WELCOME TO LEADERSHIP
EPISODE 6
How to intelligently succeed at educational reform?
Dr. Anthony Muhammad, PhD, is a much sought-after educational speaker and presenter. A practitioner for nearly 20 years, he has served as a middle school teacher, assistant principal, and principal, and also as a high school principal. He was recognized by the Global Gurus organization as one of the 30 Most Influential Educational Thought Leaders in the world in 2021.
In this episode of the Welcome to Leadership podcast he takes us on a deep dive into his success in answering this powerful question.
Dr. Muhammad is a best-selling author. He is the author of the books Revisiting Professional Learning Communities at Work, 2nd Edition (2021) Time for Change: The Four Essential Skills of a Transformational School Leader (2019); Transforming School Culture: How to Overcome Staff Division 2nd Edition (2017) Overcoming the Achievement Gap Trap: Liberating Mindsets to Effect Change (2015); The Will to Lead and the Skill to Teach; Transforming Schools at Every Level (2011). He has published 26 articles in education journals and publications in seven different countries.
Contact Dr. Muhammad: http://newfrontier21.com/
Find Model PLC Schools: https://www.allthingsplc.info/plc-locator/us
Purchase Dr. Muhammad's books: http://newfrontier21.com/store/
Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite player: https://welcometoleadership.captivate.fm/listen
Get your free copy of Aaron's book The Art of Trust and Influence: https://aaronkeithhawkins.com/trust
TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Anthony Muhammad (00:00):
If anybody studied Freud, Freud talked about the ego, and the ego is really a very significant part of our psyche, because the ego protects your self worth. Whenever we receive evidence that doesn't validate what we think about ourselves, it causes dissonance, and that dissonance makes you make a decision. If I accept culpability, then I have to accept that there's something flawed in my approach, and it's more validating to the ego to blame you or others, because if I accept culpability, that means that I'm flawed and I have to change.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (00:32):
Welcome to Leadership. I'm your host, Aaron Keith Hawkins, keynote speaker, author, and today your gift giver. If you haven't yet received your free copy of my latest book, the Art of Trust and Influence, head on over to Aaron Keith hawkins.com/trust to grab your copy. It is your how to manual for ethically improving your ability to earn trust and influence in your workplace and at home. I believe you'll find it massively valuable. That's Aaron Keith hawkins.com/trust. Now, let's jump into today's episode, Dr. Anthony Muhammad. Thank you so much for joining us here on Welcome to Leadership. I appreciate your time and the expertise that you're willing to share with us today. Uh, first and foremost, how you're doing today. Thank you for joining us.
Dr. Anthony Muhammad (01:21):
I'm great. I appreciate the invitation, and I appreciate anyone who takes the time to listen to this, and hopefully they can feel enlightened when we're done. So I'm doing great. Just, um, excited to be able to add something positive to this world,
Aaron Keith Hawkins (01:37):
Excellent. I definitely appreciate it. As I mentioned, uh, before we hit the record button today, I'm, I'm excited to hear, to have this conversation with you as a parent. We have a 16 year old daughter. The topic of education and especially leadership in education, uh, is important for all of us. So to you, parents out there, leaders, uh, especially , educational leaders, uh, I hope you get a lot of value from today. Uh, Dr. Anthony, one of the first questions I want to ask you is this, um, because I'm sure you realize more than most when it comes to the topic of education and school systems, there are plenty of plenty of complaints, some well founded, uh, about, you know, their particular educational system in wherever geographic area they live. But what are some of the, if you can gimme some of your success stories, like, uh, you're on a mission to, um, transform how, how education works in, in this country and in this world. If, if you could give us some, an example, some good news mm-hmm. <affirmative> something somewhere you've been able to intervene in, in either a specific success story about a student, a principal, a school district, a particular school, uh, what's an example of, of how transformation and culture change in education can make a big difference, and why it's so important to have, uh, people on you like that
Dr. Anthony Muhammad (02:52):
Mission? That's a, that's a big question, so let me just kind of break it down into pieces. Um, sure. Just to give a little background on myself, I grew up in Flint, Michigan, and most people are familiar with Flint, unfortunately, in the modern context because of the, uh, lead poisoning of five or six years ago, which is still not fully resolved. But growing up in a factory town, um, I grew up in a school system where it was very transactional. It was obedience, achieved a pat on the back from the system, lack of obedience, got you, uh, chastised by the system. But the prevailing ideology was because Flint was a factory town, regardless of how you performed in school, you're gonna work for General Motors anyway. You're gonna have a good UAW job. There was an industrial safety net. Well, as I was coming through school in the early eighties, that safety net was getting more and more porous, and many of my best friends, uh, did not, um, benefit from that safety net.
