Action Research 2022-24

ACTION RESEARCH

Institute for Engaging Leadership in Friends Schools 2022-2024 Graduating Cohort

Laura Barrosse-Antle

Lourdes Cossich

Jane Ellis

Rasha El-Haggan

Hannah Ellwood

Brad Gibson

Jenel Giles

John Henderson

Pamela Horn

Erika Kitzmiller

Minnie Lee

Sydney Linder

Ian Lockey

Natalie Mayer

Daniel Potter

Miriam Rock

Sam Taylor

Chris Wills

Tina Yen

Williette Zigbuo

History of Friends Council on Education’s INSTITUTE FOR ENGAGING LEADERSHIP IN FRIENDS SCHOOLS

Friends Council on Education created the Leadership Institute in 2002 as a learning community for Friends school leaders to work collaboratively on strengthening their capacity and skills. The Institute focuses on the unique role of Friends school leadership and the peculiar art of sustaining the Quaker ethos of a Friends school. Institute members conduct action research projects that benefit the network of Friends schools.

A Design Team consisting of several heads of Friends schools and Friends Council board members identified assumptions, goals, and objectives for participants in the Leadership Institute.

BACKGROUND ASSUMPTIONS

There is current need to increase the pool of strong leaders, with special awareness of the current lack of women and people of color in Friends school headships.

Leadership development is a responsibility of the community of Friends schools and a collaborative leadership development model is very fitting for Friends schools.

GOALS

To create a strategic network of Friends school leaders working together as a learning community focused on developing capacity and skills for transformational leadership in Friends schools.

To develop a pool of candidates for future Friends school headship and other leadership positions.

PARTICIPANT OBJECTIVES

To examine the particular joys and challenges of leadership in a Friends school and explore how leadership is different in a Friends school than in non-Friends schools.

To learn and explore a systems-centered approach to school leadership and to practice tools and techniques for systems analysis and managing change.

To design and implement an action research project, engaging in observation and inquiry about Friends school culture, structure, and practice.

To explore the spiritual dimension of leadership by developing the capacity to discern leadings of the spirit and test these leadings through reflective group processes

To engage in structured opportunities to visit, observe and shadow respected leaders in Friends schools within the FCE network.

To engage in an ongoing cycle of deep learning in a collaborative, collegial cohort through critical reflection and feedback for the development of personal mastery.

A donation from a Quaker family foundation funded a pilot program, and then a major fundraising campaign funded an endowment that continues to make the leadership program sustainable while keeping participation in the Institute at no or low cost. Each two-year cohort now averages 20 members.

After 21 years the Leadership Institute has 153 alumni; 24% have become heads of Friends schools and other independent schools. Others are serving as leaders in various positions in Friends, independent, and public schools. With the 2022-2024 graduating cohort, 20 more educators become Leadership Institute alumni.

The Institute for Engaging Leadership in Friends Schools is a proven success. The composition of leaders in today’s Friends schools is palpably different from a generation ago. There are more women who are heads as well as more heads of color. Moreover, there is a strong sense of shared responsibility of the community of Friends schools to claim the time and space for collaborative and reflective leadership.

is grateful to be the host and facilitator of such thoughtful and inspired professional growth and development collaboration with the Friends school network.

CONTENTS

Each action research project presented in this booklet is deeply personal to the cohort member. Yet the themes are universal. They speak to a strong desire to infuse Quaker principles and practices to transform the effectiveness of a classroom, team, or school. Collaboration underpins every project, both in terms of eliciting the input of those involved in the concept, to sharing the results so that others might learn effective applications in their own school communities.

Fostering

INCREASING 9TH GRADE STUDENT EFFICACY THROUGH MENTORSHIP

Background

My Action Research Project emerged out of concern about students’ increasing perfectionism. The Sidwell Friends Mental Health Task Force collected data on our students’ mental health in the 2022/23 school year and found a correlation between perfectionism and poor mental health. They also identifed self-effcacy as a signifcant protective factor associated with better mental health. Students with high self-effcacy agree with statements such as “I am confdent that I will successfully overcome challenges” and “I am confdent that I will be able to achieve most of my goals.”

As I started thinking about potential interventions to increase effcacy and decrease perfectionism, the barrier that came up most frequently was the credibility gap between adults and adolescents. Centering student voices and experiences in my action research would be critical to its success.

Exploration/Learning

Exit interviews with seniors at the end of the 2022/23 school year reminded me of the depth of wisdom to be found in our graduating class, indicated that many of our graduating students wished they had 12th grade insight during their 9th grade year, and affrmed that 12th grade students were open to or actively seeking connection with their younger peers. Administrators in the Upper School also expressed that peer mentorship would be valuable to the school community. Thus, my project became the creation of a program to connect 9th grade mentees with 12th grade mentors.

In preparation for launching a new mentorship program, I spoke with colleagues at Sidwell Friends and other Quaker schools about similar programs past and present and read peer-reviewed articles. My research confrmed that effective peer mentorship could increase competence (effcacy) and connection and provided important insight into the process of selecting and training mentors successfully.

In writing the application materials for the 12th grade mentors, I described the ideal candidate as a student who learns from their successes and challenges and has a process-oriented perspective on what it means to be a student at Sidwell Friends. One question on the application form also focused on the theme of growth, asking applicants to describe their process of adaptation to meet a school-related challenge that had lasted at least two of their three full years of high school.

LAURA

BARROSSE-ANTLE

9th Grade Dean, Science Teacher

Sidwell Friends School Washington, DC

I came to Sidwell Friends in 2011 for the location and academics and stayed for the mission and community. Over my thirteen years at Sidwell Friends, the Quaker vision of education has become central to my own understanding of what it means to be a teacher and administrator, and I’ve been privileged to serve our students in a number of roles, including Upper School chemistry teacher, swimming coach, clerk or co-clerk of various committees, and Assistant Academic Dean for the Upper School. Currently, I teach 10th grade chemistry, a forensic science elective, and 9th Grade Studies as well as serving as 9th Grade Dean. Prior to arriving at Sidwell Friends, I was a water polo coach, science teacher, and dorm faculty at The Hotchkiss School in Connecticut.

After sending the application forms to 12th grade students in mid-September, I received 11 applications and accepted them all. Three group training sessions in October oriented mentors to the purpose and ethos of the program, instructed them in some active listening techniques, and talked about healthy boundaries. Each session ended with scenarios where mentors discussed possible responses to challenging situations.

Nine 9th graders signed up for a mentor initially, seven of whom were new to Sidwell in 9th grade, and I directly approached two other 9th graders who I felt would beneft from the program. In matching mentors and mentees, I used my knowledge of the participating 9th graders and the challenge the 12th graders had described in response to the growth-oriented question on their application forms. Both sets of students also listed identities that they were comfortable being considered in the matching process, and I used that information as well.

Discoveries

Increasing feelings of effcacy and connection were the primary goals of the program, and some of the mentors have gone above and beyond to achieve that outcome. One mentor attended her mentee’s ballet performance over winter break. Another was mentoring a student who had to learn from home for an extended period, and the mentor was proactive about keeping in touch with her mentee through texting and FaceTime. Yet another encouraged her mentee, a reticent 9th grader who is new to the country as well as to the school, to try out for and join her a cappella group. As of early March, the most diligent individual mentors have logged seven to ten meetings with their mentees. All mentors have met with their mentees multiple times.

All mentees I interviewed for feedback prior to writing this summary reported feeling connected to their mentors. Two mentees said that they were expecting to get a lot of information on the school, but that they liked that they had found more conversation rather than advice. Another mentee shared that she appreciated the space to take a step back from work and just talk. Multiple mentor-mentee pairs reported that they connected in school outside of the required 20-25 minute meetings each week. Mentees, especially, placed value on being able to say “hi” to a senior in the hall.

Whether mentees have seen any increased feelings of effcacy is harder to gauge. I sent a survey with standardized measures on connection and effcacy in early November, but only half of my already small sample flled it out, so I don’t anticipate getting much useful information from a before and after comparison of survey data. Instead, turning again to the interviews conducted with mentees mid-year, I can report that mentees have shared that they are having conversations with their mentors about topics related to effcacy. For example, a student who struggles with perfectionism has had discussions with her mentor about managing academic pressure and the culture amongst some students of taking pride in how little sleep they’re getting. Another wrote in an email that his mentor has “helped [him] learn how to navigate [his] work effectively,” while a different mentee found it comforting and useful to know that his 9th grade year, struggles and successes, was “normal.”

A beneft of the program that I didn’t anticipate is that it engages students in thinking creatively about how to support one another. One mentor spontaneously shared feedback related to conversations with her mentee and her own experiences, bringing up specifc skills related to self-advocacy that she thought it was important for 9th graders to know. I look forward to hearing more input from the mentors and will solicit it if it doesn’t emerge organically. As a member of student support teams, I am also excited to consider how we can expand our use of mentoring to support students who are experiencing social or academic challenges.

Next Steps

1. Collect fnal feedback on the individual mentorship program from both mentors and mentees (April 2024)

2. Schedule mentors to talk to 11th grade class to solicit interest in the program for next year (April 2024)

3. Seek feedback from the Student Support Team and Upper School faculty to improve the program for future years (May 2024)

4. Modify the program as necessary in response to feedback (summer 2024).

5. Grow the program so that at least a quarter of the 9th graders can be matched with individual mentors in the 2024/25 school year.

SEEING THE LIGHT OF ALL EMPLOYEES: SUPPORTING MENTAL HEALTH IN THE WORKPLACE

Background

My journey in educational leadership started during the COVID-19 pandemic. As I strove to support my team, I began to recognize the importance of having leaders who are well-versed in mental health in the workplace. My understanding of the inextricable relationships between employee well-being, job satisfaction, and performance is informed by my lived experience. To support all employees and their differing needs, we must see the importance and moral imperative to build divisions and teams that are equipped to attract, retain, and develop individuals with mental health illnesses. Our commitment as Friends educators positions us to examine and challenge our practices through the lens of continuing revelation.

Learnings

Mental health in the workplace is a topic that is often neither disclosed nor discussed. For almost a decade, researchers have tried to understand the impact and relationship between employee well-being, leadership, and mental health outcomes. In 2016 John Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health held a summit to call attention to the gaps and issues related to workplace practices regarding mental health. Since the summit, there has been a growing call for employers to implement practices and policies that support employees with mental health illnesses. Multiple factors have contributed to a heightened awareness of the topic including the COVID-19 pandemic and a generational shift and attitude toward seeking support and help in adults ages 18-25, as reported by McKinsey and Company.

Through an extensive literature review, I learned that work is one of the leading causes of stress in adults and can be directly linked with mental health outcomes. Wu, Roemer, Kent, et al. in a 2021 article stated how long working hours, lack of vacation or weekends away from work, and unclear roles and expectations are all contributing factors that

exacerbate mental illnesses for employees within an organization. In addition, workplace ‘burnout,’ a casually and colloquially used term, was labeled by the World Health Organization as a medical condition due to chronic workplace stress. Burnout is a condition that can be prevented before it impacts employee mental health; the literature has several recommendations for doing so, though I will focus on three.

• Culture

• Health Benefts offered by the institution

• Workplace policies and practices

When we think of organizational culture in schools, we often think of how people work together and how Friends schools enact the different Quaker testimonies guided by the principles of Friendship and kindness; it is also how leaders manage teams and the behaviors they exhibit with their own relationship to work, policies, procedures, practices, or expectations that are in place. As leaders, it is important to model healthy behaviors with our work-life boundaries, speak about the importance of mental health, and collaborate with other team members to normalize it as part of workplace conversations and decisions. Thomas Hersen’s research deemed culture to also encompass, “unconscious assumptions that make up the value of an organization.” Our understanding, value, and behavior towards mental health should not be left open to interpretation.

An actionable frst step towards making our organizations and teams have a clear stance on mental health is through the evaluation of current Health Benefts programs. The Annual Review for Organizational Psychology published in its 2023 review of Mental Health in the Workplace that mental health illnesses are not covered to the same extent as other medical illnesses in most health insurance plans and cites that despite organizations having traditional Employee Assistance Programs (EPA), these are often underutilized. In their review, they recommended

COSSICH Associate Head of Lower School

The Chapin School New York, NY

Lulu Cossich is an educational leader who is deeply invested in Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging and understanding the intersections of social identities of school stakeholders. She has presented at national and international conferences on Culturally Sustaining Practices, Fostering Musical Behaviors in Bilingual Children, DEIB considerations in the choral classroom…She has worked on collaborative projects including Flux Leadership: Real-time Inquiry for Humanizing Educational Change (Teacher’s College Press) and Choral Perspectives of Music Learning Theory (GIA publications). Lulu holds advanced degrees from the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education.

training leadership to promote health and well-being, re-examining insurance policies, developing programs supporting mental health, and taking a critical look at diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.

The research elucidates the challenges employees face when navigating through unclear or non-existent policies regarding accommodations for mental health. To support our faculty and staff, we must challenge ourselves to examine what policies exist or do not yet exist for encouraging well-being and providing accommodations when needed. It is also vital to train our leadership team to think of possible structures or accommodations before they are needed. Throughout my career and research, I have learned that psychiatric illnesses and mental health conditions are protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and leadership practices can be, if in support of a colleague, subject to reasonable accommodation.

According to the research, leadership style and support have an important role in workplace mental health. Considering mental health falls under the social identifer of ability, as leaders we must approach it with and through an equity lens. It is paramount to a positive work culture that we examine our practices and meet the individual needs of colleagues. Below are some questions for self-refection,

• How am I mitigating biases when assigning tasks?

• Am I holding all members of my team to the same expectations?

- How am I mitigating performance punishment of high achievers?

- How am I holding colleagues capable of their responsibilities while also providing support to perform them?

• How am I modeling well-being?

• How do I ‘show up’ when speaking up and about mental health?

Throughout the course of this action research, I inquired with colleagues and created a social media poll to learn more about the support different schools might have for faculty and staff. My informal fndings aligned with the literature, in that many independent schools only offer EPA benefts and access to in-building wellness facilities as the main sources of support for mental health. In addition, professional development or training on the subject had not taken place in the past two years.

Limitations and Next Steps

Further research is needed to have a comprehensive understanding of the services offered by schools, as well as the impact that certain services or lack thereof have on employees from historically underrepresented groups. With the available information, I hope to create a faculty meeting model that includes mental well-being as one of its core tenets in conjunction with professional development and curriculum to be implemented in the fall of 2024.

LULU

STEPPING UP TO THE BALCONY: CONFESSIONS OF A QUAKER SCHOOL LEADER

Background

I’m entering my frst year as Assistant Head of Academics at Friends School of Baltimore. Friends School is the oldest school in Baltimore, established in 1784. It has a strong culture steeped in Quaker values and practices. One of my very frst tasks at the school is to work on aligning the school’s PK-12 curriculum while continuing to strengthen its teaching and learning program. Bringing change and impacting an entire school is not an easy feat, especially in a school with as much rich history as Friends School of Baltimore. Having experienced frst-hand how a leader can both negatively and positively impact culture, I want to ensure that whatever change or impact I have at my new school is one that keeps the positive elements of the school’s culture. Because of that, it is important that I immerse myself in both change management and leadership research. When leaders fail to begin with the 30-thousand-foot view, we miss opportunities to imagine all the possibilities. This can lead to teams working in isolation, miscommunicating, resulting in false starts and often great frustration.

Explorations

Following Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky’s book on Adaptive Leadership, leaders must leave the dance foor from time to time and step up to the balcony to gain a wider perspective. While we don’t want to stay too long on the balcony because the work is done on the dance foor, stepping up to the balcony is a necessary starting point in making lasting change. As part of my own research on leadership and change management, I studied various models that can support leaders as they start to paint their big picture.

Model 1: The Cynefn Framework

The frst model I studied helped me learn about the complex nature of change. David Snowden’s Cynefn Framework helps leaders understand the nature of complex change. It identifes situations and their solutions as complex, complicated, chaotic,

and obvious. One doesn’t move from quadrant to quadrant in a linear fashion. Rather, each quadrant explains a type of change and potential responses to that change. An example of an “obvious” change that a school might consider would be running a fre drill. There is a standard operating protocol that is mostly known to all entities. The procedure and roles are set and predictable. People just need to follow it. It’s obvious. On the other hand, a complex change requires constant probing, sensing, and responding. Bringing a new teaching and learning framework to a school would be a good example of a complex change. It requires constant iteration. The methodology, those involved, and the pathway are not clear and can change with each team. The change in this case is complex.

Model 2: The Knoster Model

As identifed in the previous model, curricular change is both complex and oftentimes challenging. The Knoster Model for Managing Complex Change provides a framework for understanding the elements of change and their potential results. The model identifes 5 essential elements of any change project: Vision, Skills, Motivation, Resources, and Action Plan. When all 5 parts are present, change is successful. When one or more of the parts are absent, the change can fail. For example, if a school is experiencing false starts and initiative fatigue, often that indicates that while the school might have vision, skills, motivation, and resources for that change, it lacks an action plan. If vision is missing, the change results in confusion. If resources are missing, the change results in frustration.

Model 3: Goleman’s Six Leadership Styles

We all know that a leader can make or break the success of a project. That’s why it’s important that anyone studying change management, must also study leadership. One of the books I studied is Daniel Goleman’s Primal Leadership: Unleashing the Power of Emotional Intelligence. Goleman argues that a leader’s

RASHA EL-HAGGAN

Assistant Head of School for Academics

Friends School of Baltimore Baltimore, MD

My path to leadership has not been a traditional one. I have jumped around from middle school, to high school, to elementary school. I’ve gone from teacher to department chair, to curriculum director to head of school, back to curriculum director. My journey, while unconventional, has given me invaluable, diverse leadership experience. I’ve worked in single-language schools, dual-language schools, single-gender schools, public, private, and international schools. Additionally, I’ve had the privilege of leadership roles in two Quaker schools and have navigated programs such as the International Baccalaureate, Advanced Placement, and the UK National Curriculum. Witnessing varied leadership approaches to common challenges has proven there is no step-by-step process to leadership success. By observing leaders as they shape culture and navigate change, I’ve come to appreciate the multiple ways school leaders have been able to bring about successful change.

emotional intelligence capacity is more important than their technical expertise. The higher one gets in an organization, the less important their technical expertise and the more important their emotional intelligence. To that end, he identifes six leadership styles: Coercive, Authoritative, Affliative, Democratic, Pacesetting, and Coaching. For each style, he identifes the qualities of the style, its impact on culture and climate, and the emotional intelligence qualities a leader must have to either embrace or avoid the style. Two of the styles, coercive and pace setting, can have a dissonant impact on climate while the rest can have a resonant impact on climate.

Takeaways:

Leadership and change are complex. There is no step-by-step guide. But what I have gleaned has allowed me to step up on the balcony and see the whole picture before I step back down on the dance foor. Some key action items resulting from my research include:

• When I frst started working at schools aligning curriculum to a particular framework, I mistakenly thought that the project was going to follow a simple step-by-step process. In other words, I mistakenly identifed the change as “obvious” or at worst “complicated.” After several missteps, I realized that I needed frst to step back and see how the various teams at my schoolwork with one another. What might they already know about curriculum design? Who might be an early adopter? Who might resist the change? I quickly realized that this change was quite complex and needed an iterative process, not a linear one.

• As I studied the Knoster model, I documented a process for change that attempted to identify all 5 essential elements. The school had identifed the “vision” through a recent reaccreditation. What was left was for me to identify the “skill”

level of those engaged in curriculum design. I quickly realized that our teachers had a high level of skill, but they all didn’t speak the same language. As a school, we lacked common understandings and language around the simplest curriculum design elements. This meant that as part of my “action plan” I would spend some time building common understandings and common language to ensure we have common targets across all 3 divisions PK - 12th grade.

• As I read Goleman’s Primal Leadership, I took note of my own leadership journey as well as of those I followed in years past and created a journal that traced the various styles I experienced and their potential impact on school culture. I realized that sometimes, I can tend to follow the “pace setting” leadership style which works in short bursts but when used in longer projects can have a negative impact on culture and climate. My refections on past leadership journeys coupled with both my 360 evaluation and Myers Briggs assessment from the Leadership Institute helped me identify my strengths and areas for improvement. This will allow me to tread purposefully and intentionally in my frst years at Friends.

Next Steps

As I continue to build relationships at Friends, it is important that I engage a larger team of willing participants who can help me navigate this complex and important project. As a school, we are currently working on building a common curricular language that will help us start having conversations on how we will bring about this change. And as I traverse this project, I must remember from time to time to step back up on the balcony so I can assess and readjust the big picture.

THE GROWING ROLE OF CELLPHONES IN THE LIVES OF MIDDLE SCHOOLERS

Background

During my four years of teaching 4th grade at Greene Street Friends School, I saw an increase in the number of students who owned cell phones each year. Throughout the pandemic, I also saw the reliance on technology skyrocket as students were trapped in their homes, with devices being their only pathway for social connection at such a crucial time of development. As I transitioned into the role of Middle School dean, I was intrigued on a larger scale about the growing use of cell phones and the effect that it had on both school and home life.

Discoveries/Learnings/Explorations

In May 2023, United States Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued an advisory on social media and youth mental health. The deleterious effects that social media can have, and how Pavlovianly attached we are to our phones, especially affects teens who are prone to risk-taking behavior, susceptible to depression, and still have highly sensitive developing brains. There is also data that shows we do not get adequate sleep when there is technology in the room we sleep in. So, how do we convey this to students, parents, and families? How can we still highlight the pros of social media (it’s used by 95% of youth aged 13-17) while also providing guardrails and safeguards to its effects. In order to best understand the impact that technology has on our middle schoolers, I sent a survey directly to students to ask about their technology use and their thoughts on social media. If anyone is going to be honest with you about their thoughts and feelings about a topic, it’s a middle schooler! This survey was given to middle school students Grades 5-8 at Greene Street Friends School. The questions are listed below:

1. Do you own a cell phone?

• If yes, in what grade did you receive your phone?

• If no, what is the reason why you do not have a phone yet?

2. Do you think students should be able to carry their phone around at school? Please explain. Be honest.

3. If you own a phone, are you allowed to keep it in your room at night?

4. What technology rules do you have at home? (This could be for cellphones, ipads, TV, etc.)

5. What do you like about social media? What do you dislike about social media?

Teenagers are incredibly bright and aware. The answers around question 2, “Do you think students should be able to carry their phones around school?” were a majority “no.” They said it would be a distraction, kids would take advantage, and it would cause drama. The majority that responded “yes” to carrying phones around school cited the reason for needing to contact parents or if an emergency were to occur. A particularly compelling answer came from a 7th grader, who responded, “No. I don’t think it’s fair that some can be able to bring it around while others have nothing. I think it also takes away the special part of school which involves communication and not being sucked into a screen.”

As for social media, many of them answered with similar positive and negative impacts. For positive impacts, they like that social media is funny, informative, entertaining, a great way to connect with people, and a place to be creative. What they disliked about social

JANE ELLIS Middle School Dean & Co-Director of the Teaching Associate Program Greene Street Friends School Philadelphia, PA

This year offcially marks my 10th year in education with more than half of them spent in Friends education. Whether working with elementary, middle, or high schoolers, I have always found the relationships to be the most exciting and challenging aspect. Specifcally, in Friends education, I have seen the value of teaching the whole child, more than what they can score on a standardized test and what parts of them shine as we explore their light within. Understanding the plethora of different factors that affect what kind of citizen they become and getting to be part of that experience is incredibly meaningful work. It is an honor to be part of the process of helping a child, especially in some of their most formative years, to build agency and encourage them to share their gifts.

media was that it had inappropriate content, hateful comments, people could be mean, it caused drama, was very distracting and addictive, and could lead to online bullying/harassment. Just like in Surgeon General Murthy’s advisory, our students are well aware of both the positive and negative impacts of social media.

Some other interesting fndings were that 70% of students who own a phone also said that they were allowed to keep their phone in their rooms at night. Answers around technology rules at home varied between three different categories. Some students had no rules at all, stating “complete freedom” or “no rules.” Others had stricter rules such as “no phones after 7PM and at the dinner table,” and some students stated broader rules such as “as long as my homework is done” or “don’t spend all day on it.”

Next Steps

The next steps revolve around how to best convey this information to families. How can we connect them with up-to-date information and data on the effects of technology for middle school students. I’d like to look into different school policies on technology rules to see what’s implemented in neighboring school’s policies and student handbooks. I do believe there needs to be more than just stating policy in handbooks. I’d like to see if we can generate guidelines for families to use at home to help create healthy boundaries surrounding technology and social media. I also think that would show a strong partnership and consistency between what’s being said at school and at home. Parents are eager for more guidance and with so much of our students’ days being spent at school, it is important that they are hearing similar messages from the caring adults in their lives.

CO-TEACHING

IN

QUAKER

ENVIRONMENTS: SUPPORTING TEACHERS THROUGH QUERIES AND CONVERSATIONS

Background

The topic and area of interest for my action research was naturally engendered. I began teaching at Friends School of Atlanta seven years ago, and during the frst six years I had the opportunity to work with an excellent co-teacher. We went through all of the phases of co-teaching: forming, storming, norming and performing, and then because of various circumstances, I found myself moving to a new age group with a new co-teaching partner this year. In creating this new partnership, I realized that I had questions and curiosities about how co-teachers are supported through the phases of their professional growth and relationship.

My action research focuses on how school administrators particularly elementary division heads and assistant heads can support co-teachers in Quaker school environments. I began this work by reading some of the research literature on the topic of co-teaching. I quickly discovered that almost all research focuses on co-teaching in the context of a general education teacher and a special education teacher collaborating to support students in heterogeneous and inclusive classrooms. Although I found the acquisition of this background knowledge helpful, I knew that, at least in my community, most co-teachers have a general education preparation and practice.

With this insight, I chose to more closely focus on my research on the experience of Quaker schools in general education classrooms, particularly elementary school settings. Additionally, I discerned that I wanted to understand and support the experience of school leaders in school settings where co-teaching is a regular practice. I had personally found that the support provided by school leaders was varied and somewhat inconsistent, and this provided the inspiration to engage in this line of inquiry and gather knowledge about positive practices, which might help guide school leaders as they support co-teaching teams.

HANNAH ELLWOOD Kindergarten Teacher

The Friends School of Atlanta Atlanta, GA

My beginning in education was early. The daughter of two “school people,” our lives were guided and formed by school calendars and communities. I came to Quaker education as a young adult seeking a school community that felt aligned with my values and where I could grow as a teacher. I found that in both Wilmington Friends School and The Friends School of Atlanta. I have served these and other school communities in various roles - teacher, Summer Camp Director, long-term substitute and aftercare teacher.

