Category Archive

Elaine McCauley is the principal of Farjardo Elementary School.

One thing that surprises me is the extreme commitment of the Ball partners. My very first contact with some of them was when they came in and met with the elementary school principals. I remember thinking, “Well, I might see one or two of them along the way sometime,” but they are here, and they are a part of us. We’re not a large district, but I think it’s amazing, considering how many of us there are, to feel that I can email Barbara Iverson and say, “I’m in a sticky situation. I’m trying to move this way with the staff. Can you help me think it through?” Or seek out Bob Hill at a meeting and ask him a question very comfortably. They feel like they’re a part of us.

Another thing that the Ball Partnership does differently than other consultants that have been brought into the district is they live what they say. They don’t come in proclaiming, “We’ve done the research, this is what we think this is best, and this is what we need you to do if you’re in partnership with us.” They come in as critical friends and as thought partners. They work with us to tap into our best thinking, and help us to find our highest purpose, and the best means to go about it. That is hugely different from any other partnership that I think you would find in education.

A key experience for me was working in conjunction with the Ball partners on the strategic plan for the district. I was the action team leader for Strategy Five, which stated, “We will ensure superior certificated and classified employees.” That experience didn’t cause just a minor shift in my thinking, but more a seismic shift in my thoughts about what it means to really collaborate and center our focus on our students, and what we can do to make a difference for them.

The strategic planning process was made possible by the partnership with the Ball Foundation, and their resources to help us. It became evident early on that to support the focus on literacy, we needed to look at what we believe and how we work with each other and the students. The strategic plan was an attempt to align these things. I learned a lot from Ball’s resources, including Stephanie Pace Marshall. She came in and spoke to us about her experience with planning, how she worked with her staff and how they lived into their strategic plan, and the whole idea of transformational change and an emerging system. It made me realize that the system does have to change in order to support the things we need to do

We learned to work at a deeper level of collaboration with the Ball partners acting as our thought partners – asking the right questions and helping us to clarify our thinking. That was key. For myself, I saw the Ball partners as models. I observed how they worked with both large and small groups, and watched the way they asked questions. They helped people to think through things.

I felt like I came out of the process with a renewed excitement about the potential of the work that we do on a day-to-day basis, and a keen understanding of Ball’s original statement – that the excellence we need is here. We just need to connect and tap into it for the benefit of everyone.

One of the key things that’s happened for me as a result of my work with Ball is I spend much more time getting ready for staff meetings. I now see that the design and planning of those meetings is very critical. I no longer walk in and say, “Let’s talk about the balls for the playground.” That’s something that can be handled on a piece of paper very quickly. What I’ve been working really hard to focus on with the staff is, “What do we believe about our work here at Farjardo? How do we build true collaboration?”

It’s just like the district at large. We are a microcosm of the district, and I have some people who are highly involved and have been a part of many of these activities. And then there are others who reluctantly attended the Articulation Days, and the Immersion Day and the World Café, and are still in that “gaining awareness” stage. Maybe they’re ready to jump into the collaborative process with their colleagues, or maybe they’re not yet ready to say, “This is what we believe. As we look at our mission, this is who we are and who we want to be and where we want to go.” We’re all in the process somewhere. Sometimes that’s hard. I have a sense of urgency about where we need to go. So I have to stop and slow myself down sometimes, and realize that everybody is not there or, at least, not ready to go there yet.

What Ball is doing is getting us there. They are giving us a lot of experiences in working with each other. They are also making resources available to us like the facilitation training, which helps me with that sense of urgency. Instead of trying to move things along, I need to stand there and let the thinking and the process happen – which ultimately helps me be better at what it is I do in a leadership role. I feel like I’ve really tried to practice more courageous leadership. When my staff says, “We’re not sure about this,” then I may be trying too hard to go in a certain direction. So I respond by asking them to tell me what I can do to help us all move along better.

I’ve also learned that I don’t need nor should I provide the answers. I need to step back and let the people who ultimately have the problem to own the problem; to find the solutions themselves or with their colleagues. I think that’s hard because sometimes people expect you to have the answer and to give it to them. But then they don’t have ownership of anything, and we need to share both the ownership and the leadership. Even when we do the hard work around the restructuring of the district – which is scary – it’s still exhilarating and transformative because of the way we are approaching it and the ownership that everyone shares. We’re dealing with some major challenges, but we look at it in a positive way and say, “This is a chance for us to begin looking at the way we do business.” Still, this has been a challenging year for us. I heard Bob Hill say that it’s difficult because we’re trying to create a new system while still working in the old system, and that’s always a struggle because the old system keeps tugging. But what a perfect time to try to make that leap into a new emerging system.

Good stuff is going to come out of this, and that’s the seed of all these factors that are forcing us to do things we wouldn’t have ordinarily done. We’ll have in place something that can just explode. Ultimately, I would love to see us leading the way in changing education.

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