Intro: Turnaround 4C Plan

With the new school year fast approaching, learn about the Turnaround 4C Plan. A proven method used over the past twenty years to improve school test scores, increase attendance, lower disciplinary rates, and for high schools, increase graduation rates. 

Topics discussed:

• Each component of the Turnaround 4C Plan
• Why improvement starts with your school’s climate (not school curriculum)
• Developing your code as the educational leader and the impact it will have on your school’s success.
• This series will delve into each component of the Turnaround 4C Plan and share proven successful tools and methods to improve your school. 

To learn more about the Turnaround 4C Plan please email Bryan Wright at brwright44@gmail.com or Mark McBeth at mark@eductionalrelevance.org

For more information about the topics discussed,  contact us at 
Bryan Wright: brwright44@gmail.com

If you found value in today’s episode, share it with a colleague, subscribe, and leave us a review. It helps us to continue bringing you conversations that matter.

Thanks for listening. Until next time, keep leading with heart—and stay educationally relevant.

Transcript

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bryan-wright_1_07-03-2024_103628 0:00

welcome to Educational Relevance, a platform for experienced educators to share proven academic strategies to successfully educate today's educational leaders. For those who don't know me, my name is Brian Wright and I am known to be a turnaround principal. Joining me today is Mark Mcbeth, who's also an effective and author. Good to see you, Mark. Today, we'll be starting a series, called Turnaround 4C Plan. over the next eight weeks, we're gonna be sharing components of this method and implementation. this plan that we're talking about has brought results of increased attendance less dismay rates. In secondary schools, there's increased test scores, there's increased graduation rates, and all this is because they are both attainable and measurable. the four C's are climate, which is who we are, Culture, what we do, how we do it, connections, why it matters. we're giving you these tools that will assist you in incorporating this plan successfully. And I think we can start with that. What happens usually when we talk about school improvement plans is that many educators from superintendents to classroom teachers, they start with curriculum. Curriculum Mark, why'd they always seem to start with curriculum?

squadcaster-ahi0_1_07-03-2024_103612 1:14

because we start with content, it's, it's what we know, as educators, we usually know our content and so people start with curriculum because they can adopt. Present curriculum. They can adopt present strategies as a whole. And there's companies out there that sell those packages and they try to convince us that if we do those things, our kids are going to learn math better, reading better, whatever. And so it's an easy. Fix so they think climate really is, just an essential place when we're dealing with the school is struggling curriculum is the wrong place to start because climate is the things that establish our environment, our disciplines. Our day to day management of the school, all those practices are so much easier to go in and adjust and adapt. Those things can be adapted and changed overnight and you can get quick wins. You always talk about quick wins and those are great things for quick wins. Curriculum just gets overwhelming. People say, why are we doing this? And they get struggled because The climate's not where they need it to be,

bryan-wright_1_07-03-2024_103628 2:28

And so Mark, let me ask one more question. If that is the case, why it seems to be so many superintendents put in five year plans when the average superintendent stays into a program average of three years, and that may be a reason why another comes in and now they started talking about curriculum change as

squadcaster-ahi0_1_07-03-2024_103612 2:45

right? I guess. Yeah, they do. It's just a repeat cycle. I think part of it is hopeful thinking that they're gonna be long term superintendent. You know, it's like I said, it's what we know. We know we can adopt. It's very convincing that it has the support and structure needed for change. People never believe that things could be changed overnight. So by adopting something out in time, we can say, Hey, don't feel so pressured. You have to change today. You can change tomorrow because this is a five year plan. this isn't a today plan. And I think that gives comfort to, the stable climate. It actually gives comfort to the teachers to stay where they're at. And that's actually the struggle but that's kind of what it's intended to do is to give comfort to teachers. So, community and the boards, school boards to not feel like they're overwhelmed.

bryan-wright_1_07-03-2024_103628 3:45

and you know, you talking about quick wins, you know, what quick wins do without changing in climate. I've often told superintendents in those districts and the community in those districts that we can make those changes, those positive changes, essentially the same staff the same students where we can make those changes because we feel that if we build those things such as environment and using the climate and that's what I'm saying. Establishing an identity. who we are and what we're going to become in the future, we can make those changes. And what seems to me what climate does is build trust. And it builds trust in your system, builds trust in you as a person, and people feel comfortable that they want to follow you once they start getting those quick wins and seeing some successes being established. Not only that, but also what you're talking about is building up a consistency with the students. And I think that's something that we seem to miss out sometimes, building up that consistency and how we're going to work with our children, and how the children are going to benefit from the consistent message they receive. Every single day. How does that sound to

