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Inspire New Leader: Practical strategies for student achievementLeadership: An Essential Element in Effective SchoolsBy François Massé For almost six years now, Ontario's school system has gone through significant changes, stimulated in large part by research conducted in the main on effective schools. One of the proposals of the movement towards effective schools is to put in place professional learning communities (PLC) that will enable teachers to meet on a regular basis to share strategies to ensure that every student achieves success. This cultural transformation to seeing the establishment of a professional learning community in the school cannot be done without taking a fresh look at the role the principal of a school must play as a leader who facilitates putting such a structure in place. This is what CECLFCE observed when promoting the putting in place of PLCs. Inspired in large part by the works of Michael Fullan and of Marzano, leadership in the Board has been quietly redefined in order to support and equip leaders who have to work in this new context. Our experience in developing leadership within the Board had three major focuses – planning for improvement, mobilization of available expertise and supervision of leaders. Planning for improvements One of the first methods identified by the Board to support leaders was to make the Board's priorities more explicit to the schools and to focus on a limited number on which to work. As well, a key message sent to leaders was that planning for improvement is an exercise in planning for change, that is, that the aim is to explore new strategies related to a result to be achieved. It is not to list all the activities that will take place during a school year. This distinction has meant that we have reduced the planning document from about forty pages to three, one page per priority. Moreover, each priority includes a SMART goal that helps leaders to make clear to all staff the outcome to be achieved. A second effect of this new approach to planning was the idea of time. The planning cycle can no longer be done on an annual basis. Rather, planning follows the cycle set by the SMART goal. Thus, some schools work on a priority over 16 to 18 months, with interim measurements. For example, a school that sets a goal of having students feel more secure in the school yard may identify strategies to be put in place over a period of more than a year, since evaluation of this priority is done every two years. The final element of this new way of approaching planning for improvement is the idea of standards that we have suggested to the schools. For each of the Board's identified priorities, there is also a standard set, a minimum performance threshold that each school should achieve. For example, one of the Board's priorities is to increase students' feeling of belonging to their school. The Board therefore set a standard indicating that, in a survey, at least 85% of students would say that they are proud of their school. When the results of the survey were shared with the school, the leader could immediately see whether or not this priority has been met, in terms of the standard. If the school does not reach the standard, the leader, in discussions with his or her team, could decide to work on this priority. In a professional learning community, an important concept to work on is taking advantage of expertise available within the school. As well, a school will be progressively more effective when it becomes increasingly easier to share everyone's expertise to achieve collective knowledge. So it is vital for the leader to propose a limited number of priorities to which each staff member can contribute in order to increase the level of collective expertise. If the priority is to increase the number of students who are competent in reading, the professional discussions in the collaborative teams will be focused on exploring, testing and validating the best practices to achieve this goal. In a way, for a certain period of time staff members become researchers in literacy during the collaboration meetings. The first responsibility of this leader is to arrange things in such a way that the discussion is focused, making it possible for teachers to share their experiences and their reflections in an effective way. The school principal does not need to be an expert in pedagogy, but he or she must put in place conditions that enable pedagogues to share their individual knowledge and skills so that they become collective knowledge. An important result of this exercise is that in the end the school harmonizes certain effective teaching practices that benefit all students. What are the winning conditions for promoting mobilization of expertise? In the Board's experience, we can identify at least three. The primary condition to ensure that use is made of available expertise is first and foremost to have a common priority. A collaborative team must work on the same priority, whether it be reading, mathematics, or an increased feeling of security among students. If the team members are not all working on the same priority, then why meet, other than to exchange our opinions? The second condition is to have an interdependent SMART goal drawn up. Certainly the acronym SMART is not new, but the idea of interdependence in the result to be achieved is a powerful influential element. When a team of teachers shares a common goal, mobilization of expertise becomes the means for achieving the goal. Thus, the goal is not to have 16 of my 20 students pass the math test in 6 weeks, but to have 50 out of 60 students (4 classes) pass the math test in 6 weeks. The final condition to promote this mobilization is to plan frequent meetings (every two weeks) that are time limited (40 to 60 minutes). The purpose of these meetings is to examine the students' progress towards achieving the interdependent SMART goal. Supervision of leaders The supervision of school principals has long been discussed among superintendents with an aim to harmonizing the process and the content of meetings. As well, we have prepared a common document as a framework for our supervisory activities; it also deals with the improvement plan and the achievement of two or three outcomes set by the school team. It has been agreed that superintendents would have supervisory meetings with leaders a minimum of three times a year. Each meeting has specific questions on planning. An interesting outcome of targeted supervision has been the ability to explore different formats for meetings. For example, in some schools, the leaders (principal, vice-principal) are accompanied by one or two teachers to discuss the improvement plan with the superintendent. This kind of shared leadership makes it possible for school principals to share the responsibility for planning with a greater number of people in the school. Professional accountability thus goes as far as the classroom, because teachers are involved in development, implementation and achievement of the outcomes that have been set out. Mobilizing Expertise
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