 Hi, folks, so this is John Ross, and I thought we'd go ahead and get started. I realize you may have people joining us as we go along, but this entire webinar is being archived. And we have an hour chart full of great information for you. I would like to give you a little bit of information about the ARC if you're new to the ARC. The Appalachia Regional Comprehensive Center, what we refer to as the ARC, serves state education agencies in four states, Kentucky, Santa Fe, Virginia, and West Virginia. Our key objective is to provide high-quality, relevant, and useful technical assistance that enhances specific FCA capacities to undertake state education reform successfully. We also help to support district and school implementation of reforms and maintain effectiveness once our services are complete. So in essence, we're trying to work ourselves out of a job. This webinar is offered as part of that service. Just very quickly, I'd like to share some information about today's presenters. We have three main presenters today. The first is Dr. Sharon Harsh. She specializes in designing, implementing, and sustaining change, customizing and delivering capacity-building technical assistance, and incorporating the cognitive elements of learning into the instructional process. She served in most educational positions from classroom teacher to assistant superintendent of one of the most consistently high-performing school districts in West Virginia. Currently, she serves as an education fellow and director of the ARC for ICF. Also joining us from ICF is Janine Branch, who personally serves as a technical assistance specialist with the ARC. She has over seven years of technical assistance experience and is a national board certified teacher who taught for over 28 years. Over her career, Janine has been involved in standards development, teacher and principal effectiveness, and evaluation in school improvement projects. We're also glad to have Kelly Stewart joining us today. Kelly founded the Appletree Network, which focuses on advocacy as well as leadership training and technology solutions for teachers and administrators in public schools. Kelly has written and featured articles for ASED, and is also the owner of Silk Paper Flower, a sustainable home goods brand. Kelly is a member of the inaugural class of the Ron Brown Scholars, who are a partner in the ARC. And she presented the ARC Diversity and Equity Summit in 2011. Later that year, she was selected as a regional finalist for the White House Fellowship. Way to go, Kelly. She currently serves, excuse me, she currently works for the Portsmouth Public School Division. Sometimes this feels like serves Kelly as an early childhood educator, and she co-wrote the District's Division-wide Climate Survey. And I'm your moderator for today, John Ross. So we've had a few people join us. If you'd like to join us or let us know who you are, you can use the chat window. If you don't see the chat window, if you press the icon on the far bottom left of your screen, hopefully the window will appear and you can let us know who you are. I'm going to take a little bit of time and let you know that probably I am responsible for today's webinar. Like many of you, I often have a desk full of books, and very little time to read them. But last year, I kept seeing this one title over and over again and that book was Professional Capital. I not only read it, but I enjoyed it so much that I shared it with a lot of my colleagues, even giving it to them as Christmas gifts, which maybe a kind of a cheesy Christmas gift, but that's what I did because I really enjoyed it. So a little while ago, my read that book would end up in this webinar. We did invite the authors to participate, and I received a very nice note from Michael Fallon, but he's actually launching a new book today. So I guess if he's launching a new book today, we have to excuse him from this webinar. While the book introduces new ideas supported with data from years of research, this webinar is not necessarily a book review. Instead, it's informed by the book and intended to help us think about the concept of professional capital and what that means for the people at whom we work. So to start, I just want to give you a few key terms to consider. According to the authors, professional capital is a function of three distinct types of capital, some of which you may be aware of. Human capital refers to the unique skills people possess, and these are things that people might refer to as talent. However, as the authors point out, individual talent is rarely enough. You just can't find talent for people and put them into school and expect to build professional capital. When shared and combined across groups and teams, learning communities, the resulting human capital is much greater than that of individuals. So there's kind of a combinatorial effect that's greater than just the whole of individuals. Social capital, the second component, complements human capital. So the authors refer to Kerry Leana, a business professor from the University of Pittsburgh who described social capital as the well-known finding that interactions between educators focused on student learning make a large and measurable impact on student achievement and sustaining that achievement. Those interactions are what are referred to as social capital, and this can occur between teachers or between teachers and administrators. And this group effect is, again, much larger than what individuals can accomplish on their own. The authors note that while individual talent is really important, putting talent in individuals in the positions with low social capital can have little impact. We learned this in our own region, the art region, through use of data reports from Tennessee that used value and a data to determine what happens to high and low performing teachers when placed into schools with different levels of social capital, teachers with high levels of human capital, as described by the authors, when placed in schools with low social capital, either left those schools or actually show decreased impact over time. So we can, however, do something about that. There's one more component to professional capital, and that's what the