EdFix Episode 25: Leading through Crisis - A Firsthand Account from a School Superintendent

TRANSCRIPT

JENNIFER CLAYTON:
How long do we wait for the adults to be able to respond to this situation the kids are living every day?

MICHAEL J. FEUER:
Welcome to EdFix, your source for insights about the promise and practice of education. I'm Michael Feuer, your host. I'm the Dean of the Graduate School of Education and Human Development here at the George Washington University. My guests are Dr. Jennifer Clayton, Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Administration here at GW, who focuses in her research on leadership development, professional learning for school administrators. In her spare time, Jennifer also heads the Leadership with Equity Institute and recently served as actually the chair of our department. So it's a great pleasure to have a chance to talk with Jennifer. Dr. Jared Cotton is the Superintendent of Schools in Chesapeake, Virginia. Started his career as a fifth grade teacher. Jared's career has taken him through a number of positions, including an instructional technology as a summer school coordinator, assistant principal, principal, director of assessment and accountability, and previously was the superintendent in the Henry County Public Schools also in Virginia. And just in 2019, Jared was named the Virginia State Superintendent of the Year.

MICHAEL J. FEUER:
And as the proud holder of two degrees from GW, I can't tell you how proud we are here, to be able to share in that celebration of your success. So let's get right into it. But you're a superintendent and you, like the rest of us, have been watching the news. So a horrible incident such as the shooting that took place in Michigan. And I just wonder if you'd give us any kind of a quick reaction to what we heard happened in a school in the suburb of Detroit, and what it must mean for a working superintendent to be able to imagine yourself in that situation.

JARRED COTTON:
Sure. And thank you for being here. As you mentioned, I'm proud to be an alumni of the George Washington University. So I'm happy to speak with you here today. Yes. Anytime we have incidents like that, as a superintendent, as an educational leader, we constantly step back and put ourselves in that role. And our hearts go out to the community, the schools, and the leaders, the parents, and the students, because no child should have to endure those kinds of circumstances and not feeling safe in school. We've spent a lot of time here in Chesapeake, doing everything we can to keep our students safe. Our city actually supported us with $2 million a couple years ago to help ramp up security and safety in our schools. But even bigger than that, it's the social, emotional concerns that we have for our students right now. Safety was a concern even prior to the pandemic, but even more so now. What we're finding is so many of our students have been home for so long and they've been disconnected and now they're all back together again.

JARRED COTTON:
And we all knew that it would be challenging when all of our students came back together. We needed to focus on student mental health and adult mental health as well. And of course, when you see scary situations like this, it just is another reminder that we have to do more. We have to do more to give our students the support they need. Our families, the support they need, so that all of our students will feel safe in school and be protected. And we need our students to help us as well, because one of the things that I've learned over the years, is the best way to keep children safe is if students- We have a campaign here where if you see something say something. And I know you all have heard that, but our students are the best source of information for safety concerns. So we always encourage our students to help us keep them safe.

MICHAEL J. FEUER:
It reminds us that there is an aspect of educational leadership that has to do with crisis management. In the curriculum and in the program that we have and others have to prepare future educational leaders, superintendents, and others, where does crisis management fit in? And in particular, are we now rethinking the significance of crisis management, not because of the horrible shootings that we have experienced only, but also because of what the pandemic has wrought for our communities?

JENNIFER CLAYTON:
So I think it's an important question. And I think I come at that from two different angles. One is, in a very tangible way we do have a course that looks at school community and communication. We ask students in that course to think about crisis response plans and what that looks like. They engage in developing one and try to think about how they would manage the unexpected. And so there are some tangible things we can do with students, but I think one of the things that we really try to focus on is reminding our students that no matter how much we might want to, I can't possibly give them a handbook that's going to tell them what to do in every possible circumstance that could arise over their career as an educational leader. What I can do is help them know themselves as leaders, have a vision for what they prioritize as leaders, and then how to use that as a north star in those moments of crisis.

