The Importance of a Shared Leadership Model

I have been teaching for more than 20 years in a small charter school, Murray High School, which is completely based on a shared leadership policy. We are very successful in every measurable way.

We learned back in 1988, when our school opened, that involving everyone in the community in decision-making created ownership of the school and of the outcomes of our decisions. We spread the decision-making system out to all members of our community -- not only to teachers, but to students as well.

We have found that the students are just as interested in making the decisions that change our school, as the teachers are. In order to pull this off, we developed a consensus model, meaning that all of us have one vote, but that we won't move forward with important decisions until we have consensus, meaning that it only takes one negative vote to stop a change.

If we were based on majority rule, we would continually have an unhappy and resistant minority. If only teachers and administrators were making the decisions, then when problems arose, students would often resist. However, when students, teachers, and administrators have worked through the decision-making process together, then when problems arise, we are all aware of the process used to get where we are and we all take ownership of working out the issues.

This process has seen us through many many situations that might have divided our school community. We use it for all the big decisions. For instance, whether we would become a Glasser Quality School was a consensus decision. Our administrator could have come in and told us, "I've decided it would be a good idea for us to join the Quality School movement. Let me tell you what I need you to do." Or the teachers and administration could have told the students, "We've decided to become a Glasser Quality School, and this is what it means to you." Instead, a staff-member brought up the possibility in a staff meeting. We agreed to read some related books and to discuss them. We reached consensus as a staff and administration. We then took the possibility to the parents. They also reached consensus. Then, we took the possibility to the student body. They resisted the idea and gave several reasons for their resistance. So, we tabled the idea for a year and we worked out several things we could do to answer the concerns raised by the students.

We took them on two field trips -- one to Alabama, where the first Glasser Quality High School was declaring itself. There a group of Murray students had a chance to meet other students who "spoke Glasser." They got to meet Dr. Glasser and to discuss the possibility of becoming a Glasser Quality School.

Our next field trip was to present at a Quality Schools Conference in Detroit. Together,with students from the school in Montgomery, we showed how schools based on Dr. Glasser's ideas worked, from a student's perspective.

Then, the next year, we brought the student body together again and said that the faculty, parents, and administration were still interested in declaring ourselves a Glasser Quality School. We asked the student body to reconsider. We held, over a period of several weeks, short workshops to consider all aspects of becoming a Quality School.

Finally, at the end of the second year of investigating this change in our school, we held a vote and there were still 8 members of the student body who voted no. Another student stood up and said, "What would it take to convince you to go along with the rest of us?" They answered, "A Glasser Quality School only allows students to make A's or B's. Without C's, we don't think we could graduate."

It was decided to write to Dr. Glasser to ask if we could "grandfather" out the C gradually. He agreed and then, we were able to reach consensus. In 2001 we declared ourselves the first Glasser Quality Public High School. Since then, we have had no resistance at all to these ideas, because everyone was involved in the decision.

We hold regular community meetings with students, staff, and administration with open mikes, so we can all share what the issues facing us are and come up with methods to solve them. Another good example would be that students were observing that between a large group of girls in the school, very negative attitudes had sprung up that were affecting the environment for everyone. People were giving themselves permission to glare at each other in the halls. Threats had been passed among various girls, and Facebook threats had already occurred. Rather than having the administration "crack down" on the students involved, we invited all the girls to a discussion and asked them, "We are observing this problem. Is it a problem for you? If so, what ideas do you have for solving it?" We had to disrupt classes for about 1 hour one day, as the girls met to talk, but the end result of this disruption was that there were several plans made, with consensus of all girls and staff members, to solve the problems and everyone went back to classes feeling better. The level of crises and conflicts between the girls dropped significantly and the girls themselves were proud of having solved the problem.

In large schools, it would be necessary to divide the students into smaller groups of 100 - 150 to help them develop the skills necessary to create consensus. This would initially take some time, but it has been our observation that the time spent teaching these skills through actually making decision that affect the entire school is time saved from dealing with conflicts and especially with resistance to teacher/administrator led decisions.

