Jerad Crave:
I think one of our biggest surprises was in the area of equity competence. In our pre-imposed survey, we found that the assistant principals felt much more competent in their abilities to be equitable and to ultimately have equity competence within their capacities day to day. And it was one of our strongest findings, which was not expected. I think in many of our districts, we did not plan strategically to have a focus on equity within our professional development sessions. And so that’s what came out as a surprise for many of us, including my district.

Alec Patton:
This is High Tech High Unboxed. I’m Alec Patton, and I’m in the studio with my boss, president of High Tech High GSE, Ben Daley. And Ben’s here because he actually pitched the episode that you’re about to hear. So Ben, tell us about this. Where’d this come from?

Ben Daley:
I’m involved in this project where we’re trying to strengthen the connection between higher ed and K-12 schools. And one of our ideas was to look at the capstone papers that graduate students are writing. And so, I went on this. I call it my bender. I was like, I skimmed a hundred dissertations that were published in the last year that seemed to have any connection to trying to improve schools in a systematic way. And it was pretty sobering actually. I kind of went through these stages of Kübler-Ross where everyone was like, “I can’t believe this is what’s out here. It’s so disturbing.” Just papers about improving things, but no one’s actually improving anything or just writing about the idea of improving things.
And then I found this dissertation written by four students who were working together to try to improve the preparation of assistant principals in their schools. And it was happening in four different school districts. And they had engaged senior leadership from their districts in this project, which was clear from the dissertation. And I just thought, “This is exactly what we need more of.” What they were trying to do and what their program was guiding them to try to do, just struck me as like, “Yes, we have found it.” If every graduate student who was doing an EdD in ed leadership did something like this, or even five a year, that would be really great. So how can we get more of this happening? So that’s what drew me to it.

Alec Patton:
And where was this extraordinary school?

Ben Daley:
Western Carolina University. And I was not that surprised when I saw that because I remembered that Robert Crow, who was a colleague of mine from doing this work around trying to improve this connection, he is a faculty member at Western Carolina. So to be honest, I’d never heard of Western Carolina except that I knew this guy, Robert Crow worked there. And so, in that sense, I was not surprised to see that his students had produced this work.

Alec Patton:
Awesome. All right. Let’s roll it.

Katie Elliot:
My name is Katie Elliot and I’m a principal in Caldwell County Schools at Hudson Middle School, which is a sixth through eighth-grade school with about 620 students. I have been in education since 2003. My first degree is not in education. I have a business degree from Auburn University. I have family members that were in education but always told myself I was not going to be an educator. I was working in the business industry in Greenville, South Carolina, and it was not a very social environment. And I kept getting a coworker’s wife telling me, “You need to teach. You need to teach.” So I eventually went lateral entry and started teaching. And after a few stressful first weeks, I really fell in love with it, and I have been doing it ever since.

Andrea Russell:
I am Andrea Russell. I am an assistant principal in a high school in Stanley County Schools. I was doing healthcare, actually, working on a nursing degree and then a radiology certification before my father-in-law who had a very long career in education said to me, “You should consider education.” And I thought he was crazy. He really is, but that’s beside point. And so I pursued education when I went back to school to finish my undergrad and taught for seven years and then went into school administration.

Robert Crow:
Hello, everybody. My name is Robert Crow and I’m an associate professor of ed research at Western Carolina University. I got into this field about 20 years ago. I remember my first course I taught was in SP ’02, so it’s been almost 20 years. The moment that I knew education was for me was I was sitting in my master’s class at the Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, and learning about ed psych. And I just thought those theories were amazing. And after I got into PhD school, I started putting those theories to practice and I never turned back.

Alec Patton:
And what’s SP ’02?

Robert Crow:
That was Spring ’02. That was my very question too. And I said, “What is this?” They said, “It’s Spring ’02, your first course.” So I’m ready to go into SP ’22 soon. So that’s kind of terrifying.

Jerad Crave:
My name is Jerad Crave. I’m a teacher/educator with Western Governors University. And formerly, during our project, I was a literacy specialist with Asheville City Schools. And the epiphany moment when I realized that I was born to be an educator was when I was in fourth grade. And I had not only my first male teacher in my career, but I also had my first Black male teacher. And those were influential characteristics in and of themselves, but it was how he recognized and supported each one of us individually according to what we needed and what would help us to be successful in his classroom. And it was the first time that anyone had really focused on me as a person and thought about how I’d learned best. And I said, “I want to do that. That’s something that I think makes a difference and made a difference in me.”

Mike Swan:
Hello. My name’s Mike Swan, superintendent of Burke County Public Schools. Burke County is located in the foothills of Western North Carolina, a beautiful place. Moved here in 1998 and began my educational journey as a classroom teacher teaching fifth-grade math and science. My memory growing up, high school, middle school, elementary school, just never really enjoyed going to school at all. It’s kind of funny to be an educator now as an adult but just wanted to stay at home, work in the steel mills like my father did. Ended up growing up after high school, getting a job on the Ohio River as a deckhand. And probably my third year after doing that hard work, I decided I always enjoyed teaching kids how to water ski, teaching kids how to shoot rifles, bow and arrows, things like that, and that was my trajectory into education at West Virginia University. So this will be my 24th year of serving students in Burke County.

Alec Patton:
A big point of the research that you did is that no one gives much thought to assistant principals, and yet you all did. I’m wondering how did that happen? And I think another way of asking this question is, how did the band get together?

