Getting students through the door is only half of the attendance problem. In this webinar, we share how two New Mexico school leaders improved student attendance and engagement by partnering with caregivers, tracking absences to find causes, and making school a place kids want to be.
The session features a district view from Superintendent Kevin Summer of Bloomfield Schools and a building view from retired middle school principal Licia Hillman, moderated by eLuma’s Brandy Samuell, M.Ed.
When a student keeps missing the same day, ask the student and family why before treating it as a discipline problem.
Make weekly positive phone calls so caregivers hear from school when their child does something right, not only when there’s trouble.
Recognize improvement, like five days attended instead of three, and reset class attendance contests weekly so every student gets a fresh start.
Hi there. Welcome to eLuma, we’re so glad to have you all today. We run a pretty informal webinar style. So if you have questions, please feel free to put those in the chat. We’ll actually answer everything at the end. But if you have something very pressing, of course, please reach out in the and ask your eye. I will stop and help you. You’re welcome to turn on your captions if needed. All the captions will come across in English. I’m just really glad that you’re here today. I know that all of us working in schools are facing a very present topic today of not only getting students to attend, but also to invoke their engagement once we have those students at school, and in addition to get engagement from families and caregivers and the parents. So hopefully We will have some strategies today. I always tell everyone before we begin a webinar or begin a training series, you’re not going to hear anything new. Maybe just hear a different way to think about something or a strategy that you haven’t tried. Welcome to Engage Caregivers, Transform behavior around table discussion. Our mission here at eLuma is to help all students achieve their potential.
And what we do here is we partner with districts to help you guys build your capacity so that you can reach as many students as possible and to put school-wide wellness solutions in place. Today, I’m so fortunate to have Alicia Hillman and Kevin Summers with me. I’ve been so blessed in my life to work with some great people, and I was fortunate enough to work with Kevin and Alicia for about four or five years in Roswell, New Mexico. At the time, both were school principals, and I had the privilege of watching them both grow into the positions that they’re in now and become incredible leaders in very different capacities and different demographics. So first off, I would like to introduce Alicia Hillman. Alicia is a retired Principal from Roswell Independent School district. Alicia was the Principal at Burindo Middle School, and she’s now a Consultant for New Mexico Public Education Department. So Alicia, I’m going to just hand it to you for just a second to tell us a little bit yourself. Hi.
Thank you, Brandy, for the introduction. I came out of a school district of about 10,000 students. Our school was approximately 725 students when I left a middle school, sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. I do some transformation monitoring now for the state, as Brandy mentioned, and other capacities during education webinars and different events like that.
Thanks, Alicia. I’d like to turn it over to Kevin Summers. Kevin is the current superintendent of Bloomfield Schools in New Mexico. And in Kevin’s prior life, I worked with him as a principal of a middle school in Roswell, New Mexico. So Kevin, I’m turning it to you.
Yeah, good Good morning, afternoon, evening, whatever it happens to be. Thank you, Brandy. So as Brandy said, I’m the superintendent of Bloomfield Schools currently. We’re located in the Four Corners region of the United States, where Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah meet. And so So I think we’ve got some really interesting demographics and challenges to share with you to give everyone some perspective. Bloomfield School district is about 1,500 square miles geographically, and we have about 2,500 students where about 40 % of those students are or Navajo. And then the other 60 % are an even split of Caucasian and Hispanic students. So really happy to be here, and thanks for having us.
Thank you so much. And I’m Brandee Samuel. I’m currently the Director of Product for K-12 Mental Health, Behavioral and Related Service Solutions here at eLuma. I’ve been here going on three years. Prior to eLuma, I have 32 years public school facing I started out as a Gen Ed teacher and morphed my way into various roles. I’ve been fortunate to be in rural, urban, and suburban areas, and I was in the virtual world prior to COVID. So that was interesting to see what the virtual world work like on a day-to-day basis, and then what we all moved into. I’ve been a school counselor. I spent about 10 years as a special Ed director, and then I was an assistant superintendent as well. I like to say that ALUMA is the culmination of all those things. And what I really love about being here is I get to work with so many educators to impact even more students. So at any rate, we’ll get started. And again, thank you so much for being here. So why do engagement an accountability matter. When we think about student success, we know that student success comes from a positive environment and when students feel they’re part of a community and they have a sense of community.
In order to build student success, we have to have collaboration between all the stakeholders: the school leader, parents, guardians, the community, teachers, everybody that touches that child and the student. When we’re able to have these collaborative interactions and work together and not against each other, we’re really able to foster that sense of community, which leads to student success and leads to building an overall positive school climate and culture. We know that this is much easier said than done with all the pressures that we feel from the outside today. We do, and research tells us, and we’re able to observe this. So not just from a research perspective, but from a more informal perspective, we’re We’re also able to see that when students feel a sense of community, that we’re able to promote resilience in those students, build protective factors, and decrease risk. And we know ultimately that leads to positive post-secondary outcomes as well. So how do you foster accountability and engagement within a school when we think about all the outside influences that we have in place and the requirements of today’s education system? So really, we need to think about the role of parents.
The role of parents has always been so important. And when I talk about parents, I’m talking about caregivers, I’m talking about guardians, because we know that we have a lot of nontraditional families today. So when I say parent, I mean that primary caregiver, that nucleus. We need parents and caregivers that put value on education. We need for the importance of education to be emphasized at home. We need families and parents that partner with the school. We know that when we have families, caregivers, guardians at odds or budding heads with the school, the student is who suffers because the student feels very torn. Teachers are not as… Do not as readily engage with the student because they may feel hands-off, they may feel targeted. So it’s so important to build that sense of collaboration and partnership. And then, of course, we need parents that prioritize attendance. And what does that mean? Not just getting your student in the door, but engaging that student once they get there. We know that when attendance is not prioritized, we really build a vicious cycle. Students who don’t attend school don’t receive the best first instruction. They don’t know what’s going on.
