Leading from the Jumpseat: How to Create Extraordinary Opportunities by Handing Over Control

[00:01] SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, bringing you the best in professional practice.

[00:06] Announcer:

Here's your host, director of the Principal Center and champion of high-performance instructional leadership, Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:15] SPEAKER_01:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to be joined today by Dr. Peter DeWitt. Peter is an author and speaker focused on collaborative leadership, fostering inclusive school climates, and connected learning. And you've probably seen him presenting at a conference here or there around the country or internationally. His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Principal Magazine, Educational Leadership, Huffington Post. He also writes the Finding Common Ground blog for Education Week.

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And he's the author of several books, including Collaborative Leadership, Six Influences That that matter most, which we are here to talk about today.

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And now, our feature presentation.

[00:56] SPEAKER_01:

Peter, welcome to Principal Center Radio. Hey, thanks for having me. So when you use the term collaborative leadership, those are two words that almost every education author tries to throw into the title of their book somewhere. If you could also give it six more adjectives, that would be even better. But you actually use the term collaborative leadership in a very specific way, to refer to something that's very specific based in research. Is that right?

[01:18] SPEAKER_02:

To be honest with you, when I first started writing the book, it was more about instructional leadership, which is also two words that lots of writers tend to use. It's pretty huge there now, to be honest with you. So John had been reading and doing research around a dissertation by a woman named Rachel Eels, E-E-L-L-S, and he had sent it to me. It was on collective teacher efficacy. And Within that dissertation, believe it or not, I ended up reading it twice, which is not something I ever thought I would be doing in my spare time. But when you work with John Hattie, you kind of find yourself doing those things.

[01:53]

And within the research, she talked a lot about this whole idea of a low level of self-efficacy. And when teachers feel that, they don't feel like they personally can make an impact on the students within their classroom. And then when they look at it from a teaching standpoint, they don't believe that teachers can have an impact on students. And that was frightening for me. to read and really look at the research around that, because these are teachers who are in the classroom. I mean, that's what we hire them to do, right?

[02:21]

And it just really started me thinking about my own experiences, both a teacher and a school principal. And this idea that instead of pointing the fingers at teachers and saying, well, you're bad, maybe there's a reason for their struggling, or maybe there's a reason why they're showing a lack of growth. And I've worked a lot with John Hattie on that kind of topic. And that's where I think this whole idea of collaboration really started to come out more and more.

[02:47] SPEAKER_01:

And collaboration feels like it could be one of those, you know, squishy things that we all supposedly do. How does it show up in Hattie's research?

[02:56] SPEAKER_02:

It's pretty huge there now, to be honest with you. So John had been reading and doing research around a dissertation by a woman named Rachel Eels, E-E-L-L-S. And he had sent it to me. It was on collective teacher efficacy. And within that dissertation, I, believe it or not, I ended up reading it twice, which is not something I ever thought I would be doing in my spare time. But when you work with John Hattie, you kind of find yourself doing those things.

[03:24]

And within the research, she talked a lot about this whole idea of a low level of self-efficacy. And when teachers feel that, they don't feel like they personally can make an impact on the students within their classroom. And then when they look at it from a teaching standpoint, They don't believe that teachers can have an impact on students. And that was frightening for me to read and really look at the research around that, because these are teachers who are in the classroom. I mean, that's what we hire them to do. Right.

[03:52]

And it just really started me thinking about my own experiences, both a teacher and a school principal. And this idea that instead of pointing the fingers at teachers and saying, well, you're bad. Maybe there's a reason for their struggling or maybe there's a reason why they're showing a lack of growth. And I've worked a lot with John Hattie on that kind of topic. And that's where I think this whole idea of collaboration really started to come out more and more.

[04:18] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and I've come across this idea, I don't remember the exact studies, possibly something by Jason Grissom and Susanna Loeb, that the idea that the primary way that principals impact student learning is through their impact on students. teacher collective efficacy. And I don't know if that's a direct finding, but I've heard that idea coming through loud and clear in some of the research that I've read. So let's talk more about that idea of teacher collective efficacy. We want our teachers to not only have a strong sense of self-efficacy in terms of their individual ability to work with students, but we want that to be a widespread phenomenon and a collective phenomenon among our staff that we feel like we're able to make a difference in student achievement so that we actually, you know, not just feel like we are, but we can actually do it. Talk to us more about what that means.