squadcaster-ahi0_1_07-03-2024_103612 4:47

Yeah, I think that's perfect. What we want is something that's the practices that we and models that we put in place has that consistency stretched across time, right? And and people need to see that that consistency happens. So when you're establishing those things, if you can create that consistency you start gaining lots more trust from the students, the staff and the parents in the community. Those, quick wins are necessary for feelings. How people feel internally. When you go into a turnaround school, There is a them against us mentality and that that them can be teachers against administrators because administrator leaves every two or three years. So then they're kind of, you know, do we trust the next guy or next woman that comes in? It's teachers against students, students against teachers secretary against the teachers, whatever it is. It's that, negative. Climate that people aren't working together. And it's those things that we have to create consistency where they see, yep. Making gains, making gains. Yep. That makes sense that we know what's coming every day and that feels comfortable and that's why climate becomes number one. And then as you're building that identity. Number two is culture.

bryan-wright_1_07-03-2024_103628 6:11

Well, culture, and that's a good segue, Mark. Culture is something that now becomes embedded. The positive changes we started, the positive changes we're doing, we're going to continue. This becomes part of what we do. All right. And everything that, and I give you a couple of examples. You talk about that, we, when we first started climate, for example, we talked about the, five step test in our schools. five step test is, right, you come to the front door and as you hit the front door, you take five steps into your school. you hit the fifth step, look around. What do you see? And I always tell people you should be able to tell what culture looks like in those first five steps.

squadcaster-ahi0_1_07-03-2024_103612 6:53

Right.

bryan-wright_1_07-03-2024_103628 6:54

All right. And you can tell what kind of school you have based on those first five steps. So when we talk about doing something along those lines, we want to make sure that those first five steps, you feel good about where you're at. What you're doing, especially when you talk about parents coming in, community leaders come to your building. You want them to really feel the culture that starts, but that comes embedded. And that's why we start building up that culture. We start with climate, talk about something good, something positive. Then we talk about something that's also embedded. And you've had some situations where you've assisted in culture. I'd talk to us about some of those things you've incorporated to make sure the culture was something that was successful.

squadcaster-ahi0_1_07-03-2024_103612 7:30

I think you're right. When you walk in that, that first step, you've established a climate that sets the stage for how we do business. And that's the culture, right? How we're doing business. What's our purpose on a daily basis. And you talk about code. I basically take, take the concept student learning first. And within that. We, start to embed things for culture where we start putting systems in place for common professional development across the board. We start putting Observations of learning together, where people can start seeing that there's positive things going on inside of classrooms as well. So we do that through like team walkthroughs before anything becomes formalized. I'm taking teachers in and out of classrooms, letting them see other teachers be successful maybe in just one little strategy, one little technique trying to embed those things in there. And I think communication becomes key. You start giving teachers power to have input. Now, they may not have control of everything, but they're having input on what's going on, what's happening, why are we moving forward with what we're doing that starts to adopt culture, you know, and because the sacred cow exists and you got to kind of know what the sacred cow is and then let them start to see things. Right. And so you have to engage them. Yeah. So, you have to adopt things like the structure of the PLC, not all the content of the PLC yet. It's really getting people talking is the key.

bryan-wright_1_07-03-2024_103628 9:13

And as you talk about building those parts, you mentioned one thing, and I want to make sure I go back to what we were talking about. I think everybody needs to have a code. I think code is what builds and it's the connection between climate and culture. And make sure I explain code. Code isn't a leader's educational philosophy. something that you hope the staff supports. Matter of fact, I think every. A leader should start any program they have and talk about what their code is and how they should develop the code. They have code is so important. That's what people want to follow through. And if they follow your code, then all of a sudden it's easier to build both climate and then connect that climate pieces of culture. You want to start embedding cause I think it's cold. Matter of fact, I was in a school where, you know, we already started cold. My codes are respect law, respects earned, not just given, but common courtesy demanded of everyone. I know your code and I'm going to let you share your code in a minute because I think it's great. But at the same time as we do that, say, okay, this is who we are. I've seen schools adopt the code saying this is who we want to be. Then once they adopt that code, then it becomes part of what we do. All right. We're going to live by that. And I've actually seen teachers create their own codes, which I've, we highly recommended. Then we said they've established that and they've built codes for their own students. So they built their own code and had kids build their code. And anytime kids were getting out of line, they just thought it was breaking away from their code. All they did was point to the wall where they put all the students codes up saying, that's what you said you're going to live by. Are you going to live by those words? And the kids actually started doing better saying, yeah, that's what I want to be about. So with that being said, I want you to hear about your code, tell about your code, Mark, cause I know it pretty