Katie Elliot:
Within the group, it was a diverse group. So you had students from higher education focusing in on that. We had a preacher in the area. We had some healthcare folks. So it wasn’t just educators. We were very like-minded in our public education focus, K-12 focus. And also, most of us, except for Jerad, had been in that assistant principal role or Andrea was, so it’s a frustration that as you’re getting those jobs and changing jobs, not feeling prepared. So I think that brought us together, definitely.

Alec Patton:
And when you say the group about it being a diverse group, what’s the group in this context?

Katie Elliot:
We were cohort five, The Revolutionaries. So there were 20 of us to start, correct me if I’m wrong, from all over. There were people from out of state, different walks of life, not just traditional educators. So it was a very neat group to bounce ideas off and to work with.

Mike Swan:
Yeah, [inaudible 00:09:35].

Alec Patton:
The Revolutionaries?

Mike Swan:
Yep.

Alec Patton:
Tell me more about that.

Mike Swan:
Well, that’s a name that Robert gave us, The Revolutionaries, and we jumped all over it. We liked it just kind of breaking down barriers was what we liked to think in public ed. We were the group that would try to… We’d stay late after class, have cocktails with one another, and just really explore what we wanted to do within this program.
And I think it all started on really that first weekend that we got to know each other. Robert and his group, they do kind of a speed dating session where you sit down next to somebody and you begin spitballing ideas, and then within three minutes you’re changing chairs. So that’s kind of how we narrowed it down to that, what we saw as a problem of practice that we wanted to start focusing on. And it took a lot of massaging throughout the process, starting, as they taught us put it in at the top of the funnel, and by the time it gets to the bottom, that’s your final project. And it took a lot of swirls around the top of the project or the final.

Alec Patton:
Can I ask when you did… Oh, actually, first, Robert, so they were the… Do you give everybody a cool name or is it some years, it’s The Conservatives, some years it’s The Middle of the Road. Don’t rock the boat.

Robert Crow:
Losers. No, actually, I don’t know. I don’t think I did give it up to them but they have pencils. I still use pencils that say Revolutionary Cohort Five. But that’s what we want, Alec. The main reason we go through all this application hoops is we want students that can dismantle inequitable structures that we see in our schools. And Katie, Andrea, Mike, and Jerad all have the capacity to do that kind of thing. And that’s revolutionary work because sometimes when they get their doctorate degree, they’re being put out into school systems that may or may not be supportive of their work. So they’re revolutionaries, that’s for sure, in North Carolina.

Alec Patton:
And I’m curious, were all of you at the time… Were all of you just sitting down in that speed dating just immediately like assistant principals or…

Andrea Russell:
No.

Alec Patton:
… was one of you… I don’t know. Yeah. How did you get to that?

Andrea Russell:
We got to assistant principal work long into the process. So first, we went through several, I guess, iterations of what’s the problem. So we used improvement science, obviously, and there were several instances where we worked through, I guess, what we called five whys. I don’t know why five is the magic number, but we worked through the five whys. And Dr. Crow, on multiple instances led us through, “Okay, what is the problem of practice that you’re interested in?” I remember lots of Post-it Motes that we threw up on the whiteboard and then he put them all together. And then we ended up in groups because of the Post-it Notes that we wrote about. And then some of our discussion was around principals and how principals didn’t really feel like they knew what they were doing when they got to the principalship. And so as a product of the fishbone that we did and the five whys, but now that process was not just a one-conversation process. That was a process of I guess the whole walking through these improvement science tools to get through our fishbone.
Our fishbone is that principals aren’t prepared to lead. But the problem that we tackled as a result of that fishbone was that assistant principals aren’t prepared for that role. And so we worked through the five whys. Why is that a problem? After we identified problems that we had in common that we saw in the multiple contexts that we were in and then kind of came down. So it was a process using improvement science tools that led us to assistant principals. But I would say that that was maybe… I don’t know if it took a full year to get there, but I know that we didn’t get there quickly.

Mike Swan:
Within the weekend, yeah.

Andrea Russell:
That’s not maybe a fair timeline, but it would’ve taken at least through maybe six, eight, maybe months or so. I’m not sure.

Alec Patton:
I want to go back just real quick because I want to go into this six or eight months or whatever, what time it is. But just to start, so I had speed dating, but you didn’t become a group based on the speed dating. Am I right that you became a group of four because you got grouped together because of the Post-it note with the problems that you wrote on Post-it Notes?

Mike Swan:
Yeah, it gave us the opportunity to get to know one another. I remember us going out to lunch after that first meeting. And we all just-

Katie Elliot:
Yeah, we naturally came together.

Mike Swan:
Yeah.

Alec Patton:
Wait, so you all went speed dating together?

Mike Swan:
Yes.

Alec Patton:
And then the four of you went out to lunch?

Mike Swan:
Well, there were probably-

Alec Patton:
No.

Mike Swan:
… six or eight of us in a small group.

Jerad Crave:
20.

Alec Patton:
We just don’t talk about the other ones anymore.

Katie Elliot:
As educators, I think we’re great in reading rooms. So when you sit down and you start to get to know each other, it’s fairly easy to tell for me at least based on personalities, who I am going to be able to work with well. And I think, we’re all in that same boat, so we definitely gravitated toward each other quickly, well before we figured out that problem of practice.