[05:06] SPEAKER_02:

It's very complicated, too, because the more I started thinking about it, the more I started thinking about, you know, there's a reason why teachers will have a low level self-efficacy, which is going to kind of be a barrier to that whole idea of collective teacher efficacy. And part of that is Maybe they don't feel like they had a voice. And that can be personally because of the fact that maybe something's happened in their personal lives, but also professionally. Maybe they worked for a school leader who was more about micromanaging. In New York State, where I had all of my teaching and leadership experience, we were dealing with a lot of accountability and mandates. And through those times when I was probably sort of the strictest that I had dealt with in 19 years in public education, There were lots of teachers in the building where I was a principal that didn't feel like they had a voice.

[05:53]

That's when I started doing things like flipping my faculty meetings and having a principal's advisory council where we co-constructed ideas together for the faculty meeting or Even opening up a time on Friday mornings when I could meet with the union reps so we could at least talk about any issues that might be happening in the building. And most of the time what I found is that we weren't. We were actually talking about education as a whole. We weren't even talking about like that there were big issues or anything. And I feel like in lots of buildings we're doing the accountability and mandates piece and we're doing the faculty meetings and teacher observations. And it's all very much being done to teachers as opposed to being done with them.

[06:32]

And I find that to say you must collaborate, it's a really easy thing to say. But it's much more complicated to be able to do because of the self-efficacy piece. And I think it really takes strong leaders who are not going to be micromanagers but also who aren't going to be insecure all the time. I mean we all have insecurities and we all – we didn't deal with insecurities from time to time. But we have to understand that, I mean, one of the things that I've probably said the most is if you walk into a faculty meeting with one idea and walk out with the same one, then why'd you have the faculty meeting? I would walk into a faculty meeting and, yep, I definitely had an idea in my mind, but I worked with a strong group of teachers that I love.

[07:12]

And I would walk out with a much better idea. It didn't have to be my idea. It had to be our idea. And, you know, those times weren't always perfect. They didn't always look perfect or anything like that. But the teachers certainly felt it.

[07:25]

like they had a voice. And I feel like if teachers are going to feel like they have a voice, then therefore the students are going to feel like they have a voice. And, you know, part of my thinking comes from the work of Russ Qualia, too, who I know you would know well. And Russ and Lisa Landy have been doing a lot of work in teacher voice, and Russ has been doing a lot of work in student voice. And I feel like all of those pieces are something that kind of affected me. And it was stuff that I was doing when I was a principal, but it's even stronger now.

[07:53]

And I think when you're looking at the collective teacher efficacy piece and you're looking at trying to build that, it's not just simply walking into faculty and saying, okay, let's collaborate together. There's so many things that must happen first. Teachers must have had, they must feel like they have a voice. They must feel like you as a principal have cared about their voice and understood that they have goals and worked on those goals with them. So there's a lot of that happens. And unfortunately, I feel like You know, the old days when I was doing my leadership experience, and you probably dealt with this as well, it was, oh, you're going to the dark side.

[08:29]

I hate that. Like, I hate that whole philosophy because I don't think being a principal is going to the dark side. I think it's a fantastic opportunity to work with a group of people and get them to come together. And that takes a lot of hard work. And I guess that's also when I'm thinking of the collective teacher efficacy piece. It's about this whole idea of letting down your level of status as a principal and and really collectively working with the people that are within the building that you're working in.

[08:56] SPEAKER_01:

That's beautifully said. I think the work that you and Russ are doing on teacher voice and student voice is so important. Russ is, for anyone who hasn't listened to our interviews with Russ Qualia on Principal Center Radio, he's our all-time most returned guest. He's been on, I think, three or four times now. He keeps writing books. And just has a tremendous perspective and a tremendous energy around empowering schools in terms of student voice, teacher voice, and even principal voice.

