 So, change. How do I feel about change? We get annoyed. We adapt. Excitement. We get practical and we keep our sense of humor. And sometimes we take action. About a dozen years ago, I was working as a director in English right into arts, facilitating my monthly professional development for the teacher instructional coaches in Springfield. They were, in fact, change agents. Some of them were excited about changing their practice. Some said, just want to get a handle on old change, I'm asked to change my practice again, or something to that degree. And so it began comparing us to the medical industry. Imagine a doctor who learns that there is this treatment that will cure her patients or significantly change the quality of life for them. And what if that doctor said, now I'm cool with what I've been doing all along. I know the treatment I'm using has a high failure rate, but I'm going to stick with this treatment and keep using it. Or if there were an experimental drug that offered patients hope for curing an incurable disease, what a doctor said, just want to get a handle on the old treatment and master try something new. I see the state of education in our country, and yes, in our progressive state too, especially for students of color and students living from poverty, as a sort of disease. But I do believe they're secure. I wouldn't do this work if I didn't believe that the cure was possible. In fact, I believe it already exists. What I'm about to share with you are some of the changes that we made in our field of school, that not only graphically increased student achievement, but created a space where students and educators can thrive. This is our story. In 2013 it was hired as a tournament on principle at Chestnut Middle School, a grossly underperforming 1,200 student level four school that was being divided into three separate schools. We also had three complex communities of six classrooms of highly self-contained special ed students. I was to take a once thriving city-wide town through the gifted program that had been housed in the school, improve our school's performance in their mutation, and bring the school out of the state's lowest underperforming status. At the end of my first year, our school was ranked in the ninth percentile, as Bruce mentioned. Fast forward five years later, we've left our underperforming status. We are meeting and exceeding our state targets. We tripled our proficiency rates on the state assessments, and our science, math, and English student performance is outpacing the state by double digits, which essentially means that we are closing the gap for our students and rapidly accelerating their learning. I'm going to show you, someone sent this to me. I don't actually know how to create this graph, which my staff would laugh about. So, if you see in the upper right-hand corner there, you see the green line, that is our school's accountability status. And we are grouped here from the 2015 bottom 10 percent of schools performing in Massachusetts. Of course, I'm so competitive that when I got this, I wanted to know what that line was, that red line. I was like, what school is that? What do they do when I want to go visit them? Is that the back? So, what we're looking at here is our math data over the last three years. We go back three years because the test changed prior to that. There's a little talking about on that. So, this is our proficiency rates, the percent of students against the state. So, the red is our school math. The orange is the states. This is our LA data. So, we go back strong and we continue to on. Ms. Sparky, can you wave your hands over there? Ms. Sparky, come on up. Ms. Sparky's been in this the whole way. She's amazing. This is our science data, which I just find overwhelmingly exciting. So, we gobbled our proficiency rates practically in 2017. And then we started to uppace the state last year. This is our most recent data that came in. I'm really excited about that. So, the data for me is not just like standardized tests and not good for kids and not good for kids. We could have that debate, but one of the things I know for sure is that when we are outpacing the state, we're closing gap. And that's what I care most about in terms of data. On my first day that I met with my teachers, a little over five years from now, I told them we're going to be very successful. And this, our little school is going to be a safe and joyful school for students and staff. I promise you. Half of them looked at me like I was crazy. Most of the rest looked annoyed and a few grinned with hope. How could I know this was possible? How could I promise our success? But for me, it's that simple because I know that under the right conditions, all students have the ability to learn to grow and to achieve at high levels. I set out first and foremost to create a school where students and staff loved coming to school every day. No doubt it would all work very hard, sometimes long hours and sometimes it would be a struggle. But we would make a place of joy, a place where learning was hard but worth it and teachers would feel their value. I tell you this to give you some context for what I'm about to share because my greatest accomplishment is not that as a principal I can say I run an underperforming middle school. Now my greatest accomplishment of my career is the collection of incredible people who teach in our school because without them, none of our success is possible. When people ask me questions like what's the single biggest thing you did and continue to do that made your school successful? I know the answer I give them is never as sexy as what they're looking for because it wasn't the common core standards and life curriculum choices nor the bell schedule nor the interventions that put in place for all students. It wasn't my skillful use of funding or longer hours or shorter hours for wraparound surfaces or a complete