They may become behind in the learning. Their grades suffer, then they may feel a defeatish sense, and then they avoid school. And then what happens when we get them back in school? It starts all over again. So we have to get our students in the school so that they can engage in learning. So I just want to pose a couple of questions to Kevin and Alicia here. Attendance and truancy are top of mind throughout so many school districts. I read publications every day, just like you do. And that’s in almost every headline that I read, at least three days a week out of the five that I read something. So it’s a real pain point. So Kevin and Alicia have led schools and districts with very different demographics. And Kevin Kevin alluded to that a little bit in his introduction. Well, each of you take a minute. And Kevin, if you want to go first, what are some things that you do? Just take a minute to describe your school setting a little bit. And then what are some practices you use district-wide to encourage attendance?
Sure. So like I said before, Bloomfield Schools have three primary demographics in terms of our students, Navajo, Caucasian, and Hispanic. And And just for anyone listening to the webinar, so 75 % of all homes in the United States without running water or electricity are actually on the Navajo Nation, which our district dips into quite a bit. So a lot of times, our students are coming from places of extreme need, but they also have to travel extreme distances to get to school. We have a couple of bus routes that students will get on the bus, and they’ll stay on the bus for about an hour and a half until they actually get to school or get home from school. So one of the things that we recognize is every day that a student’s gone, that’s six and a half hours of learning that’s never recovered. Even with the best of intentions, that six and a half hours is not recovered. Some of it may be, but most of it isn’t. So as a district, one of the things that we do is we give away vehicles, we give away cars. And so I can give you an example here, win this truck, it’s not a brand new truck, it’s a used truck.
And all you have to do to be eligible to win this, to get into the drawing, is have perfect attendance. And so then people are obviously going to question, well, how do you pay for a truck? And the answer is with activity money, right? First and foremost, we have partnerships with varying dealerships in town. We try to go find a reasonably priced used vehicle, and typically they split the cost with us. So where do we get the money from? Well, a couple of different places. We put out a publication, and these are actually my babies who are on here. This is a couple of years ago, but we put out a publication of Bloomfield Schools, where we sell advertising space. And recently, we just shifted from the magazine to selling bricks, where people can purchase a brick that goes into what we call the Bobcat Pride Plaza, where people can literally etch their name in stone and over the years come back and show their family that they have pride in this community still. So we take all of those funds, we put them into our activity fund, and then we create a partnership with those dealerships.
And like I said, all they have to do is come to school. If you have perfect attendance, you automatically get a drawing. And what’s serendipitous about it is nine times out of 10, maybe even 9.9 times out of 10, the student who wins the vehicle is coming from a place where it’s valued, it’s needed, right? And there’s a lot of times where the guardian, whether that’s grandma or aunt or biological mom or dad, they’re pushing that kid, Hey, I need you to go to school because we need to have a chance to win that. So that’s one of the things that we’ve done that we’ve actually made quite a name for ourselves around the state of New Mexico, but also in the Four Corners area, because we literally give away vehicles. Sometimes it’s one vehicle, sometimes it’s three vehicles. It all depends on the amount of money that we generate from those ads or But it’s something that’s been an absolute hit.
I love that. That’s awesome. That’s really great. Alicia, would you talk a little bit about… So Alicia, we said Alicia is a retired principal. She’s not very far retired from the job and is still very in touch with the community in which she was the principal. Would you talk to us a little bit about what your school demographic was like and what you all did to encourage attendance at Burindo Middle?
Okay. Burindo Middle is out of town. We were a county school when the district originally picked up our school. We are a 13 bus school. There is no walking students. You can walk if you’re within a mile. I think twice we’ve had kids who lived in the houses that are somewhat close by that they could walk to school. So every student either has to be brought by their parents or bused in. So when we notice we’re having problems with attendance or even just tardies, we start talking to the kids early on about what the situation is. Did you miss the bus? Do you not know where your bus stop is? Is there a reason you can’t get there? Is your mom gone? Do you need an alarm clock? What could we help you with? And starting that conversation with the student makes the student value, somebody wants me at school, so I got to start thinking about what I’m providing. We were a middle school, so it’s also on the parents. They’re the ones that have to get the kids there or help at least get them to the bus. We tried to do a lot of celebrations, especially if it’s a student.
You may not have perfect attendance, but you might have better attendance after you’ve had some contacts. You’re missing some days. We have contact with the student. If it doesn’t improve, we bring the parent in. If the parent doesn’t show, we do phone conversations. Then once the students start seeing success, we start celebrating that success so that a kid feels like, Oh, gosh, somebody really did want me here, and I’m not getting punished anymore for the choices at the beginning. I think that’s probably The key to gaining progress is by celebrating the wins. The other part would be celebrating by class, by grade, by however you want to break it up, grade levels, and then posting that information and making announcements This week, sixth grade had the best attendance, so they get whatever you want to provide, 15 minutes of free time on Friday afternoon or a STEM activity during lunch period. They don’t always have to cost things, but something that, again, celebrates that we made some successes. Then again, not punitive that I can never get better. It doesn’t build every week. It starts over, so everybody has the same chance again.