[09:26]

And what I really love about that perspective is the idea that, you know, as administrators, we might be responsible. You know, the buck might stop with us, but we don't have the information. We don't have... the perspective we need to just do everything ourselves and when we create that divide and we say all right i'm the boss and i'm going to tell you what to do i'm going to tell you that we're doing plcs this year so you're going to go collaborate you know and we have that kind of hierarchical power that's the basis for our professional work you know we lose out on so much when we put in that status you know and and granted the position is you know it is what it is we do have that responsibility and we do have some differentiation in our responsibilities you know if i if I need to be the person who looks at spreadsheets and goes to meetings downtown so that teachers in my school can, can focus on their work and not have to mess with that kind of stuff.

[10:15]

I'm very happy with that. You know, I think there's a, there's a benefit to that. But at the same time, if I get the idea in my head that I'm just the boss and I know everything cause I read a book and you didn't, and I'm a principal and you're a teacher, you know, I am missing out on so much and our students are missing out on so much that we would have access to if we approached it, uh, more collaboratively. Talk to us more about collaboration. What do you see happening in schools where leaders understand that and where teachers have that opportunity to have a voice and to really be involved as leaders? What looks different from a school that has kind of a more hierarchical divide?

[10:51] SPEAKER_02:

That's the piece that I've been thinking a lot about over the years. And I definitely was doing it when I was a school principal. It's not about reinventing the wheel. It's honestly about looking within the structure that we have because so many times it's let's chase after the new shiny toy or what's the silver bullet. It's not. Let's take the structures that we already have in place and do them differently.

[11:13]

I wrote a blog a couple of years ago called Three Reasons Why Your Faculty Meetings Are a Waste of Time. It got a strong response, but I put a survey monkey at the end and I asked some specific questions about faculty meetings and there were well over 80% of teachers who said our faculty meetings are just about list of tasks and that kind of thing. What amazes me when I'm on the road, when I'm doing presentations and workshops and even keynotes from time to time, I will have people say, well, we don't have time to do that. No, you actually do. You have the structure in place already. And why not flip your faculty meetings?

[11:53]

It's certainly not, it's an idea I wrote about, but it's not an idea that I created. I took it from the, you know, the flipped learning model and thought, wow, that has benefits for the principals and faculty meetings that way. And the more I got into it, the more I understood it, the more we worked on sort of the teacher voice behind it and co-constructing goals like let's talk about feedback or evidence-based observations, the more we had that dialogue that we should be having all the time. And that's probably one of my irritations too. When I'm running a workshop, I'll hear people say, I wish we could talk about this in school. And imagine you could make a list of faculty meeting topics as far as what does learning look like?

[12:35]

You know, I'm taking that one from John Hattie. Or what does effective feedback look like? What does student engagement look like? Is your student engagement compliant or authentic? Those kind of pieces. Those could be amazing faculty meeting ideas, but we don't do it because it's hard work and we don't like the the discourse that might come up.

[12:53]

And I don't mind the discourse because I think it leads to a better place. So the faculty meeting is one of those areas that I think where collaboration, you could definitely see within a school building. And I think from there too, you've got people who are sharing ideas with each other. And, you know, I used to email out articles on literacy based centers and those kinds of things. What I thought was the best is when I would see other teachers sending out articles to the rest of the staff. So it wasn't just me.

[13:21]

That to me is a piece of collaboration. I think teacher observation, that's another blog that I wrote and I use the sort of the same title, three reasons why your teacher observations are a waste of time. So often, way too often teacher observations have been a one and done. And I just don't think that's appropriate anymore. I think, you know, I'm not going to chastise the people that did that in the past. I'm not going to chastise.

[13:44]

I learned a lot from the principles that I had worked with when I was a teacher and But unfortunately, observations wasn't one of those areas where I learned a whole lot. I always walked out with my 45-minute lesson that looked really good with the kids, and I got exceeded expectations, even though I never thought I exceeded expectations. And I think that observations should be an opportunity where you're kind of taking the idea of risk-quality, because Russ and Lisa found that teachers very often don't feel that the principals know they have a goal. And what I know from John Hattie's research is that goal setting has about a 0.5% to a 0.51 effect size, which is over that hinge point of 0.40 that shows a year's worth of growth for a year's input.

