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Brandon Adame is a third grade teacher at Blandford Elementary School. When this story was told, he was a second grade teacher at Blandford.
My first encounter with Ball was when I worked on one of the strategic planning teams for the district. My principal proposed that I be a part of the process, so I said, “Okay. I’ll see what this is all about.” Quite honestly, I didn’t know anything about Ball and I had no idea what I was getting into. Basically, what we did was meet and talk about where the district is currently, and where we want it to be based on our vision.
At first I was really skeptical and felt intimidated. Our strategic planning group was made up of teachers, principals, and parents from throughout the entire district, and I was a first-year teacher – straight from college. But in the end, I think it was good that I had just come out of college. During the process, I remember thinking, “Okay, what do I want?” So I read my old essays that I wrote in college about what I was going to do as a teacher and how the kids were going to do this and be so great. When I read that, I thought, “Wow, that’s so not what it is.” But I knew we could get there – and that’s what I think I brought to the process.
Ball gave us the opportunity to have an open forum to talk as if there were no limits on what we could do. They said to us, “Forget about the limits. We’ll worry about that later. Let’s talk about what you want.” So every day we started by saying, “Don’t have limits. Don’t say we can’t do this.” Instead, we talked about where we wanted our students to be, and about what we could do if there were no testing or monetary limitations. For me, it was really refreshing to sit down and get back to basics, and to see what everyone wanted for the students. We all wanted the same thing, but we all felt that testing prohibited that. The process also changed my thinking to, “Let’s think beyond testing, and maybe eventually we’ll get rid of the things that are holding us back.”
One thing we started talking about was technology. A lot of students have access to computer labs, but not their own computers. So we said, “Imagine a day where kids have their own laptops and can access the internet at any time.”
I think the greatest thing that we talked about was changing the whole report card system. Instead of having letter grades, have an individualized action plan for each student based on their strengths and needs, and actually have students demonstrate their knowledge through different means – not just test taking. For example, if students like to work with their hands, say to them, “Build this for me.”
Talking about the whole structure of education, and especially the report cards really made me think, “Wow, I’ve been stuck with the same model and haven’t thought of other ones. But thinking about these new models – wouldn’t that be a great thing to see happen with the kids?”
The hardest part of the process was the word-smithing that we did. We would develop a couple of objectives for our action plan, and then someone would say, “I don’t feel comfortable with that word, let’s change it.” Or we’d say, “We agree that we all believe this should happen for kids,” and then someone would say, “You know what? I don’t quite believe that.” So, we’d go back to the drawing board day after day, and we’d e-mail each other, “Is this okay? Do you think this would work?” We’d think we were done with our action plan, and then the next day someone would say, “Well, I don’t quite feel comfortable.”
So that was the hard part. We kept going back and changing it. Every single time we did that, my ideas changed. In fact, everyone’s ideas changed and we’d be back at square one. At first, it was pretty annoying. I was like, “Come on, guys, just settle for it.” But I think that was the best part because people had so much buy-in – they didn’t want to just settle for it. They wanted something that everyone was proud of, and that everyone felt comfortable with. I think that’s what we ended up with, too. So that was a very good thing.
I’ve been able to implement some of the things that came out of the strategic planning process, like the APA principles that we talked about. Honestly, I may have heard about the principles in college, but here we actually looked at them and dissected each one. I have them on the wall in my classroom now, and I look at them when I do my lesson plans, trying to accommodate the students’ needs. I also have little notebooks in which I make notes about the kids and what their strengths are. For example, in a science lesson I’ll let the students use different ways to show me what they learned. That’s really helped me out a lot.
I’ve noticed that the enthusiasm of my students is changing because now I’m targeting their strengths and letting them show me that they know something. A lot of my kids can’t pass a paper and pencil reading comprehension test, so instead I’ll ask them verbally to explain what’s going on in what they read – which is something they can do.
My relationship with other teachers has changed as well. During meetings, I now express different points of view, and I open my mind to new things. I also participate more, and I think I add a little more to conversations because of what I’ve learned and what I’ve learned from others.