Dr. Anthony Muhammad (03:57):
And as I entered college, I started to see how a system that wasn't designed necessarily in the best interest of the student, I saw the collateral damage that it was having on my friends. So I entered the profession as a teacher, uh, as an activist. I saw if I, if I was courageous enough to intervene with young people at a young age, that I could influence the system and have direct access to them so that these young people would not have the same experience that my friends had. And I enjoyed my time as a teacher. I enjoyed my time as an administrator. And what has led me to the work I'm doing now is that I realized that I could affect lives at a local level, a direct level, but if I would work on a national international stage, then I could influence, uh, at, at a, at at scale.
Dr. Anthony Muhammad (04:52):
And sure, it's been quite a journey, uh, the last 14 to 15 years as an author, a researcher, a thought leader, um, to get people to realize that transformation starts internally. Uh, there's a book that was written years ago by Robert Quinn called Deep Change, and his basic premise was, is that change starts from within. It's really it's reflection of who you are and what you value. So that's why my work has been specifically with schools around organizational culture. And organizational culture is really a microcosm of the macro culture. So if lack of appreciation for the poor exists on the outside of school, then it exists inside of school. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, if sexism exists outside of school, then sexism exists in. So my biggest challenge has been, uh, uh, Mr. Hawkins trying to get schools to realize the era of their ways and that their thinking is flawed.
Dr. Anthony Muhammad (05:59):
And if you think in a discriminatory fashion, then your policies, practices, and structures will reflect that. So I take a very, uh, uh, intrinsically motivating approach to get people to confront what I call the brutal facts or opportunities to improve, to look at what can they change in their practice, their systems, their structures. So the, the greatest manifestation of that has been schools who have embraced what we call in, in the education circles, the professional learning community model, which is a focus on outcomes that I don't care whether you're male, female, black, white, latino, tall, short, that we measure our success in the tangible evidence of the outcomes. And that seems to be somewhat fleeting in education because we've never really been an outcomes based profession. Business is pretty logical. Did we make a profit or didn't we? We've been fine in education by saying we've given students the opportunity to learn, but their actual tangible benefit of learning is really up to them.
Dr. Anthony Muhammad (07:12):
We've held, we've held, kind of held ourselves harmless. And what's sad is the public has really backed this, this narrative. These kids are so bad nowadays. When I was in school, oh, the teachers, um, you know, I couldn't do it if I was them. We've almost looked at our profession like charity. You give the kids the opportunity, and if they care, if they engage, if they have enough support, then then they deserve the benefit of success. If they don't, it's almost like we feel they deserve the punishment or the sanctions associated with that. And we keep forgetting. We're talking about children. So my biggest struggle is to get educators to realize that their success is based upon the actual tangible evidence of student success. I can't be a good teacher if I don't have evidence that you have actually taken away the tangible benefit of being the subject of my instruction.
Dr. Anthony Muhammad (08:18):
I can't be a great principal if I don't have evidence that teachers are getting better. And as a result of teaching teachers getting better than schools get better, I can't be a good superintendent if the schools that I'm serving aren't growing and evolving. And this is a big one. State governments can't consider themselves successful if there's not evidence that schools are getting better because of their leadership and because of their service. So yeah, we almost have to do a total cleanse of the historical model of looking at schooling and the actual impact on students and society. Our model has been just totally wrong. So the schools that realize that and are able to go through that journey, they have record impact or increase and impact on kids. Yeah. I'll even give you your view as a website, and the website is www.allthingsp.info. And on that site, we have almost, almost 500 model schools who've gone through this deep reculturing, this deep dive, and there's evidence of significant impact positively on student achievement because the adults decided to be different. Not some new policy on woke or lack of woke, whatever their intention is behind that. It's not a new funding initiative. We've tried to take a very artificial approach to improving schools, when really schools are just a microcosm of the many flawed systems we have in our society.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (10:01):
I'm glad you, you kind of jumped to something I I wanted to touch on during our conversation, and, and that's your, that's your, your model PLC schools. But, but before we jump to that, I, I would love to, for those listening, you know, parents, leaders, educators, what does it look like on the most bread and butter, right? On a napkin level, what does it look like in terms of, in, in your mind, when you approach a school district or, or a school itself, what does the best case scenario look like? Starting from intervention, either your direct intervention from your organization, your company or, or, or, or someone who's on a similar mission. What's it look like when a school, uh, system that is broken in many ways, uh, for the many reasons you described, what's it look like when there's good intervention and you start getting good outcomes?
