Post 6- Daniel Pink and Motivational School Leadership Part 4: What does work? Mastery

One of the biggest complaints that I hear from the teachers is, “Great, another mandatory program.  We’re not using the last 8 programs hoisted upon us at the last 8 faculty meetings, SDAIE, Direct Instruction, Data Driven Instruction, Marzano Strategies, Thinking Maps, Differentiated Instruction, Explicit Direct Instruction, and Step Up to Writing.  And last year, there were 8 others!” It’s funny that they can all name the list of the latest programs.  The frustration is not with the strategies themselves, but that time is never given to master any of them.  And that is the second factor that Daniel Pink attributes to building motivation and engagement . . . Mastery.

In my early years setting up Professional Learning Communities at schools, I would come in like a whirlwind.  We’d identify essential standards at one meeting, analyze data at the next, create pacing guides at the next, write common assessments at the next, create a rubric and cut scores for those assessments at the next, learn about the flavor of the month of instructional strategies (because they’re all basically the same, it doesn’t even matter which one) at the next.  By then, the contract or grant was usually completed and we never actually got to the part that makes the difference, writing powerful lesson plans.

If I were to go back and do it all over again, I’d do it differently and I would combine autonomy (from the previous post) and mastery together.  Here’s how I’d do it.  First, I would say, “Your collaborative meeting time is for you to get together with others and write lesson plans.  As long as you’re doing that, I won’t interfere.”  I would begin with what’s most important (planning powerful lessons) and allow them an entire year to master the skill.  Every faculty meeting would be focused on lesson planning, there would be a section of the library with books about lesson planning, and my classroom walkthroughs would focus on the lesson plan of the day.

The following year, I would ask the question, “How do we know that the lesson plans we created last year were effective or not?”  This would lead to an understanding that we need to have some kind of assessment and data analysis tool in order to see if our new lesson plans were effective.  Two collaborative meetings a month would be to continue writing lesson plans and two would be for addressing the assessment and data analysis question.  Faculty meetings would focus on how to write effective assessments and use the resulting data effectively, the library and intranet would be filled with assessment resources, and my daily walkthroughs would focus on long and short term assessments.

The following year, I would ask the question, “So, what do we do if our data analysis shows that our lesson plans were not effective at reaching all students?”  This would launch a conversation about prevention, intervention, lesson study, and differentiating the lesson plans.  From that point, two collaborative meetings a month would be to continue lesson planning, one for assessment and data, and one for addressing the question of what to do with struggling learners.  Which week was which and exactly how the meetings are structured would be left up to the teachers.  Our faculty meetings would focus on differentiation and remediation, the library and shared folder on the network would be filled with differentiation resources, and my walkthroughs would focus on differentiation.

The following year, the autonomy would increase even more.  Three collaborative meetings a month would be for lesson planning, assessment and data, and differentiation and the fourth would be for whatever the teacher is passionate about.  It might be planning fund raisers or motivational assemblies or working with parents or setting up a tutoring center or starting a robotics club or assisting students with science fair or history day projects.  The opportunities would be endless and so would the engagement.  At this point, the REAL committees (see post 5) would recommend what professional development was needed, what additional resources could be provided, and what our Instructional Rounds should focus on.

This plan gives teachers a year to master each of the components of a PLC without moving too quickly or piling on the initiatives.  You might be saying to yourself, “Four years to set up PLCs???”  Every principal I’ve ever seen who tries to change things too quickly either doesn’t make it to the end of the year or gets some compliance and no engagement.   Beginning with the most important component first (lesson planning) would almost ensure early victories in the process and allow mastery before adding more components.

Combining some facets of autonomy with some facets of mastery could elicit high levels of engagement from a school’s faculty.  It could change the atmosphere of collaborative meetings, faculty meetings, and leadership meetings.  But best of all, it could change the quality of the interactions between teachers and students, the only thing that truly affects student achievement.

