Getting Unstuck: Breaking the Mold of the U.S. High School – an Interview with Rona Wilensky and Ivette Visbal
“Big changes fail because you haven’t built in time for teachers to do what needs to be done – so they can be successful. You didn’t include reviews and reexamination so that you can look and see what went right and what went wrong. And then teachers say, ‘Well, I don’t want to do that I don’t want to be a failure. I don’t want you know, it’s terrible. It’s not working.’ And they close the book on that new curriculum, put it on the shelf and go back to doing what they’re comfortable with. That’s how almost every change initiative and schools go because we don’t support the process.”
How might you think differently about how your organization works and approaches change?
What questions could you be asking your organization about how it approaches getting results and achieving impact on behalf of those it serves?
In this interview, we’ll hear how educators Rona Wilensky, Ivette Visbal, and their team wrestled with these questions when they decided to break the mold of the traditional high school. Rona is the founding and former principal of New Vista, an alternative high school in Boulder, Colorado, and Ivette Visbal is currently the school’s Dean of Students.
Listen for
• What were the major reform themes that Rona and her team felt needed to be emblematic of their new high school?
• What are the chief criteria for hiring teachers at the school?
• How are student choice and active learning manifested throughout the school day?
• What is the goal and outcome of integrating students across grade levels and ages as opposed to separating them by the traditional class distinctions of freshman, sophomore and so on?
• Relative to time and pace, what do you have to be mindful of as a leader, or as anyone involved in implementing a complex change?
• To what degree did Rona comply with district and state mandates, so that she could focus on what New Vista felt was its critical work?
• How did Rona and Ivette handle resistance to change?
“We made sure that whatever changes we were bringing were not just fads – something the nation is talking about – ‘Let’s do this for two to three years.’ Whatever we did, whatever changes we implemented, are going to be long lasting because we knew they were going to take a long time to get there.”
For reflection
Revisit the two questions we posed above:
Having listened to Rona and Ivette, how might you think differently about how your organization works and approaches change?
What questions could you be asking your organization about how it approaches getting results and achieving impact on behalf of those it serves?