shared these with the staff and administration.

The staff found the PDS and St. Anne’s evaluations to be a helpful metric. For me, these other narratives became another lens through which to view the audiences of a single report. While comments and narratives are primarily written to the student, other people must be able to read them and gain helpful information.

The PDS and St. Anne’s evaluations are sent along with every college application, and a college admissions officer needs to read them to decipher whether or not to admit the student into a class. CFS does not share narratives with colleges.

Friends School.

As the college counselor, I am privileged to help students find their individual strengths and express them to the world for recognition.

I maintain my connection to Quaker education by serving as the Co-Clerk of the Committee for Quaker Life and Outreach at Cambridge

Action Research - Spring 2015

Elise London

As a next step, I set out to further explore the audience. I was wondering what students actually gleaned from their narrative comments, and, particularly, what they remembered about them once they entered college. I sent a survey to 100 recent alumni. The survey confirmed that students do, in fact, take their reports seriously; they read them carefully, and they have substantive conversations about them with an important adult in their lives (teacher, advisor, or parent). Almost two thirds acknowledged that comments that reflected their growing edges, skills they needed to more fully refine or develop, were the most helpful to their growth and development. The majority of students said that their narratives provided new information, things they had not already been told by the teacher in the class. In that way, they appreciated their reports as moments for learning. Many wrote that narrative evaluations were an effective form of feedback. The alumni looked wistfully back on the time when they received substantial comments from people who knew them well. This survey made clear that students did not simply want to hear praise for skills they knew they had mastered. They wanted reports that challenged them to do better in a particular skill set for the next term or class. For students it seemed that effective narratives were themselves feedback and learning documents giving them new things to learn rather than confirming things they already knew.

After I moved to Massachusetts, I continued to collect information and began to distill my thoughts on audiences for reports. Through conversations with the Academic Dean and Assistant Head of School at St. Mark’s School, I began to sort through the different sets of needs and wants from a narrative comment.

Here at St. Mark’s, we clearly state that all comments are written for students alone. Yet, as my conversations with the administrative team have unfolded, it is clear that the nature of a comment means it must serve different purposes for different audiences. While students might want to learn about their growing edges and skills they need to refine or more fully develop, parents read narratives for information about specific assessments and general information about a student’s successes in a class. Teachers want narratives that invite conversations with advisees about goals and skill development and ideally would like to have information that follows a student from one level in a course to the next one. Administrators and college counselors would like quotable narratives that can serve a public purpose. Ideally, this is the group that would also like to see narrative commenting tie the assessments to the mission of the school.

Next Steps I feel that my project is still in its middle stages. I have so much to learn in order to help teachers craft narratives that can be equally effective in reaching many different audiences’ needs. A meeting with Peter Sommer, Head of Cambridge Friends School, provided one model for how a school might shift their use of comments. As he is in the nascent stages of that project, I will check back with him next year to see how effective that work has been in his school. I plan to survey current St. Mark’s students to determine how they are using comments to supplement the grades they receive in their courses. I will also have conversations with the full faculty in order to help move comments away from the “sandwich method” (positive – negative – positive) into a more effective format.

Action Research - Spring 2015

Using Design Thinking to Find Ways to Support Students of Color Background It has always concerned me that African-American boys are disproportionately represented on the academic probation list, and not just at our school. When I have explored the matter with peers, broad and complex issues arise: how society coerces young people of color into seeing themselves within certain limitations; the extent to which we equip students to break out of such limitations; how we as schools measure success for students; what supports are needed or appropriate; and how to implement supports without the assumption of deficiency.

As the co-clerk of a committee that has explored these issues for the past two years, I have come to both appreciate and feel overwhelmed by the difficulty of finding the “right” way to support students of color, in particular African-American boys. As someone being trained to use Design Thinking methods in education, I have come to realize that diving into this overwhelming tangle of complexity can productively shift focus away from finding an easy solution to instead looking for enduring, effective practices that grow organically from within our community.

Exploration/Learning The guiding question for my action research project was, “How might we provide support and leadership opportunities for our students of color, specifically African-American boys?” The two elements of that question--support and leadership--reflect both the initial focus of our conversations at Friends Select (supporting students of color) and my work with the director of the Young Men’s Initiative at Philadelphia Futures, whose focus on building leadership skills not only helps us avoid taking a remediation-centered posture, but also matches our desire to recognize and nurture each student’s Inner Light. With this focus, I realized early on that I wanted to work on both short-range and long-range efforts.

In the short-range, building a partnership with the Young Men’s Initiative allows us to join existing efforts with an organization that has considerable expertise. Started

by Philadelphia Futures in December 2014, the Young Men’s Initiative brings young men of color together through roundtable discussions and study groups to hold up values of leadership and excellence. Our work with them has centered around my learning about their work and strategizing ways we can build a lasting partnership. Solidifying this partnership is a critical step toward our goal of supporting our students.

