Transcript: Working Collectively to Generate and Prioritize Ideas

Laura Buckner:

Welcome to our virtual learning session on Working Collectively to Generate and Prioritize Ideas. This session is presented by the California Center for School Climate, which is a California Department of Education initiative operated by WestEd, and we provide free support and trainings on school climate and data use to local education agencies in California. So we’re very, very happy to have you all here. And this session is part of our virtual learning series on using participatory approaches to support school climate. Throughout the series, we’ll be discussing how to integrate participatory strategies to work collectively with young people, families, and communities to support school climate practices. So we had one session that’s been archived. Today is session two, and we’ve got a couple more coming up. And in that Linktree, one of the links will take you to the series page to learn more and select the other sessions that you’d like to either review or register for in the future.

So as I mentioned, we have a 90-minute session planned for today. The first hour will include some presentations and a discussion between our two presenters. That portion will be recorded and made available on the CCSC website. And then we’ll have another 30 minutes for anyone who would like to stay and engage in some peer-to-peer sharing and learning. During this time, we’ll be asking folks to unmute, share their own experiences, and continue conversing with the presenters as well as each other. This is a great time to share and receive some resources from the field and have more of a collaborative conversation.

So this is the team that’s presenting today’s session. Rebeca is here with us today. She is our fearless leader, the director of the California Center for School Climate. And on our planning and technical support team, we have myself, Laura Buckner, as well as Antoinette Miller, Carla Guidi, and the wonderful L.A. You may have heard from some or all of us leading up to today’s session. And we’re happy to help you get the most out of your time with us. So if you have technical questions, please let us know. And if you have follow-up questions, we would love to hear from you at [email protected]. And we have many other wonderful colleagues on the CCSC team who create resources and facilitate other sessions, including more tailored learning experiences. So again, if you’re interested in learning more and potentially working with us, please do visit the CCSC site. And the link to that is in today’s Linktree.

One of those learning opportunities that we want to highlight today is the upcoming and final cohort of the Safe and Supportive Learning Environments Essentials. This is a nine-week series that’s beginning in February that will help local education leaders integrate a broad cluster of research-based content, and culturally responsive practices that work together to foster safe and supportive learning environments, things like trauma-informed, restorative, and culturally responsive practices, social and emotional learning, school climate and related whole person topics. And there will be an overall focus on equity throughout. So there’s an application, it’s very quick and will be only open for a short while longer. So please do consider applying. And again, of course, more information is available in that Linktree. So I’m thrilled to introduce our presenters today. Jenny Betz is one of those CCSC colleagues that I mentioned, and I believe is also involved in the Essentials series. So if you enjoy what you hear today, please join Jenny over there.

Jenny is a technical assistance provider for the California Center for School Climate and WestEd’s Resilient and Healthy Schools and Communities team, helping schools, districts and other education agencies assess and improve school climate and wellness. With more than 20 years of experience, Jenny’s worked with hundreds of SEAs, LEAs, government agencies, professional associations, community organizations, you name it, with a focus on creating sustaining, safe, inclusive, and equitable learning environments for students. So we’re thrilled to have Jenny here today. And we also have Kristin who currently serves her community as an elementary principal in rural Humboldt County on the far northern California coast. She’s a dynamic, bilingual, and passionate education leader. Kristin puts inclusivity into practice by meeting and welcoming children, families, and educators where they are. She’s got 25 years of experience from teaching English to middle schoolers, coaching teachers on effective instruction, facilitating and implementing restorative justice, and leading through example. So Kristin embraces and models curiosity, learning, and growing every day, and we are just thrilled to have her here with us.

So just briefly before we hear from Jenny and Kristin, I wanted to give a bit of background information about why we chose today’s topic and how it fits into our vision here at the Center for School Climate. So if you joined us in session one of this series, you’ll remember that back in September, the CCSC hosted a session on Participatory Systems Change for Equity. And it’s a guide that talks about serving child youth and family serving agencies and how to embed some of these systems into the work that you do. So this is the grounding document for that series, and it really emphasizes the importance of including community partners in decision-making to transform education systems. And we consider partners to include students, families, staff, and those in other organizations who serve the same populations. So this guide gives tips for conducting systems change work for equity, and true and authentic partnership. Not just one-off surveys or just giving lip service to these ideas, but really grappling with the questions of how can we know and incorporate the experiences of others to design better education systems.

