Lucy West has been a mover and shaker in the world of education for over 30 years. Since the mid-nineties, Ms. West has been at the forefront of the movement to increase classroom discourse and infuse it with rigor and equity. Ms. West began her career in New York City Public Schools as a second grade teacher. Later, while serving the city as the Director of Mathematics for Community School District 2, Lucy invented a capacity building process for cultivating teacher leaders and highly-skilled mathematics coaches that was the inspiration for other coaching initiatives in districts as far reaching as Boston and San Diego. As the Deputy Superintendent of Region 9 in NYC (a Region serving close to 200 schools), she designed systems to scale up the coaching model she had crafted for District 2 and brokered collaborations that brought universities into partnership with the Region. Her partnership work with Bank Street College resulted in bringing dozens of highly-skilled teachers into the South Bronx– one of the nation’s poorest “hard-to-staff” congressional districts. Lucy also served as a teacher supervisor with a Columbia University Professional Development School, an instructor within Bank Street College, and an Assistant Principal of PS 234 (one of NYC’s most successful and acclaimed schools).

Lucy is a nationally known speaker on professional development practices as well as being a master mathematics coach, author, and the founder and Director of Metamorphosis Teaching Learning Communities

Lucy is also the author of Adding Talk To The Equation, and co-author of Content-Focused Coaching, and Agents Of Change

 

Lucy has 34 years in education, and didn’t start until early 30s, after being an actress and doing social work, and how those careers were excellent preparation for going into education. (2:00)

How Lucy was able to help kids in highly dysfunctional homes focus and excel at school (5:36)

Why she doesn’t have many of the typical “success” stories about former students (9:43)

Lucy loves traveling, and has been to Africa, the jungles of Peru, and many other places, and what she has learned about education in other countries has radically changed her opinions about American education (13:11)

Lucy’s career path in education, after moving from acting to teaching after a divorce, along with several stories about her experiences in education (15:29)

Her favorite story from those early years involves getting a grant for $3.5 million (29:00)

Knowing the difference between an adaptive problem and a mechanical problem is what helped Lucy take a school ranked 16^th out of 32 to being ranked #1 (30:14)

Culture eats strategy for breakfast every day – Peter Drucker (35:25)

How Lucy’s book, Content-Focused Coaching: Transforming Mathematics Lessons, came into being (37:55)

The success of her book led to Lucy becoming an in-demand consultant, and then she helped NYC redesign its schools under Mayor Bloomberg (40:00)

When she started redesigning NYC schools, no Bank Street teachers were working in the 9^th District in the Bronx, one of the lowest performing school districts in the nation. She pushed the Bank Street administration to change that, and now there are 43 Bank Street teachers in th9th District. (47:39)

You can be a school leader from any position, including teacher. You don’t need an official administrative title to lead at your school, and many people in leadership positions aren’t actually leading (54:00)

How Metamorphosis came about and what it’s all about (57:45)

Get to know your people really well, and work on the school culture (1:05:50)

Some books that have had a big impact on Lucy (1:06:45)

School leadership is collaborative, not mechanical (1:08:00)

If Lucy had a time machine, here’s the advice she would go back and give her younger self when she was just starting out in administration (1:09:21)

 

Books mentioned in this episode

Content-Focused Coaching: Transforming Mathematics Lessons by Lucy West and Fritz C. Staub

Agents of Change: How Content Coaching Transforms Teaching and Learning by Lucy West and Antonia Cameron

Adding Talk to the Equation: Discussion and Delivery in Mathematics by Lucy West

Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change by Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler

Crucial Accountability: Tools for Resolving Violated Expectations, Broken Commitments, and Bad Behavior by Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler

Crucial Conversations Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High by Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler

Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success by Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler

The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World by Ronald A. Heifetz, Marty Linsky, and Alexander Grashow

 

Connect with Lucy West

‎@LucyWestTLC

Metamorphosis TLC

 

 

About EducatorsLead:

Educators Lead is a podcast created to help launch educators into the next level of leadership. This show is for you if you are interested in educational leadership as an assistant principal, principal, superintendent, teacher or someone who hopes to be a school leader one day. Educators Lead offers inspiration and practical advice to help you lead more effectively. Jay Willis interviews school leaders weekly to discuss why and when these educators made the decision to move into school leadership, challenges along the journey, and stories that made it all worthwhile. Educators Lead is a great resource for any educator looking to make a greater impact.

Educate. Inspire. Lead.

http://www.educatorslead.com