In the end, if the Lord brings you to a change, He will get you through the change. Even if fifty people doubt you, He will strengthen and prepare you as a leader to carry out the change at your school.

As the leader, you will face resistance, and you can either respond with frustration (or, worse, force) or with compassion. Having compassion doesn't mean you need to cave into naysaying or fearmongering; it means acknowledging others' fears and reacting in a way that shows them you will keep them safe. And remember, it's never a bad idea to tell someone, "I'd like to hear your concerns so that I can pray and think about them."

Having others' experience, perspective, and support gives your school the best chance of success. While pursuing WASC accreditation, we engaged all our stakeholders by forming a committee that included staff, board members, parents, and even our middle school students. Our initial self-study document was written collaboratively by staff and stakeholders, and our WASC rep commended us for that. It was also vital that we kept our school board notified of progress at every step.

If you don’t know who you are, you’ll get lost in the change. For WASC, we needed to reevaluate our school's purpose for existing. We refined our mission and vision statements and began including them at every Open House, Education Sabbath, Constituency Meeting, and more. Two years before applying for WASC, we drafted a Continuous School Improvement Plan and frequently referenced it to stay on track with our action steps. Additionally, our staff reviewed MAP data after every testing period to analyze our strengths and weaknesses. That data helped inform our focus on Professional Learning Communities (PLC) and WASC action plans.

Lastly, for a significant change to work well, some things must stay exactly as they were. Be careful not to change too much too soon, and be mindful of staff and teacher load. When explaining the rationale behind a significant change, try to anticipate rebuttals and points of contention so you are prepared to respond to them (bonus points if you can respond with facts or data).

A heaping dose of COMPASSION

A double portion of COLLABORATION

A touch of CLARITY

A pinch of CAUTION

Leading through times of change can present great challenges for school leaders, yet change is an absolute certainty for all who work as school administrators. Changes may be the product of choices made by those in charge, such as a new strategic plan voted by a school board. Changes can also be thrust upon leaders, such as disappointing standardized test results or adjusting to new systemic policies and programs. Adventist schools across the North American Division are currently adopting standards-based teaching and learning models. This movement represents one of the more significant changes in Adventist education in many decades. This operational shift demands that leaders become change agents, leading our schools to excellence with new tools and expectations. The following is our story of how one Adventist school is navigating this change.

Northwest Christian School (NCS) is an elementary school in the Washington Conference with approximately 200 students. In 2021, after the pandemic, our team recognized that standards-based education was the way of the future, and we wanted to embrace the change. Our administrative team heavily invested in learning all we could about these new tools and systems. As a leader, I found that our administrative excitement for standards-based education spread to many of my teachers, staff members, board members, and parents. In the fall of 2021, our school board voted to pursue Marzano’s High Reliability School Certification as an institutional framework for becoming an excellent standards-based school. We are currently certified HRS L1 and expect L2 certification in the fall of 2024.

Administrative competencies and excitement only carry such a vision so far. Anxious for our staff to jump on board the change, our school developed Professional Learning Communities (PLC) that meet regularly to study standards-based education. The PLCs meet bi-weekly for an hour, with a handful of four-hour meetings scheduled throughout our academic calendar, days when we send our student body home at noon. The PLC scope of study is strictly limited to curriculum, instruction, assessment, and student growth as related to standards-based education. This process has led our teachers to become data-driven educators, developing new skills and sharpening their competencies with each meeting.

The team focus has also resulted in stronger staff solidarity, greatly benefiting the developing culture at NCS. With all of the new expectations placed on our educators, we have intentionally used training opportunities to help teachers bond and deepen their craft together. Every member of the NCS team has attended multiple Marzano and Solution Tree workshops in various locations around the country, traveling together in groups of two or three and learning alongside each other. A further component of our professional learning includes the expectation that all NCS teachers spend two full days in observation at another school. This activity alone has imported fresh ideas into our school while deepening our teacher’s professional competencies.

All three of our administrators have worked at NCS for over ten years. While we have always been proud of running a great school, the data-driven and clinical approach to education that has emerged since adopting standards-based systems has truly taken our school to the next level. And while it has been a fantastic blessing to be a part of this transformation, it is absolutely a team effort. All of our NCS educators have played key roles in this change, and when we meet our goals, even the small, short-term goals, we celebrate together. It has been an amazing journey, and I can’t wait to see where the Lord takes us next.

Be Humble

On my desk sits the quote, "Change is hard at the beginning, messy in the middle, but beautiful in the end." It's there as a reminder that the journey our school started three years ago is heading towards the beautiful part, even if right now it's still in the messy stage.

Three years ago, after our accreditation visit, our school decided that we would develop a vertically and horizontally aligned collaborative school culture for our entire TK-12 campus through the implementation of Professional Learning Communities or PLCs. We just KNEW this would be wonderful; our three campuses and 90 or so faculty would be more connected than ever, and our students would thrive because of it!

The administration planned everything carefully during the summer and rolled out the new initiative in the fall. We had an in-service, explained the purpose, provided a "why," and tried to generate buy-in. Then, we trained teachers on implementing PLCs and provided them with all the needed resources. We even created time in their meeting schedule for their PLCs so that it wasn't an added burden. The teachers had everything they needed for success, or so we thought; this rollout, along with the professional Marzano trainer we brought in a few months later, was not met with the buy-in and enthusiasm we had hoped to see from our faculty. It was clear that we had some work to do.

Our team of administrators had to spend time analyzing and understanding what went wrong and then hit reset. Below are some of the lessons we learned:

Change is messy

Don’t do it alone

Generate Small Wins

Be Patient and Consistent

It would have been easy to abandon this project for another new, more popular initiative. But our WHY hasn't changed. The reasons we made this decision over three years ago are the same, and the value of PLCs is still the same, but only clearer. Kotter's 7th step for organizational change is to "Sustain acceleration. Not declare victory too soon, [allow] progress to build, and build until the victory is fully realized" (Akhtar & Kotter, 2019). We must be consistent and sustain the change until the change becomes embedded in our culture.

Starting year four of our PLC journey, we are sustaining acceleration; maybe we are towards the second half of the messy part of the change, and I can glimpse the beautiful! It might almost be time to start thinking of what else God is calling us to do in this search for something better, this Journey to Excellence!

Akhtar, V., & Kotter, J. (2019). Charting the Course - The Path to Transformation in Education. https://www.kotterinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Transformation-in-Education-web-version.pdf

Martin, T. L., Rains, C. L., & Marzano, R. J. (2018). Stronger together: answering the questions of collaborative leadership. Solution Tree Press.

Marzano, R. J. (2016). Collaborative teams that transform schools: the next step in PLCs. Marzano Research.