Both principals and teacher leaders lead from the middle, feeling pressure and demands from a system level and a classroom and community level. Dr. Katie Pekel, the director of Educational Leadership at the University of Minnesota, joins Steve to explore instructional leadership. They examine the need for administrators to guide the evaluation, supervision, mentoring and coaching of teachers. The role of instructional coaches and their work with school leaders is discussed.
Email Dr. Katie Pekel: kpekel@umn.edu
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Podcast Transcript:
[00:00:00.300] – Steve [Intro]
Welcome to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast. As instructional coaches and school leaders, you are tasked with guiding continuous teacher growth to create student success. This podcast looks to support you with strategies from experienced guests, as well as my own insights that I’ve gathered over the years. I’m thrilled to have you with us. Thanks for tuning in.
[00:00:29.550] – Steve
Leading Come from the Middle, Principals and Teacher Leaders. I was introduced to our guest, Dr. Katie Pekel, when I read an article that describes the work she was doing with Minnesota’s Principal’s Academy. Dr. Pekel is the Executive Director of Educational Leadership at the University of Minnesota, where she leads the Minnesota Principal’s Academy, their Executive PhD program, the Principal Support Series, and the Urban Leadership Academy. Dr. Pekel has served at all levels of K-12 education, including as a high school English teacher, an elementary principal, and middle school principal. She has led the development, execution, and dissemination of Minnesota Principals’ survey since 2021. Welcome, Katie.
[00:01:26.040] – Katie
Thank you, Steve. I’m so glad to be here. I appreciate it.
[00:01:29.020] – Steve
I’m wondering for starters, what does that principal survey that you’ve been conducting – what does it say about the demands of principals leading from that middle-level manager position?
[00:01:44.430] – Katie
Yeah, if I had to summarize the findings of the survey in three broad categories, one, principals are incredibly concerned about student mental health. It remains their number one concern. In fact, they’ve grown more concerned earned from ’21 to ’23. We actually do this survey every other year. The second is that they have very limited time. That’ll come as no surprise to anyone listening today, but they’re spending their time in places they wish that they didn’t have to or that they weren’t, which is administrative tasks. The area that they prefer to be spending their time, which is instructional leadership, they’re overwhelmingly telling us that they’re not spending as much time there as they would like. Then the last big idea is that the place they want to be spending their time, instructional leadership, is actually the area that they feel the least efficacious. We ask a number, we could talk a lot of time about the survey, and I’ll try not to do that here, but we ask a number of questions about their own confidence. How confident they feel in carrying out tasks? The tasks that they feel most confident in carrying out are those that fall into the domain of management in decision making, which really doesn’t come as a huge shock because that’s what we really focus on in principle training or principal preparation.
[00:03:07.500] – Katie
But the area that’s really the most important, which is instructional leadership, are the areas that they tell us that they feel least confident. And along that line, I would just say, again, I mentioned earlier, we gave the survey first in the fall of ’21, and then again in the fall of ’23. And if you remember the fall of ’21, we were contact tracing and coming in and out of school and trying to keep masks little people. And surprisingly and concerningly, to me, principals actually in Minnesota have had a drop in confidence from ’21 to ’23. So that’s a grim telling of what the survey tells us. But that’s the reality of what you described in the opening, which is the principal being in the middle of that really, as a good friend of mine once described it, as a former Commissioner of Education in Minnesota, Mary Katherine Rick or she said, “Principals are in the most expensive vice grip ever.” They think they might be.
[00:04:08.080] – Steve
I was going to ask about the role of an instructional leader, and you flagged a question for me that I hope is safe to ask. I’m wondering what it says about our principal Preparation programs.
[00:04:24.740] – Katie
Yeah, I think about that a lot. And of course, in Minnesota, at the University of Minnesota, my principals are trained in the department in which I reside. And yes, we certainly could blame prep programs, but I would say this. I liken it a little bit to even teacher education. So even in teacher education, we give you basically entry A three-level competency. What you need to know for a lack of a better way to describe it, not get fired. And those management decision-making tests are important. And those are the things that are the easiest to get in trouble to go over. So I would say instead of, quote, unquote, putting the blame on preparation, we actually need to think about what is the continuum of development for leadership. And I don’t think we have good mechanisms in place for the development of leaders. I’m fortunate enough in Minnesota to lead a two-year professional development program for school principals that’s funded by the legislature, but it only touches a fraction of the number of principals that we even have in in the state. A lot of states have ongoing continuing education units or credits or requirements, but even those rarely are touching on those really important aspects of instructional leadership.
[00:05:45.340] – Steve
For all the years that I’ve been at this, the idea that somebody finishes that four-year college degree and gets a certificate to be a teacher and walks into a classroom with full responsibility for everything never made any sense to me.
[00:06:04.350] – Katie
Right. You’re right. And we know that models exist, right? It exists in medicine. It exists in law. You have these apprenticeship or residency type models. But we also know that that’s expensive. And so in a field where we’re constantly trying to save money here or do this there, et cetera, it’s pretty hard for leaders to say, you know what? We need to spend more money on us, and we need to develop a model that is going to… Because leaders are going to always, first and foremost, say, It’s incredibly important to take care of our students and teachers who are the closest to the students and have the greatest impact. So we’re back to that vice versa.
[00:06:51.470] – Steve
That same thing happens to teacher-leaders. They take that first role, so I suddenly become a department head or an elementary grade level team leader, and it’s eye-popping to them that they’re suddenly dealing with a whole lot of issues that I’ve been teaching for 12 years and didn’t address or didn’t call on me to use this skillset.
[00:07:18.320] – Katie
And those teacher leaders are for the first time realizing either, wow, the colleague I’ve been eating lunch with every day for the last five years isn’t actually doing what they should be doing in the classroom, or, wow, the principal’s job is a lot more challenging than I had a sense of, or turns out I’m working for a leader that isn’t going to have the skills to develop me. So yes, I think our teacher-leaders are in a place, too, where they don’t have that ongoing development or safety net.
[00:07:50.970] – Steve
So I talk about building principals, having roles on a continuum, where being an evaluator is on one end of continuum, being a coach or a mentor on the other end, being in supervision falls down in the middle there. How do you see those elements translating into instructional leadership?
[00:08:14.880] – Katie
When you start with and you talk about evaluator at one end and coach at the other, I think that principals have to move along that continuum based on whatever the situation is that they’re in with the particular other teacher at the time. I do think that in those first three years, when we’re trying to make decisions about if a teacher should receive tenure or not, which is probably the most important decision the principal will make in the building, is have we done enough of the coaching and have we been honest enough in our evaluation? To be able to do that, I think the principal has to be incredibly transparent and clear with the teacher about what those things are and how it’s on a continuum. I think one of the things we’ve maybe done a disservice to, well, the development of teachers, frankly, is we’ve said, we’ll always keep them very separate, and that there’s a hard line that coaching is coaching and evaluating is evaluating. The reality is that I think that those two, as you describe, they have to move along that continuum based on what what the teacher needs. But here is what is important for the teacher.
[00:09:35.970] – Katie
The principal has to be incredibly transparent with the teacher in saying, right now I’m giving you coaching feedback. I’m hoping to see that that’s going to bring about the improvement that we need, et cetera. And then they also need to say, right now, I’m giving you some evaluative feedback about where you stand. And it’s when we’re not clear about that, that is detrimental, I think, to the development of teachers.
[00:10:02.570] – Steve
I worked with a principal who held his teacher evaluation meetings in his office. And as the meeting ended, he would ask the teacher to get up and join him in a walk to the teacher’s classroom. And then he would sit down in the teacher’s classroom and move into a coaching conversation based on the results of what came out of the evaluation. So if the evaluation identified the spot for growth, But let’s be real clear, we’re leaving the evaluator here in the office, and we’ll get into your classroom now, and I’ll begin to switch over into that role.
[00:10:39.660] – Katie
That’s really transparent, isn’t it? That’s very clear.
[00:10:43.850] – Steve
The hard part I describe with folks on that is when you step into that coach role, you now have some commitment to the person’s growth and improvement, where when you stayed in the evaluator role, you didn’t necessarily have that accountability.
[00:11:01.920] – Katie
I agree with you 100%. I would say in addition to the transparency along that continuum, as we talked about earlier, the other thing that I think is really important is the degree to which you’re building that professional relationship. I don’t mean relationship as friendship, but I mean that professional relationship that really acknowledges, I see you as a human, as a professional, as someone who has flaws I do, but we’re in this together for growth, for what’s going to impact students in the classroom. And you’re right, that takes a lot of investment. But I also think that’s how you get really good growth.
[00:11:48.690] – Steve
I’m wondering about the work of a principal when they are fortunate enough to have an instructional coach as a position with within their school. Is there anything in your survey on instruction coaches?
