"No Time"

“… if you want to change and improve the climate and outcomes of schooling – both for students and teachers, there are features of the school culture that have to be changed, and if they are not changed, well-intentioned efforts will be defeated (Seymour Sarason, 1996).

Borrowing from the 70’s Gold Record recording group The Guess Who, there’s No Time when it comes to the work we must do. The time is now!

Over the next two weeks, our ambitious plan for Human Capital Development and Capacity Building will begin to take flight.

Beginning with the Total Instructional Alignment work – the work to align Common core to the North Carolina Standard Course of Study followed by Leadership training in the four strands of the Learning Development Center work, the Anson County Schools will take an unprecedented step toward equipping our staff – all staff with the skills, knowledge, and experience to ensure each learner is successful.

The first two-day seminar of the Learning Development Center will focus on cultural literacy. Bringing into full focus, the cultural literacy seminar will connect the dots of the vision “all means all” and the learning for all mission with the Strategic Commitments as well as the other anchor documents and initiatives. All told, the cultural literacy seminar will raise awareness, create understanding, and create the context for the in-depth learning of curriculum alignment, power of teaching instructional practice, and the formative, summative assessment strategies.

By November, all instructional staff will have completed the cultural literacy strand. The plan tentatively calls for the first of the four-day seminars to begin at the end of January. Weaving the three strands of curriculum, instruction, and assessment literacy is instructional technology. To assist with instructional literacy will be our partners Apple, Discovery Learning, and A+ Educators.

Staff, beginning at AHS will learn to effectively implement Challenge Based Learning (CBL) as an instructional methodology incorporating mobile learning (aka Laptops) as the chief means of delivery.

However well intended, the Learning Development Centers are, the impact and eventual effect of learning will be evidenced only if the learning is applied authentically and with fidelity. There is no time for feelings or personal preference. The learning must result in changed thinking, changed behavior, and changed results.

Those captaining the Learning Development Centers must navigate the dissonance, reluctance, and apprehension of adult learners. No matter the resisting forces that are perceived to delay, obstruct, or prevent learning, these captains of change must persevere – no mater what – no time!

To assist the Learning Development Center Coordinators will be the building administration. Without question, building administration must live up to responsibility, accountability and authority necessary to ensure deep implementation through relentless monitoring.

Though not the only means for building capacity in our principals, we will leverage both the Learning Development Centers with other learning opportunities to ensure that, in fact, principals have the skills, knowledge, and experience to produce different results.

There is simply no time for best intentions, excuses, or explanations as to “why” performance is not improving.

Lastly, the role of central leadership must also shift – no time. I can no longer spend time building capacity of central office to accept and embrace the mantel of leadership including the responsibility for classroom let alone school level performance.

This is serious work that requires serious people that understand that there is no time for any thought that central office is some respite from “real” work or a reward for anything less than accomplished leadership. There is no time!

As we prepare for the upcoming weeks of adult learning, two questions must be at the forefront – constantly and consistently. They are:

1. If we are to improve, what must I do differently?

2. If we are to improve, what must we do differently?

There is no time to wallow in historical explanations of excuses for not performing at higher levels. It begins with each individual then each grade level, each subject area, each school, each department permeating throughout the system and community.

There is no time better than right now, right here to make this happen.