BUILDING TEAMS TO MAXIMIZE STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

I just returned from a trip to Muscat, Oman where I provided two days of peer coaching training for the teachers and administrators at ABA, a World International Baccalaureate School (pre K- 12).
The training included several coaching conferencing practice activities allowing staff to interact with others within and beyond their grade and content area groups. A grade 4 teacher videoed a learning activity with her students and shared it with the entire faculty. At table groups of six, participants roleplayed a post conference where a coach conferenced with a teacher playing the grade 4 teacher as others observed and helped the coach as needed. The videoed teacher traveled from table to table “listening in”.

Each time we debriefed a practice conference, individuals shared insights regarding the payoffs of collegiality:

Knowing colleagues better

Understanding curriculum connections

Clarity in own problem identification

Learning more about shared students

Gaining instructional options

Celebration, Respect, and Trust

A question from the group had us explore the value in working as teams…taking increased shared responsibility for student success. Moving from individuals to franchises to teams..(see earlier blog from Sept. 13, 09)
A teacher who was retired from the Royal Navy suggested I look at John Adair’s Action Centered Leadership Model which he had studied years ago.

The three overlapping circles illustrate that each of the functions are interdependent. This is because individuals make up teams, teams/individuals complete tasks and without a task there is no need for a team or individual. If one element is missing or weak then the other elements will suffer. For example if the team is weak then the task will suffer and one weak individual can affect team performance and subsequently task completion. Adair said that leaders should therefore concentrate on:

• Task Completion (achieve the task)
• Creating and sustaining a group of people that work together as a team (build and sustain a team) and
• Development of individuals within the team (develop the individual).

from http://www.learnmanagement2.com/adair.htm)


Consider how the three elements align in school leadership.

Leaders work with staff to identify the definitions, components, and standards of student achievement (the task). Leaders coach and train to build the individual teachers’ skills set. Leaders build, design and facilitate, the teams that maximize student success.
The teacher who shared Adair’s model mentioned that communication was critical to building the balance between task, individual, and team. I got an “aha”! Peer coaching can provide the effective communication that supports effective teams.
I have been promoting connecting Professional Learning Communities and Peer Coaching. Coaching observations, patterns, and questions can provide work for PLCs. Issues that emerge from PLCs can lead members to classroom observations and coaching for more data or experimentation. Peer coaching across grade levels, departments, and even schools (grades 5-6 and 8-9) can provide a communication link.

COACHING TEACHERS FOR EXPERTISE

I’ve been reading with great interest an article in ASCD’s (February 2010) Educational Leadership, “The Strive of It” where Kathleen Cushman explores “What conditions inspire teens to practice toward perfection?”.

Cushman describes The Practice Project sponsored by What Kids Can Do, which examines the questions:

”What does it take to get really good at something?
“What habits do experts practice?”
“What conditions promote students building the habits of experts?”

In the Harvard Business Review (July-August 2007) in The Making of an Expert ,K. Anders Ericsson, Michael J. Prietula, and Edward T. Cokely cite the work of Benjamin Bloom:

”All the superb performers he (Bloom) investigated had practiced intensively, had studied with devoted teachers, and had been supported enthusiastically….”

I read Cushman’s writing thinking about my work with student effort, examined in an earlier blog, Effort and Work. Making schools more like the studios, stages, practice fields, and workshops where students practice hard aligns with my thinking about planning instruction for learning.

My thinking jumped as I reviewed Cushman’s list of Habits of Experts. I began connecting the list to the work of coaches. Do you see the connection?

Habits of Experts 1

Ask good questions
Break problems into parts
Look for Patterns
Rely on Evidence
Consider other perspectives
Follow hunches
Use familiar ideas in new ways
Collaborate with others
Welcome critique
Revise repeatedly
Persist
Seek new challenges
Know yourself

Here’s a few connections with my coaching work:

Ask good questions…I often describe that learning what questions to ask is one of the most important outcomes from teachers’ work with coaches or mentors. After a quality coaching experience, teachers find that they continue to ask themselves questions that the coach had asked them. Especially for beginning teachers there is a need to learn from your mentor, not ...“What’s the answer?”, but “What’s the questions that will guide my problem solving as a teacher?”

Look for patterns…Coaches who observe student learners and collect data create the opportunity for teachers to discover patterns more quickly than they could on their own. Teachers bringing student work to PLC meetings can collaborate on identifying patterns.

Consider other perspectives, follow hunches, and use familiar ideas in new ways…When coaches work from and reinforce teachers’ visions and beliefs about the value of their work with students, they build the desire to continually seek options to build toward greater student success.

Revise repeatedly and persist…Coaching feedback, encouragement, and support play important roles in helping teachers create the determination to work toward continuous improvement in student achievement.

Know yourself……… As coaches work to know the person they are coaching, seeking his/her agenda, they can cause the person they are conferencing with to know themselves better.

I believe that in many ways a quality coaching program models the very practices that we want teachers to implement with their students. That belief was certainly reinforced as I examined the habits of experts.

I’d love to hear the connections you find with your coaching, mentoring or leadership work.

1 Educational Leadership, Feb 2010, Vol 67 Number 5, page 53

COACHING CO-TEACHING TEAMS

I recently provided coaching to co-teaching teams at an inner city middle school. Some teams were content and special education teachers, some were content and Title I or special education support staff and in some cases three colleagues were simultaneously working with students.

