A School Leader Shares Her 3 Secret Wishes
Fall 2020
Five years ago, I uncovered a magical lamp hidden within the depths of our school. When I rubbed the side of the enchanted object, a genie suddenly appeared and offered to grant me 3 professional wishes.
As a school leader, I was both overjoyed to encounter this incredible tool and overwhelmed by the choices ahead. How would I possibly narrow all of my hopes/dreams down to three?! Ultimately, I focused my wishes on high leverage tools that would positively impact multiple outcomes in service of improving the student experience.
The 3 wishes for our school included:
Wish #1: Assist us with getting the right people on the bus.
Our school aspires to operate by the principles that Collins’ describes in Good to Great.
He writes, “Those who build great organizations make sure they have the right people on the bus and the right people in the key seats before they figure out where to drive the bus. They always think first about who and then about what.”
Wish #2: Support us in discovering an academic throughline.
There are so many important content areas in the student experience that it is impossible to prioritize them all in a way that generates significant improvement.
Instead, we sought to find a single academic throughline that when universally applied, would bring about positive achievement in all content areas.
Together as a school team, we pledged a commitment to literacy instruction. We decided that every student-facing educator, across all content areas and including teacher assistants, would commit to becoming reading and writing teachers.
Wish #3: Help us deliver on the promise of charter schools.
Charter schools are called upon to “be vanguards, laboratories, and an expression of the on-going and vital state interest in the improvement of education.” The legislature writes that the purpose of charters is “to create within the public school system vehicles for innovative learning opportunities to be utilized and evaluated in pilot projects.” Our school seeks to make contributions and impact the broader education landscape.
I thanked the genie for the wishes and along with our school team, began the work ahead.
Spring 2025
Five years after the genie’s visit, our school team and I hosted three conference visits in a one month period including groups of 20-30 people from Leadership RI, the International Lab School Conference, and CLEE’s Principal Residency Network.
Our school was selected for the site visits due to our innovative literacy instruction approach. Through their “day in the life” experience, participants were able to see literacy instruction in action across the content areas, experience our school culture, and interview a variety of stakeholders. One visitor captured this picture of a Science Word Wall because she was incredibly impressed that a science teacher was so engaged in teaching literacy:
The visitor noted,
“The impressive thing was not THAT the educator was teaching vocabulary; science teachers teach vocab all the time.
It was HOW the Compass science teacher taught it.
It was like she believed
literacy itself, not just content, is a science teacher’s job.”
During their visitors’ “Deep Dive with Leadership” session, I pointed out that in the 23-24 school year, The Compass School’s elementary science test achievement rose to the highest scores in our state. These are the students who have had the longest benefit from The Compass School’s investment in the Science of Reading. What’s more, our school’s scores exceeded even the districts who have historically claimed the front-runner slots in Rhode Island.
The Compass School not only took the 1st place position in the percentage of students meeting or exceeding expectations, but they did so by statistically significant numbers. Compass 5th graders students performed 10.5% higher than the second highest district in Rhode Island and 13.6% higher than the third highest in the state.
After we reviewed this data, the visitors inquired about our “secret sauce”. How had our school risen to become the 2024 frontrunner of science performance at the elementary level across the state? Many wondered if we had changed the curriculum. We hadn’t.
I pointed out that five years prior, when the students who tested were just starting out in kindergarten, our school set out to:
Wish #1: Get the right people on the bus. We adjusted our hiring practices and our professional development to get the right people on the bus and in the right seats.
Wish #2: Discover the academic throughline that impacts every subject: literacy. Together, we made a pact to all become literacy teachers and to prioritize teaching our students to read across the content areas.
Wish #3: Deliver on the promise of charter schools. As I discussed our school’s practices with nearly 100 visitors who represented educators and leaders on local, state, and national, and international levels during Spring 2025, I realized that we were fulfilling the promise of what charters were intended to do. Through our visitors’ first hand classroom observations, our published peer-reviewed articles, and our recently released Daring to Read blog,The Compass School team was acting as the innovative vanguard that charters were designed to be.
It is important to remember that while wishes are made instantly, progress and improvement takes time. Visitors saw ideas coming to fruition in Spring 2025 that were planted in Fall 2020. The success reflected a 5 year commitment to our strategy.
As I reflect on our school’s journey, I realize that all three of our wishes have come true. Even more important, I believe that every school is able to achieve incredible results if they follow the pathway that we’ve identified.
An enchanted lamp lies waiting to be discovered in every school. The Genie’s power comes from focused school leadership, skilled educators, and an unwavering focus on schoolwide literacy transformation. Support is available to those who are ready to realize school improvement; discover the next steps to start your school’s journey below!
Next Steps
Learn more about how your school can embark on this professional journey by visiting the Root Literacy Design website today. Explore the individualized pathways for educators, coaches and administrators.
Visit The Compass School in Kingston, RI to see its best practices in action. Click here to learn more about our Educator Open House events.
Through these opportunities, you’ll find evidence-based literacy training, tools and mentorship so that all students learn to read and write.