JENNIFER CLAYTON:
And whether it is during a situation like what occurred in Michigan, whether it's related to COVID, helping students know how to build trust, how to build relationships within their community, how to communicate transparently and how to foster resilience, are going to be the things that come up really regardless and across situations. And so in our program, I think across all of our courses, we try to help students think through that so that when they do find themselves in these situations, some of which are incredibly challenging and some of which are incredibly celebratory at times, that they can return to that as a guiding principle.

MICHAEL J. FEUER:
Yeah. It's very interesting. It sounds to me like one of the, I guess skills, if you want to call it that, that we try to impart the future or working school administrators is to create a capacity for adaptability and resilience and actually pretty quick thinking. That takes me to the question about reactions to the COVID crisis. The sudden need to consider this migration to online instruction, all of the sensitivities and the issues. But Jared, in your case in particular, you were one of the few superintendents who decided to keep the schools open in your district. Here's a very special crisis and you adapted in a particular way. And I just would love to hear a little bit more about how you went about the thought process that led to that.

JARRED COTTON:
Yes, I appreciate what Jennifer was saying about every crisis situation is different and you'll never have a step-by-step playbook. So obviously when it hit, the fear, the questions came in. We quickly looked at what we were going to do. we looked at what other people were doing. And then I found myself constantly second guessing and rethinking plans to move forward, because the number one thing that we do as you mentioned earlier in that earlier discussion, is safety of our students and staff. So the first was close everything down, send everybody home, which of course all of us did. But then I had to figure out how was I going to serve the students and our community, which is our number one job. That's the most important job that we have. And what I found was all the noise was coming at me. All of the voices they were saying, keep the schools closed.

JARRED COTTON:
And other voices said open the schools. And then there was so much noise. And where I had defined myself grounded, because with most crises, what you find, it's temporary in nature. This is not. Everybody keeps saying, "COVID's a season." This is a season that never ends, it seems lately. So it's this ongoing long term problem that requires lots of resilience and lots of decision making throughout the process. But number one thing that I found changed everything for me, is I remembered my purpose. I went back to my why. My vision and mission. Why am I in this role? Why do I feel I'm here? And my reason for being here is to meet the needs of the students who are in my care and of course, staff as well. And once I did at it helped my decision-making tremendously because then we all decided with my leadership team, we need our students in school as much as possible to make sure that they are learning, especially our youngest learners.

JARRED COTTON:
So as you noted, we were one of the only school divisions that had our elementary students in school for five days a week. They were in school five days a week starting in September for the entire school year. And we felt like that was a priority. So we made sure we made it happen. And then of course, we brought back our middle school and secondary students because getting back to our core purpose. And that's why I was so important. And then of course the whole time we had people telling us you need to send everybody home, you need to close schools, you're being irresponsible. But the other thing that happened was we partnered very closely with our local health department. And our health department supported us and our decision making all along the way. We actually used data from each of our schools to drive our decision making. Rather than reacting emotionally, we were using the data to help us make sound decisions. So that's how we've navigated and we've continued to do that throughout this process.

MICHAEL J. FEUER:
Will the COVID experience and all the managerial and other administrative and leadership decisions that people had to confront, somehow find their way into the curriculum, whether with, for example, the kind of analysis that Jared just said that he essentially conducted in order to reach the decision; is that becoming now something that in your community of prepare eras of leaders, something that is coming up now in the way we think of the curriculum?

JENNIFER CLAYTON:
So I think it is. I think it gives us a lever through which we can examine lessons we hoped people would already walk away with. So if we already wanted school leaders to recognize the benefit of data, and not a single source of data but multiple forms of data to make decisions, we continue to highlight that as a principal. But certainly this gives us a lever that is a universally shared experience that our students can then lean on and then examine it through that. Jared hit on something I think really important, which is it also reaffirms the notion that we need to develop leaders who are critically self-reflective, and who think about the decisions that they're making. I guess I would say I would be suspicious of someone who thinks that this was an easy decision.

