Explicating Essential Nine of the Second Edition of the NAPDS Nine Essentials

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to describe the key aspects of and provide examples about Essential Nine of the Second Edition of the National Association for Professional Development Schools (NAPDS) Nine Essentials.


Introduction
The purpose of this article is to clarify what the authors of the Second Edition of the NAPDS Nine Essentials (NAPDS, 2021) intended related to Essential Nine (see Table 1).
This article includes a look back on the original, provides a rationale for changes and offers some ideas and examples intended to help partners implement this important Essential.With the publication of Essential Nine, readers now have further background and rationale for each of the Essentials in the second edition.We hope that this, and the previous articles, provides useable information for all of our Professional Development Schools (PDS) partners and others engaged in school university partnership work.
We begin by reemphasizing the importance of context and by acknowledging the broad array of differences that exist in every partnership setting.We take a small space to remind readers that words, the words used in almost every document, may have different meanings depending on the culture and demographics of your partnership.Since meanings matter, we urge everyone using the Nine Essentials to discuss exactly what is meant by the words they use locally.And finally, please do not hesitate to reach out to members of the authoring team or NAPDS Leadership should you need further clarification on any of the Nine Essentials.
Essential Nine concerns separate, but related ideas: resources that support and maintain partnership and celebratory traditions that enhance a partnership community by pulling partners closer together.How these ideas play out depends totally on the context in which they are implemented.What follows here is a brief explanation of each concept and one or two working examples.The original text of Essential Nine advises partners to consider leadership, time, space, people, money, materials, expertise and workload when thinking about dedicated and shared resources.The new edition is meant chiefly to clarify and extend the original text.

Key aspects of Essential Nine Leadership
As we have discussed in several of the previous articles in this series (see Burns et al., 2022;Coler et al., 2022;Cosenza et al., 2022;Goree et al., 2022;Polly et al., in press-a, b;Stoicovy et al., 2022;Zenkov et al., 2021) and other publications (see Burns & Garin, 2020), leadership in a PDS is shared among all of the participants.Using a definition first coined by Kenneth Sirotnik (1995), we assert that leadership is basically the "exercise of responsible influence."Those three words, exercise, responsible and influence may at first seem simple, but each has special meaning here.By exercise we mean that leadership is always dynamic and ongoing.It is not passive nor is it simply administrative or bureaucratic as it is in some schools and colleges.By responsible we mean that leadership is guided by the collective values of the stakeholders and by the four pillars of Professional Development Schools which are (1) the improvement of P-12 student learning; (2) the joint engagement in teacher education activities; (3) the promotion of professional growth of all its participants and (4) the construction of knowledge through intentional, synergistic research endeavors (Holmes Partnership, 2007).By influence, we mean that each of us has the capacity to have an effect on the understanding, character development or actions of others.

PDSP
Leadership in a PDS is shared much the way leadership is shared in a community.All members of the PDS community have freedom and responsibility to lead whether we are talking about deans and directors, site coordinators, mentor teachers, field supervisors or others who consider themselves part of the partnership.Indeed, we have seen many cases where PDS teacher candidates take on leadership responsibilities within the partnership effort.Leadership in a partnership community is necessarily "flat" so that all members feel empowered to influence the well-being of the setting.Leadership like we are describing, ensures that all participants feel a sense of ownership in the partnership.Leadership also includes buying into the idea that collaboration can support professional learning for all participants (Burns, Yendol-Hoppey, & Jacobs, 2015).

Time
One major reason a PDS requires more resources is that collaboration is at the heart of partnership.Collaboration takes time, and time, an old adage advises us, is money.A successful partnership requires trusting, amicable and respectful relationships that can only be cultivated when partners work side by side in the effort to create and maintain a PDS community.Having common goals is not enough.Making time for inquiry, reflection and shared decision-making, while uncommon in conventional school settings, is indispensable in a PDS.This kind of activity is only possible when there is ample time for all PDS partners to work together.
School-university partnerships are resource hungry.In most cases, working in partnership is more costly than working independently.It is reasonable to ask why this is so.A Professional Development School is not more costly because it requires "extra" work, but because it involves a different way of working.It requires thinking differently about what it means to be a classroom teacher, administrator or professor.Our mutual goals remain the same: better learning for children, better professional development for educators, better teacher preparation and a constant drive to create and renew school communities, but the ways in which we think and operate are shaped in large part by the partnership itself.

