This morning I've been reading the first few chapter of a book that our superintendent gave us at our last management meeting. In a very
short nutshell, Gawande says doctors and medical professionals are to blame for
the spread of infections in hospitals because of lack of DILIGENCE. Primarily
they don't wash their hands for a variety of reasons, or they wash so much that
it irritates skin which breeds infection too.
Perhaps the same can be said
about student failure when it comes to us educators. We didn't screen students,
we didn't get them tutoring early enough, we didn't pinpoint their exact need
and gave them a misaligned intervention, we waited until second/third grade to catch
them up, we didn't realize that they had 5 years of intervention plan meetings over and over and the
interventions weren't done or monitored or changed if there was no progress, we
didn't keep focusing on identified priorities, we trained teachers and weren't
DILIGENT in giving them follow up support, we didn't make it easy for schools
and teachers to immediately know on day one of school who are at-risk
students/long term english learners/etc, site or district leaders didn't clarify expectations or set up
initiatives for success or we weren't patient enough with implementing
something before we throw it out and the list can go on and on.
The first few chapters also
discuss how protocol during polio outbreaks has been instrumental in containing
outbreaks and almost eradicating polio from the planet. In the case of India,
the WHO has protocols and they worked with local teams to establish a system where outbreaks were contained even in areas with severe lack of
resources and hygiene. For example protocol required that health care workers
mark P on doors to verify that all kids in the house had been vaccinated and X
if a child was missing when they visited or didn't want to be vaccinated. People also weren't
supposed to be chastised if they chose not to vaccinate. Children had their hands marked to show they
had been vaccinated.
An important feature of the success of the polio campaigns was the DILIGENCE to follow up and follow through-supervisors going
into the community to do some follow up checks to make sure health workers were
following protocol and actually checking the doors, the marking on hands, the
ways that the vaccine was transported and stored etc. For example, a minor
check to say "can you show me the refrigerator" helped the supervisor
know that the fridge wasn't working nor was the generator and it allowed
immediate trouble shooting for the local doctor.
Perhaps as school site and district
leaders we don't follow through with the DILIGENCE. Perhaps we don't monitor as effectively as we should that something is being implemented. Or we have one priority for implementation and then add on
another at the same time and then throw one or both out because we don't see
quick success. Or perhaps we don't give the appropriate support to teacher that they might need to be more successful.
It's all food for thought, but
when WHO workers fly to India to status check something, they can maintain such
follow through and they are being proactive about it. It's hard for a
supervisor who flew to India with the intent of monitoring and support to not
be stretched in all directions because it's not like he can just fly out of
India or be reached immediately to solve other problems. Or this type of "the grass is always greener on the other side" type of mentality is my failure.
The nature of jobs in educational leadership aren't able to screen out all the competing
priorities-perhaps it's easier to do in a life-death medical situation but its hard to prioritize when you've got so many competing priorities and emergencies coming at you simultaneously in the day to day of an educational system.
Perhaps some way there is a way to replicate this laser-like focus of the operating room or the polio campaign-and I suppose that this is the intent of our
superintendent highlighting effective practices of high reliability
organizations so that educational systems can basically be reconceptualized as
life or death type of situations.
Meanwhile I am going to do a checklist to
check in on people in a systematic way and check off certain things that can be done to provide proactive support. For example, I randomly emailed a
teacher because the principal said that she just told her that she didn't have
books all year. I found out immediately that she never told anyone and has had
no materials all year. A simple checklist to check in on people and ask if there is
anything that they need-beyond mass
email, like a personal email or phone call, will allow us
to get ahead of ourselves and be more proactive.
Another idea might be that I
often make assumptions that teachers or sites immediately know the levels and
the performance of their students. For example, I made the assumption that
teachers would know who to target for our local Biliteracy Achievement Award but it
seems like when I was diligent about it and sent a personalized email about who
met the criteria in both languages, who met the criteria in one language, who
is borderline and needed to be tested again, we suddenly saw a huge increase in
students participating in the award and interestingly last year many of the
borderline kids suddenly increased in their performance afterwards.
At the
district level people often repeat that teachers have access to the data in
online reporting systems and can pull their own data. "If we keep doing it
for them then they won't do it themselves" is said, but perhaps they would appreciate something similar where we are diligent about quickly pulling data
for them to serve as early look outs when it comes to student performance. Just like the doctors in the book who get too busy or forget to wash their hands, many teachers might be too busy to dig in and intensively look at their data to identify the trends. Of
course many teachers do but on a general scale everyone is not looking at it as DILIGENTLY as we all should be, including informal data and especially aren't being as DILIGENT about using such data to change or guide instruction.
According to this book, many operating rooms have established
such a strict protocol and DILIGENCE towards safety that they don't have the
same disease transmission as the rest of the hospital because they created one position on the team
whose primary job is to ensure patient safety and is a "watchdog".
How to have an equivalent position in education is beyond my comprehension at
the district level but I can see how a school site might have one of those kinds of "early
lookout/watch dog" kind of positions with an intervention specialist who
is monitoring all the kids on a continual basis and is helping teachers devise ways to target students' needs with a laser like focus.
People might be inclined to say that we
are already diligently monitoring the kids but just like this doctor admits that he is responsible for infecting his own patients by his lack of hand washing, I will admit that we could do a better job in the education field about being DILIGENT about identifying at risk students as early as possible in their education, providing quality and early interventions, and monitoring the progress of all students including students who meet grade level standards. If you already have it all figured out then good for you. Meanwhile I will keep reflecting on how I personally can try to get better at providing support that teachers, principals, support staff and parents need to help their students achieve success.
