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| Apr 5 2010, 12:16 PM EDT (current) | JenniferRief | 1630 words deleted |
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Strategic Planning Committee Thursday, March 11, 2010 Meeting Minutes Jocelyn O’Quinn called the meeting to order at 7pm. In attendance: Chuck Ott, Deb Hastings, Tim Spinney, Matt Van Ledtje, Dave Hawley, Jennifer Lyon, Blaine Cox, Judy George, Jocelyn O’Quinn, David Moore, & Paula Roy. Jocelyn introduced Mr. Ott to the committee. The following is an overview of his talk. Chuck Ott’s talk: To what extent does the strategic plan influence the behavior of a school culture? Usually the answer is none. I’m not impressed with strategic plans in general but I do believe in planning. I believe that we should reach out and gather the most important and critical information which usually comes from the people we haven’t listened to. Speak to the students who drop out. I believe in speaking to people in their homes at their kitchen tables. You have collected data and need to forge it to enhance teaching and learning. The data that we collect is often snapshot in time. The purpose of a plan is to beg the next best question to ask to drill down into the data. It should be used as a springboard. We aren’t going to change culture if we’re throwing facts and data at each other. The conventional schools as we know them are over. Kids are not going to be educated as we believe in schools. Half of our kids are only doing things to get by. They haven’t invested. They have dropped out. We have wrung the incentive out of kids to learn. Kids need to embark upon the hero’s journey. Many of our kids don’t feel that school is the place that kids can learn. This is an opportunity for us to invent a new ORCSD. To invent something new, you have to think of a new way of learning. Strategic plans force us to look at the world as problems to be solved. When we pose problems, we tend to crystallize them. “Appreciated quality” means to dialogue around one essential question. When have we been at our very best? You can use that to solve other problems. A Strategic Plan is more linear and doesn’t value dialogue, which may be the most important product. This requires extraordinary discipline. In Somersworth many years ago we tried developing a plan in a less conventional way. As a community, we went to a hotel for 8 days and learned one thing….how to talk to one another. One essential skill….before you respond to another’s ideas, you tell them what you appreciate about their point; only after doing that, do you express your own concern. The point is that we weren’t stepping on one another. Good listening produces good thinking. Your job and what you want to spawn is the idea of dialogue. Dialogue can’t stand alone. It’s absolutely essential to inventing new ways of doing things. You want to invent new things together. A really well working team has a collective IQ of 180….You can discern things that you haven’t even asked yet. Did anyone ask if the kids are working very hard? How many kids come early and stay late? Is school where the kids feel, “I can be a hero”? Can I find extraordinary meaning in my life right here? Appreciative inquiry happens to kids who are engaged with passion and discipline. You will then produce something and perform. Instead they are the audience. I can’t think of a better opportunity to take a risk with your strategic plan. It’s worth it. You are not going to do any harm or waste any money. You will assess and monitor how it’s working out. You will then use assessment and data to see if the evidence shows that you are moving in the right direction. That conversation will move and be vibrant. I used to wish and plead with people to “go out and make more mistakes.” That is engagement and trying. Inventions happen by tinkering. Can’t we tinker a little bit and make new things? I think this is so important to invite our students….to make things or fix things. In American culture, we have lost our ability to make or fix things. I don’t think our nervous system can do that. You know as teachers that kids needs to make things. In North Carolina Kids decided to build an electric car. Every student went on to make the car through physics, writing, marketing… and it galvanized the school and the car was driven to the national championship and they went on to win the innovation award. We’re afraid to try new things because of the federal government and the state and all that, but ultimately, they’re just making that stuff up. Lionel had a good idea….why don’t we just follow the child. If you can evoke a new model through your plan…through appreciative inquiry…think about some way in the plan, to start an engine which is driven by dialogue and collaboration. I like to follow the three basic human needs; 1, to belong, 2, affection, 3 it meets the need for efficacy. Meeting the needs of students will make something happen. It’s where you know that you can really make things happen. If you can find a way to plant the seed, you will find a way to change the culture. That process is governance…we assume that things are sewn up…we have polices and RSA’s, but how do we decide things? If you ask teachers, “how do we make decisions here?”, most will say, ”I don’t know.” Look to democracy as a major way of being. Never make a decision that can’t change or have humility to seize new opportunities and take the feedback to move forward. To make these decisions and move forward, you must have 3 things: 1. You need to have a clear statement of what you believe good teaching and learning looks like. You know what it looks like. 2. You need to ask the question of how we make decisions. Who is involved.? I would have kids who dropped out, sit on my cabinet and have their voice at my table. 3. Did we make a good decision? When we make a decision, we will value that in an honest way. It’s an unstoppable force. David spoke of the dialogue of the ideas. That sometimes, we felt that we were only supposed to be collecting data, but we enjoyed the dialogue much more. Mr. Ott suggested that instead of looking at student achievement, look at student work. Look at their writing, their art, and their projects. There is so much to be learned by that. Dave Hawley asked about what it means to take a risk. Chuck said that in Somersworth, we radically changed SPED. It didn’t hold up forever. We moved from referred- test- place, and replaced with refer, problem-solve- intervene. We said to parents, we can do the SPED thing, or we can look at the problem and have us work together; We started with two columns ; Observed/ Expected…We started problem-solving with that. We saved hundreds of thousands of dollars. Imagine a parking meter in front of each of the professionals around the table. Instead, go to the home of your families and sit at their kitchen table. Engage the family in on the dialogue on their own domain. What’s the problem and where do we begin? It was a collaborative approach where we took a risk. We also eliminated suspensions in our high school and instead allowed the kids to work on a Saturday morning. They would clean the grounds…it would give an alternative. We would work alongside kids and it changed relationships. These things show people what really matters. Just show something, don’t tell. I hope that your strategic plan will excite that. When you can get all stakeholders to believe that they can effect change, you will see change happen. A discussion came up about gathering K-12 teachers to look at what we are doing. Is it the best use of energy or time to engage in just grading? Where do we go from here? We had talked with Chuck about being a facilitator and he said that he would rather be a “Critical Friend”. What do we want? Do we want to send us all into a hotel to generate the report or continue the conversation? To postpone the self-imposed deadlines, we may want to move the dates to the fall and get more of the community input and the survey ideas. In the summer, it’s hard to do the additional things. Setting limits in time frames is detrimental as we might want to focus more on the process now. If we can keep the process moving, we’ll know a lot more and feel like we can do it right. Having a framework for the dialogue and how you turn the dialogue into action. How will our plan improve learning and be better for kids? Is that worth being a part of the big plan? Some of the questions we came up with for students…What are you most proud of? What excites you? Are you happy? How authentic is the activity we are doing in school? How do you make meaning in the curriculum and can the students transfer the skills they have learned. Both Matt V. and Dave M. looked into other strategies that teachers were using. Questions such as looking at SPED models, passion, and bringing a piece of yourself into the classroom can engage the students. We are missing so many people at this meeting tonight that we can’t really make any big decisioins. We are still contacting potential facilitators. We still need to speak to other constituencies. Next meeting: April 1, 2010 7pm Respectfully Submitted, Paula Roy