Recently, I was asked to present about our school to the New York Board for Charter Schools. When the board discovered that we have had zero turnover of teachers and administration over a period of seven years, they were shocked. However, when you ask our staff if they would consider teaching elsewhere, you will get an adamant, "No way!" because it is so rare and so valuable to all of us, including our administration, to have a voice in how our school runs.

We all work our hearts out for our administration. We want our principal to be happy and to stay for a long time. We want our students to be happy. They want us to be happy. We all feel good about working together to solve whatever situations we face. We've found that setting up a system that respectfully involves 100% of the community in shared leadership, leads to success academically and in every other aspect of a wonderful school.

To find out more about our school, visit: www.k12albemarle.org/MurrayHS

And please visit the William Glasser Institute homepage:

wglasser.com

Combating Student Failure with the Glasser Quality School System

I have taught for many years in traditional public high schools. I know what they are like. The reason I've been teaching at Murray for so long is because I grew tired of not having a say in how the large schools were running, so that we could improve them as a whole, rather than just making improvements in my own little classroom. However, there is hope for the large schools choosing to implement some of the ideas we offer.

I have worked closely with a principal, Harold Maldonado, at Stevens High School in San Antonio, TX, to implement these concepts in a school of over 3,000 students. He said to me, "We know how to implement the system we currently have. We have successfully implemented it in 7 high schools in North San Antonio. I'm not interested in replicating this system, with its apathetic students and faculty, its violence so that a private police force is needed to deal with the student conflicts, and its lack of respect for all concerned. I want to try a new system, one based on Choice Theory." So, together we worked out a way to do many of the most important aspects of Murray's system in a very large high school. Six of our students and several of our staff members journeyed to San Antonio and worked for several days teaching these ideas to his staff of 170 educators. Most of them were entirely enthusiastic to try them out.

At this point, they are moving steadily toward declaring themselves a Glasser Quality High School, a goal that is still six or seven years away at a minimum. They were not successful at eliminating failing grades, one of the key components of any Glasser Quality School. During their first year, their superintendent allowed them to experiment with that concept. However, once the media in Texas found out that there was a public school in San Antonio that didn't give failing grades to students, the public ridicule was so intense that the superintendent backed out and now they are working again with the same A - F system that most schools in America still use. Nevertheless, they are teaching Choice Theory and they emphasize using respect with one another. They have systems in place to help with the problems Harold described. They are happy with their school and expect that in five or so years, when their test scores allow them the freedom to request it, they are going to implement the non-failure part of a Glasser Quality School.

I can't overstate the impact this policy has had at Murray. Again, this is a MINDSET CHOICE. In 1988, we read Dr. Glasser's Schools Without Failure and we decided to make it the cornerstone of our new school. We would just make it impossible to fail. We use mastery learning to help students realize that learning is completely THEIR CHOICE. We can invite them and encourage and support them, but we cannot FORCE them to learn. The power to learn is completely theirs. In fact, we can remove all coercion from the system, so that even if they do no work at all, they cannot fail. They will not earn credits until they start to take ownership of their learning, but they cannot fail. Once they realize that they are among friends, teachers who respect their ability to learn so much that they refuse to give them failing grades, refuse to say that they cannot learn, refuse to punish them for not learning yet, they usually stop resisting and start working toward graduation.

When a student refuses to work, we say, "John, I'm really glad that you came in today. It's a good step toward graduation. Do you intend to graduate from high school?" Almost always, the student says, "Of course. Why else do you think I came in?" We say, "Well, I hoped that was why you came in. I am interested to hear your graduation plan." They student usually says, "What do you mean?" And we say, "Well, how many English credits does it take to graduate from high school?" They usually know that it takes four and they say that. Then we say, "So what is your plan to earn this English credit?" At this point, the student will "get it," that it's impossible to move toward graduation without actually getting work done. We offer to meet privately with the student to create some individualized assignment that will help them move forward. But whatever they do, we don't get angry at them. We realize they are making the best choices they know how to do at this point in time. Our job is to help them learn how to make more and more choices that will lead to their successfully achieving their own personal goal of graduation.

