Nichelle Woodson:
I think with this work disposition that you have to have is I’m going to get in there and I’m going to just roll up my sleeves and I’m going to partner up and shoulder up with my fellow educators, with the students, with families, because we all have this shared outcome of students succeeding.

Alec Patton:
This is High Tech High Unboxed. I’m Alec Patton, and that was the voice of Nichelle Woodson, Director of Freshman Success at CT RISE Network. She and Peter Lorinser, whose engagement manager at CT RISE Network, spoke to Stacey Caillier. Stacey is Director of the Center for Research on Equity and Innovation at the High Tech High Graduate School of Education. Stacey wanted to talk to Nichelle and Peter because CT RISE is doing very cool stuff in the world of continuous improvement and the way they think about the work is both clear-eyed and creative. I’ll let Stacey take it from here.

Stacey Caillier:
Nichelle and Peter, this is a long time coming. I’ve been a huge fan of Connecticut RISE’s work for years and have learned so much from you all about how to focus the work of improvement to what is most essential and how to build improvement into schools in sustainable ways. So just to give a little context for folks listening, CT RISE leads several improvement networks, one called the Core Network, which focuses on supporting Connecticut schools to improve on-track rates and post-secondary success, and a freshman focused network that serves 20 schools across Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, and New York, with a focus on improving the percentage of students who are on-track in ninth grade to graduate. And schools in your networks have improved ninth grade on-track by an average of 19 percentage points and up to 29 percentage points for students who are black, latinx, multilingual, or served by special education.
We know this matters because work done by the Chicago Consortium and documented in the fabulous book, The Make or Break Year, has shown that success in ninth grade is the biggest predictor of high school graduation and going to college and earning a degree. So Nichelle and Peter are both steeped in this freshmen success work. Nichelle Woodson leads the freshmen success team within CT RISE’s Core Network and Peter Lorinser works on the engagement team that supports a variety of partnerships as CT RISE is spreading its work to new districts and states. So welcome both. I’m so happy that we get to have this conversation today. So I wanted to start by giving you both a chance to introduce yourselves and share any identity markers that shape how you show up in the world and to this work. Nichelle, would you like to go first?

Nichelle Woodson:
Hi Stacey. My name is Nichelle Woodson and I am the Director of Freshman Success at the RISE Network. So when you asked about identity markers that really spoke to me, three automatically popped into my head as I think about how I show up in the world and also how I show up in this work. So the first one that came to mind was that I’m a black woman and in every space that I occupy, my blackness is evident and it has so much influence in the work that I do. The second marker that popped into my mind was that I am a mother of a black boy who brings me so much joy and as I do this work, I’m always thinking about what would Caden deserve? What would I want for Caden? And as a parent, you always want what’s the best for your child. So as I enter this work on a daily basis, I always approach it with the thinking of what’s best for children.
So for me, less than excellence is unacceptable for Caden so less than excellence in the work of how I show up is unacceptable for me. And then the third identity marker that popped into my head was that I’m an immigrant. I immigrated from the West Indies, Trinidad, when I was five years old and though I grew up and was educated here in the United States, I was raised in a Trinidadian home with West Indian values. And these dual worlds for me have great influence on how I navigate spaces that I occupy and how I show up in those spaces. So again, thank you for having me.

Stacey Caillier:
Thank you so much, Nichelle for sharing all that. Peter?

Peter Lorinser:
I will grab the idea of three identity markers. First, I’m a white man and I’m really aware of what that means in this world and how it influences the way I see the world. Second, I am a foster dad, an adoptive dad, and I say that because if you spend some time with me, not long after you get to know me, you’ll get to know my children and that story. I am parenting children that have different identity markers than my own, and I think that’s provided a new perspective that’s really transformed the way I approach the world. And lastly, I’m a Christian man. I’m a very faithful man and that’s a fundamental part of who I am. It guides my family and how we approach the world and it’s just a critical identity marker for me. So one, I’m a white man, two foster, an adoptive dad, and three a Christian. And I think one of those I was born with and two of those I chose. And I think that’s an important way that I’ve come to define myself in this world.

Stacey Caillier:
All right. Well, we are just going to jump right in because you both have some super compelling stories of whole school transformation that I want to dig into and elevate. And I especially love the stories you’re about to share because they exemplify what Eva Mejia in a previous podcast talked about as disproportionate positive impact. This idea that we’re not trying to just rise all boats, we’re after the change that has the biggest impact on the groups of students we most need to serve by providing some very targeted supports and closing equity gaps. So Nichelle, when we last spoke, you talked about a school who went from 47% of students being on-track in 2019 to 65% on-track in 2023 and they’re still going. And they did this by focusing on students who needed the most support. In this case, English language learners in their school. Can you tell us about Hartford High and how they got those results?

