A Summing Up. Robert Eaker
interconnected. For example, collaboration, a sharp focus on learning, assessment, time and support, passion, commitment, persistence, and a myriad of other best practices must be brought together, maintained, and supported by effective leadership at all levels for long-term, systemic improvement. Each individual aspect of effective schooling is enhanced by its connection to the larger whole. In this sense, we must become students of best practices and understand how each effective practice is connected to and enhanced by other concepts and practices. We can learn much from organizations outside the arena of public education. It is my hope that readers will conclude that my professional career reflects such a record.
Any summing up of what I’ve learned and come to believe about improving student success is deeply influenced by what I learned from research findings during each stretch of my professional journey. As I moved to new and different research interests, my thinking regarding earlier research was never fully erased. Traces of each stage of my professional journey can be seen in each successive step along the way. (Palimpsest!)
I mention this because I believe there is a tendency, particularly in the social sciences, to dismiss any research findings viewed as dated. More than one editor, I’m sure, has encouraged writers to avoid older research and emphasize more current findings. But I’ve found that research findings, like life’s experiences and personal discoveries, are usually built on earlier foundations. All legitimate research, even that which becomes overwritten later, fuels the drive to move forward and keep searching for new and better answers. I’m sure Stephen Hawking did not dismiss Einstein, nor did Einstein dismiss Newton. I make no apologies for referencing research that might seem dated to some but formed the basis for those things I was learning as I moved forward.
A word is also in order about what this book is not. Although the concepts and practices that I have come to value are research based, this book is not intended to be a synthesis or meta-analysis of research findings regarding effective teaching, effective schools, or organizational development. As a professor for over four decades, I have certainly valued research and have learned a great deal from it. That said, what follows is grounded in my experiences—the result of my attempts at using research findings to improve student learning.
Last, I want to recognize up front that I do not claim these ideas as my own. Obviously, my thinking has been influenced greatly by several people, and many are included in this summing up. And as I pointed out earlier, it is impossible to separate my ideas from those of Rick DuFour. During our decades of working and writing together, it was a rare week when we did not communicate by phone, text, or email. (At times, I felt we communicated simply by thinking about the same things, usually in the same way!) We viewed the world of education through the same lens. Many of our ideas about teaching and learning, school improvement, and ultimately the PLC at Work process were serendipitous.
The Professional Learning Communities at Work Movement
The ideas that form the framework for the PLC at Work concept and practices were not the result of a sudden flash of insight. In many ways, the PLC at Work process was an umbrella under which best practices that were found in highly successful organizations, both within and outside the arena of public education, were connected—especially proven strategies that had a positive impact on learning, school and district improvement, organizational culture, and leadership. Rick and I viewed our thinking as more than a synthesis of what works. The PLC at Work process was also the result of our personal and professional relationships with others.
The Birth of a Friendship
Each summer, Jerry Bellon—who in the late 1960s served as chair of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville (and my major professor for my doctoral studies)—led a leadership conference for educators from across the United States. Most participants were from the suburban areas of Chicago or Long Island since Jerry was consulting with many school districts in those areas.
In 1979, I was making a presentation at one of Jerry’s leadership conferences and in the audience was a young principal from Chicago—Rick DuFour. After my session, Rick introduced himself to me, and we agreed to have dinner together. I have often thought about how different my life would have been had Rick decided he was simply too busy to spend three days in Knoxville that summer. Both of our lives were changed by Rick’s decision to attend that conference.
The topic of my presentation that day was linking the clinical supervision model that Jerry Bellon had helped pioneer with the emerging findings from the research on effective teaching being undertaken primarily at Michigan State University and the University of Texas. As improbable as it might seem today, in the late 1970s, research on the topic of specific teacher behaviors that impact student learning and behavior was relatively new. Rick immediately saw the importance of this research and asked me if I would present these early findings to his faculty at West Chicago High School.
I can’t recall the exact date I visited West Chicago, but I do remember that it was a cold and rainy Friday afternoon. Rick had offered to take me to dinner in Chicago that evening, but after my presentation to the faculty, Rick told me he needed to speak to a faculty member and it would be a few minutes before we could leave for dinner. As I stood in the hall waiting, I noticed he was talking to this faculty member rather intensely. After a few minutes, Rick joined me. Since the conversation was rather intense, and the faculty member didn’t seem happy about it, out of curiosity, I asked, “What was that about?” His response, I later came to learn, was pure Rick DuFour. He said that he had noticed that the faculty member was sitting in the back of the room during my presentation glancing through a magazine. Rick simply told the faculty member, clearly and directly, that at West Chicago High School this was unacceptable—not the way things were done—and it must not happen again.
I distinctly remember thinking that in my experience, most principals overlooked such behavior. After all, the presentation was well received, and most faculty were very professional in their behavior. In the car driving into Chicago for dinner, I asked Rick why he made a big deal out of one teacher slacking off. “What’s important isn’t what that one specific teacher was doing,” he said, “or what I said to that specific teacher. What’s important is what that teacher will say to others.”
Obviously, the teacher was not happy that Rick had confronted his behavior, and he would voice his displeasure to others often and loudly. This was just what Rick wanted. He wanted the word to spread: “Hey, Rick is a serious guy, and he pays attention. He is not willing to turn his head and let things go.” That theme of “monitoring and paying attention to what we collectively have said we value” would recur in our writing and presentations for almost four decades.
At that point in my career, I was beginning my professorship at Middle Tennessee State University and was heavily engaged in consulting with school districts, primarily through my work with Jerry Bellon and increasingly with Larry Lezotte, a pioneer in the effective schools research movement. As our friendship grew deeper, I also began to partner with Rick to assist schools and districts in their efforts to improve student learning.
Rick moved from West Chicago High School to become the principal at Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois. It doesn’t do justice to simply say that Rick was an innovator. He led Stevenson from being viewed as an average school at best to the high school that the U.S. Department of Education would later describe as the most celebrated and recognized high school in the United States. And, as Rick’s reputation at Stevenson grew and my involvement with Larry Lezotte and effective schools research increased my national profile, Rick and I were increasingly asked to present in various districts or at state or national meetings—especially at summer leadership institutes hosted by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) and summer leadership conferences sponsored by the Tennessee Department of Education.
Rick suggested we begin to coauthor articles. The resulting effort led us to being asked to write our first book, Fulfilling the Promise of Excellence (DuFour & Eaker, 1987), which we followed up with Creating the New American School (DuFour & Eaker, 1992).
Both books gave increased impetus to our work with schools and school districts. Meanwhile, Rick was embedding