For long-range efforts within Friends Select, I have been using my recent training in Design Thinking to help provide direction. This training has provided a thorough and deliberate methodology for moving forward. I have been using this approach in working with the school’s Diversity Director (and my co-clerk), and our Director of Information and Design. To avoid rushing ahead without a full understanding of the issues, we have reached out to multiple constituencies: faculty, administration, students, alumni, and parents. By opening the process to as many people as we can, we have sought to leave behind preconceptions and stay open to whatever ideas and priorities may arise.

Jim Miller Dean of Student Life Friends Select School Philadelphia, PA

I came to Quaker education a decade ago, after I had spent years in a variety of educational settings ranging from an inner-city college-bound program to an all-boys private school. Having learned enough about myself as an educator to know a good match when I saw it, I jumped at the chance to teach at Friends Select. Since then, Quaker education has not only matched my values as an educator and as a person, but it has also allowed me to grow in a setting where education and integrity are one and the same. Now as Dean of Student Life, I have the wonderful charge of promoting mission-based initiatives, and the Institute for Engaging Leadership has given me further occasion to put Quaker values at the center of my work. My action research project has not only strengthened my belief that those core values are what set Quaker schools apart, but it has helped me appreciate the complex, deliberate, and always-crucial process involved in living up to those values

Action Research - Spring 2015

Jim Miller

Another important part of the process is continuing to learn about issues of race in education. When I started the project, I drew inspiration from the film “American Promise” and Hilary Beard’s follow-up book, Promises Kept. Having then read several articles by Howard Stevenson, University of Pennsylvania, I came to realize the subtle and damaging role stereotype threats that can play among students.

Next, I attended the Race Institute and an local conference called “Engaging the Racial Elephant: How Leadership on Racial Literacy Improves Schools.” As I broaden my understanding of the issues, I have come to realize that for our efforts to be authentic and effective, they have to be multifaceted.

As this process unfolds, I have learned the role of patience in leadership. The flexibility to let vision evolve around the shape of the community seems invaluable. Design Thinking has helped me to slow down, become aware of the many factors involved, and be open to a more organic emergence of solutions.

Similarly, my research on stereotype threat and other ways race and education intersect has helped me appreciate how important it is to understand before acting. Such openness also helps me take ego out of the equation and reminds me that the best ideas for the community are not necessarily ideas I could have envisioned at the start of the process.

Next Steps I am continuing to work with my colleagues on the committee to guide the project through the next stages of Ideation, Prototyping, and Testing. We look for recurring themes and questions to determine what stands out as the greatest needs and where the greatest energy seems to be. We continue to brainstorm (Ideation) and develop models (Prototyping) that come at the issue from many different angles. We are also implementing models that best address identified needs (Testing).

Based on what the process has already yielded, these are some next steps: Solidify our partnership with the Young Men’s Initiative in a meeting with its Director and the Director of Philadelphia Futures.

Hold focus-group conversations with upper school students of color, designed to (a) create another venue for students of color to candidly discuss issues in school, and (b) to gather more information on their experiences.

Craft a survey for all students so we can continue finding areas to address.

Form a white ally affinity group in the school to augment the work of our strong diversity club.

Continue to explore ways to combat stereotype threat for our students.

Explore ways to reach out to parents of color to bring them into our work.

The nature of this project has taught me that leadership is not necessarily about being “in charge” of something, but rather about having the qualities to guide a process in a way that allows adults and students to engage in authentic ways to live up to the values of our community.

Action Research - Spring 2015

Hello. My name is…

(An Orientation to Penn Charter’s Middle School)

Background I have always felt comfortable and cared for while attending and teaching in Quaker schools. Attending a Friends school until eighth grade, and then having the opportunity to work in three different Quaker institutions, has allowed me to get to know, and immensely appreciate, being a part of the community and culture at these educationally rich schools. I was also raised in the Quaker faith, thus I have experience with Quakerism and how Quaker education plays out in schools -- the academically challenging, warm, friendly, encouraging, collaborative, and unique environment that Friends schools offer. In thinking about what this type of environment entails, I have become interested in how new students feel when they enter this new, unique domain. Adjusting to this very welcoming, but different setting can be difficult. New students, from school environments different from Quaker schools, experience this transition in a variety of ways. Capturing their experiences, delving into their transitions (some of which are hard adjustments), and creating a more substantive orientation process are the focal points of this action research project.

Exploration/Learning The inspiration for this project came from a need that was apparent in a faculty meeting last year. As we were reviewing first trimester grades, many of the lower grades were from students who were new to Penn Charter (PC). With this observation noted, colleagues voiced a desire for all of us, as a middle school division and school, to figure out why they were struggling and begin to address this issue. We wanted to think about ways that new students could not only perform better, but also feel more a part of the middle school community. So, the objective of this project is to help new students adjust to Penn Charter’s rigor, values, and the culture of the school. Helping students navigate the dynamic layers and understand the expectations of the school are goals the orientation program hopes to accomplish. Working with the realities of time, schedules, and details forced my big ideas to be divided into smaller workable parts. I began my process by collecting data two different times with two different groups.

