A Year Spent Inquiring about Trust, Meant a Year Spent Measuring Trust as an Elementary School Principal

When I became the principal of a school in need of transformation,  I brought with me 21 years of leadership experience and a track record of success. I was recognized as an effective principal, and I was excited by the challenge of leading a school in need of transformation. I arrived with excitement and hope, but quickly became sobered by the magnitude of the work.  This school had experienced gaps in leadership due to the medical leaves of the former principal, and the community around the school experiences violence and poverty.  Significant problems with facilities, systems, and structures consumed my first 3 years of leadership. 

Arriving, I knew trust was low among adults. Chicago Public Schools uses The University of Chicago’s 5 Essentials system to measure and understand school improvement. The survey looks at different types of trust, and I noted that two types of trust (teacher-teacher and teacher-administration)  didn’t increase during my first three years, despite my efforts.  I chalked that up to the upheaval of the pandemic, leadership turnover, and the migrant crisis.  By my fourth year, I realized that improving trust and collective efficacy would be critical to the school’s improvement, and a lack of trust presented a significant barrier to the work we were trying to do.  Trust and collective efficacy are keys to creating successful schools. Trust refers to the bonds among adults within a school community, enabling them to unite and collaborate on the challenging yet rewarding work of lifting students to their full potential. This deep-seated trust fosters a shared belief in the faculty’s combined ability to positively impact student learning and behavior, which is the very essence of collective efficacy. These two elements are linked, each reinforcing the other to create a powerful environment for school improvement and student achievement.

A turning point in my leadership came when I chose to lean in and focus deeply on building trust. Realizing that trust was the key to making this school great, I needed to make time for trust to be a priority.  My leadership team committed to this work, and  I also signed up to participate in the Visionary Change Management workshop with Lead by Learning.  I needed a safe professional learning space for refining my thinking and leadership to increase trust, and this PLC provided encouragement and excellent feedback from principal peers. 

To make trust a priority, my team and I committed to regularly measuring trust by asking for feedback, reflecting and acting on feedback, and dedicating professional development time to increasing trust. 

To supplement the extensive annual 5 Essentials survey, we developed a brief, informal Google Form survey using four of its adult trust questions. This survey was deployed quarterly, starting at the beginning of the year. After the first few surveys, we enhanced it by prompting teachers to identify concrete changes needed to elevate their trust scores by one point. This allowed us to effectively “unpack” and address the barriers to trust in our school.  

We received feedback from teachers regarding the “pop-in” informal observations conducted by administrators. The primary concern was the inconsistency in feedback styles among the three administrators, which led to significant panic and tension among the teaching staff. To address this, we dedicated several months to calibrating our feedback approach. This involved standardizing the format and content of both email summaries and follow-up conversations. We also worked to narrow and more clearly articulate the focus of these informal visits.

Other teacher feedback was more difficult to act upon. Some barriers to trust at our school are subtle but hard to overcome: the huge size of the school (nearly 1100 students and 180+ staff), fairly significant student turnover and transiency, and few negative staff members who hold disproportionate power. 

We intentionally integrated trust-building into our school’s routine. During grade-level team meetings and professional development days, we dedicated time to fostering stronger connections. We carved out an hour for educators to share their personal stories, deepening understanding and empathy. As leaders, we stepped back to empower teachers, allowing more time for their facilitation and collective work. To support this, we invested in additional substitute coverage, providing dedicated team planning days. Our teams also used this time to debrief trust surveys, identifying specific areas for improvement and working together to implement our new Language Arts curriculum.

Our trust surveys showed that trust and collective efficacy have begun to improve, a small but notable improvement, but not the dramatic increase we had hoped for.  The most marked improvements were in teacher-teacher trust.  Now, we are reflecting on what more can be done to improve teacher-administration trust. 

We don’t claim to have trust and collective efficacy mastered at my school, but we see movement in the right direction.  I’m holding a few questions central as I think about trust and collective efficacy and plan for furthering the work:

• In a large school where it’s not possible for everyone to know each other personally, how can we build and strengthen trust across the community?
• In a high-needs school where poverty, trauma, and student transiency are constant challenges, how can teachers cultivate trust when they themselves are experiencing secondary trauma? To what extent does this emotional burden affect staff well-being and trust?
• Knowing that my staff and students are looking to me, how can I, as the principal, model trust by acknowledging my own struggles, demonstrating vulnerability, and using my growth in trust as a pathway to inspire and lead others toward deeper trust within our school community?

Ultimately, trust is the bedrock upon which all great work stands. By consistently seeking feedback and responding to the needs of our school community, we are not just building a foundation; we are laying the groundwork for a future where every student can thrive.

Heather Yutzy is the proud principal of Haugan School. She has many years of experience as a school principal, assistant principal, instructional coach and teacher. She is passionate about helping students and teachers to thrive, both academically and socially. Ms. Yutzy holds a B.A. degree in Elementary Education, and M.A. in Educational Administration and she worked as a teacher in CPS before becoming an administrator. She has now been an educational leader for more than 25 years.   Heather considers one of her key accomplishments as principal to be when her school twice achieved exemplary honors for social emotional learning. She finds joy in coaching teachers, empowering parents,  and conferring with students about their personal and academic growth.

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