JENNIFER CLAYTON:
I think most superintendents and school leaders would say that this was wrought with a challenge and that there was no easy answer. And part of that comes from the fact that these leaders are critically self-reflective. So they are weighing all of these different options. So I think we'll continue to do that in our curriculum. One thing that we are thinking about a little differently, because we hear the discussion in 12 communities around virtual schooling being a benefit to some students and probably not going anywhere, or at least leveraging the best parts of it on the other side of this, so we are thinking about how we prepare leaders who are equipped to lead in these multiple school modalities. What it means to give teachers feedback, for instance, on instruction in a virtual setting, and how that might be different and unique from what it looks like in a more traditional classroom setting. So certainly it's causing us to say, what is new and what's here to stay and what can we update?

MICHAEL J. FEUER:
In your case, Jared, you quickly ascertained that a tight partnership with the health community in your area was going to be absolutely significant. And I assume by that you mean both in terms of actually watching out for children's health and staff health, but also in terms of making your decision politically more acceptable. And if you want to share with us a little bit about the politics surrounding the decision, you don't have to name names and all of that. I want to get to the point of checking my assumption that a lot of educational decisions are in some way, part of a broader political environment. And you can tell me if I'm wrong.

JARRED COTTON:
You're exactly correct. This has been very political throughout this process. We started with entering the pandemic a certain way, but then it has developed to where now there's really two distinct groups. There may be more, but there's a camp that feels that students should be in school without masks and without any precautions, and another group that feels that students should be at home, learning virtually. And then you have some folks somewhere in the middle. But during this whole period of time, I've come to learn that every decision I make, at least 50% of the people are upset with it. And then I've talked to my superintendent colleagues and they said, "If you get 50% to agree with you, you're doing pretty good these days." So what you really have to do as you navigate through that is, again, back to your core purpose and your mission. What is my purpose I want to serve students? I have a two word mission statement for myself. It's "Inspire hope," and I feel strongly that that's my job.

JARRED COTTON:
And so I continued to reconnect with that and I knew that I couldn't do it alone. I knew that I needed the help of the health community. We formed a great partnership with our director of the Chesapeake Health Department, but we also put together a school health advisory committee of healthcare practitioners in our community who meet regularly and look at our decisions and give us recommendations and give us advice. And probably one of the best things that I've done internally, is I created a cross-functional COVID team, where I have leaders from all areas of the school division, where we were meeting weekly. Now we're meeting every other week, but just making sure that everyone's involved in making informed decisions based on data. And then of course, that led to us looking at individual schools and monitoring data for individual schools and making decisions about closure of individual schools rather than closing the entire school district. And the good news is, last year, I didn't have to close any schools at all. We were able to navigate through.

JARRED COTTON:
And of course, as we're moving through this year, knock on wood, I haven't had to move any schools to virtual yet either. We've had some in-school transmission, but it's been very limited and we have not had to move any schools to virtual. So obviously a lot of the strategies that we're putting in place are working, but we are constantly getting speakers at school board meetings, no matter what decision I make or what decision the school board makes, they have a different opinion. And I would say that we've had more speakers at our school board meetings than I've ever had at any school board meeting in the past. I think our record this season is probably we had about 75 or so at one of our meetings, but lots of opinions and lots of people coming out and sharing opinions. And then of course, you've got to weigh those different opinions and make sound decisions. And you have to come to the realization that you're not going to get a 100% agreement, ever on any decision, but particularly during this season.

MICHAEL J. FEUER:
The pandemic coincided with what we're now calling is reawakening of another pandemic in this country, which has actually existed for a longer time. And that has to do with all of the inequality and the racial injustice that pervades much of our society, even though there's been a lot of progress. I'm wondering, to what extent this crisis management conflict resolution, political awareness that a superintendent needs, is sufficient to cope with the tensions that we're now visualizing regarding curricular reform, the agenda for various social change that seem to be people are saying, "Well, the schools have to solve all this?" What do you make of that?

