Principal Labs: What They Are and Why They MatterLately, there has been an awful lot of research confirming what so many of us probably already know: that building leaders have a tremendous impact on the success of the students in their schools. As evaluators, mentors, and an everyday presence in the school, building leaders are the most influential sources of feedback for teachers, so they must take on the role of lead learners themselves. Although we may recognize the importance of administrators as instructional leaders, developing their capacity to do so is something that doesn't get nearly as much attention as it deserves. Between busy schedules and limited budgets, professional learning for principals often takes a backseat to the many other obligations of their jobs. Moreover, when instructional leaders are fortunate enough to be able to prioritize their own learning, the options are slim. Principals can and do choose to attend administrative conferences, but the focus is often outside the scope of classroom instruction. While there may be a few choices focused on developing instructional leadership, the bulk of the offerings centers around scheduling, board relations, and athletics—in short, all of the things that keep administrators' attention away from where its impact is greatest: the classroom. Even when a session might address the needs of an instructional leader, the nature of these conferences often feels like it's a one-and-done experience, so ongoing support for this work is hard to come by. Resources like emails, webinars, and podcasts arrive in administrators' already stacked inboxes. Although these resources can keep leaders up to date, they can also have the unintended consequence of further isolating those who are already, in many cases, feeling very much on their own in their professional learning journey. Similarly, over the past few years as research on coaching effectiveness has grown, administrators have begun the practice of hiring their own coaches. While this is a much-needed support and can indeed assist principals in goal setting, reflection, and transfer of learning, it is largely still independent learning. In order to truly take on the work of becoming lead learners, building leaders must engage in professional collaboration. Fullan and Quinn (2016) explain, "If one wants to shift school, district, or system practices, one needs to have a strong learning design and deeper collaborative work" (p. 62). Any administrator who has ever been lucky enough to work with a strong, collaborative team would quickly recognize this. But between the daily demands of a busy building and increasingly limited resources, there is a significant gap between the demand for collaborative professional learning focused on instructional leadership and the everyday implementation of it. A Growing Need for SupportIt's no secret that recent years in education have seen a tremendous rise in pressure. Between the adoption of increasingly rigorous standards to a rapidly changing landscape of legislation and evaluation, stakes are high. And it's showing. A 2019 report from the Economic Policy Institute states that the shortage of credentialed teachers, especially in areas of high poverty, "is real, large and growing, and worse than we thought" (Garcia & Weiss, 2019). What's more is that, while the media may focus on the shortage of teachers, the same is true for building leaders. In their book Design Thinking for School Leaders: Five Roles and Mindsets That Ignite Positive Change, Gallagher and Thordarson (2018) cite research that shows an annual principal turnover rate of 20 percent overall among public school principals and 30 percent in schools that may be considered "troubled." While it may be tempting to blame teacher and principal turnover on factors like compensation, it's not that simple. Support, or lack thereof, is equally—if not more—prevalent. The same 2019 report from the Economic Policy Institute on teacher shortages cites lack of training and support as one of the major factors driving teachers from the profession. For a workforce that is increasingly comprised of millennials, research is emerging on what is needed to retain this growing demographic. Liana Loewus (2018) explains that central to their values are aspirations of leadership and needs for ongoing support and feedback. The need to support principals so that they, in turn, feel confident and well-equipped to give this necessary feedback is more important than ever. Likewise, the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) and National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP) (2013) found that primary reasons principals leave their jobs include feeling isolated and unprepared. As it turns out, principals aren't feeling too different from teachers in their need for support and collaboration. Support That SticksLearning Forward's standards for professional learning emphasize the need for feedback and reflection as well as for learning to occur within the context of collaborative teams: Learning communities convene regularly and frequently during the workday to engage in collaborative professional learning to strengthen their practice and increase student results. Learning community members are accountable to one another to achieve the shared goals of the school and school system and work in transparent, authentic settings that support their improvement. (Learning Forward, 2021)
Building this collaborative culture sounds far simpler than it is, and the bulk of the responsibility often falls to principals who are already overloaded. Because this is such a complex and nuanced process, the professional learning that principals themselves are participating in should model the same collaborative culture. So, while the content of the professional learning for principals must be grounded in research, so, too, must the practices. Professional learning that will truly support instructional leaders—and through them, their teachers—must Offer opportunities for coaching and transfer.
Where Principal Labs Come InAlthough huge strides have been made to structure professional learning for teachers in this way, it is long overdue that we take this research about professional learning to create structures that support instructional leaders. Any professional learning that is going to truly meet the needs of developing instructional leaders should address three major goals: Build relationships among all stakeholders. The research is clear on the power of professional collaboration and collective efficacy. And with so many people—from superintendents to building principals to instructional coaches—invested in instruction and supporting the cognitive and noncognitive aspects of student growth, it's important to intentionally cultivate collaborative partnerships in order to carry the learning beyond each experience. Calibrate thinking about students' and teachers' needs. This will help principals to be able to strategically offer feedback for teachers that is aligned, relevant, and responsive. Capitalize on time spent in professional learning. Because of the many demands and responsibilities of a building leader, it's crucial to both minimize the amount of time spent away from principals' buildings and to maximize the time spent with relevant experience and actionable discoveries. To us, this means that we need to keep the learning as close to the context of principals' buildings as possible through job-embedded professional learning opportunities.