This is a beautiful, complicated process for each one of these kids who have been hurt by the failure system in our schools. I am so blessed to get a chance to watch this system work miracles over and over. For instance, we have a young lady this year who sat through my English class for the entire 1st 1/2 of the school year (her first at Murray), drawing in an artbook and occasionally participating in discussions and projects. However, she didn't turn in a single assignment. She finished my English Through Social Justice class (In mid-January) without having earned even 1/2 credit. Throughout the rest of Jan., Feb., and March, I kept seeing her in the halls and reaching out to her, inviting her not to give up on her English credit, reminding her of her graduation goal and telling her that I was willing to work out some alternative assignments that would help her move toward credit. Here we are in June and she still hasn't earned 1/2 English credit.... yet. But this is what she has accomplished: She has begun meeting with me individually after school every Wednesday. She's worked out with me an entire English credit that she's going to do on her own. One project, for instance, completely of her own choosing, is to read Milton's Paradise Lost (which is on the school Kindle she has borrowed -- I got 24 of them this year with a federal grant for $9,000) and to choose four important moments in the book to illustrate (she's an artist). Then, she's going to write an analysis of her work, explaining what she was hoping to achieve with her artworks. She is happily working away on this project and I'm sure that she is learning much more than the traditional English class would require of her. I'm sure that with another year at Murray, she will be taking AP English courses and churning out work because she has now convinced herself that learning can be meaningful and challenging in a good way. We call that, "putting learning back in your Quality World."

In the system in a regular school, in just about ALL American schools, this young lady would have received zeroes on missed assignments. She would have received very low F's on the projects she didn't finish. Even if she had suddenly found the will to work, she would have had to overcome all these failures, which had been written down indelibly in my gradebook, so the best she could have done by the end would have been a high F or a D. Somehow, the traditional system would argue, through receiving low grades, she had just learned a lesson about getting her work turned in and we had figured out her skill levels and documented them. So, the next English teacher would believe that this girl (who is now happily lapping up Milton by her own choice -- a 10th grader this year), had low English skills and she might even be put into some kind of low level class where she wouldn't have the chance to be challenged or excited by her intellectual curiosity.

At Murray, it's okay to make a mistake. You can't get hurt by it. We believe our students arrive at our school with enough hurts in their emotional backpacks. So, when a student chooses not to turn in work, we're not going to punish them by giving them zeroes or F's. However, we're not going to award credits for doing nothing, or for doing less than B work. All Murray students, to receive credit for any projects or assignments, have to do them to at least a B level. So, when a student throws something mediocre at me, and says, "I'm done!" I can say, "Well, you've done this well. I really like this line, but you haven't yet achieved a B mastery of the skills this assignment is designed to teach. To achieve a B, you'll need to do....." and then we give specifics of what needs to be done next. Often, students put this work off. They get involved in the fun things we're doing and the tough things, like learning how to write compelling and logical essays, get put aside for awhile. But we've found that when a student completes a project they love -- for instance, when their section of the video yearbook is finished -- the energy and happiness that come from achievement of a tough goal carry them forward. They think to themselves, "I WANT this credit. I worked hard on this project, so I'll be darned if I don't get this credit." This leads them to come seeking out the help they need to get complete.

Not all students learn this in their first year here. Some students keep resisting learning and we work hard to help them get past their habitual mindsets of "not caring." We don't make it with everyone. We run out of time with some, but not many. Most students eventually "get it" that their educations are gifts they are giving to themselves. Right now, in the next two weeks, we have several seniors who may bail on all the work that needs to be done to walk across that stage, but they are pulling out all the stops now and turning out some incredible work because suddenly, they realize how MUCH they want to graduate. I've seen some students work all night long the night before graduation to complete work that had to be done to earn a credit and emerge exhausted, but elated, because they saw proof that they can work as hard as necessary to achieve their goals. They have the strength and the ability to do what they set their minds to. They also see that they went through the pain of an all-nighter because they didn't learn this lesson early enough to make it easier on themselves. This is a great mindset for them to carry with them to college, where managing their own time is going to be of paramount importance. They will have learned a great deal about this in the last moments before graduation.