The first collection was with the new students to PC in September (2014). They completed a survey about their experiences entering our community, giving their thoughts about the orientation process and what support they wished they had during the first week of school. The next data set I collected was from the faculty in an October (2014) faculty meeting. I asked the faculty two guiding questions: What would an ideal orientation look like without the worry of space and time? What skills and/or exposure would you like new students to have when coming into our community?

Josh Oberfield Middle School Teacher William Penn Charter School Philadelphia, PA

I come from a family in which a profession in education was held in high regard, as many of my aunts, cousins, my brother, and my mother are teachers. Thus, gravitating towards the field of education was almost inevitable. As a student at the Media-Providence Friends School, the school environment gave me enriching experiences and demonstrated what learning could be. So, years later, and heading into education as a career, one goal was to work in a Quaker school environment. Fortunately, I reached this goal quickly and have been teaching in Friends schools for almost fifteen years. Helping kids find and be their best selves, as well as creating collaborative and hands-on learning experiences, continues to be rewarding. Ideally, every student who attends a Quaker school should feel welcome and have a positive and productive experience entering this environment.

Action Research - Spring 2015

Josh Oberfield

The data I collected from the two questions was helpful in figuring out what faculty deemed important and what vision they may have for future students and programming we offer during the first few weeks of school. With regard to the first question, about an ideal time/space, colleagues voiced a strong push to have more face-time with students and parents. Teaching or exposing students to Quakerism and other expectations, like seeking help from teachers and having some resiliency were also mentioned in the feedback. The second question garnered ideas about students having skills or previous exposure with executive functioning, study habits, working with technology, and generally being adaptive to Quaker school community norms.

With the help of the MS director, I convened a “working group” to sift through the data and begin to shape a program. We sketched out a possible plan and schedule for next year’s orientation, by envisioning a two-day program that supports new students and families and that promotes an understanding of the nature and culture of the school. A two-day program, along with check-ins during the first month, seem to be goals that can be accomplished for the 2015-2016 school year. Gratefully there has been, and continues to be, great energy and spirit with my colleagues to help shape and build an even more robust orientation program in the future.

Next Steps: For now, the program will be run over the span of two days in September after Labor Day. This seems reasonable for the first iteration of the program, but I have collected a few examples of more extensive schedules that I would eventually like to mirror at Penn Charter, e.g. Sidwell’s Jumpstart program and Friends School of Baltimore’s week-long program. Four or five topics or themes will be sprinkled throughout the two days. Examples include: meet the director and some teachers in a “Who’s who” session, get a tour of the campus, get set-up and comfortable with laptops, have a Meeting for Worship and orientation to Quakerism, learn about sports and activity credits, learn about organizational tips from the learning specialist, and find out about expectations from current students. Having meaningful socialization with new and old students and participating in activities, challenges, and/or scavenger hunts will be built into the day. The Quakerism piece is an important part of this work, and will include the uses of silence, what the inner light is and how one can access it, and understanding the community value of putting forward your “best self.” Next, figuring out who will be the group of PC students tasked with befriending the new students, as a first friendly connection at school needs to be established, as well as making time for the MS Director to meet with the new parents welcoming them into the community and setting the tone.

I am excited about the development of this project, the groundwork laid and work that will be completed this spring, and the breadth of opportunity that can flower in the future. This work will dovetail with the Middle School embarking on revamping its advisory program. Creating opportunities for success, striving to be even more inclusive as a community, and symbolically ripping off the nametags, continue to be goals of this program.

Action Research - Spring 2015

Growth and Renewal: Developing a Staff Evaluation Process Aligned with Quaker Values Background As part of my professional responsibilities, I have been involved in the development, refinement, and use of various evaluation instruments over the past 15 years. These include the faculty evaluation process and our annual professional development program for teachers. I have watched our community of teachers and administrators work collaboratively to develop both a process and product that supports personal and professional growth for teachers and provides constructive feedback. The School is committed to the ideal that supervision and evaluation of faculty creates and sustains a culture of excellence and lifelong learning which benefits students and teachers.

I have struggled a bit in my supervision of both faculty and staff members, with the distinct ways in which these “classifications” of employees are treated differently.

Some of these differences are part of the respective job duties (for example, teachers work a 9-month contract and staff work 12 months), but there are other differences that are not equal across all employee groups. While there are both legal and structural reasons for many of the perceived “inequities”, one area that seemed ripe for conversation was our annual staff evaluation process. As a school we have struggled with finding the right instrument and process to effectively provide adequate written feedback about staff performance, goal setting and follow up. If the purpose of faculty evaluation is to “offer an opportunity for individual teachers to assess and re-affirm themselves, and for administration to support faculty in their efforts and for contractual purposes,” 1then it seemed critical to offer these same opportunities to our staff, who are equally charged with supporting students, families, and other members of the school community through their work.

Exploration/Learning My first step was to discuss the staff evaluation process with the senior leadership of the school. I learned that there were varied practices, timeframes, and instruments being used for staff evaluation and that there were some employees who have not received any formal feedback from their supervisor for years, while others were reviewed annually. Some administrators felt that the evaluation instrument did not provide for adequate review and feedback for employees and used a “home grown” process in their respective departments.

