Scientia pro Artis

To Mold a New Reality

In reflecting on my life as an instructional leader, I have been fortunate in terms of serving in multiple leadership positions and leading a variety of teams. During my tenure, I made concerted efforts to consistently build talented teams, provide opportunities for others to lead via distributive leadership, and forge partnerships through shared leadership with internal and external stakeholders. 

My endeavors created voices in portraiture for developing and establishing innovative, meaningful curricula, and contemporary teaching and learning spaces for the communities I have served. I embraced and employed servant leadership throughout my career as both a teacher and an instructional leader, all the while, forging collaborative partnerships.

The following installments provide an eleven-year historical perspective regarding the myriad instructional coaching, assistant principal, and principal positions I held and led, prior to becoming a superintendent, to create and implement innovative, interdisciplinary STEAM and scholarly programming for meaningful teaching and learning. These leadership opportunities afforded stakeholders in my communities numerous opportunities to engage in participatory leadership to improve teaching and learning and advance educational settings. 

A Portfolio for Serving

In 2005, I transitioned from my role as a high school biology instructor to an area, district-office instructional coach for high school science education (primarily biology, chemistry, and physics). That particular position was valuable in terms of providing opportunities for me to develop administrative capacity by the sheer fact I was providing professional learning and curricular supports for a portfolio of two-dozen diverse high schools. Each school was unique in terms of community, culture, climate, talent management, and school-based leadership.

As an instructional coach, I served high schools primarily located in Chicago’s Englewood community as well as Chicago’s Southwest side of the city. These schools included neighborhood high schools such as Englewood, Robeson, Harper, Tilden, Kennedy, etc. and York High School in Cook County Prison. My district office instructional coaching experiences afforded me opportunities to evaluate and improve curricula, assess opportunities for affording collegial coaching, and to provide professional learning for teachers (and teacher leaders) to improve leadership and instructional capacity. 

I was also provided the means to work directly with each school’s principal and administration to further develop perspective in terms of culture/climate, leadership style, and resulting leadership impact on the learning organization. In some cases, a few principals in my portfolio were on Corrective Action Plans (CAPs) as a result of performance deficits and/or disciplinary issues (CAPs can result in principal termination if little to no improvement is observed during the corrective process).

My experiences afforded me with multiple opportunities to provide leadership capacity supports for principals navigating the CAP process, which provided me insight into documenting capacity development, as well as documenting resistance to improvement (if resistance occurred). Those experiences were learning opportunities for me as a developing leader, as I immediately recognized my responsibilities for providing supports to help teachers and leaders improve performance. I recognized and learned, as a coach, I was charged with identifying opportunities for growth for those whom I served. In this case, my portfolio of teachers and principals.  

When teachers and leaders are struggling, they require supports, and not a checklist of memorialized deficits from an observer. Anyone can criticize and record deficiencies, but once deficiencies are identified, an action plan must be devised. It was painstakingly apparent that as a coach, if I identified a deficit, I was responsible for identifying supports (assets!). I viewed my role as finding and seeing “solutions” rather than “problems,” and I loved that aspect of my position. My paradigm aligned with my values as an artist, a scientist, and as a developing leader. This particular archetype also reflected my personal and professional principles, which inspired me to help others build capacity so they could thrive. Through today, I still say to myself, and those I lead and teach, “We have a solution to find” rather than, “We have a problem,” as it naturally lends itself to asset thinking and problem-solving.

A Canvas for Innovative Design

While serving in my district’s area office position, I reached out to Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and established what would become a long lasting partnership. I was extremely fortunate to be able to connect with two wonderful individuals at IIT, Russell Betts, Dean, College of Science, and Patty Cronin, Director of Marketing, Communications, and External Affairs. Both Russell and Patty were welcoming and eager to collaborate and support secondary teaching and learning. I did not realize it at the time, but the relationship and partnership we developed would continue for over a decade, as I eventually progressed to an assistant principal, principal, and much later, when I left the district to become a superintendent. 

Russell, Patty, and I worked to coordinate a variety of district-level supports for my Englewood school communities and to identify ways we could better partner with city high schools, IIT, and additional universities. That particular partnership, and resulting professional experiences, provided me invaluable leadership practices for working with a variety of stakeholders and developing communities of practice.