This happened last year. Several seniors were still working on various projects and assignments when the bell rang at the end of the day before graduation. The principal asked me if I would mind staying after school with them to oversee their work. She was worried that so many seniors might not graduate. I said I would stay and work as long as they were willing to work with a good will. Two of the boys who stayed had been a true handful, discipline-wise, all year. They had come to us from one of the big traditional high schools in the area and their past principal had told them he didn't believe they would ever graduate, but that if they went to Murray, they might have a chance. They asked him if he would give them their diplomas if they graduated from Murray and he agreed. All year, their successes were touch and go. It seemed that every time they did something to exceed their own expectations, they immediately crashed and burned over something else.

As they worked that night, one finished before the other, who still had massive amounts of math to complete. He said to his friend, "Who would ever have believed that we'd be sitting here at school together at 11pm, working on math? No one who knows us would believe it!" And rather than going on home, he stayed to help his friend figure out the math. I had the high honor of sitting and listening to him teach some of the more difficult concepts to his friend. Then, at 11:30pm, another Murray teacher who was returning home from an engagement, stopped by the school to see if they needed any help understanding the math. They worked together until after midnight. Finally, he finished and they left school so happy that we were all smiling from ear to ear.

This is a success of the mastery learning concept. Without it, both boys would have failed out of their senior years. With it, they discovered that they were willing to achieve graduation. On graduation day, their previous principal showed up and good naturedly gave them their diplomas, reminding them of how narrowly they had missed dropping out of school. The whole place came alive with applause for them.

Now, certainly, working a very late night with seniors who had procrastinated getting their work done sounds, on one hand, like a chaotic and possibly harmful way to teach someone that learning is their own possession. But I would argue that mastery learning and the real world deadline of graduation made it possible for them to rise above their habits of failure, of giving up on themselves and on their educations. The mastery learning mindset gave them the ability to move forward and not be stuck in failure.

Some critics of our program, when they hear about our mastery learning system say, "But this is not preparing students for the real world, where they will be allowed to fail." We argue that what we are doing is helping students develop the skills they need to succeed in such a tough "real world" by giving them the time and a safety net in order to heal and grow.

Our at-risk students are the ones who didn't profit by the failure system. They rebelled and/or crumpled under its demands. We believe they need a place to recuperate and to think through their decisions to resist their own educations. We believe they need time, love, and a lot of respect to pull themselves back from the brink, to become someone who deserves to achieve and who knows that they can achieve.

Love, Charlotte Wellen

A Glasser Quality School Teacher Considers the "Testing Woes"

I teach at a very successful charter school in VA. We're a Glasser Quality High School, meaning that we're based on Dr. William Glasser's Choice Theory, Reality Therapy, and Lead Management. Our student body is made up of at-risk kids who chose to attend our charter school, hoping for something to begin working for them in education. Most of them come to us with a transcript of F's and many of what we call "resistance behaviors," such as skipping constantly, acting out in class, and generally hanging back, as if they are not motivated to succeed.

We have been in existence for 22 years. We started up in 1988, long before the testing mania got itself moving (in 1998 in VA). Our students LOVE our school (loving education again for the first time since early elementary school) because we emphasize the kind of learning that is never forgotten. We do projects together that are likely to end up with what we call Quality Work, meaning work that you LOVE to do because it MATTERS to you and you feel PASSIONATE about it. No one has to tell you to do it. You work on it on your own. We work together with our students as part of their learning teams. From both a teacher's and student's point of view, it's an amazing education.

When statewide testing descended upon us, we realized that because they are (in VA) only a series of unconnected, irrelevant, factual multiple choice questions that are impossible to study for, the tests were going to be a very distasteful obstacle for our school. Our students and parents joined together to resist the testing, but in VA, even charter schools must take these "barrier tests."

The first few years, our students rebelled during the testing and were angry with the state and with us for subjecting them to these mindless exercises in futility. We even were put on probation from the state because they knew that our students were resisting. They sent a team to tell us that they knew this because our scores were consistently lower than it was possible to be without purposefully choosing the wrong answers.

