Thomas Welch, principal—and teacher—at East Jessamine High School in Nicholasville, Ky., once asked students in his finite math class to be "consultants" and assess bids from two soft drink companies competing for the school's vending account. After representatives from both companies presented their proposals, students made their recommendations in a report, complete with graphs and charts, that supported their selection.
In assigning the project, Welch remembers commenting to students that they were "not just playing school; this is real life." He later learned that some of his colleagues were "upset" because the comment implied that they were, indeed, "just playing school." Welch's first reaction: "Well, if the shoe fits, maybe you'd better get another shoe."
Fitting many educators—and especially school leaders—with another shoe is something Welch would dearly love to do. He would like educators to directly confront the "school myths we know and love"—that teaching is equal to learning, for example—and discard the instructional practices and organizational structures that stem from those myths.
Different from the Beginning
According to Welch, there is a "truer, more valid" way of organizing schools. Schools, he states, should focus on relationships and principle-centered growth and change.
Welch has not wavered from this vision. For example, when he was first offered the principalship, Welch said he would not take the job "unless all administrators could teach." Welch wanted to set an example and create a school culture that recognized that "everybody is a learner: teachers, administrators, and students." He got his way. At East Jessamine, the principal and two assistant principals teach one block period a day.
When Welch helped design the building that would become East Jessamine High School, he, along with the teachers and other administrators, insisted on a floor plan that would foster curriculum integration. "So, if you walk down the hallway, you'll see a world studies classroom next to the language arts classroom. Across the hall is the math classroom, and the science classroom is in the corner." Such a layout, says Welch, makes it easier for teachers to coordinate their units and plan lessons that help students see the connections between disciplines.
When teachers and administrators gathered to decide which projects would receive district funding, they first established guiding principles that would bring more objectivity to the process. "Everybody knew that if their project didn't get funded, the only reason was because it wasn't as good a match with the guiding principles."
A Dynamic Vortex
Those guiding principles are at the heart of what Welch calls an "organic organization." It's a self-governing system with a structure that defies depiction on a traditional organizational chart. Instead, he explains, picture connected molecules that represent the administrators, teachers, students, and so on.
In this three-dimensional structure, the molecules cannot be placed in a linear hierarchy. A three-dimensional structure provides greater flexibility, Welch continues, and allows people to create a school where administrators teach, where there are teacher leaders instead of department chairs, and where students' needs provide the organizational and instructional focus: the guiding principles.
These are the "attractors" that "pull in the resources"—materials, people, creativity—to enable the school to live its vision, says Welch. "If the idea is strong enough, it will attract to it the things it needs that make it function," and within "this dynamic vortex, growth and change occur along the pattern or ideas that the guiding principles have established."
For example, a guiding principle at East Jessamine states that 9th graders need extra support to be successful. To ensure that more students were successful in meeting math and language arts objectives "we had to let go of 'comfort' practices," such as traditional 60-minute periods, Welch says, and teachers created a schedule that gives all 9th grade students a longer block of time to study those subjects.
Another guiding principle is that a student-centered focus must be at the heart of all decisions, especially with regard to curriculum, Welch explains. Creating interdisciplinary lessons is a curricular initiative that results from that focus. Still, even with a building designed to support that vision, finding connections between subject areas "doesn't always happen as naturally" as one would think, he says. Welch once heard the business teacher observe that the yearbook students were "lousy accountants." Welch looked at the teacher and said, "Bill, right next door you have students doing pretend accounting out of workbooks. Why not let them do the accounting for the yearbook staff?"
Fortunately, says Welch, the organic, molecular organization he's helping to buildat East Jessamine High School is designed to accommodate adjustments, such as creating a curriculum that requires students to perform "real" tasks. "We can't predict exactly what learning will look like in the classroom. We don't know all the variables," Welch states. "But I do know we're on the [chosen] path."