I believe teaching is a calling regardless of the exact circumstances of the work, and I have been continually called to do it. In joining the Friends Council Institute for Engaging Leadership, I hoped to increase my ability to impact my and other Quaker schools positively. My action research work is intended to do just that!

Explorations

After I gathered background knowledge and solidifed the direction of my action research work, I decided to deepen my understanding of school leaders supporting co-teachers through the collection of perspectives from elementary division heads and assistant division heads in Quaker schools. Using the Friends Council on Education network of school leadership, I provided a brief survey to a variety of colleagues in Quaker school settings. The small group of respondents included women, men, leaders new to their position, long-serving leaders, retired leaders and included the perspectives of people of color. The questions provided in the survey outlined the basics of what I wanted to discover:

How do you support new co-teaching teams?

How do you support highly functioning teams?

How do you support co-teaching teams in challenging or diffcult circumstances?

How do Quaker beliefs and practices inform your support of co-teachers?

As you might expect the responses were as diverse as Quaker schools! In reading through and thoughtfully assessing the detailed answers provided by the respondents, I was able to distill a few consistent themes. Noted the most frequently and with the most emphasis was the importance of kind, regular and effective communication between co-teachers. Across all of the responses, this was the most persistent refection. School leaders also mentioned different ways in which they support this essential component of successful co-teaching: regularly scheduled check-ins with teams, questions or queries for new teams to complete before getting started, and one-on-one meetings with individual teachers to gather impressions, feedback, and provide support.

Another frequently mentioned topic was the careful, refective nature of creating new co-teaching teams. School leaders highlighted thoughtful assessment of teachers’ strengths and growing areas as a prerequisite to successful new partnerships. Additionally, many of the divisional heads suggested that, when possible, teachers should be able to participate in the decision-making process for their new co-teacher. The work of creating new successful co-teaching teams seemed to be an intricate dance coordinated by school leaders.

Finally, the last frequently discussed topic was the importance of seeing that of God, light and goodness

in all while doing this challenging work. While there were many different terms used, almost all leaders mentioned holding the light of all people at the forefront of the process of creating and supporting successful co-teaching partnerships. Particularly in diffcult situations, school leaders emphasized leaning into this Quaker belief and allowing that to guide their listening, refection and response.

All of the gathered responses contributed to these learnings, and I look forward to using these synthesized themes to develop queries to further support this important work.

Next Steps

My next steps are to continue to work on developing queries to support leaders in supporting co-teaching partnerships. The work of creating open-ended, clearness quality questions is not to be done speedily or taken lightly. I have synthesized my understandings from the research portion of this work, and created three areas or periods of co-teaching that the queries might fall under:

Queries for new/forming co-teaching teams

Queries for working co-teaching teams

Queries for challenged co-teaching teams

I plan to develop a series of queries and share them with our network of Institute for Engaging Leadership alums and participants as a way to make this new resource available to current and future leaders at Friends School across the country. I think this work could be thoughtfully continued particularly through the lens of my fnal question “How do Quaker beliefs and practices inform your support of co-teachers?” This last topic of discussion truly brought forth the most nuanced and complex explanations, and could certainly be further explored through more research and inquiry. The interesting and engaging topic of supporting co-teachers in Quaker schools demands further research and inquiry.

HOW DO FRIENDS SCHOOLS UNDERSTAND AND CULTIVATE GOOD CITIZENSHIP?

Background

In the Friends School Mullica Hill mission statement, the school identifes the cultivation of “responsible global citizens” as a central aim. This is not unusual; in fact, it is more unusual to fnd a school (Quaker or otherwise) that does not identify developing good citizens as a primary goal. And yet, there is little scholarship on how schools defne good citizenship or specifc pedagogical approaches to effective civic education. Furthermore, when educators are asked what makes a good citizen, there is a wide range of responses that emphasize disparate (and sometimes contradictory) civic values.

As a civics teacher over the past eleven years, I have developed my own sense of the civic values that align with the mission of our school. Those core values include critical thinking, concern for others, civic effcacy, and political tolerance. However, this conception of citizenship was formed subconsciously and mostly through refections on my own practice and interpretation of school values rather than an intentional process that included mindful collaboration with fellow educators. Therefore, my action research on civic values and their development in Quaker schools was an attempt to broaden and deepen my own practice through exploring this question with Friends educators, while also creating a framework for guiding other teachers and schools through this refective process.

Exploration

Given the philosophical nature of my topic, I began with a review of the academic literature addressing how educators understand the purpose of civic

education. Some teachers view civic learning simply as reinforcing norms of personal responsibility: obeying laws, paying taxes, and demonstrating honesty and patriotism as privately oriented citizens. Others see civic learning as emphasizing participatory democracy as they try to cultivate knowledge of and faith in political institutions by demystifying political processes and encouraging voting. The conception of civic education closest to my understanding of good citizenship is a justice-oriented view that emphasizes critical thinking in recognizing structural inequities and taking collective action.

With these different perspectives on civic learning in mind, I began to speak with people representing a number of different constituencies in Quaker schools and organizations in order to identify common threads and points of departure. I gathered refections from older students about their civic attitudes developed in class, spoke with many teachers and administrators at my own school, and with the help of my FCE leadership and cohort, identifed members of Quaker organizations (such as FCNL) and civics, history, social studies, and Quaker studies teachers to interview from other Friends schools.

One important discovery in this process was that Friends educators and students, perhaps unsurprisingly, have unique perspectives on questions of citizenship that are deeply personal and defy easy categorization. Some teachers could not identify essential civic values of their classes because they understood good citizenship to be ingrained in the culture of the school. Indeed, many students echoed this sentiment when they reported that the ideas of

BRAD GIBSON

Middle School Lead Teacher

Friends School Mullica Hill

Mullica Hill, NJ

After spending ten years as a student at Friends School Mullica Hill, I returned as a teacher and administrator in 2013. I have performed many roles throughout my time at the school, but one constant has been teaching the eighth-grade civics class. Though world events over the past decade have often left me searching for opportunities to make a greater impact in my own capacity as a citizen, it brings me great satisfaction to see my civics students joyfully engage in political action themselves. Indeed, teaching a civics class feels like a crucial opportunity to empower young people to fnd their voice and respectfully advocate for a more just society.

citizenship emphasized in their civics classes, such as tolerance and stewardship, were already internalized early on during their time at the school. On the other hand, many teachers did identify specifc civic values that guided their work, though these key concepts varied widely. Some teachers, often in younger grades, understood kindness and respect as the essential characteristics of citizenship, while others emphasized the importance of empowering students to fnd their voice and act with integrity. While each of these values have their merit, they can easily come into confict. For example, it is not diffcult to imagine a situation where a student who showed integrity by refusing to compromise her values and used her voice to call out injustice might be seen by others as lacking the sense of respect and tolerance they most value in citizens. As a result of this diversity of perspectives, I had to amend my initial aim of identifying a clear and unifying set of civic values that could provide a sense of coherence to citizenship development at Friends schools.

Next Steps

Though Friends educators may not be able to articulate the civic values developed at their schools with a sense of clarity and precision, that certainly does not mean that citizenship skills are not being developed or that teachers are not putting a great deal of thought and care into this development. Instead, it simply suggests that Friends educators are rarely asked to think about their programs in the specifc terms of the development of citizens. Plenty of focused attention is paid to related skills (academic, social-emotional, 21st century, etc.), but generally not in the context of how these competencies could be employed in the service of citizenship.

Therefore, a next step for this project is to use the information gathered through this process to create a resource that would allow all Friends educators, myself included, to be more thoughtful and intentional in our approach to teaching citizenship. To begin the process of creating this resource, I am planning on leading teachers in my own school in an examination of our civic education program. However, given that we are in the midst of the major task of writing our reaccreditation self-study, we are holding this exploration until the staff has suffcient time and energy for the careful consideration it deserves. I have also had preliminary discussions with Friends Council about the possibility of making a pamphlet or set of guidelines on this topic that could be used as a reference for school leaders, which would be drafted after gathering feedback and insight from a few training sessions. In the meantime, I am still talking to Friends educators about my topic and ideas for moving forward in the spirit of continuing revelation. Ultimately, the goal of this training or guide would be to encourage Friends school communities to more clearly articulate how they answer the questions of what civic values they teach and how they teach them. The implementation of such a refective process on civic learning is not merely a matter of sound pedagogical practice, but rather, it is central to the mission of all Friends schools.

SUPPORTING MID-CAREER TEACHERS

Background

In the context of my work as division head I work with a number of mid-career educators. In my own personal experience, years 5-10 either at an institution or in your career is a time of both refection and seeking. In schools we often give support to those who are new to education or new to our institutions. Newcomers often get mentorship and feedback at a greater frequency than those who have been in the organization longer. Most times people do not receive that level of support or structure unless they are in need of a performance plan or if there is a structure for cyclical review as part of a growth and development program. It made me wonder if there is something school leaders are missing that would be supportive to mid-career educators. In my own experience, year fve was when I started to explore leadership opportunities. I took curriculum classes in the hopes of strengthening my practice. I also explored questions of staying in independent school and in education all together. Most of my experience was self-directed and not driven by existing programs within my school. I received support for my interests but there were no formal structures in place for me to tap into within the school community. I wondered if other educators experience something similar and how it affects their work and engagement within a school community.

Exploration and Learning

Moorestown Friends does a climate survey every two years. One such survey was completed a few weeks before I started working at MFS. Another was completed in my second year in 2021 and in the middle of the pandemic. There were three areas that stood out to me: recognition for excellent work, feeling challenged to grow, and feeling supported by administrators. All seemed to trend slightly downward after 3-5 years of service. It raised questions for me about the trajectory of support and recognition for

faculty and staff after the initial onboarding phase where they most likely receive more support and feedback.

For the next phase of my research, I sought out individuals at MFS who work to support faculty growth and development. I interviewed the Director of Teaching and Learning to learn more about both her experience at our school and other schools. During our conversation she identifed three groups of mid-career educators and their needs. The frst is people who want to grow in their craft as an educator. They are no longer looking to grow in the basics of teaching but rather they identify a core element of their teaching or content knowledge that they are seeking to develop. They seek out professional development and support from administrators and colleagues to grow in their self-identifed area. The second group looks toward leadership. They want to share their knowledge with others, show their skills and potential and/or grow into a role outside of the classroom. The last group sometimes needs some support to take on more challenge or to continue to develop their craft. This interview made me believe that there might not be a “one size fts all” approach to supporting mid-career educators but rather a mix of individualized and structured universal offerings. It left me with questions about what educators would say they need in years fve through ten that would feel supportive.

In February, I attended a webinar about the challenges and opportunities independent schools are currently facing. One topic was teacher retention. They identifed three main reasons why teachers leave school: not feeling fulflled, not feeling trusted and feeling overwhelmed. This program made me think that it is important to situate any discussion around supporting any specifc group of educators within the current social context. We can make avenues and opportunities

JENEL GILES

Lower School Director

Moorestown Friends School, Moorestown, NJ

I came to Moorestown Friends School after 12 years of teaching kindergarten at a progressive school in New York City. In my time there, I also completed a leadership degree at the Klingenstein Center at Teachers College. Working with the youngest learners and their teachers and families is a passion of mine. Quaker education pedagogy felt familiar and had many similarities to progressive education. In my time at Moorestown Friends, I have learned more deeply about what it means to be a Quaker school educator, what spirit-led decision making looks like and the benefts of Quaker education for all students.

available to teachers, but if we do not create time and structures for them to take advantage of them, then they will not be as effective or fulflling.

Refection and Next Steps

My action research has made me wonder how we can best utilize existing teacher growth programs to meet mid-career teachers where they are and give them agency on paths of growth to pursue. How can we create space for those pathways to be meaningful to the educator and have a larger impact in the school community?

Next Steps:

1. Explore the opportunities available through our current Faculty Growth Program to address the needs of mid-career professionals. For example, the school could develop some professional development or project-oriented work that involves leadership opportunities. The project could feed into work that the school needs or that would be recognized in the independent school world more broadly.

2. Continue to speak with other colleagues about what they are doing for mid-career teachers and what the most pressing needs are. There might be additional needs that were not identifed in my current action research that could be addressed with further exploration.

THE FOREST AND THE TREES - DIGITAL LIFE AT GERMANTOWN FRIENDS SCHOOL

Background

In recent years, technology has become increasingly essential for school success, impacting students, families, educators, and administrators alike. For whole periods of time students and teachers learned with one another solely through the use of technology. This shift in the method of our teaching has led to several areas of institutional growth in technology: more readily available devices, increased fltering of internet use, the introduction of more student support tools, and the use of more invasive IT tools in general. In addition, AI has risen to become a very important topic of current discussion.

The question I often sit with is “Who decides what is best?”. The burden of decision-making often falls to me and my team. As our school community continues to change and grow, so does our role in that work. Requests for new technologies and technological solutions abound. We often grapple with how our decisions, even seemingly minor ones, will have impacts on students, both present and future, throughout the school (fgure 1). We need to marry our expertise with a pedagogical and human understanding of the points of view of the folks making requests in each zone.

Figure 1: Left-hand side: Schematic representation of zones of infuence and arrows representing impact trajectories, Right-hand side: Typical questions that are posed by members of different zones in the process of adopting technology.

