Big Tech Strategies to Boost Teacher Retention and Student Success - Engaging Leadership

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Big Tech Strategies to Boost Teacher Retention and Student Success

Episode 318 • 29th November 2024 • Engaging Leadership • CT Leong, Dr. Jim Kanichirayil

With that being said, there are high performing districts who are adapting lessons from the private sector to deliver better teacher retention outcomes and student preparedness outcomes. Part of the process for pulling this off involves bringing educators into the strategic decisioning process. And that process also involves operating with a high level of urgency when it comes to driving change to best impact student learning outcomes.

So today we have Hank Thiele, who is joining us to help navigate this process that he implemented in his district. Today's conversation is going to map out the process for building this capability within any district.

in [: 00:01:00

The district record is recognized as one of the first to close the homework gap by providing. Computing resources and internet access to all students in 2007. He was the first educational leader to bring Google for education into a K through 12 school setting. His doctoral research was some of the earliest that investigated the internet's impact on communication, learning feedback, personalization, and efficacy in the classroom to create a learning environment focused on belonging.

His favorite work comes from being a dad of two amazing kids, Hank, welcome to the show.

[00:01:53] Dr. Jim: I'm pumped to have you on the show. there, this is probably going to be a pretty nerdy conversation [00:02:00] since it's the integration of both doctoral themes that you have and tech. And I come from a similar space, except not in the, in the education realm. But before we dive into all of that, I think it's going to be helpful for you to add some more context that goes beyond a few sentence bio that will help you.

the listeners get a sense for what drives you and also what were some of the foundational factors that led to your leadership philosophy.

So I look at things a little different than a lot of educators do with having that different path. And part of that path brought me through a lot of big tech settings. as you mentioned, I was involved in [00:03:00] bringing, Google into schools. I was the first educator to do that. And as part of that, I ended up in a lot of big tech settings.

And I really saw that the environments that they work in, are much faster moving, obviously, than schools tend to be, but they offer very collaborative environments they offer, especially in, some of these startups, different or more fluid pathways to upper management, a lot of feedback driven, environments, and they really are flexible.

They move fast. And they try to be responsive, to those that they serve.

And in broad terms, when you talk about you're one of the first, K through 12 leaders to bring Google into schools, what does that actually mean?

back in the, I would say we started this around 2007, 2008 and really pushed through for about a decade on that as schools moved, and That's not just the, that's not the way that schools were designed to work, obviously, just like workplaces adapted to this, but being one of the first educators to start dabbling in that and then to help spread it, really impacted the way that, I interact with, those I serve.

So that's interesting. But the other, one of the [00:05:00] other, things that I'm curious about now, having made that transition, how did that impact? Overall budgeting across a district and reallocation of resources into other areas.

And we need to start working on getting to the cloud as fast and securely as possible. that was going to be the future in education. And really with the concerns that we have around privacy and security, that was a big leap to make in an educational setting to trust that information regarding.

ld be hosted outside of your [: 00:06:00

You didn't, open up outside of that, and that transition and the tools that we made really impacted how we work together as educators within our own environments, but across school districts as well.

So how did you decide what elements you were going to bring over?

And in some ways, the flatness of some of the organizations that I wanted to try to bring into our learning environments, both. So we can be more productive as adults in these spaces, but also with the lens that these were the types of work environments that we were going to be preparing students for.

y few of us as educators had [: 00:08:00

Went virtual and went those directions. So it was crazy to see that work that we had done for about a decade really set us up for this major unexpected environment that we had to work through.