Andrea Russell:
And it was helpful that we were all in public education. So there were several members in our cohort that were in higher education or a different setting altogether, completely not a part of public education. And the fact that the four of us were in some kind of leadership capacity in public education, our identifying problems of practice and then wanting to work on those problems of practice, I mean, it almost was really organic. But then, we worked together in the class assignments and the class requirements of learning how to use the tools to identify the problem, the root causes of the problem, so we ended up just sticking together and working through it, and it just kind of magically happened, I guess.

Alec Patton:
I’m looking at your fishbone right now. And as you say it’s, “Principals are not adequately prepared to lead,” is that starting point. So was that where you began?

Andrea Russell:
Yes.

Mike Swan:
And Alec, I was an assistant principal for eight years, and we didn’t have any systems in place in Burke County, and it was just a novel approach anywhere. And so as I transitioned into the principalship, I was able to really jump in with a lot of the experience that I went through during that process of not knowing what I didn’t know, and what I didn’t know I needed to be a successful principal. So it took a lot of struggles personally and professionally to make it to where I am now.

Alec Patton:
So your own life was part of your research basis?

Mike Swan:a
100%. Yeah.

Andrea Russell:
I would say that’s true for all of us.

Alec Patton:
And so, I’m really curious about your initial responses to the improvement science stuff. When Robert said, “Right, we’re all doing a fishbone,” how did that feel when you were first dipping your toes into this?

Andrea Russell:
A lot of that improvement science stuff happened first in class. So, Dr. Crow took us through using that as a group, as students, as doctoral candidates, as students in the classroom where he brought out beautiful different colored strips of paper and Post-it Notes and markers, and led us through how to use everybody’s snickers, but how to use or how to implement these fishbone diagrams and driver diagrams and those things. And we did those separate really from the action research so that we had opportunity to learn how to utilize it so that when we did get into the disquisition phase where we were actually implementing the process in our districts, that we were confident in the process and using that with our people. The first time we used it was just like, “Okay, Dr. Crow wants pretty things and graphs and in color, and how can we give that to him?”

Katie Elliot:
Well, also, they didn’t just work on improvement science because a large lens of the program is a social justice lens. So at the same time, we were working on improvement science tools. They were breaking down our thinking about ourselves and about our situations and broadening our perspectives in so many different ways. And that’s one of the strengths of this program. One of the things that attracted it for me, knowing that the quality of professors were there to help do that. So there was a parallel to the improvement science piece and that was the equity and social justice piece, which was pretty powerful for many, many of us in the room. So that occurred at the same time. So at times, they were trying to frustrate us and we’d have to change gears and change gears. So it was that deep analysis thinking on our feet, but also that upset that revolution in our own thinking, that was very, very powerful for the improvement science work. I think it made us take it more seriously.

Alec Patton:
What was toughest in those early days?

Jerad Crave:
I mean-

Katie Elliot:
The toughest-

Jerad Crave:
I think, ultimately, narrowing down to that problem of practice. We knew that we wanted to focus on leadership, but it took several iterations and the five whys to really get us to the fact that if we want successful schools, we really have to focus in on the assistant principals because they’re eventually going to transition into that principal role, most likely. That’s the goal. And so we would have the biggest impact by focusing on that group of leaders.

Alec Patton:
I mean, it sounds like this crash course in improvement science combined with deeply interrogating your own beliefs and attitudes about social justice.

Mike Swan:
I remember having that conversation with Dr. Weiler as far as we spent a lot of time in class saying… She said, “You guys can do this.” But we knew politically in a lot of our school districts, it’s difficult to just come in and break the walls down. It’s got to be at a very slow pace in order to get that improvement and to get that buy-in. I remember vividly that discussion with the social justice and we did the equity audit within our own district and seeing some of the outliers of things that we really needed to focus on and people saying, “Hey, wait a minute. We’ve got to take caution because we are rural. All of us are rural districts within the state of North Carolina.” So that was always kind of a very delicate subject. And then that’s what really stuck out with me on how to make those small steps in order to make it equitable for everybody.

Alec Patton:
And I’m curious. You may not want to answer this but you decide. When you were doing that… You’re doing the social justice work simultaneously with learning these improvement science structures, was there a point for any of you where you were like, “Man, I’m might have made a mistake here. This is a lot to be doing on top of my job, and I don’t know about this.”

Jerad Crave:
How many times did we have that discussion?

Mike Swan:
Yeah. How many times did I tell my wife and say… I had a new baby at the time. My wife did, and I’m thinking, “My gosh, was this the right time to do this?” Our district leadership at the time, I was transitioning from a high school principal job of five years into a director of student services role. So within that same month, I got accepted at Western Carolina, began the classes, and then a month later, I transitioned into the central office, plus a newborn. So I was, or maybe a two-year-old, and just thinking the time commitment, “How is this all going to play out?” And I told my wife several times, and I think I told this group, “Man, this is tough.” But we persevered and just kept… And I know they have the same struggles that we’ve all got children and families, but we saw an end game for us, I feel, that we continued.
And once we got connected as this foursome, we really held each other accountable and pushed each other. We talked about that during the cocktail hour as far as sticking together and making sure everyone held each other accountable. We didn’t rely on somebody else to say, “Hey, Jerad’s not doing his part. Can you talk to him?” If Jerad wasn’t doing his part, we would say, “Hey, let’s go. Get this done.” Or maybe it was Mike saying, “Hey, I can’t meet this weekend. I’ve got… I want to go hunting.”
“Well, you’re going to have to put that on hold for this year.” And that happened a lot.