Nichelle Woodson:
Yes. So I love talking about Hartford Public High School because I’m so very impressed by the work that they do and also really proud of the growth that they’ve made over the past few years. And also when I started at RISE, they were one of my schools that I had in my portfolio. So just seeing their trajectory has really made me smile for sure. So there were several key things that the staff and administration at Hartford Public implemented to see the closing of those academic gaps for their English language learner students. So one of the things I think that the administration did that was extremely important before they got to some of those technical and tactical things was they did some intentional work around adult mindset. I watched the team as they made moves to ensure that the adults on that team had growth mindsets and they wanted to make sure that fixed mindsets was not just permeating through that team.
So the administration and the team of educators made intentional space within their team meetings to talk about beliefs that they knew they had and that they had to have in order to start to see positive shifts in student outcomes. And as they did the work, you started to see and also hear different language in what the team believed. So you started to hear language where all students were going to achieve at high levels and talking about what supports the team needed to do to get to all students. And you started to hear language around confronting and disrupting systemic inequities that were within their locus of control. And then you also started to hear the team of adults start to hold themselves and each other accountable for student outcomes. So they had to start there first with the mindsets and then as they did that work on mindsets, the work with the RISE coach and the grade nine AP, they started to dig into subgroup data because until you do that mindset work, talking about subgroups could be really challenging and difficult, right?
Because it can bring some things out and forces you to hold up a mirror. So in those conversations with talking about subgroup data, they started to uncover gaps that they saw with some of their subgroup populations. And a big gap that they noticed was with their L students and also some other students, that those gaps were just increasing. So they were ready to say, “Okay, what supports can we put into place that we can use to help our struggling students specifically with this focus on the L population?” So two things happened here that I feel had tremendous impact on this particular student population. So the first thing is that the team started to look at what can we do through extended day programming? So what supports could we put in place for these students that were outside of the core class? What was really amazing when they first started the EDP programs, which was happening after school, they realized, you know what? We really need to focus on building those connections with the students before we can even touch the academics.
So they shifted and they went from focusing on this afterschool program to what they can do in the school day outside of the core classes. So they created these clubs and what was really amazing was at the end of the year when we spoke to the students, all of the students that we spoke to, what they said is that, “You know what? The grade nine experience for us was really awesome because the teachers took time to get to know me.” We built relationships, they felt valued, they felt seen. And because the teachers took that time in those clubs to set aside the academics and really focus on these connections, those relationships, those connections allowed students to feel valued and seen. Which in turn connected them more with the school, which in turn improved their academic outcomes. And then the second thing that I thought was really impressive and had impact on closing this gap was the administration asked the teachers, what do you need as educators and where are you struggling?
And almost unanimously they said, “Time. We need time to collaborate. We don’t have that time as general ed and special ed teachers to actually talk and co-plan.” So admin was like, “Okay, we’re going to remove that obstacle then.” And they used time in their on-track data team meetings to provide space for those teachers to collaborate, to co-plan. So now you had general ed and special ed teachers able to plan together on how they were going to support these students in core classrooms. So what I really, really loved and was impressed with with this work is that they made this intentional shift toward more distributed leadership. So the admin trusted the teachers to design the work that they needed to implement to help their students. And I talked about earlier, holding themselves accountable because they had that autonomy because they had that trust from the admin to share this work, it was so powerful that you got to see them holding themselves and each other accountable for their student outcomes.

Stacey Caillier:
Yeah, that’s amazing. I really appreciate, and I know that this is something that CT RISE really focuses on. How can you get this adult work of collaborating on this to live within the meeting structures? Don’t make it something extra on people’s plate, build it in. And then I also am really struck by, I think I’ve already talked with you both about recommending this great book called Shattering Inequities, where they talk about this mindset shift of going from, can our students do it to what conditions need to be in place so that all students… And that so beautifully mirrors the mindset shift that you just talked about that folks went through at Hartford High. So I just love all of that.
I want to dig in a little bit too into what you were saying about the use of data and starting to get comfortable with looking at subgroup data because I think that’s a huge strength of CT RISEs work. Just you all are so good at supporting schools to make use of data, and we know schools come to this work with varying degrees of comfort using data and having conversations about it, especially when it comes to data that’s been disaggregated by race. Can you talk about what have you all learned about how to support schools in using data in a meaningful way? What are the big challenges you’ve encountered and how do you support folks to get moving with data?

Nichelle Woodson:
Peter, you want to start or you want me to start?

Peter Lorinser:
I’ll start with generally because I think part of it is what we’ve learned about supporting schools with data is you know the saying, “forest for the trees” and the idea that different people need to look at different parts. And oftentimes what we’ve experienced is we need to look at both the forest and the trees, but different people need to look at data at different times and different views. And so I think we’ve often talked about how do you narrow the focus with data and do you look at the right data at the right time? And so I think Nichelle, in your story when you were talking about it, this is a common theme that we have across all of our schools that we support, is we want teachers and educators to have data on their individual students so they can look at the students or the trees if you will, if continue the metaphor.
But then we also want them to be able to look at subgroups and we want them to be able to see a little bit more the forest. And then sometimes we work with our principals or assistant principals or district representatives. What’s the forest? What’s the entire school community? And so I think it’s a mistake to do only one of those things, you need to do all three of them. I was just working with a school this past week, they’re talking about individual students, they’re doing KidTalk protocol, and in that the administrator noticed, hey, all of the students we’ve selected are multi-language learner students. We need to look at that and we need to dig into that a little bit more with the mindset to build on this mindset conversation, a mindset that we promote is that anybody working in grade nine, we want them to have this mindset. It’s our job as educators to help prevent student failure even if it means altering our own practice.
So we do sessions and we try to influence people to think that way because what we’re trying to do is you look at your data responsive to it and like Nichelle said, and have a team that can do it or that can make changes based off of that. So I think that’s my general conversation about data. I think one of the things, and Nichelle, this might lead a little bit more into you, is we’ve learned that frankly the systems out there that educators have access to in terms of data are not meeting their needs. And so within our core network and in increasingly more schools, we’ve been able to provide a data hub or a data platform that helps our educators do those three things we just said. It helps them look at individual students, it helps them look at subgroups or subpopulations of students, look at trends over time, and then it helps the administrator look broader too around what’s the forest. So Nichelle, do you want to speak a little bit to how our Core Network uses the data hub?

