Uncommon Schools: At Work, Practice Puts Perfection in Reach

Katie Yezzi:

IN 2011, I started a public charter elementary school as the principal. My organization, Uncommon Schools, manages charter schools for the bottom line, which in our case is student achievement. Some 92 percent of my school's students live below the poverty line, and the urgency of our faculty's work is what motivates us to be great every day.

But the overwhelming need to be great can also swallow people up. If teachers are underperforming, or if student achievement appears to be plateauing, teachers can become paralyzed and fall prey to self-doubt or frustration.

We have found an antidote to this sense of defeat: practicing and preparing outside the classroom. Practice, I have found, is one of the most powerful ways to improve performance.

Last March, as I was preparing to conduct midyear reviews with the teachers, my managing director, Doug Lemov, asked me if I wanted to practice any of them in advance. I immediately took him up on the opportunity to practice one review of a teacher who was struggling. I was dreading the review. I didn't want to be harsh, but I also didn't want to water down the message and give this teacher a false impression. I knew that I wasn't ready to have that conversation, so Doug and I practiced.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at December 1, 2012 3:08 AM
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