Dr. Anthony Muhammad (10:53):
It's not as complex as it seems. It's the complexity of human difficulty with change in self-reflection and metacognition. A school shifts from stagnation or regression to progress when it becomes student centered as opposed to adult centered. So when I focus my practice, my behavior, our systems, our resources around the needs of the student, what can we do to enhance the experience of the student? So if Aaron is struggling with background vocabulary, that doesn't mean that Aaron is flawed. It means he has a need that we have the talent, the resources, and the ability to respond to. Often what he responded in toxic school cultures is they lament over what you don't have, and they are perturbed with the, with the discomfort that meeting your needs have. But what we know is every student has a set of assets, and every student has a set of deficits.
Dr. Anthony Muhammad (12:00):
What's been prevalent is that the deficits that students of middle to upper middle class who come from nuclear homes, who are of a western European ideology and, and set of behavior standards, we accept their flaws as normal with students of color, students of poverty, students of disabilities. For some reason, we frame their challenges as insurmountable obstacles or an inconvenience as opposed to a challenge that needs to be addressed. Every student has gifts, every student has deficits, but the stain of social ills and, and, and, and, and, and discrimination make it seem as if some students are just somehow irredeemable and they're not.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (12:57):
What, what is the, what does a good intervention look like? You know, I'm sure we've all and myself included, have had struggles, uh, during those school years mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, I often lament the fact that, you know, if I wish I could have a conversation with my, you know, 12, 13, 14 year old self, because as you mentioned earlier, uh, we're dealing with children mm-hmm. <affirmative>, so to expect them to have the same level of cognition and re and reflection capable of a 20, 30, 40, 50 year old adult, it's just not fair. Yeah. For all of us, uh, who are adults on listening to this, you know, we all have, I'm sure things that we've done as children that we regret and we talk about what happened in high school or middle school are something we did that we're not proud of, but we also don't, we often don't look at it or discuss it through the lens of, we were just children, and we didn't know any better. We didn't have the, the, the benefit of, of, you know, life experience. So what is a, what is a successful intervention on almost micro scale? You know, using a hypothetical or real case, uh, scenario of a student who had a challenge, uh, there was a positive intervention as opposed to writing them off, uh, because of who they were, where they were from, what they look like. What's a good intervention look like in, in simplest words? Well,
Dr. Anthony Muhammad (14:13):
It's all conditional and, um, based upon it's contextual, but I'll, I'll write in my, in my, my research about the tipping point between a healthy and a toxic culture. All students have challenges, and this is the tipping point. Sure. A healthy culture becomes what I call my, my right, my, my literature reflective and prescriptive. This is their ideology. What's causing Aaron's struggle and what can we do collectively to do something about it? A toxic culture becomes descriptive and deflective, they're flabbergasted by Aaron's deficiencies, and they describe them to make themselves feel better, and they deflect responsibility on others. So the challenge itself doesn't change. It's the response collectively of the culture on how to respond. So if your issue, as I mentioned earlier, was background vocabulary, if you're reflective and prescriptive, you ask to what degree is this background vocabulary deficient and what resources and structures could we use in practices to fill in that gap?