JOHN HENDERSON

Director of IT, Head of Computer Science and Digital Media, CS Teacher

Germantown Friends School, Philadelphia, PA

I have served as an administrator at both large and small schools and taught science, math, and computer science in grades 6-12. I joined Germantown Friends School in 2017 and was immediately moved by the impact of an institution led by shared values and focused on community building. I now serve as the IT Director and Computer Science and Digital Media Department

Chair. As I’ve watched the landscape of digital life and educational technology change drastically over the past 5 years, I’ve been grateful to be at an institution such as GFS that puts ethical considerations frst. Quaker education demands that we prioritize every voice and I’ve seen that we must take as much care with our digital spaces as our physical ones. Through building warm, welcoming, and inclusive technology spaces, both physical and digital, we help students build the lifelong skills of empathy and collaboration.

Explorations

As I sort through the various disparate requests that come across my inbox in a given week, I often ponder what types of decisions ought to sit solely in my zone. What would be better addressed by our Chief Advancement Offcer, In-house Counsel, Division Directors, Associate Head of School, or others?

And yet, it is clear to me, in particular when considering conversations throughout and following the COVID-19 pandemic, that this is a puzzle many schools are working on and that it is a topic ripe for discussion within GFS. In response to the willingness within our GFS community to engage in these conversations. I formed a committee charged with addressing the various issues and questions associated with Digital Life at GFS.

The committee is composed of Division Directors, Director of Academic Program, Associate Head of School, In-house counsel, our Health Education Department Chair, and members of the IT department. I am uplifted by the depth of consideration these constituencies bring to each topic. So far, we’ve addressed device use at different grade levels, software adoption and removal procedures, modifying the schools fltering, email quarantining, and gatekeeping of applications for minors. Let’s look at some upcoming questions on our agenda:

• How fast do we need to adapt and change?

• What new tools should we adopt to enable deeper learning and more feedback for students?

• What should our stance on Social Media on campus be?

• Why and how do we decide to flter, block, or unblock specifc sites? What circumstances and criteria should we consider when we receive a request to unblock a site?

• Do AI technologies, including assistive applications, help or hurt our students in learning? Are they safe?

• How much privacy is too much? How much is not enough?

This work is expansive. It is ever changing. Even as I prepare agendas for the Digital Life Committee, even as we enter into our Meetings for Business, I fnd that the work shifts. The topics we need to discuss and how we understand them as educators can change.

Is it working? I see defnitive progress in defning how the moral compass of Quaker pedagogy applies to digital life. Committee members are enthused and all

the feedback relating to this work has been positive. What more can we do?

The committee will become a standing committee, meeting once a month indefnitely in order to establish momentum, consistency, and dependability. I foresee intentional discourse around both big-picture questions and smaller, day-to-day issues. Through dedicating time to listen, research, and refect, we will make space and time for contemplating our digital lives.

Next Steps

1. First and foremost, I wonder the following: How can I balance committee-paced work with the need to effciently respond to acute issues in a way that includes all zones of infuence? A constituent may want and need answers from me or my team quickly, but we are obligated to respect what zones of infuence that question may touch. How can we create a committee agile enough to respond to such needs and requests?

2. Would an incident-response protocol, akin to our established bias-incident response protocol, enable us to better manage tension and change in the digital landscape? Would a tool like this enable greater transparency and communication surrounding digital incidents?

DEVELOPING A FRAMEWORK FOR EFFECTIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING

Background

As the Assistant Head of School, I play a large role in supporting teacher professional growth and development. At High Point Friends School, teachers play a major role in providing not only academic instruction but also social and emotional support to educate the whole child. This led to the question: How do teachers know if they are effectively using their knowledge and skill set in regards to teaching and learning? Some teachers may question if they have the necessary training and knowledge to teach academic content well or if they have the soft skills (empathy, patience, communication skills, etc.) to be an impactful teacher. Both of these questions are valid as good teachers embody a combination of both content knowledge and soft skills along with knowledge of the expectations set by the school.

High Point Friends School emphasizes being a private school with a public purpose that prepares students to become civically engaged citizens of the world. In an effort to provide current and new teachers with a clear understanding of expectations regarding teaching and learning at HPFS, and in collaboration with our school academic team, I worked to create a structured framework that is specifc to HPFS. This document sets standards and areas of focus that contain expectations and evidence of what effective teaching and learning looks like at HPFS. It will also guide our professional development around teaching practices as well as be used to create a more formal process of faculty evaluation moving forward.

Exploration/Learning/Discoveries

To help teachers engage with the framework, our academic team created guiding queries that were sent in a Google survey. In recognizing the various stages of growth and development, we decided to create two sets of queries, one for early school and one for lower and middle school teaching staff. Here are some examples:

Guiding Queries

Early School

• How do you foster a predictable learning environment characterized by acceptable child behavior?

• How do you use your time effciently so each child has a positive, nurturing relationship with teachers and peers?

• How do you engage children as individuals, including those with diverse needs and interests and across a range of ability levels, by adapting their teaching for the beneft of all students?

• How do you work collaboratively with the families and /or signifcant adults in the lives of the children in your classroom?

Lower and Middle School

• How do you plan and prepare for student learning and demonstrate strong knowledge of content and pedagogy?

• How do you prepare for student learning by demonstrating strong knowledge of students?

• How do you engage students through intentional, research-based instructional practices?

• How do you utilize effective questioning and discussion techniques in the classroom?

• How do you create a classroom community that establishes a culture of academic learning?

• How do you create a classroom community of respect and rapport?

• How do you manage classroom procedures and routines?

The teaching faculty were given two weeks to complete and return their responses. Once all the feedback was received, I summarized all the data and shared it with the academic team. Upon review, we discovered that over 90 percent of the responses correlated positively with the original framework document of standards and expectations/evidence that had been prepared by the academic team. The results confrmed that the majority of the teaching staff were either currently participating in effective teaching and learning practices or had a full understanding of the expectations of effective teaching specifc to HPFS.

PAMELA

LYNETTE

HORN

Assistant Head of School

High Point Friends School, High Point, NC

I began my career in Friends education during the fall of 2014 when I joined High Point Friends School. Over the past 10 years at HPFS, I served as an early childhood teacher, Director of the Before/After Program, Early School Director, Director of Teaching and Learning, Director of Admissions, Lower School Director and currently the Assistant Head of School. My experience over the years has deepened my passion for Friends education and I have been blessed with the opportunity to learn and grow as a leader in an environment that allows me to present my best self.

Staff Feedback Examples

• “I surround myself and my students with as many research based instructional methods as I am able to fnd and share. I use a combination of tried-and-true practices that have shown success through the years in combination with new strategies that I found through my research.”

• “Students know what to expect in my classroom from the frst day of school. We have procedures and routines that have been established and students know the expectation is to follow those preset disciplines.”

In our many hours of conversation around teaching and learning at HPFS, we noted that one of the most effective teaching standards is the creation of a classroom community that establishes a culture of scholarly habits. This insight led to a deeper discussion that created a clear defnition of scholarly and community habits across all grade levels. The academic team decided to create an additional document with examples of scholarly and community habits to share with the teaching staff. The completed Framework for Teaching and Learning document was presented to the staff as part of professional development in January of 2024. Here is a portion of the completed framework excluding expectations/evidence:

High Point Friends School

Framework for Effective Teaching and Learning for Early School

1. Foster a predictable learning environment characterized by acceptable student behavior and effcient use of time in which each child has a positive, nurturing relationship with caring adults and peers.

2. Teachers demonstrate an awareness of a commitment to, and a respect for, multiple aspects of diversity while working toward common goals as a community of learners.

3. Teachers engage students as individuals, including those with diverse needs and interests, across a range of ability levels, by adapting their teaching for the beneft of all students.

4. Teachers work collaboratively with the families and/ or signifcant adults in the lives of their students.

Next Steps

Framework for Effective Teaching and Learning for Lower and Middle School

1. Plans and prepares for student learning and demonstrates strong knowledge of content and pedagogy.

2. Plans and prepares for student learning by demonstrating strong knowledge of students.

3. Engages students through intentional, research-based instructional practices.

4. Utilizes effective questioning and discussion techniques.

5. Creates a classroom community that establishes a culture of scholarly learning.

6. Creates a classroom community of respect and rapport.

7. Manages classroom procedures and routines.

• The Framework for Effective Teaching and Learning document will be used as an in house resource to provide consistency, organization, and certainty that all teachers are planning and providing the most effective instruction. It will also be used as a tool for teachers to refect on their teaching strategies for development and improvement. All current teachers and teachers new to HPFS will have access to this document as part of the requirements at HPFS.

• We will also begin using the Framework for Effective Teaching and Learning to formulate formal teacher evaluations.

INQUIRY TO PRACTICE: EXPANDING THE IDEAS AND STRENGTHS OF QUAKER EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP

Context

I felt like a fsh out of water when I began this leadership program. A lifelong educator who has taken many paths that led me from middle school to higher education, I sat in our Quaker circle feeling somewhat envious that my colleagues were inside the chaos and joy of schooling each day and a bit confused about my role as someone who spent her days in the quiet and isolation that university life often promotes. I have spent more than a decade teaching action research and wanted to do something that mattered, but I need time and space to refect on what that might be. What could someone like me, who feels so removed from schooling, contribute?

I had many ideas, but none felt quite right. And as I always tell my students, when they are doing their action research projects, write about a topic you care deeply about, a topic you can’t stop thinking about, a topic that you, as a human being, are uniquely qualifed to do. None of my original ideas met this bar. I could do them, but these ideas felt like a task list rather than an exciting research question that kept me up at night. So, one by one, I rejected these ideas even though I didn’t know what I actually wanted to do.

Fortunately, one afternoon in the spring 2023 retreat, we had a panel, where Daryl Ford described this leadership program, as a gift, a gift to have time to be away from our daily commitments and obligations, a gift to be in a community with dedicated and wonderful colleagues, a gift to think deeply who were all are and how we wanted to develop. That sparked a thought about how I might be able to leverage this time to both receive and, dare I say, create what I hoped could be a gift to this community. A community that has taught me so much about myself and the critical role that Quaker educators play in our highly inequitable and fractured society today. Over time, I began to see myself less as a fsh out of water and more like a unicorn, a someone once told me. As an educator who has always traveled a less linear but, at least from my perspective, an intentional path that had led me to this point. I was different, but over time, I slowly began to feel like, maybe, just maybe, I belonged in that Quaker circle among those wonderful people. That shift happened because of the gift of this space and the remarkable humans—the incredible Quaker facilitators and educators—that I spent so many hours with at Pendle Hill and my mentor, Bryan Garman, who taught me more about educational collaborative and refective educational leadership than I can put into words.

Process

When I refected on the gift that I had received—this gift of two years of concentrated thinking and learning—and the gift that I wanted to generate—the product of my action research, I fnally decided to do something that is, in many ways, my gift. I wanted to interview educators about their insights and knowledge about educational practice and leadership and weave that knowledge into stories so that others might learn from and refect on the collective

ERIKA KITZMILLER Term Assistant Professor, Education Barnard College New York, NY

Erika Kitzmiller is a term assistant professor of educational studies at Barnard College, Columbia University and a research affliate at the Institute for Urban and Minority Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her teaching and scholarship examine the historical processes and current efforts that have contributed to and mitigated educational inequality today. Erika uses original quantitative and qualitative data and methods to understand the intersection of educational policy and practice and its impact on educators, families, and youth. Erika’s teaching and research are rooted in inquiry-driven, practice-based methods to advance educational equity and social justice. A lifelong educator, Erika has worked as an administrator, consultant, and teacher in public and independent schools in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia and is the author of The Roots of Educational Inequality: Philadelphia’s Germantown High School, 1907 – 2014. She is fnishing her second book, Unchartered: Reimagining the American High School

wisdom that educators possess but rarely have the opportunity to share beyond their classroom and school walls.

I started this action research where I start every research project. I started with books and conversations. I spoke with our wonderful retreat facilitators, Drew, Irene, Shu Shu, and my wonderful cohort, who pushed me to think more about Quaker education and leadership. I spoke with Bryan Garman about my ideas when we met at Sidwell. During my visit, I naively asked Bryan if he had any book recommendations, not knowing how much Bryan loves books, and then suddenly found myself stuffng my suitcase with nearly a dozen books that he thought I “might want to read.” Some of the books that Bryan gave me were Quaker texts about education and other books were about social change, equity, and justice. During our fall 2023 retreat, I spent about an hour at the Pendle Hill bookstore, painstakingly looking for books and pamphlets that might help me understand Quaker teaching, specifcally how it relates to children’s development and schooling. I walked away with another dozen books that helped me understand the unique aspects of Quaker thought and education. These conversations and books were gifts, time for me to learn and refect, grow and develop, think and dream.

Next Steps

My action research project is a series of interviews with Quaker educational leaders about their leadership practice and commitment to Quaker ideas and values. The work is inspired, at least in part, by the

thought-provoking inquiries that Drew Smith posed to our panelists who graciously came to our retreats and by a Pendle Hill pamphlet, “Advices & Queries for Friends School Community Life,” written by Sean Compagnucci, who wrote this work as part of his action research project. This fall and spring, I have refned and fnalized the inquiries that I plan to use in these interviews and, over the next several months, hope to complete and draft a narrative of what I have learned from these books and conversations. In the spirit of Quaker teaching, I have decided to expand the concept of leadership beyond the head of school. This move, I hope, will help us learn from the myriad ways that individuals in our schools contribute to and advance Quaker teaching and learning throughout these communities and help us address and ultimately dismantle the hierarchical power structures that the word leadership typically promotes. If anyone is interested in being interviewed and sharing their wisdom about Quaker educational practice and leadership, please reach out. I’d love to learn from and with you!