Finally, we did what we do best. We went to the entire school community and showed them the test scores. We asked them if they liked their school. They love it. We asked them if they thought our small school could stay open if they continued to do so poorly on the testing. After a long discussion, the students asked us, "If we agree to do our best on the testing, will you agree not to even mention the testing for most of the year, and to continue doing the fun stuff in classes?" Of course, we agreed.

For the past ten years, since we achieved this agreement with our student body, our test scores have been among the highest in the state, certainly in our region. We set a goal a few years ago to hit the 95% pass rate in every subject, which we did. Now, we're working toward 97%. To achieve this, we decided, as a staff, to be a lot more relaxed about the testing, even though the existence of our school (and our jobs) depends on these test scores. We decided to trust the kids and to trust what Dr. Glasser calls "education" rather than "schooling." Teaching to these mindless tests is "schooling" at its worst. It turns kids (and teachers) off to the joys found in discovery and creativity.

I teach English to all levels at our school, from students who can barely read and write, to students who are already taking college courses while attending our school. I have them all mixed together in my classes. We don't divide by grade level. I've found that when we are having fun together, everyone is learning at their peak. The fun stuff is what they remember. I may not have taught them every single literary term, but they will enter the test feeling confident as writers and readers. They will know that they know a lot and so far, even if they hit questions on ideas we have not covered, they are managing to do quite well. Often, we have over 50% advanced pass rate in reading and writing.

I teach American Studies, too, and I've found this same approach to be essential in helping students pass the completely embarrassing US/VA History SOL test which is nothing but lists of facts, so many unrelated facts that there is no way at all to "cover" them in a single school year. Whenever I think about that test, I can't help but remember Dickens' Gradgrind saying, "Facts! Facts! Facts!" However, our students, we have found again and again, just need to go into that test feeling like they love history. They need to feel confident about themselves as historians, as people who care about their history because they see how it relates to their current lives. Then, when the test throws some curve balls at them, like asking them which president was NOT born in VA, they can figure it out because they know they know a lot.

I believe that our state governments have teachers flummoxed with all the threats about having to do well on these state tests. Teachers believe that they have to "cover" everything that is going to be on the test, and they forget about education. They get completely lost in "schooling" and they begin to worry because they do not love what they are doing and they know the kids are not having a great time either. At our school, we have found that the essential element of doing well on the tests is to simply forget about them and do what we know is going to help students improve their skills and essential understandings in ways that mean something important to their lives. Then, the testing is just a state hoop to jump through at the end of the year, not something pulling us down all year long.

The testing environment in our school is remarkable. Kids run through the halls shouting, "I passed my Geometry SOL test!" or "I got a perfect score in Reading and my first grade teacher told my parents I would never be able to learn to read!!!!!" Students realize that the testing matters to our school and they want to do well so our school has 100% pass rate. They're not embarrassed by caring how they do. They don't rag on kids who do well. They celebrate together. We all do.

Although I would definitely agree that these tests could be improved so that they test something valuable, as they stand, I suppose that the tests have helped our school because we can get waivers based on how well we're doing. These waivers allow us to try all kinds of interesting things we wouldn't be able to do otherwise. For instance, we recently got a waiver on seat time, meaning that our kids don't have to have 140 hours to earn a credit. We cut back our classes to something like 122 hours and our test scores went up! This enabled us to add another class to the year, so our students could earn 8 credits a year. This means that some of our kids can graduate in three years and most of our kids can spend quite a bit of their senior year already enrolled in the local community college, earning college credits.

The testing hasn't hurt us after all, simply because we listened to our kids' request not to "teach to the test," but to make school fun. It's amazing to us that IT WAS A CHOICE OF MINDSET that helped us, as a staff, as a school, move past the "testing woes." We decided not to worry about those tests and to use the saved time to plan out some fabulous projects and class activities that none of us will ever forget.

Love, Charlotte Wellen, NBCT, Practicum Supervisor/William Glasser Institute