I love that. Before we move on from this slide, we’ve talked a lot about attendance. Before the webinar started, Kevin and Alicia and I were talking. We got the attendance. We have some incentives. We’re getting students there. What do we really do to engage those students in learning once they’re in school? It’s one to get them indoors and get them in a seat, but what are some things you’ve tried to engage students? Kevin, we’ll just go in the same way.
Okay, that’s fair. Well, so I think the first thing to recognize is if we think of education as an industry, our industry hasn’t changed in 120 years. We have been the purveyors of knowledge, set down, shut up, and we’re going to learn you today. But our society has shifted dramatically over that 120 years, but specifically over the last 10, 20, 30 years, where we’re no longer the holders of knowledge. Actually, our kids have the sum of human knowledge at their fingertips, the literal library of Alexandria. And so as an organization, as an industry, we need to shift our practices. We’re no longer tasked with teaching kids information. Instead, now we’re tasked of making sure that they can find the information that they need and making sure that that information is accurate. And so for us, it’s a very simple concept. We don’t advertise it this way necessarily, but we use an acronym, and the acronym is DCS. And what that acronym means to us is doing cool stuff. Our job is to provide experiences for our kids. And so we want to try to make sure that our classrooms look different than they did 120 years ago.
We want our teachers to take risks. We want our administrators to take risks. And one of the simplest things that we can do is integrate music, particularly the music that our kids like. But we integrate music into all of our classrooms. So as our kiddos show up every morning, the billboard top 100 list is playing. Of course, it’s edited. It doesn’t have explicit language in it, but it’s playing. And all of a sudden, the school becomes something that’s inviting. I want to be here. I want to engage. And then they see teachers dancing in the hallway randomly because of that music playing. And so that’s just a really simple one % extra or cherry on top type of strategy that we can use just to get kids wanting to be there. And then when they’re there, they’re like, Hey, this is actually pretty fun because it looks different than education 120 years ago, because it’s not 120 years ago.
Oh, I really like that a lot. Kevin Just out of curiosity, do you do that across elementary, middle, and high?
Yeah, we do. So specifically with our elementary school, so there’s music playing specifically before school and after school. So as students are arriving and as they’re departing. But at our secondary campuses, at our middle schools and our high schools, that’s actually the belt. So when the music starts, they realize, oh, it’s time for me to transition class, and they start transitioning there. But we also have some great partners with audio enhancements. Not that I’m trying to plug anybody during this, but it’s not like we’re just holding a phone up to the intercom system. We actually have it programmed. Sometimes we use Spotify playlists or YouTube playlists. So, yeah, there’s a lot of music. And then when we have family engagement events, which I know we’ll talk about later, music is a big part of that as well.
That’s really fun. I love that. That’s cool. I like it a lot. Alicia, what are some ideas that you have?
To piggyback a little bit on what Kevin says is that too many of our schools look like institutions. They don’t look like fun places to go. We all sit in rows. I mean, we’ve gotten to where we group desks, but looking at different learning styles and desks and seating and making things comfortable for kids. Not that they’re in the back falling asleep, but maybe it’s an honor that day to get to sit in the Bing bag chair and do your reading. So looking for different environment areas. We turned our library It looks like it’s a café. It’s got café tables and it’s got couches. Kids want to come in and sit and visit and read in there. Making our school look different. I love the music part. Even murals that kids are active parts of their art class, put art up. I think that helps. I think the other thing with engagement, we do run bell to bell. It seems like in middle and high schools, everything’s drawn on a bell. We started when I was there making things more fluid for For a student because, Freddie, you had mentioned it earlier about how a kid feels defeated and it’s just a repeat process.
Well, they’re always going to feel defeated because they aren’t getting that learning. Why can’t he get his direct instruction from someone and then move to a different class for some one-on-one work? And that’s everybody. That’s not IEP students. That’s anyone who… And it might be that kid who’s missing a lot of school, but don’t take away his fun either. Don’t take away his PE, don’t take away the art class because he’s learning that, too. Maybe he’s in art, and he’s not in art that semester, but he goes to art because he got to school all week. And instead of on Friday going to language arts, he goes to his art class. So just looking for more fluid ideas to help meet the individual needs of students.
And if I could add to that, Brandee, I think Alicia made a really good point of really cuing into student interests anyway. And so over the last several years, in particular, career and technical education has become a pretty large priority across the nation. And that’s because the data that’s tied to it. So specifically for the state of New Mexico, 98 % of students who enter high school and have two or more connected courses that are CTE related, 98 % of them graduate. And that’s unheard of for the state of New Mexico. I think the average graduation rate is in the high 70s. So really keying in on making that experience more than just, sit down, sit in this row, be quiet, I’m going to talk to you, and really making it participatory and exploratory on the behalf of students.
I so agree. I love this part of the conversation. And one of the reasons I wanted Alicia and Kevin here is because they really are both able to think outside of the box and see that we have to try different things. And just to piggyback on both of their points, we don’t reach kids today the same way we did 30 years ago when I started teaching. I can remember when I started teaching, I taught fifth grade, and I was in a very high needs, a Title I school, very diverse. I taught with a group of people that are wonderful that I adore, but they were real honed in on recessed attention. If you didn’t come in and you didn’t sit down in a row like Alicia mentioned, and you didn’t do this, then you had recessed attention. And I got a lot of flak because I never kept up with recessed attention. It’s not anything wonderful about me. It’s like, number one, I couldn’t keep up with it. Number two, I kept thinking, well, doesn’t everybody need to play? And so, yeah, 30 years ago, everybody did in fifth grade need to play at recess.