Katie Elliot:
It also was so rewarding because even though it was a struggle and things were difficult in class and there were frustrations to be able to get outside of the district and outside of the county and have that professional conversation with everyone, even though it was hard, I think for all of us, we didn’t hate being there. We never once hated being there. Sometimes it’s hard to get going and get started, but it was very rewarding personally. I mean, I missed it once it ended. Even if it was hard and we were diving into deep topics, it was definitely where we felt that absence after it ended.

Jerad Crave:
Well, in our own districts, we can be so myopic and so focused on the rigors of our own jobs, and outside of the research, we can get so focused in on what we have to do in a daily setting, that coming together and working on a problem of practice that was much larger than our roles was very satisfying.

Robert Crow:
And this is one example, Alec, of the ability to do a group dissertation. Some institutions won’t let their students do that kind of thing. And in fact, some of our students don’t want to do it either, and they do it individually. So seeing this kind of group, in fact, this is the first four-way group we’ve ever had. And just the recognition that you guys have recognized the work that they’ve done, it’s just amazing. It’s wonderful.

Katie Elliot:
It was more powerful because we had four contexts to compare. Yeah.

Andrea Russell:
I would add to that too that going into this group of four disquisition, I immediately jumped on board with, “Oh my gosh, yes. I don’t have to do all of this by myself. Please, can I work with some other people? Yes.” And that turned into, “Okay, now we are gathering data for four separate districts, and we’re going to have to follow through with entire comparative analysis of data that we’ve gathered in four separate districts.” So while we walked into it thinking, “Hey, we’re a really strong group with some really professional ideas and opinions and skills and abilities that all four of us bring to the table,” we then had to implement in four separate districts, gather data in four separate districts, and do this huge comparative analysis, which thank you, Katie, data is her thing.
It gave us some amazing data and some offered some big ideas from the research that we had, which is much better than what we could have brought from any one context. But we walked in thinking, “All right, if we can do this together, it’s going to be easier,” which we found quickly that we bid off a lot of responsibility, I think, with the data that we were able to gather.

Alec Patton:
And I want to get into that and the sort of experimental design. But first on that, crafting the question, do you remember, was there a eureka moment about, “Oh, assistant principals. That’s the thing.”

Katie Elliot:
I think that was pushed by Robert.

Andrea Russell:
Yeah.

Katie Elliot:
Yeah.

Robert Crow:
Well, that’s kind of interesting, Alec, because that’s one of the things that we try to differentiate between a PhD dissertation and an EdD dissertation. PhD dissertations have research questions. Our dissertations of practice have problems of practice that are then explored and solved. So that’s a real big question. And so when people ask, “Where are the research questions?” Especially people on the committee, we have to do some training on how different this dissertation is than the basic five-chapter PhD dissertation that most people wrote different programs.

Alec Patton:
You have this. You’ve narrowed it. You’ve gone through this process. How long was it? How long did it take before you got this problem of practice identified? We’ve had a year. We’ve had six months, somewhere in between. Anyone want to pin it down.

Jerad Crave:
I feel like it was at the year mark that we really focus in on assistant principal preparation and started to move forward with that idea. And we had already coalesced as a team by that point as well.

Katie Elliot:
And the great thing was that they were breaking it down for us to start writing. We didn’t call them chapters, but to get that initial work done. So we did have things that we could use from each of the classes we were also in. So some of them directly tied into our disposition work, but they definitely evolved. I remember Dr. Weiler going back and forth with us a lot on that problem of practice and how we were going to state it and Dr. Crow as well. And that was in the initial time before chairs were assigned. So that’s another thing about the setup of the program. It’s fantastic to get you started thinking about that large piece of work in the beginning rather than waiting till classwork is over and then starting it.

Alec Patton:
Right. Was there a time in that first year where you were just like, “Let’s get on with it”?
“I get it, but it’s insane that we’re spending a year to decide what to focus on.”

Katie Elliot:
Oh, yeah. And that was hard for us to get. I think in the end, it benefited us greatly because again, that thinking had been reworked and broken down a bit and built back up with those improvement science tools. It needed to take that long, but we didn’t necessarily realize it. We’re educators. We move quickly. We have too much to do, so we wanted to jump right in, and they really had to slow us down and tell us to redo and look at the research a little more. Investigate this. But that was essential for the outcomes to be there. We also had to take the time to learn all of those strategies we needed as we were going to tackle the data pieces and work within our districts on that because it took a while to set up design teams and other things. So it’s not a fast process.

Alec Patton:
Does anyone remember what the wording of your specific problem of practice was at the end of that year?

Jerad Crave:
I feel like it was similar to what we had as our final outcome. That assistant principals are not adequately prepared to transition into the role of principal.

Andrea Russell:
I think Jerad, we started with the principal. I mean, our fishbone problem in practice was about principals are not adequately prepared for their role. And we ended up doing our disquisition or action research based on the preparation, the intentional preparation of assistant principals because of the work that we did with the improvement science tools, the fishbone, and the driver diagram. When we ended up compiling all of those things, it ended up being about how can we prepare assistant principals. Because what we wanted originally to talk about was principals were not prepared. And we had some personal experience with that. And I’m pretty… I know we used Mike in that way too when he was called to be a principal and didn’t really know or didn’t really have that skillset then. But then, I guess, we used the five whys to get to, “Well, how can we do some meaningful change in multiple contexts?” And we started talking about working with assistant principals specifically.