I then engaged with our Staff Meeting for Business (SMB) clerks to share my action research goals. They were enthusiastic about this work and supported my use of a staff survey to determine ways in which the evaluation process could be more closely aligned with the Quaker dimensions of the school, along with being consistently delivered by using a unified instrument. There were two notable findings from the survey: staff members seek ongoing, regular feedback from supervisors (the staff evaluation and feedback process is currently inconsistent across departments), and there is a desire to tie Quaker values into the evaluation process.

1

Jeanne Phizacklea Director of Library & Information Services Friends School of Baltimore Baltimore, MD

What drew me to Quaker education was a job, but what kept me was community. Two weeks into my new job as director of technology at Friends School of Baltimore in 2001, I sat in the Stony Run Meeting house attending my first Meeting for Worship. I will never forget the feeling that came over me as I sat silently and listened as a few members of the school rose to speak.

"There is no doubt," I said to myself, "that you are in the right place."

That feeling has been affirmed dozens of times over the years.

Perhaps the greatest gift of my working in a Quaker school is that my own child is a benefactor of the teachings, values, and spiritual and community connections that Friends education offers. It is a privilege to serve as the Director of Library and Information Services at Friends School. Prior to joining Friends, I was a technology director and teacher at a small independent school in Shreveport, Louisiana and held various teaching and administrative positions at the university level.

Friends School Faculty Development and Evaluation. Baltimore: Friends School, 2015.

Action Research - Spring 2015

Jeanne Phizacklea

Gathering samples of evaluation materials from other Quaker schools was part of my research. Because Quaker schools often have unique ways of operating from a business perspective, it was important that I primarily reviewed tools that were being used in a Quaker-centered environment. As I pursued my research in this area, I learned that very few schools had evaluation instruments designed for staff. Some used the same instrument for all employees and none had a process for staff that was tied to the Quaker dimension of the school. An emergent theme in my work is that the evaluation instrument is only one piece of the puzzle. There is clearly a need and desire among our staff members for more regular evaluation and for the process to include more ties to the Quaker aspects of our school. However, there are priorities that pull employees in many different directions, and they are not, as a group, necessarily encouraged to engage in practices such as Meeting for Worship or Professional Development Days (both of which are required for faculty) on a regular basis.

Next Steps One volunteer emerged from the survey who was willing to assist with reviewing and revising a draft evaluation instrument. Additional volunteers (up to 4) will be recruited to assist with this project as well.

In addition, our Staff Meeting for Business and the Quaker Principles Committee will review drafts of the evaluation and provide feedback on the design and implementation of the system.

An unexpected concern that has arisen during this action research process is the level of supervisor preparedness and comfort in conducting staff evaluations. While the senior administrative team has had extensive conversation and training on evaluation methods, other mid-level managers who supervise staff have not. One outgrowth of this research may be to address the need for more formalized supervisory training on conducting an evaluation. There are several questions about which I would like to gather broader feedback in the coming months: Do supervisors feel adequately trained to conduct evaluations? If no, what type of training do they feel is missing?

Does the staff evaluation instrument provide relevant feedback and information?

How does the timing of annual evaluations impact the quality of the process? Are there aspects of the timetable that could be shifted to make the process more effective?

Are there other opportunities during the course of the year when supervisors engage in informal conversation with employees about their work? Would this be valuable?

Are their elements of the evaluation process that make you uncomfortable or unsure?

How could the school provide additional supports to you as a supervisor related to staff evaluation?

This action research has led me to deepen connections with a wide range of colleagues with whom I have not previously had the chance to work. I look forward to continuing to work on this project and to sharing a newly created evaluation instrument and process with our employees in the months ahead.

Action Research - Spring 2015

Learning to Lead

Background The National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) has a long-standing commitment to leadership development, serving independent school administrators, heads of school, and trustees. As an organization, we know that in the next five to eight years we will see record numbers of independent school leaders retire, specifically heads of school. In most cases, the schools they are leaving are faced with vastly different challenges than they had a decade ago.

Affordability, enrollment management, marketing, and legal issues are but a few of the challenges that new leaders need to be prepared to tackle. Gone are the days where the head of school was seen as the chief academic leader. Independent school leaders are now spending much less time on internal issues, such as curriculum development and implementation, and much more time on external concerns and opportunities like marketing and advancement.

While the issues and needs facing independent schools are changing, the way we train our leaders has not. Even today, the majority of school heads follow a traditional trajectory, starting as teachers, becoming department heads, then division heads or senior administrators, which leads to assistant headship, and ultimately school headship. Unfortunately, following the traditional trajectory to headship does not equip a leader with the necessary skills for today’s headship.

Issues of advancement, financial planning, and good governance, for example, are significant in these times for school heads.

This combination of factors led me to ask three important questions: How can we better train our leaders for a more complex job? How can we make sure these leaders represent the diversity found in our schools? How do we measure our success moving forward?