Dr. Anthony Muhammad (15:21):
Mm-hmm. <affirmative> in a toxic culture, they're flabbergasted at the fact that you even have vocabulary deficiencies, and they seek to make themselves feel better by blaming parents, by blaming the previous grade level. So a toxic culture seeks to, to validate or make themselves feel better about challenges, healthy cultures, because your success is that important. They wanna understand it and work together to resolve it. Yeah. So the, the intervention is whatever the result is of that process, whether it's behavior, academics, whether it's socialization, it's accepting you as you are to help you ascend to where we'd like to see you go. It's not that cha, it's not that difficult, Aaron. It's really what a good parent would do for their child. Yeah.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (16:16):
That, that is a, I apologize for interjecting here. That is said is such a powerful, uh, leadership and life lesson, you know, because it's, it really boils down to accountability. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you know, in the context of what we're discussing here in the school system, it's, you know, there is a challenge. There was someone who was under our, our care. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, essentially a, a student who has a challenge, and rather than reflect or blame, as you said, a parent student, their neighborhood, whatever excuse you might put in. And basically, basically what it is, is saying, it's not my problem to fix. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> too bad. We have other things to worry about. It's what do we have that can help? Um, and that, and that is, it's, if I'm hearing you correctly, it sounds like just it's accountability really,
Dr. Anthony Muhammad (17:03):
And it's,
Aaron Keith Hawkins (17:04):
This is our challenge. This is ours to solve. Absolutely. And we, and, and most importantly, having that presumption that we can solve this, like you said, it's not, not that difficult. We're not trying to put, you know, a rocket ship on another planet. We're trying to help a student who's right in front of us overcome this challenge times however many students are in that school district. It's just a, it's a repeatable pattern.
Dr. Anthony Muhammad (17:28):
And what you describe is what John Hatty, who's a very prominent educational researcher, would call collective teacher advocacy. The belief in our ability to resolve an issue, and some of the defensiveness is actually a deeper root to it. If we, if anybody studied Freud, Freud talked about the ego, and the ego is really a very significant part of our psyche, because the ego protects your self worth. Whenever we receive evidence that doesn't validate what we think about ourselves, it causes dissonance. And that dissonance makes you make a decision. If I accept culpability, then I have to accept that there's something flawed in my approach, and it's more validating to the ego to blame you or others, because if I accept culpability, that means that I'm flawed and I have to change.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (18:22):
Imagine that.
Dr. Anthony Muhammad (18:23):
Right. So it becomes a lot easier to make others culpable as a way to protect one's ego or one's self worth. And it's very prevalent in the culture of education.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (18:35):
Doctor, what may I ask is, um, in your, my gosh, how many years have you been, been doing this? A couple, 33 years, if I'm not mistaken.
Dr. Anthony Muhammad (18:43):
33. Yeah.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (18:45):
What is one of the, and this may be a difficult question to answer, um, but I'm gonna ask it anyway, <laugh>, what do you see as a common challenge that you see in a school system, meaning a common issue, um, that perhaps is one of those things where you as the professional say, okay, we, we see this a lot. What is a common challenge you see in school systems, and perhaps more importantly, what is a, one of the common threads when you see those common challenges that overcomes the hurdle to a school system, having a culture issue that needs to change and making that shift into, we are now going to take some action to change this culture. Where is that, uh, to use the term you mentioned earlier, where is that, where do you see that tipping point coming a lot for, for people out there to give them a good idea how this can evolve for them and their
Dr. Anthony Muhammad (19:41):
Children? We found that it, it, it, it is almost without exception, the example and the priority set by leadership that school cultures don't typically evolve on their own. It requires a catalyst, because if people don't get a chance to step back and reflect and see where they need to improve, then why would I need to improve if I don't think that anything flawed in my behavior? So leadership becomes absolutely essential. And leadership in the modern context, uh, is, is addressing something that many of us call the compliance mentality. Uh, no Child Left Behind will go down as one of the worst public policy decisions in American history. It made school districts believe that success is measured totally on one standardized test in two areas, math and reading. That's culturally biased and given annually. And you compare our proficiency rates to our, to our neighbors. So what we found over past 20 plus years since No Child Left Behind was made law in 2002, is that if a system gets good enough test scores comparatively to their neighbors, they think they're the greatest thing since Life Bread.