authors refer to as decisional capital. They note that true professionals are called upon to make complex decisions relating to their own positions, and when teachers are given the opportunity to share decision-making and come up with outcomes that they feel will impact their students, they can build confidence, insight, and greater judgment. Imposing things on teachers, whether professional development or resources or policy or other types of supports does little to support growing decisional capital. Decisional capital, as some of our presenters will mention, is the one component that many educators may feel most lacking in our current era of accountability, but it is something we can have an impact on. More about this later, if you remember your math, Hargraves and Fulin suggest that professional capital is a function of all three types of capital, human, social, and decisional. So there you go. Quick world run definition of those terms. I'm going to turn this over quickly to Janine Branch, who will share some ideas of how professional capital is built. Good afternoon, everyone. It's too long. Good afternoon, Janine. Hi. For too long, teaching has been a private matter, happening behind closed doors where teachers worked alone, making decisions in isolation and not in consultation with others. And every year, like it or not, teachers have professional development. Usually to meet certain requirements of hours required by their district or the state. Sessions are often planned by the district or the state and have a topic that may or may not be of value to the listener. Most teachers attend as required, but often they rarely listen and very few implement what they hear. No one follows up or plans discussions and no one monitors implementation. Now, if we realize that the most powerful lever to impact student learning is effective teaching, we must find a better way to build the knowledge and skills of our teachers to systematically improve the quality of teaching across the school or school system. In other words, we need to build their professional capital. Fuller and Hardreeves argue that to effectively bring about changes in our educational system that bring about positive results for students, there must be an increasing, we must build the, we must increase the professional capital of all of our educators. We must create systems that unleash the power of peers working through transparent, purposeful and energizing interactions. So given that information, trying to advance the slide here, how do we get there? What would it look like? It might, it would involve teams of teachers talking about teaching. We would see learning teams of teachers constantly working to improve their craft. If we could listen, we might hear, what were the goals for our students? How did they meet those goals? How do we know? For students not meeting the set goals, what do we do now? If, if goals were met, what do those students need to improve, to move them ahead? What do our artifacts of student work tell us? We now realize that professional capital is best built by teams of teachers having regular and frequent conversations and interactions centered on instruction. The power of individuals to change a system is limited. We realize that it's groups or networks of teachers involved in persistent collaborative enterprises centered on the work of improvement. It involves persistent development of human capital, social capital and decisional capital. And as John mentioned before, that human capital involves increasing individual qualification, their skills and knowledge, ensuring that teachers have the expertise to bring about positive results for students. Social capital involves positive interactions among the teachers and administration. Administrators in conversations centered on instruction and a persistent feeling of trust and closeness among the staff. It also includes the professional culture that connects and influences the way people perform their work, the purposes they pursue and how they support one another to improve. Decisional capital promotes the ability of all to use competent sound judgment and make the right decisions. Teachers working to improve professional capital would bring about the practice of teachers talking about best practice and moving it to next practice. It would involve collaborative discussions, trusting relationships and collective responsibility to bring about increased professional capital. We must have teachers constantly and collectively building their knowledge base and expertise. Using what they know to plan lessons, examine varied instructional strategies, determine appropriate lesson organizations, select materials and so on. This continuous working on the work of teaching is beneficial for every teacher, no matter where they are in their career. John Hattie, another researcher, delved into over 800 meta-analyses spanning a 15-year period relating to the influence of achievement on school-age children. He found that the biggest effects on student learning occur when teachers become learners of their own teaching. He also found that it's when teachers come together to reflect on and discuss their past teaching and learning by closely examining student work, talking about what could have been done better, what worked and what did not that teachers improved. Great teachers are keen to discover what is working and what is not and are eager to share and collaborate with others. Great teachers such as these work in schools that have a culture of trust, support and transparency. And finally, using this research, Hattie provided this advice on the development of professional capital. He says that teaching is not only teaching but learning. The word teachers is plural because when teachers meet to discuss, evaluate and plan their teaching in light of feedback evidence about learning both good and bad, that evidence is created and the result is better teachers. This is most essential, not resources and not class size. Teachers must become a team leading the school to excellence, not just a building of individuals working in isolation. Going back, the following in Hargreaves equation that professional capital is equal to the human, social and decisional