Nichelle Woodson:
Yeah, for sure. So there are a few things that we have in place when we are engaging in data conversations with our school partners. So we know that data could be overwhelming sometimes, and at times educators are like, wait a minute, where do I start? What do I look at? What do I need to talk about? What’s this data telling me? And these questions that they’re asking themselves over and over again that there were a couple of things that we started to do. The first thing that we implemented with our data tools, and this is I’m going to lead up to the data hub, but when we had our dashboards, it’s like, okay, we need to make sure that educators are getting comfortable with discussing disaggregated data and talking about subgroups and identifying inequities and how can they do that? Because sometimes it’s not an organic conversation where you just innately start to have these kinds of conversations.
So we shared with our partners protocols and the protocols gave them a structured way to start to engage in these conversations about different groups of students or in individual students and also allow them to move to action. So we have this data, so what is the data, and now what? The protocols allow them to get to that, “Now what?”, that actionable next step of when you are talking about data. So the protocols help with that and fast-forward a couple of years. So now we’ve introduced the data hub to our partners, which is an amazing tool which allows all of the educators to have easy access to data and provides it to them in a way that is user-friendly and also allows them to get to that “Now what?”, part, that actionable part. And then the thing, the beautiful tool or resource that my team and I, we call it our bible, is we call it the strategic data calendar.

Stacey Caillier:
I love that. I love that data calendar so much.

Nichelle Woodson:
Yeah, because it allows educators… And it’s for everybody. It’s not just for the grade nine AP, everybody has access to the strategic data calendar because it allows you to take all of those questions of when should I be talking about this particular data set? Who should I be talking about? Where am I getting this data? It’s all right there laid out for you on a yearly plan. Every month you get to see, you should be talking about this group of students using this data and here’s a protocol that will help you to engage in that conversation. So that strategic data calendar has just been a game changer, not just for us as freshmen success coaches, but also for our school partners because now we don’t even need to do that. We used to help them calendar out when they should be having certain conversations about certain students, we don’t even need to do that. We come into the meetings and they’re like, “Here’s the calendar. We planned it out already”, because they have access to this strategic data calendar.

Peter Lorinser:
I think one of the things that we’ve been able to learn is there’s certain times of the year that you should be looking at certain data points, and so we’re just now getting close to the end of the quarter. And so we’ve been pushing, looking at attendance in the beginning of the year because hey, you don’t have grades data yet, but you do know if the kids are in your building or out of your building or you do know if they’re in your class or out of your class. And so we have a bunch of protocols around attendance and now that we’re getting close to the end of quarter, now we have protocols around end of quarter moves that you need to make or you’re on the CUSP students.
And so I think we, through working with a lot of different schools over the past many years, have been able to figure out what’s the right data at the right time and right conversation. And we have protocols for just about every conversation you want to have. And I think to Nichelle’s point, we’ve put that in the hands of our schools and educators to say, “Hey, this is how you could look at that data, but you need to tailor it to your own school.”

Nichelle Woodson:
And because it’s in the hub, you don’t have to go looking for that data and collate and analyze it. You don’t have to do that. It’s right there at the click of the button for you in the hub.

Stacey Caillier:
Yeah. You all have done such a great job of shaping the path, making it as simple as possible for people to have access to the data and then have ways of discussing it. This podcast came about because I went to your session at the Carnegie Summit and was like, “Oh my gosh, tell me more about that strategic data calendar and can I get a copy?” Because just this idea of being so clear with folks about what you’re looking at, when, and here’s the tool you can use to do that, or a protocol. I just thought it was so of course, so intuitive and beautiful and simple, and the thing you’re describing is also not this complicated 20 page document. It’s like a two-sider, that’s really clear. A principal or a team could have it tacked up on their wall and know exactly what they need to access.

Nichelle Woodson:
Exactly.

Stacey Caillier:
I also just love protocols so, so much, and I really appreciate how I’ve looked at y’all’s protocols and I really love how there’s such a great way of distributing the conversation, making sure that everybody’s being heard, but also helping teams not get stuck in analysis paralysis, which is what can happen when people look at data. I think we’ve all coached schools or been involved in projects where people spend so long looking at the data that it’s just like, well, what are you going to do? So I just think you’ve really found this sweet spot of getting people immersed, but also we can get moving with very little data and with simple data.

Peter Lorinser:
I think protocols, I think they protect us from ourselves.

Stacey Caillier:
Totally. Yes.