Anyone who has ever designed or planned any professional learning surely recognizes that these three goals, though they may sound simple, are anything but. With seemingly infinite idiosyncrasies that are a natural by-product of the human nature of our work, calibrating feedback can be a surprisingly complex process. And, as just about anyone who has ever struggled to navigate workplace dynamics knows, building relationships is no easy feat. Neither of these goals can (or should) be done in isolation—or in isolation of the primary focus to build instructional leadership that is responsive to teachers' and students' needs. This is where principal labs come in. The principal lab is a structure that we developed as a part of one district's professional learning system when we recognized this complex need for support. These labs designed specifically for building and district administrators are tailored to their needs as instructional leaders. While structures like instructional rounds work to scratch the surface, principal labs offer a deep, intentional dive into supporting the whole instructional system—with leaders as the primary focus. Principal labs offer a structure for scalable, flexible job-embedded professional learning that combines instructional rounds and peer coaching in the context of a collaborative network of support. Within this structure of principal labs, which we'll detail in Chapter 2, principals build relationships with their colleagues to collaborate and form a network of professional learning, participate in an anchoring experience to work toward a common understanding or language of the lab's focus, and engage in at least one observation where they see the focus of the day's lab in action in their own buildings. Principal labs move deeper beyond instructional rounds by tying these observations to their anchoring experience and then through the facilitated reflection that happens after the observations. This component of the lab implements tenets of coaching to help principals reflect and analyze what they've experienced and make decisions about next steps forward. We initially designed the labs when we recognized a principal-shaped hole in our support system, and we found that, when we combined principal labs with other structures like PLCs, school improvement plans, and teacher learning labs, this administrator-centered professional learning can impact positive change in the whole school, district, and educational community. The Lab's ImpactWhen working together in a district of approximately 10,000 students and more than 25 administrators, we knew we had to be systematic about the who gets what and when of professional learning. To do this, we synthesized research related to student learning and applied it to adult learning. It was already established as a part of the district's culture that administrators attend professional learning alongside their teachers, and the practice of engaging in instructional rounds had been in place for a number of years. Still, though, something was missing. We assumed that having administrators participate in professional learning alongside their teachers would be enough, but it wasn't. There was tremendous benefit in their participation, but it was easy for a principal to spend a lot of time attending to initiatives for many different content areas and grade levels, and they sometimes reported they got lost in teacher learning and didn't know how to prioritize this time or effectively support teachers. Principal labs offer the opportunity to ensure that administrators more deeply understand the instructional initiatives in their buildings and can more confidently support the work teachers are doing. Once we introduced principal labs, we quickly started to see gains. Instructional practices began to shift in meaningful and consistent ways to create a shared understanding of how best practices play out in the district's classrooms. And, what's more, collaborative networks really started to gel in authentic ways. Principals began to feel more comfortable reaching out to one another and to those in the central office as collaborators, and teachers started to report that feedback from their administrators was more aligned with the professional learning and risk taking they'd been doing. In education, it often seems like anything you try to initiate is just a drop in the bucket—unlikely to have any lasting effect in a field where it feels like everything is working against us. It's true that without an intentional, systemic plan for support and without a coherent, collaborative team, any sort of instructional change will struggle to gain traction. But, with principal labs, we've found a means for systemic support and a deepened culture for professional learning that maximizes principals' time and builds efficacy for all involved. With an understanding of the beliefs, structure, variations, and logistics required, we believe that any member of the team—from consultants, coaches, and central office to building principals themselves—can plan and facilitate effective principal labs. No matter where you may fall in this range of roles, we hope this book will help you do that. In the first three chapters of this book, we'll share with you our beliefs and the research that make up the foundation of principal labs, and we'll describe some tools to put those beliefs and research into action. The goal is not that you execute a cookie-cutter template, but that you can use the elements of the principal lab structure to design professional learning that is responsive to the needs of any group you work with. Chapters 4–7 will bring theory to action with real-world examples from different types of impactful labs we've run. And, in Chapter 8, we'll share logistics that can help make planning your own principal lab a success. By reading this book, we hope you'll gain an understanding of the value of principal labs, research-based common elements that yield a successful lab experience for all, and tips and tricks to try along the way. We are thrilled to share with you a practice that has been the single most effective move we've made to transform leading and learning through shared learning, and we hope you'll walk away with the tools you need to make principal labs your own. Printed by for personal use only |
