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Readings Reports in Administrative Council W-JCC Public Schools September 7, 2006

THE AUTHOR: Phillip C. Schlechty. Founder

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Readings Reports in Administrative Council W-JCC Public Schools September 7, 2006

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    1. Readings & Reports in Administrative Council W-JCC Public Schools September 7, 2006 Working on the Work: An Action Plan for Teachers, Principals, and Superintendents by Phillip C. Schlechty, Jossey-Bass, 2002 “Author & Introduction” Gary S. Mathews, Ph.D., Superintendent Cynthia Rhone, Principal, Center for Educational Opportunities

    2. THE AUTHOR: Phillip C. Schlechty Founder & C.E.O., Center for Leadership in School Reform, Louisville, Kentucky Author of Working on the Work, Creating Great Schools, Shaking Up the School House, Inventing Better Schools, and Schools for the 21st Century Former Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Former Executive Director of the Jefferson County Public Schools/Gheens Professional Development Academy B.S., M.A., Ph.D., The Ohio State University One of the nation’s most sought-after speakers on the topic of school reform

    3. INTRODUCTION “Schools cannot be made great by great teacher performances. They will only be made great by great student performance.” Work on the students (cajoling/threatening for compliance) Work on the teachers (merit pay/observation schemes) Work on the work (improve quality of work teachers provide students)

    4. THE BASIC THEME “The key to success is to be found in identifying or creating engaging schoolwork for students.” “This book…centers on only one issue: the uses of the WOW framework as a tool to improve student performance in school.”

    5. TWO KINDS OF WORK Manual Work: the application of muscle, sinew, and brawn to complete tasks, produce products, and achieve goals. Knowledge Work: the applications of intellectual processes; the management and control of symbols, propositions, and other forms of knowledge; and the use of these intellectual products in the achievement of goals.

    6. SCHOOLWORK: a form of work intended to produce learning. Schoolwork: those tasks, activities, and experiences that teachers design for students and those that teachers encourage students to design for themselves, which the teacher assumes will result in students’ learning what it is intended they should learn. Schoolwork is a special form of knowledge work: a form intended to produce learning assumed to be essential to the continuation of the culture and the optimization of the moral and intellectual development of the individual student.

    7. THE BASIS FOR “WOW” Not a “systematic” research base Not a program It is a system of thought and a way of life Not intended to replace or even compete with existing efforts to improve instruction It is a framework for giving direction and purpose to much that is already going on in schools and classrooms and a framework that leads to suggestions regarding what might need to be going on…

    8. BASIC ASSUMPTIONS OF WOW 1 - One of the primary tasks of teachers is to provide work for students: work that students engage in and from which students learn that which it is intended that they learn. 2 - A second task of teachers is to lead students to do well and successfully the work they undertake. 3 - Therefore, teachers are leaders and inventors, and students are volunteers. 4 - What students have to volunteer is their attention and commitment.

    9. BASIC ASSUMPTIONS OF WOW 5 – Differences in commitment and attention produce differences in student engagement. 6 – Differences in the level and type of engagement affect directly the effort that students expend on school-related tasks. 7 – Effort affects learning outcomes at least as much as does intellectual ability. 8 – The level and type of engagement will vary depending on the qualities teachers build into the work they provide students. 9 – Therefore, teachers can directly affect student learning through the invention of work that has those qualities that are most engaging to students.

    10. THE ROLE OF THE TEACHER: “Great teachers are great leaders!” “As leaders, great teachers understand that the needs and interests of those they want to follow them, the students, must be central to their concern.” “They understand this because they know that good leaders are also good followers.”

    11. TEACHER: Facilitator, Coach, or Leader? Facilitator of learning: to serve more like “midwife” than a leader…towards “personal development” and the “personal construction of knowledge” Coach for learning: to help students move in directions students might initially want to avoid and, as well, to cause students to test themselves in circumstances in which they feel uncomfortable and uncertain. Leader for learning: to inspire others [e.g., students] to do things they might otherwise not do.

    12. COMPETENCE & COMMITMENT The teacher needs to be skilled in providing students with schoolwork that will engage them and encourage them to direct their efforts in productive ways. The teacher needs to be committed to ensuring that the work he or she provides students results in their working with the knowledge they are expected to acquire in order to be entitled to be called well educated. The teacher also needs to be committed to providing students with instruction and practice in the skills that will be of continuing value to them as they mature.

    13. THE IMPORTANCE OF “WOW” AS A “DISCIPLINE” “Discipline” means a regimen or regularized manner of approaching a problem or task, e.g., the “WOW” discipline when applied to lesson planning. The function of “discipline” is to ensure control and coherence. “WOW” is a “process discipline,” i.e., one that establishes control that does not constrain (planning routines or problem-solving techniques guide action without constraining the form that action takes). “WOW,” as a discipline, is not antithetical to creativity and innovation; indeed, it makes creativity possible.

    14. ENGAGING WORK & ENGAGING TEACHERS Is a teacher “engaging” when he/she possesses personal qualities that are attractive to students—that is, that the teacher is pleasant, winning, charming, or perhaps even “charismatic”? Is a teacher “engaging” when the he/she creates activities for students that draw them in, attract them, hold them, and fasten their attention?

    15. “ENGAGING TEACHER” “Failure to make this distinction [personal qualities vs. quality activities for students] too often leads to the conclusion that the only way to improve education is to work on the performance of the teachers. This eventually leads to the hopeless conclusion that the only way to improve the schools is to make it possible to recruit to the schools 2.7 million college-educated Americans who are personally engaging and willing to provide heroic personal performances on a routine basis for a relatively modest financial reward.”

    16. Heroic teachers do exist, but… “Heroic teachers do exist, but they cannot be the stuff of which great schools are made. There is simply not enough heroic material to go around. What is needed are teachers who know how to create, as a matter of routine practice, schoolwork that engages students. Schools cannot be made great by great teacher performances. They will only be made great by great student performance.”

    17. ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOK Chapter 1: The Idea of Engagement Chapter 2: What A School where the WOW Framework is in Place Would Look Like Chapter 3: Primarily for Teachers Chapter 4: Primarily for Principals Chapter 5: Primarily for Superintendents Chapter 6: Accountability and School Reform Appendix A: Framework for Analysis, Dialogue, and Action—School Version Appendix B: Framework for Analysis, Dialogue, and Action—Classroom Version

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