making capital of the teachers in the school. Thanks, Janine. I have to remember to work with technology and unmute my button now and then. At this time, it would be nice to stop and see if anybody has any questions or comments that we've covered so far. The idea of professional capital, any questions about this idea of human decisional, social capital? Any questions? If you do, please post them in the chat box. And while those questions are going on, two or more people are typing. That's good. We're going to let those questions go on. Sharon, you'll be up next. Caitlin says, like a researcher, the idea of teaching is profoundly and fundamentally social is interesting. Yes, very much so. And I think your daughters would appreciate that as well. A little insight to what they go through in school. All right, well, let's move right ahead. I'd like to get some more questions later, but right now I want to turn the microphone over to Dr. Sharon Harsh. Again, she is the director of the ARC. Professional capital at its core is about building capacity, which is the key charge of the comprehensive centers from the U.S. Department of Education. Dr. Harsh is going to help us better understand the connections between capacity building and professional capital. If you're on mute, I'm going to try one more thing. Sharon, I think you may not use the presenter number. Wait, hold on. Give me just a second. So, Sharon, I've unmuted all the lines, so if you'll go ahead with your presentation, that'd be great. Right. Thank you, John. Throughout the book, Professional Capital, which is the book we're discussing today, Hargraves and Follens, who are the authors, use term capacity in many of the folks that we work with in our region. We talk a lot about and work around capacity, and the authors use the word capacity as well. In some cases in this book, the word capacity is used interchangeably with the word capability, but primarily it's used to denote a separate condition. For example, in discussing change, the authors indicate that governors, chief state school officers, and teacher organizations need to promote capacity building. The authors also say each level of change needs new capacities, and state leaders need to develop the capacity to make a judgment about change in the teaching profession. So, if they talk about capacity in this book, and capacity is actually a separate concept, then what does capacity mean in relation to professional capital? And that's what we want to explore for just a few moments. In this first slide that you see, the graphic is designed to show the capacity is a precursor to professional capital, and capacity serves as a foundation for acquiring the professional capacity and the professional capital that teachers need to change the status of the teaching profession. So if you look at the arrow, you'll see that capacity is that precursor, a foundation that leads to the professional capital. In the second slide, the graphic illustrates that the type of capacity teachers need to gain professional capital and expertise. And many of you that are on the call know what expertise is and have encountered the skill sets that are involved in acquiring expertise. Expertise is gained by helping teachers acquire a sophisticated level of knowledge. And this knowledge has to be about the art and the science of teaching. It has to be about perfecting a wide range of skills to operationalize the knowledge and then to gain professional experience demonstrating success and utilizing that knowledge and skills. So in other words, knowledge and skills alone is by profession. They need to have the expertise and the experience in order to accrue the expertise. So together, these elements create the capacity and the expertise needed to amass professional capital. In this slide, you'll notice that I added intellectual capital to the three kinds of capital that the authors identified as professional capital. And that's because I believe that to change the teaching profession, teachers need to be seen as more than purveyors of information. They have to have the intellectual expertise and the capital to analyze and improve their craft. I think we should pause to restate the need to have professional capital and rethink the term professional capital just for a moment. Capital is defined as something of value that can be used to gain a desirable conviction or advantage. Capital is what's expanded and it's what's used as a lever to change and enhance the profession. And if you think about market thatcher, he's just recently passed away, market thatcher is an excellent example of someone who understood the power of accumulating and using political, social, she used personal capital to access and hold one of the most powerful positions in the United Kingdom. In her biography and many of the works that have been written about her, in her early years, market thatcher was very purposeful. She cultivated the knowledge, she cultivated the skills and the interpersonal connections that she needed for the position she desired and she used that expertise to cultivate the capital, the personal capital, the social capital, the political capital that she needed in order to not only acquire but to manage and perform that job. But her story also underscores the importance of continuing to replenish the capacity and the expertise for the position. Teachers, once they accumulate professional capital and that expertise, it has to be replenished because market thatcher's story is also an excellent example of what happens when your stock of political, social and personal capital becomes depleted. So first, we need to help teachers develop social capital. The second level would be to use that social capital to gain advantage in professional status so the profession can be enhanced. But the third level is to continue to build that capacity, continue to improve that expertise so that professional capital is replenished and the profession stays strong and teachers stay strong. If you move to the third slide, in that third slide I use a four-part matrix view. The profession has low status. When both in the profession have limited professional capital and you can see in the matrix, usually in these cases