The Power of ONE!
Creating ONE TEAM with
ONE Focus for
Student Success!
• School-wide focus on learning
• A collective focus on the purpose
• Celebrating successes
• A Multifaceted Approach to Mentoring
• Develop a culture of collaboration
• Intensive Professional Development
Researcher, Dr. Anthony Muhammad, studied 34 schools around the
country. He focused on how educators (teachers, counselors,
administrators, and support staff), interact in the school culture and
articulate their beliefs through their behavior. He found four distinct
groups of educators:
Believers
Tweeners
Survivors
Fundamentalist
Believers are educators who believe in the core
values that make up a healthy school culture.
They believe that all of their students are capable
of of learning and that they have a direct impact
on their student’s success.
• High level of intrinsic motivation
• Personal connection to the school and community
• High levels of flexibility with students
• Application of positive student pressure
• Willingness to confront opposing viewpoints
• Varied levels of pedagogical skills
The ultimate goal of Believers was success for every student
academically, socially, and emotionally. They were not happy and they
did not feel successful unless every child within their influence
maximized his or her potential.
Tweeners are educators who are new to the
school culture. Their experience can be likened to
a “honeymoon period” in which they spend time
trying to learn the norms and expectations of a
school’s culture.
• Level 1 Tweeners – brand new educators
• Level 2 Tweeners – experienced educators who
moves into a new school or job
• Loose connection with the school and
community
• An enthusiastic nature
• “The honeymoon period” - wanting to fit in
• Compliance – wanting to comply
• One third of the new teachers leave the profession in
the first three years of practice and nearly half before
they reach year five in the profession.
• Schools cannot gain momentum if they lack
organizational memory. Organizations with no
memory simply survive; they never reach a point
where they can thrive.
• Tweeners present the best opportunity for the growth
of Tweeners.
Fortunately, this group is not widespread in our
schools. They are a small group of teachers who
are “burned out” – so overwhelmed by the
demands of the profession that they suffer from
depression and merely survive from day to day.
• Lesson planning, classroom organization,
student evaluation, discipline, etc. create
challenges these staff members to feel stressed.
• Stress vs Burn-out - when a person is stressed
they care too much, when a person is burned
out they see no hope for improvement.
• Survivors are not in control of their own
emotions, which made it difficult for them to
manage the behaviors of others, particularly
students.
• Survivors carry no political agenda. Their sole
purpose is to make it to the end of each school
day with their sanity intact.
Fundamentalists are staff members who are not
only opposed to change, but organize to resist
and thwart any change initiative.
• Fundamentalists have a blatant and overt opposition to
change.
• Fundamentalists entered the field while long-held traditions
were still in place, and they express discontent and anguish
over the new paradigm and systems that have replaced
them.
• Fundamentalists loathe accountability initiatives like NCLB.
• Fundamentalists do not feel their stance on these initiatives
is pessimistic or anti-child.
• Fundamentalists often use very effective teaching strategies.
• Fundamentalists are by far the most active. They actively and
consistently seek to add to their ranks and to gain political
power to support their belief system.
• Fundamentalists work to keep the philosophical argument
focused on emotion.
• Fundamentalists use three methods of influence their
political ends: defamation, distraction, and disruption.
1. What is the right change for a school to embrace to create the culture they
need?
2. How do we get all staff members to embrace this change and actively apply the
right methods once we identify them?
In his book, Good to Great, Jim Collins calls the process of answering these
questions, “getting the right people on the bus.” Stephen Covey calls it synergy.
According to Covey, when all the members of an organization have their mission
and purpose aligned and combine that alignment with energy, they create a
powerful force.
• School-wide focus on learning
• A collective focus on the purpose
• Celebrating successes
• A Multifaceted Approach to Mentoring
• Develop a culture of collaboration
• Intensive Professional Development
Vision
Mission
Annual Theme
What do we want to become. Vision emerges from
the sense of purpose. It forms the why, but it also
embraces the future as in “to become” the best, the
most noted, the highest quality, or the most trusted.
Producing students who are........
T.R.U.E. Patriots!
T rustworthy
R esponsible/Respectful
U nited and
E ngaged in learning each and every day
MacArthur 9th Grade School
“Where Tomorrow Begins Today!
Eisenhower Senior High School
SWOOP-Student Welfare, Our Only Purpose
Lake Olympia Middle School
Believing in Lifelong Learning
A mission statement provides a clear
understanding of the school’s purpose.
Mission Statement
We the members of the Eisenhower High
School Community are committed to
enriching the lives of all whom we touch. We
accomplish this goal by maintaining academic
excellence, examining and sharing positive
values, affirming dignity, promoting positive
and social development, and serving as a
community resource.