QUAKER VALUES AS A NORTH STAR IN A NON-QUAKER SCHOOL

Background

After two decades of working and living at George School, I made the decision to leave Friends education for a promising and exciting leadership opportunity in the Midwest. This decision came with a heavy heart because Quaker values have been fundamental in shaping who I am in all facets of my identity. The power of process, refection, perspective gathering, and centering the Light in others has made me a better parent, wife, daughter, F/friend, and educator. These very tenets born out of my time at George School ironically resulted in the choice to begin a new life in the Twin Cities.

So, with Quaker beliefs and testimonies close to my heart, I began my frst year as Upper School Principal at St. Paul Academy and Summit School (SPA) in the fall of 2023. SPA has an aspirational mission and core values with many commonalities to Friends schools, yet I struggled to keep up with the faster pace of the school and felt the weightiness of decision-making that was different from what I was accustomed to. In a short amount of time, my leadership skills were tested by various circumstances, which included: making diffcult decisions around student discipline, supporting teachers’ professional and emotional needs, helping families process programmatic changes, and most notably, managing tension from the Israel-Palestine confict.

These are all complex matters, and the search for truth in unity – “a seeking of the Light in an atmosphere of love, trust, and mutual forbearance” remained elusive at best (Advices and Queries for Friends School Community Life). I fumbled my way, grew impatient, and lost confdence in my leadership. What I realized is that one cannot simply bring Quakerism to a non-Friends school. It was unfair and irrational to expect the SPA community to readily embrace the Quaker ethos. However, in discerning what is good for the whole community, I have found steadiness in the humanism of Quaker principles–creating space for the expression of diverse viewpoints, folding refection into daily practices, relying on stillness to identify emotions and biases that get in the way of constructive thinking, and valuing the gifts of every individual in community–for the success and well-being of students in our care.

Discoveries and Next Steps

In my frst year of principalship, I have learned many lessons about confict resolution, change management, crisis leadership, and the importance of effective communication. I am immensely grateful to the faculty, administrative team, and leadership team at SPA for their support in helping me navigate these lessons.

Parents, too, have been instrumental in my learning within a new school community. Of all the constituents at SPA, an area of growth for me as a school leader is thinking about how to support parents and envisioning what

MINNIE LEE

Upper School Principal

St. Paul Academy and Summit School

St. Paul, MN

Friends education was discovered by sheer serendipity. I joined George School’s faculty in 2004 as a Biology and Chemistry teacher. The intention of teaching for one year turned into an amazing run of 20 years. Nurtured by thoughtful school leaders and colleagues, I’ve been fortunate to hone my craft as a classroom teacher and develop leadership skills through roles, such as Assistant Dean, Co-Clerk of Faculty Concerns Committee, and Director of Learning Center Services. It has been a privilege to work and live in a community bonded by Quaker values. As I continue my professional journey at St. Paul Academy and Summit School as Upper School Principal, I hold tenets of Friends education–silent refection, continuing revelation, and minding the Light–close to my heart.

learning together with parents entails. Rather than beginning from a defcit mindset of parents as “the problem,” I prefer to see their Light, affrming their indispensable role in helping schools make thoughtful, mission-driven decisions.

Considering the changing landscape of the parent-school relationship, I am curious about the following:

• What does a healthy parent-school partnership look like in regard to programming and engagement?

• What structures do schools have in place to foster strong partnerships with parents?

• How do school leaders nurture collaborative relationships with parents?

• What practices are effective in building a culture of trust with parents, so they feel a sense of belonging in school communities?

These queries, which will be posed to independent schools, combined with further examination of the ways in which my school engages with its parent community will lead to a greater understanding of how meaningful partnerships can be intentionally cultivated. In this year of great transitional change, I am at peace with the fact that my action research is only in the beginning stage. And I am at peace knowing that Quaker values integral to my leadership style will guide this work moving forward.

FAIRLY ASSESSING PROGRESS IN MATHEMATICS FOR STUDENTS WITH LEARNING DISABILITIES

Background

Assessment is an essential part of building an effective instructional program. Students need practice taking tests to demonstrate their independent abilities and educators need to provide tests to measure student progress. At Mary McDowell Friends School our status as a self-contained Quaker school for students with learning disabilities complicates the reality of accurately assessing our students.

The need for formal assessment speaks to questions/concerns that teachers, parents, and outside team members have when it comes to measuring the effectiveness of special education. In our setting we fnd that assessment frequently fails to capture the full scope of student ability. This reality is at odds with the need to formally identify and prove evidence of student progress.

I have found a number of factors that are at play in attempting to measure formal progress for students in a Quaker school that is searching to assess equitably and responsively while also acknowledging  the particular needs to measure gains for students with Learning Disabilities whose progress is reported to the Department of  Education in New York City.

Exploration/Learning

This fall, a series of questions remained for me to explore, research and collect information about from colleagues.

The frst area where I worked to gather data is in regard to responsive math assessments used across schools. I spoke with teachers in other Special Education settings to see what assessment looks like in their schools. This component of my action research was not particularly effective. Schools use a wide variety of assessment programs, and ultimately, I needed to reach out to more schools that serve our particular population.

As is true across academic contexts, there are large gaps in resources and materials when it comes to formally assessing students that have been diagnosed with learning disabilities. In math, students graphomotor, reading, sequencing, and executive functioning struggles impact the quality of their computational abilities. This leads to subjective differentiation and unregulated accommodations related to gathering information. If the goal is to gather formal data, these gaps lead to a terrible hurdle for schools to clear in order to fairly and fully understanding student growth.

SYDNEY LINDER

Middle School Academic Dean

Mary McDowell Friends School Brooklyn, NY

Before stepping into my role as Middle School Academic Dean, I have held positions in public and private institutions as a classroom teacher, instructional coach, curriculum coordinator, and CSE (Committee on Special Education) coordinator - a role unique to Mary McDowell Friends School (MMFS) - liaising with the DOE in our work supporting students with learning disabilities in a self-contained setting. These roles have each developed my craft and commitment to Quaker education. Currently, my role at MMFS involves supervising faculty, acting as a writing coach for Literacy teachers, running new teacher meetings throughout the school year, communicating with parents, pushing in to classrooms to support academic instruction and teaching a small 6th-grade Literacy group. I am privileged to learn and grow in my community every day.

Additionally, it was important that I continue reading about best practices for assessing students with learning disabilities in math - including students with dyscalculia. Based on my research, there are an increasing number of formal assessments that responsively measure specifc learning disabilities in math but few curricula that are designed with dyscalculia or other learning disabilities in mind. At this time, educators and evaluators are focusing on testing accommodations that can support students in the testing environment.

Next steps

1. Reevaluating the Spring assessment

A number of important points arose from the initial spring assessment we gave during the 2022-2023 school year.

• First, students generally performed poorly on the assessments, despite being given appropriate accommodations. This tells me that I need to both revisit the format of the assessment and make sure that the language, directions, and space on the page feel accessible to the test takers and I need to caucus with teachers to hear their feedback about how to improve the format of the assessments.

• Second, tests were used to inform group placement but were not always used effectively. Due to the constraints on us around class placement, we are not always able to keep learners who are assessed to be a good ft, in the same group. Additionally, we do not have the same tests to place new students.

• Third, we need to consider if purchasing a division wide subscription to a formal assessment measure along the lines of MAP or Key Math, would be valuable and a better use of our resources to reach the aim of improving our accuracy in tracking growth. At this time, a small team of faculty and administrators are working together to reevaluate our spring assessment considering my fndings.

2. Tracking student progress over time to gather information about progress/outcomes

In order to measure progress over the three years of middle school, or even, longitudinally throughout a student’s time in a self-contained setting, we need to collect, organize, and maintain the data collected from our assessments each year. This tracking can live with the Academic Dean, but I believe must include math teachers, a math coach, and the school psychologist who has access to outside evaluations and other formal

tests that may be necessary to elucidate particular details. Tracking student progress through data will take place over several years. My goal is to do a larger scale review of the data we collect at the end of three years (a full cycle of middle school assessments).

3. Align our MS assessments across all three school divisions

If the goal of this project is to fairly assess students in an independent school with three divisions, then all three divisions have be aligned in certain elements of our testing for students with learning disabilities. Instructional goals in Lower, Middle, and Upper school are different, however, there are a few areas where I believe alignment would be benefcial to being able to show evidence for long term progress.

• Collecting, organizing, and maintaining data about students in the same way

• Using a standardized list of testing accommodations

• Having familiarity with the math scope and sequence of skills for each grade level (as laid out in norm-referenced curricula)

• Having shared language for describing student progress to families

At this time, I am working alongside the Upper School Academic Dean and the Math Department Chair to begin building the frst bridge related to math assessments - the tests given to rising 9th grade students before they enter the Upper School.

4. Share the data we gather with other schools

Students who require special education services are at a disadvantage when it comes to tools, resources, and effective testing strategies to measure their progress. An essential next step in this work will be to share the learning and positive outcomes of this work with other schools - public and private.

A paradox that remains for the students at MMFS is that - for most of them - their specialized, Quaker education is monitored by the blunt processes of the Department of Education. In my work informing families about student progress, quantifying that progress for the DOE, and helping teachers develop curriculum that fully captures what growth is being made - I fnd that of God in every person is in the front of my mind. Yes, our students are federally guaranteed this education under IDEA but I often feel that they uniquely deserve this education through the lens of the testimonies and values that are the roots of Quaker education.

INTEGRATING SERVICE LEARNING INTO AN UPPER SCHOOL CURRICULUM

Background

As a Quaker educator, I fnd myself called to think deeply about the intersections of an education system still frmly rooted in a historical white supremacist model and the desire for education to be liberatory for our students. The independent school, college preparatory model, however, provides a number of obstacles to our classrooms being liberatory, particularly assumed cultural touchpoints of a Western ‘canon’ that must be covered. My action research project grew out of these perceived tensions.

My Latin classroom is a locus for social justice work, despite the subject being usually associated with descriptions of violent empire and “great men.” The Latin classroom has not traditionally been a space to discuss women, enslaved people, race and ethnicity, colonization, or disability, even though the surviving evidence provides us with abundant resources for such investigations. Historically a so-called ‘Classical’ education was intended to prepare predominantly men for public service in European nations and their colonies; this means the subject is at once behind the times when it comes to engagement with oppressive structures but also incredibly well suited as a space from which to examine and dismantle such structures.

My upper-level classes engage students with questions about gender, sexuality, imperialism, race, ethnicity, ableism, and disability. By studying ancient ideas and thinking critically about the impact Classical reception has had upon the creation of modern, “Western” virtues and social structures, students are asked to question assumptions, critique society, and look at the ancient world anew as a much more complicated collection of societies with various avenues for both oppression and freedom. As part of a desire to put classroom discussions and learning at the service of society, my action research project involves developing a service-learning model that works within my specifc classroom settings, but that can serve as a template for other teachers in various disciplines.

IAN LOCKEY

Upper School Latin Teacher & Coordinator of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Friends Select School Philadelphia, PA

I have been the Upper School Latin teacher at Friends Select for the past 12 years. I am currently also a lead advisor and the Upper School Coordinator of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Friends Select is my frst high school teaching job, and my time at the school and my engagement with Quaker educational models has been personally transformational. During the past 12 years, I have developed a deep passion for social justice work and for working with and for students to encourage critical engagement with the world around them. This work is done in all aspects of my job from advising to classroom teaching to creating social justice programming, and it is from this that I developed the idea for my action research project.

Exploration

Since this project is being piloted during the 2023-2024 school year, there have been some successes and some areas that have been changed midway through the year. As I write this, the students have not completed the project either, so the information about the summary presentation is at present aspirational.

I piloted this project with my Latin V students. By Latin V the students have already had a lot of exposure both to textbook and authentic Latin texts, and they have engaged in discussions about the complexities of Classical reception and the ways in which the subject matter has been used to justify such areas as patriarchy, racial hierarchies, imperialism, capitalism, and white supremacy. As students at a Quaker school, they have had plenty of exposure to social justice work and service, and so introducing a service-learning project in their yearlong course was a natural step.

The project itself is broken down into four areas to ft into the quarter system our school employs. The quarter divisions have blurred over the course of the project, but the basic areas of study and experience have remained the same. Our classes meet three times a week during a typical week, with two 55-minute blocks and one 70-minute block. Since my Latin V students are also studying disability in the ancient and modern worlds this year, the project was initially worked on in every other 70-minute block.

During the frst quarter, students were asked in groups to identify a social justice issue that they were passionate about. At this point, the students did not have to consider the ancient world, except if they selected a topic that had no direct correlation in the past. This group of seniors ended up settling on education and its intersections with gender and class, poverty and access to resources, childbirth and adoption, care for people experiencing mental health crises, and housing insecurity. Students spent time during the frst quarter identifying sources, researching their topics in the ancient world, and compiling a basic presentation of the major themes they had identifed. In the future, I will compile research materials ahead of time and limit the available topics students can study, because there was not enough time to fnd available academic articles and do signifcant research.