In the very first post in this blog series, I said that a principal’s job is to hire, train, and retain spectacular teachers.  This process will certainly bring on the kind of engagement that will improve the classroom practices of all teachers, be engaging enough to encourage teachers to stay at the school, and motivate outside teachers to want to be at this school.

What practices have you put into place that allow teachers to master their practice?  Tell us the story below.

Read Part 1 of this blog here

Read Part 2 of this blog here

Read Part 3 of this blog here

Read Part 5 of this blog here

Read Part 6 of this blog here

Tags: Professional Learning Communities, dufour, motivation, teachers, principal, leadership, school, mastery, daniel pink, michael horton

Post 5- Daniel Pink and Motivational School Leadership Part 3: What does work? Autonomy

In the last two posts, I wrote about two motivational strategies that Daniel Pink's research says do not work to motivate teachers (or anyone else) in creative endeavors: Carrot and Stick reward/punishment systems and If/Then rewards.  In the next three posts, I'll write about the three things that he says do work effectively to motivate people: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.  Finally, I'll write about the factor that I think Daniel Pink missed.  This post will be about the first element . . . autonomy.

Using autonomy to motivate and engage people is about giving individuals freedom within their jobs to direct themselves and the work, giving real input into the workings of the job, and allowing flexible grouping of employees to work on projects collaboratively.  In studies of organizations that practice this kind of motivational strategy, Pink found that creative solutions and products burst forth out of activities featuring high levels of autonomy.  Pink gives an example of Google's Friday activities.  On Fridays at Google, employees are allowed to work on whatever project they desire with whomever else they wish.  In this "20 percent time," more than half of Google's products (hence its profits) are generated.  It is said that employees show up early and stay until the wee hours of the morning working on these Friday projects.  And Google is not the only example.  Atlassian, FedEx, and Twitter also use autonomy days like these to motivate and engage employees.

Eric Sheninger, a principal and prolific Twitter user, has used this same strategy at his school.  Teachers are given time within the school day to work on creative projects of their choice with colleagues of their choice.  Here's more information: http://www.centerdigitaled.com/training/Googles-8020-Principle-New-Jersey-School.html and you can find Eric on Twitter at @NMHS_principal.  At one school I've worked with, we did something similar.  This school had four collaborative meetings a month on late-start days.  Originally, the principal gave an agenda for each meeting and teachers were mostly compliant, but not engaged.  Then, the principal changed the structure so that he created the agenda for 3 meetings a month and on the fourth meeting teachers were allowed to create lesson plans with any group of teachers they wished.  The result was spectacular cross-curricular, project-based common lesson plans.  But an even more important result was a happy and engaged faculty.

In my experience at a county office, I've seen how autonomy can change motivation as well.  As part of my work supporting Professional Learning Communities, one of our first activities is to show teachers how to use common assessment data to design interventions and change instruction.  So, we developed a Data Analysis Worksheet to help schools accomplish this task.  I dutifully took this DAW to several schools, trained them how to use it, and then watched it go completely unused for years because of a lack of motivation.  Now, when I start working at a new school, I ask them "What would you like to accomplish with your data?" and "What would you have to measure in order to accomplish that?" and then together we build a tool to do exactly what they want.  In every one of the schools that I've used this strategy, the worksheets get used regularly.  And the magic is that they look almost exactly like the worksheet that I used to give other schools that went unused.  What was the difference between the schools that used the data worksheet and those that didn't?  Autonomy

Another example came from a friend of mine, Stan Crippen.  Stan is retired now, but when he was teaching in a local high school, he helped set up what were called REAL Committees.  The acronym stands for Resources, Environment, Achievement, and Life-Long Learners.  Each committee was given autonomy to study issues, identify problems, and propose solutions.  For example, a question might come up at a faculty meeting about getting iPads for teachers.  The resources group would look around for grants to write and the Life-Long Learners group would set up fun trainings to show teachers how to use them.  I had the wonderful experience of reproducing this process at another school (who added a "Students" committee to make them "REALS Committees").  It literally changed the entire culture of the school.  The school went from an embattled relationship with the principal to a highly collaborative relationship.  When that principal left, the committees kept the school running smoothly for 6 months with an interim principal.  The REALS committees were able to implement a school-wide writing program with a common assessment, common rubric, and common data analysis worksheet!  An administrator or outside consultant never could have accomplished this through training and traditional motivation alone.  I uploaded a few slides from a PowerPoint that these teachers created to describe the REALS committees to their school board on my wiki, click here to have a look.

