Leadership magazine Nov/Dec 2014 V 44 No 2 | Page 20

Cultivating the
conditions for learning

A

s a former secondary teacher
and site and district leader in
California’s Central Valley, I
have many fond memories of
the area. The one thing that amazed me was
the hardpan soil. It was almost impossible to
plant, cultivate and harvest in that soil.
I relate the analogy of cultivating hardpan
soil to the cultivation of district and school
conditions needed for a successful implementation of Common Core Standards. I
quickly learned while trying to plant trees
in my backyard that I needed the right tools
and conditions to be able to cultivate the
land so the trees would grow.
Similarly, site administrators will need
the correct tools to cultivate the conditions
for teachers to successfully implement Common Core Standards and improve their instructional practices to meet the needs of the
targeted student groups identified in their
LCAP (Local Control Accountability Plan).
20

Leadership

Principals need the tools to

Teachers who reach and teach all students

cessfully implement Common Core Standards. I intentionally leave out the need for
teachers to increase their content knowledge
due to the fact that much has been written
on that topic.
Do our teachers need to know their content to provide rigorous learning experiences? Of course. But what are the conditions needed for teachers to become great at
the craft of creating learning opportunities
for students who can show their brilliance,
who love the struggle of moving from not
knowing to knowing how to learn anything,
and who can critique text and argue multiple sides of an author’s purpose? When we
have these outcomes, we have teachers who
can reach and teach all students despite their
income levels, academic English acquisition,
or institutional or instructional racism.

As a consultant for districts and schools
across the country, I have identified some
areas that must be addressed in order to suc-

By Edwin Javius

cultivate the conditions for
teachers to help underserved,
low income and marginalized
students do great work.
The hardpan soil in education takes on
several forms: current mediocre practices,
teachers’ fixed mind-sets, instructional
planning with no return on investment,
one-size-fits-all instructional strategies, and
instructional coaching that is too broad for
immediate teacher improvement.