Building Momentum for Sustainable Changes in Education: Toronto District School Board

Sue Derby, Maureen McKenna, Karen Leckie, and Nancy Nightingale

Focus of the Appreciative Inquiry

Imagine Student Success: building momentum for sustainable changes in education

Client

The Toronto District School Board is the fourth^-largest school board in North America, with over 550 schools, 270,000 students, and 16,000 teachers. More than eighty languages are spoken in this educational system.

Sue Rowan, then system superintendent of leadership and development for TDSB was eager to explore the idea of “beginning to shift the conversation” in the system using Appreciative Inquiry. She just needed a place to start sowing the seeds of change. The catalyst for moving forward was a mandate from the Province of Ontario Ministry of Education to each school board to identify strategies focused on student success—success that would prepare students not only for college and university, but also for apprenticeships and the workplace.

Client Objectives

In the spring of 2004 Sue and Maureen began their involvement with what became a watershed initiative known as Imagine Student Success with a simple “conversation for possibility” with Sue Rowan. By September that year, after careful planning with a small core team, Imagine Student Success was born. TDSB embarked on this exciting project with the specific intent to:

• Identify student success from a student perspective;
• Broaden understanding of what constitutes student success; and
• Support the Student Success Advisory Committee in its overall development of a TDSB vision.

“Imagine being part of a secondary school where every student feels successful; where positive student-teacher relationships flourish; where flexible timetables respond to the many and varied needs of our students; where students and trustees enjoy an ongoing dialogue on the things that matter to them most; where teachers consistently create the learning environments in which students are successful; and the student voice is built into everything we do. This is the dream of Imagine Student Success.”

Melanie Parrack, Executive System Superintendent, Student Success, Toronto District School Board

What Was Done

After a successful pilot with seven schools, groups of students in grades 7, 8, 9, and 10, representing 115 schools, were trained as “appreciative interviewers.” They worked with their Imagine Student Success teacher/coach to conduct interviews with a selection of other students, parents, school staff, and members of the working community on what success meant to them. The foundational question of the interview was “Tell me a story about a time when you felt successful.” Over 2,400 interviews were documented with at least two-thirds of those being interviews with students. Each school interview team “made meaning” of their interviews and came up with a set of common themes. iCohere supported the capture and reporting of stories and themes.

Imagine Student Success phase one was complete when close to one thousand students, teachers, and guests from both the system and the community participated in an Appreciative Inquiry Summit in May 2005. Student participants further refined their definitions of success by interviewing each other and creating images of their desired future for education in TDSB. The Province of Ontario Minister of Education was on hand to hear their hopes and dreams. It was truly an energizing and meaningful day for everyone involved. Within three weeks of the summit, a small group of students were invited to present specific recommendations to the board and to the Ministry about how education can change to ensure student success.

Outcomes

The board took the student recommendations very seriously and from them crafted five “student success mandates.” They also endorsed an advisory group composed of students, teachers, principals, staff, and trustees and appointed a full-time TDSB staff member to lead the initiative. Throughout 2006 five Imagine Student Success committees focused on moving forward on their assigned mandate:

• Student advisory process to trustees and co-curricular activities
• Positive teacher-student relationships
• Pilot programs around flexible timetables
• Professional development for teachers
• Student voice/student surveys

The expansive scope of this initiative propelled the need to build internal capacity around the use of Appreciative Inquiry. As a result the board engaged the authors to conduct customized AI foundations workshops for some staff groups and teachers, assist in developing communication strategies, and conduct think tanks on topics that will ultimately contribute to student success. Having witnessed the possibilities that Appreciative Inquiry presented, a number of managers and educators in TDSB embraced the opportunities to learn more and apply the approach in their various constituencies in the years that followed.

In the short term the impact of Imagine Student Success and AI was felt in several ways:

• Staff, students, and the community could now envision new possibilities for student success.
• Strong positive interpersonal relationships increased through shared imagination.
• Stakeholders began to view challenges as exciting, creative opportunities rather than problems.
• Staff, students, and the community were empowered to explore school improvements with optimism and energy.
• The student voice was taken seriously and has expanded.
• Lives have changed.

Following are some mini-stories that illustrate that impact on the system and on the lives of students.