The mission of Harris Academy is to
ensure academic excellence by providing
the best teaching practices to maximize
continuous growth and promote college
readiness for all students in a safe
learning environment.
the missing piece meets the big o
by Shel Silverstein
It’s important to set a campus theme to align the school focus in the direction that
needed to turn the school around.
Themes should be determined by the needs of the campus
Themes are balanced
Themes have a focus
Themes can be created by the staff, students, community, etc.
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"KEYS4SUCCESS
"IT'S ALL ABOUT RESPECT"
“GO, EAGLES!" AND "KNOWLEDGE, PRIDE, SUCCESS"
SWOOP, SWOOP – STUDENT WELFARE OUR OWN PURPOSE
"ACADEMIC SUCCESS UNDER CONSTRUTION"
WHERE TOMORROW BEGINS TODAY
"KEYS TO CHARACTER UNLOCK THE FUTURE"
“LINKING FOR SUCCESS”
“DESTINATION LEARNING”
THE POWER OF ONE – ONE SCHOOL, ONE TEAM, ONE FOCUS
BELIEVE
H.O.P.E. – HAVING OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE EVERYDAY
"SHIFTING GEARS"
• Find a “School Song” that fits theme
• Get band to learn theme song
• Dance team creates dance to theme song
• Cheerleaders create cheer for theme song
• Create a school rap
• Have students write poems about the theme
•Create banners, signs with theme on it
•Put them on letterhead
•Purchase t-shirts with theme on it
•Put theme on phone dialer
•Put theme on marquis
Have staff wear
same shirt to
District
Convocation
The song should be one that everyone can relate to.
• Make sure that the staff is VERY aware of the
theme
• Request clubs/organizations to incorporate
theme into their plans for the year
• Request the parents/community incorporate
theme into their plans for the year
What themes have you had and how
did you share them with the staff,
students, and community?
• School-wide focus on learning
• A collective focus on the purpose
• Celebrating successes
• A Multifaceted Approach to Mentoring
• Develop a culture of collaboration
• Intensive Professional Development
• Celebration in school provides consistent reinforcement
about what is important.
• Celebrations should be planned
• Celebrations should be impromptu
• Celebrations should be authentic
• Celebrations should occur on a regular basis
• School-wide focus on learning
• A collective focus on the purpose
• Celebrating successes
• A Multifaceted Approach to Mentoring
• Develop a culture of collaboration
• Intensive Professional Development
• The good mentor is committed to the role of mentoring.
• The good mentor is accepting of the beginning teacher.
• The good mentor is skilled at providing instructional support.
• The good mentor is effective in different interpersonal
contexts.
• The good mentor is a model of a continuous learner.
• The good mentor communicates hope and optimism.
The good mentor is highly committed to the task of
helping beginning teachers find success and
gratification in their new work. Committed mentors
show up for, and stay on, the job. Committed
mentors understand that persistence is as important
in mentoring as it is in classroom teaching.
At the foundation of any effective helping
relationship is empathy. As Carl Rogers (1958)
pointed out, empathy means accepting another
person without making judgments. It means setting
aside, at least temporarily, personal beliefs and
values. The good mentor teacher recognizes the
power of accepting the beginning teacher as a
developing person and professional.
Beginning teachers enter their careers with varying
degrees of skill in instructional design and delivery.
Good mentors are willing to coach beginning
teachers to improve their performance wherever
their skill level.
All beginning teachers are not created equal, nor
are all mentor teachers. This simple fact, when
overlooked or ignored by a mentor teacher, often
leads to relationship difficulties and diminished
support for the beginning teacher. Good mentor
teachers recognize that each mentoring relationship
occurs in a unique, interpersonal context.
Beginning teachers rarely appreciate mentors
who have right answers to every question and
best solutions for every problem. Good mentor
teachers are transparent about their own
search for better answers and more effective
solutions to their own problems.
Good mentors share their own struggles and
frustrations and how they overcame them. And
always, they do so in a genuine and caring way
that engenders trust.
• School-wide focus on learning
• A collective focus on the purpose
• Celebrating successes
• A Multifaceted Approach to Mentoring
• Develop a culture of collaboration
• Intensive Professional Development
Professional Learning Communities provide
the most effective Culture for Collaboration
among the staff.
“A PLC is composed of collaborative teams
whose members work interdependently to
achieve common goals linked to the purpose
of learning for all.”
• A focus on learning
• A collaborative culture with a focus on Learning for all
• Collective inquiry into best practices and current reality
• Action Oriented: Learning by Doing
• A commitment to Continuous Improvement
• Result Orientation
Ensuring That Students Learn
School mission statements that promise “learning
for all” have become a cliché. But when a school
staff takes that statement literally—when
teachers view it as a pledge to ensure the success
of each student rather than as politically correct
hyperbole—profound changes begin to take
place.