In the second quarter, originally students were asked to identify someone doing important work in their area in Philadelphia or the wider United States and to invite them to speak to the class. This way everyone would learn about everyone else’s topics. The idea was that once a speaker had come in to address the students, the group who had invited the speaker would then present a summary of the talk and the ways it intersected with their research. Given interruptions to the schedule during the second quarter, there was not enough time for this in class, and so the students are currently creating podcast interviews and summaries instead. This will bleed into the third quarter, which is the quarter where the students are each asked to complete at least ten hours of service with a local organization. The students in their groups are able to work together at a service location or work at different locations, but each student is responsible for their own ten hours of commitment.

Next Steps

The project will culminate with a presentation by the various groups to their classmates, peers, parents, and service partners. The students will spend the beginning of the fourth quarter creating a large-scale poster inspired by poster presentations at academic conferences covering their research in the ancient world, the topic in the modern work (locally, nationally, and internationally), and the ways in which their service helped deepen their understanding of both areas. Students will be required to prepare and practice a clear fve-minute summary of their work for their audience.

This time around, the project is not offcially graded because I strongly believe that service learning should not be completed for a grade. The students will - in the third quarter and at the end of the project - complete a self-evaluation of their work to encourage them to refect deeply on what they have achieved. Upon completion of this project and my own self-refection, I will put together a framework that any upper school educator can use for their classes, one that can be adapted for a variety of schools and budgets. It is my hope that by incorporating projects that call for various modes of learning in one class space, we can encourage students to begin to re-envision education as a focus of the practice of liberation.

IN A QUAKER SCHOOL, STRENGTHENING COMMUNITY AMONG THE UPPER SCHOOL FACULTY

Background

In our upper school at Friends Select, I have always felt deep pride in the ways in which we teach and prioritize Quaker community among our students. As our mission states, we “work to achieve balance between the needs of individuals and our community, in an atmosphere of cooperation and concern for the betterment of all.” Our ideals of community are seamlessly woven into students’ daily practices—in classrooms, assemblies, advisory groups, and Meeting for Worship. We teach our students to accept, to give, to listen, and to shine in their identities, all of which create a sense of warmth and bonding. But I sometimes wonder if we could do more, institutionally, to ensure that the US faculty feels equally prioritized within our space of community.

I can remember the moment, several years into my teaching career at Friends Select, when I truly felt part of our community. It was the day my Division Director invited me to be the faculty advisor for a student affnity space—a space in which he knew I belonged. I felt seen, and I felt heard. Not only did it help me feel more connected to our community, but it helped me fully appreciate the power of community. I wanted other faculty members to feel that same sense of belonging, but how? For my Action Research Project, I decided to delve into how we might strengthen community among our US faculty and explore why it is crucial to do so, particularly in a Quaker School.

Exploration/Learning

In a 2022-23 US faculty meeting, I introduced my Action Research Project with an initial question of “Why is having a strong community among our US faculty important, particularly in a Quaker School?”

The responses included these overarching ideas:

• As we encourage our students to live out our school’s values, including community and integrity, we must serve as models in these testimonies.

• Feeling seen by each other enables us to better see our students.

• An adult community with stronger bonds helps us see each other’s inner lights with trust. As we all aim to improve our teaching practices, it allows us to more safely learn from each other, stumble in front of each other, and grow from each other’s wisdom.

• The better we know one another, the better we can hear each other, especially during diffcult conversations.

• Considering the extensive time we spend in school, it helps to feel a sense of belonging, which leads to sentiments of fulfllment.

• A more cohesive adult community helps earn confdence and trust from our families and students.

It was clear that our faculty recognized the value of community. In order to work on strengthening it, I investigated what systems were already in place that helped foster a sense of community, and what obstacles prevented community growth?

Through surveys, I learned that our US faculty believed that:

1-Most connections with other teachers were made: within shared classroom spaces, during school faculty social outings, or during collaborative initiatives (e.g., feld trips, committee work, or outside-the-classroom projects). 2-Limitations to making connections existed because of: limited faculty-designated spaces, our

NATALIE MAYER

Upper School Dean of Academics, Upper School Biology

Friends Select School Philadelphia, PA

My career path toward education—a path that included experiences in politics, in hospitals, and in children’s television production—may seem meandering. But the experiences I had in communicating with different constituents, caring for patients in medicine, and learning how to educate children with care and creativity, all provided me with invaluable life lessons for my ultimate landing spot in Quaker education and administration. My frst exposure to Quaker education at Friends Central School was followed by 17 subsequent years at Friends Select School as a Biology Teacher, Science Department Chair, Advisor, Grade Dean, and currently as the US Dean of Academics.

separated upper school campus buildings, unaligned free periods, and a lack of time due to personal-life responsibilities.

When faculty were asked which three action steps they’d want to try in order to strengthen our US faculty community, the results revealed (as seen in this bar graph) that faculty had a wide range of willingness, but the most popular choice was to participate in creative professional development outings during a time of the year that was already allocated to work hours. Thanks to my division director’s support of the Action Research process, I was given an end-of-the-year faculty meeting day to create an upper school community building day, in accordance with the data I collected. Our resultant June 2023 day at Treetop Quest Philly (an outdoor ropes course) followed by a lunch at our Division Director’s home, created moments of challenge, vulnerability, support, courage, and newfound camaraderies. These feelings were not just my observations but actual testimonies from the participants, as recorded on “What Do You Notice? What Do You Wonder?” cards. (See Example)

Some common ‘I notice’ excerpts:

• Pride in accomplishments, people enjoying each other and making summer plans together; deeper sense of community

• Smiles, laughter, friends, relaxation, people cheering each other on, walls coming down, ease in conversations

• Light and warm energy, connections

Some common ‘I wonder’ excerpts:

• How do we create space for this kind of relaxation in the midst of the intensity of the year?

• Why don’t we do this more often?

• When can we do this again? (with students? with other divisions?)

Next steps

My takeaway from our June 2023 outing was that it fostered a sense of belonging for many co-workers in our community. But how do we use this moving forward? While I recognize there is no exact formula for this work of community building, I know it involves ‘strengthening our muscles’ through exercises that include listening, stepping outside of our comfort zones together, and leaning on one another in safe spaces. As Suzie Wise points out in Design for Belonging, “belonging…gives us permission to share our talents and express our life force.” So it is with these conditioned muscles that we can fourish, feel safe to be creative, and feel safe to discuss differences. In an ever-complex world today, our school, our morale, and our student community depend on the adults in the room to continue this work and to continue our Quaker search for the truth, in community.

Moving forward, I hope to:

• Make a tradition of an end-of-the-year community-building activity and develop practical mid-year activities as well

• Expand programming with activities that incorporate US faculty family, faculty community service, or bridging together our separate US buildings

• Establish an upper-school committee to continue this work

• Find ways to present our fndings to the adults and students in our school, and collaborate together

In my current role as US Dean of Academics, where my focus typically lies within the details of grading, pedagogy, and student support, it has been fulflling to take a step back for a bird’s-eye view of the community as a whole. I am grateful for this opportunity and look forward to thinking further about how community and academics intertwine.

INTRODUCING QUAKER-BASED DECISION-MAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS

Background

Quaker-based decision-making (QBDM) is a non-voting, collaborative process that encourages discussion, where each constituent can freely express their ideas about which decision they think the group should make. Through this discussion, the group seeks to discover what is the best collective path forward, a path that might differ from the preferences of individual members. This practice of decision-making stands in direct contrast to the system of voting used to make political and other decisions in our country.

In my experience, QBDM leads to a more committed and involved community where its members feel valued and heard, but it also has pitfalls. QBDM can take much longer to make decisions than other methods, and members of the decision-making body can fnd themselves in situations where no sense of the meeting, no understanding of the right collective decision, is present. When opportunities arose in the classroom for me to implement QBDM with students, I realized that all of the pitfalls adults experience are magnifed with children. Knowing that the benefts of using this process with children would be worth navigating its pitfalls led me naturally to the question I am exploring in my action research: how can one adapt and scaffold QBDM for young learners?

Exploration

To help guide my research into the use of QBDM in the classroom, I created a survey that asked teachers to share their opinions and experiences with QBDM and shared the survey with teachers at Princeton Friends School and nearby Newtown Friends School. While over 80% of respondents shared that they have used or tried to use QBDM with their students, they also shared

many things that got in the way of implementing it. These included that it takes too much time to implement at the expense of curriculum, that it’s hard to facilitate without training, that students aren’t mature enough to handle the process or don’t seem to care about the opinions of others, and that there are few decisions to make in the classroom for which QBDM would be appropriate. These concerns mirrored many of my own and supported my decision to continue down this path of inquiry.

To fnd out more about what QBDM strategies teachers have found successful, I spoke to two teachers who had experience using it: Garrett McVaugh, a preschool teacher from Moorestown Friends School, and Denise Coffn, a Kindergarten teacher from Sidwell Friends School. They both gave me ideas for how to explain the process of QBDM to students and how to modify and scaffold it for them, and Denise shared the following seven-step framework for using QBDM with children: posing the question; generating ideas; asking clarifying questions; sharing what we value about the ideas given; sharing suggestions, ideas, and concerns; making a decision; and thanking each other for thinking together.

I implemented their suggestions and Denise’s framework in two case studies at PFS. The frst was a music project where the 3rd-grade class students needed to pick one song from the PFS songbook to illustrate together, and the second was working with the 8th-grade class to decide what they wanted to perform together for our annual talent show. To make the seven-step process easier for students to follow, I made a chart that represented the steps as traveling up a mountain, and several 3rd-graders shared that they found the visual representation helpful. I also

DANIEL POTTER

Music and Math Teacher, 6th-8th Grade Advisor, and Educational Technology Coordinator Princeton Friends School Princeton, NJ

My journey with Friends education began when I enrolled in Wilmington Friends School in seventh grade. I immediately found philosophical and ideological connections between my developing beliefs and values system and Quaker philosophy, and by high school, I felt connected enough that I served on several student committees that were deeply embedded in the Quaker philosophy and practice of the school.

By the time I graduated from WFS, I knew I wanted to be an educator, and so in 2020, I was extremely excited to join the faculty of Princeton Friends School, where I teach music and math and serve as a 6th-8th grade advisor. Working in a Friends school has confrmed my belief in the power of a Friends education to positively impact young students and to help them learn how to use their voice to act for change in the world.

wrote down a list of general reminders, such as “consider if this is the best decision for the group,” and a list of steps for if and when a student can’t let go of an idea, and I reviewed both lists with students each time we met.

Overall, this process for QBDM worked much better than anything I had used in the past, and it led to successful decision-making in both of my case studies. Students were respectful of each other’s ideas and the process, though some wanted to move faster than the process allowed. Denise’s seven-step framework was very helpful when working with my 3rd-grade students but less so with my 8th-graders, and I’m curious if future case studies would yield similar results. Above all, my biggest learning was that PFS students need more practice in having a slow discussion where they refrain from talking over each other.

Takeaways

While I have still more to learn, the following points I feel are the most important for any teacher who wishes to try implementing QBDM in their classroom:

• Explain the process to children, and let them know that it will take time.

• Emphasize that the decision the group makes should be the best for the group, not for any individual member or subset of members of the group.

• Take notes during the conversation that you can refer back to at the start of future decision-making sessions. Don’t be afraid to tell students to slow down or wait for you to write things down.

• Ask students to share what they like about the opinions others have come up with so that they don’t focus only on their own ideas.

• Invite quiet students into the conversation; make sure all voices are heard.

Next Steps

My two case studies showed me that there is still work to be done to refne the framework I adapted from Denise, and I’m excited to rework it based on future case studies. Once it reaches a more fnalized state, I hope to share it with other teachers and help them implement the process with their students with the goal that all teachers and students at PFS be fuent in this process, leading to more thoughtful students and a more refective school community.

INFUSING QUAKER PROCESS INTO FRIENDS SELECT FACULTY MEETINGS

Context

When I joined the Friends Select community in 2018, faculty meetings were organized and led by the Upper School director. At my previous school, Sandy Spring Friends School, meetings were clerked by a member of the Upper School faculty who was selected by a nominating committee. When I became the frst Upper School Quakerism Coordinator in 2020, I began an ongoing conversation with the Upper School Director, Chris, about Quaker life in our division. At his prior Quaker school, Chris had also experienced clerked faculty meetings. We had a series of conversations about the advantages of the clerked faculty meetings that we had previously participated in. While Chris ran effcient and thoughtful meetings, he and I felt that the meetings would beneft from having more Quaker processes integrated into the agenda setting and from wider community buy-in. Additionally, for many of the Upper School faculty, Friends Select was the frst Quaker school they had worked at. We hoped that, by increasing their familiarity with Quaker Based Decision Making, it would give them the skills to support our students to further infuse their classes and co-curricular activities with Quaker processes.

Summary of Findings

Implementation Process

In the spring of 2023, we shifted the mode of our faculty meetings. Through a series of emails, surveys, and meetings, faculty were taught about the new plan, processes, and goals. I clerked the meetings for the remainder of the year, giving the group time to appoint a nominating committee which was tasked with selecting frst the clerk and then the steering committee. At each phase, the faculty as a whole nominated potential candidates, and the nominating committee worked together to select different community members who were best suited to each position, with an eye to a diversity of experiences, perspectives, and expertise. After the nominating committee made their decisions for each role, they presented it to the faculty for approval. By May of 2023, we had selected our new clerk and new steering committee. The steering committee was composed of the clerk, the Upper School Director, the

MIRIAM ROCK

Upper School English Teacher and Quakerism Coordinator

Friends Select School Philadelphia, PA

Miriam Rock is an Upper School English Teacher and Quakerism Coordinator at Friends Select School. In addition to teaching three sections of American Literature and a senior elective, she works with a group of student leaders to coordinate Quaker life in the Upper School. Miriam started her career as a student teacher at a magnet school in South Philadelphia before spending three years teaching at Sandy Spring Friends School. She also currently serves as the Board Chair at The Miquon School, a progressive elementary school in the greater Philadelphia area.