The point being is we have to recognize what our kids need to do today, elementary, middle, and high school, to make this a place you want to be. And Kevin said it really well. And so did Alicia. How do we make it fluid? So as we keep moving through here, the importance of attendance. We’ve talked about it so much. We need to track it. We need to communicate positively before and inside the year. So before the year, these are all the things we’re going to do, like Kevin’s contest, Alicia’s contest. You can always start over. You can always do better, right? You’re not just immediately, Oh, I’m never going to be better at this. So why should I try? We have to remember the mindsets of students and where they are developmentally. And then consistent attendance. The big thing here for me, it improves the school connection, which increases engagement with learning. The music. What kids don’t like music? That’s a a universal language, isn’t it, music? Just that example in and of itself. I might not get to listen to Spotify at home, but when I go to school, I can, right? It’s a thing.
We have to make it look different. And this isn’t 120 years ago. And I I really appreciate that point. One of the things about tracking attendance, and Kevin and Alicia may want to weigh in here, is when we’re tracking attendance, it isn’t just a got you. We’re looking for patterns. Alicia mentioned this. Do we have a student who’s always absent on Wednesday? What’s going on on Wednesday? My mom has to go to a medical treatment on Wednesday, and I can’t get here. Or my mom works on Wednesday, or my dad works on Wednesday, or my aunt, and nobody can keep my siblings. I’m always late on Fridays. My caregiver works night, so on Thursday, and I can’t get here until he or she gets home. So we’re not just tracking attendance for a got you. We’re tracking attendance to help you. What do you need from us? So I just want to be really mindful of that. I’ve had a lot of educators talk to me lately when I’ve been doing some coaching around, well, we’re just keeping up with this attendance, and this kid only comes two days a week. Have you ever asked them why they only come on Monday and Tuesday?
No. And I’m not criticizing anybody. Sometimes we just don’t think about it because we’re so busy. But talk to kids, ask them. They’ll tell you.
And I think to that point, Brandee, well, you know this, but nobody else does. I grew up on a cattle ranch, right? And so I tend to think of kids as cattle sometimes, right? Where you’ve got to go track the lone dogey down. And a lot of times, specifically when we’re thinking about student attendance, at the high school level, we think, well, they’re humans. They move. They can drive sometimes. Sometimes, or they have their own mind and they walk off campus. But when we talk about elementary students, elementary students are at the mercy of either our transportation systems or their guardians’ transportation systems. And so that’s not to say that there aren’t parents that don’t value education and don’t value attendance within our organizations. But there’s a lot of external factors that we have to consider instead of, well, Alicia just didn’t show up for the fourth time this year on a Wednesday. Asking those questions, why being able to offer support. Sometimes we can offer support and sometimes we can’t. But you’ll never know the answer to that question if you don’t ask the question why.
Sure. I want to pause here for a second because you made me think of something. And Alicia and I were talking via some email the other day. Alicia, would you speak to just for a second? And this is to Kevin’s point, to this communicate with parents and families? We have a lot of parents who had very negative school experiences that we all deal with, no matter the demographic, right? What are some ways that Alicia, you’ve used in the past to talk to parents that share with you? I hated school. I don’t see any reason to send little Johnny or little Jill. Would you tell us a little bit about how you’ve approached that?
Because Kevin- I think a lot of it is getting your parents back through the door so they do see that it’s a very different education system. And then about being partners. Johnny’s not in trouble. We just want to help. We got to figure out what the pattern is. That’s attendance, discipline, any of that. If you get them back in through the doors and they can see some positive influence, bring that teacher in that little Johnny loves or has a great time in their class and talk about the good things Johnny does. It doesn’t always have to be the negative side that you bring parents in. That’s what I think too many parents think now. If they get called into the principal’s office, it’s because Johnny’s in trouble. Instead of looking at it as a unit like, I’m bringing you in because Johnny loves art class and he’s missing it because he doesn’t get here Friday morning in time for art. Could we change his schedule? Something that gets that parent involved and lets them know that you’re thinking about Johnny on a positive note and not always on negative note.
Yeah. And Kevin, I’m going to pick on you for a minute because this resonated with me. I was thinking with the music and the arts that you guys have going on and knowing that the cultures that your students come from and how art and music is such a big part, has that had any a positive shift with some of your families or caregivers that are reticent about school?
Well, not just families in particular, but oftentimes we hold meetings at central office, which our central office happens to be right across the parking lot from one of our middle schools. And in the morning, we actually had some consultants come and like, I can’t believe the music that’s playing. Like, what a great way to start the day. So it impacts even outsiders to our system. But it is something that our students in particular really like. But we’re getting feedback from our parents as well. This is just extra. It doesn’t cost you nothing, but I thought it was funny. So I put together a playlist specifically for our high schools. Wanted to tap into what’s hot right now, not necessarily what was hot 15 years ago or 30 years ago or 40 years ago whenever we went to high school. But I put together that playlist, but I also want to make sure that it was vetted, right? That it didn’t have explicit messaging and things like that. And as I walked into the high school, it was just a couple of weeks ago, one of the front my office aides said, Mr. Somers, did you create that playlist that we listen to every day?