Additionally, I was able to reflect on and employ my doctoral studies, which commenced in 2004, with respect to leadership research related to instructional/collegial coaching, distributive leadership, and community/family engagement. My doctoral work remained invaluable throughout my time as an instructional coach when I transitioned from my role as a coach to an assistant principal.  

Finding My Way

In late 2006, I was offered and accepted a position as assistant principal at Lane Tech College Prep High School in Chicago. Lane Tech is one of the largest high schools in Illinois and the nation. At the time, Lane Tech served approximately 4,500 students, with students of every background and socioeconomic status (we later began housing a middle school Academic Center in addition to the high school, beginning in 2011).

Coincidentally, I previously attended Lane Tech as a student and later taught there during my career as a biology teacher (I began my teaching career in the 1990s in Chicago’s North Austin neighborhood before transferring to Lane Tech as a biology instructor). As an eventual assistant principal at Lane Tech, I was charged with overseeing curricular programs, scholarly programming, reinvigorating the school’s science curricular offerings, supervising numerous departments, and serving as the school’s Curriculum Director and Advanced Placement (AP) Coordinator.

From 2007 through my tenure as an assistant principal, and eventually principal of Lane Tech in 2012, I began actively establishing and nurturing external stakeholder and university partnerships. In addition, I also began spearheading new STEAM course offerings and focused on expanding Advanced Placement course offerings. As we developed and launched new STEAM-related courses, such as engineering design, neuroscience, art in mathematics, etc., we were able to expand innovative course offerings and increase the number of STEAM instructors. There was a very high demand for our dozen-plus new course offerings, which resulted in both the science and art departments nearly doubling in size.

We also created an interdisciplinary, cross-curricular program called Alpha-STEM for students specifically interested in research. This interdisciplinary, cross-curricular series created cohorts of 28 students each for attending STEAM courses as a group for a four-year course sequence. Teachers assigned to each cohort collaborated with colleagues for delivering cross-curricular lessons for authentic interdisciplinary teaching and learning. During our first year of Alpha, we recruited 56 students for two cohorts. Within five years, Alpha-STEM grew to approximately 670 students in over 24 cohorts at four grade levels. 

Like Gouache on a Palette

Alpha-STEM initially began in 2007 through an “Alpha- Tech, Engineering and English, Art, Math, and Science” construct I designed for reinvigorating our science department’s curricular offerings. It was also designed to create more robust interdisciplinary teaching and learning for the school community. The school originally had a program coined “Alpha” for the science fair that had existed years earlier but had been discontinued, as almost every student stopped participating after freshman year. The program was intended to provide cross-curricular learning to support student science fair projects but it lacked administrative leadership support and had been abandoned. I originally branded our new program “Alpha TEAMS,” (for Tech, Engineering and English, Art, Math, and Science) with interdisciplinary course planning. This was prior to STEM becoming a widely embraced philosophy within the school district, and to a degree, nationally. 

From 2007 through 2015, I provided administrative leadership for our new Alpha-STEM program (the A in Alpha was for “Art” while STEM represented “Science, Tech, Engineering and English, and Mathematics”). Teachers across different departments were provided common prep time to create semesters-long, interdisciplinary based lesson plans and long plans for cross-curricular planning. Teachers also visited classrooms in different departments to teach lessons for better supporting Discovery Learning.

The Alpha-STEM program developed into a fully sustainable, four-year programmatic cross-curricular offering. Where other attempts in the past had failed, Alpha-STEM had succeeded. The many successes of the program were the result of careful planning, a commitment to providing administrative support, and employing distributive leadership for teachers leading the program. The program’s teachers were among the best teachers I have ever worked with over the course of my career. I was also able to hire a new, dynamically gifted science department chair, Kevin Kopack, whom I would collaborate with throughout my time as an assistant principal and principal. 

Our initial two cohorts of 56 students grew each year, when we finally reached approximately 670 students in over 24 cohorts at four grade levels. As a result of our growth, we expanded the size of STEAM-related departments to support student interests and provided teachers with opportunities to lead. 

Alpha Article

Diamonds in the Rough

While serving as an assistant principal and throughout my tenure as principal, I continually partnered with Kevin on all things interdisciplinary and STEAM-related. Beginning in 2008, we identified the need to better encourage and support female students for considering professions in STEM-related fields. It was glaring to us both that we lacked school-wide concerted efforts, structures, and processes to support our female students, which indicated we had a solution to find! Our goal was to reach students school-wide and not just within STEM-related departments, but those beyond the acronym of STEM itself.

