Introduction
Negative Versus Positive Variables and Behaviors As school organizations experience change, threats emerge, challenging the culture within each organization. These threats are defined as negative behaviors that shift school districts and schools, which fracture the culture for the district, the school, or both. Efforts to maintain effective implementation of school-improvement processes through PLC development (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, Many, & Mattos, 2016) are essential. These efforts allow all stakeholders to remain focused on promoting the interdependent work of educators despite new challenges, like virtual teaching and learning. A weakened process is evident when schools change their core purpose and essential components of education. In a virtual environment, leaders’ challenge is to maintain focus on those variables within their control. Robert Eaker and Janel Keating (2012) note variables that are within educators’ control and outside their control (table I.1). Table I.1: Uncontrollable and Controllable Variables Uncontrollable Variables Students cannot choose: • Their parents
Controllable Variables Collaborative teacher teams can develop:
• Where they live
• A school and classroom culture of caring and encouragement
• The school they attend
• A guaranteed, viable curriculum
• Their teachers
• Effective, research-based teaching strategies
• The high-stakes summative assessments they’ll take
• Common formative assessments of student learning • Systems of providing additional time, support, and enrichment • Ways to frequently recognize and celebrate improvement
Source: Eaker & Keating, 2012, p. 9.
These traditional uncontrollable variables are still present in schools, and especially as schools transition their work to virtual or hybrid environments. The uncontrollable variables contribute to negative behaviors in staff, threatening school culture and creating undue stress and emotional effects on both the educator and the student. Prominent principals and district administrators in Hawthorn Community Consolidated School District 73 in Vernon Hills, Illinois (personal communication, September In a virtual environment, 17, 2020), shared additional uncontrollable variables with us when leaders’ challenge we were discussing how to effectively educate students during a is to maintain focus pandemic while shifting the methodology of instructional delivery. on those variables The pandemic, the availability of technology, stress, the ordering within their control. and delivery of materials, the reliability of others, the emotional concerns of others, and the ability to establish learning success in a student’s home environment are all education unknowns. Tackling them all simultaneously is akin to building too many planes and learning how to fly them all at the same time. However, when
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