The Principals’ Training Center: Creating an Effective School
The PTC has a long history of providing really excellent trainings that help to improve the skills and understandings of its participants in a short amount of time. Those who attended this course were largely teachers who may be department or grade level team leaders, but many current administrators attended as well. This mix of people provided lively discussions between those who have years of experience and those who have many questions. I, for one, really enjoyed this dynamic as it sharpened me to more clearly define my own practices and beliefs while sharing with and learning from others.
The course that I took this summer, which was my first PTC course, was Creating an Effective School. The title says it all, you are going to learn how to lead in a school that wants to make a difference. There are five main categories that you will focus your learning on, which will drive home how to be an effective leader of a school or division.
To my knowledge, this summer course was among the first that the PTC has had online. Typically, people travel all over the world to one of their sites, such as Rome, Miami, or London. You will spend an intense 7 days with about 12 hours per day scheduled for you as you train, learn, and spend time with your cohort. This gives you loads of access to your trainers and other experienced members in your group as well as time away from everyday distractions.
With this course being online, I was a part of the synchronous sessions that ended up being at 8-10pm Korean Standard Time. I also was assigned to a home group that met every morning to go over our week’s task with all members located very close to my time zone. The task that every member was given was to end the week with a well thought out plan on how to tackle an issue that needed attention at our own schools. Mine was to help develop our instructional staff to have more innovative teaching and assessing practices. Among our group we had a variety of initiatives and all members were great at listening and providing feedback.
In its essence, the course was divided into three modes of learning - the synchronous lessons and activities, our home group that focused on supporting one another’s tasks, and self-study through the provided resources. I expected to be most excited about the synchronous lessons, especially given that the PTC trainer is a fantastic person and leader, Barry Dequanne. However, Barry’s job was more about introducing the main topic and helping to frame our thinking. This was invaluable, as it was enabled me to really get the most out of the self-study times. Exploring the topics, videos, and research was mind opening and a real highlight for me.
The Creating an Effective School course has five major parts to it that are each given about a day’s time and attention. Each will be briefly described below:
Foundational Documents - Keep your school’s vision, mission, values, and learning principles at the core of whatever you do. Decision-making is nonstop and without these documents, you have no North Star to guide you. Many schools do not have learning principles established to base learning decisions on. These are researched and proven facts about student learning, but the verbiage can be adjusted to reflect your school’s culture or slogans without losing its meaning. As soon as you turn away from these documents, you are making decisions blindly and may be going in the wrong direction.
School Improvement Process and Change - Knowing how to collect feedback and get the right sets of data to analyze and find your school’s strengths and areas of growth. Change and the change process must either be driven or supported by data. Adopting data analysis protocols can help teams to review the information in a less biased and personal way. This allows for trends or patterns emerge without so many hurt feelings, allowing all to have a voice at the table and help drive change together. It is the leader’s role to help frame the questions and data presented along with making the data more succinct and understandable.
Organizing for Learning - Spending time to think through systems and organization can seem dull or unimportant to many. However, how we structure our school, operations, and decision-making is essential to any school improvement and ensuring that stakeholders are either leading the change or are at least on board with it. This leads school leaders to ask these three questions, and the answer to them should drive how we structure our schools. How do we organize the adults? How do we organize the learning? How do we organize the leadership? Do this part well and you will see a common mission and vision in action.
Human Resources - A phrase that my community hears me say a lot is that a school is only as good as its teachers and its students. This is completely true, although there are certainly other variables that influence student learning. The focus of human resources is how leaders hire and develop their teachers. Are you recruiting for experience, for diversity, and for expertise? Do you seek feedback from your staff about what trainings they need to better prepare for school changes and initiatives? Are you training teachers to be leaders of their grade levels, departments, or teams? Successfully doing all of these parts will help you lead the school with the talent, culture, and progress needed from your instructional staff to ensure constant growth for your learners.
Culture and Climate - If a school is only as good as its teachers and its students, then it is the culture and climate that allows them to thrive. Culture is a set of values and beliefs held by a group along with their actions. In other words, who we are and how we behave. Leaders are responsible for the actions and beliefs of this group as we shape it and model it. Are you a school that leads with empathy? Then how do you handle that staff member or student who is routinely late? Focused on innovation? Then do you create an environment that allows for new ideas and psychological safety? The big idea here is to know what you believe, individually and as an institution, and align your actions to it. This needs to be your framework for thinking and decision making.
Of course, there are many more parts to leadership when it comes to creating an effective school, but these seem to be the strongest and most foundational. In other words, all other important aspects largely come from these five. Finance and operations? Recruitment and staff development? Student safety and learning? All rely on these five pillars of successful schools.
A month after completing this course I am looking back and reflecting on my learning experience - I have to say that the training was very worthwhile. While many shared just how meaningful the in-person experience was from years ago, of which I have no first hand knowledge, I can say that the online version did work very well. Having the PTC’s director, Bambi Betts, in each of the live sessions, which were hosted by a truly great leader, Barry Dequanne, added immensely to this learning experience.
My take away from this training is probably a bit different than many people, as I think we all listen for what we think we need. As some were seasoned school leaders, some new into leadership, and others aspirational, we are all learning at different stages. However, I do believe that the resources and connections shared will be meaningful enough to cause me to review them every few months and every year. The tenets of this course will probably never need to change - and that is the special value that the PTC brings to the training. That you are learning the most important aspects of a very specific topic that you can keep with you for your career.