Soap-Opera Schools

Soap-Opera Schools

By Trent Provo

Doctoral Student

Indiana State University

Principal, Meadowlawn Elementary

Twin Lakes School Corporation

&

Ryan Donlan

Assistant Professor

Department of Educational Leadership

Bayh College of Education
Indiana State University

            Soap operas have been airing in the United States for well over fifty years.  Most have the following in common: Love triangles, outlandish plots, over-the-top acting, and last, but not least, DRAMA. 

What is it that makes these programs so popular that people will watch them for half a century? Is it that they allow people to escape from their everyday lives and experience a fantasy world?  Do viewers enjoy the entertainment value of the plot lines?  Or could it be the drama? 

Soap operas are a lot like some of our schools, it seems.

No single organization is immune to drama and its effects. 

In their book, Beyond Drama: Transcending Energy Vampires, Dr. Nate Regier and Jeff King (2013) define drama as "the pattern of habitual and predictable roles that cover up our best selves, justified by myths, which move us further away from solutions, healthy relationships, and effectiveness" (p. 26). Drama invites us to put on figurative masks and play roles that are certainly not representative of our best selves. 

When drama takes place in schools, it leads to a decrease in productivity, morale, and overall effectiveness, not to mention time wasted by principals who are trying to make sense of it all while working to diffuse it. 

Let's take a look.

Teacher A: A good teacher. His students are motivated; they achieve above the state average on state assessments and show above-average academic growth.  He is dedicated to the school’s mission and champions the cause of the at-risk student.  At times, however, he will push his beliefs about classroom management and best practice upon others, and when school leadership does something that he would consider shortsighted, he will not hesitate to hold court in the teachers lounge.   At times, his tone comes across as preachy, as if he were saying, "Do you mean to tell me, given the fact that we offered our input, that it was completely discounted?  Where’s the commitment to the faculty!?"  He has been known from time to time to sidebar with parents at the local Walmart and offer critiques of their children’s current teachers. Every so often, he looks for the faults in others and at times, forsakes others for having a lack of commitment. 

Teacher B:  A good teacher.  Her students are usually at or above the state average on state assessments and show typical growth.  She cares about her students and forms relationships with students and parents.  She considers her students “her flock,” and at times will over-adapt to them when they are misbehaving.  While in distress this teacher acts as a victim.  She droops around on some days, not looking as well-accessorized as she does on others, almost as if someone has hurt her feelings.  She appears down on herself when things aren’t going her way, and often says that she deserves what she gets.  She bemoans how hard she works, yet at times she feels that nothing she ever does is good enough. 

Teacher C:  A good teacher.  Students are performing and love her class.  In fact, she is the chairperson of the building’s Teacher Assistance Team.  Oftentimes, when other teachers are having problems with students, she will help them with strategies that she feels will make a difference.  Yet at times, she’ll go too far.  She’ll spend her preparation periods in other teachers’ classes helping supervise off-task students.  She’ll even help those students complete their assignments, taking the responsibility off of their shoulders.  So that teachers can have more planning time, she’ll even offer to take their classes or their extra-duty assignments so that they have more time to work on curricular alignment or pacing guides.  She’s the peace-maker in the teachers lounge and one who often will quietly sweep conflict under the rug by placating as many people as she can, instead of inviting others to be accountable.

In each of the descriptions above, the teachers respond differently to distress.  One is a Persecutor; another is a Victim, and a third is a Rescuer.  Regier & King (2013) might concur, per the fascinating discoveries of Stephen Karpman that they noteded in their book.  In our example, each of these teachers handles his or her distress in a different way, each as part of Karpman’s Drama Triangle.

What does this cycle of drama mean for school leaders? 

Imagine if these teachers could avoid this sort of distress, or at least provide for their own needs more effectively so that they would not allow distress to affect their teaching.  Kahler (2008) offered tools that a school leader can use to help with this. The most important thing to consider is that we as school leaders must focus on people.  In doing so, we can then recognize drama and help to put an end to it.  Better relationships allow for educational effectiveness, critical in successful schools. 

Teachers need to be as close to their best selves as they can be, everyday.  They owe it to their students; they owe it to themselves. If workers at a factory face drama and their effectiveness suffers, then they could produce faulty products. These products, albeit substandard and at times, even unsafe, can be recalled by the manufacturer.

 If teachers face drama and are less effective, can we recall the students?  Do they have a second chance at market dominance? 

We all know the answer.

Schools are creating a product that our country depends on more than anything else.  And on the way to becoming economically competitive and socially responsible, our students are relying upon us as both clients and customers.  Is a daily Soap Opera the “script” that students arrive at school to purchase?