Space
We do not want to argue the necessity for in-person, face to face collaboration exclusively although many of our colleagues prefer that to relying on technology.They find inspiration in being engaged together much the way workout partners affirm one another in their quest to be fit.Good partners find it difficult, if not impossible, to create meaningful relationships without sharing clinical spaces in schools for teacher candidates or on college campuses for specialized professional development.The pandemic notwithstanding, partners are energized when they pool their talents, ideas and actions in common spaces.Dedicated classrooms or spaces in a PDS school for methods classes and meetings are important strategically and symbolically as a PDS center or home base.Finally, having a common space also allows teacher candidates to be more present within the school district.

People
Everyone within a PDS can and should be thought of as its greatest resource.Our thoughts may go immediately to only those people in positions of authority or only those with specialized expertise or experience as resources, but that conception of important human resources is too narrow.Of course, key figures in the school organization and the college organization are important resources, but no more so than mentor teachers, field Revised Essential 9: resources and traditions supervisors or teacher candidates themselves.In conventional arrangements, teacher candidates in clinical experiences may be seen as liabilities, taking up time and energy from the experienced staff.We argue that the opposite is true in a PDS.More important than money and materials are the shared human resources contributed by each partner.It is the time, talent and dedicated commitment of school-based and college-based educators working together that make-or-break partnership.Even partnerships that lack materials and resources have continued to thrive because of the educators who go above and beyond any contracted expectations to enable the partnership to thrive.The greatest resource of all may be in the hearts of those individuals committed to making the partnership work.
Teacher candidates as value-added resources.It is especially important to recognize teacher candidates as valued resources within the partnership.We have heard assertions that teacher candidates can be a burden on a school and district because they lack the skill and expertise of more experienced teachers.However, the opposite is true in a PDS when teacher candidates are given responsibilities and tasks appropriate to their stage of development and when they are provided with support through supervision and coaching.Teacher candidates are capable of accomplishing so much for children and for other teachers within the community.Their motivation to succeed and their enthusiasm infuse energy into a PDS.There is no limit to their potential under the right conditions.Seeing teacher candidates as assets is consistent with community values and sets the stage for high expectations.
One condition we point to as important is that they be placed, whenever possible, in cohorts.A group or team of teacher candidates has much more potential to exercise responsible influence than one or two candidates in a school or district.In cohorts, candidates have opportunities to collaborate among themselves and with other teachers in a setting.Operating as a group, teacher candidates learn the value of collaboration, cooperation and teamwork.It better prepares them to build community within a faculty.
In one PDS, the community deliberately sets out to establish a cohort identity with their interns.When teacher candidates think of themselves as such, they are expected to think about issues beyond themselves, a primary virtue of community membership.Being a member of a cohort enlarges a clinical experience.It provides practice for taking on responsibilities within a community.
We know of cohorts whose identity was shaped by their collective efforts to help others.For example, one cohort of teacher candidates raised funds for a Ronald MacDonald House during their time in the partnership.Another cohort collected books for the African Library Project (cite).Still another cohort spent Saturdays making blankets for orphanages in the USA and South America.These activities not only evoked a sense of pride, but they also helped to shape candidates' understanding of what it means to be a teacher.Working together as teachers developed a sense of pride in themselves, in their PDS and in their profession in each cohort.These experiences added to candidates' understanding of what it means to collaborate as an educational community.According to Zeichner (2021), PDS partnerships should include having candidates connect with all facets of the broader communities that a school or district serves.

Money
The best financial and material resources are hard wired.They are predictable.Those who control and administer partnership budgets are responsible for ensuring a funding stream that is reliable.Dedicated resources are those a partnership can count on year after year.Seed money, start-up funds and grants are wonderful and welcome, but too often when that money runs out, the partnership runs down.The funding that partnerships require must be sustainable.The most secure partnerships have protected budget lines in school districts and colleges.