In the first post in this series, I wrote about how important teachers and the lessons that they teach are in improving student achievement.  This new motivational technique, autonomy, should be used where it is most powerful, in motivating teachers to create spectacular lessons, assessments, and interventions.  Autonomy works perfectly alongside PLCs, team-teaching assignments, leadership teams, School Site Councils, and other committees on campus tasked with affecting student achievement.  Pink says that people should have autonomy in four areas: Task, Time, Technique, and Team.  I cannot see how schools could be flexible with time as Results Only Work Environments do, but the other three areas leave plenty of room for autonomy.  Give teachers autonomy over what they do, how they do it, and who they do it with and they'll be motivated to do creative, fulfilling work.

There are many more examples of autonomy-based motivational strategies with teachers.  Please share yours in the comments section below.

How have you used autonomy to motivate teachers and change the culture of your school?

Read Part 1 of this blog here

Read Part 3 of this blog here

Read Part 4 of this blog here

Read Part 5 of this blog here

Read Part 6 of this blog here

Tags: autonomy, daniel pink, motivation, teachers, principal, leadership, michael horton, mike horton, drive

Post 4- Daniel Pink and Motivational School Leadership Part 2: What does NOT work? If/Then Rewards

In the last post, I wrote about how rewards only work for encouraging people to do tedious, non-creative, or straight-forward activities.  But rewards and punishments are not good for motivating long term, creative, innovative behavior.  What I didn't say is that even when rewards are appropriate, some reward systems are more effective than others.  And on the rare occasion that rewards do work, they simply motivate people to seek rewards, not participate in the anticipated behavior.  Not only does the research show that rewards do not work for creative behaviors, but they actually HURT the behavior.

Daniel Pink points out that the most common and least effective form of reward is the if/then reward.  For example, a principal might say, "If you have perfect attendance at faculty meetings, I'll enter your name into a drawing to win a good parking space."  The research on motivation shows that this type of reward might motivate attendance at meetings (a non-creative behavior), but that's not really the behavior that the principal wants.  We'll find out in future posts what strategies Pink suggests to internally motivate teachers to thoroughly participate in faculty meetings and other important activities.

They type of reward system that seems to be effective at motivating these low-creativity behaviors are "now that" rewards.  This would look like, "Now that you've completed typing the minutes from the last meeting, I'd like to give you this Starbucks card."  This makes people feel appreciated and doesn't lead to behavior simply aimed at receiving a reward because no reward was promised.

I know what you must be thinking . . . "But money must be the ultimate motivator.  Money works as a motivator, right?"  The research clearly shows that as long as the person feels like they're being paid fairly, then money is not a motivator and can actually reduce creativity and engagement.

In the next four posts, I'll share with you the three things that Daniel Pink writes about that can motivate people and the one thing that I believe that he missed.

For what activities have you found that rewards DO seem to work?  How did you set up the reward system?

For what activities have you found that rewards DO NOT work?

Read Part 1 of this blog here

Read Part 2 of this blog here

Read Part 3 of this blog here

Read Part 4 of this blog here

Read Part 5 of this blog here

Read Part 6 of this blog here

Post 3- Daniel Pink and Motivational School Leadership Part 1: What does NOT work? Carrots and sticks

The next two posts will be about techniques that Daniel Pink points out in "Drive" that do NOT work to motivate teachers (or anyone else for that matter).  Then after that will be the three techniques that DO work. Finally, I'll write about one big factor that I think Daniel Pink missed completely in his book.

First, you may want to brush up or refresh yourself on Daniel Pink's philosophy on motivation by watching his 2009 TED speech here, http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html. 