3 Crucial Questions
As the school moves forward, every professional in the building must
engage with colleagues in the ongoing exploration of three crucial
questions that drive the work of those within a professional learning
community:
 What do we want each student to learn?
 How will we know when each student has learned it?
 How will we respond when a student experiences difficulty in
learning?
Being Timely, Based on Interventions, and Directive
When a school begins to function as a professional learning community, teachers become
aware of the incongruity between their commitment to ensure learning for all students
and their lack of a coordinated strategy to respond when some students do not learn. The
staff addresses this discrepancy by designing strategies to ensure that struggling students
receive additional time and support, no matter who their teacher is. In addition to being
systematic and school-wide, the professional learning community's response to students
who experience difficulty is
 Timely. The school quickly identifies students who need additional time and support.
 Based on intervention rather than remediation. The plan provides students with help as
soon as they experience difficulty rather than relying on summer school, retention, and
remedial courses.
 Directive. Instead of inviting students to seek additional help, the systematic plan
requires students to devote extra time and receive additional assistance until they have
mastered the necessary concepts.
A Culture of Collaboration
Educators who are building a professional
learning community recognize that they must
work together to achieve their collective
purpose of learning for all. Therefore, they
create structures to promote a collaborative
culture.
The Process
The powerful collaboration that characterizes
professional learning communities is a systematic
process in which teachers work together to
analyze and improve their classroom practice.
Teachers work in teams, engaging in an ongoing
cycle of questions that promote deep team
learning. This process, in turn, leads to higher
levels of student achievement.
Team focus
For teachers to participate in such a powerful process, the school must
ensure that everyone belongs to a team that focuses on student learning.
 Each team must have time to meet during the workday and throughout the
school year.
 Teams must focus their efforts on crucial questions related to learning and
generate products that reflect that focus, such as lists of essential
outcomes, different kinds of assessment, analyses of student achievement,
and strategies for improving results.
 Teams must develop norms or protocols to clarify expectations regarding
roles, responsibilities, and relationships among team members.
 Teams must adopt student achievement goals linked with school and
district goals.
Determination
In the final analysis, building the
collaborative culture of a professional
learning community is a question of will. A
group of staff members who are determined
to work together will find a way.
A Focus on Results
Professional learning communities judge their
effectiveness on the basis of results. Working together
to improve student achievement becomes the routine
work of everyone in the school. Every teacher team
participates in an ongoing process of identifying the
current level of student achievement, establishing a
goal to improve the current level, working together to
achieve that goal, and providing periodic evidence of
progress.
Data
The results-oriented professional learning
community not only welcomes data but also turns
data into useful and relevant information for staff.
Teachers have never suffered from a lack of data
Assessments
Teacher teams develop common formative
assessments throughout the school year. Each teacher
can identify how his or her students performed on each
skill compared with other students. Individual teachers
can call on their team colleagues to help them reflect
on areas of concern. Each teacher has access to the
ideas, materials, strategies, and talents of the entire
team
Finally…
The professional learning community model is a grand
design—a powerful new way of working together that
profoundly affects the practices of schooling. But
initiating and sustaining the concept requires hard
work. It requires the school staff to focus on learning
rather than teaching, work collaboratively on matters
related to learning, and hold itself accountable for the
kind of results that fuel continual improvement.
• School-wide focus on learning
• A collective focus on the purpose
• Celebrating successes
• A Multifaceted Approach to Mentoring
• Develop a culture of collaboration
• Intensive Professional Development
Professional Development
Stages of Staff Development
By evaluating staff members' strengths, as wells as
understanding their knowledge, skills, motivation and
resources, a school can determine the types of staff
development they will need for the year.
It is important to determine which teachers need
specific staff development for their own teaching
success.
Analyze Data
•Analyze the data gathered from the Needs
Assessment
•Categorize the teachers based on the
findings of the data
Conduct a Needs Assessment
A simple survey will help get feedback as to what
individual teachers feel they need to learn to help their
students be successful.
It is also important to group teachers by years of
experience to determine their needs based on their
experience level.
Create Staff Development Plan
Make sure Plan is implemented
All in all it is up to the principal to set the tone of
the campus and lead the staff, students and the
community to come together with the distinct
purpose of providing the students with the
instruction and curriculum needed to help them
grow and learn in a positive learning
environment.
Resources
In the last two pages of your AIE Quick Reference
booklet, write…
HOW…
will this session help you further
YOUR school improvement?