PEER COACHING: UMBRELLA OR SKELETON

When describing to teachers that a peer coaching program is not ”another thing”, I often suggest that it is a tool… an umbrella under which many of our existing programs or tasks get accomplished. Most recently, I was training 165 pre-K to 12 teachers and administrators at the Enka International School in Istanbul, Turkey in peer coaching. With the whole staff training together, English and Turkish speakers using simultaneous translation with headsets, we were able to explore the many ways that peer coaching fits into the day to day goals of teachers and administrators.

Darlene Fisher, the director of Enka School used the symbol of a skeleton. Coaching being the skeleton that supports the many activities of a faculty… a community of learners.

See how the symbols apply for you.


I usually start this conversation by looking at three types of coaching illustrated in an early coaching article by Robert Garmston:


Consider technical coaching most commonly connected to staff development. This is the follow up coaching that is needed when teachers take new skills back to the classroom to integrate into their existing practice. We are all familiar with how our best intentions to implement new learning can be lost without coaching support, reinforcement and celebrations of persistence. Coaching should be how changes in practice or curriculum are implemented. Coaching should be written into any team or individual professional development plan.

I connect collegial coaching to the development of teacher relationships. In other words, the what we are coaching may be less critical than the fact that that staff are getting to know each other and our programs through peer observation and conversation. I am often amazed that in a coaching workshop teachers from the same building make a discovery about each other in a 10 minute practice conference. I had a science teacher say that he just discovered that the Art teacher taught some important material. Coaching should be a component of Professional Learning Communities (PLC). As teachers in a PLC get to know each other better, the quality of their work will deepen. Small Learning Communities and Middle School Teams can both speed the development of their relationships through peer coaching.

Challenge Coaching is helpful when teachers want to work together to create an new opportunity or solve a problem. I worked with an English department that designed a lesson structure for a critical thinking lesson. Then, one teacher taught the lesson and video taped it. The team coached the lesson, modified it and passed it on to another teacher who taught and video taped. The process continued until 9 members taught and together polished the lesson design. Grade level or department teachers can use challenge coaching to tackle a standard that is troubling a number of students or create a plan for a disruptive student that they share. Observing in each others’ classrooms and reflecting and problem solving together often builds creativity.

Within the two day training and a follow up day with teachers and administrators at the Enka School, the following discussions of peer coaching were heard…

In the training during practice, a teacher shared that he had just met a person on the staff that he didn’t know and it was June!

Enka is structured in Pre –K , 1-5 and 6-12 units… discussions emerged about the value of 5 and 6 teachers coaching each other.

Discussion emerged around departments and grade levels selecting a common area for professional development and agreeing to coach each other.

Several teachers wrote on exit notes that they were anxious to coach with teachers in other grade levels and departments.

English pre school lessons will be team taught next year to provide teachers greater flexibility in differentiating. These teachers were discussing how coaching could be a daily activity. Since teaming will be new for most, we discussed teams inviting a third teacher to coach them on their teaming.

E-portfolios are being explored by a group of Enka teachers. They met briefly to examine how coaching was a natural component to support the reflection element of portfolios.

How would you label the Enka staff’s ideas for peer coaching…… technical, collegial, challenge? Do you see many areas of overlap?

Peer Coaching……..umbrella or skeleton? Do you have a better symbol?

THE POWER OF VERTICAL TEAMS

For the past three years, I have been working with the staff and administrators at Twin Lakes Elementary in Hillsborough County, FL forming teaching professional learning communities that team K-2 and 3-4 teachers in groups of 7-8. These PLC’s have a three year focus on students as they move through the grades staying in classrooms of teachers on that team.

This year I will be working with at least 5 additional schools looking to create various forms of vertical PLC’s. One of the schools in Hillsborough County, FL asked the staff from Twin Lakes to share their experiences. What follows are the key points they shared.

A big thank you to the Twin Lakes team!

Professional Learning Community Overview
May 13, 2008
Twin Lakes Elementary

Katherine Biggens- 4th grade teacher
Arlene Haack Music -Specialist/Facilitator
Maggie Leverett- Counselor/Facilitator
Vanessa Malzone- Kindergarten Teacher


Big Picture-What is a PLC? (represents a shift in thinking)
*PLC’s are something you are, not something you do.
*PLC’s focus on results
*We focus on student behaviors which result in student achievement and identify what teacher behaviors are needed to make that happen.
*We focus on learning rather than teaching as we collaborate.
*We begin with the end in mind.

What are the benefits of vertical teaming vs. horizontal/grade level teaming for students and teachers?
*Development of quality lesson plans; work smarter rather than harder
*Knowing students better via more valuable discussion
*Data informed discussions; predicting how students would do then comparing to what they actually did
*You are a part of a team that has a knowledge base of grade level expectations but that also contribute to a team across grade levels
*You have an opportunity to collaborate with teachers across grade levels where you can plan such things as Buddy Reading, peer tutoring,
*During vertical teaming, there is a group of teachers across grade level that can assist with Student Teacher Assistance Team (STAT) interventions
*Student discussion is communicated by current and previous teachers

How did our PLC’s impact the school?
*Increased school grade
*Personal growth-stretching
*Increased communication/collaboration
*Interventions shared among house members/regrouping of students
*Tied to Continuous Improvement Model (CIM)
*Celebrations of learning
*Decrease in behavioral problems
*Matching teaching and learning styles
*PLC’s complete next school year student placement task


Why do we need common planning time?
*There needs to be a time dedicated to facilitate the PLC process. This time needs to be protected and consistent on a weekly basis. It also needs to be during school time and not a voluntary meeting. Without the common planning time we cannot have the discussion and results for student improvement.