overhaul of how we taught writing, though I do believe all of those factors matter. But I believe hands down the credit, the impact, the improved test scores, the empowered student voice, the student centered learning, the cross content literacy and numeracy practices and yes the joyful school house are all due to the quality of the teaching in our school. Then, those four back there, that room full of teachers when we all sit together they are my greatest accomplishment. I doubled down on teaching and that has made all the difference for our students. Some of the images just you can see some beautiful faces and that my superpower is taking people to teach in our school and have a really good picker. I seek teachers who believe in our students the ability to be successful who have compassion for the challenges our students carry without feeling sorry for them and I also let teachers go who aren't serving our students well. My first year I exited a third of my teachers and I feared that the remaining teachers would be frightened by that. But what I learned is that some teachers, teachers who plan well who do write by kids also don't want the principles to keep these people employed in our school. I seek teachers who practice, who teach their asses off every single day and then I spend nearly all of my time and energy knowing, supporting, nurturing and loving them. I doubled down on teaching because nothing matters more than that. There they are. So what does this look like? This looks like teachers having an hour prep time and hour collaboration and learning time every single day. This looks like teachers not spending one red cent of their own money on school supplies. And this large closet in my school that looks like staples that has every school supply and provision a teacher could need and if there's something they need that's not in that closet, we order it. This also looks like including teachers in the most important decisions we make at the school such as curricular choices, bell schedules, disciplinary policies, choosing the content and format for a professional learning time, field trip choices, leadership roles, feedback groups attending at professional conferences and leader literally feeding them meals and snacks when they're hungry. This also looks like removing bureaucratic barriers and creating conditions for teachers to spend their energy on teaching, learning and loving students. I've literally tried to remove every barrier in teacher space so they could be excellent for our kids. We have the highest teacher attendance in the city of Springfield of 55 schools and I believe that this has everything to do with the conditions we've created together at our school. We have to take like a little picture because it was a little messy. In the education where we are asking so much of teachers while simultaneously feeding up on them neglecting their learning needs making decisions for them instead of with them we blame teachers for nearly everything but do little to strengthen them for their nearly undoable job they face every day. There's a phrase we education leaders like to say all about the students and this is meant in use as a way of prioritizing students needs over adult needs and on the surface I think most all educators would agree that students come first but I would argue that if we don't tend to the needs of teachers then students pay the price. So this is a conference about change making change in our classroom practices and in our schools but the ultimate change that needs to occur I believe has to do with the way we position our teachers for success. I may be a good change of the choir here but I share this agenda of mine and this message everywhere I go regardless of the audience. So what change is still needed and on the horizon at our school? Over the last few years we have committed to paying attention to diversity, equity and inclusion in our school. Like most places and until recently we weren't talking about race racism, about bias, about privilege and how these issues impact our students and our work with them every day. So two years ago we rolled up our metaphorical sleeves and committed as a school to begin doing the work of unpacking our own identities and exploring how the intersectionality of our identities with our students serves or hinders them. We white educators are doing our white people work and naming an owner in our position in systemic racism and learning how our privilege can blind us. We're also bringing this equity work to the student level to create voice and agency for our students so that they feel valued and affirmed and identities as students of color. We also know that as students of color don't see themselves in the teachers they can hardly be affirmed. With great intentionality I have worked on the issue of educators of color to students in our school and on this point I need to point out that recruiting, hiring and retaining educators of color has not been hard. Too often schools and districts use the excuse that it's somehow hard to find awesome educators of color. It is no surprise that as we have increased the percentage of educators of color in our school our student achievement has risen. I'm a white guy. I lead a school of mostly black and brown children. It's complex but we're having the conversation and what I know for sure is that if adults aren't addressing the issues that may place limitations on our students' success they don't go away. In fact they get worse. The help of any school or classroom comes down to the relationship we build with students and with each other. So if you think about the changes you want to make in your school, your classroom practice, they may be technical they may be pedagogical but I invite you to be brave to ask this big question about change. Start conversations at your school or in your workplace. Make change. Make change for the capital C. Thanks.