Currents in Literacy

Professional Development: One Principal's Recipe

By Mike McCabe

About ten years ago I became involved with the Principals' Center at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where I met principals and HGSE faculty struggling with connecting research to practice. I also found dedicated people who love kids and are committed to "building learning communities" for ALL children and the adults who work with them. The Principals' Center provided me with unique opportunities to meet researchers, authors, faculty, and practitioners from around the world. The intellectual stimulation quickly became addictive. I joined the Advisory Council and began attending programs. The whole idea of the Principals' Center was built around the notion of an ongoing "conversation" about education, teaching, and our "practice" as administrators. These conversations took place at dinners with authors, fireside chats and formal presentations. During my first few years at the Center, I attended the annual Summer Institute, an intensive ten-day professional development program. I returned the following year as a Group Leader and feel privileged to return each summer. This past summer the topics ranged from experiential education and standards based education through the policies and politics of education. The overarching vision of creating inclusive learning communities through transformational learning and leadership is by far the most fascinating aspect of study for me.

We often compare planning the Institute to setting the table; the real fun and excitement comes when our invited guests arrive. Our guests are one hundred and twenty principals from around the world. They come from private and public schools, from rural, urban and suburban communities from as far away as China and Australia and as close as Cambridge, Massachusetts. They come with a common desire to learn and to share. They come to learn from the Institute staff and from each other. They come to share their experiences, knowledge, and culture. Most of the participants come expecting to "learn something at Harvard," and they leave feeling changed. They may have come expecting to learn "facts," but they leave with confidence in themselves and an understanding that learning is really a lifelong journey. The institute ends but the professional development opportunities continue through informal discussions and communication and through formal programs at the Principals' Center.

As I have had the opportunity to experience the transformative power of participating in the professional development sponsored by the center, I am committed to - even passionate about - creating equally important high quality professional development programs and opportunities for the staff at the Thompson School. It presents the only logical way to move forward. The only real opportunity for change. I believe that teachers are professional, they basically want to do the right thing, and they want to improve their own practice. It is my role to support the continuous professional development of the people closest to our children.

For many years we have engaged in the struggle to identify high quality options for teachers, searching for a model that would lead toward the improvement of instruction. I now prefer to think more about a recipe than a model. The recipe involves thinking about the teacher as the chef. The principal or school system can provide the ingredients or raw materials but the teacher must add the art, science, skill, and passion to create the masterpiece. The metaphor also forces us to look back a step and involve the teacher in selecting the recipe itself.

Our work with Lesley University through the Hood Children's Literacy Project and with the Literacy Collaborative (LC) are great examples of relevant, high quality professional development programs. They are both programs that loosely follow this recipe. The initiative for our work with both programs came from the staff. It grew out of the success of the Reading Recovery Program and a desire for teachers to take the most successful techniques from this program and apply them to the classroom. The LC program provided the structured training/education for five team members who are expected to take a leadership role in supporting the rest of the K-2 staff.

The Hood Project has actively supported the teachers by connecting their concerns and needs to the research base, literature, and the efforts of scholars like Ellin Keene, author of Mosaic of Thought, and Ralph Fletcher. The Hood Project staff have helped us by building on where we were, by creating a leadership team, and by providing resources to assist at every level of implementation, from materials through classroom assistance. Keene's recent visit was an excellent opportunity for the Thompson teachers to observe the practice they had already read about in Mosaic and then probe and clarify further. The faculty is very excited about Ralph Fletcher's visit in November to keep the momentum of inquiry going.