Pink points out that early motivation research focused on only our biological needs of hunger, thirst, belonging, etc.  After that came the punishment and reward philosophy of motivation or "external motivation."  For a long time, this was the one weapon in the arsenal of leaders despite the sneaky suspicion that it wasn't working and never really did.

Pink explains that external motivation, carrots and sticks, only works for routine tasks requiring little thought and/or creativity.  Although they might work to encourage teachers to submit their attendance on time, it is not effective for things like creating powerful lessons plans, collaboratively creating performance tasks with colleagues, or brainstorming solutions to deep school issues.

And I know what you're thinking . . . but when money is the reward, that must work, right?  Wrong.  As long as the person is receiving a salary that is fair, then money is not a motivator.  And for the most part, administrators have no control over a teacher's salary anyhow.  Most teachers are part of a lock-step salary schedule.

We need to find a better way to motivate the faculty and in the next post, I'll  discuss Pink's idea that in the rare occasion that rewards do work as a motivational tool, some forms of reward are more effective than others.

Where have you found rewards and punishments to be effective motivational tools in your school?  Where have you found them not to be effective?  Please leave a comment with your ideas.
Read Part 2 of this blog here
Read Part 3 of this blog here
Read Part 4 of this blog here
Read Part 5 of this blog here
Read Part 6 of this blog here

Post 2- Prelude to the Research: What is the Role of an Administrator

I think that we can probably all agree without providing a mountain of research that the job of an administrator is to ensure the deep, long-lasting learning of every student in their care.  Sure, there are other things that must happen too like buses arriving on time, formal teacher evaluations completed, open houses running smoothly, and football games being won.  But all of these things are secondary to student learning.  At Starbucks, they have to order sugar, wipe down tables, and interview new baristas, but that is all secondary to selling coffee.

So, if we agree that ensuring student learning is the ultimate job of the school and therefore the principal, then how does a principal do that?  One word . . . teachers!  There is a mountain of independent research that comes to the same conclusion, nothing has a greater impact on student learning than the adult standing at the front of the classroom . . . teachers!

Mortimore and Sammons concluded that teaching has 6 to 10 times the impact of ALL OTHER FACTORS COMBINED (caps added as emphasis, of course).  Marzano repeated a similar notion when he says that in the same school, one teacher can achieve 27% success and another 72% success with no other major differences than the adult at the front of the room . . . the teacher!  Eric Hanushek showed that 5 years of instruction from an above average teacher can completely eliminate the achievement gap.  These researchers showed the the impact of one factor can overpower the impact of ethnicity, family, poverty, schools . . . the teacher!

So, then, the role of the principal should be to do whatever it takes to hire, retain, train, and motivate great teachers.  This blog will be about the latter, how to motivate . . . the teacher!

Post 1- Motivational School Leadership Blog

Starting with Daniel Pink's "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us," I set off on a reading spree about motivation and influence.  As an administrator at a county office of education, my brain was constantly wondering how all of this information applies to schools.

I've worked with numerous principals who were unable to motivate their teachers to change or collaborate or analyze data and several who were highly successful at this.  The research shows that out of all of the factors that contribute to student achievement, the teacher and the lessons that they teach are BY FAR the strongest influence.  So, a school leader's job is simple, hire the best teachers, retain the best teachers, train the best teachers, and motivate the best teachers.  Most leaders know how to hire, retain, and train teachers.  But what about motivation?

I'd like for this blog to be a conversation.  I'll summarize some of the research and writings on the subject and I'd love to hear from administrators how they've used this information or how the information might apply (or not) to schools.

Over the next several months, I'll summarize books such as Drive, The Motivation Breakthrough, The Influencer, The Art of Influence, Flow, Tribes, Outliers, and several research papers on the subject.  I'd love to hear your opinions on how we can apply these powerful strategies to creating schools that are motivational, supportive, and highly effective.

Please lend your voice, share with your colleagues, and add to this important and valuable work.


Tags: motivation, teachers, daniel pink, drive, michael horton, mike horton, principal, autonomy, mastery, purpose carrots and sticks