So during the first session in the series, we discussed relationships and the transformative power of authentic, resilient, and reciprocal relationships with the people you’re serving. We heard from San Juan Unified School District about how they stepped into their community to really understand and then find ways to support the needs of their families all while focusing on the relational aspects of the work that they’re doing. And today we get to talk about how to move from building relationships to that collective changemaking. So in the guide elements three, four, and five are dreaming a vision for the future, deciding on priorities and goals, and then generating change approaches. And just to say that we believe that systems improvement, including school climate improvement, cannot be done successfully without the input of the people closest to the issues. So we believe that it’s imperative that as you’re coming up with your vision of how you want your schools to be and to feel, and making decisions about what’s important, and how you direct your funds and your energy, that you’re doing so in collaboration with young people, families, staff, and other education partners.

And we’re going to hear from Kristin and Jenny today about how that can look. Their stories are going to bring these concepts to life and share with you some of the lessons that they’ve learned along the way. And finally, I’m just sharing this graphic of the domains for school climate, because school climate and participatory engagement are intimately connected. To make positive shifts in school climate, we must be able to take in the stories, ideas, and experiences of all so that we can have a collective vision for where we want to head. We need to prioritize engagement, relationships, collaboration, and co-creation as both the end and the means. And these domains are areas, all of them, where collective visioning, idea generation and prioritization can happen. They’ll also show up in your LCAP planning, SIPSA planning, providing student and staff supports and many, many other aspects of the work you’re all doing.

So I invite you to take a moment to review the domains and think about is there an area that I want to keep in mind, as we’re thinking about collective idea generation and prioritizing? Are there opportunities right now to invite partners to work with me to create a vision of how things should look, and feel, and be? As you’re listening to our speakers today, I invite you to start thinking about how what they are sharing might apply to how you conduct that work. So I’m going to stop talking. If there are, I notice in the chat there may be some freezing or sound issues. We’ll try working on that in the backend. And I’m going to go ahead and turn the spotlight over to Jenny.

Jenny Betz:

Thank you, Laura. And hello everyone. I am beyond delighted to be here. This topic is super important to me and I’m excited to be working with great colleagues and Kristin, who you’ll get to meet in just a little bit. So at the California Center for School Climate and the other work we do at West Ed, we do things at the big picture level and then also in system change. But then also we are… Oops, oh, sorry, that’s just moving. Also, we are supporting what goes on in those everyday moments, those little things that actually make a big difference. So I’m going to talk more sort of big picture a little bit and what are some of the key considerations when you’re doing this work. And then Kristin is going to really bring life to it. And I’ve been to her school and really you’ll get something out of what she’s saying, but also you should go visit there. They’re really fantastic.

So just to bring us back to the element, so the Participatory Systems Change for Equity guide, it’s based on decades and decades of working communities, and research, and all these things that was put together in this way to really look at how do we have systems change that is actually participatory, that everybody that it impacts is really part of the process. And we know that that is incredibly hard, especially at the school or district level, because that takes time. Relationships take time, having the conversations, working through conflict, making sure everyone understands what are we even talking about.

All of that takes time and effort. And what I really love about the guide is that even though it’s not at all like a do this step first, that step next whatever, and that you follow it and then change is made, that’s not the case. They all connect to each other, the elements, but there’s a flow to it that we’ve been using with some other districts and agencies to help them move through, and get to the point where they are able to build up their capacity and skills to do the work in a collaborative and participatory way.

So one of the ways we do that and think about it is thinking about essential questions. So again, this is not going to be the detail about what happens at a school or in a district office, but if we look at those elements and how they flow, and Laura mentioned this just a minute ago. So the first two are connecting community, and then see the system and center community experiences. So the questions there, and the reason that I think it’s important for us to really tease out those essential questions is it helps us see the difference between those things, right? Because really what’s the difference between connecting community and center community experiences, right? Or set goals and prioritize goals or generate change ideas? What really are the differences? And one of the ways we can think about it are the way that we ask the different questions that then build on each other.

So if we think about connecting community, we’re really asking, and actually, let me just stop one second. This is all under the idea that this is a participatory collaborative process. So none of us, none of you should be thinking about these decentral questions or any of these elements in a silo or just on your own, right? This is really meant to be a collaborative process. So connecting community, we’re really thinking as a group, as a district or team, whatever. Who are we? Do we have the right people here? What have we experienced generally in life even, relationships, and then also in the system or in the school? Then we’re thinking, see the system and center community experiences. So the questions really are, okay, what actually are our perspectives, those of us on the team or whatever, whoever’s working on it, what are our perspectives on these, whatever the topic is, and then what are the experiences?