Exploration/Learning I decided to begin with research. I looked at ten corporate, higher education and non-profit leadership models to identify who their target audience was, what role diversity played, what their “buzz” words or “tag lines” were, and how the model was evaluated. My first observation was that in each case, whether corporate, non-profit, or education, the target audience included people who already had a leadership position or demonstrated leadership potential. I concluded that we often think of leadership as something inherent, a gift bestowed from birth, and rather than something that can be acquired over time and through experience.

Jay Rapp Vice President for Professional Development The National Association of Independent Schools Washington, DC

While I have always been drawn to Quakerism and Quaker education, I have not had the privilege of working in a Quaker environment.

The tenets of Quakerism speak deeply to who I am as a person and as an educator. My current position at the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) as Vice President for Professional Development gives me the opportunity to use the qualities of Quakerism to shape future leaders who directly impact current and future students. Prior to my work at NAIS, I worked at Fountain Valley School, a boarding and day school, in Colorado. I currently reside just outside Washington, D.C. with my partner and two incredible children.

When I looked at the role diversity played in each program/framework, it was included in every model, some more explicitly than others. Many stressed the global aspect of diversity and the importance of a leader understanding and embracing cultural differences, which would ultimately lead to better collaboration skills and the capability to embrace controversy and difficult conversations. There was little mention of the different experiences that women and people of color might face when ascending to leadership positions or being considered as a future leader.

Action Research - Spring 2015

Jay Rapp

In taking a careful look at “buzz words” and “tag lines” used in describing leaders, I saw that various models were inherently similar in naming skills and competencies that good leaders should have. Here are the frequently mentioned traits: Good communication skills Self-awareness Ability to collaborate Integrity Visionary Optimism Resilient Conflict Management Culturally competent Respect Ability to embrace /manage change Finally, I wanted to see if/how these models/programs were evaluated. Four out of the ten had an evaluation built in as part of their model/program. These methods were not surprising or out of the ordinary and ranged from 360 degree feedback assessments to pre and post psychometric assessments. Various surveys were used, as well as focus groups and individual interviews. All were designed to measure the long term effects of each program in terms of leadership skill development as defined by each program/model. I was surprised that six of the ten models had no evaluation process in place.

From this research I developed a leadership framework that would apply to current leaders and aspiring leaders at any level, from “teacher to trustee”, and would be specifically applicable to independent schools. Ultimately I articulated six competencies with a variety of skills related to each.

Know Yourself Lead with integrity, courage, passion, and understanding.

Know Your Stuff Be expert in the operational, managerial, and financial requirements of your role.

Instill a Compelling Vision Backed by Concrete Goals and Plans Engage your school community in the development of a compelling vision of the school’s future.

Build a Positive, Cohesive and Equitable Team and School Culture Create an environment of respect, regard, and contribution, inclusive of diverse backgrounds.

Engage Your Community Proactively Cultivate an effective governing relationship with your school’s board.

Follow Up Continuously and Adjust Strategically Adjust plans as necessary, continuously, aiming to keep goals constant.

After completion of the framework, I vetted it with five different focus groups made up of a variety of individuals from NAIS member schools nation-wide. Their feedback was taken into consideration in making changes and refining the framework. Ultimately, NAIS hopes that this framework will be adopted by all organizations serving independent schools and become a tool used to measure success in various leadership programs.

Next Steps This framework is still very much a work in progress. There are two main steps that I am hoping to accomplish in 2015. I have convened a task force of state and regional association executives to come together to deliver future professional development, specifically leadership development, in a comprehensive, tiered format that would benefit program participants both nationally and regionally. My hope is that we can come to agreement on a leadership framework that we would all feel comfortable adopting. Once we have created greater buy-in, I would like to develop a graphic that simplifies the overall framework while communicating its core values. Finally, my ultimate hope is that we are able to use this framework to create metrics that will help us better determine programmatic success. In the end, are we actually preparing leaders in ways that make them successful?

How can we generate that data?

Action Research - Spring 2015

When A Startup Grows Up: The Evolution and Care of Faculty Culture in a Young Quaker School Background In my role as Academic Dean at San Francisco Friends School (SFFS), I have been aware from the beginning that my work has the potential to profoundly impact how it feels to be a member of the professional community at SFFS. I know that, for better or for worse, how teachers feel about their work trickles down into their relationships with students and parents. I committed to study faculty culture in my Action Research project with the hope that deeper insight and understanding would help me do my job better for the benefit of teachers, and, by extension, students and parents.

My project began as a general investigation of how to tend to faculty culture, but by the second year I was focusing on the particular context of SFFS’s rapid growth.

SFFS was founded in 2002 with 36 kindergartners and a razor-thin faculty/staff.

In the early years, faculty meetings could be held around a single table, every element of the program was a first-time experiment, and everyone in the whole community (students, teachers, staff, parents) knew everyone else’s name. Today SFFS enrolls 436 students and employs over 80 teachers, administrators, and staff. Our school functions and feels like a big institution. I found myself wondering what the effect of this twelve-fold growth in twelve years has been on faculty culture.