[14:24]

And I think it's working on a goal with a teacher and then making sure all of your feedback in a teacher observation goes toward that goal. And look at observation as more of a cycle instead of a one and done. I think when you're sharing that kind of information, when you're having that kind of dialogue and As a principal, I would walk in. I had my iPad. We were a Charlotte Danielson school. I had the Danielson form on my iPad.

[14:48]

Every note that I wrote up, the teachers got. I would send it to them. I sent it to my own office so I could upload it into our format. That level of transparency helps bring along the idea of collaboration as well. A quick story. When I was a teacher, my last year of teaching— The principal that I was working with, it was their first year as a principal, and I was excited to work with them because I'd worked with them in a different capacity.

[15:14]

But they checked lesson plans every three weeks, and I went in to – I handed in my lesson plan a day late. I forgot to hand it in on like a Thursday afternoon. I went in on a Friday morning. I always had my plans done, and I walked up the stairwell. I remember seeing the principal on the stairwell, and I said, I'm really sorry. I forgot to hand this in yesterday afternoon.

[15:32]

Here it is. And they handed it back to me and said, oh, I never read your lesson plans anyway. And I thought, why am I handing them in? That completely goes against what collaboration is all about. If you were looking at my lesson plans and you're providing feedback, that's one thing. If you were talking about it at a faculty meeting about what do lesson plans look like, what should they look like, that's collaboration.

[15:54]

But when you're just doing it out of a compliance measure, that goes the other end of the spectrum from what collaboration is. And those are all areas we already control within our school days.

[16:05] SPEAKER_01:

Let's talk more about that idea of a cycle and about focusing on teachers' goals because I think you're absolutely right. The process of evaluating teachers has for years, I mean, pretty much always been driven by state requirements, by district requirements that we conduct this formal process in a formalized and specific way. And often that pulls us away from the way we might prefer to work with our colleagues who are in the classroom. And it draws our attention away from what they are specifically working on right now. And I don't know if you felt this as a principal or as a teacher, but one thing that never really made sense to me was the time span of goals. If I'm gonna sit down in September and set goals for my classroom for the year, and then I'm going to be evaluated on those goals in like April or May, some of those goals might be achieved by, you know, mid October.

[16:56]

So if you could make a change to the way we do teacher evaluation in this country, what would, what would that be?

[17:01] SPEAKER_02:

Well, I would make it much more collaborative. Um, in New York state for the last couple of years, I was a principal. It was all tied to a point scale, which was completely idiotic. Um, where I would have to, you know, after finishing a observation with a teacher, I'd have to say, wow, that was a 19 out of 20. And I just think all of that stuff is ridiculous. Um, Much to your point about the observation piece, I think you're right.

[17:24]

It's a lot like the model I'm fortunate enough to work with Jim Knight as an instructional coaching trainer. I've learned a tremendous amount from Jim. I love pretty much every single thing he does and the way he conducts himself and this whole idea of instructional coaching. Although instructional coaching is non-availative and And the collaborative leadership piece is I still think we can take elements of that. And one of the things that I think Jim talks about that is brilliant is just this whole idea of what is your current reality? Understanding what your current reality is.

[18:00]

So sitting down with teachers and saying, what is your current reality? What does the data tell you? Those kind of things. Because the goal does need to be wrapped around that current reality. And I was partially guilty of some of this too early on in my principalship. They would come in and say, I don't know what goal to work on.

[18:16]

they would give me something and sometimes it was fluffy and I'm like, oh, that's great. And that's not beneficial either. Like we really have to look at our current reality and understand what our data is telling us. And very often it's wrapped around student engagement. You know, it might be something around student engagement or even when you're talking about classroom management, it's about that. But much to your point, after you go through kind of a cycle where I go in and observe and I give you feedback and then we look to see if you improve, if you really showed improvement and that sort of goal has become not just one thing that you did because I came in, but part of your practice, you know, part of a habit, then yeah, I think you should be allowed to move on to a new goal and say, let's go deeper or let's do something different.

[19:00]

I think if we had those, that flexibility and, you know, some of that comes from the work of John Hattie as well, because John wrote a really brilliant paper called the politics of distraction a few years ago. And I was fortunate enough to be able to edit it for him before it was published. And I loved it. And I read it and re-read it and re-read it. And in there, John was talking about the whole idea of link autonomy, teacher autonomy to growth. And that's kind of like, if you've got a teacher that's showing a tremendous amount of growth, their students are showing a year's or even more than a year's worth of growth in a year's time, then that teacher should have more autonomy to choose the goal that they're going to be able to work on.

