PLANNING FIRST DAY

Recently I was providing leadership skills training for teachers who facilitate professional learning communities at their school. We examined how Questions for Life could be used to create questions that increase the productivity of PLC planning sessions.

As a sample we practiced using the following questions to explore planning the opening week of school:

What will students see and hear in your classroom on opening day?

How are the first three days of school similar and different from the rest of the year?

List activities that you usually do during the opening week of school.

What generalization can you make about “setting the stage” for the school year?

What are the most important messages you want students to sense during the opening days of the year?

What relationship exists between our school vision/mission and the first day’s message to students?

How important is it to set an emotional tone to start the year? Why?

Here are examples of opening day ideas from Wow! Adding Pizzazz to Teaching and Learning.

Sixth grade middle school students find small bags labeled Survival Kit on their desks when they enter the classroom. The teacher assures them that while 6th grade English is demanding, they will survive. Students open the bags to find among other things, a small compass, lifesavers, and a band –aid. As they question their teacher, “What are these things for?”, they find the symbolism:

Compass is for finding direction…critical to quality writing. Lifesavers remind you I’ll be here when you need me.
The band-aid can cover the grade on a writing that looks bloody (I respond in red) and allows you to do it over for a new grade. (pg37)

An elementary teacher has a gift wrapped box delivered to her classroom. As student curiosity rises, she informs them that sure enough it is a gift for them, but the note attached says the box cannot be opened until students identify the volume of the box. Several days of math are spent learning the necessary skills, as measuring uncover fractions. (pg36)

A high school social studies teacher who begins opening day with Billy Joel’s "We Didn’t Start the Fire" states, “I’ll never start the year with rules again, catching them with a WOW- the first day was amazing and powerful. (pg42)

What ideas do you have for setting the desired climate for opening school?

How might we collaborate to set the tone?

Who does what? When?

These questions and examples generated a quick exchange of beliefs, practices, and ideas. What started as a modeling and practicing activity lead to decisions that set some first day plans into action. My experience shows that ACTION tends to motivate teachers to continue investing in PLCs.

Let me know if you experiment with the above.

THOUGHTS ON LINCHPIN

Thanks to a recommendation from a district staff developer I just finished reading Linchpin: Are You Indispensible? by Seth Godin . I’m recommending it for your reading. Here are a few of the statements I highlighted as I read with my comments added.

“The problem is that most schools don’t like great teachers. They’re organized to stamp them out, bore them, bureaucratize them, and make them average.” (pg 29)

Godin uses the term artist to describe indispensible people who do remarkable things. Many students need their teacher to be remarkable. Administrators and coaches should work with teachers to find their voice and spirit in their teaching. Teachers’ individual insights and connections to their students are critical to bringing out student’s artistry.

“The Boss’s Lie…What I want is someone who will do exactly what I tell them to do. What I want is someone who shows up on time and doesn’t give me a hard time…How come the stars in the company don’t follow these rules? (pg 37)

As I read this piece I kept thinking that in many schools and classrooms we have rules that are lies. We suggest that success comes from following the rules.
Signs in elementary schools frequently say, “Always raise your hand.” Yet my observations often show teachers rewarding outspoken students who bring interesting comments or questions into the discussion.

“Being good at school is a fine skill if you intend to be in school forever…It’s nice, but it’s not relevant unless your career involves homework assignments, looking through textbooks for answers that are already known to your supervisors, complying with instructions and then, in high-pressure settings, regurgitating those facts with limited processing on your part…What they should teach in school…only two things: 1. Solve interesting problems. 2. Lead”. (pg 47)

Godin’s two things match closely with 21st Century’s Partnerships 4Cs -

critical thinking and problem solving, communication, collaboration, and creativity and innovation. And, with concerns in recent reports identifying that American creativity scores are falling as Newsweek reported:

Kyung Hee Kim at the College of William & Mary discovered this in May, after analyzing almost 300,000 Torrance scores of children and adults. Kim found creativity scores had been steadily rising, just like IQ scores, until 1990. Since then, creativity scores have consistently inched downward. “It’s very clear, and the decrease is very significant,” Kim says. It is the scores of younger children in America—from kindergarten through sixth grade—for whom the decline is “most serious.”

Are too many elementary students playing school with the wrong rules?

Tapping their own creativity is essential for teachers to create classrooms where students are practicing solving problems and leading. Those kinds of learning options don’t come from textbooks and teachers’ editions.

“Every successful organization is built around people. Humans who do art. People who interact with other people. Men and woman who don’t merely shuffle money, but interact, give gifts, and connect.” (Pg 235)

To coach teachers as artists who do remarkable things, coaches and administrators must function as artists too…giving gifts to staff who give gifts to students.

COACHING WITH R E S T

My writing partner, Terri Bianco , and I are working on a new book on instructional coaching. We’re writing to provide insight and skills to instructional coaches and to administrators who need to practice instructional coaching directly with teachers and support the work of instructional coaches.

We are explaining how the backwards planning process, moving from student achievement to student behaviors to teacher behaviors to leaders’ behaviors, can be used to guide coaching conversations with teachers.