That's going to drive some teacher retention outcomes. And the reason why I bring that up is when we look at your district, your district in the suburbs of Chicago [00:09:00] is actually 1 of the more affluent districts, in the state. And. When you're observing that district and looking for things to impact, you have a lot more resources theoretically than what a standard district would have.

what were the steps that you took with that big tech lens that helped you formulate? Here are the things, here are the priorities that we need to focus on within the district to help drive these teacher retention outcomes.

and. A lot of the structures that traditional corporations had or schools had with, in how you [00:10:00] dress and how you interact in, how you share ideas with one another, were being torn away and set aside with the outcome being the most important, piece of the work. And I tried to model that a lot as, I worked.

in district leadership in my last district, and then when I came into this district is the superintendent, essentially the CEO, just trying to make sure that, that type of an environment was reflected. what is the core responsibility that we're trying to get done? How are we getting it done?

zation, make it work quicker [: 00:11:00

And my community, as we did that work. So it was looking for ways to do that. I

[00:11:26] Dr. Hank Thiele: mean, some of it is just simple, informal things, like coming in and telling people that, I'm not Dr. Thiele, I'm Hank, just to try to break down some of those formal barriers, other ways was with my leadership team and, my expectation with that leadership team was that people would push back that, We are all equal members of the table when we're sitting there.

xpect when I moved into the, [: 00:12:00

So how do you open up those opportunities to show that you're not necessarily the smartest person in the room and yes, by your position, you have that authority, but that's not where you want to work from all of the time and looking for different opportunities to open doors for that.

[00:13:09] Dr. Hank Thiele: Yeah, I think it, it was new to a lot of the organization. some of it is just, it's, you spend your time where you value things the most. So it was creating time for people to be able to reach out to you. going to where they are, a lot of time setting aside drop in times where I'd sit in like a staff cafeteria or an office or a meeting room.

ould hear me speak like this [: 00:14:00

But to be able to hear me talk about something and share what I. I think about things, that really was went really well for about four years until the pandemic showed up and then things switched to very much a top down model for kind of the three years that we went through pandemic post pandemic, working our way out of that.

And now the last year. Or so has been trying to return the organization to a more collaborative, less top down environment. So in some ways it's been starting over in the last year.

but one of the things that I'm curious about. So far, we're talking about [00:15:00] this as capability that you've built, in your immediate downline. when you look at the front lines of the organization, what were the things that were happening at that level that helped build this culture?

it was building some vocabulary in the organization that, people can set up a meeting with anybody could set up a meeting with any leader that we would come to them, and that they could say. we'd appreciate that they would share with us what the purpose of that meeting was that they.

solve the problem. It's just [: 00:16:00

To seek understanding or to take action, just looking for advice. those are some different things that we've done over the years. and I'm looking for ways, I have some ideas of how I'm going to improve that in the future as well.

[00:16:42] Dr. Hank Thiele: Yeah. Part of it was, we want an environment where students understand that's how to work through a chain of command, but also how to, advocate for themselves within, a. Organizational structure to do that. We need staff that understand how to navigate [00:17:00] that as well. And for a lot of what we do in the organization, the goal is of a school is ultimately to create students that are prepared for all of the years that will come after they leave you.

But to do that, you need to have staff that. Can work in those environments as well. So anytime that we're looking to try to mirror something that's happening or change that's happening in society with our students. We want our staff to experience that as well. So we've done that with things like this, where you're flattening organizations and trying to coach up the adults in your organization as to how to navigate through it and to get work accomplished and to reach to the upper levels of the organization.

ot of ways where we've tried [: 00:18:00

[00:18:05] Dr. Jim: When I think about what you're describing, you're intentionally working through a number of things to break down your psychological size and make yourself more accessible. And you're creating this culture where people can set up meetings with anybody in the organizational chart as needed.

The thing that I'd be wondering is. Yeah, how do you build structure around those meetings so it doesn't become like a toxic conversation or a waste of time, because having that level of access is great, but if it never really goes anywhere, it just turns out into a slam my boss session.

It's not really productive. So how did you work around that challenge?

But if we're results focused and start with, hey, if this. interaction goes exactly the way you want it to, what would that outcome look like? If we can get that to define, people to define that from the beginning of that interaction, it helps us as a participant in that conversation to be better in tune to what their needs are, and then structure it.

