The Importance of Reflection and Perspective in the Process of Growth
By: Katie Ahmadzai
Education is rich with rhythms: the first day of school, homecoming week, Christmas and Spring break, finals, and graduation. For school leaders, one essential part of this yearly routine is using the summer to plan for the coming year. But without a pause to reflect and reorient ourselves, we can easily fall into the trap of discouragement or distraction.
It can be discouraging to come to the end of a year and feel stuck when you look at survey or test results and wonder if you’ve really made any progress. It can be tempting to try to distract ourselves by looking for a new challenge, so we can just start from scratch. However, pausing to reflect and celebrate can prepare us to carry on the good work with the right perspective.
At NorthStar Academy (NSA), an international online Christian school, our lead teachers from around the world (literally) gathered virtually in June, entering our familiar planning process with one new experience behind us: we had just completed our first year as part of Baylor’s Center for School Leadership’s (BCSL) improvement community, which has included working through a 5 quarters now of improvement processes as we faced the opportunity to bring deep change to NSA through an adaptive goal to “increase meaningful teacher engagement through PLCs & coaching to provide more impactful feedback that leads to improved student engagement in their learning.”
Our measurable goal aimed to boost teacher engagement by 10% through focused, measurable actions. Initially, our path from “basecamp” to this goal seemed clear. Yet, like any journey, our year was filled with detours, pauses, and new understandings along the way.
Detour #1: Early on, we discovered we lacked a shared definition of teacher engagement. The varied teacher self-assessment responses underscored the need to establish common expectations and standards.
Detour #2: One of the paths we planned, developing more of a coaching role for lead teachers, was unexpectedly steep, and the rapid changes proved too be too much, too soon. We had to reroute to slow the process down.
Although these hurdles slowed our pace, they also allowed us to ask important clarifying questions and seek help from others outside of our context. And however slow it felt like we were going, the accountability of the broader school improvement community helped us maintain forward motion focused on consistent growth and small steps toward improvement.
Navigating Familiar Terrain with New Insights
Anyone who has hiked a mountain knows the feeling: you walk for a long period, and due to the spiral route, at some points, it feels like you’re right back where you started. You look out and see the same lake you saw an hour or two ago. However, with each loop, you are climbing higher and gaining a bit more perspective.
During our meeting in June, as we reviewed our efforts from the previous year, the surveys showed positive, though modest, changes in teacher-reported engagement. We hadn’t implemented as many changes as originally planned, but a moment of reflection revealed important progress. We had a wonderful time pausing to celebrate the growth we had seen.
Celebration #1: Monthly PLC meetings, for example, focused on collaborative growth, support, and community-building. This shift transformed our faculty meetings from “come and listen” to “come and share.”
Survey Results: 1: Strongly Disagree; 5: Strongly Agree
Fall:
Spring:
Celebration #2: Even in our online context, teachers reported feeling a stronger sense of support and community. The view from our current “loop” up the mountain might have looked familiar, but it was undeniably from a higher vantage point.
We still faced the same adaptive challenge, but we now approached it with a clearer perspective. We no longer wanted to jump to the next challenge or give up, but because we took the time to reflect, we were now ready to persevere.
Climbing with Purpose
Instead of searching for a new “mountain,” we took time to refine and build on what we had started. By breaking into smaller teams, we focused on exploring two complementary ideas to address our adaptive challenge. The intent is not to rush the climb but to make sure that strong and secure supports are available to sustain increased teacher engagement for increased student achievement.
While reflection is indeed a vital part of a strong culture of school improvement at the team level, it is also vital at the personal level for each educator, especially as a follower of Christ. When I am pressing ahead without pausing to reflect on my practice in the presence of Christ, I will miss the opportunity to see my life through His perspective. I tend to slip into putting my identity into what I can do versus who God says I am, and I can get discouraged, distracted, and/or feel stuck on my journey up the mountain, instead of living out of His fullness and taking the journey one step at a time, pausing to soak in the vistas along the way. When we, as leaders, make reflection a habit for our own lives, we will have the tools and mindsets we need to encourage this in others and make it part of the culture of our schools – schools that find value in the view.
Katie Ahmadzai is the principal of NorthStar Academy, an international online Christian school and an alumna of the Baylor Master of Arts in School Leadership (MASL) program.
Join us at Catalyze (formerly Just Schools Academy) July 28-30 at the Hurd Welcome Center at Baylor University, where your team of teachers and administrators will have the opportunity to address a problem of practice related to your campus improvement plan focusing on feedback, engagement, or well-being. This is not a conference. This is a retreat that offers your team a collaborative environment where you’ll work alongside a network of educators and the BCSL team to develop a plan of action using our improvement science tools. With ongoing monthly support from our team, you will be equipped with strategies to catalyze lasting improvement in what we like to call “catalytic improvement communities” that will benefit your school. You will improve an aspect of your campus improvement plan, develop leaders, and enhance collective teacher efficacy. Gather a team of 2-10 teachers and administrators because we do this work best together.