Kenzie Thompson Leadership Book Review

Working on the Work

An Action Plan for Teachers, Principals, and Superintendents

According to Philip C. Schlechty the author of Working on the Work the key to improved

student performance is improving the quality of student work. Schlechty’s framework for a

WOW school is outlined in his book which includes how teachers, principals, and

superintendents’ roles contribute to the WOW recipe. “Schlechty offers practical guidelines for

redesigning classroom activity so that more students are highly engaged in schoolwork,

developing clear and compelling standards for assessing student work, and making clear

connections between what students are doing and what they are expected to produce” (Schlechty,

2002).

The WOW framework designates that a teacher must be much more than simply an

educator, they must be a leader. Schlechty states that, “the special task of teachers is to engage

students in activities, tasks, assignments, and other undertakings that result in students’ learning

things they need to learn but might not learn unless they are properly led” (Schlechty, 2002).

This means that teachers need to have a democrat type of classroom where students are

volunteering to learn, leading to authentic student engagement.

A central component to the WOW framework is student engagement. According to

Schlechty there are five different types of responses students have to activities; Authentic

engagement, Ritual engagement, Passive compliance, Retreatism, and Rebellion (Schlechty, p. 1,

2002). Authentic engagement is the key to a highly engaged student centered classroom. In a

highly engaged classroom there is little or no rebellion from students when given a task to

complete, and almost all (if not all) the students are authentically engaged in the task at hand.

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Included in chapter one “Making Engagement Central” is a student questionnaire on classroom

engagement that can help the classroom teacher assess the level of their students’ engagement.

Chapter two focuses on “The Wow School”. “In a WOW school, nearly all classes are

highly engaged, and when they are not, teachers make every possible effort to resign the pattern

of activity in the classroom so that more students are authentically engaged” (Schlechty, p. 17,

2002). Schlechty states the following standards should be embedded in a schools’ mission or

vision if they are to indeed be a WOW school. There are twelve standards; one: Patterns of

Engagement, two: Student Achievement, three: Content and Substance, four: Organization of

Knowledge, five: Product focus, six: Clear and Compelling Product, seven: A Safe Environment,

eight: Affirmation of Performances, nine: Affiliation, ten: Novelty and Variety, eleven: Choice,

and the twelfth standard is Authenticity (Schlechty, 2002). These standards are elaborated and

refined clearly in the chapter; there is also a set of questions to help create dialogue with faculty

as well as personal reflection.

Chapters three through five are directly for school faculty; teachers, principals and

superintendents. Schools cannot be successful without student success therefore the WOW

framework begins in the classroom. “the task of the teacher is to design work that is responsive

to student needs and motives, which result in students’ learning those things it is intended they

should learn” (Schlechty, p. 38, 2002). While a teacher’s role of designing is crucial to the WOW

framework there must be supports in place at an administrative level as well. Principals must be

leaders for their schools and authentically implement change by working with teachers, working

on the work and not the teachers themselves (Schlechty, 2002). The overall pressing issue in

structuring schools to adhere to the WOW framework is having leaders “work on the work” itself

and focus on the core business of schools. According to Schlechty the core business of school is

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“the business of inventing schoolwork for students that truly engages their hearts and minds and

results in all students’ learning what they need to lean to be entitled to be called well educated”

(Schlechty, 2002).

Schlechty, C. Phillip. (2002). Working on the Work An Action Plan for Teachers, Principals, and

Superintendents. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.