She is a progressive educator and believes that the role of a teacher is to support students in unlocking their innate curiosity and building the skills to pursue it.

Quakerism Coordinator, and 2-3 at-large members.

We spent the 2023-2024 school year with the new system in place. The steering committee meets monthly to plan the agenda for the upcoming meetings. The Upper School faculty is clerked by a member of the community who works to get a sense of the meeting and ensure that we are hearing from a variety of different voices. Faculty members who have ideas for how to use upcoming time can bring it to any member of the steering committee, who endeavor to integrate the feedback.

In May of 2023, the Lower School Director, Dave, approached me to ask that I speak with the Lower School Faculty during their closing meetings. They had heard about what we were doing and hoped to integrate the model for their own faculty meetings. Over the summer, they worked to create a similar model, adapting the roles slightly given the needs of their division.

Community Feedback

Midway through the second school year, I shifted my focus to evaluating the effectiveness of this new model. Upper school faculty completed one survey in November 2023 and will complete a second in May 2024. The community feedback submitted by upper school faculty through an anonymous survey was largely positive. The majority of the faculty expressed that the new mode of faculty meetings was engaging, lived into our Quaker mission of the school, and created space for them to share their opinions and ideas. There was also appreciation for the way in which the new mode invited more voices into organizing and leading the meetings, and the ways in which this resulted in a clear and timed agenda being sent out ahead of time. Finally, a large cross section of people expressed appreciation for how thoughtfully the faculty clerk was leading the faculty in deepening our Quaker practices. Several community members expressed that they missed hearing directly from Chris. There was also some nostalgia for the casualness and spontaneity

that often characterized the old mode of meetings and allowed for informal ways of connecting with colleagues.

In addition to capturing feedback from my colleagues in the Upper School, I met with Chris and Dave to hear about their perspectives on the new structure. Chris echoed much of what was said in the survey. He agreed that he missed having time to connect with the faculty during the meetings, but reframed the challenge as an opportunity for him to be more intentional about building authentic touchpoints with everyone on the faculty. Overall, Chris was pleased with the way in which the new mode created authentic and shared leadership opportunities. Dave’s sentiments were very similar to Chris’. He was pleased with how the new mode of meetings fostered more faculty agency and creativity in generating conversations and designing the structure of the respective meetings. Like Chris, Dave expressed that this process had helped him to isolate areas where he needed to more actively engage with faculty in building community and shared understandings.

Next Steps

This work has been incredibly gratifying and humbling. There are so many opportunities ahead of us: moments when the faculty will be called on to make a decision using Quaker based discernment practices, moments where we transition from one clerk to another or from one division director to another, places to deepen the work of the meetings, and places to deepen the faculty’s understanding and integration of Quakerism into our professional lives. I feel deeply humbled to be surrounded by so many talented colleagues interested in sharing this work with me, and look forward to continuing to facilitate it.

SUPPORTING FIRST YEAR TEACHERS AT FRIENDS SCHOOLS

Background

Scattergood attracts teachers with a wide range of teaching and life experiences. Since I started as the Academic Dean, it’s been a key part of my role to mentor and develop all teachers. For retention, I have found it particularly important to pay attention to the experience of frst year teachers.

In that time I have worked to strengthen a peer coaching model. I have also started meeting on a set schedule with all teachers, in low-stakes 30-minute sessions. I meet with new teachers every other week. Two years ago, we developed a set of fve core teaching practices (e.g., “Balance student-led inquiry and teacher-led instruction”), and these have become one lens through which we collaborate on teacher growth.

I am improving in this part of my job, but I’ve also experienced some challenges. I have not done well creating a set schedule of teacher evaluations, and always feel behind in this. I had a diffcult experience letting a teacher go, unsure of whether I gave her enough early feedback. I have questioned the value of our mentor program.

So, I’m led to an essential question: “How can schools best support and develop secondary teachers throughout their frst year?” To get at this question, I interviewed six administrators at Friends schools who are in charge of teacher development. I asked them questions about their programs, and they put me in touch with frst year teachers at their schools to whom I sent a short survey.

In a review of the literature, I found one study quite useful: published in 2021 by NAIS, it focused on support for new teachers. Two of their key recommendations for schools seemed particularly relevant:

1. “Develop consistent and personalized mentorship programs for new teachers. Only 19% of teachers in schools with 300 students or fewer reported that they were extremely or very satisfed with new teacher induction programs.”

2. “Provide a clear evaluation and feedback process that focuses on growth and development of teachers. When asked if they had a clear understanding of how to reach career goals, just 14% of teachers strongly agreed.”

Learning

My data included seven schools (Westtown, George, Scattergood, Sandy Spring, Mullica Hill, Friends Select, and Mary McDowell). While schools approached the support and growth of frst year teachers pretty differently, programs fell into three main areas: Mentor Programs, Professional Growth, and Formal Evaluation.

Mentor Programs

Six of the seven schools have peer mentor programs which tend to focus on teaching the culture, systems, and values of the school. Levels of accountability and resources given to these programs differ widely. Administrators generally thought these programs were useful but wished they could provide more structure and time. Mentor quality varies, and without formal times to meet and lacking specifc goals, these programs can be less valuable in practice than in theory.

Of the eight new teacher respondents, only one listed their peer mentor as a valuable resource in their frst year (though all of them ostensibly had one). Two mentioned them, but not in a particularly positive light. Five didn’t think to list them as “one of the ways I was supported as a teacher in my frst year.” Representative of this attitude was this comment: “Having a mentor without any dedicated time sort of undermined the whole purpose, especially once things got busy.”

SAM TAYLOR

Academic Dean & Assistant Head of School Scattergood Friends School West Branch, IA

I came to Scattergood after teaching math in Honduras, assuming I would stay for just a year or two (I was a bit off!). Over my frst 15 years at the school I taught humanities, writing, social studies, and math classes. I also coached soccer, clerked staff meetings, and led trips to Latin America. In the middle of that time, I had a formative experience earning a Master’s at Teachers College, where I learned to pay closer attention to the lived cognitive experience of my students. For the last fve years, I have served in my current role, which allows me to mentor teachers, supports students, and serve as a steward for our wider institutional goals.

Two of the keys to a successful mentor program that were highlighted by Maggie Chiles, in her 2017 Action Research Project, were: (1) Clearly defned roles and responsibilities of the peer mentor, and (2) secure time for the mentors to meet. Based on the teacher data, these two components were missing from the less successful mentor programs.

Professional Growth and Evaluation

Many administrators were wrestling with the tension between their evaluative role and their role in teacher growth. Three of the seven schools are working to separate “growth and renewal” from “evaluation.” They are working to make the evaluative process into more of a binary checklist–are your grades in on time? Are you meeting standards of professionalism?–while the “coaching model” is focused on teacher-generated as well as school-wide goals.

There were as many models for developing frst year teachers as there were schools. One school with a very small 6-8 program relied a great deal on their mentor program for teacher development, alongside “Professional Growth Plans.” Another school has a Director of PD whose role is entirely non-evaluative; he observes teachers and meets with them individually. A couple of schools rely on Department Chairs, though there is an understanding that the experience may vary quite a bit from department to department. Some schools include a minimum of 3 or 4 classroom evaluations per year. In other schools it is more haphazard. In some schools, the stated policy runs into the problem of administrator time.

In general, administrators seem to agree that this model works best when:

1. Teachers are a part of goal setting

2. There is a set schedule of classroom visits and meetings

3. Emphasis can be placed on the pre-meeting (What are your goals for this lesson? How can

you accomplish them?) not just on post-visit feedback, and

4. New teachers are embedded in a community of teachers who can support them.

While mentors from outside a teacher’s department were of mixed value to teachers, they spoke much more often of leadership (department chairs, division heads, etc.) whose role was to help teachers develop in their craft. Seven of the eight respondents mentioned these relationships as being helpful. Informal relationships with teachers in their departments were also cited as being helpful by six new teachers.

Next Steps

I will put these understandings into practice at Scattergood:

1. I need a more formal classroom evaluation schedule, which can hopefully coincide with my already clear 1:1 meeting schedule. I am piloting this in the spring of 2024.

2. I have also begun the process of building a basic professionalism checklist along with our 5 core teaching practices into my regular 1:1 meetings. I will get feedback from teachers about how this is going at the end of the year.

3. We need to look at our mentor program, and either (a) invest more time and structure into the program, or (b) lay it down. I hope to work with our Head of School this spring to consider more accountability and better compensation for mentors.

I hope that the generosity and wisdom of those who helped me with this project can continue to resonate with me, and that I can keep working towards these goals even as “more pressing” concerns arise.

DISCERNING WESTTOWN’S QUAKER PEDAGOGY

Background

In the summer of 2022, I found myself sitting around a table with the rest of Westtown’s senior leadership team. We were asking questions and proposing answers that drove to the heart of who we are as a Quaker school community. Earlier that spring, we completed our accreditation process through the Pennsylvania Association of Independent Schools (PAIS). Our goal for this meeting was to review the recommendations from our accreditation committee and determine how the school would move forward as an institution. The committee lifted up the resonance of our mission statement in our community and the way that it holds true for various stakeholders and guides all of the work we do. Simultaneously, they acknowledged the weighty and aspirational goals outlined in the school’s Strategic Vision which had been adopted in January 2020.

By the end of our administrative meeting, we had decided that the school needed to engage in a comprehensive curriculum and program review program that would take multiple years. We determined that we needed to review all aspects of our program (academics, co-curriculars, residential life, student leadership, etc.) to determine both where we are now and where we aspire to be. This process would drive decision making in terms of our teaching practices, hiring goals, spiritual community, and approach to marketing and retention. From the outset, we determined that we needed to clarify the ways that Quakerism undergirds every aspect of school life, and that this process should examine and audit our program through that lens and in turn clarify that our commitments to equity, justice, and belonging (EJB) and sustainability are grounded in our Quaker values.

Exploration/Learning

The tremendous scope of this project required the full buy-in of our employee community. Faculty would need to examine, document, and potentially rewrite the curriculum while our external facing staff offces would need to communicate the process and outcomes of this work to internal, external, and prospective audiences. We knew that to be successful, we would need to engage in this work through Quaker decision making processes that would seek input and wisdom from students, faculty, families, trustees, and alums. A Curriculum and Program Review Process Committee was formed in the fall of 2022 and charged with researching and recommending a curriculum review process. The committee engaged in this initial research and planning phase for fve months. The frst step of our process was to review Westtown’s mission and Strategic Vision, as well as the PAIS committee’s recommendations.

CHRIS WILLS

Dean of Faculty and Innovation

Westtown School West Chester, PA

Chris Wills is an artist and educational leader based in Philadelphia, PA. He serves as the Dean of Faculty and Innovation at Westtown School working across all three divisions of the school looking at the community and holistic curriculum from a bird’s eye view and seeking to build bridges and connections across the Lower, Middle and Upper Schools. Chris has worked and taught in independent schools across the country. He advises on educational trends and programs, leading professional development at the national level for teachers in both public and independent schools. With a background in visual art and arts education, Chris seeks to fnd creative solutions that balance the needs and aspirations of students, families, and school communities.

From there, the committee developed a list of guiding principles and essential questions that were presented to the Principals’ Group, Upper School Department Chairs, the Equity, Justice, and Belonging (EJB) team, the Sustainability Committee, and all faculty for feedback. We then began work on our timeline and recommendations. Some of the essential questions guiding this process include:

• How do we defne Quaker pedagogy at Westtown?

• How do we ensure that the principles of equity, justice, and belonging are effectively embedded throughout our program?

• What are the experiences and outcomes that are expected of a student completing each division?

• How do we leverage our unique position as a regional three-divisional day school and a global boarding school for the betterment of our students?

In the spring of 2023, we began our Curriculum and Program Review and engaged the faculty in the work of analyzing and documenting our academic program. During an in-service day, our Head of School, Chris Benbow, posed the question, what is it that we endeavor to do as a school community? His own response to this question was to offer an outstanding program in an environment of intentional belonging and explicit Quakerism. As a school, our goal is to ensure that Quakerism is clear and visible in everything that we do. We began to document four types of learning that are integral to Friends schools:

• Learning to Know (Content)

• Learning to Do (Skills)

• Learning to Be (Dispositions)

• Learning to Live with Others (Community Agreements and Expectations)

Thus far we have made tremendous progress in this work and have continued to fnd ways to engage our constituents in this process. Highlights have included designing and building our own software application for curriculum mapping, developing a parent engagement series highlighting the role of Quakerism in our program, leading in depth professional development on backwards design, essential questions, and spiraled curriculum, and making recommendations for ameliorating the effects of the pandemic on interrupted learning particularly in the areas of social-emotional learning and executive functioning behaviors. Additionally, our curriculum mapping process embeds our EJB work directly into course, unit, and lesson design by incorporating

anti-bias frameworks into our instructional approaches and daily instructional practices.