Being part of this process was a great experience for me. I’ll be honest with you, it wasn’t the easiest thing. It was a lot of work, but at the end, I think we all looked at each other like, “Wow, we all gained a lot from this.” So, it was definitely worth it.
Word cloud created at wordle.net.
Rosemary (Santos) Aguilar is Director of Curriculum and Staff Development.
I think that we are fortunate to be in a partnership with Ball right now, because they have helped us go through the budget crisis. Our district, as we know it, has been — I do not want to say destroyed — but pretty much decimated in the sense that it is going through some difficult changes.
At this point, we are in the process of rebuilding, and part of that rebuilding is creating a strong foundation on which to build. I think that this year Ball has been very instrumental in helping us build that new foundation by helping us see new ways of working, new ways of thinking, new ways of designing.
The new way we are working is more organic. We are more relaxed. We are more concerned now with the content and the quality of the conversations, and we have allowed ourselves the time to think, to share, to question; whereas in the past, that was not really the practice.
We do not know what next year is going to look like. We have some ideas, but they are changing every week. Part of what we have had to deal with is the uncertainty and being okay with the fact that we do not know. I personally have not been told what my role for next year will be. However, it is okay, because I know I am going to be part of the new Rowland. Therefore, whatever role I end up in, I feel that it is going to be a place in which I will be able to continue to grow and develop as a professional.
We all respond to change differently. The fear in change is not knowing or not having the information or the knowledge about the change. The fear is based on the unknown. I think that is the piece. That is the bloodline that Ball is giving us, because they are constantly talking to us about the change process, about how it is chaotic and it is uncertain. Therefore, instead of just experiencing all the confusion, the chaos, the uncertainty, and not having anyone, Ball staff is telling us, “It’s okay. This is what happens. You are going to feel this way. These reactions are normal.”
If it were not for the Ball staff, I do not know that I would be able to say what I’m saying. I don’t know that I would be as hopeful. You know how when somebody is not doing well and cannot take care of himself or herself that they actually need somebody else to help them through those hard times? That is how I see Ball for us.
The next two years are going to be important because they are going to create the foundation of the new Rowland. I see Ball playing a very important and critical role as our partners in this process. Our critical friends – that is what they are – critical friends.
I am very hopeful for our district, because we have to go through this. We don’t have a choice, but we’re in good hands with the Ball Foundation.
Word cloud created at wordle.net.
Terry Amaya is a history teacher at Giano Intermediate School. When this story was told she was a seventh grade math and science teacher at Giano.
It’s been nice to have had a chance to talk with teachers from other schools at the district-wide meetings arranged by Ball. I taught in elementary before this year, and the only teachers we ever communicated with during workshop trainings were from elementary. So it was really interesting to hear the perspective of high school and middle school teachers, and what problems they were dealing with. A lot of their issues were similar to what we were dealing with at an elementary level, like motivating students.
We tried to come up with ideas of how to motivate students, but first we discussed why this lack of motivation exists. What is it that happens to the students? Why do they lose their motivation to learn? What kinds of experiences can we create for them to become motivated? One of the high school teachers felt that some programs were made too available for the kids. For example, the Mt. Sac Community College program that helps Nogales High School students catch up with classes. They’re allowed to take night classes when they fail a subject at school. So we thought, “The students know they can make up the class so they relax about doing well at the high school, and then later try to make it up during the summer or in the evening.” I thought that there are probably many students who actually need to re-take those classes, but I could also see how some would rely on that opportunity. The next time the teachers get together, I would love to hear about some strategies for motivating kids that other teachers have tried that I can take back to my class right away and use.
It’s been interesting and beneficial working with different people. You don’t realize that there are so many other people with so many ideas. And that’s what I’ve enjoyed – talking to others and seeing the excitement in their eyes about what they want and plan on doing. It motivates me to say, “Okay, I’m going to try this.”
Word cloud created at wordle.net.
Rob Arias is the Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources.
The work with Ball has made me more cognizant of the idea of having more people involved in discussions and decisions regarding what we do on a daily basis. I think I’ve been trying to encourage that more. Personally, I feel like I’ve always been pretty collaborative in the way I do my work, but I think I recognize now that it’s not just a matter of having a collaborative leadership approach. You might have that, but in order to make that real, you almost have to make a conscious effort to get more people involved. I’ve always known this, but I think it has become clearer that a lot of people don’t have access to information that could be helpful.
