- Anthony Muhammad Transforming School Culture Professional To Bring#
- Anthony Muhammad Transforming School Culture How To Develop People#
Muhammad is recognized as one of the field’s leading experts in the areas of school culture and Professional Learning Communities (PLC). His work has allowed him to work with schools in all 50 U.S. States, 10 Canadian provinces, the Caribbean, Africa, South America, Europe, Australia, and Asia.
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A former teacher and middle school principal, he is the co-author of “The Will to Lead, the Skill to Teach: Transforming Schools at Every Level” and the author of “Transforming School Culture: How to Overcome Staff Division.” He has presented his work on creating healthy school cultures to improve student achievement to many schools, districts and educational organizations, including Vallejo City Unified School District, Region 4 of the California Regional System of District and School Support, Martin Luther King Jr. Eyes on the Early Years Newsletter ArchiveAnthony Muhammad, author of The Will to Lead, the Skill to Teach: Transforming Schools at Every LevelFor Anthony Muhammad, a widely recognized expert on school culture, the success of California’s big push to improve public schools rests on the ability of administrators and teachers to put aside blame, learn to talk to each other and work together to support their belief that every student can be successful – which is his definition of a healthy school culture.Muhammad grew up in Flint, Mich., where he said he learned first-hand how teachers can subtly encourage or discourage their students. Local Control Funding Formula Explained California’s Homeless Students: Undercounted, Underfunded And Growing
Anthony Muhammad Transforming School Culture How To Develop People
What I’ve found is that when people get frustrated in an improvement process, they tend to gravitate to other people who share those kinds of frustrations, and cliques, subcultures and schisms start to develop in the organization.It’s not that some of those issues aren’t legitimate. Debra Colvard, the principal, was convinced that they had all the right technical mechanisms, such as instructional tools, in place, and that the issue was trying to get the people to actually use them.Muhammad: It started with, from the leadership perspective, involving the teachers and the community in developing what we call ‘collective purpose’: What are we trying to accomplish?The second major piece was to improve communication between the classrooms and leadership. And just last year, they became an 800 API (Academic Performance Index test score) scho ol. Many people are excited about new possibilities, but some might say, “Oh, yet another effort to reform.” What would you say is needed to make these new efforts effective?Anthony Muhammad: My message to legislators would be that reform takes time, it’s multifaceted and one of the biggest parts they’ve missed is that systems and leaders have to know how to develop people.Without leadership that has an understanding of emotional intelligence, and how to motivate and cultivate people, we’re going to get results like we’ve gotten over the last 15 to 20 years – a huge investment in the nonhuman parts of the organization, with little to no results.EdSource: How do you suggest school leaders motivate teachers, staff and each other?Muhammad: One of the schools I’ve work with is Martin Luther King Elementary School in the Central Valley, in Hanford, which, when we started with them about four to five years ago, was a Program Improvement school. At the same time, Common Core State Standards are being introduced. Excerpts of the interview are below.EdSource: As you know, California is in the midst of a momentous change in how it funds education, with more money intended to go to schools that have a high concentration of kids with low incomes.
So that’s why developing the collective purpose, and getting people focused on a common set of objectives, is very important, because that frames the conversation about communication.Muhammad: There are two parts to the building-trust-through-communication piece. Well, California is measuring schools as organizations, not as Mrs. And one of the issues that we face as a profession is that, for years, we’ve been in an individualized modality.When I was a teacher, I could go to my classroom, shut my door, and basically isolate myself from the rest of the staff.
Anthony Muhammad Transforming School Culture Professional To Bring
There are things that administrators have legitimate issues about with teachers, whether it’s not following the curriculum or whether it’s issues of professional behavior.This has to be a reciprocal process, but the administrator is definitely in the best position to lead the process through exhibiting humility.EdSource: Why is this kind of open communication important to school reform?Muhammad: Because developing changes to the school, as an organization, takes a high level of collaboration. You also have to open yourself up to the administrators communicating their issues with you. They have the power to assign teachers.There can be an intimidation factor that the leader has to recognize but if the leader is extending the olive branch, and is articulating that this is a safe process, teachers are more likely to participate.EdSource: And what do you ask of teachers?Muhammad: What I’ve got to help the teachers to understand is that if you feel that you’re a victim of poor leadership, and if the leader is extending an olive branch, you have an obligation as a professional to bring your issues to the table.
And this has been a part of our culture for a long time. I like to call a toxic culture ‘descriptive and deflective.’ So whenever problems arise – whether it’s parent involvement, whether it’s students who don’t speak English, whether it’s financial challenges – when toxic cultures are confronted with a problem, they get very vivid in their description of the problem, and their habit is to find other people to associate blame for the problem.So if a school has an issue with student attendance, in a toxic culture, people gravitate to other people who are flabbergasted about it, and they will complain about it. Habits take time to develop, and they take time to change. How does a healthy school culture operate?Muhammad: When it comes to the difference between a ‘healthy’ or a ‘toxic’ culture, it really boils down to a set of habits. So if a person has a personal pity party, and they find other people who share that pity party, they’re not spending their time doing the work necessary to help kids move forward.EdSource: You have written that a “healthy” school culture, not a “toxic” culture, is critical to effective school reform.
The state of California and other states have invested a lot of money on changing the systems, but they haven’t done a good job in trying to change the mindset or the habits. Well, why aren’t kids coming to school? Is the concentration higher in the third grade as opposed to the fifth grade?’ And they start to organize themselves to actually solve it.So we’re talking about a shift of habits that makes an organization productive or unproductive. It makes them unproductive.In a healthy culture, they say, ‘Okay. It doesn’t make those people bad people. Describe everything’s that wrong with the world, and then find other people to blame for it.
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