VIEW FROM THE HIL
News and Highlights from the WMU-HIL Literacy Leadership Project
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HIL Project school leaders in Grandville are creating a culture of literacy, growing leaders, and creating a “Bulldog House System” in order to grow a strong community of learners and foster a positive environment.
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December 2021
HIL PROJECT DIFFERENCE
SPOTLIGHT ON SCHOOLS
FOCUS ON PARTNERS
UPCOMING EVENTS
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 FROM THE DIRECTORS
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Good news from the HIL School Renewal Team!
As we close out a 2021 filled to the brim with new experiences and new opportunities to test our creativity, commitment, and ability to adapt, we have much to look forward to in 2022.
FIRST, LET'S GIVE A SHOUT-OUT to all the courageous educators we have served and called learning partners through the 4.5 years of working together through the U.S. Department of Education (USED) Supporting Effective Educator Development (SEED )grant. This grant launched the High Impact Leadership (HIL) School Renewal Project in 2017, and it has been a fast and exhilarating ride all the way. Our winter hats are off to the principals, teacher leaders, district and ISD partners, and GELN Literacy Task Force. What a rich and rewarding experience it has been to walk alongside amazing educational leaders as they kept the fires burning around our shared passion for student literacy success! We look forward to seeing meaningful gains in student literacy success with our Cohort B schools, as we did with the Cohort A schools.
NEWS FLASH—HIL RECEIVES A MAJOR NEW GRANT that will expand our work to Pre-K–grade 12 in Grand Rapids Promise Neighborhoods.
READ MORE IN THE FULL REPORT about the new grant and how we are scaling-up our current HIL Project work.
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HIL Project professional learning resources support School Renewal
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The Principles and Processes of High Impact Leadership can transform schools but they cannot be quickly learned or embedded in the culture of the school. They are not a program to be adopted, but rather a new way of talking, thinking, and acting that allows principals and teachers to focus on the most impactful work of the school.
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Introducing the HIL Edupaths Learning Series
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We are pleased to introduce a series of five professional learning courses designed to introduce school leadership teams to the High Impact Leadership (HIL) School Renewal approach for sustainable positive change.
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The courses are free and accessible through Edupaths. (Use search term "High Impact Leadership Renewal" in the Pathways menu.) Participants may earn from 1 to 1.5 SCECHS per course. Course 1 and 2 are available now and Courses 3–5 will be available in 2022.
Course 1—Introduction to the High Impact Leadership for School Renewal: A transformative approach for positive change
1.25 SCECHs
Course 2—Building a Foundation for School Renewal: Phase I of the HIL School Renewal Process
1.00 SCECHs
Course 3 – Digging Deep to SOAR to New Heights: Phase II of the HIL School Renewal Process
Course 4 – Mapping a Gold Standard Pathway to Evidence-based Change: Phase III of the HIL School Renewal Process
Course 5 – Progress Monitoring through Cycles of Transformative Change: Phases IV and V of the HIL School Renewal Process
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Other HIL professional learning
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In addition to the new Edupaths courses, we also offer many other resources on the Professional Learning page to support sustained learning and deeper understanding of the HIL Model. These resources can be used with your HIL Teams, during staff meetings, or within professional learning communities (PLCs). Many of the resources were created by HIL Implementation Facilitators and model HIL-in-action in schools.
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There you will find:
- HIL Process Guide for School Renewal: To support Facilitators in their work with schools.
- HIL Edupaths Courses: Five EduPaths courses that will provide an overview of the HIL Model for School Renewal and show examples of how it can be applied in schools.
- HIL Learning Maps: Support opportunities for deeper learning by school teams. Designed using the format developed by the MAISA General Education Learning Network (GELN), the HIL Learning Maps offer support for facilitators and links to project resources.
- HIL in a Bag: This visually appealing, hands-on manipulative provides content in small chunks. This resource, used with specific protocols, is useful for both face-to-face interactions and small group settings.
- YouTube Presentations: This playlist on the HIL YouTube Channel includes inspirational voices. practical tips, and stories from HIL Project personnel and school leadership teams.
We recommend working with your team as you begin to explore these resources more deeply and build your Positive Core, Collective Ownership, Evidence-Based Decision, and Organizational Learning together.
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The association between teacher leadership and student achievement
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One unique feature of the High Impact Leadership Model for School Renewal is its commitment to teacher leadership in each HIL school. The HIL Research Team described what research literature shows about the association between teacher leadership and student achievement in an article published in the Educational Research Review Vol. 31.