We’ve talked about our experience already, but what are the experiences then of our community members, which again, like Laura said, could really be anyone that touches or is impacted by the school or the system. So what are the experiences of those folks that aren’t sitting here in this meeting with us together? And that involves data collection, and talking to people, and listening deeply. And then the other piece that’s so important is how do we relate this to the larger system, and how do we make sure that the folks who are on our team with us, and those who are giving impact or input, and that we’re collaborating with understand how the system works so that they can be really meaningful, thoughtful collaborators when we start coming up with ideas? We don’t want to just hold that as admins or as school folks. We understand how the system works.

We have to share that with everyone else so they know how the things go and what’s going to be most effective. Then the ones for today that are really the most important are dream of vision for the future, deciding priorities of goals, and generating change approaches. So our essential questions are what are the conditions, experiences, and outcomes that we can actually dream of together? What is the no limits dream and vision? If there was nothing holding us back, where would we want to be? Where would we see things? What would it look like, feel like, sound like? And then, deciding priorities and goals is like, okay, we see this big thing that is amazing. We don’t have to think about whether it’s realistic or not. It is just amazing. How do we get from that to action and to prioritizing things? How do we move from the dream to the reality?

And then, we’re looking at how we make the connections, prioritize and then still have that dream and be still going towards it. The generating change approaches is also where we can get really creative, that and the dreaming. So just to know that that then flows in. So we talked about who we are, we’re gathering data, we understand our community more. We understand who we are and what the issues are. Then we’re going to dream this new way of being and we’re going to figure out the ways that we can start to try making that a reality. Then we’re going to make sure, and these are coming up in some of those future sessions, right? We’re going to make sure that things are aligned, that we’re not coming up with a dream or a plan that’s totally out of sync with our LCAP or whatever else is going on.

How might we align the existing efforts? Who really are our allies and champions in this work? Who else needs to be involved? Who aren’t we at this point including and collaborating with? And then it’s the ongoing, it’s the sustainability, it’s the continuous improvement, learning together and growing the change. So how do we keep this going? Who needs to be at the table in an ongoing way? Are we actually making the impacts that we dreamt of or envisioned? And how do we know that? So all of those things really loop back together, but there is some sort of a flow that then keeps us moving. So for me then the first piece is really what is, we’re talking about dreams, and vision, and goals, and change ideas, and what really is the difference between a dream and a goal? So we’re actually going to watch this very short clip of this educator talking about that to his class. It is not the same context that we’re talking about, but I think we can apply what he’s saying.

California Educator via Dream vs. Goal video:

Your dream is your destination, and that’s exactly what you were kind of saying. Your dream is the final point. When I said the word dream, many of you probably said to yourself, “Okay, I want to do this. I want to be a professor over here. I want to be a biochemical engineer over here. I want to be in the oil business over here. I want to be a CEO, I want to be a doctor. I want to be a lawyer.” You see yourself doing those things. That’s your dream. Your dream is like the end. You skip over everything else. You see yourself doing it. Goals are the processes and the journeys in between those things. So if you wanted to be a teacher, obviously you have to graduate high school. From high school, you need to go to college. Those are the steps that you have to take in between to make that dream your reality. Like dream, you see it at the end of the road. Goals are the things you got to do like this to get there.

Jenny Betz:

I just appreciate so much how he lays it out and makes it pretty easy to understand. And I think we could even take it a step further, that if we think about a dream, I actually think that being a teacher is actually a goal. If you think about it, and you could put in the chat or just think with me, what really is the dream if what we want to do in life is be a teacher? Maybe the dream is just being happy and healthy, or helping other people, or feeling good in the world. Whatever it is, that’s the big piece. And then maybe being a teacher or traveling the world or whatever it is, gets us to that. So when we’re dreaming, I think we can really, we don’t have limits. And that’s the exciting part about it. So if we think about it, dreams can really inspire.

Goals are what actually transform things. Our goals have a finish line, like he said, there’s an end. We reached it. Yay, let’s have a party and think of the next goal. The dreams never have to end, and they’re also free. Limitless, can involve everyone, can be creative, can change over time. They’re not something you can just put in a spreadsheet and check off the boxes until you get there. Thinking about that dream and what those bigger picture things are, we can think about in our own life. But then when we think about it as a school, or district, or agency, whatever system you’re working with, even as a team, we can think about that. And then it’s that allows us to think, okay, what are those steps? What are those goals that we need to hit along the way to get to that dream, or as close to it as we can?