Karen and Nancy

Karen Leckie, a young teacher who was part of the initial core group, had a dream. That dream was to teach in a school where students would have the freedom and the opportunity to be the best they could be through self-directed learning. In December 2004, after being a pivotal part of the Imagine Student Success pilot, Karen and her principal, Nancy Nightingale, responded to the invitation from the Ministry of Education for proposals on dealing with “Students at Risk.” Their proposal was grounded on four key planks:

• The theme of “freedom and independence” from Karen’s students’ Imagine Student Success interviews;
• Themes from their Imagine A.Y. Jackson parent event;
• Appreciative Inquiry as a foundation for inquiry in the classroom; and
• The Sudbury Valley School Model.

In less than six weeks from proposal submission, Karen and Nancy received funding from the Ministry of Education and began immediately to invite students to participate in a program they called “jPod”—a facilitated, self-directed learning program based on AI and featuring democratic decision making, individual time lines, and a student-run code of care committee. Students receive support in reaching particular learning goals. A central component is a vibrant, diverse community of learners who respect the principles of mutual respect and understanding. Students are guided toward meeting the curriculum expectations for the particular credit they are pursuing. Students in jPod can obtain credits in any course currently existing within the Ontario Ministry of Education documents. Students may also obtain interdisciplinary credits that can be used toward the six credits needed for entrance into post-secondary education. The jPod blossomed from five students to more than one hundred students over its first eighteen months—clearly an example of “change at the speed of imagination”! Karen and Nancy were clearly early adaptors of Appreciative Inquiry within TDSB and became serious students and advocates for the application of AI in the system. They both remain passionate contributors to the worldwide AI community.

Randy

Randy Yeboah was part of the Imagine Student Success initiative and one of the original five jPod students. When Karen and Nancy were invited to showcase jPod as a successful pilot for reaching “at-risk” students, Randy found himself front and centre. He was invited to share his views of this new way of teaching and learning to the Ontario Minister of Education. “Imagine a program that builds on positive relationships: where students, teachers, and administrators are making connections; where teachers have the time to get to know their students on a personal level and develop relationships; where schools function like caring communities,” he said. Before Randy prepared and delivered that speech, he attended our four-day AI Foundations workshop. He still loves to recount how he successfully used “stealth AI” throughout! Randy went on to respond to the increasing needs of the community with some other Toronto youths, starting an online dialogue on how they could help young children to avoid guns and gangs. Randy introduced them to Appreciative Inquiry and as a result of inviting them to dream they formed iDREAM—a not-for-profit organization to mentor youth between the ages of six and ten Randy’s story continues to be a wonderful example of what happens when we see the possibilities in our youth and shine the light on them. He is now in his last year at York University in Toronto, studying public administration.

Saeid

jPod student Saeid Chavoshi designed a grade twelve course called Brain Science and became the first student ever to author his own curriculum within the Ontario curriculum. Being inspired as a result of this achievement, Saeid changed his career path to study cognitive science at Toronto University. In addition to being a full-time student, he operates a not-for-profit organization called www.systemsforchange.ca.

Alex

Living into his talent for video storytelling, Imagine Student Success core team member and jPod student Alex Kolodkin developed and produced several videos to tell the Imagine Student Success and jPod success stories. Alex will tell you that AI changed his life, and our experience of Alex today is that he embodies the principles in everything he does. Alex is currently a thriving media student at Ryerson University in Toronto.

Learnings

• Beginning with a core planning team that included staff, teachers, trustees, and particularly students was key to success;
• Student insight into the use of student-centered language was invaluable to the development of the Imagine Student Success interview protocol and approach;
• Pushing forward with one key champion made a big difference in a short time without the need for top-down endorsement from the board;
• Communication in a huge system like TDSB is a real challenge;
• We helped the client develop and implement a communication framework for sustaining the momentum throughout and beyond the initiative; using the many existing communication channels for different audiences in TDSB made a big difference;
• Building internal capacity for AI in a large organizational system such as TDSB is an absolute priority for sustainability and stimulating the ripple effect beyond the primary initiative;
• Fanning the ripples of interest within the board through coaching early AI adopters resulted in many AI initiatives: large-scale multi-stakeholder think tanks on topics like autism, school revitalization programs, training administrators and the communications department in AI, changes in the classroom and with administration within schools, and student-led transition programs, to mention a few initiatives;
• Going beyond the scope of the initiative and inviting students twice a year to participate in AI foundations public workshops continues to make a huge difference for everyone involved; and
• Building and nurturing relationships with staff, teachers, and students over a period of years will continue to make a positive difference at TDSB.

The following websites provide additional information for the interested reader: