Elizabeth A. City

Investigating Disciplinary Literacy provides practical, research-based guidance for teachers seeking to strengthen students’ reading, writing, and communication skills in subjects from the humanities to the sciences. The authors present a framework for conducting professional development cycles based on disciplinary literacy-related learning and district-based research projects they have conducted over the past five years. The book outlines the steps in the cycle and identifies four “working habits” essential to initiating and sustaining disciplinary literacy projects: balancing content with process; creating a culture of adaptation and invention; attending equally to intermediate and subject-specific literacy skills; and positioning teachers and leaders as learners within projects. The book, written in a reader-friendly voice, shows how educators can collaboratively explore and implement disciplinary literacy-related practices in context-specific, meaningful ways.

Investigating Disciplinary Literacy provides practical, research-based guidance for teachers seeking to strengthen students’ reading, writing, and communication skills in subjects from the humanities to the sciences. The authors present a framework for conducting professional development cycles based on disciplinary literacy-related learning and district-based research projects they have conducted over the past five years. The book outlines the steps in the cycle and identifies four “working habits” essential to initiating and sustaining disciplinary literacy projects: balancing content with process; creating a culture of adaptation and invention; attending equally to intermediate and subject-specific literacy skills; and positioning teachers and leaders as learners within projects. The book, written in a reader-friendly voice, shows how educators can collaboratively explore and implement disciplinary literacy-related practices in context-specific, meaningful ways.

Walk into any school in America and you will see adults who care deeply about their students and are doing the best they can every day to help students learn. But you will also see a high degree of variability among classrooms—much higher than in most other industrialized countries. Today we are asking schools to do something they have never done before—educate all students to high levels—yet we don’t know how to do that in every classroom for every child. This book is intended to help education leaders and practitioners develop a shared understanding of what high-quality instruction looks like and what schools and districts need to do to support it. Inspired by the medical-rounds model used by physicians, the authors have pioneered a new form of professional learning known as instructional rounds networks. Through this process, educators develop a shared practice of observing, discussing, and analyzing learning and teaching.

A practical, accessible framework to help education leaders at all levels turn goals into effective actionIn Leading Strategically, Elizabeth A. City and Rachel E. Curtis introduce an actionable leadership framework that supports education leaders in developing and executing cohesive strategy and in taking action in their daily work in ways that make them more effective. Their approach helps leaders navigate challenges and dilemmas in ways that build ownership, collaboration, and capacity within their schools, school systems, and nonprofit educational organizations. City and Curtis center their framework on five essential elements of strategic leadership: discernment, or figuring out what is important to achieve the organization’s vision; cultivation of relationships by tending to interpersonal interactions and social networks with intentionality; deep knowledge of organizational context and history; identification of where power resides, what it looks like in action, and how to marshal it in service of shared purpose; and maintaining a lean and flexible mindset by thinking big, acting small, and learning fast. Throughout the work, reflective questions and tools invite readers to interrogate how each element can apply to their work, guide decision-making, and inform their leadership. Real-world mini case studies show these principles in practice, and a final chapter synthesizes the book into a set of questions leaders can use to guide them to lead strategically. Overall, this practical, hope-filled work encourages leaders—from teachers to superintendents and CEOs—to think expansively about what they can do on behalf of all students, their families, and their communities.

What’s the scarcest resource in schools? Almost any educator will answer, “Time.” The lack of time for colleagues to work together is one of the biggest barriers to improving teaching and learning. All too often, educators also say that the biggest waste of time ismeetings. People in schools attend dozens, if not hundreds, of meetings a year. How can that time be used wisely? This book, by two editors of Data Wise: A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Assessment Results to Improve Teaching and Learning,attempts to bring about a fundamental shift in how educators think about the meetings they attend. The authors make the case that these gatherings are potentially the most important venue where adult and organizational learning can take place in schools, and that making more effective use of this time is an important key to increasing student achievement. In Meeting Wise, the authors show why planning meetings is a high-leverage strategy for changing how people work together in the service of school improvement. To this end, they have created a meeting-planning “checklist” to develop a common language for discussing and improving the quality of meetings. In addition, they provide guidelines for readers on “wise facilitating” and “wise participating,” and also include “top tips” and “common dilemmas.” Simple, succinct, and practical, Meeting Wise is designed to be read and applied at every level of the educational enterprise, from district leadership meetings and professional developmentsessions to teacher-team meetings and even teachers’ meetings with parents and students.

What’s the scarcest resource in schools? Almost any educator will answer, “Time.” The lack of time for colleagues to work together is one of the biggest barriers to improving teaching and learning. All too often, educators also say that the biggest waste of time ismeetings. People in schools attend dozens, if not hundreds, of meetings a year. How can that time be used wisely? This book, by two editors of Data Wise: A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Assessment Results to Improve Teaching and Learning,attempts to bring about a fundamental shift in how educators think about the meetings they attend. The authors make the case that these gatherings are potentially the most important venue where adult and organizational learning can take place in schools, and that making more effective use of this time is an important key to increasing student achievement. In Meeting Wise, the authors show why planning meetings is a high-leverage strategy for changing how people work together in the service of school improvement. To this end, they have created a meeting-planning “checklist” to develop a common language for discussing and improving the quality of meetings. In addition, they provide guidelines for readers on “wise facilitating” and “wise participating,” and also include “top tips” and “common dilemmas.” Simple, succinct, and practical, Meeting Wise is designed to be read and applied at every level of the educational enterprise, from district leadership meetings and professional developmentsessions to teacher-team meetings and even teachers’ meetings with parents and students.

Based on Data Wise and Data Wise in Action, Key Elements of Observing Practice offers insight into one of the most challenging steps in capturing data about school performance: observing and analyzing instructional practice. A central premise of the Data Wise approach is that teams of educators must have a good understanding of what instruction looks like in order to improve it. The most direct approach to developing this collective knowledge is to have teachers observe one another’s practice. However, many schools do not have a collegial culture in which examining instruction feels supportive rather than threatening, and most teachers do not have the skills to describe teaching in a fine-grained, evidence-based way. This DVD and Facilitator’s Guide provide school leaders with a set of tools for developing teachers’ capacity to learn from their own practice. The DVD features a 20-minute film that follows members of one school team as they apply the five key elements of observing instruction. It also contains five sections that offer viewers a closer look at each element. Brief videos providing an overview of the Data Wise improvement process and a summary of the eight steps of the Data Wise cycle are also included. The Facilitator’s Guide provides meeting agendas, protocols, and discussion questions to help principals, academic coaches, and other providers of professional development use the video segments to structure their conversations with colleagues about observing practice. The complete program involves a series of eight meetings, each of which runs forty to seventy minutes. This package includes one DVD and one Facilitator's Guide. There is a reduced rate for five copies of this package available for schools and training. (See above.)

Walk into any school in America and you will see adults who care deeply about their students and are doing the best they can every day to help students learn. But you will also see a high degree of variability among classrooms—much higher than in most other industrialized countries. Today we are asking schools to do something they have never done before—educate all students to high levels—yet we don’t know how to do that in every classroom for every child. This book is intended to help education leaders and practitioners develop a shared understanding of what high-quality instruction looks like and what schools and districts need to do to support it. Inspired by the medical-rounds model used by physicians, the authors have pioneered a new form of professional learning known as instructional rounds networks. Through this process, educators develop a shared practice of observing, discussing, and analyzing learning and teaching.

Evidence from high-performing schools shows that efficient use of resources is essential for creating the conditions that support school improvement. How can school leaders use scarce resources more efficiently? And what should their priorities be? In Resourceful Leadership, Elizabeth A. City examines decisions about the use of three key resources—time, money, and staff—and how tradeoffs among them are integrated into school leaders’ improvement strategies. She undertakes a detailed study of two small urban high schools in their first year of conversion from a large, comprehensive high school. Resourceful Leadership is divided into six chapters that present a lively and insightful analysis of school leaders’ dilemmas, decisions, and tradeoffs. Woven through the book is the discussion of additional intangible but essential resources: vision, trust, ideas, energy, and hope. The book offers both the theory behind effective resource use and a practical look at the decisions, tradeoffs, and practices that support it.

Evidence from high-performing schools shows that efficient use of resources is essential for creating the conditions that support school improvement. How can school leaders use scarce resources more efficiently? And what should their priorities be? In Resourceful Leadership, Elizabeth A. City examines decisions about the use of three key resources—time, money, and staff—and how tradeoffs among them are integrated into school leaders’ improvement strategies. She undertakes a detailed study of two small urban high schools in their first year of conversion from a large, comprehensive high school. Resourceful Leadership is divided into six chapters that present a lively and insightful analysis of school leaders’ dilemmas, decisions, and tradeoffs. Woven through the book is the discussion of additional intangible but essential resources: vision, trust, ideas, energy, and hope. The book offers both the theory behind effective resource use and a practical look at the decisions, tradeoffs, and practices that support it.