Peter Lorinser:
We do protocols in meetings so that we can stay on task because we’re human and we want to dig into this thing or that thing and veer to that conversation and protocols like, “Nope, okay, let’s focus here”, because there’s a million different things people are looking at or thinking about, and we have protocols to just almost acknowledge we’re human and we need to protect ourselves.

Stacey Caillier:
Yeah, I used to make a joke that was a little unpopular, so I stopped making it, but I might start making it again when I would introduce protocols for the first time with a group, be like, and I’m guessing some of you are thinking, oh, I hate protocols. Why do we have to have these structured conversations? The protocols are for you. You are why we have the protocols, friend. Yeah. Okay. But Peter, I want to get to your story because you’ve also talked about a school that you’re especially proud of. Burncoat High School in Worcester. Did I say it right? I’ve been getting coaching on how to say it.

Peter Lorinser:
You even threw in a Massachusetts accent there. So yeah

Stacey Caillier:
I know, I got coaching from my East Coast friends about how to say Worcester, Massachusetts and Burncoat joined your Freshman Focus Network and they improved their ninth grade on-track rates by nine percentage points in a single year. Can you tell us their story and why you are excited about it?

Peter Lorinser:
Yeah. So I’m from the Midwest and I moved out to go to college in Worcester and having my family struggle with how to pronounce Worcester for many years.

Stacey Caillier:
And I can tell you’re from the Midwest, you said out.

Peter Lorinser:
Oh, yeah.

Stacey Caillier:
I lived in Minneapolis for a while, so I hear you out.

Peter Lorinser:
Yeah, if you get me talking about out or bagels or anything like that, you’ll start… But yeah, no, so Worcester, Burncoat, when we first started working with Burncoat, it was actually during the school year of 2021, ’22, and it was fully remote. At the end of that year, they were able to get to about 56% of on-track rate, and then we knew the work wasn’t done so we continued and they were one of our first schools that joined our Freshman Focus Network for the entirety of the ’22, ’23 school year. And by the end of that, so about June of last year, they got to about 65% grade nine students passing all courses. And this year they have a goal of 70%. And I’m really excited by the work they’re doing. That 9% jump is exciting and awesome, but I would say the reason they come to mind as a school that I want to celebrate is just they’re willing to make changes based on what they’re seeing.
They’re looking at their data, like what we’re talking about. They’re looking at the data and they’re making changes to make sure they’re better serving their students and they’ve created a culture within their school and their administration where they’re nimble enough to make those changes. So for example, they identified a group of students this past year that they thought needed extra supports and they’ve identified where those students were coming from, their feeder middle school. And so they developed a partnership with their middle school in making sure that they can create a pathway for those students. And they developed it at Patriot Academy that is specifically tailored to a group of students that they’ve identified that would benefit from further supports from adults. And the exciting part about that is that happened probably in June of last year. And in March of that same year, they attended a school visit with our network to a school in our core network, our Platt High School. And they saw that work of teaming and they saw that structure and they said, “Hey, maybe that would work for our school in our context.”
And so they quickly amped up and got ready. And they’ve launched it the beginning of this year, and it’s still really early in the process, but they’re really excited about what that Patriot Academy has been able to do, both within supporting the students that are part of the Patriot Academy, but also how it’s improved the culture of the entire grade nine team. That’s one example, one change they’re making. But I think the reason they came to mind is they’ve just embraced this innovative thinking and they look at their data, they recognize the need and they’re willing to make changes. And it’s not a small change to change the entire team and structure and restaff and do all these things, but they’ve embraced that mindset I talked about earlier, that they think it’s their job to alter the conditions to make sure that they’re supporting their students. And I think that’s super important and it’s exciting for us as an intermediary or support because not only do we work with them as a high school, we’re now working with four other high schools within that district.
And so we’ve expanded our footprint within there and we are working together in supporting them as a network of five schools within their district, but also as a network of 20 schools within our entire network. And I just think that they’re the type of school community that I just get excited to work with. I get excited to coach because I know that when they see a good idea, they’re going to think about it, figure out how they can integrate it, and then look at the data to figure out is that working within our context for our students? And if it is, we’re going to continue it. If it’s not, well, we’re going to abandon it and we’re going to shift practice, but we’re going to learn from it. That’s the whole idea of improvement science in my mind when we work with schools is, are you going to be able to make changes that are better for your students by looking at the performance you’ve had in the past couple of years?

Stacey Caillier:
There’s a couple of things that really strike me from that story. One is the importance of building a bridge between that eighth grade and ninth grade experience. I think a lot about those transition points and just how overwhelming that is for students and how much of a gift it probably feels like to be like, hey, we see you even before you’re here and we have something special to support you. So just building that bridge feels so critical. And then I’ve recently talked about just the dispositions that feel so critical to improvement and curiosity and humility being two key ones. And when you described that Burncoat saw how another school was doing something, immediately wanted to take that back and try to make it work in their own context. That just speaks to their disposition as learners, the curiosity to learn from other folks, and also the humility to be like, “We haven’t figured this all out, so let’s try some stuff and we’ll adapt it as we go. So I just love and appreciate that story in so many ways.”

Peter Lorinser:
I feel like a theme and not just data, it’s mindsets too, right? We’ve talked about that. And I love the piece Willing to be Disturbed by Margaret Wheatley, which we’ve used in a lot of our circles and my favorite line of that is, “We have to be willing to admit that we’re not capable of figuring things out alone.”