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Their highlights include:
- Teacher leadership has a small positive relationship with student achievement (r = .19).
- Facilitating improvements in curriculum, instruction, and assessment was the dimension mostly associated with student achievement (r = .21).
- The relationships were similar among studies conceptualizing teacher leadership and studies using outcome measures differently.
- The relationships were not statistically different between elementary and secondary schools.
- Published studies reported higher effect sizes than unpublished studies.
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We invite you to read the full article, The association between teacher leadership and student achievement: A meta-analysis by Jianping Shen, Huang Wu, Patricia Reeves, Yunzheng Zheng, Lisa Ryan, Dustin Anderson.
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School renewal for resurgence and re-imagining the future
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By Dr. Patricia Reeves, HIL Project Co-Director and Co-Principal Investigator
What is a normal school year? That is yet to be defined. Starting in March 2020, we left “normal” behind and began a journey of discovery as changing conditions called for changed ways of thinking. What has not changed is the mandate to think and act on behalf of student learning and well-being. A global pandemic kicked off a global migration away from business as usual. As K-12 educators and school leaders, we are caught up in that migration. We and the communities we serve have an opportunity to ensure that the moves we make, the paths we take, and the stars we follow lead to the future we desire for the children we educate. This migration will require transformative discoveries and action.
READ ABOUT HOW HIL creates motivation and capacity for transformative change.
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SPOTLIGHT ON SCHOOLS
Grandville GRIT allows West Elementary School to persist through HIL Process
by Jean Carroll-Hamilton, HIL Project Facilitator
You’ll often hear the term “grit” around Grandville Public Schools. The dictionary defines grit as “courage, resolve, and strength of character,” and that is exactly what West Elementary students and staff have shown these past two years as they trek along their HIL journey.
West, a K-6 elementary, joined HIL Cohort B in the 2019-20 school year. West was already a school of hard-working, dedicated professionals that had a lot of good things happening literacy-wise and beyond. They also had the leadership of a positive and forward-moving principal. The first months of the project were spent focusing on the HIL Principle of Positive Core—developing our mission and vision and looking at our current state through a strengths-based appreciative lens. School Renewal Rounds took place in February 2020, and staff embraced the recommendations and were open to enhancing what they were already doing well along with identifying areas of need and learning how to support those areas. Then Covid hit!
READ ABOUT HOW WEST STAFF ADAPTED and the difference they are making for students.
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Very Hungry West teachers fostering literacy on Halloween.
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SPOTLIGHT ON SCHOOLS
A writing learning lab:
Teachers learning from each other at
Riverside Elementary in Lakeview
By Mary Barkley, HIL Project Facilitator; and Barbara Martin, Riverside Instructional Coach
Riverside Elementary School, a K-4 building in the Lakeview School District in Battle Creek, joined the High Impact Literacy (HIL) Project as a Cohort B school. The school staff engaged in Literacy Rounds in March 2020, and just days before all Michigan schools went to virtual learning, the teaching staff reviewed the recommendations made by the Rounds team with then-HIL Coordinator Derek Wheaton. One of the recommendations was around Essential Instructional Practice #6: Research- and standards-aligned writing instruction.
In particular, the following questions were raised:
- How do we collectively teach writing at Riverside?
- How do we ensure that our writing tasks connect to reading?
- How can we leverage our strengths to increase our collective confidence with teaching writing?
- What are our expectations for student writing, when thinking of: Quality Volume Rigor?
READ MORE about Riverside's "next steps" for professional development.
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HIL Team Member and kindergarten teacher, Mary Volesky, reviews the anchor chart with her students prior to working in their draft books. Kindergarten teachers at Riverside Elementary have common expectations for student writing and it is reflected on this anchor chart, What GREAT Writers Do!
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SPOTLIGHT ON SCHOOLS
Readers Today, Leaders Tomorrow:
Teachers at Reeths-Puffer Elementary are engaging families in new ways
By Jane Dezinski, HIL Facilitator; and Paul Klmsza, Principal of Reeths-Puffer Elementary School
The HIL Leadership Team at Reeths-Puffer Elementary School (RPEL) has taken their goal of increasing family engagement and made it happen with an interactive literacy calendar for each month of the year. The calendar focuses on the theme of, ”Readers Today, Leaders Tomorrow” by sharing a large variety of literacy opportunities for students at home.
