WEBVTT

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My name is Nathan Glockle. I'm principal
at Laura MacArthur Elementary School in Duluth, Minnesota.

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To give you a little bit of background on
the turnaround efforts at Laura MacArthur,

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our school was labeled a Priority school as
a persistently low-performing elementary school

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in the state of Minnesota. We needed to really
ramp up our efforts in helping our most at-risk

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children. We had a comprehensive need assessment,
and we looked at what were the things that

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were working, what were the things that weren't
working, and we got our Leadership Team together

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and we started to talk about the things that
weren't working. And we had already discussed

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what had worked in a survey when I first got
here. It was differentiated instruction in

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math, it was guided reading, and it was small
groups. And so we took that and for the last

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two and a half years, that's what we've
been focusing on.

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Before our Priority label in 2012, we had
met two different Saturdays with the Leadership

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Team to begin the conversation about what
our vision might look like. And we developed

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a vision, and that vision is to be a Reward
School in 2015 and say we did it together.

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And with that in mind, we really tried to
implement things that were simple to understand,

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and it's something that everybody had a
piece in. We talked and brought everybody's

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core beliefs to the table, and we believed
that we could be, and so really, from the

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very onset, it was giving problems and challenges
over to the staff.

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I could always tell people what to do, but
in order for transformation to happen it had

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to come from them. One of the reasons I believe
we have such high staff engagement is, staff

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are empowered to take ownership of their situation
of people's problems. It's about people

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not telling people what to do but asking them,
"What do you think the solution is?" And

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so I sat through meetings after meetings and
just brought people together, and I think

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that's the essence of leadership—is to
bring people together to talk about problems

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and solutions.

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Our school improvement plan was written by
our staff, our School Improvement Grant was

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written by our staff, and the Leadership Team
saw what can be done when they're working

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together, and they brought that sense of collaboration
and teamwork to their grade-level teams. Everybody

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was engaged and they felt that their voice
was going to be heard. And so, when we look

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at the amount of turnover, it's been very
minimal because they're committed and they

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want to see this thing through.

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We've seen some tremendous gains in a short
period of time in closing an achievement gap.

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We went from the bottom 5% to the top 1% in
the state in closing an achievement gap. And

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there's a lot of different things that had
to happen in the building, but we really capitalized

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on the low hanging fruit that was in the building,
and engaged every single staff member in the

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building to get their oar in the water.