On Wiked at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, co-teaching is defined as

…the practice of having two or more educators in a classroom, delivering or assisting in the daily lesson. Co-teaching can be done in several ways, and can range from a second teacher simply visiting the classroom to see what instruction is going on, and to assist anyone who seems to need a little extra help, to team teaching, in which both teachers plan, deliver and assess the student's work. Advantages for all students include:
1. More time spent working cooperatively and learning content
2. Strong emphasis on learning skills, organizational responsibility, and preparedness.
3. Diverse learning techniques and teaching techniques
4. Improved self esteem
5. Opportunities for leadership and growth within the least restrictive environment
6. Less fear of failure
7. Better or more meaningful grades
8. With two teachers in the room, they can model partner and group activities for how students should act when working with others.


The middle school arranged for a substitute to join me for my two days of coaching, creating maximum opportunities for learning. I observed teams for about 30 minutes and then the substitute covered the class while teams left for coaching and reflection on my observations.

My open-ended questions to the teams frequently led to an early response from one of the members (reinforced by the other), “We could be more productive if we had more time to plan together.”

My response was,”I know you would and the leadership team is working to make that happen. In the meantime I’m wondering if spontaneous planning during learning might
create options for additional focused instruction to increase student learning?”

Early in my two days I realized that when co-teaching there were often a lead teacher (at any instance) and a supporting teacher. Effective teams exchanged roles seamlessly and unconsciously creating instructional moments where students always knew where to focus attention. Other teams had planned “who does what” and closely followed the plan.

In all cases the non-lead teacher was in an ideal position to be studying the learners in a way that the lead teacher could not. So the non-lead teacher had information that the team could use IF they had comfort and trust with spontaneous coaching.

Examples:

Math Content Teacher and Special Education Support Staff

My Observation: The support teacher was debriefing bell work problems on the board that students tackled as they entered. Realizing a few students were unclear of the process, he went into an in-depth, step-by–step presentation lasting about 12 minutes.

In the coaching session I asked the Math teacher how many students needed the support teacher’s presentation. She suggested 4 of the 18. She was in the perfect spot to interrupt and send the 4 students to the board with the teacher while she provided a more effective 12 minutes for the other students. She did not.

Science Content Teacher and Special Education Teacher

My Observation: The science teacher was preparing the students for group project work. As she got to the 5th direction I was thinking to myself, “too many directions for the inclusion students and probably some other students.”

In the coaching session I asked the special education teacher, “What were you thinking as the teacher presented the directions?”. Her immediate thinking matched mine yet she didn’t choose to interrupt by asking, ”Could we do the first two, and then check back?”.

These two teams and others quickly identified that in the non-leading role they could assess learning and suggest modifications, but “felt uncomfortable.” However the leading teacher always responded with, “ I wish you would have.”

The awareness of the non-leading teachers’ opportunity to assess and see alternatives and the openness of the lead teacher to accept evidently clicked. Two days latter I received an email from the principal that she could observe a difference in classrooms as teams were working with spontaneous coaching input to each other.

REFLECTION AND COACHING

I recently provided a faculty professional development session at Edgewood High School in the Buckeye Local School District , Ashtabula, Ohio. I have been working with the Learning Improvement Team (LIT) designing professional learning plans around their school goals. (Teachers learning to impact student learning.)

I was asked to provide the entire faculty with a personal experience to demonstate the value of reflection generated by coaching conversations.

Note Dale Vidmar’s (Southern Oregon University) thoughts on reflection and coaching:

As instructors reflect upon their experience in the classroom with a colleague, they discover important information about the intended results in comparison with the actual lesson. They share both accomplishments and frustrations. By making the collegial conversations part of instruction, instructors build upon the everyday classroom experiences, complementing class time with the conversations before and after teaching. They learn to be conscious in the classroom, using the thinking that goes along with performance to manage their actions. They address and self-monitor their teaching practice on a continual basis, ultimately learning not by experience alone, but through critical reflection upon their experiences.
"Reflective Peer Coaching: Crafting Collaborative Self-Assessment in Teaching." Research Strategies. 20 (3). 2005. 135-148.

In Quality Teaching in a Culture of Coaching , I outline the value of coaches asking open-ended questions to generate teacher thinking and reflection. Questions that contain no sense of right/wrong…allowing the coach to understand the teacher’s thinking and create and atmosphere of trust. Since this was an initial experience for the staff, I provided a list of questions to guide their conversations. After one model where I conferenced with a member of the LIT team, teacher pairs conferenced with each other about a lesson plan they’d be using the next day. (Teachers were asked to bring plans to the meeting and were assigned partners)

............Leanne Hartzell and Paul Blum in a coaching session

Here are the questions they used:

How does this learning activity fit into the current unit of study?

What are the most important student actions/behaviors needed in this lesson?

What are the critical teacher actions/behaviors needed in this lesson?

How difficult is the concept/activity for your learners? Groups of learners? Individuals?
1______________________________10
Easy ...................................Very Difficult

How does the difficulty level effect your instruction?

Describe the assessment you’ll be doing during the learning activity that might modify what you’ve planned? … influence future lessons?

What could I observe and provide feedback on that would have value for you? [Watching teacher, students (all or some) or teacher student interaction, etc]

Is there a question, problem, or opportunity for which you are interested in getting ideas ?

Paul Blum, pictured above, coached by his partner Leanne Hartzell stated, “I don’t recall having a conversation like this in all my years of teaching.”

My further questioning of Paul reveled that the 12 minute conference conversation felt good as it respected the importance of his work and the reflection generated a new idea about the lesson he was going to teach.

I received an email from the Edgewood principal informing me that several teacher pairs from the session did classroom observations or met to conference after they taught their lessons. Others have expressed an interest in more coaching activities.

Teachers do value reflection.