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A Lesson on Teaching and Learning Marcus Foster Leadership Claims Foster consistently articulated a theory-based vision of deeply-engaging, culturally-responsive,

, and intellectually-challenging instruction and adult professional learning. His theory was that all students deserved high-level curriculum and instruction from caring educators. He did not believe schools were the answer to poverty and social issues, but he did believe they played a key role. While we dont have evidence that Foster selected and used an instruction framework to grow teaching and learning, he did engage staff in constructing some of their own tools and vision to guide the work. Intellectually Challenging Instruction Evidence: Foster stated in his dissertation, More than anything else, disciplinary schools needed a strong principal and a highly skilled teaching staff. Evidence: Foster believed in raising expectations for all students, Everyone knows that if teachers go into a school expecting youngsters to act like hoodlums and do sloppy work or no work at all, they will begin to produce just that behavior (Spencer, 113) Evidence: Foster believed that students work behave and enjoy school if they were actually being taught. (Spencer, 114) Evidence: Foster wanted to create a Fully respectable academic program students needed academic skills. (Spencer, 120) Adult learning: Evidence: Foster joked that he could not change teacher attitudes and expectation simply by printing memos and telling everybody to please be loving and please have high expectations so he instituted weekly staff meetings (twice the normal frequency) to talk it out. (Spencer, 114) Evidence: One staff member said, He wasnt always bossy. He would ask, What do you think? He was always open to suggestions. (Spencer, 115) Evidence: At his staff meetings he demanded input and participation. Staff had to face and discover problems themselves with minimum help from me (Spencer, 114) Engaging relevant players collaboratively and draw from school-based and community expertise and resources in instructional improvement work was a strength of Fosters. Many of the ways he engaged the community involved factors outside of instruction but he saw them as connected. He engaged his staff deeply in the work and especially around their beliefs and expectations and how those informed what they did with students. Evidence: Foster continued to emphasize the importance of factors beyond the school itself, including the social and cultural backgrounds of the students and the need for additional support from the community and larger society. Yet in contrast to the increasingly headed debate beyond the school, Foster did not pit the school against the community, or educators against students and families. As a school leader, he carefully pushed all parties teachers, students, parents, building staff, nearby residents and merchants to change their fundamental beliefs about the school and each other, and to contribute to reversing a cycle of low expectations for families. (Spencer 96) Evidence: Foster joked that he could not change teacher attitudes and expectation simply by printing memos and telling everybody to please be loving and please have high expectations so he instituted weekly staff meetings (twice the normal frequency) to talk it out. (Spencer, 114) Evidence: One staff member said, He wasnt always bossy. He would ask, What do you think? He was always open to suggestions. (Spencer, 115) Evidence: At his staff meetings he demanded input and participation. Foster believed staff had to face and discover problems themselves with minimum help from me. (Spencer, 114)

Fashion and enact systems to support and sustain instructional leadership, inside and outside of schools. Foster was frequently engaging outside support (families, community members, organizations) in the work of educating children, wasnt about supporting instructional leadership as much as ensuring that kids had what they needed, important connections from school to work were made, and families saw their role in their childrens education. Within the school he supported distributed leadership, instituted weekly staff meetings, engaged staff in conversations to build capacity of his teachers. Evidence: Foster continued to emphasize the importance of factors beyond the school itself, including the social and cultural backgrounds of the students and the need for additional support from the community and larger society. Yet in contrast to the increasingly headed debate beyond the school, Foster did not pit the school against the community, or educators against students and families. As a school leader, he carefully pushed all parties teachers, students, parents, building staff, nearby residents and merchants to change their fundamental beliefs about the school and each other, and to contribute to reversing a cycle of low expectations for families. (Spencer, 96)

Fosters work was all about crafting instructional visions, practices, and supports appropriately for meeting specialized learning needs of students in his community and of EACH child as an individual. Evidence: Foster asserted, You dont have to have middle class values but you have to have middle class skills and, we have to recognize that slicing the pie in equal portions, when the needs are unequal, is an injustice. (Spencer, 158) Evidence: Urban schools and educators needed to stop making excused and take more responsibility for the performance of their students. The students learned more at Catto, benefiting from teachers who saw them sympathetically and curriculum that offered better academic as well as vocational training. (Spencer, 132) Evidence: Foster added a reading intervention program recognizing that every student that deals with pre-delinquent children shows that severe reading retardation is central to their failure in school (Spencer, 120) Evidence: Foster released teachers for training in language immersion strategies used at younger grades. He believed instruction needed to start where students were. (Spencer, 120)

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