TLIM: A Crockpot

As I am sitting, at the back of the College Street Elementary library on a Tuesday night at 7:30 PM watching three of our teacher leaders facilitate a session with parents on the 7 Habits of Highly Successful Families, I flash back to a moment almost exactly 2 years ago. On an October day, I sat in my office with our new principal, Susan Heintzman, and a few of our teacher leaders with a Leader in Me Sales Rep. He said a lot during that meeting to try to “sell” The Leader in Me program to us. He knew that he was speaking to administrators and teachers from a campus with a high number of office referrals, a high absenteeism rate, and struggling scores on the state assessments. Oh boy, what we wouldn’t give for a “magical” program to come fix all of our problems… While I don’t remember most of what he said, there was one thing that did stick with me. The rep shared the data-based results that Leader in Me schools had experienced in relation to behavior, attendance, and academics; but he also cautioned us that The Leader in Me was not a “microwave”, but rather, “a crockpot.” The Leader in Me, he said, takes time and if done “low and slow”, will have a wonderful result.

At that time, what I took away from the “Crockpot” analogy was that we were NOT to expect results overnight. Those who know me well know that being patient and waiting for results does not come easily to me. In fact, one of my top 5 strengths based on the Strengths Finder is “Activator”, meaning, I see something that needs to be done or a problem that needs to solved and would rather take action than sit around and analyze the decision. It is a good thing that Mrs. Heintzman, our principal, is analytical and thoughtful and is usually able to pull me off of the ledge before I take action too quickly :). Because of this trait of mine, after we “pulled the trigger” and started our LIM journey, I expected that after at least 1 year of TLIM implementation, we would see at some results. I wanted results! And I wanted results BADLY! I was quite disappointed at the beginning of the 1^st 9 weeks last fall to see that our number of office referrals, absence occurrences, and academic data had stayed stagnate. In fact, saying I was quite disappointed was probably an understatement. I had witnessed the hard work and dedication of our staff and students and wanted SO badly to have seen that “it worked” to solve our problems and to share that victory with them. I remember saying to Mrs. Heintzman many times, “What are we missing? What else can we be doing?” and seeing her wait patiently.  We kept working hard and I just kept waiting, and waiting, and waiting to see the results. I finally decided that we were doing everything we could in our power and that I needed to stop watching the “crockpot” timer and just keeping working.

This evening, the timer went off… Because the 9 weeks is about to end, I pulled data for discipline, attendance, and reading scores. This is what I discovered:

	End of 1st 9 weeks 2014/2015	End of 1st 9 weeks 2015/2016
Discipline # of Occurrences	67	17
Students with 4 or more absences	37	16
iStation Tier 3 (struggling readers)	46%	22%

I sat in the back of the room, almost crying tears of joy (actually, I did a little but no one saw), listening to our teachers and parents dialogue in a conversation about how to lead their families to be more successful. I heard one grandparent thank a teacher and the school for teaching her grandson the habits and for always listening to him and supporting him. I heard parents share the way they have seen their children transform at home. I listened to these small victories in the background while staring at this data. That is when I realized that while the timer hadn’t gone off until I saw this data today, things were slowly cooking and marinating the whole time, I was just focusing on the final product instead of enjoying the cooking process.

I originally thought that the slow-cooker analogy just meant we needed to give it time and not expect results overnight. Now, I have deepened my thinking about why treating school reform like a crock-pot (being proactive and following a plan) is WAY better than the microwave method- Just like using a microwave to cook food may be fast and produce food that is edible, the food has gone rubbery, isn’t full of flavor, and you weren’t able to get anything worthwhile done during the cooking process. A school program put into place quickly then walked away from results in just that, a program without much result other than dull and impactless program.

A crockpot/ slow-cooker, on the other hand, takes time. During the time it is cooking, you can walk away and work on things of high importance. In fact, this cooking method gives you more time since you don’t have to take time to actually cook. When the timer goes off, what you find is tender and flavorful and is meant to be enjoyed around a dinner table with your family. Not only that, but you were able to enjoy the time that the meal was being cook by focusing on things of high importance. This is The Leader in Me. If you put thought into the flavorful ingredients that are placed into the crockpot (pick the right staff and select the right initiatives), stop listening to the “Activator” inside of yourself and instead use the “cooking” time to plan, prioritize, work, and enjoy school initiatives, you will find yourself with a solid, positive, effective, and student-centered school with the results and happiness to show it. It may take more time, but it is worth it!

I showed the above data to one of our teacher leaders this evening during a break and his response was, “I have been seeing this trend in my classroom. Now the question is, what next?” I love that he knew that even though the crockpot timer went off to show the wonderful results of everyone’s hard work, it isn’t the end. What will we cook next? You’ll just have to wait and see!