the teachers demonstrate or the educators demonstrate little action to enhance the profession. And that's partly why these authors have called for an axis, staying from the part of teachers to develop professional capital. In these cases under the slow status section of the matrix, often teachers get involved or these teachers get involved whenever they want to pay raise or if there's a burdensome policy change that needs to occur. But if you look for a moment at the highest professional status in the matrix, educators have high professional capital and in these cases they're really active in trying to promote and improve the profession. So they are at this point self-monitoring, self-correcting and self-modifying in their work. And that's the condition that we want for all teachers to be actively involved and to use that professional capital to actually manage their own profession. And the fourth graphic slide, I use this same matrix to show that there are really two paths that can be taken to change the status of the profession. In states and districts where the level of education performance is high, then teachers have a large stock of professional capital that they can work with. And administrators and teachers can use the recommendations in this book to become proactive in coping and enhancing and improving the profession. But in path B, if you'll look at that matrix, where education performance is low and we're all working with schools in our states or on issues surrounding persistently low performance. And in these cases where education performance is low, teachers need to be supportive. They need to be able to cultivate that expertise which is built on the capacity that we just talked about, the large skills and the expertise. Building that capacity and gaining the professional capital that they need. That's not an over knowledge journey at all, but it's certainly one that the authors call for us to be diligent about and to be supportive of teachers and helping them to gain that special capital that they really need to enhance the profession. So the question is, how do you change the status of the teaching profession? In the book, the authors give recommendations for both teachers and administrators to follow. And so my call is the focus primarily on what teachers need to do. I'll hone in on what state administrators need to do. And in Chapter 7, you'll find lots and lots of recommendations that the authors make. And in this next slide, what I did was recap the recommended strategies for state education agencies. The first two strategies called for the state education agency to lead the charge. They recommend that in these strategies the State Department will model change and implement change practices in their work. Then in strategies 3, 4 and 5, these strategies set up the conditions for enhancing the status of the teaching profession. And it's following that model and that they recommended the State Department do. And in strategies 3, 4 and 5, what you have to do is change policies and structures at the state level that permeate throughout the district and the schools. And these will be changes that would allow teachers to address issues, reshape teaching practices, they'd be able to select from multiple career paths and develop ownership of their work. And then finally, in strategies 6, 7 and 8, reinvent the state education agency as the change agent. And the state agency in these strategies would operationalize this enhanced status for the teaching profession. And in these strategies, the state education agency will engage in capacity building at all levels and be a visible active participant in the education process. So building the capacity at all levels is something that our state and our region have been interested in. Some states are working actively in building capacity, and that's exactly what Harvey and Paul are recommending that we do in this group of strategies. To John, I'll turn it over to you now in case there's a question. Thanks Sharon. And once again, we're going to do questions at this point in the chat window. We'll do open questions at the end and open up the phone lines. I think it's interesting, Sharon, that the authors write an entire book about three forms of capital, and of course you read it a fourth time in the equation. Yeah, I believe strongly in that intellectual capital. Right. But since I've learned so much from you about building capacity and the work that we've done in the past several years, I think I take it that your word on good authority so let's see. Caitlin said that she'll let full and hard grades know they have some edits they need to make for the book. That was a lot about building capacity and the relationships of professional capital. Any additional questions for Sharon? And she's not going anywhere, so we can talk to her later. Okay, not seeing any or not seeing anybody typing any. Let's go ahead and move on. I'd like to, so after, let me get back on track. So much of the book that we've talked about so far is about establishing the teaching profession as a true profession. And with the unique look on this topic, we have former lawyer Kelly Stewart who explores the parallels between these two professions and then gives us some detail about additional components of professional capacity. Thank you, John. And thank you, Sharon. Thanks everybody for letting me be a part of this call. Sharon, you are extraordinarily difficult to follow, but I will try. And the first thing I want to do is apologize to everyone for my unnecessarily long bio, which I need to work on and cut that down. But one of the things that happens when you go to law school and you're in that realm is I had to, I had such an uphill battle when I decided that I wanted to be a teacher. I'm alternatively licensed and it was just like, well, you're just going to be a teacher. And it was interesting, as embarrassing as it was to hear the White House Fellowship mention, that was what I got the most, that was the response that I got from so many people was, you're just a teacher, you know, almost like I wasn't supposed to be there. And so that's definitely something that we have to work on as far as building professional capital. And so I was asked