And then that is then the plan that we can follow to take action. Sometimes we jump right to that. How many times have you been in a workshop or a meeting? It’s like, okay, what are our next steps? What are the strategies we can do? We haven’t actually talked about why are we doing this? Where do we want to be? Who is this benefiting? Who is this not going to benefit? How does it all fit together? We often aren’t given the time to really have those meaningful conversations. And if we don’t set that at the outset, then our goals and actions can really only do us so much.

The other two things that I just want to share that these are actually things we go into much more in the SSLE essentials course, which is awesome. But there’s two things to maybe think about also as you’re listening to Kristin. So we often talk about the work and change opportunities, and that’s where we leverage things as the personal, us, individuals. Our interpersonal collective, so our team, or our school, or our community that’s coming together to do something. And then the system and structure. So the structure impacts all of us, but as individuals, we can impact the structure, more so as collectives we can impact that structure. So they’re all connected, and it’s in that interconnectedness, and the complexity of systems, and humans where there are opportunities, because there’s not just one right way. There are a million right ways and there are a million ways to dream about it. And then given our reality, we figure out what we’re going to do. So it’s not a limit. It actually opens opportunities, the more we can understand the complexities of things and how they’re all connected. And then lastly, this is so important, and Kristin is actually going to have some great examples about it, is the continuum of participation.

And this is based on, some of you have heard Hart’s Ladder, work from Californians for Justice, and it’s looking at how are we actually engaging people? Are we involving students in something really because we’re like, “Ooh, it would be nice at the board meeting to have some students come and maybe share something, or maybe just look good.” And then we’re like, “Look, we have students involved,” but we never talk to them again. Or we say, “Students, we want to hear from you. Sure, thanks. We’ll totally, yep, we’ll take that and never hear from them again.” Versus really involving them, collaborating, and leading and having ownership over decision-making together. And there’s so much to be said about that, but I think at every step of the way, we can actually check ourselves and be like, where are we here? So with that, I am beyond happy to send it over to Kristin. And what I’m going to do is before the spotlight goes away, I’m putting on my Alice Birney sweatshirt, because I am a super fan. So with that, Kristin, it is over to you.

Kristin Sobilo:

Jenny, with our sweatshirt. Hi, everyone. So my name is Kristin Sobilo. I’m the principal of Alice Birney’s Learning Community up in Northern California. And I will just say that I’m very excited to be here. I’m in a regular day as a principal right now. And to be able to actually, I’ve been telling Jenny, and Laura, and Antoinette, and L.A. about, a lot of times when you ground yourself in the work that you’re doing to share that with someone else, it becomes more meaningful to you. So I’m very excited to be here. So I’m going to get us starting.

I’m moving along my little slideshow now. Okay, so giving you a little bit about Alice Birney and where I came to be working with WestEd, and also to give some foundations to possibly the work you’re also doing. So we are considered behind the Redwood Curtain, and so therefore resources and accessing those resources can be a challenge. And so, this is where WestEd and our partners that are out there really are providing us a service. I like to couch it on that in Alice Birney, I am one of four elementary schools within Eureka City Schools, a larger district. Ultimately our district has about 3000 students. We’re at about 400 at Alice Birney, I like to humble myself that I am very much part of something bigger than myself. And so, what I’m sharing with you today is something that you would see at a lot of our elementary schools.

Alice Birney became part of the community school’s implementation grant. Ultimately at one of the national conferences that we attended in Pennsylvania, I really appreciated this term and it stuck with me as an admin, and has really become part of my work, which is that the school implementation grants are an opportunity for a school improvement strategy. It is not a program, it is a strategy. And I think ultimately what Jenny was just speaking about with those participatory systems, that is the strategy, that using those participatory systems in order to access a shared leadership approach to our schools is ultimately that direction of implementing strong positive climates in our entire nation. So a pillar of that is shared leadership. And so, a lot of my connection to WestEd has come from a family forum. Ultimately as an administrator in my fourth year, I was looking to see how could I really increase the engagement of families and our diverse community that we do have at Alice Birney. We are 70% EL learners, and so we have a variety of languages and socioeconomic levels within our school community.

So I wanted to find a way that I could harness the voices of that diverse community. So I worked with Rhonda, the director of our community schools grant here in Eureka City schools, and we reached out to WestEd, and WestEd offers the family forum. I strongly, strongly encourage this at your district or at your school. It was absolutely, a moving experience. And so, that’s the connections that I made with WestEd, which brought me here today to talk with you, to share that experience that I’ve been having at Alice Birney with all of you today. And we had successful implementation of the forum’s outcomes. So I can also say to you that the work that we did with WestEd had direct outcomes to the systems we have at Alice Birney right now this year.

So our time today, I just want to couch it in three areas. So the first is just talking about our why, which I think is the dream. I think number two is our how, how do we generate, how do we prioritize? And then I’d love to share with you some of the lessons that we have learned. So thank you so much, Laura. I think I will need assistance on moving them for some reason. So what I recommend for preparing for our time is, I would love for you to have an opportunity to process about your district, or your site, or your classroom. And so if you have a processing place. And then number two, I want you to understand this phrase that I will use, which is apply to your work. I’m going to give examples of what we’re doing specifically to Alice Birney, and I’d like to take a few minutes to let you freeze and think about how that may or may look at your specific area.

So here’s our why. Doug Fisher, we are a visible learning district. We have just joined with the Visitable Learning Initiative, which is kind of foundations of John Hattie’s work. So we are directly working with Doug Fisher and Nancy Fry. And so, one of the quotes that I am moved by and use daily with my staff as well as our parents is, “When you know your why, the what has much more of an impact, because you walk in your purpose.” I think we say this in a cliche way, but ultimately that’s a key part of the work that I do on a daily basis, is ensuring that people understand our purpose. And I hold that as a huge responsibility. So down below you’ll notice our purpose, and this was generated through our staff, which is the school leadership team, and then our entire teaching staff. And then I asked for our classified staff, which would be our paraprofessionals and our monitors, to provide feedback essentially using a DOT system, which we’ll talk about today.

All right, so I believe in the concept of fertile ground. So I believe in ground swell. So one of the most important elements of the how is to begin to create fertile ground around the vision that we have for our school. So that starts, it’s messy, I’ll say that. When you think about getting into the garden, think about getting messy, you’ll be hands-on. Essentially, we’re reading a book right now called Leader Credibility written by Doug Fisher, and it speaks specifically about that. A lot of the work that I do as an administrator is talk, 70% of my work is communication.

So I’m spending 70% of my time ground swelling the vision and the ideas that I am getting from others, and that’s a consistent element of our work. I think this also lends itself to the concept of transformational leadership. So a transformational leader is going to approach from a generative and a prioritizing fashion of all stakeholders, or all people of that community. And ultimately, when I think about that fertile ground, that’s where transformational leadership comes. It is not what I want. It is what we need as a community. So my job is to continuously speak to that community, to find out exactly what that looks like.

Participatory systems. Ultimately, I thought I would just provide a slide that was very analytical and let you know some of the direct steps that we put in place. So I believe that the participatory systems are essentially the fertile ground. This is where the work needs to be put in order for those conversations to be generated, prioritized, and for us to know that the ideas that I am generating are authentic and true, and that is truly my learning community providing that feedback. So number one is to really put the time in and creating a diverse and engaged decision-making body. So at Alice Birney, we have worked very hard and tediously at creating a strong ELAC. So we have outreach by our bilingual technician. She actually makes personal phone calls to certain families, and those families then make phone calls as well. So we do personal outreach in order to build our family engagement tools.

So the PTA, that is an element of our family engagement tool. So we have dinner and childcare for any meeting. We essentially bring relevant resources to those meetings. So for our ELAC, we looked at COVID restrictions during COVID, we have brought in the DMV, we have brought in healthcare providers around dentistry and ears, and we’ve also looked at eyes, ultimately providing resources to our ELAC families that they can have at that meeting to increase the engagement to come. Moreover, we have also worked with local agencies to provide trips to historical sites, and that has increased the networking of our ELAC families.

And so, putting that time there has really benefited us having fertile ground for strong participation. We have also a student council, so we use our fifth graders, we have fourth grade and third grade representatives. So we begin to train them. And that student council is an active decision-making body along with me of how we would move forward with student action. Number two, a strong student school or strong school leadership team. So in Eureka City schools, we each have our own school leadership team, and that is a team that meets two hours at least a month, as well as participates in administrative led collaboration days. And they would lead those collaboration days around specific themes.

At Alice Birney, we have divided that school leadership team into three areas. We have a data component of that team, where teachers and classified staff work around the data that we collect on climate, as well as academics. We then have a curriculum and instruction team. Essentially they’re taking that data, processing that data, and figuring out what are the needs of our staff in order to move forward with our goals or our dreams. And the last is belonging. And that group is specifically looking at staff and student belonging. This is where essentially we have the element of our expectation stations, where we teach students about expectations at our school, as well as provide monthly community and staff activities that build community and belonging with each other. So I think one of the main parts of that school leadership team, besides looking at data, I think a lot of you would have that element going on at your own schools.

But one thing that we really turned to was in our conversations every single month that we have, we use this question, who is benefiting and who is not? So when that data comes out, we’re asking who is benefiting from the action we just did with M class, or when we did that intervention system, who benefited from that but who did not? And therefore the who did not becomes the next action item. And I strongly recommend that that becomes a natural tool for that participation. Last of course, and that is the communication plan. This is something that you’ll see later. I’ll talk about the lessons that we have learned, and that is having a strong communication plan. How will we speak to everyone? So I use the tool nine in the engagement guide from the collaborative here, and it provided an excellent guide for me to kind of see what the steps were to engage strong communication between all.

So how am I communicating on a daily basis to teachers? How do I communicate on a daily basis to monitors, paraprofessionals? How are students communicating with me? How are students communicating with each other? How do we expect teachers to communicate to their paraprofessionals? All of that, that multi-tiered approach to communication. I will have to say I don’t have it down yet, honestly, I don’t. And that’s an area that I will continue to grow. But I have realized that that is an important element to the participation system, and I have to put my time there. So I started a website for my entire staff. It’s called the Eagle Courier. I did it through Google Sites. I would share it with anyone and let you just copy it. But ultimately it provides resources to teachers right there. Keenan trainings, for example, which is something teachers and staff are expected to do on a regular basis.

But yet, where do I find it? I can’t find the email. Where is that? So I created a website, and ultimately teachers would go to that website or any of my classified staff, in order to find things that are expected of them. And that tool right there as a communication tool has provided that fertile ground, where I know they’re reading, I know they’re finding information out, so now I can talk to them about it. So, woo. All right, we’re ready for the next slide. So, generate. As I was preparing for this, I ended up deciding to look up these verbs a little bit. Absolutely. I see you, Audra, I’ll get those to you. Ultimately. [Responding to a message in the chat.] I looked up the word generate. To generate something is to bring it into existence. So I find that to be an excellent word for the work we do. What does existence mean?

Maybe it’s not going to look like everything on Monday morning, but that idea is going to be my fertile ground, correct? And so, that generation, that dreaming can still become my fertile ground. I may not get there until two or three years in, but it becomes that fertile ground. So again, I’m going to go back to the committing to diverse voices. Go get that person on your leadership team who disagrees, have that fierce conversation. Bring that person in, that person that’s harnessing that energy is going to bring so much more impact to the growth of your school than not engaging. So I strongly recommend that. And that is what I mean by diverse voices, and we’ll talk about salads and sundaes in a little bit. The next step is an assets and needs inventory. So there’s going to be a generation, then you’re going to need to drill that down.

I like to look through strengths, honestly, and I like to start there. What can we already do and hone that to be even better. So I like the dot system, which ultimately after we’ve done a large poster situation, we now would walk around with a couple dots, and I’m going to prioritize with those dots, the areas that have been generated that I feel are the most impactful for our school, correct? So every teacher, every classified employee gets the opportunity to those two dots, and they’re essentially going to show as we look at the next, that’s going to prioritize where we’re at. It has to be a thoughtful question. This is where your fertile ground comes in. I don’t want to just say, so how are kids going to learn to read? That may not be the thoughtful question. It may be, how are we going to ensure students know how to read?

So that I think is an important element to really dialogue. I have a colleague that I love to dialogue with, I think she’s even out there today. And so, I’ll reach out to some of the most important people in my life as a leader and ask them, can you help me pose a thoughtful question for the staff? Then you’ll see a system for ranking those assets and needs. That’s where I see post-its have been used before. Dots. You can do a fist to five right there in the meeting. Give me five, four, three, two, one on what you feel and that recording of it. I will say that when you generate those ideas, be intentional about the recording. People believe that their words are validated if they see us record them. So every idea would need to be recorded, but maybe not every idea would end up having a dot.