I said, I sure did. She said, Would you please DJ prom for us? It’s awesome. And I was like, Yes, I nailed it. All right. But I think one of the other things to talk about with regard to that, and I think to Hillman’s point, is positive communication just for the sake of positive communication. Now, one of the things that we do as an organization is, and it’s something I started when I came as the superintendent, is recognizing adults and students for positive reasons at school board meetings in particular, because school board meetings are not fun. They’re not exciting. They’re called board meetings for a reason, right? So we wanted to inject that idea of positive communication. And last week, we have a board meeting today, actually. And last week, I ended up calling a grandmother of an elementary student, and I asked, Hey, is this Mrs. Jones? And she said, Who’s calling? And so I introduced myself, and it was silent. I could hear my blood coursing through my veins. It was that silent. And I said, I just want you to know that your grandson is an absolute delight. And from then on out, the conversation was…
I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. And all I wanted to do was invite the kiddo to our board meeting so that we could honor him. And we do something really simple. These cost about three dollars to be made, but we give them a coin that’s got our mascot on it. And it says sumum bonum. It’s Latin for the highest good. And on the back, it just says Bloomfield Schools, Bobcat Pride. But the trick with this is you cannot just buy these. You can’t just Pick one of these up because you got an A on a test or because you came to school. You have to be honored in front of the board. And so we’ve made it really an experience. And sometimes we make those phone calls, and I specifically did this as a principal when When I was working with Brandee. We would make those phone calls weekly. Just, Hey, positive referral. Let’s catch our kids doing something good because our parents are so inundated with the negative. And by the way, they know that, right? I know when my son’s at home that he’s a little sour patch kid, and sometimes he’s sweet, but sometimes he’s really sour.
So I know when I experience that at home, the teachers are also experiencing that, right? And so it’s nice for me to get the phone call he was being sweet, and he was helping his classmates, or he was helping the teacher. Things like that, they cost no money. All they cost is a little bit of energy.
I love it. Thank you, guys. Those are great. So as we keep going then and we keep talking about how do we foster attendance and engagement? Lots of great ideas. I think Alicia and Kevin both have generated so many ideas. And I just know for me right now, I’m sitting here thinking, oh, yeah, and what about this? And what about that? So do that. Think about what we’ve been talking about. But there’s really a huge onus and importance of teamwork and collaborative leadership. You’re visible in the building, regular classroom visits. I was at a very distinct vantage point with Kevin and Alicia. Kevin and I went through University of Virginia School turnaround together. Alicia, I went through one of the worst crises imaginable with. So I know these two individuals as leaders well. The one thing I can I tell you, I never walked in Kevin’s middle school or Alicia’s middle school and could find them in the office. Never. Unless I had a set appointment, which I was late for, so they had time to get in there. But they were always in hallways, always in classrooms. And that’s the key. It’s not a run by or a drive by to catch during an evaluation.
Not only did the teachers need to see you visible in the staff as leaders, but students do. Because in students’ minds, I was a counselor for many years. I put huge work into school guidance lessons, classroom guidance. If a student sees you more than twice and on a regular basis, they know you. We’ve got to build these protective factors and these relationships in students. So we want to have visibility, regular classroom visits in the hallways. And if you want to know what’s going on in a school, it doesn’t matter what your position is here. Volunteer to do lunch duty. Two days a week, you will know everything going on in the school. Alicia, Kevin, am I lying? Or do you know? You know everything going on. So if you really want to have your pulse on it. And then unified goals. Everyone in the school community needs to know and understand the goals. Goals aren’t just written on paper. And if it’s the goal that’s just going to be on paper, then it’s not the one you want. What do you really want to accomplish this year? And maybe that’s just one goal. And that’s okay because Because you have some schools or some school populations that need to back up and work on the one big thing.
And what is that? What’s your outcome? And then standards alignment. We talk about this all the time. Align curriculum. We could go on and on for days. That’s like five webinars, right? Vertical alignment, grade to grade, horizontal alignment. I don’t want one fourth grade teacher on multiplication of double-digit numbers and another elementary math teacher on fractions. Because what if I have to make a shift? Or what if we have to combine classes? We all need to be aligned so that it’s a community. It’s also a sense of community. Teacher collaboration. We hear this word all the time. I really hate this word. I bet Kevin and Alicia don’t like it either. Silos. What really is a silo anyway? When I don’t know what’s going on in tandem around me, I’m in a silo. I was on a call the day with a school, a very high-performing school who wants to talk about building some capacity This is for school counseling, and they have no idea what’s going on in the special Ed world. Well, not that I should know everything, but I should be able to work in tandem, right? So let’s look at that.
Positive accountability. When I talk about accountability, again, I don’t like got you. What’s positive, Kevin and Alicia really describe that well. But one point of growth academically, we really celebrate, right guys? We celebrate a half point. So what’s positive accountability? So you have a kid that they’ve attended school three times the month of October. And in November, we got them here five times. That’s pretty positive. Is it where we want to be? No, but we’re getting there. So how can I build in that positive accountability and then high expectations? Kids will rise to what we really want them to do. And Kevin and Alicia have heard me talk about this ad nauseam. I have a long background with working with students with emotional disturbance. And the pet peeve of my life is when we take children with extreme behavioral difficulties and we put them out in a portable or we put them in the back of the building. So we’ve lowered their expectations right there because we’re going to put you back here and you don’t have to work to be in with every student. Academically, what do we expect students to do? I love Kevin’s point about CTE.
If we want to engage students, what is functional, and meaningful for that student? And we talk about differentiation all the time, but we need to set those expectations. So how do we lead for change? Again, I’ll go back to this. This is really one reason I invited Kevin and Alicia today, because in 32 years, I spent a great amount of time in a leadership role where I got the privilege of being in every school in a district, and I wouldn’t change one thing about that. And there are very few people that I saw lead for change daily, and these are two of the people. Some people lead for change once a month, and then it’s exhausting. And these two know it’s exhausting. But how do we really lead for change? And we talked about goals being visible and accessible. But how do we really involve students, teachers, families, parents, caregivers? And then how do we communicate those? We all talk about data-driven decisions. And Kevin talked about data, but he demonstrated how we use data. That is not just a number on a sheet. It should inform what we do, right? So how do we do that?