to look at some of those intersections and I went to NYU Law School and we have a wonderful public interest assistance program for the graduates who go in into public interest law. And the only stipulation is that your job has to be substantially related to the law. And unfortunately I did not get that assistance from that loan repayment program, but teaching is probably more substantially related to the law than any government job or any other job that I've held outside of an actual law firm. We live in a highly litigious society. Obviously if you have people's children in that mix it's going to become even more emotional. And really when I walk into, every day that I walk into the school, I sort of treat myself as the administrator of my classroom. And as I move throughout the building, I act like an administrator, not because of any professional ambition that I have, but just because of the liability that I see everywhere. If there's water on the floor or if a door is open or unlocked like everything, I just feel like I'm the custodian because I have that, I don't want my school to be liable for anything and I don't want my district to be subjected to liability. So this is an enormous responsibility that every teacher has. This isn't just something that lays with the administrators, it's something that has to extend throughout the building, a sense of professional responsibility if you will. So because of these liability issues and just some of the liability that we can subject the district to, it is imperative that teachers are treated and trained as professionals. And not necessarily something that we should just desire, but something that we need, especially regarding regulations like, in laws like ADA, IDEA, anything involving special education, and a lot of the Title I regulations because we know that schools can be subjected to a great deal of sanctions when those regulations are not followed correctly. So we shouldn't relegate these things on the job training. It needs to be something that we definitely sit down and explain to everyone who has a stake in it. Professional capacity is a really beneficial term because it gives us a framework outside of the teacher quality conversation. A lot of times I feel that it's not so much a teacher quality problem that we're having, it's a capacity building issue. And if we have leadership and we have a commitment to build professional capacity, I think that we would see that the quality is there. It just needs to be developed properly. And so we get five C's that are sort of delineated throughout the reading. And what we have is capability, commitment, context, or conditions of learning, career, and culture. And to that context and conditions of learning, I would include conditions of learning, but also conditions of teaching because they really are one in the same. Condition that the teacher is teaching in is the same condition that the child is learning in, almost like a mother and a child. And whatever environment the mother is in, that's the environment it's feeding, it's going right into the child. So that's why we have and make sure that we take care of the environment for both parties. And this is a really helpful graphic and it describes commitment and capabilities. And so this is where we have the super excited, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, fresh out of college, ready to go, ready to change the world and make a difference at the beginning of the career, but maybe not so capable just because everyone knows the first year of teaching is your initiation, a trial by fire. And so as you get further in your career is when you start to, you know, things start rolling, you know what's going on, and maybe some of the commitment is going down as we can see with our turnover and the amount of people leaving the profession. But it's because of some of the conditions and everything that's going on and we want to try to keep that commitment high. So going into capability, capability can also be described as the left for success or how much people want to succeed. Like we said in the graphic before, commitment is high early in the career and the capability is lower. And as they develop and move forward, you have that inverse relationship. As far as commitment to the career, it can grow in stages. And Harvard's influence suggests waiting to build capacity and focusing on teachers who will be staying for the long term. That is teachers who maybe aren't going to make it past the two to three year mark, focusing on teachers at more of maybe the six and seven year mark. And that's kind of a dangerous thing to, that's kind of a dangerous road to go down because you don't want to wait too long. Obviously you want to make sure that you still can take advantage of that enthusiasm as well. But I understand because they want to make sure that you're investing your resources appropriately. And they seek about improving school leadership to improve professional capacity. Basically all of these opportunities for building professional capacity, if we don't have school leadership that supports it, it's not going to happen. It's not something that teachers can do in a vacuum by themselves. And as far as context and conditions of learning, the authors speak about how testing is definitely the most overwhelming influence on our school culture right now. And we probably aren't going away from that at any point. And so what we want to do is build professional capacity so that teachers understand why the testing is happening to make it less of a something that's viewed as a burden and more of something that's viewed as a tool than sometimes it is. And so when we involve teachers in that decision making process and they're involved in those higher level decisions, they can understand what the data is actually being used for as opposed to just feeling like it's something that's happening to them or to their students. And they also talk about self-efficacy, which is very important. That's the measure of the teacher's belief that they can make a difference. And when that goes away, it's a very dangerous thing. If a teacher does not believe that they can make a difference and whether that's through their conditions that