PDSP
We know of places where there has been pushback on funding partnerships by deans, superintendents and by some school and university faculty members.Universities may be the biggest culprit because traditional budget models rely on surpluses from field experiences, mainly student teaching, to support other college activities.The simple truth is that if all of the student tuition and fees collected from student teaching could be dedicated to fund a partnership, then there would be a very reliable and sustainable source of revenue.The case for dedicating these funds has been argued more than once.Securing funding, especially in multipurpose colleges of education, is almost always a struggle.
School district personnel have also questioned the traditional budget model.Teachers and tax payers want to know how universities justify the measly stipends paid to mentor or cooperating teachers when teacher candidates often spend one or two semesters exclusively embedded in the school.One experienced and thoughtful classroom teacher once remarked, "We host teacher candidates and provide almost all of the training.They pay regular tuition to the university, not to us.Where does the money go?" There is probably no single greater issue than trust in a successful partnership.And there is no greater way to undermine trust than to be opaque about how dedicated resources are used.Said another way, partnerships must be transparent about what funds are available and about how they are allocated.It is not only important for partners to negotiate dedicated resources but also to make clear how they are used.To ensure trust, communication mechanisms must be in place to demonstrate to all those working in partnership how dedicated resources are used.
To be fair, it should be said that school and college budgets are often under stress.Some budget cuts occur outside of our control.When they are severe, PDS budgets are most at risk.

Recording and reporting PDS progress
With regard to finance and expenditures, it is critically important that a PDS demonstrates how additional funding has resulted in better teaching, learning and schooling.Collaboration should certainly include collaborative inquiry into how student learning is better, how teachers' professional growth is better and how the school community is better because of the support being provided.This task can be difficult and complex, but there should be a plan for assessing success even before the PDS is operational.(use the Back to the Future protocol) Too often partners wait until a PDS has been operating for some years before they decide to evaluate its goodness.Evaluation is an afterthought when there should be a plan for assessing results very early in the partnership's development.Those who work in PDSs know how effective they can be, but a partnership needs more than testimonials.Partnership efforts need evidence of success and that evidence needs to be shared with all of the stakeholders.
Consider one study that compared and contrasted student achievement and learning in classrooms where candidates and mentor teachers co-taught, with student achievement and learning in traditional classrooms (Badiali, 2010).Researchers found no significant differences in reading and math test results suggesting that having teacher candidates did not diminish the effectiveness of instruction.
In an effort to measure parent satisfaction with PDS interns, another partnership made a practice of sending out annual parent satisfaction surveys.Survey results were analyzed and reported at public school board meetings (Nolan, Amond, & Grove, 2006).Another PDS surveyed mentor teachers to determine what, if any influence, working in a PDS had on their own knowledge of curriculum and instruction (Badiali, Nolan, Zembal-Saul, & Manno, 2010).Mentors reported that their instruction had changed for the better as a result of participating in the PDS.

Revised Essential 9: resources and traditions
Where money is concerned, it is necessary and responsible practice to evaluate its impact on members of the community.Studying ourselves and reporting the results of our studies holds us accountable for the responsible use of funds.In addition, enough cannot be said about the power of reporting the results of collaborative inquiries at local, state and national meetings and conventions.To every extent possible, partnership teams should present such results together.Resources that support members of the K-12 faculty and staff for this purpose are critical to satisfying and legitimizing the mission of PDSs.

Expertise
The amount of expertise within a school university partnership should never be underestimated or under explored.Principals, teachers, instructors, professors, candidates and children themselves hold a bottomless reservoir of knowledge and expertise.Roland Barth, one of the country's most renowned educators, makes this point in his book Improving Schools from Within (Barth, 1999).Partnerships do not work from a deficit mindset that asserts schools must be fixed.That is not the notion of a professional development school.Professional development through leading and learning remains central to the PDS mission.
It is important for those inside a PDS partnership to acknowledge the richness of their environment.It is a good practice to call upon experts "outside" of the PDS to enhance the knowledge and skills of those "inside" of the PDS.School districts, colleges, universities and other community members can lend much to the knowledge and skills of a PDS community.Parents and guardians have expertise to share.Community leaders, policymakers and knowledgeable others have expertise to share.
Just a word of caution when calling on outside experts; they must be prepared to usefully engage with those professionals inside the PDS.They must have some orientation as to who partners are, what they believe and how what is being communicated will be used to complement the mission of a PDS.Without proper guidance, bringing in outsiders to inform the PDS, things can go wrong.For example, a law professor, asked to come speak to teacher candidates about legal aspects of teacher liability and negligence, began his talk by saying, "If you are only going to be teachers, here's what you should know about liability laws."That expert was never invited back.
Another issue with orienting "outside" experts is that they may have little knowledge of the classroom or the life of teaching.Without that knowledge, they may take a condescending tone to their audience.