[00:12:07.540] – Katie
Not specific to instructional coach, per se, but I would say just in response to the idea in general, I would say this: The last time I was a practicing school principal was 12 years ago, so that’s quite a while ago. But I was fortunate enough at the time that I had two instructional coaches in the middle school that I led a thousand students. And what I’m hopeful about this idea of instructional coaching is, and I would say it’s a hypothesis, perhaps, of mine, is that I think we are going to stand to see a different generation of school leader or school principal, because I think so many of them are now coming through the ranks of instructional coaching. And I think when school principals have that professional partnership with an instructional coach, somebody that has potentially an area of expertise that I don’t, for example, my background is, as you mentioned, I was a high school English teacher, so I gravitate more towards literacy, understanding of literacy, et cetera. But that doesn’t mean I’m not responsible for mathematics. As a school principal, I likely don’t have the depth of knowledge in mathematics that I likely need to have or wish I had when it comes to coaching the math teachers in the building.
[00:13:38.220] – Katie
That’s where I think the benefit of having that partnership with instructional coaches, those, one that, for example, has a deep knowledge in mathematics, is what can enhance my ability as a principal. So I see those instructional coaching roles as not just the improvement of of the classroom teacher. I see them as the improvement of the system because they’re really also coaching the principal at the same time. It’s not in the same relationship. I get that. They’re not saying today, we’re going to talk about this particular instructional move. But they are really developing, at least in my case, but in many cases, I think, the principal’s knowledge and helping to grow that.
[00:14:26.390] – Steve
In my work, I describe that the principal would be one of the people looking to tap the coaches expertise and the coaching feedback.
[00:14:38.840] – Katie
Absolutely.
[00:14:40.040] – Steve
The coach ip seeing things around the school that the Principal isn’t seeing. If we can find a way to work as a team where we’re both focused on the greatest possible growth of all the teachers in the building, that brings that team together.
[00:14:56.870] – Katie
It really does. I think one of the programs that I’m fortunate enough to also oversee at the University of Minnesota, we call it the Minnesota Instructional Leadership Academy, but it’s a partnership with the Center for Educational Leadership out of University of Washington. They call it the ILA or Instructional Leadership Academy. We approach it, and just as you described it, which is a team comes together to do that learning together, meaning the principal, maybe assistant principal as well, instructional coaches, so that when they’re doing the collective learning and they’re also doing collective walkthroughs that that learning, that collective learning transfers to collective impact in a building.
[00:15:39.730] – Steve
I’m wondering about the role of the principal in generating teacher leadership beyond the concept of an instructional coach – how does that fit into the administrator’s role?
[00:15:59.320] – Katie
I think it’s one of the things that’s really important as a school principal is being able to recognize and leverage the unique skills that individual teachers bring to that system as a whole. I might see one teacher as incredibly good at building, humanizing, and welcoming classroom environment. And then I might see another who’s incredibly good at using assessment data to move instruction and to move student performance, et cetera. I think for a principal, to balance and not prioritize particular skills above one another, but to leverage for the system as a whole is their primary jobs. And I think what can happen is, because we’re humans, in the human nature, we might gravitate towards someone or some type of skill that we’re most comfortable with. I might gravitate those who are more focused on curriculum instruction because that’s my area of expertise or background. I might not gravitate towards those that come out of more of like a counseling and guidance or social work type background. That’s not going to be good for my school as a whole or a system as I keep talking about, if I’m not lifting up and leveraging all of those aspects.
[00:17:38.160] – Katie
I think as school principals, we have to be critically reflecting on our own biases all of the time to say, am I gravitating towards the thing that I feel comfortable with or better at? And if that’s the case, what do I do to challenge myself out of that? And that’s where the leadership team in a school is really important. So if I’ve got a building or instructional leadership team that really just reinforces my ways of thinking, that’s probably not going to move us. I really need others there that are going to challenge my ways of thinking as well.
[00:18:23.700] – Steve
I’m really hearing team building in what you’re saying. The variety of strengths that I can build into that team.
[00:18:35.030] – Katie
Yeah. And team building, I like how you use that term. And team building isn’t, do we all like each other and get along? And I think too often that’s a approach. So there’s a non-education book. It’s called “Smart Leaders, Smarter Teams,” I think is what it is. Schwartz is the author. And he lays out, I think it’s these six aspects of what you need to do to develop high functioning teams. And I use it with principals in the Minnesota Principles Academy. Principles are usually like, oh, well, this seems like a blinding flash of the obvious, but I haven’t been thinking about my teams in this way. So it’s really the difference, I oftentimes say, between a team and a committee. The committee can get together and decide what we’re going to do for staff or appreciation week or whatever. That’s different than what a team needs to do.
[00:19:33.570] – Steve
Yeah. I work on separating the difference between people being franchise holders and being teams. Just today, we’re working with a leader who’s got departments that are being led as franchises. And when the department heads come to a meeting, they’re coming as a franchise holder and leaving to run their franchise. And how does the leader move towards them coming to those department head meetings to see the whole school as their focus?
