Michael Fino

EDLD 6803
Spring 2017
Fieldwork Reflection on Building Relational Trust

These past three years at San Leandro High School have been invaluable. Not only has

the experience given me the chance to see the way a large, comprehensive high school operates,

but Ive worked within a mathematics department that has long struggled to support the diverse

needs of our student population. From a newcomers perspective, it seems that because of the

lack of positive growth in student math scores, leaders in district office may feel they cannot

afford to give teachers in this subject area as much instructional freedom. While I can

understand this approach, an unfortunate consequence of micromanagement is damaged

relational trust. For an organization to operate at maximum efficiency, there needs to be a certain

level of trust between different levels of management. In the case of a district, there needs to be

relational trust between those administrators in district office (superintendent, assistant

superintendent, directors, etc.), administrators at the school sites, and the teachers at the school

sites. When these relationships fall apart, the students will suffer.

Our district adopted a new K-12 mathematics curriculum that is heralded for being 100%

aligned with the common core standards. This being said, our students operate at vastly different

levels, and the achievement gap is enormous. The new curriculum is extremely rigorous, and

offers little in the way of supporting those students that are already below-grade level (at least

25% of students). In addition, the district has required teachers to administer end of module

assessments straight from the curriculum, which has been met with pushback by a large

percentage of mathematics teachers. Earlier in the year, three leaders from district office came to

one of our math department meetings to inform us of the expectations around these assessments.

Our teachers had some very realistic concerns, such as the tremendously high level of rigor of
the tests, their long length, and the concern that giving them would result in losing too much

instructional time. These very real concerns were met with little sympathy, and district

leadership made some questionable comments in response. To hear a district leader say, It cant

really get any worse about the work we are doing is disheartening, to say the least. In this

situation, I definitely learned how not to communicate to the staff that you should value.

From all of these experiences, there are a number of things to consider and learn from as

an educational leader. While I cannot blame district leadership for taking a hard stance on

selecting a new curriculum and initiating a series of end of module assessments, administrators

should always treat their teachers with respect, and ideally utilize their expertise in positive,

constructive ways. I understand the complexity of the us versus them mentality of

administrators versus teachersbut personally, if I had been in the position of power, I would

have sought out the opinions of the strongest mathematics teachers throughout the district before

selecting any curriculum. While they did include some teachers in the textbook adoption

process, in the end did not take their opinions into consideration. I believe forming alliances

with two or three teachers (at each site) that consistently get results in their classes, and then

trusting in these teachers leadership, would be far more effective than micromanaging every

decision. I also believe that the intention of common assessments is in the right placebut the

delivery was misguided and ineffective. Again, if two or three teachers (including a strong

department head) were given some parameters/goalssuch as creating common summative

assessmentsbut were also given the freedom to figure out how to achieve these goals, I think

all parties would have been a lot happier, and the students would benefit.