Dewey for the 21st Century
By Cristina Alvarez
One thing I learned as I researched for my dissertation is that entrepreneurial leaders who build successful schools share certain qualities: they are optimists, people with a can-do attitude. Where others see only problems, entrepreneurial leaders say, “Here’s an opportunity I can do something with.” That was one of the key findings of my study — in analyzing my own experience as well as that of the principals at the Science Leadership Academy and at the Microsoft School for the Future.
When I look back on my time at CHAD, I understand that I was leading atheoretically. I was doing what came naturally. But without a larger awareness of what I was doing, I was subject to peril. I wasn’t able to gather evidence — qualitative evidence in terms of institutional and Board interactions — to see and analyze the patterns that might put me at political risk. Without that understanding, I wasn’t able to shift my behavior, to take a different route, to put in different kinds of structures that would help me survive.
By definition, leadership positions are volatile. Boards are fickle; people get hired and fired all the time. When I had to leave CHAD, it was devastating because it seemed personal. I didn’t see that this happens to leaders all the time. The bigger the game you play, the more likely you are to be at risk.
It was Torch Lytle’s organizational leadership classes that helped me grow in that area. I learned to read the context of the workplace to increase my professional survival. In the event that I move to another position, I know how to transition into whatever comes next. In the organizational and public leadership classes I made peace with change as a routine part of growing as a leader.
Who will I be in the face of change? Certainly I will be more informed. Through my Mid-Career experience, I developed conceptual frameworks and now do not lead atheoretically. Because I know what I value as a leader, I lead very deliberately now.
As I progressed through the coursework, I began applying leadership theories to my practice and learned to articulate what kind of leader I am – what I value and what I’m willing to give up. Prior to that I may have endorsed programs because they seemed good at the time. Now I’m saying no to certain things and am willing to live with the dark side of what I’m not choosing.
For example, right now Hunter will not have a basketball team. We have a beautiful gym, but we will not have a basketball team or a football team. The students are asking for them, but I’m purposefully not spending our resources or staff time there.
Why? Taking a step back to the conceptual framework, I believe we should prioritize building 21st-century skills in our kids. School might be the only place where poor kids get exposure to digital tools and resources that they don’t necessarily get in their neighborhood environment. They may not have technology access at home, and when they leave us, they may not have it in their high school. We have a short amount of time to give them meaningful experiences with technology.
So as an educational leader who is committed to improving the lives of our kids, I have to look at the school budget, at the time teachers are spending, at the resources I’m providing for teachers – I have to look at all of those variables with that goal, that vision, in mind. Right now, I’m unapologetic about not spending human and budget resources on developing sports teams.
I’m trying to build leadership, autonomy, and learning – to give teachers freedom to operate as experts and support them as they do. In my first year at Hunter, teachers and support staff were lined up to ask permission to do things that they should have just been doing, things that were good for kids. They were getting to know the expectations of a new principal. They didn’t want to take a chance on being punished.
To support the creation of a learning culture I encouraged them to learn and try new things. They began to visit each other’s classrooms to watch each other teach. I sent them to other schools to see how innovative programs were run and to conferences to present their work. (This summer, for example, a team of teacher leaders joined me in presenting Hunter’s transformation at the national conference of the National Staff Development Council in Seattle.) And when they tried new things, I supported their initiatives with the budget. Pretty soon they were meeting to reflect on their practice and do teacher inquiry.
For years, one of the things that hampered Hunter School was teacher turnover and a lack of continuity in leadership. Kids weren’t seeing the same faces through the year and that lack of consistency is highly correlated with poor school climate. So my first job was to stabilize the operational side and, at the same time, set a vision and inspire teachers to embrace a 21st-century vision for their practice.
The Turnaround
What is happening at Hunter is a school turnaround. The strategy is twofold.
First, we increased technology integration across the board with the Classrooms for the Future grant by putting technology and training in the hands of the ordinary classroom teacher. We supported them as they learned to integrate technology in their lessons. Student engagement and the quality of teaching and learning vastly improved with the arrival of the laptops in the middle school. The improved climate was a factor in retaining teachers. After years of teacher turnover, for the first time in six years, 100% of the teachers returned. That happened in my first year.
Second, we created a model design technology lab that functions as a “disruptive innovation.” My vision was to create a design technology lab that didn’t exist anywhere else in the city. The lab was to be a workforce development experiment so that our kids, who are almost exclusively living in poverty, could see career possibilities and learn about being entrepreneurial. It would open the business world to them.
Working in the charter school world for almost eight years where building human resources is strongly valued, I knew that Hunter had to find good people in order to move in the right direction. As a leader, I could not turn a blind eye to notable underperformers while most teachers were working so hard to change and improve.
When I arrived, Hunter had a model digital music lab that had gone fallow because of a chronically absent teacher. So I cut the position, added a new art technology position and used my credit card to place an ad on craigslist. The ad read, Hiring an Art/Tech ed teacher to support technology use for instruction in classrooms. Have a Pennsylvania Classrooms of the Future grant with 85 laptops, professional development for teachers, Smart Boards in every classroom. Looking for a creative, progressive educator who will run with this position. Must be PA certified for Art/Technology. If you believe in Dewey for the 21st century, email ccalvarez@philasd.org
The craigslist ad got responses from as far as Argentina — a lot of graphic artists and a lot of people from San Francisco, Seattle, major cities. The teacher we hired is fully certified in art, has worked as a museum educator, and ran her own design business. The perfect mix of educator and entrepreneur, she incubates new ideas, introduces kids to open-source applications, and serves as a technology leader and mentor to others. The Institute for Educational Excellence and Entrepreneurship recognized us for the cool projects our kids completed in the design tech lab.
An architect – one of my former CHAD teachers – and the new design technology teacher brainstormed about the lab design. The model they set up is straight out of the Computer Clubhouse Network, an idea that hatched because I had a conversation with Penn GSE Professor Yasmin Kafai, who put me in touch with the flagship Computer Clubhouse in Boston.
The Computer Clubhouse model is the single best discovery I’ve made as an educator in recent years to serve poor kids. It’s a youth empowerment model and it addresses one of the key challenges for poor kids. Many of our kids don’t make the connection between what they’re learning in school and what they’ll be doing down the road.
The conceptual framework for the Computer Clubhouse model comes out of Seymour Papert’s work at MIT; Papert coined the term “constructionism” to refer to his theory that the most effective learning happens when people are making tangible, real-world objects.
Our design technology lab is essentially a design studio, with one area reserved for research and for prototyping, a spot for storage and scanning, and two banks of computers loaded with free open-source software. In other words, when Hunter students use digital tools, programs, and technologies in meaningful ways to produce something that has value to them, they become designers of their own learning. They design their futures as citizens who will be able to live and work successfully in the 21st century.
Penn’s Mid-Career doctoral program gets the credit for expanding my conceptual understanding of educational leadership. Action research and inquiry are stances I have adopted as practices for the rest of my career. Penn GSE also offers ongoing access to a network of professors, researchers, and educational leaders who are working at the cutting edge of our field. The benefits of my growth as a leader through my experiences in Mid-Career accrue to the students, teachers, and families I serve at Hunter School.