Implementation Scenarios
In small groups, review the scenario and discuss
- What is the issue? What concerns might be behind the resistance? What information does the principal get if he or she views this resistance as feedback?
- What actions would you take to address the issue? How can you draw from CBAM, Decoding Resistance, or your experience?
Record your discussion on a T-Chart.
Scenario #1:
You are the experienced principal at Independence High School. Youlistened to your faculty when they requested release time for peer coaching. After lengthy collaborative planning, you implemented a schedule that supported the peer coaching initiative. You provided professional development on peer coaching. You regularly do walkthroughs during peer coaching time. After one semester, you notice that many teachers never participate in peer coaching activities. In fact, some teachers who originally spoke up about the need to work with colleagues appear to be socializing during release time instead. What will you do about this floundering initiative?
Scenario #2:
You are the principal at High Expectations Elementary School. You were at the staff meeting where the District's Director of Elementary Education shared information about Common Core State Standards and the formative assessments teachers would be expected to develop and then share across the District. You noticed that most teachers sat with their arms crossed during the presentation. At one point a teacher, Ms. Comstock, raised her hand and said, "These standards are too high!Our students don’t have the skills they need to tackle critical thinking. Our students struggle just to get to school and our job is to love them and make sure they are fed. Not everyone should go to college. We have extremely high expectations to even think about them graduating from high school! There is no way they'll ever pass this new test!These other schools have no idea what we deal with here every day!" Luisa thought she actually saw tears in the eyes of this teacher as she spoke. There were many other teachers nodding and voicing their support for Ms. Comstock. What work do you need to do with the staff?
Scenario #3:
You are a solid building principal beginning your second year at Tightknit Middle School and in your 15th year as a principal. Among the large staff, there are a few teachers and instructional assistants who are very influential in the neighborhood and who have a lot of political capital to spend. The former school principal, Priscilla Pleasant, was quite social with the teachers and the parents and let them come and go as they pleased. There were many assemblies and fundraising events that “brought the school together.” It was up the Tightknit Heights parents to organize all this because “half of the parents (of the poor and minority kids) don’t care.” The scores for the white kids are high and very low for the rest of the students.When you were transferred here, you were charged with reducing the predictability of gaps in student outcomes. This clique of teachers does not like the fact that you are in the classrooms so much. They are telling everyone in the TightknitHeights neighborhood that you are micromanaging and calling meetings that keep the good teachers from spending THEIR time on helping THEIR kids.They tell the parents that the principal is not open to suggestions, so the best thing would be to rally as many parents as possible and go to the school board and tell them they want Priscilla Pleasant back. Next move?
Scenario #4:
You have just been assigned as principal at Dead Dog Gulch Elementary School.You may be new to the school this year, but you are perceptive about the cultural challenges you faces.The previous principal has retired after a long career at DDG.The staff is comprised of a number of teachers who have been at the school their entire careers and are of the mind that they are doing the best they can, considering the high poverty in their rural community.There are several newer staff members who want to see change, but have not been able to buck the resistance of the “old guard.” How would you begin creating the conditions to change the culture at DDG?
Scenario #5:
You are principal of a large middle school in a large district. You have just come back from the principal coach Network meeting with great ideas about how to introduce peer observation into your subject area team meetings. You know that your staff has had professional development in plenty of good instructional strategies, but that you still aren’t seeing the bump in student achievement you expected. You suspect that the strategies are not being fully implemented. You worry that the staff will get frustrated not seeing results and give up on the strategy when, really, they haven’t even fully explored the strategy yet. You are pretty excited! When you introduce this initiative at the staff meeting, you are gob smacked by the suspicion you encounter. All the questions are about whether this will count towards measuring teacher performance and none of the conversation is about how we can do better for students. What should you do?