That's why, we've given these kind of sentence starters as to why are you scheduling the the meeting in the 1st place and if we can reinforce that as they walk through the door, if you're here for me to just listen, I shouldn't have a hat on where I'm trying to solve your problem for you.

then hopefully at the you're [: 00:20:00

Then it's important to do the saving throw afterwards to come back to that person and say, okay, I know that conversation probably didn't go the way that either of us would have wanted to. usually it's yesterday because I give it, overnight time to reflect on it. However, this is what I heard you saying.

This is what my next steps are going to be. Here's what I can do, so that. Even if a conversation goes poorly, there's a way to rewrap back around into a positive direction afterwards.

[00:20:40] Dr. Hank Thiele: Getting nerdy.

That's all about doing these things and regularly engaging in that sort of stuff. When I'm thinking about [00:21:00] this, obviously. The people that are active, I'm going to pay attention to, but I'm almost more concerned about the people that don't set that time up because it's the quiet, It's the ones who are quiet that you need to worry about.

So when you think about that, what was, the process or structure or mechanism that you put into place to make sure that you're getting line of sight into your entire employee population versus just the squeaky wheels.

And then sometimes it's around a particular topic, The last couple of years, a major focus has been mobile devices in classroom [00:22:00] settings and trying to hear from educators about, here's some changes we're thinking of making, here's the language we're thinking of saying, what's your feedback on this, and allowing that, that just anonymous feedback to come to you, and then sorting through that, making sense of it.

Always the challenge in all of that is Helping your organization and I'm not great at this yet. I'm just saying this is a major challenge is you go through all of this is trying to work through, helping the members of your organization understand that just because we didn't do what you asked for doesn't mean that you weren't heard and trying to bridge the gap between those things, especially in today's world of personalization, which, every device, every, you kind of software package you work with.

y you want it. So how do you [: 00:23:00

To navigate that, we've set up some smaller group pieces where representatives can come forward to represent different groups, like teacher groups and those kinds of things. We've worked with our because we're union shop. We have a couple of different unions or union leaders to help them. coach people up as to how to work their way through these different structures that we built to provide feedback or to offer that as somebody else's perspective.

and then also just continuing to try to build these structures so that we can encourage people to come forward with concerns that they have.

So how are you handling that challenge and particularly within your leadership cohort so that those skills are being developed well? That in a way that it creates continuous conversation versus a type of communication that just shuts down all future conversation.

So draft responses talk through, Um, uh, With a colleague, that response that you're going to do or the issue [00:25:00] before you go, we leverage the leadership team around us, so that we are coming back as positively as well intentioned as possible in any response that we make so we can set that tone for those that we lead and serve, we've talked a lot that a fast response.

That is on your own is typically problematic, right? That you need time to, you need to respond in a timely manner, but you need to respond in a thoughtful, thought out manner. we also have an expectation that 24 hour response could be. Hey, I got your question, your concern, you want to meet, however, I need to know more or I need some more time.

nd reacting emotionally. And [: 00:26:00

Can we just put pause this and come back later? And I find that actually doesn't happen often in person that happens in digital communications. So trying to. how many times are you going to respond and interact digitally before you need to take this to a face to face conversation is a huge leadership skill right now, because it's real easy to misinterpret, or misunderstand in a digital, uh, text based format with when you can get on a video call like this or even a phone call and you know that has died, but it's so much more effective and efficient and authentic than just email or text responses that coaching up our leaders of how you can turn.

that's going one way into a [: 00:27:00

[00:27:02] Dr. Jim: Yeah, I have a rule and maybe this is just my Gen X nature that if I have to type more than 3 sentences, I'm going to give you a phone call because it's, things are going to get lost in translation on that. So a lot of our conversation has been focused on some of the structural things that you've put into place to help create this informal listening culture, all the way through the organization.