Shared resources
To every extent possible, all of the resources mentioned above should be the joint responsibility of each partner.Likewise, partners should make every effort to determine resource needs before going into a fiscal year, realizing that there will be unforeseen circumstances that will require attention.Partnerships are dynamic and new challenges develop sometimes without notice.Unexpected changes in enrollment, unexpected changes in personnel, and unexpected changes in state policies can all require rethinking how funds will be allocated.Further, a common lexicon and a shared understanding of key concepts and terms are essential (Parker, Zenkov, & Dennis, 2019).
Many PDS partnerships find ways to share professionals.A good example from one PDS partnership is how the college funds two or three first year teachers in the school district in exchange for the full-time services of two or three reassigned veteran teachers.While the college pays the salaries of first year teachers, they are contracted with the school district.Reassigned teachers who volunteer to work in the PDS retain their contracts with the district, but work directly through the college as supervisors in the PDS.This arrangement is made each year with the understanding that classroom teachers who are reassigned will return to the classroom after two or three years.The arrangement is a win, win, win.It provides employment for recent PDS graduates even if that employment is temporary.It provides a rich professional development experience for veteran teachers who assume the role of university supervisor.It also assists the PDS community by placing knowledgeable insiders among the PDS leadership.
Essential Nine concerns two separate, but related ideas.We have discussed resources that support and maintain partnership.Now we turn to celebratory traditions that enhance a partnership community by pulling partners closer together.How these ideas play out depends totally on the context in which they are implemented.What follows here is a brief explanation of the concept of celebrations and traditions that serve to hold a PDS together.Activities that demonstrate that a partnership is one unique community are essential to building a strong culture.They can serve to unify participating educators by adding coherence and purpose to their efforts.
It can be argued that every school has a unique culture.Experienced educators can visit a building and sense a vibe by observing and talking with the school's inhabitants.School cultures evolve, influenced by factors like administrative initiatives, faculty personalities, student demographics and the geographic and demographic nature of the surrounding community.Mixed together, these and other characteristics influence what a school becomes.School board policies, curriculum choices and personal politics all play a role in influencing schools.Cultures are made of such things, but these "things" are not stagnant nor do they stand alone.They are dynamic and animated threads woven together by all of the human relationships embedded in them.
We all want to live and work and learn in healthy cultures.For that reason, it makes sense to be thoughtful and deliberate about how to create and support a partnership culture that makes attaining its goals possible.Acknowledging accomplishments is particularly important during these stressful times for teachers and administrators.Good things happen every day in schools that should be recognized and brought to light.Strong partnerships establish celebrations and traditions that sustain a healthy culture with the community.Traditions, celebrations and other events acknowledge success and serve to bind a community together.They illustrate and commemorate individual and community achievements.There are traditions and ceremonies that evolve within partnership communities that serve to honor those members who exemplify its values.Let us provide a few examples.Some Professional Development Schools have an opening ceremony.In one setting all PDS mentors, all principals, all supervisors and all teacher candidates gather together a few days before school begins.The school district superintendent and the dean of the college address the group, affirming the importance of the partnership.PDS interns are welcomed not as student teachers, but as teachers who are fully expected to act as responsible professionals from the first day they arrive in school.Experienced mentors, former PDS interns and college faculty offer words of encouragement and hope for a productive new school year.The opening ceremony is an event that binds the community together as it brings together school district and college/university partners and sets the stage for the school year ahead.It reminds mentors, interns, and all PDS partners of the value of PDSs and its impact on student and teacher learning.As part of the meeting, mentors stand side by side with their interns and recite a pledge very similar to the pledge used by the National Education Association.
During the school year, the partnership may offer special retreats for mentor teachers.The agendas and activities for these retreats are created collaboratively with a focus on learning.Mentors and supervisors often team together to share instructional activities that prove to be powerful for their students.