[19:40]

I think that we have to stop saying, You know, teachers aren't taking ownership over their classrooms. At the same time, we're preventing them from taking ownership over their classroom. And that doesn't have to mean that they work in silos, but it does mean they have to understand the current reality. And then we can come together as a faculty and kind of look for the common themes. That's another piece, because much to your question, the deeper question that I will sometimes get from people is, Well, you know, districts have initiatives. Typically those district initiatives are pretty open enough, a pretty large umbrella that we can find a common theme within that.

[20:19]

You know, when I was doing my doctoral work, we had to learn a lot about finding common themes from the research that you're collecting. So, you know, I think all of those pieces are an important part of the teacher observation. I feel like if a principal met with the teachers at the beginning of the year, they talk through the goal setting process together and with some flexibility, knowing that if you made it through a cycle and that teacher really mastered that goal and it focused on student learning, then you move on to a new goal because you're absolutely right. Why focus on something in September and you're not going to be evaluated until April. That's, that's kind of ridiculous. But I also think that when we're collecting those goals, when we're talking with each teacher as a principal, as a leader, We should be looking at what the common themes are because those are some of the things that we can talk about at faculty meetings as well, that we can make some of the faculty meeting discussion because then you're really inspiring the learning there as well.

[21:16]

So I think that's another piece. And then getting people kind of synergizing the groups and being able to say, listen, this goal setting can be transparent. We should talk about our goals that we have, even as a principal. What is your goal? We should be talking about that. And then getting people to synergize no matter what grade levels they're teaching about their goals, because very often you're going to have many people that have the same goal and synergizing that group.

[21:44]

And I think that that creates so many different layers and it creates a real foundation around this idea of learning that could be very exciting as opposed to, you know, compliant behavior. That's just going to be, I'm coming in, you know, Peter's coming in to observe me and, I want to look really great and then have it done.

[22:02] SPEAKER_01:

You know, Peter, it's almost like you are the fly on the wall is not the right word because you're actually editing the work of John Hattie and the book series with Corwin. But, you know, it's so powerful to hear your perspective as having a foot in, you know, the world of John Hattie's research and the world of Russ Qualia's work on voice and as well as Jim Knight's work on instructional coaching and using video. Really appreciate your perspective and the insight you bring, not only as a former teacher and principal, but as someone who gets into a lot of schools and talks with educators all over. Thinking about the kind of the big takeaways from your book, Collaborative Leadership, What do you think is one of the biggest surprises when people read the book and maybe have had kind of a typical experience as a classroom teacher and then as an administrator?

[22:55]

What do you think is one of the biggest shocks that readers will encounter reading your book?

[22:59] SPEAKER_02:

That it hasn't been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize yet. I think they're just going to be... Nah, I'm just kidding. That's a really good question.

[23:10]

I'm hoping... I know it's going to sound silly, but Part of the thing that I think has been beneficial to me, at least from a writing standpoint, is the fact that I can make things very practical. And I always joke around, like, I'm a kid that barely graduated from high school, and I failed out of a couple of community colleges and stuff. So I always, somebody will say, you never use big words in your blog.

[23:34]

I'm like, that's because I don't know any. But I think the reality is, I feel like I've gotten, and it's taken a lot of hard work, but I'm lucky in the way that John Hattie calls me the great communicator because I can take his research and make it very practical. But that's very much my job when I'm doing the consulting piece. So I'm hoping what people walk away from is I chose these six pieces, these six influences out of – at the time when I was writing, John had about 150. He's up to about 195 now. I chose six influences that I thought would be the most powerful for a school leader that would have an impact on all of the different stakeholders that come into school.

[24:19]

So I'm talking about teachers and staff, parents and students and the way to authentically engage with them. And because, you know, we're always saying that we want teachers and students to take accountability over their own learning and all that stuff but but sometimes the very thing we do is breed compliance and i've learned a lot about that from john as well and i think it just connected with me so well because of my experience as a principal dealing with the accountability in new york state so i'm really hoping that readers will look at these six influences and they'll get a better understanding of john's research And they'll be able to walk away with some serious practical steps that they can do tomorrow. Like my whole thinking when I write is I don't want them to walk away and say, wow, Peter is a good writer or what a neat book.