Katie Elliot:
I think we definitely flipped it a little bit. I think we ended with, “Assistant principals transitioning into a principalship role are often not adequately prepared to lead and struggle in the beginning years of their new leadership role.” But definitely, it did still focus on the principal.

Alec Patton:
Year one was come up with a topic.

Katie Elliot:
Classes.

Alec Patton:
I mean, a lot more, obviously. So what happened in year two?

Andrea Russell:
Year two was the research. We did a lot of research. And then, we…

Jerad Crave:
Essentially our lit review.

Katie Elliot:
And our proposal. Putting the proposal together takes a lot of time and learning to do that. And there was a little bit of initial research on that, but we had to get that approved by the committee and then move forward into the project. So there was a lot of refining on our writing. So as the class slowed, lessened, we definitely picked up on the writing piece.

Andrea Russell:
And I appreciate how the classes at Western allowed us the time to do that. So that summer class with Dr. Weiler was devoted to that. It was devoted to the IRB process and the proposal process and the writing, getting those pieces ready for implementation. We spent that whole time doing that under her supervision.

Alec Patton:
All right. And this could sound dismissive, and it’s not meant to. But it sounds like year two was the most… As it were a conventional year. Just in the sense that year one, you’re doing improvement science and social justice, and you’re learning these things that are… They’re not new, new, but they’re not what everybody’s doing. And then year three, you’re doing action research with PDSA cycles and everything, which is definitely different from what most folks are doing. And year two, you’re kind of preparing a poet proposal and doing your research, which seems to me the thing that pretty much everybody does if they’re doing doctoral research.

Robert Crow:
Yeah. Because in year three, there’s no coursework normally. And so they’re out there building structures. To me, that’s what people who have Doctors of Education do. They build structures. So they actually had to design the whole program and then implement it and then collect data on how it went, and then make suggestions for improvement. So they have to do the whole nine yards. They just don’t go out and do a survey like some people would do research. They actually had to create all of the professional development, everything. So it takes a lot. It takes a lot.

Alec Patton:
Tell me about that design. What’d you make?

Robert Crow:
Well, they used a… For us, for practical research, we used a bunch of different types of measurement. So, of course, they wanted to look at capacity. So they were using a normal survey for pre and post-type of outcomes. But then, when they do the professional development sessions, there will be some kind of process measure or a driver measure where they would collect data, look at the analysis, and then try to figure out the next steps. So there’s a lot of data collection along this whole process because there’s multiple PDSA cycles. It drives our IRB people nuts because it’s like, “What do you mean you’re collecting three different surveys?” And it’s like, “Yes, that’s what we’re doing.” So we viewed how to train them on how to work with us.

Katie Elliot:
Yeah, we had three different initiatives based on the literature and our pre-surveys. So we worked on professional development sessions for assistant principals. We had an orientation session to get them into the project and the role, talk about some introductory items, and get them familiar with the district. And we also had the shadowing piece. So for each of those, we had to have the balance process and driver measures. And we were very careful to have data for each of those for each of the initiatives. Of course, for each of the initiatives, we also had outcome measures based on the goals we had set.
We did do a pre and post, same information, different moments in time, and we used the North Carolina rubric for assessing the leadership standards to do that. So we tried to layer the data, both those process measures, but also the outcome measures, and have qualitative and quantitative data for all of them. So we did design a fairly complicated structure because we wanted to be able to move this research forward and to share it and have it be replicated. We wanted to prove that what we were doing was solid, even though it was across four different districts.

Alec Patton:
If I understand correctly, the three interventions, if that’s the right word, that you tried, that you tested, were like discreet professional development sessions, like you come to a room and you do professional development, specifically aimed at assistant principals, and then a shadowing program where assistant principals shadow somebody else through their job. And then was the orientation the third one?

Katie Elliot:
Yeah, so that was more being familiar with the district for policies and procedures. We really honed in on skill development versus career development and the need of both. We can’t just give them the facts and skills. We also have to teach them how to be savvy and to work forward to analyze what area they might want to focus in. What schools are appropriate for them? So it was definitely on both sides. So that’s why we really separated out the orientation from the professional development.

Alec Patton:
Right. And who were they shadowing?

Katie Elliot:
They were shadowing principals. They also shadowed first some other assistant principals just to get familiar with different levels, the different elementary, middle, high levels. Because if you’ve always been an assistant principal in a high school and you get a principalship in an elementary school, there are so many differences. And we have more high school APs than any other category, but more elementary jobs. So we started with assistant principals working with other assistant principals, and then we moved into shadowing principals.

Mike Swan:
And we’re just finishing up the first round of our shadowing here in Burke County. And it’s very intentional for us to place our assistant principals that had zero experience. Anywhere except high school, we’ve intentionally put them in the elementary setting to shadow an elementary principal so that they can see what it’s like a day-to-day car rider, and the school lunch, opening milk cartons, things that you don’t even think about for high school assistant principal. So it’s been a really great experience for our folks.

Alec Patton:
And so were you doing PDSA cycles, Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles on all three of those?

Katie Elliot:
Yeah, in the design phase we were.

Alec Patton:
Got it. And the design phase was year three.

Katie Elliot:
And year two.