So tell us a little bit about how this has impacted how the organization functions or the district function, and also some of the impact at the student level and educator level as well. And in terms of student achievement outcomes, educator retention outcomes, what's the story there?

One of those dated back a decade before I got here, there was a building project that occurred that was pretty significant. That, the spaces that people walked into after that did not look or feel at all like what people expected they were going to get. And we were heading into another major, building environment and a lot of these strategies of.

Giving people voice and breaking things down and having small conversations led into that development cycle that we did around 136 million high school makeover project here in the district, and I'm really proud that at the end of that project, we walked out of here with very modern spaces, very flexible spaces.

gned by educators, and those [: 00:29:00

And we have created some real modern learning environments, that, Reflect kind of the college spaces and work spaces that our students will eventually end up in. And, our teachers were really prepared for what those were going to look and feel like, when they showed up.

[00:29:52] Dr. Hank Thiele: Yeah, very much. when we talked about flexible environments, that was with our staff and, we're probably, more [00:30:00] flexible with staff time than many school districts that are out there as much as we can be and cover our. Yeah. Supervisory responsibilities because we did the same thing after we have flexible spaces.

We built a flexible schedule, where three days a week are very traditional eight period school days, but then two days a week are more collegiate in style with a block schedule. And within that block schedule, every student has. One 78 minute what we call resource period, which it's 78 minutes of unstructured time one day a week in which our students are in these more modern, flexible environments.

, practice rooms, bookstore, [: 00:31:00

And then they get to practice in that 78 minutes a week. Of how are they going to structure that time and be productive because they're going to end up in collegiate settings where they're going to have to or work settings now where they're going to have to be managers of their own time and make choices of how to be productive.

And we want them to practice that here in our space where there's a little bit of guidance and a little bit of structure before they end up in the real world. And then don't know how to structure that time. so many students as they're come into our schools, especially in their ninth grade year, really struggle in trying to structure that time.

into our Third year of this, [: 00:32:00

[00:32:14] Dr. Jim: Great stuff, Hank. I'd like you to put all this together. So when we open the show, we're talking about, driving impact and change in a district by applying some of the concepts out of big tech, using informal listening as a way to drive that sort of impact. if, you know, Another leader of a district is listening to this conversation and they want to do this on their own.

What are the three or four key pillars of the framework that you applied with success in your district that other listeners and leaders need to pay attention to?

In these settings that will make people more comfortable coming in one is bringing another person with you so that they're not walking to room where you're the only person there and then they're expected to fill the space and encouraging them to bring others with them into these spaces so that there's support in numbers.

we've heard that a lot from our team that if you say it's going to be one on ones, that's pretty intimidating. But if you can bring a friend along. that helps as well. and really trying to define the matter at hand that you're talking about. if it's going to be talking about a specific problem or space or issue, trying to keep it to that, can be the biggest challenge of that conversation because a lot of times people use that and then they're going to birdwalk from this issue to this issue.

[00:34:18] Dr. Jim: Great stuff, Hank. If people want to continue the conversation, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

[00:34:28] Dr. Jim: Awesome stuff. I appreciate you hanging out with us and sharing, the, the story of what you did in the district and how you brought big tech, concepts into the district to create a, more, more of a high communication culture. When I think back through this conversation that we had. What stands out to me that is really critical and this can be applied in any concept.

e impact and change. I think [: 00:35:00

And I think that's one of the important things in terms of. Operating from a common dictionary or rule book that's going to be helpful in impacting some of these changes. That was 1 of the 1 of the big things that stood out in the conversation that I think others should apply to regardless of how you plan on changing your environment.

It's important to communicate what. That vision is what the rules of engagement are. So you have clarity around what the action steps are going to be. So Hank, I appreciate you hanging out with us and sharing that with us. for those of you who have been listening to this conversation, hopefully, this was meaningful for you.

on, make sure you leave us a [: 00:36:00