So Kevin and Alicia, we’ll switch order this time. So Alicia, I’m going to call on you first. How do you get participation in building goals and then buy-in in executing on goals from any stakeholder, from all or community.
We brought that up at the beginning about data drives all our instruction. If you’re looking at data and you have your whole staff, including your elective teachers, looking at the data, it’s going to tell you something. Where’s your deep dives and what’s it telling you? It might not be that an art teacher can mind down into a math class why they don’t understand Pythagorean theorem, but you might understand that we’re lacking our math. Our math scores are lacking because we aren’t perfecting any of our concepts. I think if you get everybody working together with their own set of data and come up with as a school, where are we weak? Don’t set a million goals that you can’t reach. Look at what’s important. Is attendance going to be your focus this year? Is it your tier one instruction that’s going to be your focus? If you let them talk about it, it’s just like the kids. If there’s more teacher talk in an administrative meeting, just like if there’s more student talk in a classroom, the people doing the talking are the people doing the learning. Then they come up with their own ideas. What is important?
What are we missing? Then you can set your goals, and it’s a whole lot easier to get buy-in if they’ve been part of setting it up, not an administrator coming in and saying, This is what we’re going to do, and this is why we’re doing it. I think it’s crucial that teachers are a part of that at the beginning of the year, setting the goals. In our state, we have a process But if they’re part of identifying what their weaknesses and strengths are, then it’s a whole lot easier to get them moving in the same direction.
Kevin, what are you doing?
First, I’ll start by reiterating something that Alicia said that I think is more profound and more people need to hear it than is imaginable, I think. But if you prioritize everything, you prioritize nothing. And so priorities In my opinion, two. That’s what goals should be. Those are the two things that we are working our butts off towards together. We can’t have 500 different plans and prior towards them all. It’s physically impossible. So really narrowing our focus on to one or two things that we’re going to do and do well, and everybody’s going to do well. But I think the other thing that Alicia said that I want to just expand on is leadership in general. So there are I think it was John Maxwell that said, Anyone can be a leader, but not everyone should be a leader. And I think some of us have that joke as educators of, Yeah, anybody can be a parent, but that doesn’t mean everybody should be a parent. Well, the same thing applies to us. And so there’s positional leadership where, well, I’m the principal, or I’m the superintendent, or I’m the teacher, so you do what I say.
That’s not leadership. Nobody cares about that. And so in order to get to the most effective form of leadership, it requires consistency, and truly saying what you’re going to do and doing what you say. And any falter in that is going to break that trust that you have with people. And so One of the things I talk with my folks about, and when I say my folks, sometimes it’s teachers, sometimes it’s principals, sometimes it’s directors, but trust requires four things. And there’s probably a lot There’s four things that trust requires than these four things, but these four are the essential things. And if you don’t have all four of them, then nobody’s going to trust you. Nobody’s going to buy in or follow the cause. The first thing is competence. I have to know what I’m talking about. If anybody who I’m talking to suspects that that guy’s an idiot, then they’re not going to follow me right off the bat. The second thing is reliability or accountability. Again, consistency. I say we’re going to do this thing, we need to do this thing. And come hell or high water, we’re going to make that happen.
The third component is benevolence. And I used to always joke about this as a principal, specifically with some of my teachers. I’m an entirely benevolent leader. Of course, you can go do this thing. But the reality is that all effective leaders have a concern for others. It’s just empathy. And then the last thing, and in my opinion, it’s one of the most important things is ethics. You can’t be 80 % ethical. You can’t bend the rules for some people and not for the others. And that’s not because we want to get people, but it’s because we want to be consistent. And so if you don’t have all four of those things, then you don’t have trust. And the last thing I’ll say is as a superintendent… Now, granted, I don’t have a massive district. I have 2,500 students, 450 employees, but I don’t make a single decision in a vacuum. Every decision that’s made requires the input of the people that it affects. And so sometimes it’s students, sometimes it’s teachers, sometimes it’s principals, and sometimes it’s a combination of all of those. So that doesn’t necessarily mean I always make everybody happy. It’s impossible.
Even if I sold ice cream, I still wouldn’t make people happy because I don’t have pistachio. But the idea is to always keep the focus on, A, the data, and B, what’s best for kids.
I agree. I think those points are so very true. They resonate so much with me. I hope they do with a lot of you. Those four requirements of trust really lead us to the next slide, modeling change, particularly trust. We know that to change adult behavior is so difficult. It’s very difficult. We’re very rooted in our ways, but it takes trust. We have to trust. We have to know that others are going to do what they say they are going to do, that they’re ethical. Growth mindset is really, we haven’t done this yet. It’s that simple. Sometimes we really break growth mindset down into something very complicated. And that’s not it. It’s, here’s where we are today, here’s where we want to be tomorrow, and how do we get there? Tracking progress, just knowing what’s going on regularly, making sure that it’s regular, and then adjusting, using the data. Kevin said this perfectly, using the data and making the best decisions for students.
And sometimes- Well, sorry, Brandee, I cut you off. And to reiterate, if it’s not working, change it. I mean, I think we wait too long to make change, and then you’ve got frustrated teachers and frustrated students, and it’s not working. So making your adjustments, but making them timely.