[25:11]

That would kill me. I want people to walk away from reading a book and saying, I tried this in my school or classroom, and this definitely had some power and an impact on the learning that happened in the school. I'm thinking that they'll walk away with that, and I hope that that will probably be one of their bigger surprises.

[25:30] SPEAKER_01:

Well, and it's really interesting to see by the chapter titles, the actual effect size, you know, seeing instructional leadership, 0.42, collective teacher efficacy, 1.57. And, you know, to understand how you've put those ideas together to kind of focus our attention as instructional leaders. on those influences that really do make the biggest difference. So the book is Collaborative Leadership, Six Influences That Matter Most.

[25:55]

And Peter, if people want to find you online, learn more about your work or learn more about bringing you out to their district or conference, where can they find you online?

[26:03] SPEAKER_02:

So they can look at petermdewitt.com. So that's my website. Or Finding Common Ground with Education Week is my blog. Those are probably the two best places to go. But Corwin...

[26:16]

Press because most of my books are written with Corwin Press and Collaborative Leadership is co-published with Corwin Press and Learning Forward. So they can go to the Corwin Press website and plug in my name and they'll get a bunch of information there as well.

[26:30] SPEAKER_01:

Well, Peter, thanks so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio.

[26:32] SPEAKER_02:

Justin, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

[26:36] SPEAKER_00:

And now, Justin Bader on high performance instructional leadership.

[26:40] SPEAKER_01:

So high performance instructional leaders, what did you take away from my conversation with Peter DeWitt? One thing that really stands out to me is this idea of status and this idea of voice. And I think we've relied on positional power in our profession for a long time because we know that if we are going to get everyone in our organizations to do certain things, things that we have decided either collectively or individually or that policymakers have decided are necessary and helpful for students, we know sometimes we're going to have to rely on positional power. We're always going to have people who say, no, I'm not going to do that and you can't make me. So, you know, the bottom line is sometimes we do have to say, well, yes, I can make you and that's what I'm going to do. And we're going to do evaluations.

[27:25]

We're going to do all those traditional hierarchical things that we need to do. But I don't think that should pull us away from the fundamental nature of our professional relationships as being collaborative with teachers. We need to be collaborative because teachers are the ones who do the work. with students. We do not educate students by ourselves as administrators. We work together and collaborate with teachers.

[27:52]

And that attitude needs to permeate everything that we do, whether that's a faculty meeting, whether that's professional development, whether that's an inquiry and goal-setting cycle with a teacher, as we talked about in our conversation today. We need to approach this work collaboratively. uh... one resource that i want to mention in our principal center professional member dashboard is our new course high-performance decision-making which is a way of actually designing decision-making structures and policies and procedures around your shared agreements about who makes what types of decisions now often We as administrators make a lot of decisions by ourselves for the sake of expediency or for the sake of confidentiality.

[28:33]

But we know that many types of decisions, such as curriculum decisions, decisions that affect students, decisions that directly affect the work of teaching and learning, we know we can't make those by ourselves. Or if we do, they're not going to be very good decisions. And we know we need to get buy-in from teachers. So what we do in the high performance decision making course is we actually walk through the process of thinking about who the stakeholders are in a decision and who the decision makers are and what the communication and engagement process needs to look like for various types of decisions, as well as what the decision process itself looks like. Because here's the thing, when we're not clear on that, when we don't have a shared set of expectations about how we're going to make decisions, our decisions suffer in terms of quality, in terms of efficiency, in terms of buy-in. People throw a fit when they don't like the way the decision was made.

[29:24]

But this is a solvable problem. When we can make decisions through a clear, transparent process that we've carefully defined and everybody's on the same page, everyone knows what's going to happen, we can move much more quickly and make higher quality decisions with greater buy-in. So I want to encourage you to check that out at principalcenter.com. And the course is called High Performance Decision Making, part of our professional membership, which you can learn more about at principalcenter.com slash join.

[29:54] Announcer:

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