Stacey Caillier:
That’s right.

Peter Lorinser:
And I think that’s the whole idea of we create networks and we’re trying to do that within our Freshman Focus Network, which is 20 schools, but also Nichelle, we work with 10 schools in our core network. We’re constantly trying to connect the dots between them because they’re doing the real work and we see our job as making sure that we’re really creating connections between them.

Stacey Caillier:
Yep. For sure. So we just shared some stories. Now, I want to illuminate some of the conditions that are making success possible. We’ve already surfaced some of them, like a focus on data to eliminate gaps and develop targeted supports, carving out time for adults to collaborate, making sure that that time together feels powerful and purposeful as sometimes it doesn’t unless we have some really helpful structures, a shift towards more distributed leadership. Shifting in mindsets, what else have you all learned is essential to ensuring ninth grade success?

Peter Lorinser:
I think for grade nine success, for a school community to see success, it in some ways boils down, to me, in three different ways. One, you need to know how your students are performing, and that’s both qualitative and quantitative data. But we need to make sure that our schools have the right data infrastructure so they know how their students are performing. And then two, like with the Hartford story, we need to make sure that our teachers have collaborative space and time to talk about that data. I think it is strange to me that some schools don’t have that time because of how necessary it is for a group of teachers and educators to connect and to work with one another. And then the third thing is they need to be able to make changes based on what they discover. And so one of the things that I’ve always, I love The Make or Break Year book, and we use it a lot in our summer reading to help people understand the importance of grade nine.
But my favorite part of working with grade nine is this idea that they say in the book, “It’s not a policy or program, it’s people.” And this work is about people. We support people, we support educators, and through trial and error, as the book goes that schools figured out in Chicago what worked best for their students. Well, some of those things work well for our students out here in Connecticut and Northeast and some we’ve had to adopt and change. So I think at the end of the day, for me, for grade nine success, it’s making sure that you have the right people with the right mindsets to do this work.

Stacey Caillier:
Anything you want to add, Nichelle?

Nichelle Woodson:
Just one other thing to add on to what Peter said is that this work isn’t easy. We know that, right? This is tough work, challenging work, but it’s so rewarding when you get to see your students just progress with their outcomes. So I think with this work disposition that you have to have is I’m going to get in there and I’m going to just roll up my sleeves and I’m going to partner up and shoulder up with my fellow educators, with the students, with families, because we all have this shared outcome of students succeeding. And the other thing is that you need to check your ego at the door. You cannot come in here with your ego. And be open and flexible and also have and be open to innovation. I think that’s really important for the educators that are doing this work. And just coming as you’re innovating, as you’re open to innovation, think outside of the box because we can’t continue to do the same things that we’ve been doing time after time because we saw some of those things didn’t work. So let’s think differently. Let’s think outside that box.

Stacey Caillier:
Yeah, for sure. I feel like I could ask 20 questions based on that, but I’m going to pivot to something else that I really want to make sure we talk about. And this one’s for you, Nichelle, because in a previous conversation you talked about this shift that you’ve all made in your thinking and your work with schools from being a facilitator to a coach. And I’d love to hear just what led to that shift and what has that meant for how you all work with schools?

Nichelle Woodson:
Oh yeah, the shift. So when I first started work at RISE a little over six years ago, I came in… Well, I wasn’t a facilitator, but I was on the team of facilitators. And ask Peter and I, we did this work together. We were facilitators and we were all things to all people. And when I say “all”, I mean all. Even though we were focused on freshmen success, we were in all of the meetings. We were meeting with admin across grade levels. So not just grade nine, grade 10, 11 and grade 12 administrators. We were facilitating meetings and school trainings and we were up for all of it. We’re like, “Okay”, when I said we rolled up our sleeves, we rolled up our sleeves. That’s what we were doing. But we had to rethink that because it was like, is this sustainable? And what impact is that actually having being all things to all people and doing all of these things really led to this mindset in our schools that this is RISE work.
So the work that the educators were doing, sometimes it felt like this extra work for them. And I have to give credit to a former Hartford public assistant principal, Basiana Parkinson, that started the mindset work that I talked about earlier in the Hartford Public story, that she started to shift that language. And she started to say, “This isn’t RISE work, but this is the right work.”This is our work. This is not RISE work. This is embedded, integrated into the fabric of who we are as this school. So a couple of years ago, we on our team internally made this intentional shift from facilitation and being facilitators to coaching and more specifically coaching grade nine administrators, because we saw that the grade nine administrators, they really were the drivers of the bus.
They were the ones who were going to lead the team and rally their teams in doing this right work, in doing the work of their school. So our RISE coaches, our freshmen success coaches, they work with the grade nine AP and the APs then in turn work with their team leaders and the on-track data teams to implement the freshmen success work. So our goal really now is to build the capacity of the people on our school teams. So really to help our school partners to build these systems and structures that outlast people. So that’s where that shift is from RISE work. So you’re not dependent on a RISE coach, you’re not dependent on a particular AP because we know people shift. So you have to work on building those systems and structures. And we saw that that has really had the significant and positive impact on student outcomes and the work that teams are doing.