Alec Patton:
Got it. So I normally think of implementation as happening within a PDSA cycle that you try something, you do it for a little bit, you study your data, you plan again. But it sounds like there was kind of a design testing phase and then there was a more long-term implementation phase within the project. Is that right?

Katie Elliot:
That’s correct. We used design teams because to do something like this, you have to have that representation and buy-in from the district and the people that you’re going to be working with. So we all created design teams of important players within our district. I had our assistant superintendent of curriculum. We had different principals and assistant principals on the committee that helped us walk through those PDSA cycles in order to make our design well-rounded and multi-perspective.

Alec Patton:
How did you convince them all to do that?

Katie Elliot:
We harassed them.

Mike Swan:
That was a challenge. Yeah, that was a challenge too. I think I was able to get more buy-in, I thin,, because I was at different was at the district level, so I had easier access to… And Katie was too at the time, I believe, right, Katie?

Katie Elliot:
Mm-hmm. I was.

Mike Swan:
Yeah. So we had easier reach, so to speak. So that’s why we feel it has to be that district initiative from top down. It can’t be one school to try to support this because as you start reaching out, that momentum is going to decrease unless you have that top-down approach.

Alec Patton:
Yeah. I was wondering because I can see with the finished… Where you’re at now, I can see it being a pretty easy sell. Not easy sell, but to sort of say to a district like, “Hey, are you doing anything to prep your assistant principals?” And they’re like, “No, not really.” You’re like, “Great, I got some ideas for you.” That makes a lot of sense to me. But being like, “Hey, so you want to help me with my doctoral research by being on a design team?” That just seems like a big lift.

Andrea Russell:
And that’s the life that I lived as an assistant principal. So I had to go to my district leaders and say, “Hey, as an assistant principal, can I help you grow the capacity of assistant principals?” And that was a really unique perspective because my district leader kind of looked at me and said, “Do you think assistant principals are going to listen to another assistant principal?”
“Well, maybe. Maybe they will. Maybe if I have some help and some backing and some other district help, they may. Maybe if I’m just a logistical paper pusher, maybe I can do that.” So that was it. I lived a different role than Katie and Mike who had district positions. However, because I developed a design team, I was able to convince, maybe that’s the right word, a district who at the time was our director of secondary education. She was very instrumental.
I pulled another assistant principal and then some help on board to work with the logistics. But the details of the assistant principal program that we implemented was essentially left up to me. Basically, because they didn’t want to mess with it, and they were okay with me doing it. I guess I attribute that to 16 years in the district and knowing most everyone and having that rapport built already, and they were helpful in letting me do that. But they acknowledged that, “Hey, an assistant principal coming on board to try to build capacity of assistant principals is a little bit weird.” I’m not sure if weird is the right word. But it was acknowledged that, “Hey, you’re an assistant principal too.” So that was an interesting take.

Alec Patton:
What I’m kind of struggling with understanding here is in the examples that I know where a district gets design teams and does PDSA cycles within something, either there’s a funder putting up a bunch of money and they’ve all joined the program, or they are paying somebody to help them out. There’s that kind of thing. And I’m really having trouble with being like, “So I’m doing this doctorate and I could really use your help.” It seems like a really unusual way to position to need to convince people to do what… Is it pretty… I mean, I imagine was a pretty decent time commitment.

Andrea Russell:
I would say that’s a fair… I would say that’s a fair take on it. And I would go so far as to tell you that in my district, I’m in a small rural district, I was the first to go to one of our district leaders and say, “Hey, I’m in a doctoral program and I need some help with this doctoral program.” And that district leader looked at me and said, “I’m not sure we’ve ever done that before. So what do you need?” So yeah, being in a rural, very small district where there are not a lot of doctoral candidates working on that degree, there’s not a lot of experience in supporting those folks. And I was one of the first in my district to do that. So it was an interesting, “Hey, how can we help?” And they were really great to do so. I mean, I guess they didn’t have to, certainly didn’t have to. But I had relationships with them already because I’ve been in the district for a considerable amount of time, and they were great to work with me.

Katie Elliot:
And it was far difficult. I was jealous of people almost that were working on a more traditional program because they could go outside of the county and just pull data. They didn’t have to have all of those savvy conversations to get people on board. But again, that was part of our learning.

Jerad Crave:
Well, by savvy you mean begging.

Katie Elliot:
Yeah. Ask the right people at the right time. You got to be savvy about it.

Jerad Crave:
True. True.

Mike Swan:
And Alec, our district, and I know a lot of other districts like us, they try to push our administrators to get that post-secondary education. And this was a big step for me. I always thought, getting my master’s in school admin was it. And then as I started exploring, we talked early on about why WCU, but I think by drawing that in, that was able to… All of our other district leaders see the need, so they want to participate, be part of this, and now we’ve got several folks that are going through a doctoral program as well based on the work that we’ve done. So yeah, I think it’s that. As I mentioned earlier, it’s that keeping the momentum going.

Robert Crow:
And one program element that is kind of built-in is that normally on dissertation committees, we have somebody inside the district come and serve on the committee that we have to get them graduate faculty status and everything. It’s a big pain in the butt. But they serve on the committee and they can kind of pave the way a little bit. It didn’t really happen with this group because there’s four of them and it was kind of hard. But normally, when we have one or two, it’s normally someone’s supervisor that serves on the committee and they can make sure that the work can roll out. But really, when you work with improvement science, it’s so collaborative that you start doing fishbone diagrams with people and they get right into it. I mean, it’s wild to see how people react to it.

