Hujhax – Under Pressure

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Today, was the first day I was not at school. Where was I, you say? Not sick, but rather with two partners in crime, colleagues Rustum and Raul, who, along with myself were invited by our principal to his district principal’s meeting in order to both observe a principal’s meeting and to present our math intervention program Kids Mastering Math to a group of about 70 principals, as well as the district’s Chief Academic Officer, Dr. Judy Elliott. Overall, it went really well, although I must admit how strangely similar a meeting of principals felt to a faculty meeting. They face challenges, unclear mandates, lack of communicative entities, and feel the frustrations of trying to gain the buy-in from their faculty. The biggest frustration about intervention for students is that there’s such a hard time getting faculty buy-in for it. Whenever you mandate something, folks will resist.

And they are absolutely right. Part of the big emphasis we pushed today was that Kids Mastering Math was not mandated on teachers and as a result, got a group of educators who “bought in” to a piece of intervention that could actually make a difference in the lives of kids. Unfortunately, many schools and districts took small successes in intervention a HUGE step too far and mandated it school-wide, which simply won’t work.

Here’s what I hope LAUSD will realize and do:

• LAUSD should not force schools to during-the-day intervention for schools who have continued to show marked improvement. Schools like Berendo, and schools like Virgil, who not only have shown success, but have great leadership models should be allowed to continue improving in the exact way they are right now.
• If LAUSD is going to mandate intervention, allow schools to implement it on a small-scale basis (i.e. across a grade level, or a single content area, or among students with certain scores only), and then expand based on real results! This way, you can get invested teachers to teach it, rather than try to convince an entire faculty that this won’t be another program that they will have to prepare for.

It shouldn’t need to be rocker science. Teacher’s buy-in when they see success and when they really trust the leaders. Start small. Prove your results. Get bigger.

In.

That.

Order.