Principal+Leadership

3. Six Ways for Principals to Be Learning Leaders In this thoughtful Journal of Staff Development article, consultant Cathy Toll draws a distinction between instructional leadership – planning, implementing, and evaluating instruction – and learning leadership – focusing on what is learned and how it’s learned. She believes that both are important but that the second isn’t getting enough attention, particularly as it relates to the professional development of teachers. She suggests six ways that savvy principals can be learning leaders: • Don’t accept that a teacher can’t grow. As a rookie principal, Toll admits that she believed some teachers were stuck and saw herself heroically pushing on them like heavy boulders – a mindset that put these teachers in a deficiency mode. “I saw it as my duty to get unlearning teachers to learn,” says Toll. “Over the years, however, I have come to recognize that all people learn all the time, including teachers. When one stops learning, one is either dead or in a coma!” She realized that some teachers learned more slowly, some got it cognitively before their actions caught up, and some grew in areas where she wasn’t looking. Seeing teachers this way helped Toll to become more sensitive to their needs and more supportive of their development. • Model being a learner. Early in her principalship, Toll was loath to admit when she didn’t know something. When a teacher asked for help using geoboards, Toll, more expert in literacy, made a couple of stumbling attempts and a lame suggestion to look in the literature. “Thus, I missed a great opportunity to be a learner,” she says, “both for my own benefit in knowing more about geoboards in math instruction and also to enhance my relationship with the teacher.” She wished she had said, “I’m not sure about using geoboards myself. Should we figure this out together?” The same goes for sharing professional reading. Rather than telling teachers about an article you read over the break (See how well-read I am!), it’s better to take part in a study group, reading and discussing articles and books along with teachers. • Create a hospitable climate for learning. “The core of hospitality in support of learning,” says Toll, “is friendliness toward new ideas and the exploration of the unfamiliar, and a welcoming spirit for those who struggle to question themselves and their learning. In a hospitable environment, teachers can be the learners they truly are, with no pretense to know what they don’t know and no shame about what they bring to the learning. Thus, when difficult examinations of past-held beliefs or current failed efforts take place, these struggles occur within a community that can reliably receive and honor that work… In mature learning communities, participants recognize that differences are a rich source of potential understanding and learning.” Principals play a key role in creating a hospitable climate: by accepting teachers as they are, warts and all; by clarifying differences in a non-threatening way; by asking teachers to consider other viewpoints and their impact over time; by sometimes asking colleagues to sleep on an issue before continuing a discussion; and by making it clear that some differences won’t be resolved – one side doesn’t have to win while the other loses. • Create a sense of possibility. “Learning can only occur when a learner sees possibility,” says Toll. “Principals support possibility in two ways: providing new visions of what might be and encouraging new lenses for seeing what is.” This includes getting teachers to visit other classrooms and schools, sharing videos and teacher accounts of successful instructional approaches, organizing study groups, and getting teachers to look at student work from other grade levels and ask probing questions. • Ask the right questions. Principals reveal a lot about their values by the questions they ask in supervisory conversations, faculty meetings, and classroom visits. Toll believes teachers grow when they are asked questions like: - What have you learned about your students since the beginning of the year? - Have you adjusted your work because of something you’ve learned? - When you think about a struggling student, what would you like to learn about him or her? - What new understanding has been most helpful to you this year? - What information did you use to make that decision? - How are you learning? - How can I support your learning? These types of questions show that a principal values teachers’ professional learning. • Go deep. A lot of what teachers “learn” in workshops and try out in their classrooms evaporates within six months. Why? Because it doesn’t mesh with what they know about teaching and learning and doesn’t resonate with who they are as educators. Toll believes that professional development “sticks” only when it engages teachers at three levels: knowing, doing, and being. When principals introduce new classroom practices, she says they need to work hard to help teachers understand “why they are implementing those practices, when those practices are best used, and how they might evaluate the appropriateness of particular practices for particular students. Connecting with teachers’ being is more challenging, but it helps when principals honor teachers’ beliefs, values, and perspectives and encourage them to teach their students in accordance with those values. Principals can also help teachers see “that they are constantly learning in ways that shape their being,” says Toll. “This kind of learning takes place subconsciously as educators interact with students, colleagues, the profession, and the larger community.” Finally, principals can recognize teachers’ “being” side by holding retreats, personal growth workshops, and health enhancement activities – showing a recognition of “the whole teacher.”

“Six Steps to Learning Leadership” by Cathy Toll in Journal of Staff Development, June 2010 (Vol. 31, #3, p. 50-56), no e-link available; Toll is at cathy@partneringtolearn.com

Jim O'Toole, Ed.D.