Education Week - February 24, 2016 - S58

LESSONS FROM A
LEADER

>> Push for

Solutions

Find the resources,
provide research, and
stretch your team's
understanding and
practice. Be relentless
in finding solutions and
moving beyond "stuck"
phases.

>> Everyone

Has Gifts

Assume positive intent
in those you lead and
look for the things they
are good or great at.
Look also for the areas
where people need
to grow and work to
support that growth to
make them stronger
leaders.

>> Teamwork Is
Essential

This work is demanding,
and no one has all the
answers. When you
work collaboratively, we
often discover that the
answers are within the
group.

principal, then to supervising principals at more than 30
schools in the city.
Both in Chicago and and now in Tulsa, he learned to
reject the temptation to micromanage his principals,
which inhibits their ability to learn and think critically
about their work.
He has learned to listen for, and ask, what teachers and
students are saying. And he has worked hard to involve
students and their families in Tulsa, particularly Hispanics, who have traditionally felt disconnected from the
broader school community.
"One of the things I learned was that people want to
get involved. People want to help," Contreras says. "It's
a matter for us, as leaders of schools, of how we frame it
and what we want to engage people in."
Contreras and those who work with him say he places
a high value on using various types of data, whether that
means creating a personalized schedule for Englishlanguage learners instead of relying on a computer, or
holding monthly "portfolio meetings" of principals that
feature videos of teachers in the classroom and robust
discussions of their practices.
But none of that means he glides through school hallways with his eyes glued to a spreadsheet.
"Any time he's in the building and we're walking
around, he just jumps right in, talks with students, asks
what they're doing, and he becomes part of our building," says Josh Regnier, the principal of East Central
Junior High School, who reports to Contreras.

Strategies in Action
As a principal supervisor, Contreras is responsible for
managing six school leaders.
Traditionally, that's a central-office-based, middlemanagement administrator job that in many districts
focuses on making sure that principals-and by extension the schools they lead-comply with rules and
regulations.
But Contreras takes a very different approach to the
role-one that the Tulsa district is pursuing with all its
principal supervisors to better support its school-level
leaders. (The Tulsa district's work on refining the principal supervisors' role is supported, in part, by the Wallace
Foundation, which also supports the coverage of leadership, arts education, and extended- and expandedlearning time in Education Week.)
Contreras is in his schools constantly, visiting three a
day, each for about two hours. Before classroom visits,
he reviews some fundamental data with each school's
principal, such as student attendance and literacy, and
any previous strategies at that school he's discussed with
the principal.
Then he looks for those strategies in action, visiting
two or three classrooms with the principal to observe
teachers and students at work. Contreras and the principal discuss how to "coach that teacher up" and if the
instructional strategies he or she is using are working.
Regnier says one key instructional shift this process
has led to in many classrooms is a new focus on reading
levels. The fine-grained information about reading levels

Education Week Leaders To Learn From

that Contreras reviews with him beforehand, according
to Regnier, helps teachers as well as students determine
reasonable goals. Regnier says that breakdown before
class makes it so that "I'm not just coming in with an
agenda."
Contreras, in turn, says a sharp focus on reading levels
fits more broadly into a districtwide goal of improving
literacy. And that approach of considering both classroom and district goals, he says, helps him evaluate
principals.
Contreras also sets aside two distinct blocks of discussion time with the school leaders he supervises. One is
"school time," in which he wants to hear about what's
going on at the school involving teachers and students.
The other is "leader time," when principals are
encouraged to tell him what supports they need from
him or ask him about a particular line item in the
budget.
In many cases, these segments of time help principals identify small but significant steps for improving
instruction.
For example, Regnier says that for new teachers, he
and Contreras often focus on classroom-management
techniques. For more senior staff, it might be helping a
teacher who is enthusiastic about group work but has yet
to establish clear expectations or procedures for how that
group should function.
"The purpose is to identify a bite-sized action step to
help the teachers improve," Regnier says.
Once a month, Contreras gathers the six principals he
supervises at one of their schools to observe classrooms
in small teams. Principals are encouraged to share their
thoughts on those observations afterward.
And they receive reports from administrators about
data on issues related to English-language learners, for
example.
"We'll use each other as a resource, and we'll calibrate,
talk through the process of how do you support this
teacher? What would the feedback conference with that
teacher look like?" says Regnier, whose school's enrollment is 53 percent Hispanic and 25 percent Englishlanguage learners.
"Then we'll practice and see what it would look like in
real time."
All those practices, Contreras says, ultimately allow
principals "to leverage each other."
"You can be part of a team, or you can just be going in
and putting out fires," he says.

Energy and Support
When Contreras discusses classroom work with his
principals, "every conversation has some data wrapped
up in it," says Kim Dyce, the deputy superintendent of
the Tulsa schools and Contreras' direct supervisor.
For example, Contreras has worked with principals to
identify students who are not on track to graduate, how
many credits they lack, and how many credits they can
realistically obtain each semester to get back on track.
"I appreciate his willingness to continually push the
thinking in terms of what the issues may be," Dyce says.

Education Week - February 24, 2016

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