they're working in or what they're seeing, it has a really detrimental impact. And one other thing is that we spoke about this kind of in the chat. I think we kind of got to this point about looking at teaching as a social profession. And I actually have that in my notes because we as teachers are in the human-building profession. And so our culture and our context and our conditions of learning and teaching, that's so much more important than in any other profession. We're not making widgets, we're not banking, it isn't finance, it isn't even STEM, it's not technology. We're building human output. And so we have this ripple effect where if they're emotional at the services in the professional environment, they're going to reverberate even more strongly for that learning environment. So that's really important that we control those conditions. And I think one of the best things that any, honestly, this is just from me speaking from the front lines. I think that the level of organization and the level of just basically how smoothly is the school being run. And that goes back to that leadership component. And I almost say that before you even ever go into a classroom, I would say go to the lunchroom. See how the lunchroom is run. Looking in the hallways, are students moving effectively through the hallways? Is there chaos and noise and trash on the floor? Like these are all part of the conditions and these are all things that can truly degrade the learning and teaching environment. And so if we want to get the most out of our teacher, we have to make sure that those conditions are right just like we would want for our own kids. And so then we get into the career context. And there was an interesting quote where the authors spoke about, they said that school systems and countries end up with the teachers they deserve. Basically, however much value they put on teachers, this is either the teachers that they're going to get. And so they spoke about having teacher renewal strategies built into building professional capital. One of the best strategies I felt was involving teachers in the higher level conversations, obviously they get more of a sense of ownership of what's going on. One of the most challenging strategies is going to be managing upward and challenging the system as it is because school systems can be very recalcitrant and just unmovable. And so that's going to be something that is definitely a challenge. One of the last points that I just wanted to make before we open it up to questions is that the higher pressure the environment, I think the more accelerated these phases are. And we want to avoid teacher burnout and make sure that we're having teachers doing the job that they're there to do, which is educating our students. And that's all that I had. Well, thanks, Kelly. You brought up so many ideas that I think really resonated with me in the book, especially this last one. Believe it or not, I was in Michigan last week talking with some superintendents up there, and they're starting a book study on this book. And one of the things they brought up was the idea that, I'm going to move you back there, so we have questions and comments. And so if you do have questions or comments you'd like to put them in the chat while I'm talking, that'd be great. But one thing they brought up is that very often they place teachers in their early career in the hardest-to-teach classes with the most reps, which can be very difficult, very discouraging, and hardening the full and quiet out of the book, using lots of different research, that our goal with those teachers in the first five to seven years is to get them to their mid-career, because that's where we get the biggest bang for our buck when we bring in change initiatives, when we bring in capacity-building initiatives. It's those teachers in the mid-career that get the greatest benefit from that. So I think your final comments there, Kelly, were just really spot-on about the idea of encouraging, especially those early-career people to move on to becoming mid-career. Thank you, John. Any other questions or comments for Kelly? And Kelly, like you, I'm actually in the trenches today, so if there's an announcement at the school that I'm sitting in, I'm going to have to put myself on mute. So what I'm going to do, because we are focused, we have focused a lot on schools, on actual schools today, and while the ARC staff work primarily with state education agencies, I'm going to turn this over to Janine, who's going to help us realize how SEAs can help districts and schools build and nurture a professional capacity. So Janine, I'm going to turn it over to you. Thanks, John. So if we want an educational force of professionally capable teachers, not just teachers working in isolation, like the one on the slide, but into teachers working as groups who are learning from one another, helping each other to be the best they can be, how do we make that happen? What are the implications for all of us? Actually, there are implications for every level of the educational system from the state house, which includes both the national and state levels, down to the schoolhouse. The work must begin with a bold and inspiring vision from the top, a vision that brings changes to policies and practices, and for some of these, there might be major changes, as well as shifts in many long-held beliefs. Then that vision must move through districts, then on to the school level, and finally into the classroom. And it's here at the classroom level, as we all know, that the actual work is done. These many intricate pieces of puzzle must fit together and involved in a more effective professional educational system that produces the kind of results that we want for children. Pieces to the puzzle. Well, the first of these that I want to talk about is time. If there's one of the men I've heard over and over again from teachers, and I admit it, I said it to myself when I was teaching, there's not enough time. I have too much to cover. This lack of time is behind much of the resistance to change in our schools, and it probably has killed more innovations than anything else. The 1994 report of the National Education Commission on Time and Learning, called