Revised Essential 9: resources and traditions
Holiday celebrations are another means to bring a sense of community to the PDS.Their purpose is mostly social so holiday parties play an important role in building relationships.These celebrations emphasize togetherness and highlight points of pride and accomplishment in a PDS.They are jointly planned and executed by school and college members.
Another occasion for celebration and community building is sharing the results of classroom inquiry.Some PDSs have interns, and mentors share the results of their inquiries in small groups or by department or grade level, by school or by multiple schools organized as a conference.Sharing the results of classroom research is enlightening in that the questions explored are always relevant to the local setting.
Another example worth mentioning is the "Pinning Ceremony."The pinning ceremony is certainly one of the most important traditions and celebrations in one PDS as the circle of children pin is used as a tangible symbol of the teacher candidate's formal entry into the teaching profession.When the mentor teacher publicly secures the pin to their intern (pins), they are welcoming them into teaching as colleagues and equals.Pinning represents a special moment that culminates a year-long PDS experience for interns.An example of a tradition and celebration occurs when, at the end of the school year, all PDS interns stand before the PDS community and recite a final pledge.It is simply this: In the presence of our families, colleagues, and the PDS community, we take this oath in recognition of the honor and privilege of becoming a teacher.We arrive at the threshold of our chosen profession, pledging to preserve our humility, integrity, and all the values which brought us to the practice of teaching.We will engage in honest self-reflection, striving for excellence, but acknowledging our limitations, and caring for ourselves as we care for all students and their families.We will seek to teach the whole child, rather than merely dispense disconnected pieces of knowledge, committing to a partnership with our students that empowers them and demonstrates empathy and respect for their effort to learn.We will always care, learn continuously, and comfort members of our community.

Concluding thoughts
We close this explication of Essential Nine acknowledging that there is much more to say.We hope that the explanation provided here and these few examples have been helpful for those wishing to begin a school university partnership and those partnerships who wish to consider ways to get stronger.
In closing, we return to an important theme.Antecedents matter.At times, the most recent edition of the Nine Essentials mixes metaphors.Words like community, school, resources and organization may all conjure up different images to different audiences.Those images derive from different realities and experiences in the workplace.To some readers, the word school means a large multi-story concrete building located in the middle of a city, while others think of a school as a small, church-like structure in an open field, populated by only a handful of teachers and students.The same might be said when thinking of colleges.Size, physical conditions, numbers of students, geographic location, policy orientations and many other conditions of context exist.It is true that schools as places have things in common, but they also are culturally unique.What background and experience the reader brings to any written description matters when interpreting the Nine Essentials.
While our realities may differ in their understanding of what a school, college or partnership is, the concept of community can be far less clear.Communities differ substantially from organizations (Sergiovanni, 1994); they have different characteristics.Organizations are governed by rules and regulations designed to enable efficiency and accountability.Communities are guided by collective beliefs and moral virtues that guide norms for behavior.By necessity, schools are organizations with legal responsibilities set down by the States.School "communities" may or may not grow inside these organizations depending on the make-up and leadership of those who work in them.A PDS is not an organization, but a community formed by mutual agreement of the educators who serve it.
A newly minted PhD and former principal we know once joined a university faculty because in her job interview, they described themselves as a close-knit community who valued collaboration and personal relationships.She was encouraged to think she would be joining such a group.Once hired, she found those characteristics to be far, far different from the elementary school she had left.Her comment after working through the first semester was "Collaboration?This is not collaboration.Meeting together once a week is not collaboration.They should have seen our school community." To extend our discussion of Essential Nine, we would like to suggest that you use the Future Protocol aka Back to the Future (BTTF) developed by Scott Murphy (2002), which is in Appendix A. It can also be found on the National School Reform Faculty web site at www. nsrfharmony.org.BTTF is an entry level form of scenario planning.If you believe it to be too basic, the literature on scenario planning is plentiful.
The goals of BTTF include discussion around and clarification of the vision for your partnership.We have cautioned in other essentials that settings can oversimplify the goals of a PDS by thinking of it as a teacher preparation model.It is more.Teacher preparation is one goal, but it shares status and importance with quality and equitable curriculum and instruction, professional development for practicing teachers and school (meant here to include P-12 and college) renewal (see Goodlad, 1994).Focusing on this four-part mission, the BTTF protocol can guide purposeful action.
Like many of the protocols suggested by the National Reform Faculty, BTTF requires a learning mindset and some patience with the process.There are suggestions for how team members should comport themselves in this simulation.Those facilitating BTTF would benefit by doing a "dry run" with a group of colleagues before using it with partners who may not have developed working relationships.This protocol can actually be fun as well as useful to discipline a planning conversation.Please feel free to modify BTTF to fit the needs of your setting.