Stacey Caillier:
Yeah, I feel like that’s a very common trajectory for folks that are supporting improvement work in schools. We started out that way too. We were like, “We’re going to facilitate all the meetings. We’ll be there. We got you, don’t worry”. And then we had to get ourselves out because we were like, we’re not building capacity at the school. We got to shift how we’re thinking about this. But I love you guys went a step further in terms of, and we’re just going to meet with the APs, we’re going to help them prep, we’re going to help them reflect, but we’re coaches, which I just really love.
And Peter, I remember in the workshop that you all led at the Carnegie Summit, you both talked about this realization that like, oh, okay, our job is to support school and district leaders to grow as improvers and to coach those leaders, not the whole team. And I’m just curious because I think so many of us are trying to figure out how do we best engage leadership in this work because leadership is so critical for making it happen and sustaining it, and just what have you all learned about how to engage school and district leaders? What works, what doesn’t? Epic fails are welcome.

Peter Lorinser:
I think first, these are very busy people and they are running a school or a district. And so I think the first thing that we’ve learned is we need to just understand that, right? And understand that there’s a lot of pressure on them. And I think as Nichelle was talking about when we first started, we really wanted to be in the weeds with our schools. And I think that honestly comes from a very good place. We wanted to support because of an acknowledgement of all of it is important. We weren’t saying, “Oh, this meeting isn’t important. That’s why we’re not there.” We’re saying, “It is important, but we need to focus ourselves and we need to focus our partnership.” So how do we engage leadership? I think the first thing that we try to do is we try to come alongside them and learn from them and understand their context and lots of listening.
And each of our schools within our core network, within the Freshman Focus Network, they’re all different. And we talk a lot about, at least from Freshman Focus Network, we talk a lot about conditions and how do you establish conditions? And then we start talking about different strategies that may or may not help them. And we have some schools that say like, “Hey, we need to really build our teacher to student partnerships, relationships, that we need to build that culture.” And so then as a coach, I say, “Okay, that’s great. Why are you doing that? How are you going to do that? How are you going to know it’s going to work? And then here’s a strategy you could use to help facilitate that.” And so I think it’s a lot of listening and understanding about what they need as a school community. We have a goal across our entire Freshman Focus Network is grade nine on-track improvement, to increase that percentage of on-track.
But then underneath that umbrella, each of our schools has specific priorities intended to address specific needs of their school community. And to me, that’s super important because we can’t just say, “Accept this way of doing things and it will improve your grade nine outcomes.” Because what we’ve learned and what we’ve talked about today, it’s mindsets, it’s people, it’s the structures, it’s the systems. And so a lot of it is we need to empower the people at the school level, at the district level, to make good decisions that are guided by this idea of continuous improvement. Hopefully we’re all in this to continuously improve. And we always talk about little CI versus Big CI, and I love just focusing more of my work on little CI. Do you have the mindset that if it’s working, how do you expand it? And if it’s not working, how do you curtail that or change the way you’re doing things?
To me, in my work with a lot of different schools, that’s what I value the most, right? Do they look at their data? Do they know what’s working, what’s not? And are they willing to make changes? And that process is sometimes messy, to be honest with you. We like to think it’s going to be this perfect PDSA cycle and we’re going to go through the process. Sometimes that’s just not reality. And that’s why I care more about are we willing to roll up our sleeves, do the work together? And at the end of the day, I think the last thing I’ll say on this is I see the success, the Burncoat success story, I’m there to support them. I think that’s Dan, he’s the Dean of Burncoat, it’s his story. It’s their story, it’s their improvement, it’s their students. My job is to empower them and guide them and help bring in different experiences that might influence and support them as they go.

Stacey Caillier:
I want to just build on something that you said during that, which was helping people reflect on what’s working and how to do more of it, what’s not working, and how to stop doing that thing. Because I think a lot of times schools end up in this initiative overload space where they’re just layering idea upon idea upon idea, and we’re not letting go of anything. And so it makes sense why this folks in schools can just feel overwhelmed with all the various things that they’re trying. And I think that discipline of identifying what can we actually stop doing? What’s something that we tried and it just didn’t work? And we’re going to be real and honest about that.
That is something that requires coaching because really hard to let go of the thing that you’re invested in or the thing that you’ve been doing for a long time and maybe even have forgotten why you do it or haven’t necessarily questioned if it’s effective or not. So I just want to put a little pin on that idea of part of the value of being a coach, I think, is that you can shine a light on the things that people can stop doing and create a little more coherence for themselves and their system.

Peter Lorinser:
Yeah, I think within all our core network schools, we love the on-track data team, a group of educators that meet to talk about students on a regular basis. And I think when we share that idea with our Freshman Focus Network schools that have different systems already. The last thing that they want me to tell them is, “You need to do more. You need to add another meeting.”

Stacey Caillier:
They don’t like that?