For instance, there have been times this year during some open public meetings where questions were being asked about delicate and difficult matters regarding layoffs. Some of the questions didn’t have to be answered, and I had a choice there, personally. I could have done the administrative two-step and shuffled my way through those questions without answering them. But I thought it would be better for me to be very upfront about the challenges that the district was facing – to try to be as clear and transparent as possible.
Now, was my choice to do that a result of the work that we did through the Ball Foundation and our strategic plan? You know, it’s hard to say exactly. But I think it did have some impact. I think you have to practice those behaviors of being clear and transparent, and I think I’ve been practicing them because of the work I did with strategy eight. And I think as you begin to practice that, it becomes part of a fabric of what you do.
So, the impact of me being open, transparent, and just laying it out there for folks was very positive. I don’t think anybody was crazy about my answer or said, “Way to go!”, but I think it settled that particular audience. They could accept the reality that we had to deal with because they understood it. I also think the fact that I didn’t have to answer any more questions about the subject once I spoke about it in a very open way was evidence that the approach was the appropriate one.
Word cloud created at wordle.net.
Lee Austin is a sixth grade teacher at Killian Elementary School.
My last meeting with Ball was a really good learning experience for me. We watched the video about the artist from a Scandinavian country [Andrew Goldsworthy] who was putting together rocks on the beach to make a nature structure that would eventually be torn back down. My first reaction was that this art was pointless because it just gets destroyed. But then when we discussed the movie in our groups, the people in my group pointed out that the movie shows the building up of something and the learning from mistakes.
What the artist was trying to convey is that even though he was frustrated by the process, he was learning and progressing every time he rebuilt the structure. The structure got larger, and the artist was becoming more competent. He said, “That’s my art. I’m getting to know my stones better.” His goal was to make it look like some kind of a conceptualized idea that he had. He said, “I would like it to be this big, this tall, this wide,” but it kept falling in on him. He built the structure like four or five times. I don’t think he ever completed what he wanted, but it just shows that even though our goals may be higher than our achievements, we can still see growth even though we fall short of our goals.
There was an analogy that could be drawn from the movie. Building the structure was like working with your students. You learn to work with whatever stones you have and build the best you can. It’s very much like getting to know your students better even though all of them don’t necessarily build the house that you had anticipated or you don’t always get the cohesiveness of your goals. The structure getting torn down is similar to your class getting rebuilt ever year. Each year you get a whole new set of stones and you have to try to build your model again. You have breakdowns and trials and tribulations, but as you get to know the stones better, you can make a better structure out of it. Then hopefully the structure is better in June than it was in September.
I can see that analogy now, but I didn’t get it initially. My understanding of the video was brought out by the other people. So I think it’s important that people have the opportunity to interact because you can see so many different things from different perspectives. It helped me see a more positive message from that video than what I had understood on my own. I would have never gotten that in a traditional meeting where I would have just sat down, watched the video, smiled and said, “Thank you,” and then walked out the door.
I appreciate the fact that we have an opportunity to interact collegially for we don’t usually get to do that. I am sure you have heard many times that teachers are such isolated professionals who get very little chance to interact. With the Ball Foundation, we have gotten the opportunity to really discuss and collaborate on our thoughts and ideas without a lot of pressure or time constraints. It’s nice to interact with people that I have known for years and find out that some people still have real positive attitudes towards school and are looking on the bright side rather than the dark side of life.
I also shared the story of the film with my students, and like I am doing right now with you, I did the same thing with the kids. I said, “I went to a meeting and here is what I saw. I got to see that the point of this film was that we can learn from each other, and that sometimes, even if we don’t understand something, if we work together, we might be able to help each other understand it.” The students responded positively. They got it, they understood it. I’ve got a really good group of sixth graders, and we’ve done a lot of collaborative work together doing our science lab investigations. The kids are learning to work together and they can see the value of all that interaction.
Word cloud created at wordle.net.