JENNIFER CLAYTON:
Right. I wish I had the answer to that. But I do think there are some things that we try to do in our efforts with our students and then also the great work that's happening among a number of school divisions, including Chesapeake, to help leaders think about these issues. I think in some ways COVID did perhaps what NCLB did so many years ago, which was it shined a spotlight. It reemphasized a spotlight on some things that people can perhaps go through their daily lives, not realizing in the experience of their students. So if our teachers are coming from a particular perspective and they haven't encountered some of the challenges of the students that they teach, this experience sometimes is a real awakening for them. And I heard one principal in a study, that we did say that COVID was an opportunity for teachers to cash in on relationships they had our already built.

JENNIFER CLAYTON:
So when they had to be virtual with students, the teachers who had relationships, where they knew their students well, were able to cross that virtual chiasm in ways that teachers who were not as skilled in that relationship building or didn't take the time perhaps to build those relationships, were lacking. And so then that chasm became even wider. So I think there was a lot of learning that happened in that regard. I think one of the things we try to do with leaders, aspiring and current, is help them think about how to move the needle of a school and recognizing that pushing everyone's growing edge where they are and hoping that you're bringing everyone along in the process.

JENNIFER CLAYTON:
And I hear principals talk about this tension they feel between wanting to differentiate their supportive teachers to try to get them to understand issues around equity, culturally responsive pedagogy, how to know their students well, how to connect with their students, trying to think about where is this teacher and what will it take to move this teacher's practice? While also feeling the pressure and urgency around serving school students that are currently sitting in those classrooms. So that question around how long do we wait for the adults to be able to respond to this situation the kids are living every day? And I think that's a struggle for principals and superintendents and all school leaders every day. So we try to walk through that. I think the leadership of our Equity Institute, which we have been really excited to lead, participants will say that being part of that group with principals across school districts in different contexts emboldens them to take on those tougher conversations.

JENNIFER CLAYTON:
So perhaps they always knew they should, but didn't necessarily go there until they experienced hearing what other principals were doing, and knowing that they were part of a group of people trying to move that practice toward a greater sense of equity. But no question that one of the things that has made this work difficult, is the increasing temperature of the discussions. So when groups, for instance, at a school board, if we could actually get folks to sit around the table and realize they actually all have the same goal, which is serving children, and if we could lower the temperature, it's probably amazing the progress we could get done. I think that's what principals try to do in a way with their teachers in a little bit more of a sheltered environment because they have their school. And so they're lowering that temperature to try to be able to move the practice.

MICHAEL J. FEUER:
Let me pivot and ask you, I know we said earlier, Jared, that you taught fifth grade, but I would be curious if you'd share with us a little bit about what got you into this line of work and your own background; just a little bit about yourself.

JARRED COTTON:
Sure. Happy to share. We call it our origin story, right? Our education, when we received the bug to be an educator. And I will tell you that when I started college right after high school, there were a lot of things that I wanted to do, and one in particular, I wanted to be a pharmacist. And I was working as a pharmacy tech at the time and I was planning to go to pharmacy school, but then circumstances changed a little bit and I ended up getting a job at a treatment center for kids in Portsmouth, Virginia, and the students actually lived there at the treatment center. It was a residential facility. And I was hired on as a lifeguard. They had just put a pool out there. And then I was their first lifeguard that they hired. So that was fun. And then the summer ended and they asked me to stay on as a counselor to work with the students. And at the time I don't think they realized I was 19.

JARRED COTTON:
So some of the students, the children that I worked with, were almost as old as me. But in particular, I worked with 13 or 14 year old boys. And during the day they had to go to class and they had school, of course, and the students would get in constant trouble during class. And they would have to be removed from the setting. They'd have to be put in time-out or they'd have to go somewhere else when I would help support in the classroom. And then the teacher was out for a couple of weeks and asked if I could be the substitute teacher. And I said, "Are you kidding?" Because I had just spent some time in there watching all the drama and behavior issues that were going on. But even then I was sitting there thinking, "I know what the problem is. This class is incredibly boring. So I would be acting out if I was in this class."