From 2009 through 2011, we began working with IIT, UIC, and other institutions to create partnerships for increasing supports for prospective female STEM students. Kevin had a friend, Angie Diefenbach, who was an engineering geologist from Oregon. Angie served as a guest speaker for our female students regarding the work she was performing as a female scientist. Angie’s time with our girls inspired students as a result of her authentic experiences as a female in a male-dominated STEM profession. 

The Stability Zone

In an effort to create formal, ongoing structures as opportunities for our female students to learn more about STEM from female STEM professionals, we began researching what other types of organizations and/or structures existed and how we could partner to encourage the pursuit of degrees in STEM. One of our chemistry teachers had previously worked at Niles West (just north of Chicago) and led a Girls Empowering Math and Science (GEMS) program. We visited Niles West to learn about the work they were doing with their female students and how we could better afford motivational supports. We also continued learning about existing structures at UIC, Northern University, and Penn State. 

In September 2011, we recruited the first of many coordinators and co-coordinators for Girls in Engineering Math and Science (GEMS). Although Kevin and I founded GEMS, we could not sponsor/coordinate the effort (for obvious reasons!) and needed female teachers in STEM to provide direction. We also wanted to create student leadership for decision-making, but would first have to establish GEMS with a female teacher sponsor. While interviewing one of many new, potential physics teachers, one candidate, Emily Finchum, was intrinsically motivated to sponsor GEMS and was already experienced with sponsoring a similar program at University of Illinois Chicago (UIC).

Emily was a mentor/tutor for a Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) program while she was a student at UIC. She was also involved in the Girls’ E-Mentoring in Science, Engineering, and Technology (GEM-SET) program at UIC. Emily and I discussed the start of what I wanted to call GEMS (Girls in Engineering Math and Science). Emily was the perfect candidate. Beginning that school year, with GEMS founded, we officially established GEMS as a vehicle for empowering our girls.

GEMS LT Article

GEMS Article

Grace Under Pressure

We communicated to stakeholders that GEMS was established as a result of the strong gender gap in STEM-related fields and that GEMS was founded to build capacity in young women entering the fields of math, science, and engineering. A large portion of our efforts centered on educating our girls on how to be successful in these fields by accessing female experts through field trips, guest-speakers, research with universities/organizational partners, and through service learning efforts.

Carbonate Rocks (‘n’ Roll) 

By the following school year, GEMS more than doubled in size. We grew from approximately 70 girls to over 140 female members. Within another two years, we had over three hundred female students participating. We added new coordinators and continued outreach to universities and expanded our efforts to our sending elementary schools. 

During our expansion, one memory, above others, still stands out, as it inspired me to continue my efforts in creating opportunities for students to learn and distributing leadership for empowering others to lead. One of our GEMS students, who aspired to be an anesthesiologist nurse, shared how excited she was that we had an anesthesiologist nurse come to speak to GEMS. She noted, “I have heard about many women taking the lead in scientific jobs but I never had the chance to meet any.” That quote actually appeared in our school newspaper, and when I read it at the time, I felt several years of validation in one sentence. I was ecstatic. When young people see others that look like them, excelling in careers and life, that reflection can be life changing. It serves as a projection for the future. That is the goal of education and it was a goal that represented my value set as an instructional leader. 

The Looking Glass

That singular quote was so profound that I have deliberated upon it ever since. It made me reconsider how I have defined and employed the term “reflection” when working with teams and encouraging educators to engage in reflective practice. There are many types of reflections, but the most meaningful reflection was creating a mirror of possibilities for learners. That reflective mirror was the creation of an environment a student felt deeply connected to as a result of seeing someone like herself, flourishing in a world of future possibilities. I believe this is the most meaningful and influential form of reflective practice, as it creates a mirror of possibilities.

Since its inception, thousands of female students have participated in GEMS. Over the years we received an extraordinary level of positive feedback regarding GEMS and how it created authentic opportunities for mentoring and inspired the pursuit of careers in STEM. While I am proud of the impact this has made on females in STEM, I believe the most important attribute is the creation of a holistic mindset for developing student learners’ self-worth and efficacy. In essence, when students feel good about themselves, they feel good about learning. When students feel good about learning, they, in turn, feel good about themselves and are intrinsically motivated to learn.

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