So all of these things really help us to model change for the adults around us who can lead the change for the students that we’re taking care of, that we’re guiding. I said this earlier. I had the advantage of being in Kevin and Alicia’s schools many, many times. And one of the things that I always noticed, and I can tell you, and they’re going to laugh. I observe some very difficult adults in both of their buildings, too. So it wasn’t like, Okay, everybody’s just going to drink the Kool-Aid and do what Alicia says or do what Kevin says. Kevin and I managed through some very difficult personnel situations. But one thing that I noticed is that the majority of the staff in both of their schools had growth mindsets and were really mindful about decisions they made for students and for kids. So we’ll go back in the same order again. So Alicia, how did you model and encourage your staff to work from a position of growth mindset?
I think it’s back to being that teammate, being with them instead of ahead of them. If you were together, like when we were talking earlier, we were in classrooms, but it wasn’t gotches, and it wasn’t Because I had to do an observation or I had to do a walkthrough, and there was positive feedback. When you met with the teacher, it was, How did you feel like things went? How did you feel like it had accomplished your goals? Instead of it, there’s It’s great coaching examples. I think if you get in the coaching mode where they’re part of the process, not just being talked at, but being talked with, then growth mindset comes because they’re looking for successes. Nobody walks in and says, I want to be the worst teacher ever today. They want to do well. They just sometimes need the path to get there. If you work together as a team with a coaching framework, success comes, and that’s what growth mindset is about, is changing up what I’m doing, acknowledging what happened, being open to evaluations and criticism and feedback, and especially if they can find it on their own instead of being told what to do.
I think that makes a big change.
Kevin, it’s the same question, but a little bit different for you. So as superintendent, and having, as our former boss used to say, the 32,000-foot view, how do you encourage growth mindset within your school-level leaders so that then trickles down to your building staff?
Well, that’s a little trickier, I think. I had something ready to go, but no, I think it actually works perfectly. It still comes down to trust, first and foremost, but empathy. And so specifically, my job is to essentially evaluate principles, right? And maybe as brash as it is to say, I can do the job of all of our principles. I’ve done it before. But if I If I have to do that job, then what do I need them for, right? And that’s brash. I wouldn’t say that to them. But the reality is, they’re in charge of buildings to make the best decision for kids. And I have to trust that they’re going to do that. And sometimes, they’re going to miss the mark. And when they miss the mark, how we respond is just as important as the leadership or ownership that we give them in the first place. So this is just to Alicia’s point. When they don’t make the mark rather than holding up their data in their face and saying, What’s this? Tell me about this. We say, What’s going on? What happened? And we start to coach them through it. So the same thing that we’re expecting our principals and our teachers to be able to do for our students, we have to be able, as the educational leaders, to do for the people who are in our charge.
I would also say that I think probably the the best thing that a leader can do, whether they’re a principal or an instructional coach or an assistant principal or a director, whatever, is just to be in classrooms and catch those moments where a teacher is not doing great, but then follow up with them later and be like, Hey, that’s okay. That’s one moment, right? And the reason I think that that’s important is because, like parents, educators aren’t… I think what you said, Alicia, is perfect. You said, Nobody wants to be the worst teacher on the planet or whatever. I think people are doing what they know to do. They’re doing the best that they know how to do. Nobody taught me how to be a parent. And so I’m doing the best that I know how to do, and I can’t do any different until I’m afforded the grace and then have that model to me to be able to do something different. So being in those classrooms, I think, is extremely important. And Brandee, I know that you talked about this earlier that Alicia Alicia and I were always in classrooms. I’m still always in classrooms.
And I know Alicia is in a different capacity, but I know that she’s always in classrooms as well, because the reality is I can meet with a parent at five o’clock or six o’clock or seven in the morning or at lunchtime. I cannot see instruction, and I can’t be around kids when they’re not in the classroom.
I agree. I so agree. So that brings us to engaging students. And engaging students is active learning and purposeful learning. And I really think those are the two big things. Active, Alicia reminded me this other day, I do, we learn together, or I do, I demonstrate for you is the leader. We do. We do this together as a large group, and you do. You try it independently. Teacher is a facilitator now, right? And we hear so much about encouraging discussion and debate and giving students voice. And we’ll come back to that a little bit, and then purposeful learning. I don’t know how many times I said that it’s in my life, functional, practical, meaningful. If it’s not one of those things, it doesn’t work for any student. And it doesn’t matter what the student’s ability is. It’s functional, practical, practical, meaningful? Is it relevant? Can we tie it to the real world? And we have to help students understand what they’re learning and why we’re learning it. Just like Kevin demonstrated with our phones, we’re competing against all the technology and all the knowledge in the world. So if we don’t tie into the why and the what, we’ve lost students.
I want to go back before we get ready to close up here just around that student voice piece. And coming from very diverse populations, how do we really incorporate student voice into those highly diverse populations or underserved populations? Where student voice may be more important because they may come from a culture that a child’s voice is not very important, or the child’s having to do all the voice because they’re taking care of everybody in the family. How do we build in that student voice in the classroom? And why is that important for engagement? Anybody can go here.
I was going to yield for Alicia, but I’ll go. I wish that I could be a teacher today because I would be I would be such a better teacher than I was in the past because of that very point. I think, again, educators are doing the best that they know how to do, and our students are doing what they’ve been told to do or what they’ve been expected to do. But I think one of the things that is most damaging in the industry or the arena of education is that we make assumptions that are oftentimes totally invalid. And one of those assumptions is as the teacher or as the educator, I have to stand up in front of the class and teach this lesson because it’s the standard or whatever. What’s more to your point, functional and relative, is making sure that I’m teaching to my students the things that are valued to them. And I was always a science teacher, secondary science teacher, so I can almost make anything work. But I would also say the same about language arts and mathematics and social studies. We can make those relevant connections to kiddos, but we can’t assume what those are.