The next is that generation needs to be continuous, correct? So we used the family forum last year in May, and that generated for us and prioritized for us what we would do this year. However, I need that continuous conversation, right? That fertile ground. And so, we launched parent cafes this year. Ultimately we’re working with an outside agency called Changing Tides. It’s a mental health agency that deals with the social emotional health of all ages, and they have set up at our school. So they come to Alice Birney, and they come once a week. We had it going once a week, and they come for about an hour and a half. We tried it after school, that was less successful. Now we’re going to try it in the morning. And that parent cafe, I am not running that cafe. This is being run by my community school liaison who you’ll meet in just a minute, as well as changing tides.

And the reason, as I will tell you in our lessons later is format matters. So I wanted an arm of continuous engagement that was not directly related to me. I am aware of my role, I believe in transformational leadership. And so, I believe that I have a role, but that it doesn’t have to be a hierarchy, but that’s not necessarily how everyone else will view me. And that’s important that I see that. So creating a forum where parents could actively talk about what they wanted for their children without having other entities or school officials was one of our purposes there.

And so, that was the purpose behind it. And I get invited, and I get to come and speak with them. So at this point, I want to just take a moment for some processing, all right? I want you to think about your team right now. Do you see a diverse voice? So reflect on that. Reflect on your team. Do you see that diverse voice? And what diversity do you see? Then take a moment right now to jot down two assets that you see on a regular basis with your team or your school.

So now I’m going to dig a little deeper on that. I like the Venn diagram when I start to look at that fertile ground. So thinking about your assets, what do you do already that is very strong, that’s an excellent place to grow from? And then, now connect that to what do you see as the needs? What are the needs right now that you can see in January? Great time to be reflecting, what are the needs? And then see how they connect. Just take one of them and see how that need may connect to it.

So kind of sparing that thought. I’m going to give an example. When I first got to Alice Birney, Alice Birney had a garden. There were garden boxes set up. It wasn’t used, but it had a place, it had a location. And so, I realized that the garden being behind the Redwood Curtain was an opportunity right there. That was a strength that we already had, but we weren’t using it. It became more of a behavior problem than it did anything else. And so, ultimately I saw that strength. But the other area that we have been struggling with is behavior. We have certain students that have a difficult time fitting into a traditional classroom. So looking at the garden, looking at the social emotional needs of our students, we then realized that we could create garden curriculum for our students TK through five that would give them an opportunity to socially, emotionally grow.

And so, we started garden projects this year. We launched the garden stewards, which essentially happened during lunchtime for students who have difficulty going out on the playground and interacting with their social peers. So they come to the garden and they work with our farmers, and they work together on what does the garden need? What are the needs of our garden community? And then they work on that. These same students also receive a tiered approach where they may have a lanyard and come to the garden when they need a break. So then we began to use the garden as a social emotional tool for our students. So all students do the seasonal celebrations within our garden four times a year, but only some students receive that tiered approach with their needs socially, emotionally. All right, we’re ready.

So prioritizing. So after we have had the fertile ground, we’ve had these decision-making bodies. Ultimately we then begin to look at how are we going to prioritize the generation of the ideas we just had. So when I think of that, I think of my decision-making bodies. Prioritizing is going to come at that level. And so, I kind of put in four direct themes to that prioritization. So one, there needs to be a continuous data collection, and that is where we use our school leadership team. Number two, you need that sorting and the ordering of those values. That’s where the dot system, the fist of five, and I’m going to bring all those values together. And then last is ongoing feedback. So that’s that continuous conversation. I’m realizing that I have a short amount of time left. So let’s go to the next. Ella’s going to tell you a little bit about how we took, we did empathy interviews at the beginning of this year based on parent feedback last year. And we ran empathy interviews with them in September, and she’s going to tell you how we prioritized that data.

Ella Chalmers:

Based on family feedback from last year, we conducted empathy interviews with our families across our district. In those empathy interviews, we asked families five questions, and we prioritized the data that we got from those five questions with their top concern for their student, and their top hope and dream for their student. The top concern that we found was emotions and behavior. And we addressed this by informing families of our social emotional learning that’s happening in our classrooms. And the top hope and dreams for their students was belonging. And to address this, we started student led lunch clubs, student leadership, and small groups with our site social worker.

Kristin Sobilo:

So ultimately, we are then putting those things in place now. So my next slide relates to what I feel is a challenge to having transformational leadership using that fertile ground and speaking to everyone, right? Is looking at what is that sundae? And after listening to that description of dream versus goal, I think it’s important to realize that two people might be coming from different perspectives. So the sundae, the wow, let’s do this. Versus, hey, we actually really need that salad. That’s what our bodies really need. But boy, look at that sundae, and in just listening just now, I think there could be a philosophical difference. Your sundae people could be the dreamers. They could be the dreamers, and your salad people are the goals. These are what’s going to get us there. But it’s important that salad realizes that it takes the sundae for us to see the bigness of it, but it also, the sundaes need to understand that it is actually the goals of the salad that move the school forward.