As school leaders, once we recognize drama, we can use appropriate tools for human relations that we have at our disposal (Kahler, 2008).  Our first step is to recognize the personalities of those involved in the drama, as well as the roles our staff members may play in their own Academy Award-Winning Performances.  The next is to communicate openly and honestly with our staffs.  Regier & King (2013) noted that this is being compassionate with them.

The way these messages are delivered is often more important than the messages themselves.  With this in mind, it could be said that one’s channel of communication (Kahler, 2008) can help change the channel on any given day’s hourly broadcast.

References

Kahler, T. (2008). The process therapy model: Six personality types with adaptations. Little Rock, AR: Taibi Kahler Associates.

Regier, N., & King, J. (2013). Beyond drama: Transcending energy Vampires. Newton, KS: Next Element Publishing.

_______________________________________________________________ 

Trent Provo and Ryan Donlan believe DRAMA is quite influential in student and staff underperformance today in our nation’s schools.  They wish to invite K-12 education in America to move from where it is to an even better place.  If you would like to have a conversation with our authors, please feel free to contact them at trent.provo@sycamores.indstate.edu or ryan.donlan@indstate.edu. 

Who is Guiding Our Students?

Who is Guiding Our Students?

By Jill Robinson Kramer

Associate Vice President Planning & Research

Ivy Tech Community College

Indiana State University Doctoral Student

&

Ryan Donlan

Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership

Bayh College of Education

Indiana State University

As parents of young children, we talk to them about where they want to go to college, not if they want to go to college.  College is a foregone conclusion.

Unfortunately, this isn’t true for all families.

Some children start their lives with a certain degree of privilege, even at times with College Savings Plans.  Many of the fortunate, of financial means or not, have their parents’ visions of and experiences in college passed down to them.

Other students, whom we may refer to as potential first-generation college students, may wonder how to get to college and if by chance they get there, yearn from semester to semester for belonging, purpose, and the means to pay for tuition, books, and basic expenses. These challenges confront students each day.

The Indiana Commission for Higher Education’s College Readiness Report annually documents student academic enrollment and course-level placement in the state’s public colleges and universities based on secondary school factors such as diploma type, high school of record, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and academic performance.

Did you know that Indiana ranks 14th among states as to the percent of its high school graduates who go directly to college (66 percent) (National Center, 2011) yet is 34^th among states in the percent of adults who hold a postsecondary degree, at 36.1 percent (U.S. Department, 2012)? 

Educators, community groups, and policy-makers have pushed for equitable college access during the past two decades, yet supports for college completion have lagged. What happens prior to college is a strong predictor of completion in college.

Diploma type is one factor that can affect students’ chances for college success.

For example, of the 2,553 students who earned a general diploma, 78 percent needed remediation, as they did not place into college-level courses, while 38 percent of the 17,119 students earning a Core 40 diploma needed remediation.  Only 7 percent of students earning an Honors diploma were placed into remedial courses (Indiana Commission, 2013b).

Remedial courses might not sound such a bad place to be enrolled, if one needs the help, yet in many cases, students enrolled are required to pay full tuition, without these courses counting toward a college degree.

That’s a lot of investment for a lesser tangible dividend.

We’re surprised, actually, given the intended rigor of an Honors diploma, to see any of these students, 946 in total, testing into courses that are not at college-level (Indiana Commission, 2013b).  Ivy Tech, for example, recently changed its placement policies so students who earn certain grade point averages place directly into college-level courses. Did college advisors suggest placement testing as the first alternative?  Did students and families fail to provide high school transcripts that would have allowed for direct placement?

The need for remediation and sporadic under-preparation of students coming from K-12 education to higher education causes tension. All too often K-12 gets blamed, a victim it seems of another’s persecutor in an unhealthy relationship.  Regier and King (2013) speak of accountability in healthy relationships, where we are to a certain degree responsible to others, yet first to ourselves, through our behavior.  It is with this in mind that we wish to remain “open” as to what is happening in terms of children’s under-preparedness.  Let’s not let drama carry the conversation.

Business and industry blame “Education.”  Within our profession, higher education blames K-12, and oftentimes, K-12 blames parents and “poverty.”  Blaming poverty is very fashionable, it seems. Instead, might we identify a simple fact that seems ever-present – That some students simply do not know what they need to do to prepare for success in college?

Clearly, the alignment of K-12 and higher education curricula would seem an avenue for increased preparation. Additionally, high school counselors might be benefit from knowing the (ever-changing) postsecondary admission and placement policies. Finally, students and parents might be encouraged to become more active consumers of the education for which they are paying.