Prisoners of Time, concluded that time is the missing element in our schools, and our schools are captives for the clock and the calendar. Despite major changes in our society and how we live, we've had time constant in our schools and let learning vary. Finding the time to build the professional capital of teachers must be a priority. And there are people in organizations around the country that are working to find innovative ways to change the concept as we know it now. They're working on ways of changing both the school day and the school culture. One innovative approach is to extend the school day. Extending the school day provides more time for students to be actively engaged in academic classes that allows more time for enrichment activities and educational experiences that enhance the lives of children. And it provides time for teacher collaboration and embedded professional development, time that leads to increased human social and decisional capital. I would suggest that not only it might be a challenge to find time for teachers to meet, but in some cases it might be hard to find a place to meet as well. Another piece of the puzzle related to time is the length of time needed for a school to show a cultural or an academic change as a result of a new implementation or innovation, like thinking about building the professional capital of teachers. Research says that it often takes between three to five years to see results to any major change, and are we going to be patient enough to wait? Another piece of the puzzle is the rural issue. We all know that rural districts and schools have their own set of unique ways. These areas will need additional support and even more creative approaches to create the kinds of structures and processes that will build the professional capital of those educators. Leadership is another piece of the puzzle. We need school leaders who are positively working to build the professional capital of their teachers who will provide a clear vision for change. Through Thought Word Indeed, they would find ways to build human social and decisional capital of others. We need school leaders who are involved with their teachers, supporting and encouraging them, building a culture of collective responsibility where risk-taking is encouraged and mistakes are seen as opportunities. One more piece of the puzzle is implementation. Implementing any new practice is difficult and many times the urgent need to impact student achievement leads to fragmented implementation of previously successful programs that often result in less desirable outcomes. School leaders must pay careful attention to the implementation process as they work to build the professional capital of educators. Remembering that effective implementation is a process that includes a specific set of activities designed to put an effective innovation into regular and normal practice. We've talked a lot about culture today and for professional capital to grow and flourish, we must have a culture that's inclusive, collaborative and trusting. Collaboration can only be successful when we have an environment that encourages teachers to take on leadership roles and support one another. Another piece of the puzzle would be change because change itself is difficult. We have to think about what the authors say that if we are to impact a new future for the teaching profession, we must first develop, accumulate, invest and cultivate that teaching capital. So it's up to schools, districts and governments to be the change. Each must be capable and credible, morally consistent, culturally connected and strategically aligned. In the final analysis, if we want to increase the professional capital of our teachers and bring about positive changes to the profession of education, and most importantly improve results for children, we must all have the commitment to develop our collective professional capital and the professional capital of others. The kind of commitment that the authors talk about results in resilient and effective teachers. Finally, I would like to share that, of course, ARC is committed to provide support for education across the region and to help deliberately build that professional capital to work alongside our FDA colleagues to bring about positive change. Two other organizations that I'd like to make sure you know about are a group called, an organization called Opportunity Culture. Opportunity culture is working to extend the reach of excellent teachers in many innovative ways. You might be interested in visiting their website to learn more about the exciting work they're doing. And another one is the Center on Time and Learning, which is dedicated to finding and supporting innovative approaches that expand learning time by extending the school day. And they're finding in many of their pilots that they're having increased student achievement and enabling a well-rounded education for students as well as giving teachers time for that collaboration that we all need. I believe Sharon's going to expand on the opportunities and ways that ARC can help. So, Sharon, I'll turn it over to you. Thank you, Janine. Are there any questions that, John, that you want to take about June's presentation? It's your slide for strategies for state education agencies. Thank you, John. And I want to be sure to comment before I make this comment about this slide how fortunate we are to not only on this webinar have two teachers that have actually cultivated professional capital, but we have these folks available to work with us in the ARC, both Kelly and, you know, great examples of teachers that have cultivated professional capital. Janine, by accruing and accomplishing the National Board Certification, and for many years of teaching and now working as a technical assistance provider, Kelly is being a practicing attorney and has chosen education and brings all those skillsets of both perfect examples of teachers that can accrue and accumulate great deal of professional capital. In this slide that's in front of you, I want to be sure to talk about what the Athlete Regional Comprehensive Center can do for the states who are participating in our region and in the services that we're giving. The ARC, or the