Dr. Anthony Muhammad (21:02):
If a school doesn't, they think they're hopeless. So the schools on the upper band don't see a need to change because from all their indications, they feel validated. We're a good school. The schools that are vilified or, or, or embarrassed in the newspaper and called failing and, and priority schools, they think that they're hopeless and nothing could be further from the truth. So a leader who's able to break through that, and we've seen more of this the last eight to 10 years, a leader who realizes that they're chasing the wrong, they have the wrong drivers, and they're chasing the wrong end.
Dr. Anthony Muhammad (21:48):
Every school in Florida needs to improve. They just need to improve on something different. Yeah. So the schools and the wealthy communities, you're no better than anybody else. The test that the state of Florida gives is calibrated to the experience of your students. They would've done fine on that exam no matter what you do. People in cities like Liberty City, Miami, the poor parts of Florida, you're no more flawed than anybody else. The test just doesn't measure your students built in proficiencies. It highlights their deficiencies. Why? It highlights to proficiencies of other districts when leadership realizes that they can't be redefined by some invalid state test. And it is really about improving the lives of young people. And how do we pragmatically drive our own bus, where our students strong, where do they need support, and how do we help support them to become the students we expect when they can see past that social, political and, uh, some of the, the, the, the, the glass ceilings that have been placed among them, then they're free.
Dr. Anthony Muhammad (23:06):
It's kind of like you've ever seen the movie The Matrix, when they told Neil, the free is mine. The current system of testing and comparing schools is the matrix that most schools are caught in. It drives their decisions, it drives how they use their resources. It drives staffing. When a school frees themself of that, and they get back to the root of the morality of our profession is to help prepare young people to be gainfully employed or productive citizens to make our society a better place, then they're not confined by very toxic and, and constricting, uh, uh, environment that this testing, no child left behind testing has done to our schools and it's killings. And when I work in South Korea, when I work in Singapore, when I work in Finland, even when I work in Canada, their systems are much more liberating. And, and they actually perform much better on international assessments because they get a chance to work on the whole child. But just to be honest with you, just to, it's, it's just a microcosm of every other system of discrimination.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (24:27):
Yeah. Yeah. That is, uh, that is the reality, uh, in, in so many different contexts, uh, this being education that we're discussing here. Gosh, we can go down to rabbit hole mm-hmm. <affirmative> of how, uh, systems become flawed, uh, in, in many different contexts. What do, do you say to, you know, we're having lunch with one person who's a principal, another who's a, maybe a teacher at another school, someone else at the table with us who's a, a parent. How do we start this conversation keeping in mind the, the reality, uh, or I should say the, the systemic pressure for so many reasons, be it financial funding, things that are, that are kind of locked in place in our, in many ways dependent on these standardized testing scores and these other systems that are in place that are flawed, but that do have tangible outcomes, so to speak. How do we have that conversation? How do we start that conversation to say, we can do something even with these structures that in place we can break through this wall mm-hmm. <affirmative>, how, what does that conversation sound like to, to, to decide we're gonna make that breakthrough without jeopardizing, uh, or feeling like we're jeopardizing, um, some things that could have some unintended detrimental effects? How do, how do we get through that wall?
Dr. Anthony Muhammad (25:51):
Well, number one, what we've been doing the last 20 plus years in the name of raising test scores, hasn't raised test scores. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So what you're doing anyways, not working <laugh>. So why are you tethered to a system and you have all this anxiety and the achieve and cap hasn't closed one bit, so what you're doing is not working anyway. You might as well work on your con work through your conscience and your morality. And what we found is schools that don't focus on test scores and focus on student growth actually improve test scores. When you stop focusing on test scores, you raise test scores because
Aaron Keith Hawkins (26:34):
You, that's a beautiful statement. I'm gonna ask, doctor, I'm gonna ask you to say that one again cuz that somebody may have been sipping their coffee or something and maybe they may have missed that. Please. Could you re restate that again about
Dr. Anthony Muhammad (26:44):
Well, our traditional approach hasn't worked anyway. So when you focus on test scores, we never raise test scores. When you focus on the child, and that becomes your fixation, one of the beneficial byproducts is that we'll see a growth in test scores. I'm not opposed to mm-hmm. <affirmative> profession task scores. It's just not a good driver of organizational behavior. Yeah. It's one indicator of many indicators. So when that becomes your fixation, you become tethered and fearful of something you're not making a positive impact on. Anyway.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (27:19):
Yeah. Wow. That's powerful. Um, that is extremely powerful. I couldn't have imagined a better answer than the one you just gave, um, because it does, like you said, when we first started this conversation, it's not overly complicated. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, because I can imagine people that may be listening to your conversation and talking about the reality of, of the situation that we're in educationally and having that instinctive fear about changing something and almost bracing themselves against their desk, that they don't wanna upset the boat. Because even if things aren't so bad now, they're scared of making it or things aren't that going that well now they're scared of, maybe scared of making it worse. Um, but what I wanna highlight what you're saying is if you, if, if, if we change our focus from this, uh, almost, you know, bending the knee to testing scores and these traditional things that we've been told are what we have to do for so long, and just start focusing on these students and this, this humanity, this conscious, this focus on the student as opposed to the adults that are in charge of these students, you're gonna get the results you want anyway.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (28:33):
Anyway.