squadcaster-ahi0_1_07-03-2024_103612 10:50

Yeah. So, so basically I have, I have an overlap. It's, it's student learning first, but then, then I always talk about rigor, relevance, relationships, generates results. And I say it over and over. And over and over again until other people start to say it over and over again themselves. So, when we're in meetings with these staff, they're starting to talk about is this relationship related? Is this for students and adults, right? But is this, rigor? Is this relevance? Are we talking about results? And if we have all those type of things, we're setting the culture for positive learning outcomes that we're focusing on student learning as the outcome. And we were focusing on the avenues to get there. One of the things when we think about culture, when we go into a school that needs to turn around, people have difficulty communicating with each other. And when you're in a culture that has become positive and you know you can go to the next step, which is what we're going to talk about next is when people are able to interact among themselves based on that code, When they're starting to have that kind of conversation where they're in depth in that conversation, now they can move to that next phase. Which is curriculum. So let's define curriculum.

bryan-wright_1_07-03-2024_103628 12:15

first, if we have done the first two steps correctly, if we have changed the climate of the building to something that's positive, if we've embedded the culture and some of the things we're talking about, and you mentioned there's two C's that we even talked about a lot today, communication. Now, and those are part of the connection piece that we'll discuss at the end. But now, now you can talk about building a curriculum, making changes in curriculum where people feel as though you're not attacking them at their academics, not attacking them personally. We're talking about changes that will greatly benefit and enhance student learning. That what we can do. And we're doing this together. This is not something that they're doing on an Island that we've already established a context that we're now we're doing it as one, as a group, as one, one school. One district, one community, one classroom, so we can start doing these things. So that's when curriculum style becomes changes that we can do that we talked about and saying, Hey, we can do these ideas that we think will work inside our building, our district, our community, our classroom. And that's why curriculum changes is usually not the first thing we do, but the third thing we do once we establish a positive climate and hopefully a positive culture as What do you think

squadcaster-ahi0_1_07-03-2024_103612 13:26

Yeah. Positive culture. So, so each becomes important for the next. So climate, we have to, we have to establish the management systems, the day to day operations, build that trust. As you said, then the culture, we have to establish the positive thinking, the purpose of why we exist. And we really have to get there. And then that curriculum is about when people start to self reflect and start saying, Hey, here's the strategies we can use to incorporate rigor relevance relationship. This is where we can create actual content, knowledge and, and methodologies to get there. When, when they're able to have that deep conversation. So when we're, what we see in the turnaround is kind of like before we go in, we see a lack of cohesion, right? We're missing the connect between the content that we're teaching, how we're teaching it, how we're doing it as a school, how we're measuring it through data. Those things don't exist. And that's when we're, when we come in to do the curriculum. Now we're looking at what kind of data are we really going to look at to measure whether students are learning? What are we going to measure? Becomes essential. How are we going to deliver this message to know ultimately how we're whether people are learning it. And so this is once again, we jump back to where you started. You asked, why do people start here? Because it's just where people think, well, our content content, let's just teach content. If you teach reading, kids will learn, but if the climate doesn't exist and the culture doesn't exist, that's the positive culture. Don't get it. Cause there's always culture, but The school gets stagnant and can backtrack. And sometimes that backtracks because of that, that consistency where you said superintendents, principals come in for two or three years, move on, we're asked to move on because they're trying to make positive change and it's hard And so if the people following our model here, if they start with climate and we can give them the tools for that later, right? And they, they go, they go to culture and then they, they start to focus now on that curriculum. They will have way more success

bryan-wright_1_07-03-2024_103628 15:47

Absolutely. I know when we're talking about our plan kids don't learn if they feel unsafe, in their environment. They're not going to learn. And yet we always make sure we start with curriculum and we always say, you know, the kid may be unsettled, maybe unsafe his environment. And then all of a sudden you saw what happened in Kobe when the people came back and the first thing they did was trying to steal educational policies and kids weren't learning at all. And so that would happen in COVID. So what happens after that? Now people are building up those trust issues. Again, they starting with some of the turn around foresee policies and now improvement and learning is being evident is taking place. the one thing that brought it all together. And when we talk about this plan, it's a connection piece and you handled that beautifully earlier when you discussed about the connections, as far as communicating, making sure that communication, those lines are open. Also talking about consistency of what we're doing and how we're doing it. So people know we're going to be the same positive thing every day. Once you add more about the connections, you think that Could establish that we make this plan be something that people may want to utilize.