Alec Patton:
And so I’m curious, what were your big… What were the big things you learned from that design team phase?

Mike Swan:
I think on my end it was, some of the ideas that I had weren’t what I guess that design team wanted to see rollout. So I had to take a couple of steps back. And because my superintendent helped me, my assistant superintendent and some of the feedback that they gave me was, “All right. Have you thought about this?” Posing those questions to me and then backing up and redesigning it and going a step forward. So that’s kind of one of my takeaways.

Alec Patton:
I mean, on some level you must have been like, “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it for two years. I’ve spent a lot more time on it than you have.”

Mike Swan:
I know. But at the end of the game, they’re the ones that had that district vision and they were there to support me. So that’s kind of how I approached the purview.

Alec Patton:
Yeah.

Jerad Crave:
Well, and also I think it’s important, for my design team experience. I had ideas of including a lot of equity measures and cultural competence measures. And my design team essentially said, “Well, we’re doing that,” which they weren’t. And I had to just nod my head and say, “Oh, okay, great. Well, what are your ideas?” But at a certain point, you have to let go of your A goals and just try to achieve the B goals in the name of progress.

Alec Patton:
What did you have to sacrifice?

Katie Elliot:
I think we planned shadowing experiences that were slightly higher than what we got out. And it wasn’t just in the planning stage, but in implementation that the nature of being an assistant principal is that you’re busy and making that happen. We did fairly well in my district. But I had initially wanted them to have more time. It’s very hard to go in for four hours or eight hours and really get the whole scope of the job. So if we could have provided more time for them to do it, but principals we’re slightly alarmed that them being out of the building for that long would be a drain on them and that’s completely understandable. Ideally, we would have people sub in and help with that. So I think the shadowing got a little lighter in my district, and I don’t know if anyone had to leave any part of theirs entirely out. We tried to stick to it.

Mike Swan:
And I think that’s what we focused heavily on too. We tried to make it work for them to make sure that the principal’s still going to be in the building when that assistant principal’s gone, so it’s that successful experience, and they’re not panicked to get back to their duties that they’re supposed to be doing, that they’re getting paid for, so to speak.

Alec Patton:
That design team at that point went through PDSA cycles, refined this three-part program of professional development orientation and shadowing, and then you did a pre-measure survey, and then you implemented it at scale, it seems like, for that third year, and did that post survey and then crunched all those numbers with Katie’s data abilities, and I’m sure other people’s as well. Is there a big step of that that we’ve left out?

Katie Elliot:
Some of… We did some pre-initiative data to help plan in that. So that was presented to our design teams. So we’d already done some interviews of principals and district leaders and assistant principals, and also some pre-initiative surveys about perceived abilities and what principles thought that they could have used in order to have a better experience onboarding into the principalship. That was presented to design teams to help plan the details. So the design teams didn’t just work based on what we thought might work. It was based in the data from that pre-initiative work.

Alec Patton:
And at the end of that third year, once you started going through the data, what surprised you?

Jerad Crave:
I think one of our biggest surprises was in the area of equity competence. In our pre and post-survey, in comparing those two pieces of data, we found that the assistant principals felt much more competent in their abilities to be equitable and to ultimately have equity competence within their capacities day to day. And it was one of our strongest findings, which was not expected. I think in many of our districts, we did not plan strategically to have a focus on equity within our professional development sessions. And so, that’s what came out as a surprise for many of us, including my district.

Alec Patton:
What do you attribute that to?

Katie Elliot:
I think it’s giving them the tools and the ways to work with it because we gave them some practices and skills and career where they felt more confident to tackle the problems. A lot of the pre-stuff said they just didn’t know what they didn’t know. So we tried to give them that so they could step into those problems of practice with more confidence and less fear about tackling them head-on. It goes back to that revolutionary piece. If you have people that know what they’re doing, they can do better work. I mean, it sounds simple, but in public education that’s much more complicated.

Jerad Crave:
Right. And we talked about how just having the support and feeling acknowledged and valued and that the district was putting forth an effort. In the end, it was us initiating the effort. But the fact that assistant principals were getting the attention they deserved, I think had a valuable impact on their feelings and their feelings of competence, and ultimately their competence within equity.

Katie Elliot:
It was also the relationship piece because the qualitative data really pointed to the fact that when you work within a school, that’s your bubble. So when we got the assistant principals to the district offices for training professional development, the orientation sessions focused on familiarizing them with district leaders, when they got to work with different APs in different schools and levels, they really stated to us that they could see themselves leading in many different areas. And before, it was very hard for them to picture themselves outside of that current role. They got to know people and make those connections, which also broadens your skillset because if you want to talk something out, now, they had people to do that with.

Mike Swan:
And it helped build that network too, Alec, as far as those assistant principals. I know our folks and I’m sure others have. Like Katie said, they stay in contact with one another. We expect our principals to reach out to one another and build those networks to ask questions. So the assistant principals have begun doing that as well. Based on the training that we’re giving them, they feel more confident to be able to come out of the schools network with folks, spend a half a day or a day together in those PDs, and get to know one another because there’s a good chance that they may end up at that school that that same person was at. So I think all of that kind of comes together for that.