Dr. Anthony Muhammad (28:34):
And you focus on student,
Aaron Keith Hawkins (28:35):
And you're gonna do it with, you're gonna do it with ethics, with morality, with humanity, and, and with, you know, children, uh, presumably that will go through life with some appreciation that people were actually looking out for them as opposed to themselves.
Dr. Anthony Muhammad (28:49):
And at, at my school when I was a principal in, in the metro Detroit area, we had a, uh, five critical areas of impact we wanted to address with kids. Academic skill development. We're very serious about that. You need literacy, numeracy, critical thinking skills, expository writing, uh, the ability to do research and to cite your evidence. I mean, all those things are critical character development, the application of what you've learned. We had a whole component helping our kids take the theory of learning and apply it. We had a, an entrepreneur program. Our students every year took a social issue and wrote policy on it, things like human trafficking and, uh, being in a food desert, diabetes, and other community health issues. We had a focus on parents, school, community relationships. How do we educate our parents, our community to work as one? And we had, our fifth focus was on post-secondary opportunities, getting our kids access to universities, trade school, military, uh, community college.
Dr. Anthony Muhammad (29:56):
Because in this new economy, if they couldn't take what they've learned and extend their learning outside of high school, the data's really clear your opportunities are limited. So we figured if we focus on those five critical areas, they'd pass whatever tests they were given. And we set measurable goals and objectives. We did reviews every quarter to measure our progress towards those objectives. Hopefully you'll see, you see that leadership makes the difference. My teachers were willing to do it if they were led, but they can't do what they can't envision. It's one of the greatest obligations of leadership is to provide a vision for the organization greater than where you are right now. And if all I can tell you is here's a, a curricular scheme I purchase to hopefully raise test scores, I seem like a sick event. And at best, a middle manager, I'm like a manager at Burger King. I'm just following corporate policy. Yeah. That doesn't inspire teachers.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (30:58):
Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Wow. That is a, it's excellent communication for everyone listening. If you want to, and I'm sure you do. You wanna learn more about, uh, Dr. Anthony's, uh, work and what he and his organization are up to. And those re and those, um, at all things plc.info that discuss some model schools, uh, that have implemented, uh, what the doctor here is, is speaking about. I'll make sure to to link all of those in the show notes, um, after we conclude today. I just wanna make sure everybody's aware of that cuz uh, you, there's probably people listening that are, that are hungry to go a little deeper than this and certainly, uh, deeper than what we'll be able to get to today. I wanna, I wanna jump real quickly into something, um, that popped into my head just because you mentioned that the teachers, uh, on your, on your, on your website at, um, I saw a link to that discussed wellness mm-hmm. <affirmative>,
Aaron Keith Hawkins (32:00):
Um, uh, wellness solutions for educators. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, if we can touch briefly on that, because certainly being an educator in whatever position you are, whether you're at, you know, the pre-K level all the way up to being a principal, there's a, there's a lot of responsibility involved in education, obviously. That's probably the biggest understatement I could make. Where are you seeing wellness coming into play, um, and how it affects our teachers and, and what are a couple ways that educators can make sure they're taking care of themselves? Because we're not taking care of ourselves, obviously we're not gonna be able to give our best to those who Absolutely. Uh, were in a position to care for. Could you, could you touch on that briefly about the whole topic of
Dr. Anthony Muhammad (32:42):
Wellness? Yes. The same way I'm passionate about, um, taking a look at the needs of the whole child. It's also important to take a look at the needs of the whole educator and the whole professional. We're physical, we're hormonal, we're intellectual, we're social. The human being is a very complex being and to not take care of your whole self makes you less equipped to meet the needs of students. So professionally, we found, and, and the research is really clear on this, that when teachers work in a collaborative culture where it's not my students, they're our students. When teachers get time to collaborate, time to learn and grow, time to share, they, their systems built to perpetuate their collaboration. The root word of collaborate is labor. It's co-labor. And schools were actually designed as individual stations of labor they call classrooms. So the schools where educators tend to be more satisfied is where there's more collaboration, where it's a we mentality as opposed to me, we have this weight to carry, but it's a lot easier if we're all carrying it together.