Peter Lorinser:
Right? Yeah. You have no time already. Let me say, “You need to do this” with the no time that you already don’t have. But I think that the process though is important where I’m saying, “Yes, I believe that structure needs to exist, and here’s why.” Now let me talk to you what structures do exist? Might they meet the same need? And if they don’t, then maybe you need to influence your entire practices to create that structure. But something’s got to give, and that takes time. That doesn’t happen in one month of partnership. That takes time for them to build up to get there. We’ve had schools in our network that they did their team meetings after school last year, and they figured out a way to make that work. It’s not ideal, but they made it work, but then it was effective.
And so then the teachers and the administrators, “Hey, how do we structure our day so we can do that during the day because that’s more respective of our time.” And then that’s a process that goes in that direction. But yeah, I think it’s a mistake to say all of these things you need to add on to your already busy schedules. And that’s why we work with change makers or administrators, people that can make the decisions within the school building. And when we have to, we work with district people to make sure that those obstacles are removed if there’s something standing in the way of good, strong practice.

Stacey Caillier:
Yeah. Well, and on this thread of empowering folks within schools to do the work, I also want to get into one of the things that I know you all are very excited about, which is the evolution of your on-track coaches. So Nichelle, can you share with us who are those people? What do they do and why do you think they’re so critical?

Nichelle Woodson:
So each school has two on-track coaches, and each has a caseload of about 60 freshmen students who have been through metrics looking at their eighth grade GPA and their ADA have been identified as students that may struggle with that transition into grade nine. So what supports can we put in place to help them with that transition to and through grade nine. So one of those supports are these amazing on-track coaches and the on-track coaches, they work with their caseload of 60 students and they partner with the educators.
They’re part of the on-track data teams. They are the connection between school and home because they also work closely with the parents, the families, and the on-track coach is really a value add to the grade nine work. So last year, I’ll just talk a little bit about some of the stats that we saw last year with our on-track coaches. So I think about high 80s, mid 80s of their caseload were high risk of vulnerable students, coming in with these indicators that they may struggle. And what we saw was that they finished off on their caseload of students across the network higher than the overall on-track rate of the overall grade nine in the network. So that shows you the value that they add to the support of your grade nine students.
Really, really being that advocate, that cheerleader, that supporter, at times that nudger, that challenger to the students, like, “You can do this. You’re going to do this.” And offering spaces for students just to succeed. So the on-track coach to me is invaluable to this work. And Peter will talk a little bit about, because not all of the schools that we work with, the schools that he works with have on-track coaches, but to me, you can see the value add that they have to the freshmen success work.

Stacey Caillier:
And these are school personnel. They’re not like RISE employees, they’re like school personnel embedded in that school.

Nichelle Woodson:
Yeah. So we have two different sets of on-track coaches. They all do the same work. Three of our schools in the network have RISE employed on-track coaches, but they are in the schools. So they are located and they report to the school every single day and work with their caseload of students. And then the six other schools that we partner with, they are district employed, and they also work, of course with the schools, but they’re employed by the district.

Peter Lorinser:
And I think, like Nichelle says our core network, we have two per school. And I think within our Freshman Focus Network, not all of them have on-track coaches. Some of them do, and some of them have been influenced by our support system. Said like, “Oh, we need that position.” And to Nichelle’s point, we’ve seen a lot of success with it. But then we have some other schools that say like, “Okay, we don’t have the budget or personnel to develop an on-track coach. What is the purpose of them? And how might we staff creatively to make sure that a certain subset of students that have been identified as having some indicators that they need more support during the transition, how do we effectively staff and support those students?”
And I think that is the central idea of the work. I think in an ideal world, yes, all schools have on-track coaches because it’s that important of a transition. But when they don’t, I think the push that we make is you need to make sure that you have an extra set of eyes or adults on a certain subset of students that just need a little bit more support as that transition goes.

Stacey Caillier:
Yeah.

Nichelle Woodson:
And I’m glad Peter said, “In an ideal world.” So I hope we get to that ideal world where we do see on-track coaches in all schools, because like I said, the support that they offer students is just so invaluable.

Peter Lorinser:
And frankly, it’s not just grade nine. We’ve seen some of our schools say like, “Hey, we need grade 10 on-track coaches.” I think it’s this idea that there’s so much value add when you put another adult just having eyes on a group of students, giving them the nudges when they need them. And I think the high schools should be doing that. We should be supporting our students in that way.

Stacey Caillier:
Yeah. And a lot of our high schools are not structured in a way to facilitate those kinds of meaningful relationships with a small group of students. I’m thinking back to when I was teaching high school and saw 200 kids a day, it was really hard to focus on making sure I was really attending to those 50 or so. So yeah. Okay. We’re nearing the home stretch. I have two last questions. One is that I know that I’m always amazed by how much we are constantly learning and relearning the same lesson in a way that’s just like, ugh, for real? I’m learning this again? And I’m curious, what’s a thing that you keep relearning?