Exploration and Learning I started with some fact finding about our faculty culture. The Faculty Clerks and I hosted two “listening groups,” each attended by a diverse group of faculty members, to discuss what is working and what could improve in our faculty culture.

The Faculty Clerks and I analyzed the results and identified six themes, which we reflected back to the faculty and shared with the administrative team. Importantly, several participants named the listening groups themselves as a significant example of, and contributor to, an inclusive, responsive faculty culture.

The listening group feedback became the impetus to take a variety of responsive actions. These included changing the seating arrangement during weekly meetings so the faculty face one another, having a “mixer” lunch during our fall professional development day, asking our Head of School to briefly address the faculty on a regular basis, and re-envisioning our faculty retreat in August. One challenge was how to understand the effect of these and other actions on faculty culture. I have solicited feedback from the faculty about many of these changes, and while the responses offer insight into how faculty feel about each experience, they do not help me make before and after comparisons. I continue to be interested in the distinction between “culture” and “morale,” and in how these qualities can best be monitored in an organization. It is clear that careful listening and thoughtful responding are ongoing projects in a healthy school culture.

Gwen Rino Academic Dean San Francisco Friends School San Francisco, CA

I’ve been fortunate to be involved in startup projects twice in my career as an educator. In 1998 I became a founding middle school teacher at an independent elementary school that was just expanding into the upper grades. It was challenging and exhilarating to work with a team of bright, energetic, committed teachers to create an academic and social-emotional middle school program from scratch. In 2008 I became the Academic Dean at San Francisco Friends School, which was then six years into the project of building the Bay Area’s only school in the Quaker educational tradition.

Once again, the startup work of program building was exciting and challenging. But the Quaker foundation of the school made the work feel different: purposeful, grounded, profound. I feel that I have found my home in Friends education, where I am continually challenged to bring the best of myself to my work and to my community.

Action Research - Spring 2015

Gwen Rino

Meanwhile, I became curious about the idea that several of the themes from the listening groups might be particular to our school’s developmental stage. I decided to investigate how the business community thinks about culture in growing companies. A review of business literature revealed that high tech startups are keenly interested in the pressure that rapid growth puts on a young company’s culture. The famous qualities of startup culture -- intense creativity, “all-in” teamwork, breakneck pace -- are challenging to maintain as a company grows. In fact, in the summer of 2014, some of the brightest stars of the tech world (leaders of Twitter and Facebook, among others) startled the blogosphere by arguing that a company cannot and should not attempt to maintain all aspects of startup culture indefinitely. A maturing company must establish systems, roles, and policies that undergird but do not stifle the energy and innovation that first carried it to success.

I decided to investigate how the SFFS startup experience has paralleled the developmental pattern described in the business literature. I interviewed the 14 current teachers that began working at the school before 2008 (the pivot point in our shift from a small to a large school). I was fascinated that the teachers talked about the changes at school in nearly identical terms as the tech companies. In particular, the teachers appreciate the development of clearer, more professional roles and systems, but they also rue the dimming of the intensity and personal connectedness that characterized the school’s inception. I am curious to learn more about what the business literature has to say about promoting innovation, collaboration, and ongoing learning, and how it may be relevant to the continuing development of the faculty culture at our young school.

Next Steps Regarding the question of caring for faculty culture, next steps include instituting the listening groups as an annual event, and investigating the Independent School Management Faculty Culture Profile as an instrument for monitoring faculty culture. I am also interested in developing a clearer picture of how teachers understand our professional growth program as an element of faculty culture.

Regarding the question of how startup schools mature, I plan to write an article that describes how the business literature can provide useful insights for the leaders of young schools. I will also reflect my findings back to my SFFS community in the context of our next major developmental phase: our founding Head of School will be departing in June 2016.

Action Research - Spring 2015

Fostering Meaningful Collaboration and Empathy Background For students, the physical, emotional, and intellectual development that takes place during middle school is profound and challenging. In many ways, the rise in social media and other technologies has made this transition even more difficult.

Current research shows that empathy among American young people is rapidly declining. A recent study conducted by the sociology department at the University of Michigan indicates that today’s college students may be 40% less empathetic than students ten years ago, and many researchers correlate this decline to the rise of social media and other technologies.

What does this mean for the developing pre-teen or teen? The middle school years are marked by heightened self-consciousness and a need for meaningful peer relationships. If today’s adolescent peer group is less capable of empathy and positive identity reinforcement than the peer groups of prior generations, students are at a greater risk for developing negative self images. The decline in empathy also means that students may be less receptive to or aware of the positive social reinforcement that their peers provide.

Christopher Sparks Teacher Haddonfield Friends School Haddonfield, NJ

Since entering the field of education, I have had the opportunity to serve students and faculty in charter, independent, and Friends schools in Rhode Island, New Jersey, Italy, and

As educators we need to create strategies that foster a culture of meaningful collaboration and empathy amongst our students in order to engender their positive emotional and intellectual growth. As Friends educators, we are especially well poised to accomplish this task, since we can draw upon the rich tradition of Quakerism, which recognizes “that of God” in everyone and has developed a myriad of practices that beget empathy.

