A week in your life as an MSC might find you making the case to your principal for how prevention programs are linked to academic success or chatting in the hall with a health teacher about how her classes are going. It might find you attending a PTA meeting to address parents' concerns about the school's growing bullying problem or reviewing school data on suspensions. Or it might find you hosting a meeting for a visiting MSC to find out how the program you just selected works in practice. You may consider these tasks just part of your job. But what you are actually doing is being a "change agent" -- a person who facilitates the integration of prevention into middle schools, inspiring and guiding others to do things differently.

To effectively do your job, you must play many different and important roles: catalyst and motivator for change, advocate or champion of the cause, collaborator, resource provider, and progress monitor. You must also be the leader and guide of the overall change process. But what does it mean to be an effective change agent in each of these roles? To help answer this question, we interviewed several MSCs from around the country.

• Catalyst and Motivator for Change. In this role, you demonstrate the need for prevention in your school and district by providing current local data. You inspire and guide stakeholders to create a shared vision for prevention for which everyone takes ownership, you then make sure that prevention efforts stay on track

  • Karen Smith (MSC from Houston, Texas) demonstrated the need for prevention after she had established positive, trusting relationships with teachers and administrators. She coordinated a districtwide survey of developmental assets. Then she presented the results to staff, identifying strengths and focusing on the positive things staff were already doing before identifying gaps for improvement in the district.

  • Penelope Williams (MSC from Milwaukee, Wisc.) gathered local, district, and school data and conducted focus groups of parents and teachers to identify their prevention priorities and concerns.

• Advocate or Champion of the Cause. In this role, you develop administrative support for your prevention initiative and create ongoing partnerships with parents and community members. You nurture these relationships throughout program planning and implementation.

  • Kathleen Johnson (MSC from Warren, Penn.) recognized the importance of involving key stakeholders, so she formed a Safe School Team that included top administrators, teachers, community agencies, parents, and the district grant writer to help shape her prevention plan. She also actively participates in related community-wide boards and committees, ensuring that prevention has high visibility.

  • Penelope Williams (MSC from Milwaukee, Wisc.) met with the board of governance at one of her schools (a group that includes parents, staff, community partners, and students) to explain how prevention goals can align with board of governance and school goals as part of comprehensive school reform. She also meets regularly with principals to ask how she is doing at meeting the school goals.

• Collaborator. In this role, you must communicate with, listen to, and collaborate with key stakeholders about decisions, concerns, and progress. According to Joseph Durlak, a researcher in the Department of Psychology at Loyola University in Chicago, "Collaboration with local staff to ensure their meaningful input into program operations works to increase their sense of program ownership, produces a better ecological fit for the program, and generally increases administrative and technical support for the program. Without collaboration with staff, the [school] is less likely to be committed and prepared to mobilize needed resources."

  • Karen Smith (MSC from Houston, Texas) spent a year and a half building positive relationships with administration and staff to develop buy-in before implementing a program. Teachers shared concerns and ideas about what they were looking for in an ideal program before selecting one.

  • Kathleen Johnson (MSC from Warren, Penn.) goes to PTA meetings to discuss prevention programs and offers training to parents. She also attends meetings of the safety committee for each of her middle schools.

• Resource Provider. In this role, you provide ongoing, relevant, and quality training and technical assistance to implementers so that they can do the best job possible. You also help identify ways to provide other necessary resources, such as funding and additional staff.

  • Kathleen Johnson (MSC from Warren, Penn.) worked with her district grant writer to get additional funding to support the prevention initiatives. She participated in a training of trainers (TOT) for her prevention program, then trained 350 teachers in it.

  • Karen Smith (MSC from Houston, Texas), whose prevention program is taught by district police officers, sent a campus officer and counselor to a TOT. They will be involved in training additional officers who will implement the research-based program.

• Progress Monitor: In this role you establish a system for collecting information about the implementation process. Firsthand knowledge of what's going on will improve the support and technical assistance you provide and increase the likelihood that you will use your resources effectively. Monitoring may also reveal program activities that should be adapted or refined to better meet the needs of the community. Effective change agents support implementation over time and foster a planned, periodic process by which staff reevaluate whether the current programs are meeting evolving needs. According to the authors of Promoting Social and Emotional Learning, "The longer a program is in place, the more it will have to be adapted to changing circumstances. Implementation must be monitored and the program's outcomes evaluated regularly." Finally, monitoring can help you identify successes that you can publicly acknowledge and celebrate.

  • Kathleen Johnson (MSC from Warren, Penn.) meets monthly with her lead teachers--those staff who oversee implementation of the prevention programs at each of her schools--to monitor progress and address concerns.

  • Karen Smith (MSC from Houston, Texas) is in constant communication with each of her schools and has begun keeping a list of "success stories" so that she and her teachers have concrete reminders of their progress.

  • Penelope Williams (MSC from Milwaukee, Wisc.) and her middle school staff worked with an evaluation team from a local university to adapt the Life Skills curriculum's pre- and post-tests for measuring student progress. They will test the sixth graders when they begin the program, then follow their progress through the seventh and eighth grades.

• Leader and Guide of the Overall Change Process. In this role, you are responsible for overseeing and coordinating the complex set of roles and responsibilities that define your position. Figure 1 describes the steps you must complete in order to achieve change and institutionalize prevention activities in your schools and district.

Figure 1

As leader and guide of this change process, you will probably adopt each of the roles described above. Initially you will need to be both a motivator and champion in order to get school and community members to buy in to the need for prevention and join your advisory team. Later, you will need to be a collaborator with that team to identify prevention priorities and select prevention programs. As you begin implementing these programs, you will need to be a resource provider to ensure that faculty and staff are adequately trained and have the materials they need to do a quality job. And along each step of the way, you will need to monitor progress and make necessary adjustments. (Click here to read more on the steps of the change process.)

Some of the roles described above may be easy to play; others may be more challenging. On Day 2, we will explore one strategy that can help you overcome these challenges and effectively fulfill the multiple roles of a change agent.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Please think about these questions and post your answers, comments, or questions to the Discussion Area

1. Which of the roles described above have you spent the most time playing?

2. Which of the roles described above have been most challenging to play and why? Which have been most satisfying?

References

Durlak, J. (1998). Why program implementation is important. Journal of Prevention and Intervention in the Community, 17(2), 15.

Elias, M. J., Zins, J. E., Weissberg, R. P., Frey, K. S., Greenberg, M. T., Haynes, N. M., Kessler, R., Schwab-Stone, M. E., & Shriver, T. P. (1997). Promoting social and emotional learning: Guidelines for educators. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.