Terri developed an acronym for the process.
R = Result
E = Evidence
S = Student Behavior
T = Teacher Behavior

The result describes the learning outcome, standard, understanding, or achievement you seek (What do you want your students to know or be able to do?). The evidence describes the student performance that would illustrate success (How will you know they learned it?). The student behaviors describe what students will need to do/practice in order to be prepared to produce the evidence (What are the learning behaviors?). Teacher behaviors define how the teacher will elicit the necessary student behaviors (What would best practices suggest or how does “what I know about my students” indicate what is most likely to work?).

In a pre-conference we might hear…

Coach: How does your current student writing compare with the standard that you are seeking to meet? (result and evidence)

Teacher: Most students are responding to the writing prompt by answering a question or creating a list rather than thinking through a message they want to communicate and then planning how to produce that message.

Coach: What do you think your students need to do or experience to develop the skills/process for success? (student behaviors)

Teacher: They need to see and hear the planning/writing process and practice planning rather than jumping to get a piece finished.

Coach: What can you do to get that experience and practice? (teacher behavior)

Teacher: I think I can model a “think aloud” as I respond to a prompt on the board and then have pairs work on planning a writing response together.

Coach: When the pairs are working, what would you want to observe happening? (student behavior)

Teacher: Students questioning themselves and each other before planning their writing and during their writing.

In a post conference we might hear…

Coach: What did you notice as you observed the pairs during their practice? (student behavior)

Teacher: A few pairs really did a lot of thinking and planning before they wrote and developed better writing pieces. But, too many just did their old behavior of answering the question or listing together, thus their writings are longer but not better quality.

Coach: Yes, I noticed the same thing. What did you do when you stopped at a pair where that was happening? (teacher behavior)

Teacher: I asked them questions to see if I could trigger more thinking.

Coach: That’s what I thought. It seems the students weren’t sure how to question themselves. I’m wondering if you need to more explicitly model the questions you are asking yourself as you do the think aloud. Some pairs may even need question starters… maybe using yours or generating some as a class before they start working as pairs. (teacher behavior)

Instructional coaches can use the same REST process in planning their work with teachers:

Results: What do teachers need to master and implement to increase student achievement?

Evidence: What do current observations of teachers tell us is happening?

Student Behaviors are now Teacher Behaviors—What will teachers have to do and experience to produce the evidence we’re seeking?

Teacher Behaviors are now Coach’s Behaviors—What will I do as coach (model, teach, ask, provide) to create the necessary teacher behavior?
How can I get my principal to help?

Now we need to hear from you to learn the REST of the story…

PROFESSIONAL LEARNING TEAMS

During recent professional development work in two different districts I have been noticing increased teacher interest and willingness to explore a more collegial or team based approach to meeting student achievement goals It was especially motivating for me that one of the sites was all secondary teachers.

My thinking was reinforced while reading a recent Education Week post (June 28, 2010) by Tom Carroll and Hanna Doerr of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (NCTAF) titled Learning Teams and the Future of Teaching.

…according to the most recent MetLife Survey of the American Teacher (2009), today’s teachers work alone—they spend an average of 93 percent of their time in school working in isolation from their colleagues, and they continue to work alone during their out-of-school hours of preparation and grading. Their day-to-day work is disconnected from the efforts of their colleagues, and their pullout professional development is fragmented and poorly aligned with their students’ learning needs.

In last week's blog, I provided some examples of teachers collaboratively planning and assessing student progress. NCTAF identifies learning teams for creating teacher collegiality focused on student achievement:

NCTAF’s Six Principles of Success for Professional Learning Teams

Shared Values and Goals: The team should have a shared vision of the capabilities of students and teachers. They should also clearly identify a problem around which the learning team can come together, with an ultimate goal of improving student learning.

Collective Responsibility: Team members should have shared and appropriately differentiated responsibilities based on their experience and knowledge levels. There should be a mutual accountability for student achievement among all members of the learning team.

Authentic Assessment: Teachers in the community should hold themselves collectively accountable for improving student achievement, by using assessments that give them real time feedback on student learning and teaching effectiveness. These assessments are valued—not because they are linked to high stakes consequences—but because they are essential tools to improve learning.

Self-Directed Reflection: Teams should establish a feedback loop of goal-setting, planning, standards, and evaluation, driven by the needs of both teachers and students.

Stable Settings: The best teams cannot function within a dysfunctional school. Effective teams required dedicated time and space for their collaborative work to take place. This required the support, and occasionally, positive pressure from school leadership.

Strong Leadership Support: Successful teams are supported by their school leaders who build a climate of openness and trust in the school, empower teams to make decisions based on student needs, and apply appropriate pressure perform.
Source: The National Commission on Teaching & America's Future

Here are some video clips where NCTAF features schools implementing learning teams.

Note how the following quote from Michel Fullan, All Systems Go (pg 72), illustrates the power of Learning Teams:

The power of collective capacity is that it enables ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary things—for two reasons:

...knowledge about effective practice becomes more widely available and accessible on a daily basis

...working together generates commitment

Building collective capacity should be on the top of school leaders’ agendas as they plan for the start of a new school year. Teachers learning in teams to meet students’ achievement goals provides a strategy.