Nichelle Woodson:
I’ll start. So for me, definitely something that we continue to relearn is our coaching model. We talked about moving from facilitator to where we are now. Now, there were iterations before that. So the coaching model just continues to evolve, and I know that there’ll be other iterations of this coaching model that we have because we have to be responsive as our schools continue to evolve and the educational landscape continues to evolve. We as freshman success coaches, we need to evolve with that changing. So we have to continue to be nimble. We have to continue to be flexible and continue asking our schools to innovate. We as coaches need to continue to innovate on how we work with them. So for me, that’s what we keep relearning,

Peter Lorinser:
And I think in a different way, but very similar. The work is never finished. And I think that’s something I’ve had to remind myself when I first got into education, in my early 20s, an aspiring teacher and I was like, yep, we’re going to do this. All achievement gaps are going to be done. They’re going to be closed. And I think the reality is about a decade plus later, we’re still doing the work. And sometimes that can feel frustrating. And why do we still have these gaps? Why do we still see these issues? I think one of the things I have to keep on reminding myself is that this isn’t a perfect world and we need to continue to just do our best, put the right foot in front of the next, and making sure that we’re doing the work that our students deserve. And that we’re making sure that the right people are in front of those students.
And we’re making sure that the system’s willing to adapt to meet the needs of students. And sometimes we get that right. Sometimes we have no idea how to predict anything that’s going to come up. We don’t actually know in 10 years what the best school’s going to look like for our students. But if we continue to do this work and basically fill education with a bunch of people that are willing to make good decisions on the behalf of students to support them, and we’re willing to listen to them, then I think we’re going to make a lot of progress. So I think I’ve had to remind myself when I get frustrated at times that we’re having the same conversations, I’m having the same conversations over and over, that this work, frankly, it’s never finished. And that’s okay. That’s okay to be that it’s never finished because there’s always work to be done.

Stacey Caillier:
Yeah. The two words that are coming to mind for me are “relentless optimism.” That’s what this work requires.

Nichelle Woodson:
Yeah. Yes.

Peter Lorinser:
Well, Ted Lasso is used to inspire us.

Nichelle Woodson:
Yeah.

Stacey Caillier:
Yeah. Oh my gosh, I wish I had a Ted lasso quote I could pull out my pocket. I’m going to have one. I’m going to have one by the end of this. Okay.

Peter Lorinser:
There you go.

Stacey Caillier:
Do you have any final words of advice, wisdom, anything you wish you would’ve known when you began?

Nichelle Woodson:
For sure. So building off of what Peter’s talked about, relearning, I think coming into this work, definitely, I was like, “Okay, let’s go. We got to make moves. We got to have on-track rates at this level by this time.” But having to take a step back and remember that, you know what? This isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon. So this work takes time when you do it with intentionality and thoughtfulness, and when you’re working with people, you have to do that. So for me, this work, it has to happen. So because it’s the marathon, I have my marathon shoes ready and I have my sneakers laced up and I’m ready for that run.

Peter Lorinser:
So I’m going to continue with that Nichelle, I think as a runner. And I wear a running watch every day, and I run when I can and I try and I’ve trained for marathons, I’ve done marathons. And I think there’s always this analogy that I’ll connect with is, no matter how much I run today, tomorrow morning when I wake up, my watch will say zero. Every morning. And it doesn’t mean that what I did the day before didn’t help me build the muscle that I need for the race, but it does mean that we are starting over in some ways, in some fashion every day. And so I think it’s a good reminder that each day we need to do the work.
It all builds on each other, but to Nichelle’s point, it is a marathon. It’s not a sprint, and it doesn’t happen overnight. And I think some of this work that we’ve been doing, the schools that we talked about, I foresee a world where we might be coaching those same schools in 10 years. And that’s okay, right? If a football team or baseball team, any sports team won a championship one year, we don’t say the next year, they don’t need a coach. You always need a coach. You always need somebody to support you along the way. And I think that’s the thing I’ve learned. I used to talk about this work of I want the school to be good without me. Sure, I do want that. But I also think that they can benefit from a coach every year that they do this work.

Stacey Caillier:
Yeah. Okay. And now I have to just pile on with this running metaphor that we have going which Nichelle started.

Peter Lorinser:
I think I’ll go for a run right after.

Stacey Caillier:
Yeah. As somebody who really does not like to run and has only been a runner at one point in my life, which is when I would run every morning to a donut shop. I think the other lesson in here is you got to find ways to celebrate the small wins every day. Whether it’s a donut or whatever, maybe not a donut every day. That was probably not the healthiest choice that I was making. But celebrating those small wins and having a coach who can celebrate those with you and make you see them is also really, really helpful. So I’m going to end with two quotes.
One, which is when we last met, you both shared how one of the big ideas from the book Learning to Improve drives your work. And the quote was, “Continuous improvement requires both the courage to act boldly and the humility to know our work is never complete.” So you both are bold and humble, and I appreciate you and your work so much in the world. And because somebody did bring up Ted Lasso, in the words of Higgins, “Human beings are never going to be perfect. The best we can do is to keep asking for help and accepting it when we can. And if we keep doing that, we’ll always be moving toward better.”

Peter Lorinser:
Higgins might be my favorite.

Stacey Caillier:
Mic drop. Mic drop, Higgins.

Peter Lorinser:
Absolutely. I’ll let him take it.

Stacey Caillier:
All right. Thank you all.

Peter Lorinser:
Thank you, Stacey. Thanks for having us.

Nichelle Woodson:
Thank you, Stacey.

Alec Patton:
High Tech High Unboxed is hosted and edited by me, Alec Patton. Our theme music is by Brother Herschel. Huge thanks to Nichelle Woodson, Peter Lorinser, and Stacey Caillier for this conversation. We’ve got a great collection of links to CT RISE, as well as other improvement resources in our show notes. Thanks for listening.