So that I think is that difference between dreams and goals also. So when I think of that, I think of that in three parts. Number one, it’s about that fertile ground. The conversations about what that goal specifically is. Parking lots, in staff meetings, in open houses, in IEPs, in parent SST meetings, it’s a continuous conversation. Sometimes they’re fierce. That’s where I believe I’m helping a sundae to realize that we got to have a salad to get there. It’s not that the sundae isn’t all right, it’s just that we still need the salad to get there, and I need the salad to understand that sundae is giving us that inspiration. And then the last is data. Show me, don’t tell me. So when I can show, absolutely show to our learning community that this is what our needs are, then I’m more willing to see that that salad is there.

So that’s that idea of importance around fertile ground to communicate what the data is. I absolutely agree. Street Data, fantastic book. And that’s essentially what we’re speaking about, right, Natalie? That there are different elements of me collecting that data as a transformational leader. And I need to be aware that even that parent who only stops by in the morning still has a crucial element of that voice, even if they can’t come to my ELAC meetings, or my PTA meetings, or open houses. Yep, absolutely.[Responding to a message in the chat.]

So in summary, we’ll kind of go at those lessons a little bit now. So the first lesson, Laura, we can change to the next I think, is that multi-pronged communication plan. I think you all realize you need a text, a print. We have just started video actually, where we’re videotaping a student just telling us what you do in your music class, did you do in math today? And we’re posting that on Facebook, so that there’s a continuous conversation about how we learn at Alice Birney. Number two, start with the end. So I think it’s very important that you know what that dream is, right? What’s that sundae or what’s that end goal that we are trying to get, and therefore backward mapping to what will be the salads to get us there?

Format matters. So this one is a specific example. When we led the family forum, most often that forum can be held in a panel and we decided to do it as a circle. And I didn’t realize how crucial that format was going to be to our families, but the feedback that I received from them is they felt like they were equals sitting in that room. And that language was just absolutely impactful to me as a leader. So really looking at the format, how are you bringing out the most important information? Do you have a format at a large sense? So your open houses, your site council meetings, your ELACs, do you have a format that’s more personal? Are you talking in parking lots? Is it at dismissal and arrival? Are you talking at lunchtime? Where is that format coming where you’re having those personal conversations?

And then I wanted to let you know that as we created this fertile ground, we are ready to take risks. And so, this year our ELAC has asked to do a site visit where they could come to the school and visit classrooms, and see what we’re doing at school, so that when I come to them and I ask them, “What would you like to see in your SIPSA, your site plan for student achievement?” They feel they have the tools to talk about it. So that was feedback from our families that I need to understand the system in order for me to provide genuine feedback. So wrapping up, I think last minute really, and I’m glad that we end with this slide, is ultimately, although you may feel like you are that red tulip in the middle of all those yellow tulips, I will remind you that we’re all tulips.

So we are not alone. And I think most importantly, I have seen the value of WestEd’s work with us. The guides that they provide are absolutely strong outlines for us. I believe the family forum is an opportunity for us to launch into vulnerable places with that expertise and support. So I think I would just say to all of us, you’re not alone. We’re all tulips. We may be all different color of tulips, and sometimes when you’re out in that tulip world as an administrator, you may feel that you are doing it alone. But I will remind us all that we’re growing out of that garden and we definitely have a lot of plants around us to use, and pollinate, and generate from. So I believe that’s the end of my work with you. So this last slide just tells you the outcomes of the work that we did. The next slide just speaks of John Hattie’s work. I believe when we have that fertile ground and we have strong participatory systems, that ultimately we increase collective teacher efficacy, and therefore we increase student growth.

Laura Buckner:

Thank you so much, Kristin. There’s a lot of information there. The slides are all shared and Kristin has been so generous with also offering to communicate more and provide more. So I believe her email address is on the slides and I’m sure she’ll be happy to share it in the chat. So thank you very much. We’ve got about one minute left for this webinar portion. L.A. will be pushing out a feedback poll. We would love for you to respond to it. We really do look at it and it helps us to plan for future events. So thank you very much everyone. We’re going to stop recording the webinar and then we’ll have our group discussion in just a few.