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Leisa Morton-Standish, PhD

Director of Elementary Education

Dr. Leisa Morton-Standish is the Director of Elementary Education at the North American Division.

She has taught in small rural schools as well as in large urban schools. She has taught on the east and west coasts of the U.S, both in and out of the Adventist education system, and overseas. She has also spent a considerable part of her career teaching at universities, including the University of Maryland, Washington Adventist University and Macquarie University.

Leisa holds a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Maryland, an MA in Education from California State University and a Diploma in Education from Avondale College.

Leisa is committed to Christ and the ideals of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Her first love is the classroom where she can share her passion for learning and her love for Jesus.

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ecently, I met a remarkable person. Her name is Debbie and she is an elementary school principal.  Eight years ago she arrived at a failing school in Idaho, from a comfortable administrative desk job. Her task, should she choose to accept it, was to turn around the school which was slated to be closed, by the state, at the end of the academic year.

Today she oversees a thriving school in a high transition, low socioeconomic status area. How did she do it? One of the key initiatives she used in her turnaround strategy was to work with her staff and school community to become certified as a High Reliability School (HRS).

With the support of her staff, the leadership team utilized the HRS framework to show how best practices work together. They gathered data, submitted evidence and met indicators to empower the community to measure their progress on attaining five increasing levels of reliability:

Using the framework and indicators, her school developed permanent, positive and significant impacts on student achievement by synthesizing their successful initiatives into one harmonious system.

Debbie explains that, “The Marzano HRS™ framework did not add a new initiative to school efforts but rather supported what initiatives they had in place, highlighted what they were doing well and areas they needed to work on.”

She gives schools four suggestions for starting the journey to becoming a HRS:

  1. Provide ongoing support — “Providing more training, like short video lessons, would be helpful for those small bursts of learning that we do in our schools. We continually need refreshers and instruction that pushes us to do better.”
  2. Emphasize collaboration — “The most important cultural change for many schools is increased teacher collaboration. Professional learning communities and other teacher teams that collaborate frequently on key learning.”
  3. Empower students — “When students know what they are learning and how they will know when they have learned it.”
  4. Manage expectations — “Timelines, clear goals, patience, and perseverance are needed as you take the time to learn and provide the ownership and clarity your staff and students deserve.”

For more information about HRS and how they are part of the standards-based journey contact your conference for the password to the presentation by Dr. Tammy Heflebower from Marzano Resources for North American Division schools:

Video: https://vimeo.com/500193409

Padlet: https://padlet.com/tammy_heflebower/7thDay

 

REFERNCES:

https://www.marzanoresources.com/

Meeting notes with Idaho principal on January 18, 2021

 

 

 

 

High Reliability Schools:
A Personal Journey

5

Competency-Based Education

4

Standards-Referenced Reporting

3

Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum

2

Effective Teaching in Every Classroom

1

Safe, Supportive, & Collaborative Culture

RESOURCE

HRS
7th Day Adventists

Padlet

Figure 1: The Marzano High Reliability Schools™ Framework

SPRING 2021

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