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3 Pillars for Instructional Leaders, Here and Now

by Sarah B. Ottow, Confianza Founder and Director

“We are stuck in logistics land,” is something I hear from instructional leaders I support almost daily. From teachers, “I’m not the same teacher online.” For many of us, this is all too true right now. Logistics are still very much the focus—not deep focus on teaching and learning—during this ongoing pandemic. Many classrooms are still having technical issues with poor wi-fi, devices, engaging students in new modalities, and helping families navigate new digital tools. Many districts are charged with making decisions about staying in a hybrid learning mode or going fully remote while coronavirus numbers increase in their surrounding communities.

Suffice to say, this is a very challenging time and a time like no other yet we can’t detract our focus from student learning. When we started online teaching and learning in Spring 2020, many of us thought it would be “emergency remote teaching” for a short time only, yet it has become so much more—an ongoing pandemic and ultimately a new way of teaching, learning and leading. “We can’t idle, but can slowly chug[1],” as we move through this current state of constant flux. We are all building a sense of what our unwritten new job descriptions entails and learning in real time many new skills and ways of relating with each other. What can instructional leaders do to support others effectively during this time of the ongoing global pandemic?

In a June 2020 study, Covid-19 Heightens the Leadership Gap, the Global Learning Services Harvard Business Publishing team learned how leaders from different industries across the globe have responded to and adapted through the Coronavirus pandemic as it relates to work. Although leaders, pre-pandemic, often experienced high levels of uncertainty as compared to those they support by virtue of their role, the requirements for leaders is vastly shifting and demands on leaders have greatly accelerated more than ever. Given that we are in a time that can, in fact, heighten the leadership gap, our goal is to not have our schools simply survive but to reach towards thriving through this uncertain time.

Let’s look at some steps educational leaders can take. We will look through the lens 3 pillars of leadership from what the Harvard study found:

  1. Leading through uncertainty,

  2. Cultivating trust and transparency, and

  3. Reskilling for opportunity.

Leading through Uncertainty

The progress of an effective leader is not impeded by ambiguity. Ambiguity and uncertainty, in greater part, comes with the job of any leader. This time of heightened uncertainty requires us to let go of assumptions and our old ways of doing things rapidly. We need to try new things and encourage others to do the same. We need to foster a growth mindset with ourselves and with others now more than ever so that others can also navigate the complexities of the ever-changing ways of schooling during a pandemic.

“What we don’t know scares us,” a leader shared with me the other day, explaining how some on his staff are anxious, some are striving for perfection, while others are resistant to change. We all have different responses to stressors and so it’s important that we, as leaders, model an inquiry-based approach. We need to show that admiring the problem doesn’t get us anywhere. Instead, we need to learn from what’s not working and execute the next steps within our sphere of influence. As leaders, we need to stress that success might look a lot different right now than what we are all used to. As one principal told me recently, “We are all failing greatly right now and that’s part of the process.” If failing is part of trying new things, then let’s redefine what success is and be sure to celebrate the small wins along the way.

Cultivating Trust and Transparency

During this time of an unclear future, our silos between work and home have blurred. Leaders have a critical role in supporting others’ emotional and physical health as well as balancing home, work and the current events shaping our unclear future. We can support others by continuously linking others’ roles to the larger purpose at hand which is to provide education to all students across our community. As global literacy researcher Marie Clay teaches us, there is a lot of value in “roaming the known” in our Zones of Actual Development, not just forging ahead to what’s next in the Zone of Proximal Development. As leaders, it is imperative that we make time and space to process together in this grey area and to process what we are experiencing together without judgement, fear, or more stress.

 “It’s the Year of Forgiveness,” is a helpful mantra to tell ourselves and others we support.[2] When others are looking for us on how to respond, we can be a little bit gentler with ourselves and with each other. We can leverage people’s differences to make teams stronger and more innovative. As leaders, we should be giving more autonomy, not less, and work hard to build a shared vision and strong community across our remote staff and stakeholders during this time of an unclear future. While leading virtually is not a skill set or a toolkit every leader has, we can and must promote connection, collaboration, and engagement so that everyone can move forward together.

Reskilling for Opportunity

Strong teams are essential for the effectiveness of a school, not just individual teachers or staff members’ competency. Therefore, leaders should be sure that teams are focused on the innovation needed to adapt to the changing landscape of schooling right now and into the future. One way of supporting teams is to provide support for learning new skills while also having time and space to process and roam the know. Like English Language Learners acquiring a new language, it’s more practical and useful to focus on growth, not just proficiency.

“We need to give teachers permission to be bad at trying new things,” a school leader asserted to me in a recent coaching session. While we all work to close achievement gaps over time and space and in a time of such challenges, we do so by building digital fluency. New tools and platforms provide opportunities to make teaching and learning exciting, more personalized, and focused on 21st century skills for students beyond their K-12 education to their future beyond. We can make the connections for teachers to transfer what works in face-to-face instruction to remote environments. The classroom practices that worked before don’t just go away. We still need to focus on cultivating a learning community, connecting students’ identities to rigorous content, and quick plan-teach-assess cycles to guide our instruction and leadership.

Leaders have a lot of power and part of this power includes becoming stronger in this uncertain time, perhaps even finding more opportunities for innovation and collaboration. Here are some guiding questions to help you move forward:

  1. What is your own personal comfort level with normalizing change? How could you improve your leadership strategy to help others adapt through this uncertain time?

  2. How are you currently cultivating engagement and trust in individuals and teams? How could you improve so that everyone has access to community and support?

  3. How are you providing time, space and resources to support people’s growth of new skills? How could you improve opportunities to help others learn new skills?


[1] Thanks to Zach Eldrige

[2] Thanks to Victoria Kelly