JARRED COTTON:
So when the teacher left, who will remain nameless, for a couple weeks, I said, "Okay, I'll give it a try." And I said, "I'm going to flip the script. We are not going to sit here and do a bunch of worksheets. We're going to go outside. We're going to do hands on learning. We're going to do experiments. We're going to do activities. I'm going to get the students engaged. We're going to work on projects." And I had a two week period of time where I had no behavior issues, and no one could understand what happened. Students acted completely differently than they did during a regular week. And I said, "Well, daggone, I'm pretty good at this." Not only did I get the students hooked on learning, but they actually enjoyed the week and they wanted me to be their full-time teacher. And I thought, "If I can turn that group of students around and get them excited about learning, then I'd be pretty good in the classroom."

JARRED COTTON:
So I remember going to my college counselor as I was transitioning to Old Dominion University for my bachelor's and I met with the counselor about becoming a teacher. And that's when I got the bug to be an educator. And I haven't looked back since. But of course, I will tell you this; when I told my family I wanted to be a teacher, they all told me I'm going to be poor. And they were concerned about me making that choice. And I said, "I'm going to be poor, but I'm going to be happy." And I have no regrets. So I think that's just a neat way that got me into education. And I think when I talk to other educators, they have similar experiences and stories as well.

MICHAEL J. FEUER:
And Jennifer, you also came into this line of work through a trajectory. Tell us a little bit about it.

JENNIFER CLAYTON:
Sure. So I always think about my career as almost having two halves, because the first half was all spent in K12. And like Jared, I think I got the bug from my 11th grade history teacher. And I think when you have a teacher who knows how to bring a subject matter to life that makes you want to be in class, and I probably was a pretty motivated, good student, but I remember thinking I just wanted to learn even more. I ended up actually as a history major probably largely because of that person, and then was really excited to be in the K12 world. I had some young children and decided it was a really good time to go back and get a doctoral degree with every intention of returning to K12. And I had a department chair who called me into his office and said, "We really want you to be this graduate research assistant." And I said, "Oh, thanks. No thanks." And then he called me again. He said, "We'd really like you to be this research assistant on this project."

JENNIFER CLAYTON:
And I said, "Oh, that's so kind. No thanks." And at the fourth time that he called me back, I said, "All right, I'll do it." And so I think that for me, was such a reminder that what we sometimes don't see in ourselves, others see in us first. I appreciate that he was persistent and I realized that it turned out I really loved research. And I'm sure people who know me, my family maybe in particular, would note that I like to ask a lot of questions. So it turned out that this was a very good fit. And so I came into the academy through that route. I will say, as someone who I think is 100% here because of the mentors I experienced, a lot of those happened through the professors that I had in my program who showed me the ropes about research and publication and things that as someone coming out of the K12 world, I literally knew nothing about out.

JENNIFER CLAYTON:
But I also think that one of the reasons I'm grateful for having had the experience in K12 is that it helps me and reminds me to maintain humility with my students. I have not been employed by a K12 school district since 2003. So even though I spent time in K12, I am not walking that walk every day. So as someone who prepares educational leaders, it is a priority for me to keep my research, my practice, my service grounded in K12 environments, so that I can at least have the awareness of what folks are dealing with every day, what they're experiencing. It's why things like being involved in the leadership for Equity Institute, where I get to talk to principals all the time. It's why when our alumni call and say, "Can you be my leadership coach for 20 minutes? I need to talk to someone outside of my contacts," they take those calls every time, because selfishly it keeps me grounded in what they're experiencing. So it's exciting work. I feel lucky to do what I do every day.

MICHAEL J. FEUER:
I feel very lucky that you're my colleague. And I feel very lucky that I've gotten to know Jared, at least a little bit more. And I look forward to many more opportunities. And I want to thank you both for a truly inspiring and energizing conversation. Thank you for being with me on EdFix, which people can listen to on Apple podcast, Spotify, iHeartRADIO, Player, FM, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Ms. Touran Waters is a masterful choreographer of all of this and we thank her. For more information about this podcast and our guests and other episodes, you are welcome to see our website at EdFixpodcast.com. And with that, we will close it out with a big thank you to our guests, Jared Cotton and Jennifer Clayton- Go forward and do great things.

JARRED COTTON:
Thank you.

JENNIFER CLAYTON:
Thank you so much. Great to talk with you.

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