Let us ask ourselves within the current structures of secondary schools, “Who is advising these students along every step of their journeys?”   Ideally it would start in the home.

Yet, with only one-third of Hoosier adults having a bachelor’s degree or higher, many of our secondary students miss-out on effective parental guidance to allow for the best decisions regarding college access and success.  So that leaves again, an “all other duties as assigned” job bullet, for someone in any community’s high school.

That someone is typically the high school counselor.

Yet, does that profession itself even have clarity of what is expected of it?

This spring, the Indiana Chamber of Commerce Foundation revisited the history and impact of school counseling in Indiana with its report Twenty Years After High Hopes Long Odds: Indiana School Counseling in 2014. “For the last 50 years, that tension between whether school counseling is designed to help students prepare for work, to enter college or overcome social/emotional challenges has remained” (Fleck, 2014, p. 8).

Indiana is one of 26 states that mandates school counselors in K-12 schools.  However, the student-to-counselor ration is one of the highest in the nation, even among states that don’t mandate counselors at 620:1 (Fleck, 2014).  Low college attainment rates among Indiana’s adult populations and high counselor-to-student ratios in professional positions that split their daily duties among administration, behavioral intervention, and college/career planning, give rise to the reality that many of our students lack a college-and-career road map.

We would further suggest that it is not the parents’ or the counselors’ fault. 

It’s a systems-design flaw in a society that is wanting for intervention.

Might others share with students that if they do not earn an Honors diploma in high school that their chances of graduating college decrease? Do students know that going part-time decreases their chances of graduating college?  Who might talk to them about it?  It is an important topic, considering that of the 2012 graduates who attended college, 80 percent attended full-time, while just five years ago, 90 percent of college-going students in Indiana attended full-time (Indiana Commission, Key Takeaways, 2013a).   We’re losing ground.

Who’s talking to the students, when counselors are chasing standardized testing windows, disaggregated data reports, and “other administrative duties as assigned”?  Leaving no stone unturned in finding a creative solution is imperative; communities may have our answer.

Commission data provided us some enlightening news:  Thirty-five percent of 21^st Century Scholar Students needed remediation compared to 42 percent of students with similar financial backgrounds (Indiana Commission, State Report, 1). Thus, it seems that a financial promise, coupled with intentional college preparation services, may have an academic impact on students, evidenced by the fact that more of the 21^st Century Scholars are college-ready.

            As educators, how do we increase expectations of all students who come through our buildings while empowering guidance counselors with the time and permissions to focus on the college and career readiness portions of their jobs? A clear disconnect currently exists between student aspirations of going to college and college completion once there.

Would a viable answer be to suggest relief for some of the political pressures placed upon schools that seem to rest upon the shoulders of the guidance counselors, so that they can reclaim an equal emphasis on course scheduling, emotional intervention, and college and career planning?

References

Fleck, M. (2014). Twenty Years After High Hopes Long Odds: Indiana School Counseling in 2014. Indianapolis: Indiana Chamber Foundation.

Indiana Commission for Higher Education. (2013a.). College Readiness Report: Key Takeaways. Indianapolis. Retrieved from http://www.in.gov/che/files/CCR_Key_Takeaways.pdf

Indiana Commission for Higher Education. (2013b.). College Readiness Report: State Level Report. Indianapolis. Retrieved from http://www.in.gov/che/files/StateofIndiana_IN.pdf

National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (2011). College-Going Rates of High School Graduates. Washington, D.C. Retrieved from http://www.higheredinfo.org/dbrowser/index.php?measure=32.

Regier, N. & King, J. (2013). Beyond Drama: Transcending Energy Vampires. Newton, KS: Next Element Publishing. Retrieved from Kindle.

U.S. Department of Education. (2012). New State-by-State College Attainment Numbers Show Progress Toward 2020 Goal. Washington, D.C. Retrieved from http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/new-state-state-college-attainment-numbers-show-progress-toward-2020-goal

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Jill Robinson Kramer and Ryan Donlan are stanch champions about the power of college completion in providing high-quality life experiences for students that are economically productive and socially responsible.  If you have ideas for how they can better encourage ALL with a vested interest in student success to counsel “just a little bit,” please consider contacting them at jkramer5@ivytech.edu or ryan.donlan@indstate.edu. 

