How would a leader of content knowledge solve the problem of high Hispanic dropout rates in a high school?
The typical response of most school administrators to an achievement problem in their school is to adopt a program. The program will usually include several one-day workshops led by a well-known guru in the field. The staff would receive notice of their involvement in the program at an opening day workshop. The announcement of the new program would be accompanied by a brief power-point presentation of what the program entails and the schedule for the in-service workshops. Because the agenda for the opening day workshop is jammed with managerial matters, there is little time to explain to the staff the rationale for the program or the theories, ideas, and practices that govern the program. One year later when achievement gains have failed to materialize school administrators will blame teachers for failing to “buy into” the new program. Administrators who approach instructional change in the mode of “shoot first and then aim” do not have much time for recriminations because it is a new year and time for a new program.
A leader of content knowledge, however, would approach an instructional problem quite differently. There would be no grand announcement of a program or a schedule to launch the faculty into action, but rather a series of mini-presentations that would begin with factual representations of the problem and then, as the year progressed, the communication of an agenda in the form of an instructional story that is told over and over again in faculty meetings, in school board meetings, in meetings with district personnel, and most importantly in the daily hallway and classroom conversations with teachers, students, and support personnel. The instructional story would always be composed of the facts of the problem, the emotional toll the problem is taking on students, parents, and teachers, and possible solutions for the problem. The instructional story would always be delivered orally so audiences feel the seriousness, passion, and purposefulness of the leader of content knowledge. The power of the instructional story does not lie in the emotional force of the story alone, however, but ultimately in the substance of the story—a philosophy of education—that weaves theories, ideas, and the practice of curriculum and instruction into the everyday routines and varied understandings of the school community she leads. In the case of high Hispanic dropout rates, the story might look something like this:
For the last five years one-third of the Hispanic students who begin in our school will not walk across the stage four years later. All of us sitting in this auditorium have experienced the pain of students and parents who have been drawn into the life changing decision to quit high school —it is like a death without a funeral. Many of you have stopped me in the hallway, dropped into my office, or cornered me in the parking lot to tell me a story of one your best Hispanic students who decided to dropout of school. Let me interject that I truly appreciate all the efforts this faculty is making to support students whose native language and immigrant status has made it difficult for our new arrivals to do well in school.
Of particular concern to me is the high number of Hispanic students who come to us from good high schools in Mexico and still fail to graduate. In talking with students, parents, and colleagues in districts with similar populations it appears that highly educated Hispanic students drop out of school because of their frustration in basic skills classes where they feel stuck because of their inability to speak English. If I placed myself in a similar position I can see where I would become bored in courses where I was not challenged and where I felt I was going nowhere. The research on the problem of high dropout rates among Hispanic students is all over the place. Some researchers feel that the solution lies in the community; some feel that the solution lies with better ESL/bilingual programs; some feel that more attention needs to be paid to employing more Hispanic teachers. As you know, over the last five years we have implemented a number of changes in our school to address each of these approaches to the problem with limited success.
Recently, there have been several writers who focused on the problem of how to increase the retention rate of academically talented Hispanic students. Again, the solutions offered by researchers are all over the map, but a common theme that emerges from effective programs for second language learners is the inclusion of classes, especially advanced classes, that are conducted in the native language. Some of you have expressed to me concerns about not emphasizing the importance of learning English. I agree with this concern. I feel this concern should be an important part of the conversations we will be having this year about how best to address the instructional needs of Hispanic students who are academically prepared to do well in advanced classes in mathematics and science.
The construction of this instructional story by the leader of content knowledge would begin a year or more before any public pronouncements were uttered about the problem. That year would become a period of private study of the problem. The leader of content knowledge would seek out experts in the field who have studied and written about the problem of high Hispanic dropout rates. Based on these conversations, the leader of content knowledge would select monographs and research articles that represent a continuum of theories, ideas, and practices in the field. She would then allocate time to read about the problem, talk about the problem with experts in the field, and finally to begin to run her thoughts by staff members most affected by the problem.