[00:20:12.820] – Katie
I can’t agree more. And I’m going to even take that up one level. So a lot of my work is about the relationship and the work between the principal and their supervisor or supervisors at a district level. And whenever I’m called in to I work with school districts that there might be some… Usually, they don’t call me because things are going super well, right? Unfortunately. But the first question I asked when I’m in the room with the… oftentimes, it’s the principals and district level folks together, I say, are you a school district or are you a district of schools? And of course, they want to say, we’re a school district. And then, of course, then I will oftentimes ask the principal, where’s your allegiance? Who do you work for? And they’ll say, I work for the teachers or the families or the students in my building. And I’ll say, you work for the school district. And when you operate your school, I think what you were just describing as a franchise.
[00:21:15.020] – Steve
Franchise, yeah.
[00:21:15.960] – Katie
Yeah. And that’s when we can get into some trouble. And the problem is that some of our most high potential principals, some of our really great principals, they’re the ones that see themselves as working for the building versus the system of the district as a whole. And I get that.
[00:21:35.230] – Steve
They built their career and their reputation.
[00:21:37.870] – Katie
I get that.
[00:21:38.780] – Steve
By building the franchise.
[00:21:40.030] – Katie
Yes, of course. So they might have some greatness in isolation, right? Just like what you just talked about amongst those department heads. The reality is, as a school principal, I have many things to learn from my principal colleagues. And the minute I’m in competition with them, I’m losing out on an opportunity to learn. And I’ll be honest, that’s a lesson I had to learn as a school principal. I was always doing it onto the next thing and whatnot, and I was not taking the time, especially early in my career, to really recognize the incredible talents and gifts of those that I was working with. And it wasn’t until I had that opportunity to step back and go, oh, that that’s when I truly was able to be like, oh, this is what collegial collective leadership can look like.
[00:22:33.530] – Steve
Well, Katie, I have to tell you, it’s been a pleasure, and I’m already thinking in my mind, I’m going to have to set up another podcast with you because I think we could go off in several directions. As we wrap up here, knowing that I’ve got school administrators and instructional coaches, mostly listening to the podcast, any closing thoughts that you’d want to leave them with, knowing the very difficult jobs that they’re facing today?
[00:23:09.730] – Katie
Yeah. Again, I’ll go up one level to bring it back down to the school building level. I had the honor to help or sit on the doctoral committees of two of my students in that executive cohort. They studied the relationship between school leaders and their supervisors. One of the things that came out of one of their dissertations was there was almost no agreement between those two levels on the definition of instructional leadership. I think about that at a building level. Whether the school principal is working with the instructional coaches or the school principal is working with the department heads or whatever the case may be, I think going back to this idea of what is the clear definition of what it is we’re working on or trying to achieve. So whether it’s the instructional leadership or it’s the conceptual framework for what instruction can and should look like in this building. I think that to really have a productive working relationship, we have to have agreement on what is the conceptual framework that we’re trying to work towards and what are the metrics that are telling us we’re getting there. And the metrics are not just student outcomes.
[00:24:21.000] – Katie
And so how do we define those and measure those? And it doesn’t even have to be quantitative data. But how do we define those and measure those so that we know we’re accomplishing what we’re setting out to accomplish?
[00:24:34.520] – Steve
I call them progress indicators. There’s a whole slew of those indicators that precede an increase in student learning.
[00:24:43.820] – Katie
There sure is. And if we don’t identify that at the outset, we’re just going through the motions of, quote, unquote, school – and wishing.
[00:24:51.420] – Steve
And wishing. That’s great. Wishing the right number will be there at the end when we should have known eight months earlier that the first set of progress indicators weren’t showing up. Wasn’t going to come. By the way, what’s the easiest way that listeners might follow up with you with the question or learn more about the work that you’re doing?
[00:25:13.690] – Katie
Absolutely, yes. So as you mentioned, I’m at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus, so I’m pretty google-able. And then my email address is pretty simple. It’s my first initial of my first name, K, and then my last name, kpekel@umn.edu.
[00:25:36.320] – Steve
We’ll put your email in the podcast lead and make it easy for folks to find you.
[00:25:43.090] – Katie
Sounds great. Thanks very much. Steve was lovely to be with you. Enjoy the day.
[00:25:48.020] – Steve [Outro]
Thanks for listening, folks. I’d love to hear what you’re pondering. You can find me on Twitter or LinkedIn at Steve Barkley, or send me your questions and find my videos and blogs at barkleypd.com.