A Special Person; A Special Story

A Special Person; A Special Story

By Sarah Wareham

District Autism Consultant

Office of Special Services

MSD of Wayne Township Schools

Indiana State University Doctoral Student

&

Ryan Donlan

Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership

Bayh College of Education

Indiana State University

            When meeting someone new or catching up with friends, often the question, “How are things going at work?” comes into the conversation.  For those of us whose work is our life’s calling, this topic is one that we are proud to embrace and will talk for hours when given the chance.  We embrace the occasion to share our experiences with those around us, informing their understanding through our lens, and at times, asking for theirs.  Yet how often do we ask ourselves, “What is their take-away?”

            As educators, we have a special opportunity to tell our story each time the topic comes up, not only our story of our week, but also the story of education, itself.   Education is the one profession in which everyone in our country has experience, and an opinion, as we all have attended schooling of one form or another.  These experiences have made all of our current professions, livelihoods, and even our abilities made possible to provide for family, friends, and loved.

Have we considered that we can use this to our advantage when telling our story? 

Dr. Brad Balch in our Department of Educational Leadership probably articulates this best in the Bayh College of Education, the need for educators to become more active in defining the realities of our current profession for inquiring minds who want to know.  We believe that telling our stories allows us to better connect with those around us, forging bonds to each person’s K-12 experiences through the emotional connections we have felt, either positively or negatively.  For this reason, K-12 educators have an obligation to leave lasting impressions on our friends and family by telling the stories of our experiences.  Yet do we take these opportunities when given?

            Currently, a disconnect exists between the portrait of education painted through the media and the reality of what is happening in our schools.  If we had no direct experience in schools, we might think that the future of public education is dismal and  further, that society is crumbling because of it.  Unfortunately, this IS true in isolated instances of abject neglect for student learning, and for students in these circumstances, we need immediate and effective actions taken to provide them better for personally meaningful lives that are economically productive and socially responsible. 

However, for most students in our country, the K-12 system of education is moving along quite well -- the need for a systemic overhaul simply isn’t pressing, despite the haranguing of pundits and pontificators.  Often unshared in the mainstream is the fact that there are many great things happening for students in our schools, YES, in the traditional, public schools that have been around for many, many years. 

Take for instances the partnerships with the orthopedic industry and the efficacy in leadership at all levels in the Warsaw Community Schools under the stewardship of a dynamic, new, and innovative Superintendent Dr. David Hoffert; or the leadership in school safety and academic intervention in the Vigo County Public Schools, led by Superintendent Danny Tanoos, his fine staff, and local law enforcement officials.  Consider further the work of Dr. George Van Horn, Director of Special Education in Bartholomew Consolidated School Corporation, and CAST who are working to imbed the principles of universal design for learning across their entire school corporation. 

Wow!

Incredible people are doing special things for students, families, and communities, some shared and many not.  What is our obligation?

Amidst the sensationalized bludgeoning that is currently en-vogue with many desiring election to office, from the PTO President to the local school board to state and national positions, it is our duty as educators to step out of the victim role and stop whimpering about how the media and politicians are bullying us.  If in moving through victimhood we can access the openness though which to envision another role for ourselves, we can then begin a path through resourcefulness and persistence in sharing our message – our special stories.

 In doing so, we will then recognize that each time we speak of all the special stories happening with teachers, children, paraprofessionals, and parent volunteers, we very much have the ability to change the way others think.  Our stories are emotionally compelling.  More than that, our stories are honest, regaling feats of heroism in the face of adversity – Of that special teacher making a positive difference above all odds, serving as the parent, the coach, or the confidant desperately needed in a given situation. 

We bet that you have more than a few of these very special people in your school building.  How can we tell their stories?

Consider the power in the fact that when we tell folks that we are teachers, and DO IT RIGHT, the number one response really isn’t as much, “I’ll bet you love your summers,” rather it is more genuinely, “It takes a special person to do that!  I could never be a teacher!” 

Again, that’s when we do our job in telling what is actually special about when the buses drop-off children, each and every day.

Let’s capitalize on this sentiment and take those around us from where they are to a better place in understanding why our educational system is making a positive difference in a civilized society’s challenges, with its bottom line that special people, well-trained to supplant what society unintentionally abrogates, are working incredibly hard for students sent to us by parents who with few exceptions, are simply “doing the best they can with the hands in life they were dealt.” 

Their stories then become interwoven in our partnerships, and in our lives – very special, indeed.

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Sarah Wareham is a Doctoral Student in Educational Leadership in the 26^th Ph.D. Cohort Residency at Indiana State University, studying Human Relations in Educational Administration with Ryan Donlan, Assistant Professor in Educational Leadership.  If you would like to share a story of your own with them, please feel free to contact them at sarah.wareham@sycamores.indstate.edu or at ryan.donlan@indstate.edu.  They would love to hear from you.