We literally have to ask them. The idea of having a teacher as facilitator I think is something that’s very difficult to do because it requires a relinquish of control and being able to be fluid and I have to move on my feet. And sometimes, yeah, I’m going to have to shut this conversation down, but I’ve got to give that control over to the kids. Kids. But when you do that, what we see is most of the time, the lion’s share of the time, our kids are so responsible. And I think the one mindset that we have to move away from when talking about student voice in particular is something I hear pretty regularly, and it’s sad, it breaks my heart, is, yeah, but not these kids. These kids can’t do that. And that’s completely false. We have students who are making their own videos, and they have their own blogs, and they have their own podcasts, and they’re extremely entrepreneurial, and they’re extremely resourceful, and they can teach us things, but we have to be able to relinquish that control. So that’s extremely important for us because we do have these three pillars of demographics with regard to our students.
And we recognize that even though we all live in the same general area, the cultural values are very different. And so there are times where some of our students, they’re not empowered to speak at home because that’s not the social structure within their culture. So we provide them an opportunity to do that within our schools because that ultimately is something that’s required in the real world, right? When they’re out in public doing different careers, doing different service projects and things of that sort. So it becomes very important for us, but it is a risk, right? You have to give up that control. I’m sorry. I might have started rambling and didn’t quite answer the question.
No, you did great. That was great. Is there anything to add around student voice?
Well, I think it’s important to find, too, that the success for that student that doesn’t want to speak or is going to a different classroom, they know something that they can lead on. Set them up to be the leader in one area or even just in their group. And that gives them a voice that they don’t always get the chance to have. And I think if you set your and watch your learners, you have a lot of opportunities for success for kids that will make them or help them talk more.
I love that. We’re moving through here. As we’ve demonstrated, it takes a village. Everybody has to work together. The school community, the community at large, family structure, guardians structure, all staff, including leaders. We’re tracking attendance for a purpose, for a positive purpose. We’re communicating positively, and We’re really encouraging that consistent attendance so we can engage with the community. As we wrap up today, we’ll go through the questions. These are different ways you can reach out to ALUMA to support your culture and your climate. We would love to help you. My contact information is on here. Please reach out at any time. Happy to brainstorm with you. Happy to talk through ideas to help you build your capacity to support students and give voice. So real quick, we’re about to run We’re getting out of time, but we’ll get your questions answered in the chat. Let’s see. Okay, we got the music question answered. We had a few questions that came from attendees prior to, and I’m just going to throw these out there and Alicia or Kevin either jump in. What ways are suggested to get high school parents engaged with school? What are some things we could do to engage high school?
I was going to cut Kevin off. I think it’s back to getting them through the door. You’ve got to get parents in. Then I think you also need some early warning system, some communication. There are grades online, so parents, and then getting them to access that and finding a way. I think a lot of those will track who has been on. If a parent is not checking, maybe make that phone call. Hey, do you know you can check on your student’s grades or their attendance by looking online and help or send the information home with them? Just finding a way to keep enveloping them back into your environment.
And here’s a-Yeah. Go ahead, Keturah.
I can’t really add to that other than, like Alicia said, get them in the doors. And what I would even say is get them into the doors for things that aren’t inherently academic, right? I can’t think of the word, but we’re cornerstones of our community. So it’s fine to host a community like dance. It’s fine to have karaoke and things like that, because if you can get them in the doors for one thing, then you’re much more likely to get them in the doors for something else, whether that’s parent-teacher conferences or PAC committees or things of that sort.
I like that. That’s so true. Because it removes the stigmatism when it’s for something fun. It’s okay to go in there. And then this one last question. We have several parents who enable poor behavior choices of their children regarding absences, work completion, Signing students out when they’re not really sick. How can we help set those boundaries and help the parents see that that has a huge impact on not partnering with the school?
I’d start with the student again. The more the student knows, the more the student is going to talk about it at home. My teacher noticed I’m not coming to school. My teacher noticed I’m tardy every other Tuesday. If they start seeing the patterns and know somebody cares about what they’re doing, send notes home. It’s all the same stuff. You just got to work harder at it.
And I think we addressed it earlier in the sense that we have to assume positive intentions, right? Specifically with our elementary kiddos. If they’re not coming to school, there’s probably a reason. And again, I would suspect nine times out of 10, it’s because the parents doing the best that they know how. So reaching out and figuring out what we can do to help.
Agree. And then we’re a little bit over time, but just to wrap up, Kevin, what’s one takeaway that you hope that everybody here today could walk away with regarding student engagement?
Be different. Our classrooms can’t look like they did 120 years ago, and we expect them to be packed to the brim, do things differently and take risks and be comfortable in the failure of those risks sometimes.
Alicia, what about you? What’s the one thing you want everyone to walk away with?
I go from a little bit different angle on this. It was a harder lesson for me to learn, but teachers need positive reinforcement as much as students. We’re asking them to do things for their students. They need the same things. They’ve got to feel supported in positive actions. And just remember that all levels in your school really need the same things.
I agree. My takeaway for everybody is listen to your students. All you have to do is ask, and it doesn’t matter if they’re in kinder or post-12th grade. All you have to do is ask. And sometimes we don’t ask enough, and that’s letting them have some voice. I just can’t thank you all enough for being here. I love being able to talk with Alicia and Kevin. I felt like I was back at my roots, and I really love that. I encourage you, anybody here, please reach out. Any questions, always happy to collaborate. That won’t cost you a dime. Happy to support your schools with any things that we have to offer. I hope you guys have a great rest of your week. Thanks for spending an hour with us today.
Thank you.