How do Specialists impact this process? Specialists work the schedule so common planning time can occur for houses. Specialists have changed their ‘team talk’ into more students centered discussion finding their commonality was ‘children’. Specialists and houses share information about children in order to improve student behaviors and achievement.

Challenges?
*Time and Scheduling
*Money to get a mentor (Steve Barkley)
*Resource people buy-in necessary for success
*Communication between Houses
*Meetings/Training/Administrative Support
*Grade levels still need to meet as a team
*Faculty decisions of benefits vs. challenges
*Teachers do not want to go back to the old way

PLANNING FOR PLCs: Connecting to Student Achievement

I recently had the opportunity to work with the administrator and teacher leaders at Eustis Middle School looking to establish a plan for teachers to work in PLCs as professional development for the next school year.

We used a backwards planning process to establish a focus and a plan.

First, we identified the student performances, behaviors, and practices that would be critical in reaching the desired student achievement.

The list looked like this:
Students…
...take responsibility for their own learning and their classmates learning.
...have plans for their futures.
...show interest and engagement in learning.
...are thinkers.
...direct many learning activities.
...have active conversations in learning.
...are collaborative.

The following drawing by teacher Julia DeLaCruz illustrates.

The Ideal EMS Student:

Having decided upon the desired student performances, we then brainstormed
the teacher practices most likely to generate these student responses.
That list was then summarized into three focus areas:

Co-operative Learning
Motivating the Unmotivated
Higher Order Thinking

Teachers will have the opportunity to select one of these three areas for study in the coming school year. Initial professional development opportunities will be offered to the three groups. Then smaller PLCs will be formed in each of these three areas. Those PLCs will work together making specific applications of their studies with their students. It is expected that those learnings will follow back to the larger group and potentially back to the entire faculty.

GRADE LEVEL TEAMS AND DEPARTMENTS AS PLC'S

I am currently working with several schools in Lake County, Florida who are focused on using grade level teams and departments to create Professional Learning Communities, where teachers’ conversations can generate teacher professional development and increased student learning. Collegiality is the goal. The following quote from Roland Barth appeared in an interview in the Independent School Magazine.

Independent School: What does collegiality look like in a school?

Barth: By collegiality I mean four things. One, teachers talking with one another about the work they do -- talking in faculty meetings, in hallways, in classrooms, at the dinner table about practice. Second, sharing that craft knowledge, shouting it from the mountaintop, and honoring it when someone else is sharing it. Third, making our practice mutually visible. That is, you come into my classroom and watch me teach seventh-grade biology and I come into your classroom and watch you teach ninth-grade geometry, and, afterward, we talk about what we are doing and why, and what we can learn from each other. Above all, collegiality means rooting for the success of one another. If every adult in the school is rooting for you, when the alarm clock rings at six a.m., you jump out of bed to go to that school.
When these qualities of collegiality are in place, a lot of good things happen to schools, to kids, to teachers...

In my work with Lake County schools, I provided teachers and administrators with questions to guide their initial conversations as they presented student assessment data to their colleagues to seek insights and ideas for continued learning growth. Here are some examples for your exploration:

Looking at the results from my last assessment…

What is similar and different about the students’ performance?
Based on those results, who needs what as the next step?
What reteaching needs to be done and how would I teach it differently?
What options exist within my classroom to meet these steps?

What ideas, materials, centers, etc do my teammates have that could support the next steps for each learner?

Do teammates have students needing the same next steps? How might we work together?

PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITIES-Conversations for Student Achievement

I have often recommended that forming PLC’s, so that teachers have at least some students in common, greatly increases the power of conversations to impact student achievement. I recently had the opportunity to observe Twin Lakes Elementary School’s K-2, 3-5, Special Education, and specialist (music, physical education, library and computer) Teaching and Learning Teams.(PLCs)
My thinking on teams with students in common was reinforced when I observed:

-At a K-2 meeting, the second grade teachers were presenting the results of a math assessment they had recently completed with their students. They shared that their students scored low when questions asked them to explain their math reasoning. Hearing this, the first grade teachers quickly said, “That’s because we did not address that last year” At this point (September) the PLC placed on their April agenda the need to revisit this learning objective for late in the year planning.

-At the special education team meeting, teachers were discussing several students who should begin additional mainstreaming experiences. They discussed the need to attend K-2 and 3-5 house meetings to seek assistance in finding the best settings for mainstreaming. They decide to individually prepare the following chart for their next meeting in preparation for meeting with the other houses:



This work will place individual student needs and ways teachers can meet them on the agendas of several meetings.

-At the same special education team meeting, I observed a teacher describing a student who was struggling. A teacher who previously worked with the student offered some insights. Other teachers began to think out loud about “what might help”. Some teachers offered equipment from their classrooms that the teacher could experiment with. The team facilitator mentioned that the teacher might want someone from the team to observe the student and collect data as the student responds to the teacher’s current practice. Before the meeting ended, an observer and observation times were identified and recorded in the team minutes.

It is easy to see that students at Twin Lake Elementary will benefit from the collaboration time their teachers spend. [Twin Lakes teachers have a one hour common release time each week for these Professional Teaching and Learning Teams meetings. Their students also are scheduled for the same lunch so that teachers share this common time.]
Do you have similar experiences?