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Becoming a terrific High School: Six Strategies and One Mindset that Produce a Difference
By Tim R. Westerberg
ASCD (2009)
Reviewed by Mary Tedrow,
Windows 7 Ultimate Key, NBCT
High College English/journalism (N. Va.)
Turning into a great High School: Six Tactics and 1 Attitude that Produce a Difference is full of familiar information because, being a classroom instructor,
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Westerberg’s thin text (i.e., “a quick read for busy administrators”) outlines methods to change the mindset from the professionals inside the building to a we-can-do-it mindset as the professional team moves schools from okay to wowser. Westerberg leans heavily around the business management text Good to Wonderful that was making the rounds in my system in 2000. Westerberg’s text is essentially a roadmap for where to drive the building-level bus of reform, in Jim Collins' Good to Fantastic terminology.
Citing Robert Marzano as the wellspring of his ideas, Westerberg employs another education buzz-term, the writing standards mnemonic 6+1, to outline what a school can and should do to move a high school to greatness: Follow the six methods and couple them with a can-do attitude, the plus-one aspect of your formula.
Many of Marzano’s points are incorporated here: Too many standards are taught. Focus within the Power Standards. Administer frequent common formative assessments to assess student learning. Encourage collaborative work among the professionals to create standards of teaching and learning. Define rigorous teaching to encourage a culture of success and foster the mood that “what we do here is important” to the student body at large.
What about the elephant?
There is little to argue with in this text as it sets clear guidelines for professional improvement in a building where the success of each child is paramount — also my classroom goal. I agree we need alignment from top to bottom.
The book outlines the role of administrators in this framework. Rather than just read it, I can imagine an administrator referring to it from time to time to check in on where and how the strategizing is going.
I’ve no beef with the content.
I do have a beef with the elephant within the room.
Westerberg gives only a nod to the need for the professionalization of teachers in his afterward,
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It should be the first.
The outline for effective teaching and learning ignores two essentials that would make such a plan truly excellent: empowerment of both students and teachers through ownership of goal setting and self-evaluation and assessment,
Office 2010 Product Key, along with the time to do so.
A bulleted list on pages 57-58 outlines eight ways to find time for teachers to do the essential work of collaboration. A lot of items about the list have already been promised to those of us who yearn for collaboration with peers (but never considered in my working experience is bullet #1, a huge insult to professionalism: eliminate duty periods). Only one particular suggestion has been acted upon in my workplace: provide substitutes so teachers can work together.
This has happened twice from the past year.
Meanwhile, directives based on Marzano have added a burden to already burdened teachers who must delay their “own work,” from the form of lesson planning and assessment, to do the work of your building. This creates a resentment that places any improvement program at risk.
Unwillingness to comply with change is often dealt with in high school reform books in a chapter titled “Dealing with Difficult Teachers.” (Though, thankfully, Westerberg has not included that chapter.) Yet, as each new directive comes from above, teachers are tasked with building the plane while flying it,
Office 2010 Professional Plus, and recently this has been occurring in shorter and shorter time frames.
It is exhausting.
Veterans get good at fending off the change-du-jour. Teachers learn to shrug, shut the door, or risk getting worked to death over every new initiative.
Great schools will be a fact of life when wonderful working conditions are standard and teachers are provided with time and resources to enact deep and lasting reform. Piling more work on already over-worked teachers continues to thwart the best intentions.
Westerberg’s plus-one perspective adjustment at the building level comes from celebrating success. But whose success is being celebrated? No matter how noble, celebrating your goals is not the same as setting and reaching my own. Neither is it the same as the sense of pride and self-satisfaction when the self-identified work achieves measurable change.
Thus does corporate partying make cynics of us all.
Both Marzano and Westerberg would do much for the education field if they first wrote the book on acknowledging and providing space and time for instructor knowledge and growth, rather than on how to manage change in a non-conducive environment.
That would be revolutionary.
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