India. In my current role as a 7th and

I began my action research project with the following orienting queries: What tools already exist to increase student empathy, and how can these existing tools be made more effective? Although the increased use of social media and other new technologies has decreased empathy on the whole, might it be possible to harness current technologies to increase students’ ability to step into another’s shoes?

I began by surveying academic literature on information and communication technology in order to critically assess the merits and limitations of technology use in the classroom. During the course of my research, I was inspired to look at “emergent worlds” (i.e. digitally-created worlds) as tools to promote empathy since the creation of such worlds depends on successful student collaboration. I decided that my 8th grade humanities students would embark on an interdisciplinary and project-based exploration of dystopias and utopias in order to lay the foundation for their year-long study of human rights. With technology integrated throughout the project, students worked in small groups to create a utopian society and recorded their conversations along the way. Sometimes students scribed for their group; other times, students created records of their online communications in Google Docs. At key intervals throughout the project, students analyzed their communication patterns to identify positive and negative traits and to see if their communications moved the group towards their goal of creating an emergent world that incorporated everyone’s ideas. Could they correlate positive communication patterns to better project outcomes? Could they correlate positive communication patterns to greater empathy within themselves and within their peers?

in the classroom. I am deeply

8th grade Humanities teacher at Haddonfield Friends School, I strive to bring an inspired education to students, one which will plant seeds of creativity and patterns of thought that transcend the content taught committed to Friends education as it nourishes the life of the mind, strengthens the life of the spirit, and empowers its students to be peacemakers and visionaries in an increasingly complex world.

Action Research - Spring 2015

Christopher Sparks

During these moments of reflection, it became apparent that SAVI, the System for Analyzing Verbal Interactions, would be an excellent tool for monitoring and then modulating both verbal and written communication patterns. (SAVI® is a registered trademark of Agazarian, Byram, Carter & Simon.) SAVI, a research tool for examining the communication patterns of groups of people, was introduced to me during a Friends Council on Education Leadership Institute retreat. The SAVI tool primarily focuses on the efficacy of information transfer during communication. SAVI’s successful implementation depends upon learning to observe and listen really well; thus, I wondered if it could engender an increasingly empathetic classroom environment. In addition to SAVI, I also looked at the Developmental Designs social-affective curriculum for middle-graders, and at models of accountable talk, both of which were already in use in my classroom. With these three tools, I hoped to develop a means for students to self-assess the degree to which they were meaningfully collaborating with others in the peer group.

After analyzing their initial communication patterns through the lens of SAVI, the students and I noticed that about 65% of their utterances were in the red light zone, 30% were in the yellow zone, and 5% were in the green zone. Red light communication behaviors, such as joking around, social ritual, sarcasm, ought-itude, and yes-but, proved to be counterproductive and held back students’ conversations. These results were not surprising; they seemed consistent with developmental behaviors one might expect from middle graders and with the four adolescent needs, as articulated by Developmental Designs: competence, autonomy, relationship, and fun. I realized that these four adolescent needs could provide an alternative, developmentally-appropriate framework for the communication behaviors organized in the SAVI grid. I also realized the intervention’s primary weakness was that it did not communicate information in a way that was readily-accessible to middle schoolers.

I worked with a small team of students to “essentialize” and tailor the SAVI grid to the communication patterns of the group. For each square on the SAVI grid, we honed in on two most common behaviors for that particular square and eliminated the others. I then aligned this pared-down SAVI grid with the four adolescent needs.

The result was a clear grid which was less cumbersome for students to use and which helped me design scaffolded lessons to teach positive communication patterns.

At the current stage of the project, the students have a SAVI/Developmental Designs hybrid framework that enables them to self assess the degree to which their communication behaviors are productive, empathetic, and promote meaningful collaboration during technologically-mediated project-based learning environments.

Next Steps Moving forward with my action research, I will continue to use the SAVI/Developmental Design hybrid to structure mini-lessons that encourage students to analyze their communication patterns. I have introduced the curriculum to the members of my middle school team and hope to facilitate the implementation of the communication framework within their classrooms and to solicit feedback from them. The feedback will be used to refine the SAVI/Developmental Designs hybrid grid and mini-lessons to make a stronger curriculum.

Action Research - Spring 2015

Joining Place and Person: A Four-Tiered Model for Global Justice Programming in Friends Schools Background The 21st century finds independent schools focused on the challenges created by globalization. Societies beyond Europe and North America have faced these same challenges and, to some extent, witnessed their opportunity to shape the new millennium curtailed in the wake of white imperialism. In order to cultivate partnerships of justice and avoid the pitfalls forged in previous relations with the non-West, independent schools must tread lightly as they seek to formulate global studies programming (that does not reinforce paternalistic models of global exchange at the national level). One way to guarantee programming that does more good than harm is to “marry” person and place over a series of carefully constructed points of engagement. In this arena, I see Quaker schools holding a special niche. Devoted deeply to justice and equality, Quaker schools are in the best position to model global programs that decenter students, build awareness of privilege, and seek to foster justice at every level. One tool in the Quaker toolkit is the concept of radical hospitality, adapted from the Benedictine philosophy by Brad Ogilvie of William Penn House. Radical hospitality asks us to focus on relationships rather than problems. By placing relationships at the center of our approach to global programming, we begin from a place of inquiry and openness that places continual revelation at the center. Instead of approaching global trips or classroom experiences with the assumption that we are in a position of power to “know” and perhaps “improve” a community, we might begin with the query “how might I foster a relationship with citizens of this nation I seek to know?”