Next Steps

Westtown’s commitment to Quaker values remains at the center of this project. Over the course of the 2023-24 school year, community stakeholders engaged in brainstorming to consider what dispositions we seek to cultivate at Westtown. Faculty, parents, guardians, and alums began to identify the attitudes, mindsets, and ways of being we seek to nurture in our students, and consider the ways that Quakerism shapes and informs these shared dispositions. As we look ahead, we plan to create a Portrait of a Westtown Learner that would demonstrate how qualities such as peacemaking, inquiry, leadership, collaboration, and listening guide our work with students from daily interactions to the sustained effort of “preparing [our] graduates to be stewards and leaders of a better world.”

The Curriculum and Program Review is estimated to take two more years to complete before we enter a cycle of maintenance, improvement, and review. The work ahead includes identifying signature experiences, continued curriculum mapping, and ensuring horizontal and vertical alignment across all three divisions. This process has been an exercise in change management, requiring leadership, shared vision, skills, resources, incentives, and strategy. Through this collaborative process we have strengthened our cross-divisional connections and community through Quaker decision making and are laying the foundation for an innovative school of the future that is deeply connected to its roots.

As I think about my own learning through this process, I have come to know myself as a leader. I recognize that my strengths lie in motivating and empowering a community, making complex information accessible, and connecting diverse teams for the greater success of the school. Most importantly, I have learned that I must move at the pace of my community and listen to and respond to their needs. By prioritizing the growth and development of our faculty and giving them agency in this process, we have been able to promote collective action and foster sustainable change.

DEEPENING A RELATIONAL CULTURE THROUGH RESTORATIVE PRACTICES

Background

I became the Upper School Dean of Students at Abington Friends School (AFS) in the Fall of 2021, as students and adults returned to campus after months of isolation, uncertainty, and hybrid-learning. I entered into my role with optimism, and perhaps a bit too much naiveté, because I quickly came to experience the emotional heaviness of the job. I observed that the hallmarks of the AFS community I had previously known - trust, connection, joy in student life - were ruptured.

The most obvious marker of this disruption in community life and student engagement I noted was in our attendance data. Looking back at documentation from the 2017-2018 school year, about 2-3% of the student body exceeded attendance policy limits for lateness and absences. In 2021, that number increased tenfold, not including a dramatic rise in the number of students who habitually went to class late, cut class, or left class for more than 10 minutes at a time. While attendance improved the following year, students continued to show gaps in their academic learning, in executive functioning, in their social-emotional development, and their enthusiasm to engage in student life.

The top priority that emerged from Upper School faculty conversations was the idea of studentship - how do we cultivate learners that are curious, growth-minded, and actively engaged? Informed by these faculty conversations, my inquiry expanded the idea of studentship to include social emotional learning (SEL) goals that equip students to engage as co-creators of a relational community. My action research aimed to explore how student training in Restorative Practices (RP) could deepen relational culture.

Exploration

The following queries emerged during my exploration of RP.

For the individual:

• How can I apply my learning about RP to my everyday practice to strengthen my relationships with students, colleagues, and in my personal life?

• How can I gather feedback from critical friends

and others to support my own learning and growth around relationship building?

• How am I being mindful of my own emotions, triggers, and responses?

• What is my relationship with authority? Am I permissive, neglectful, authoritarian, or authoritative?

• How can I lay down ideas of power and control and still be authoritative?

• How can I use affective statements and questions to normalize emotions as part of relationship building?

For the community:

• How can we support SEL by incorporating a focus on mind, body, spirit connection?

• How do we emphasize cooperation and collaboration and de-center individual success over others?

• How can we show appreciation meaningfully for people’s work and efforts?

• How do we create learning communities that embrace risk taking and decrease the shame around failure?

• How do we engage with each other with open-heartedness?

• How do we normalize confict and move through it respectfully?

• How do we interrogate our assumptions with curiosity?

Learning #1: Restorative Practices is the work of Community

The primary focus of RP is building and strengthening relationships, rather than addressing harm. As individuals, we can only maintain a limited number of strong relationships. Fully implementing RP, therefore, requires an examination of the relationships that exist within a school. How can we leverage all community members to collaborate, refect on, and practice RP to strengthen connections and trust?

In my action research, I leveraged a team of adults interested in RP to co-create an RP training curriculum for students, with the idea that students would then be better equipped to engage with one another and mediate confict as needed. Members of this team have also brought their understanding of RP into our 9th Grade advisory curriculum, creating a compounding effect that we hope will positively impact student

TINA YEN Dean of Students

Abington Friends School Jenkintown, PA

As a frst-generation daughter to immigrants, I grew up wrestling with notions of home, belonging, and community because of the way my parents built deep relationships with great care and curiosity for others. My childhood home was always abuzz every weekend, flled with the many people my parents regularly invited into our lives. I grew up witnessing the connectedness of an immigrant community while never quite having one where I felt I truly belonged. My parents’ story of care and curiosity for others continues in my work, driven by an optimism that whole humans and strong relationships can heal and transform communities.

behavior in future years. We’ve also implemented RP circles to address harm and reset team culture for our wrestling team. This was successful and has resulted in a stronger team bond for the students. Another notable observation since beginning our implementation of RP is increased student accountability and an acceptance of consequences.

Learning #2: Student/Adult Equity, Intergenerational Partnerships, and Liberatory Change

The fundamental premise of RP is that people are happier, and more likely to make positive changes to their behavior when people in positions of power do things with them, rather than to or for them. I see this sentiment frequently expressed by students who ask for opportunities to play and bond with peers.

Students identify participation in communal activities as a way to build connections. While those moments are valuable and necessary, I also wonder if what students crave is human connection - the kind of connection that comes with deep listening, empathy, and storytelling. My RP team incorporated these learning outcomes into our frst RP circle-keepers workshop.

We constructed the workshop on the premise that both students and adults are experts, and that we can collaborate and learn together as colleagues to move beyond models of adult-led or student-led programming, as well as to challenge the assumption that adults are gatekeepers of knowledge. The feedback was positive and students named learning and querying alongside adults as meaningful. Students also identifed intergenerational partnership with younger divisions as a key goal for future community building.

Intergenerational partnerships help us to see, engage, and learn from one another as people, outside the structures of hierarchy, power, and oppression. It is through this type of RP work that we can build more relational, liberatory learning communities.

Next Steps

I will continue expanding RP education at AFS. This includes continued parent, student, and faculty/staff engagement. My team will continue training student circle keepers - some are already involved in collaborative problem solving with faculty. I will also be offering a new course in the upcoming year for all 10th graders to explore RP and Quakerism.

Feedback is an important component of RP. So, as my education efforts expand, I would like to collaborate with my US Director to develop a student and faculty feedback tool that will allow us to assess improvements in the school’s relational culture.

Final Refection

I have learned that building human-centered, relational communities sparks joy and a sense of purpose for me. This work is continuous and ongoing. Our understanding and our relationships are always evolving. This work has also changed me. I am more aware of my own emotionality in hard moments, and I also feel more grounded in a practice of critical refection in which I frequently re-examine my own relationship to authority and power as my personal and professional relationships continue to evolve. I am deeply grateful for having had this opportunity to learn and grow and I am thankful to everyone who has supported me along the way.

FOSTERING DELIBERATE ENGAGEMENT IN AN EARLY SCHOOL ENVIRONMENT: COUNTERACTING PASSIVE PLAY

Background

AMONG OUR STUDENTS

I am a lifelong early childhood educator who began my teaching career in my home country of Liberia in West Africa. In 1993, I moved to the United States to study education and earned a Bachelor’s in Early Childhood Education. After I started teaching, I decided to expand my knowledge by earning a Master’s degree in Special Education. Through the years, I have had the opportunity to work in diverse contexts. I love to support children in their growth and development and have had the opportunity to work with a range of students, including high-risk students at a College Laboratory and school with mostly privileged students at competitive independent schools. Thirteen years ago I joined the amazing staff at Carolina Friends School as an Early School teacher at the Campus Early School. At Campus Early School, we work with a multi-age group of children using a modifed High Scope curriculum that is deeply inspired by our Quaker Values. Through these experiences, I have learned that every child, regardless of context, has unique gifts that they can develop through play, exploration, and creativity.

I have also observed that few experiences satisfy and fulfll children more than being able to express themselves openly and without judgment. This nurtures a child’s self-effcacy and expands their abilities to problem solve and engage with their environments in new ways. Through creativity, children try out new ideas and practice skills through imaginary games and scenarios. Because of this link between creative, open-ended play and learning, we often call play the work of childhood.

I was recently surprised to observe novel changes in the character of my students’ play. Since my students have returned to in-person learning after at-home

learning during the pandemic, I have observed them being more cautious and hesitant about initiating play. Students have been more likely to seek adult direction for prescriptive play and less likely to engage in open-ended creative play. Given the central importance of this to learning, I decided to intentionally investigate the trends I was seeing in order to support my students.

With the support of my colleagues and head teacher, I initiated an action plan to help our students regain their confdence in engaging in and initiating open-ended creative play.

Exploration/Learning

My colleagues and I started taking notes of our observations. We saw that during unoccupied play, children’s behavior often seemed random, without specifc goals and with no particular narrative to their play. Even when provided with a wide range of creative materials and plenty of opportunities, often their attention spans could not be sustained. Children seemed to gravitate to games based on screen-based narratives that demonstrated violent interaction.

We listened intently to what children were saying and provided activities that were based on the children’s interests and ideas, yet children often engaged with material for only a minimal amount of time. On occasion, children needed both a step-by-step process on how to use materials and adult scaffolding throughout simple activities. We had to build in much more time to talk through ideas and nurture children’s curiosity than we had in the past. We wondered if the behavior we were seeing in our students was exhibited in children attending other Quaker early childhood programs.

WILLIETTE ZIGBUO

Childhood Educator and Lead Teacher

Carolina Friends School Durham, NC

Since my early years, I’ve harbored a deep-seated desire to become an early childhood teacher. My unwavering aspiration has be to provide each child with the same enriching early childhood

experience that I cherished. I learned invaluable qualities, including patience, creatively, story-telling, fexibility, and compassion, from my own teachers. For the pass 27 years, Iv’e striven to instill these virtues and create similar experiences within my own classroom, bringing Immeasurable joy through the laughter and delight of my young pupil. As an early childhood educator brimming with curiosity, excitement, and an unquenchable thirst for continued learning.

I felt both humble and proud to be a part of the Friends Council for Engaging Leadership Institute. I eagerly anticipate using the knowledge and insights gained from this experience to foster both personal and professional growth at Carolina Friends School.

I led an effort to reach out to other early school teachers to see if they were experiencing similar trends with their students. We identifed three Quaker Early Schools in and out of our region for observation and data collection. After several hours of observation and discussions with classroom teachers, art and gym teachers at three schools, we found that our colleagues were seeing similar scenarios and patterns with their students.

After analyzing my notes from these many observations and discussions, I saw that students, 1) struggled more to initiate, engage, and sustain play activities, 2) demonstrated short attention spans, 3) needed step by step instruction for novel tasks, 4) frequently sought out teacher directed play, 5) were cautious and took minimum risk in exploring materials, and 6) gravitated toward screen-based games.

After a year of these observations, we made intentional changes to our classroom and playground set up. We introduced more natural materials, river rocks, wooden sorting sets, wooden play dough sets, natural fne motor sets, and sorting stones, amongst others. Our playground was set up with various open-ended materials for tinkering, sensory, and other exploration activities. Our goal was to support students in overcoming the defcits they had exhibited in the 2021-22 school year.

In 2023-2024, I observed that the children were more excited and eager to engage creatively with materials. They often played cooperatively with peers and required less teacher-initiated activities. They were curious about materials, and their pretend play was flled with narratives. We observed less teacher attention-seeking and more cooperative and symbolic play with peers. For example, a group of children collectively transferred a hay bale into a wagon and took turns going on a hayride. After days of hayrides children tore the hay bale apart and scattered it on the

ground, placed balls on the hay, sat on the ball and pretended to lay eggs on their nest. Some of the same children who had run in circles around the playground the year before continued to do so, but this time they ran with their jackets hung on their heads as pretend capes. Children also built obstacle courses where they created levels to challenge themselves. They were able to scaffold and work on activities for an extended period.

After this intentional observation and analysis of revised approaches at my school, I decided to follow up with my colleagues at the three Quaker early childhood programs I had visited and inquired if they were fnding that their interventions were improving things for their students. Happily, my colleagues shared that they also were seeing children engaging more creatively and taking more initiative in play. I sent out a questionnaire to collect data on what each school had done; specifcally, I wanted to know what seemed to have had a positive impact, and what wasn’t effective.

Next Steps

After collecting and analyzing the data from observations, conversations, and the accommodation strategies questionnaire, I plan to share valuable insights across all participants about the most effective strategies for teaching children how to engage in exploratory play. Moving forward, I would like to lead an iterative process where participants can continue to build upon our shared insights, strategies, share ideas and resources across locations. My goal is for us all to have effective strategies in helping children rebuild their creative abilities and self-initiative skills after the pandemic or any other potential learning interruptions they may experience.

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 action research is the reflective inquiry approach, in which every turn of spiritual 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.

This booklet contains summaries of action research conducted by members of the 2022 -2024 cohort of the Institute.

THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF QUAKER SCHOOLS