squadcaster-ahi0_1_07-03-2024_103612 16:51

leadership creates the connection, right? So that that leader needs to look at early on helping really set climate and then start to build capacity over time for teacher engagement. Community engagement, getting people involved to change that culture. Then ultimately the people who know their content, the instructional strategies, all the methodologies exist off and inside the buildings, right? And we're, empowering them over time. We do that by always having that code from day one. it embeds it, even if we're not there yet. Even if they're not living it yet, they know that it exists on our perspective. It's our expectation. The connection between all these is that they all exist at the same time, but you can't, Go heavy on the third one, which is curriculum before you've went heavy on climate and then. settle into consistency and then go heavy on culture until it becomes embedded and felt right. And then now you can really embed the curriculum. The comprehension piece, the connections between the two, all these helps build capacity. Another C over time is really building that capacity and we have to think about each of those. So To get there we're thinking about our leadership type, style we're using. We're, we're thinking at first it's not really learning focused even though we're using those terms. It's still not learning focus, it's management focus. And then we start to put students first and we make that shift and then we can get into to that instruction and learning are the central focus. But we're making that connection all the time, that connection, it's there.

bryan-wright_1_07-03-2024_103628 18:54

Right.

squadcaster-ahi0_1_07-03-2024_103612 18:55

so, and at that connection piece, we really start to live the culture on a daily basis and it adapts and changes because they're going, Oh, we know more now we feel better about who we are now we're making, we're still making those gains.

bryan-wright_1_07-03-2024_103628 19:13

Oh, absolutely. Now we're scaffolding what we're learning, what we're doing, and it builds like a stepping stone, building up towards success. You know, I got to tell you this quick story, Mark. I'll let you know this. And the story I'm talking about is you know, I was a principal of a middle school. And at one time, I remember sure the first day I said, we are the best middle school in the state of where we're at. And I said that, and it didn't draw any play. And I kept saying it, we said it every day. If I wasn't in school, I had an assistant principal say it every day. all of a sudden Next thing you know, kids were like, welcome to this school and they're like, best middle school in the state. We heard you. We heard you. So I quit saying it for a week. See what's going to happen. had kids and teachers come up to me. Why? We're not the best middle school now. We're not this. We're not that. And I was like, Oh, Oh, I'm sorry. And sure enough, we started saying it and saying it by the end of the second year, were the ones

squadcaster-ahi0_1_07-03-2024_103612 20:07

Yeah. Yeah.

bryan-wright_1_07-03-2024_103628 20:08

acting like they were, and they start, believing. It became part of the culture we believed in. We are this. And so when we had our third year yearbook, first thing we put in our yearbook in the front. Welcome to this school. We are the best middle school in the state And it became something that it was a connection piece that we use that we started with climate we started making sure who we are, then we started embedding it and all of a sudden it became culture like, Hey, this is what we do. And then the connection was what brought it together.

squadcaster-ahi0_1_07-03-2024_103612 20:39

I'll make one more analogy for some of the sports people out there. So every principal that's listening to this, no school districts out there where they got a powerhouse basketball team, powerhouse football team winner year after year after year. They teach the fundamentals, climate. they build a sense of culture that we're going to win no matter what, right? It's just, it's just given. they then build a game plan called, you know, curriculum, right? And then they make the connections with those kids and the community and say, this is our package. And year after year, they're consistent. And even if they have a season where they're losing a few games, the mental state is still that we're still the best, just where you were talking about. We're the best. And they adopt it. And the coach no longer has to sell it. It's just embedded. And I think that's where we're going. What I want to do is in our coming up sessions with you is really dive into climate a little bit more. Talk about some tools that you've used, maybe some tools that I've used. Some practices that we focused on to get that. School to move through that climate stage and then on to the next one, the culture and then, and make that connection. And that's why we have a multi series plan here.

bryan-wright_1_07-03-2024_103628 22:07

thank you, Mark. I think that's a great idea. So the, for those who are going to close off this session today, we want to thank everybody for listening. Again, our email addresses will be put in the comment section. Please if you wish to know more about us or ask us any questions, do not hesitate to do so. Meantime, Mark, it's good to see you as always, my friend. Until the next session. All right, everybody have a good day. Bye. Bye.