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 1st 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!