Dr. Anthony Muhammad (34:01):
Number two, when it comes to wellness of educators is creating a work life balance. Um, if you're collaborative at work and you're giving it, you are all as a unit, then you can't neglect this whole kind of stand and deliver freedom writers. That old narrative of the teacher who gives up his or her life to save a few kids, that's not an attractive duplicable model. If you look at all those films, they, they save a few, but they destroyed themselves in the process. Uh, that's not the goal. Yeah. It's kind, it's, it's altruistic and who wants to do that? Yeah. Um, you shouldn't have to fight city hall, get a divorce, uh, keep the same kids for four years, tour the Holocaust Museum to teach kids how to write. I mean, we've been teaching people to write since human beings have been on on two legs.
Dr. Anthony Muhammad (34:59):
So yeah, the whole idea of the altruistic sacrifice for my students, that narrative has to die. You have to take care of yourself personally, socially, emotionally, and leaders have an obligation to produce a collaborative environment at work. So you don't feel like you have to do it by yourself. We can do this without destroying our own personal lives. Because as much as students need you, your family needs you. If you have children, they need you, your grandchildren, if you have them, they need you, your, your friends, your neighbors. We can't discount the importance of the individual teacher as a human being.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (35:42):
Yeah.
Dr. Anthony Muhammad (35:43):
But the way we activate that and create that environment is that there has to be a collaborative work environment. And I'll just give you one statistic I think you'll find interesting. One of the ways we burn teachers out, and we keep talking about wellness, but we refuse to change, is the amount of direct instruction teachers have with kids in the highest performing schools and systems in the world. They spend about half as much time in front of students as we do. They spend as much time on lesson design, collaboration, professional development. They believe that if the teacher is better equipped with less time in front of kids, that quality is more important in quantity. In the US the idea is that quantity is more important in quality. So we have kids go to school longer than most nations make them go to school. They're in front of teachers for longer. We even make 'em go to summer school. We believe that more bad instruction is more important and less quality instruction and it's a recipe for disaster. And we're seeing teachers leave our profession in record numbers. We have fewer young people getting certified in education. That whole work life balance thing became very apparent to a lot of people during covid. And the great resignation didn't skip education.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (37:11):
Yeah. Wow. That's, that's powerful stuff. I think, I think a perfect segue before we wrap up is this, could you give us a brief discussion about your model PLC schools? Cause I wanna, I want to finish this conversation on a, on a high note, um, uh, so we can both briefly discuss and then again, uh, we can tell those listening where to go, whether you're parent and educator and leadership to go and just see what can change and then start having those and, and find your way as whatever way you as the listeners is, you know, is gonna be most actionable for you to start having this conversation and making a change. And hopefully, ultimately reaching out, uh, to Dr. Mohamed, uh, hopefully for some direction and some assistance in making the changes that need to be changed. Cuz there's, there's literally no sense in gaining information about what the problems are and how they can change in our educational system if we don't take the step of actually putting it into action. So please, uh, doctor, if you could explain briefly, you know, summarize what your model PLC schools are mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, and, and how they can hopefully inspire and motivate some people into action. Okay.