Athlete Regional Comprehensive Center we call it the ARC, provides capacity building technical assistance services to state education agencies. And John mentioned that you and the early part of this webinar and the services that we provide are customized. So if there are states that have needs around developing professional capital, the work that we're doing and the initiatives that we're doing can be customized to include that as well. The ARC has deep expertise, you've heard from two or three, John is also one of our staff. People that have deep expertise in capacity building and in teaching and in education in general. And there are five recommendations that Hargraves and Fallon make that I'd like to draw out and bring to your attention. I've listed those for you on this slide. These are recommendations that are actually being implemented by the ARC right now at both the state and the regional levels. And I want to share those with you in case any of our listeners would like to make sure that their state participates in these. The first is large scale change. The ARC has a very complex and multidimensional capacity building model and we do work in large scale change. A lot of our initiatives are very large and very complex. We support states that's implementing and sustaining targeted services in these large scale change efforts. And one of the things that we're doing this summer is that we're having a regional seminar. It's an ARC regional systemic capacity building seminar and it's for the executive team. The executive SEA team can come to this seminar and we're going to be sharing ideas and dimensions and examining rather dimensions of the theme on systemic capacity building. So a lot of the work that we have is so large that it's not a matter of just doing individual capacity building pieces. The states are actually involved in very large initiatives and this seminar will be addressing many of those issues and the techniques for doing that. And again that's June 25 and 26 for our state teams. The second area is promote capacity building. I mentioned earlier that some of our folks are not only working in capacity building but we're doing some training with some of our states on capacity building. And following the hall grays call for states to do this capacity building at every level. And the ARC can not only support states in that effort but can actually do capacity building at the state level as well as helping to build the capacity of the districts and the schools to do their work. And we're offering our states this year a series of metacapacity seminars. The metacapacity is just that having the capacity to not only do your work but having the capacity to build the capacity of others. So these seminars are designed to help SCA teams do that and we're delighted that we're going to be working in some of our states on these metacapacity seminars. We have large projects in all of our states around redesigning the professional career. Our states are working really hard on teacher and leader effectiveness. And I think every state in our region has initiatives, one or more initiatives in this area. And our states also are really involved in collaboration. A lot of the ARC initiatives deal with regional conferences, stops cross-state networking and other ways to help states promote the culture of collaboration. Not only at the school level but certainly at the regional and state level as well. And then they call, they are great in that following team call for initiating change starting at the top. The ARC offers our state organization change initiatives and we are also starting a organization redesign initiative that will be available to our states. The ARC also uses tools and processes from the national content centers. And the building state capacity centers as well as other centers have a lot of the tools that are around these issues and our states are actively involved in those. And our job at the ARC is to get that information in schools to our states. So if any of our listeners have initiatives or additional needs in those areas, please contact your state coordinators because we will be very happy to work with our state. These are just five of the recommendations that they give in this book. Many others and the ARC will be more than happy to work with our states and customize initiatives without any of the issues pertaining to professional capacity. Thank you, John. And I'm going to turn it back over to you for our final talk on the professional capital. Well, I would like to turn it over. I believe the phone lines are open. I know we have some SEA staff on line as well as some representatives from some of the content centers who are our partners at SHARE mentioned that we're working with. Are there any questions from any of our SEA participants today? I'm trying to use my good wait time at this status and Jackie Wells talking. I don't hear any. If you do have questions, I do want to let you know that it is three o'clock and I do like to start and stop on time. So I'd like to thank you for participating in today's event. If you do have questions we didn't get to them, please let me know. Lori, I'm a little new to this system, so I'll make sure you get a pop-up PowerPoint because you registered and I do have your email. Thank you. It was a very good webinar. I think we just need to think it through a little bit more. I'm representing the Center on Enhancing Early Learning Outcomes. So I do want to work with Janine to think about how we can include and promote the professional capital of our early childhood leaders in State Departments of Ed. I'm sure they're kind of part of this work, so thank you. It was excellent. Great. Well, thank you very much Lori for joining us as well as our other visitors today. I hope you enjoyed today's webinar. If you have any ideas about follow-up ideas you'd like to participate with, you can of course communicate with your State Coordinator or you can actually send me an email or a Kim Cook. You should have our email address based on the registration for today's event. Until then, from Powhatan High School outside of Richmond, Virginia, I'd like to thank you and this is John Ross. Thank you. Thank you, John. Thanks everybody.