The goal of this personal journey for the leader of content knowledge is to allocate the necessary time to become immersed in the theories, ideas, and practices associated with the problem and, then, to seek out as many opportunities as possible to translate the theories, ideas, and practices from the professional literature into the everyday vocabulary, metaphors, analogies, and personal histories of the teachers they work with. The eventual success of the instructional story will depend on how well the leader of content knowledge has woven the theories and ideas from the professional literature into the everyday realities of classroom practice and, most importantly, how well the story stands up to “competing counterstories” (Gardner, 1995) of staff members. In the case of Spanish speaking content classes (science, social studies, mathematics) the instructional story would have to withstand the very powerful counterstory of the absolute duty of schools to teach recently arrived immigrants English as quickly as possible and to accomplish this moral and pedagogical function in classes where the recently arrived immigrant is totally immersed in English speaking classes.
What makes the personal and public journeys of the leader of content knowledge so vital to the process of solving an instructional problem is the personal understandings that come with the private study of the problem and with these understandings the development of necessary knowledge to define the problem for the staff, to explain an instructional framework that would address the problem, and to relate the components of the instructional framework to the everyday realities of classroom teaching. In the case of high Hispanic dropout rates, the leader of content knowledge has defined the problem—-the dropping out of high achieving Hispanic students who do not have access to higher level math and science classes; she has proposed a solution for the problem—the creation of advanced classes in mathematics and science that are taught in Spanish; she has identified indicators of success—the graduation rates of high achieving Hispanic students. The knowledge base developed during the personal and private journeys serve also as a solid foundation for confronting the “little” problems and competing counterstories (Gardner, 1995) that will emerge during the implementation of upper level content classes taught in Spanish.
The final guarantee, however, of the fulfillment of the goals and strategies of an instructional story is the day-to-day discussions and decisions that surface, situation-by-situation, as teachers work to develop curricular and instructional strategies for teaching advanced content classes in Spanish. The personal and private journey would reveal in which situations the leader of content knowledge should become involved. In the case of teaching advanced content classes in a second language, the challenge that will confront teachers in the program is finding materials in the second language—textbooks, lab activities, assessment instruments, technology applications—and personnel that possess a facility with the second language to teach the class and translate the materials. The ideal strategy for this instructional problem is the employment of Spanish speaking teachers who are certified in mathematics and science. Knowing this, the leader of content knowledge would become very much involved in the recruitment and employment of prospective teachers —which would include contacting department chairpersons of science and mathematics at universities with significant Hispanic populations; mentoring promising Hispanic students in these departments; and developing school and district incentives that would attract these candidates to their school.
The other situation that the leader of content knowledge must become a part of is the lesson planning process. What this means operationally is the development of a team format that will allow teachers in the program to collaborate on lessons and a process for requesting the materials and intellectual resources they will need to create lessons, materials, and assessments in Spanish. While teachers are becoming acclimated to their new assignments the leader of content knowledge would have found ways to subtly become an accepted member of the planning team. Their role on the team is part manager of resources and logistics, part cheerleader, and part keeper of the faith in the philosophical assumptions guiding the change initiative. In every situation where teachers come together to change what they do in classrooms, the leader of content knowledge plays the all important role of establishing an intellectual climate where teachers feel free to create the details of classroom instruction and at the same time maintaining the boundaries for the faithful adherence to the theories, ideas, and practices that have been woven together to form a school’s response to the instructional challenge of the day.
The Choice for Educational Administrators
A recent report (HSSE, 2005) on student satisfaction with their school experience gives voice to John Goodlad’s (1984) observation over twenty years ago that schools are places where students have become emotionally deadened by the routines of schooling and intellectually morbid by an institutional curriculum that prizes completion of work rather than understanding and reflection. Faced with these contemporary realities of schooling in America and the direction where the school reform literature is pointing, school administrators have three choices: they can retreat to their office; they can dance around the classroom (administrators-as-managers); or they can enter the classroom as leaders of content knowledge. Administrators who choose to enter the classroom will truly begin a difficult private and public journey into teaching and learning —but it will be a journey that has the only real opportunity to fully develop the creativity, intelligence, and the competence of our next generation of children.
Alan C. Jones 