Dr. Anthony Muhammad (38:20):
Well, to some logistics for those listening, the term PLC means professional learning community and the model is called Professional Learning Communities at Work Model. The best way to get a concrete understanding of that model is through a book called Learning By Doing. It's a handbook for the implementation of this philosophy, which is a, a very profound shift from traditional schooling to a collaborative model, focus on student learning. In that book, we identify the six key characteristics of a school that is of this model. We'll model PLC schools are schools who produce evidence of proficiency and impact in these six areas on the all things PLC website, there's actually even an application that you can download which tells you or guide you what kind of evidence it has to be produced. Is there a, is there evidence of a collective commitment to working together and focusing on student learning?
Dr. Anthony Muhammad (39:26):
Our teachers, number two, are teachers given time to collaborate and focusing on student learning and placed into high performing teams. Number three, do those teams identify specifically what we call a guaranteed and viable curriculum course by course unit by unit. So if there are three high school algebra teachers are the objectives of proficiency and algebra the same across all three classes. So no matter what teacher I'm assigned to, the criterion of excellence has been identified across all the algebra courses. Number four, do those teams frequently gather evidence on my progress towards those objectives in a formative way to inform the teacher and inform me of my progress against those objectives? Number five, from that evidence, has the school produce a system of support that targets my needs based upon that evidence and gives me enough support and it's consistent and intense until I meet that threshold of excellence.
Dr. Anthony Muhammad (40:38):
And number six, is it a data driven, self-reflected reflective environment that we use that evidence of student progress to affect our individual and our collective practice? To be a model PLC school, you have to produce tangible evidence that these six characteristics are prevalent in universally embraced within your, your school. If you do that and you produce at least three years of growth in indicators of student achievement, you receive the designation as a model of this concept of the nearly 500 schools on the website. If you click it under evidence of effectiveness, it identifies where the school is it's makeup, and it has a link to its website and to its principal that you can reach out and ask, can we come visit? Could you share with us your schedule as being a part of this process? A model school has to agree to be an ambassador to other schools who are seeking to do the same, creating a network nationally and internationally.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (41:45):
Beautiful. And, and and to that point, uh, as we mentioned allthingsplc.info, if you go there, there's actually a map, uh, of the, uh, United States where you can see where those lists of schools are in each state. Um, not to be biased towards Florida, but Florida's got 13 <laugh>. You can hop in wherever you're listening from. Again, that's allthingsplc.info, again, we'll link it to the website aaronkeithhawkins.com. So you can hop on over and take a look. Dr. Anthony Muhammad, I wish we had about three or four more hours of time, <laugh> because I love having these conversations with people such as yourself that are just examples of what leadership is. And I say that not by about being in a position of leadership, but being someone who has, you know, clarity in who they are, clarity and what they're looking to do, and having those commitments to excellence and making an impact.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (42:52):
I mean, that's, that's the whole premise of the show. That's what leadership is. And regardless of what your position is I appreciate you for the impact that you're having. I you know, not to be cliche, but obviously our young people are the future of this nation and this world, and there is no, there is no higher calling than to be an ambassador, uh, for our young people. Absolutely. And doing everything we can to lift them up and put them in positions to succeed no matter who they are, where they're from, uh, what their personal situations may be. So I thank you for your work. Thank you. I hope everyone, as you're listening right now, uh, please take the time to reach out to Dr. Anthony Muhammad and, and just send him a thank you for the work he's doing. I will put, make sure I put links to the books that he's written and the work that he's doing and certainly examples of success, uh, in some school systems nationwide. So that hopefully as you're listening, you can begin to have these conversations in your own districts and make the change that you're looking to make in your own geographic areas and for your own children. Dr. Muhammad, thank you so much for your time. Thank you. I definitely appreciate you. I'm grateful for this connection, this relationship, my friend. Thank you. You'll
Dr. Anthony Muhammad (44:09):
Talk to you soon. Keep using the platform for good. I appreciate you having me.
Aaron Keith Hawkins (44:12):
Absolutely. That's a promise. Thank you so much, sir. If you enjoyed that episode, I'm gonna ask you to be a little bit selfish and go ahead and hit that subscribe button to make sure every episode gets delivered directly to you. And second, if you haven't yet, head over to aaronkeithhawkins.com/trust to grab a free copy of my latest book, the Art of Trust and Influence. I think you'll be glad you did. I look forward to seeing you next time. Thanks so much for joining us.