A Summing Up. Robert Eaker

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 truly innovative initiatives at Stevenson High School. Additionally, he was becoming heavily involved with educational organizations such as the National Staff Development Council (what is now Learning Forward) and ASCD. I continued my work with districts on implementing findings from the effective schools research. Both Rick and I were asked to be fellows with the National Center for Effective Schools Research and Development, an organization founded by Larry Lezotte. This increased exposure culminated in our decision to write Professional Learning Communities at Work, published in 1998—a turning point in our careers.

      Another turning point was soon to follow. In 2002, Rick married Becky Burnette. Obviously, marrying Becky changed Rick’s personal life significantly, but it also had an important, and positive, impact on our work with the PLC at Work process. Both Rick and I had experience at the high school level, and I was working in higher education. What was missing in our experience base was a strong elementary school perspective. Enter Becky. Becky had served in roles ranging from elementary teacher to central office staff, but when she married Rick, her most recent experience was as principal of Boones Mill Elementary School in Franklin County, Virginia, where she had successfully implemented PLC at Work concepts and practices.

      Becky completed the team. In addition to being a highly successful practitioner, she proved to be a solid thinker, presenter, and writer. Following the marriage of Rick and Becky, further refining and promoting the PLC at Work concept became the work of the three of us.

       Who Is That Guy?

      It’s safe to say that without Jeff Jones, there would just be a warehouse full of PLC at Work books somewhere in Bloomington, Indiana. Jeff Jones and his partner, D. G. Elmore, purchased National Educational Service (NES) in 1998. The company name was changed to Solution Tree in 2005. While Rick and I developed the basic conceptual framework for embedding PLC at Work concepts and practices in school districts, schools, and teams, Jeff Jones provided the business acumen, marketing skills, and vision that moved the PLC at Work ideas off the page and into schools and districts all over the United States and, eventually, around the globe. Jeff and his wonderful wife, Margaret, took the financial risks involved in purchasing and growing a company to support that work. The PLC at Work movement was a collaborative team effort involving Rick, myself, Becky, and Jeff. Importantly, in addition to our professional teamwork, we developed a very close personal friendship with Jeff and Margaret.

      Just as the beginning of my friendship with Rick was serendipitous, so was our association with Jeff. The second book Rick and I wrote was Creating the New American School (DuFour & Eaker, 1992). It had been published by NES in Bloomington, Indiana. With the success of the book, coupled with the increasing work that Rick and I were doing with school districts, ASCD, and the Tennessee Department of Education, NES began to plan for a few small events, we labeled institutes, during which educators could spend two or three days gaining our insights on how schools could improve student achievement.

      The impetus for these institutes was twofold. First, Rick and I had conducted a couple of small, relatively successful workshops for educators in the western suburbs of Chicago. Second, Rick’s reputation as a principal was gaining momentum, and my reputation gained increased national exposure as a result of an interview that had appeared in the Phi Delta Kappan (Duckett, 1986).

      In 1998, NES planned an institute to be held at Mont-Tremblant, a resort area near Montreal. Rick and I planned the agenda, while the associated activities and logistics were handled by NES. When Rick and I arrived at Mont-Tremblant the evening before the institute was to begin, we were casually informed that the company had been sold to a person named Jeff Jones and his business partner but that the people and the day-to-day operations would be unaffected. In a very brief visit, we were introduced to Jeff. And just like that, the handoff was complete.

      Rick and I were somewhat taken aback by the change in ownership. In the movie classic Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Foreman & Hill, 1969), as the Pinkerton agents relentlessly chase Butch and Sundance, Butch keeps observing the pursuit and rhetorically asking, “Who are those guys?” Watching Jeff at the Mont-Tremblant institute, Rick and I joked that we were just like Butch. We kept asking each other, “Who is that guy?” Little did we know, that guy would change our lives—and our families’ lives—in ways that would be both positive and dramatic.

      Shortly after Jeff purchased NES, our book Professional Learning Communities at Work: Best Practices for Enhancing Student Achievement (1998) was published. When writing the book, Rick and I wanted to accomplish a number of things that we thought were unique. First, as we represented two different professional worlds—Rick offered a practitioner’s perspective, while I brought higher education’s insights and research focus—we believed we could create a research-based, effective approach to improving student learning that preK–12 practitioners would find СКАЧАТЬ