Literacy activities are engaging for students and encourage all areas of literacy practice at home. This idea takes the place of the traditional “March is Reading Month” and replaces it with the concept that every month is reading month.
READ MORE about how their HIL Team is developing systems that leverage shared leadership to sustain continuous growth in equitable literacy learning for all students and staff.
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Teacher leaders at Reeths-Puffer Elementary School created a dynamic way to engage our students and their families in literacy each month. Students are encouraged to turn in their completed literacy activities calendar to qualify for regular drawings for prizes and incentives.
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PARTNER CONNECTIONS
PLCs, MTSS, and HIL? Oh, my!
By Michelle Goodwin, HIL Project Facilitator
In their desperate attempt to grasp the potential danger they faced and cope with their sense of overwhelm, fictional characters Dorothy, the Tin Man, and the Scarecrow famously uttered: “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!” as they proceeded down the yellow brick road. Who could have predicted that over 80 years later, that phrase would perfectly describe the sense of surprise staff at Walnut Hills Elementary School in Greenville had as they began their work with the High Impact Leadership (HIL) project in the fall of 2019—only their phrase went something like “PLCs, MTSS, and HIL? Oh, my!” Like many educators, the Walnut Hills staff was feeling full to the gills with initiatives, acronyms, and projects, prompting the question, “What else could we possibly take on at this time?”
As Walnut Hills Elementary staff began their work with the HIL Project, they had first and foremost in their minds the work they had been doing since they joined with Montcalm Intermediate School District and Michigan Integrated Behavior and Learning Support Initiative (MiBLSi) in 2016 in the district on-boarding of Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS). Many questions swirled: “Would their tiered systems for reading and behavior mesh with the principles of HIL?” “Would they be simply repeating all the work that had been done to get MTSS up and running?” “Was HIL just another thing to do?”
READ MORE about what Walnut Hills staff discovered about the connections they found and how much the focus of HIL matched the work done for MTSS.
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Check out what's happening at HILwmu.org!
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Team resources for Facilitators and School Leaders
The HIL website now features helpful links to the resources HIL teams use most often.
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Team resources for Facilitators and School Leaders
The HIL website features helpful links to the resources HIL teams use most often.
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Leading Now, Reading WOW!
Don't miss all the latest news and happenings featured in the Leading Now, Reading WOW! widget near the bottom of the HILwmu.org home page! If you haven't visited lately, here's a sampling of what you've missed:
- Updates about Project activities
- Stories about the impact that high integrity, high fidelity leadership practices are making in schools
- and more!
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How can you help?
Some HIL Project schools are benefiting from the generosity of local businesses and charitable foundations. These donors recognize the good work happening and want to leverage their giving through partnerships poised for success.
We acknowledge with appreciation their support and invite others to join them.
Thank you:
BESCO Water Treatment
Binda Foundation
Laura Bush Foundation for America's Libraries
Metal Flow Corporation
Perrigo Charitable Foundation
Pokagon Fund
Red Line Designs
Scholastic Corporation
United Way
Contact us to learn how individuals and organizations can enhance literacy efforts at HIL Project schools, AND receive recognition for their generosity.
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Upcoming Events
All dates subject to change based on State and National travel and assembly restrictions in place at the time of the event. At all times, we are committed to regularly engaging our teams using creativity and technology as necessary.
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SUMMITS
March 7-18, 2021
Self-Scheduled Asynchronous
Principal & Teacher Leader Summit
May and June 2021
In-person Appreciative Summits
Grand Rapids & Kalamazoo
(Watch for registration information in January)
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FACILITATOR WORKSHOPS
January 14, 2022
February 11, 2022
March 9, 2022
April 21, 2022
May 13, 2022
June 10, 2022
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GELN DIRECTORS PARTNER VIRTUAL MEETINGS
February 24, 2021
April 28, 2022
June 23, 2021
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OTHER LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES
Four Assessment Capabilities:
What they are and why our children would want their teachers to have them
January 18, 2022
If our skillful use of assessment is the lever to support all children to become capable learners, then what are the assessment capabilities our practicing teachers must have from day one?
Learn more and register here.
Building Classroom Libraries:
Essential Instructional Practices in Literacy
This series of courses was created by a subgroup of the ISD Early Literacy Coaching Network to provide support to district literacy leadership teams focused on building and supporting classroom libraries within their school. The courses are aligned with the Essential Instructional Practices in Early and Elementary Literacy.
Click here to learn more.
(To access Building Classroom Libraries courses, you will need an EduPaths account and be logged in.)
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