In order to empower students in this relationship-building work, I have created a multi-step process of engagement wherein students can pursue up to four levels of commitment.

The four-tiered model begins with classroom study of a region and requires no travel. In the course, students will learn to think through the lens of a regionexploring art, literature, history, and current events related to the region. Once students have an intellectual foundation, they will pursue travel within the region they have studied via a carefully crafted and extensive program (for example, a summer study for three weeks in Rwanda). After completion of the experiential summer study, students will apply for the chance to serve as a Global Leadership Teaching Assistant (TA) in the course they took the year previously. Steeped in the region via a yearlong class and travel, the TAs will help lead discussions, create projects, and expand their own knowledge. Students who complete these first three stages and go on to study the region in college will be eligible to return as an alumnus to help lead the summer study trip. Whereas one can imagine up to 40 students studying a region each year, one imagines only a handful of students completing all four stages, but for these students, the opportunity for a deep dive into the non-west will be a meaningful opportunity to cultivate expertise and a global ethic.

Shields Sundberg History Department Sidwell Friends School Washington, DC

Shields teaches at Sidwell Friends School for the History Department.

As Chair of the Department, she developed several global programs that have inspired this action research project. Devoted to Friends education, Shields’ primary goal was to identify a global initiative that was uniquely suited to Quaker testimonies. As Friends schools aim to solidify market share, they have an ideal platform from which to cultivate a global ethic that advances equity even as it grows our footprint in the independent school world. Shields also devotes considerable time to community development work in northern Haiti as a member of Alyans Sante Borgne (ASB). Shields’ passions include economic development challenges, social justice, and music (especially of the jazz, blues, and hip hop traditions).

Action Research - Spring 2015

Shields Sundberg

Exploration/Learning This action research took shape organically throughout the Leadership Institute. With global programming already on my mind, and worries about becoming a one-trick pony, I tried to search for action research projects outside the realm of global studies. In our second gathering, which coincided with the 20th Anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, a Friend shared Chimamanda Adichie’s “Danger of a Single Story” with our cohort. At the same retreat, I enjoyed a walk-and-talk with Tom Hoopes to focus on the project.

Together, these two moments provided the revelation that I had focused in a singular fashion on one model of global programming. Thus, I set to work discerning a program with multiple points of entry.

The Institute provided me an opportunity to step back and think deeply on the curricular matter most important to me, re-imagining how global studies might take shape in Friends schools.

After establishing the four-tiered, flexible model of global engagement, I decided I needed to do more work to articulate the ethic behind the program. In conversation with alumnae who claimed that studying Africa with me had “changed their lives,” I set out to understand just how and why. From there, I wrote a series of articles to explain the way teachers in classrooms “here” can lead students through exercises about how knowledge is constituted “there” (i.e., Africa) to reflect on how and why we study the non-west.

The core tenant of the program seeks to teach that “justice here is justice everywhere.” I see in this model flexibility, optimism, and the possibility that Quaker schools might make the foray into global education with greater grace and justice than many other independent schools who tend to focus first on travel.

Next Steps June 2015 I will be in Rwanda with 13 students. Thus, I will have an opportunity to reflect on the model and I plan to write an article about this approach to global studies programming. Upon completion of the trip and article I hope to complete some outreach regarding the various paths schools take to “going global!” Irene and Joe provided excellent guidance regarding this step along the way, and I did some outreach. I plan to do more. One other step I aim to take is to apply the same process Friends Council and our Leadership cohort helped me develop to the process of sharing the model. Ideally, I would like to create an instrument for gathering data about Friends schools‘ programming as I open channels for feedback and “appreciative inquiry,” to borrow from Bryan Garman’s recent work at Wilmington Friends School which he shared in FCE’s recent publication—Leading in the Light: Celebrating 325 Years of Quaker Education in America.

Action Research - Spring 2015

Institute for Engaging Leadership in Friends Schools 2013-2015 Graduating Cohort Kathryn Park Cook Karen Cumberbatch Cameron Wade Francisco Elisabeth Gamble Tom Hoopes

Program Director Irene McHenry

Ben Horner Nicholas A. James Elise London James Miller Joshua D. Oberfield

Program Consultant Joseph Marchese

Jeanne Phizacklea Jay Rapp Gwen Rino Christopher Sparks Shields Sundberg

Consulting Heads of School John Baird Nancy Donnelly

Friends Council Executive Director Drew Smith

Craig Sellers Earl Sissel