WEBVTT

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Hello, my name is Sam Redding, and I am the Director of the Center

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on Innovation & Improvement, and we're in Lincoln, Illinois.

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We look for quick wins-ways that leadership can show to staff and community that problems

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that have existed prior to this can be addressed, can be solved in quick order,

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and so there is concrete evidence of improvement.

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What types of immediate changes are appropriate in a turnaround school?

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First is to focus on that word "immediate."

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They need to come about fairly quickly.

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Secondly, they need to be concrete and visible.

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Thirdly, they need to be something that's going to improve the daily situation

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of the people working in the building.

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And so we look for examples such as the physical appearance of the building.

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I have seen a situation where a principal thought that teachers needed some encouragement

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to share and work together and created a resource room in which it was well stocked

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with labeled materials, many of which had been produced by the teachers.

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But the leadership was able to make that room happen in short order,

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and it was a visible sign to teachers of the direction they were going.

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Addressing student discipline by putting administrators and deans and counselors

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and other staff in hallways to interact with students, to have a stronger presence,

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to give teachers confidence and assurance that things are improving.

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Examples might be a change in schedule, which could be a change in students' schedule

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if that is a problem that arises from the faculty.

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It could be a change in a teacher's schedule,

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and change in teacher's schedule is probably more likely to have the immediate effect

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that you are looking for in a quick win.

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Often times expectations are placed on teachers without adequate time to address them,

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so being able to change schedules to get teachers more planning time,

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to cluster teachers who are working together for planning time,

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that kind of thing can go a long way to help teachers see that things are changing.

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How does the principal engage teachers,

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other staff and parents-the school community-in accomplishing quick wins?

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And the first answer to that might be to engage them in identifying the problems

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that would be addressed with the quick wins.

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The leader must be certain it's something that they can pull off.

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In other words, there's nothing more demoralizing and counterproductive

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than to set a quick win goal and then falter in the process.

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And so that often means that it's something

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that the leader thinks they can accomplish pretty much on their own or at least without having

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to have the cooperation, support,

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and engagement of a large number of people that might yet not be on board.

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The point of it is to show that good things can happen in order to get them on board.

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It's important to make immediate changes in a school in a turnaround situation to signal

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to the staff and the community that things can get better because just ahead you are going

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to be placing demands upon them and raising expectations,

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and people are going to be engaged in very difficult work.

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And so they need some insurance on the front-end that this is not the same old school,

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that things have changed, that things are going to improve both in terms

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of the working conditions of the people and, ultimately,

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in terms of the learning results for the students.