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Helping handsTeacher specialists support struggling South Carolina schools By Joan Richardson Results, October 2004 Copyright, National Staff Development Council, 2004. All rights reserved. Edison Arnette says he's changed. As principal of one of South Carolina's under-performing high schools, Arnette could easily have become a defensive man. Instead, he decided to become a beacon of change. And, to hear him tell it, he's not done changing yet. Arnette's story of transformation started when South Carolina embarked on its bold program for improving student learning by providing assistance for any schools with below-average results on statewide assessments (see box below). Lake View High School in rural and agricultural mid-South Carolina fit the mold: 44 of its 65 seniors in the Class of 2003 failed the state's exit exam. In 1999, only about half of its students took the SAT--and that half earned a dismal average 435 verbal score and an even worse 388 math score. The state sent a team of external auditors to visit the school and left Arnette with a list of 82 recommendations for improvement. Lake View had no curriculum guide and little professional development for teachers and less for administrators. Staff members knew little about the state's content standards or examining test results to determine areas needing improvement. Teachers essentially closed their classroom doors and did not spend much worktime with other teachers. Students, teachers, and the community had low expectations for learning. "To be honest with you, we felt like we were being punished," Arnette said. But he said he couldn't quibble with the team's findings. "It was an honest evaluation. They didn't sugar coat anything," he said. "I knew we needed to change but I felt like, if there was going to be change, it had to begin with me. I had to lead by example. I couldn't just tell them that they had to change. I had to change and become a better administrator," he said. From the beginning, Arnette decided to use the state report as a springboard for improvement. Even before he knew the state would dispatch specialists to his school, he told teachers to prepare for changes. "He told them that, 'I'm not going to have that external team come in here again and cite us like that. If you don't want to be involved in these changes, you might want to look somewhere else,' " said Barbara Hawkins, the school's state-supported curriculum specialist. "He laid that support for us. "How we fit in depends on what's been told to the staff prior to our arrival. He made it clear that he wanted us there and that he wanted teachers to support us," she said. SPECIALISTS ARRIVEThe state allocated money for four specialists to Lake View: Hawkins plus specialists in math, science, and English/language arts. Hawkins said the team of specialists came in acting like a team, something which she credits to the preparation provided by the state as well as the personalities of her specialist colleagues. "We did not march in like bulls into a china shop. The Lake View teachers are a very together group. They have a small community atmosphere here and they had a certain collegiality. When we came in with our own collegiality, it just sort of clicked," said Hawkins who lives in the same county as Lake View. Math specialist Teresa McDonald, who commutes 56 miles each way to her new job, said the specialists knew they would spend their initial weeks earning the trust of teachers. "We treaded water for a little while and eased our way in," she said. The specialists visited teachers' classrooms very informally, checked in with them during their planning periods, shared materials they thought would be valuable, and offered any sort of help that teachers wanted. The state's intention is that every specialist spend at least three hours each day in a classroom demonstrating lessons, team teaching, working with small groups of students, or observing teachers teaching. McDonald said it took about a month for teachers to seek out the specialists for assistance; this year, it took about a day. "Now, they know we're here to help improve instruction and that we're not here to take over their classrooms," she said. When the specialists arrived, Arnette set aside two hours each week to work with them on instructional issues: reviewing test scores, school improvement plans, individual student results, and more. This was the first time in his 13 years as a principal that he had done this kind of work. Arnette said those meetings began to change the way he viewed and did his job. "In a small school, you wear 25 different hats. I was really caught up in making the school run on a daily basis. I had no real long-term vision. It was just a survival thing." As Arnette learned from the specialists what his teachers needed to learn in order to improve their teaching, he decided he wanted to learn alongside his teachers. "I went with them to be part of the professional development that the teachers were getting. I was a participant with the teachers where I had not been before," he said. "My statement is this: If the teachers do it, then so do I," he said. The second big change came with Arnette's decision to create learning communities. The high school's block schedule enabled him to have teachers devote 90 minutes a week to learning communities work. But, because the school is small, he can't juggle the schedule to give all teachers in a department the same block for professional learning. That means the learning communities are cross-curricular, a disadvantage that has proven to be a boon for Lake View. "Now everyone knows what everyone else is doing. Math teachers can talk about what is going on in math class and English teachers can talk about English classes. They really flourished under that," Arnette said. One evaluation of the learning communities sums up the staff's general response: "I get the opportunity to see and work with colleagues more. I feel valued and rejuvenated." SUSTAINING GROWTHSouth Carolina never intended to leave the specialists in place permanently. Lake View was supposed to have specialists for only one year. But after Lake View's significant improvement in a single year, Arnette convinced the state to let them remain for a second year. "If you want long-term change, you've got to have them around for more than one year," he said. In their first year, Hawkins said the specialists focused on filling the big gaps, especially introducing teachers to new strategies. "I think we kind of opened their eyes to things that were out there that they just weren't aware of," she said. This year, the focus is on building capacity to sustain the growth. The meetings that were designed for the principal and the specialists have been expanded to include the department chairs to prepare them to take on greater leadership roles. As he had with the teachers, Arnette prepared the chairs for what would happen this year. If they weren't ready for that, he invited them to step aside. None of them did. "To educate them about new ways of teaching and then ask them to lead the changes at the same time, that's too much for anyone," Hawkins said. "They need as much time to develop leadership as they did to develop expertise about their teaching. "They are really troupers. They try really hard to understand. They communicate. They are not playing around," Hawkins said. But Hawkins reserves a special comment for Arnette. "You cannot imagine the professional growth of this principal. There is a difference when you have a principal who's actively supporting and one who's passively supporting. He's actively supporting. He's been with us every step of the way."
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