Katie Elliot:
It was surprising to me that we had so much differences amongst gender, age. We were very effective at getting some significant values with our younger administrators, where some of the older administrators, that was more difficult. And then men and women had some differences amongst them too, about what they were comfortable in. And that was some interesting reading in the qualitative data as well.

Alec Patton:
And what were the gender differences?

Katie Elliot:
Just looking at where if one gender is more comfortable doing the evaluation piece and maybe men were more comfortable doing a school mission and that big leading change piece. Women definitely had more significance in school improvement, in distributive leadership, in efficacy and empowerment. Women and men were vastly different, especially in conflict management and resolution. That was the most significant difference between them on their numbers when we worked that out in the end.

Alec Patton:
And what was that difference?

Katie Elliot:
It was 0.001 and a 0.36 on the P values.

Alec Patton:
Which and which though?

Katie Elliot:
Women were the significant value.

Alec Patton:
All right. And what is-

Katie Elliot:
Feeling more confident to tackle the human resource issues and dealing with writing teachers up, just to put it bluntly, and knowing what to do in those situations.

Alec Patton:
Got it. So that was the jump on… So women kind of jumped more on that than men did.

Katie Elliot:
They jumped a lot more on that.

Alec Patton:
Got it. All right. I know that I’ve gone way over the time that I said this was going to be. Thank you all for hanging out. I’ve got one final question, which is just… And you can just speak as you see fit, but I’d love to hear from everybody. Based on all these three years of work to a district leader who’s listened to this podcast episode, one piece of advice for them based on what you’ve learned.

Robert Crow:
I’ll jump in from the 30,000 feet. All right. So my big thing is that we can’t expect to send a Katie out or an Andrea or a Jerad out into these districts to change culture by themselves. And so I know Carnegie’s gotten some different projects like iLEAD and others that are working with districts, so they get prepared. So when an Andrea or a Katie or a Mike or Jerad come in and do this work, they know what’s going on. But I think it’s a bad way to think that these people could be martyred by sending an amount by themselves to conquer the world.

Katie Elliot:
For me, the takeaway for district leaders would be to focus in on the succession planning. We put together a framework that really focuses on succession planning, how to be very thoughtful and proactive in developing leaders, also, while having that social justice lens. If we’re waiting just to have the vacancy and throw somebody in there, whoever that committee might pick, we’re missing the chance to be proactive about the right person with the right skill set for that position. It needs to happen way ahead of time. And that happens often in private industry, but not nearly as much in public K-12 education. So focus on that can spades because you can have a great leader in the wrong fit of a school and it could be disastrous. And that hurts students.

Alec Patton:
And what is succession planning?

Katie Elliot:
The thoughtful looking in at what vacancies do we anticipate and what people within that pipeline do we have that would be a good cultural fit. And then also, what skills will we need to help them develop before that is happening before they’re going to be put into that position? So thinking out, having that board with your people on it and thinking about where they might be going in a year, three years, five years.

Mike Swan:
The Assistant Principal Leadership program is kind of how we’ve approached that. We want to start the succession planning. Eventually, our principals are going to retire. They might take other district-level leadership positions. So we want to have them prepped in order to take that next step and feel confident of us putting them into that role based on the training that we’ve given them.

Andrea Russell:
But I think that training that districts need to take should be intentional and with purpose, and not just because of which director in the county office is available to talk with assistant principals. I think assistant principals need to be involved in the process so that the professional development that they spend their time in is relevant to the work that they do. That was one piece that we found in our work that assistant principals were eager to give feedback and grateful for the opportunity.
One of the things assistant principals said to us is, “Thank you for the opportunity to network, but thank you for the opportunity to tell you what we need and for making these topics of professional development relevant to our needs specifically.” Because the needs in Stanley County were different than those in Burke County and those in Asheville City and those in Caldwell County as well.
While professional development should not be an option, it should be a requirement, but it should be tailored to those, like Katie was saying, the succession, because you know which positions may or may not be coming available and which people are going to be a good fit. Not because they can move into that position, but because they’re best suited for that position. Because our title of the whole thing is Building the Bench. Because we’ve intentionally built the bench so that our assistant principals are ready and capable to move into those positions that are coming available.

Jerad Crave:
And I think, just to add on, my big takeaway is, at the district level to create change, you have to have allies and be political to create those alliances to people who can make decisions and that will hear your ideas and ultimately create change in a meaningful way. So without those alliances and those individuals on your side, it could be a futile effort to create any change, much less positive and impactful change within the district.

Alec Patton:
Great. Thank you all so much. Is there anything else anyone wants to say before we wrap it up?

Robert Crow:
Alec, we just want to thank you for taking the time.

Jerad Crave:
Yes.

Robert Crow:
And getting this out there-

Jerad Crave:
Oh, yeah. Thank you, Alec.

Robert Crow:
… in the world.

Katie Elliot:
This was good for us because COVID hit right as we were finishing, so we had plans to publish and do a lot of things that just got stuck. So this was great. We were so excited to have you reach out to us.

Alec Patton:
Oh, it’s great. I’m so pleased.
Wonderful.
All right. Thank you folks so much. I’m going to stop the recording.
High Tech High Unboxed is hosted and edited by me, Alec Patton. Our theme music is by Brother Herschel. The Education Leadership Program at Western Carolina University, where Andrea, Jerad, Katie, and Mike did their doctoral research was awarded Program of the Year by the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate. There’s a link to the program’s website as well as a video about the program in our show notes. Thanks for listening.