keeping meaningful conversations alive!

44
KEEPING MEANINGFUL CONVERSATIONS ALIVE! June 2008 Kathy S. Emeigh Assist. Director of Curriculum, IU 20 610-515-6546 [email protected]

Upload: toya

Post on 24-Feb-2016

37 views

Category:

Documents


0 download

DESCRIPTION

June 2008 Kathy S. Emeigh Assist. Director of Curriculum, IU 20 610-515-6546 [email protected]. Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!. How do you have meaningful conversations about student achievement in your buildings?. Training Methods & Levels of Impact Joyce & Showers (1980). - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

KEEPING MEANINGFUL

CONVERSATIONS ALIVE!

June 2008Kathy S. Emeigh

Assist. Director of Curriculum, IU 20610-515-6546

[email protected]

Page 2: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

How do you have meaningful conversations about student achievement in your buildings?

Page 3: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

Training Methods & Levels of ImpactJoyce & Showers (1980)

Method: Didactic presentations of theory and concepts

Level of Impact: Awareness

Evidence of Impact: Participant can articulate general concept and identify problems

1inclined to teach or lecture others too much:

“a boring, didactic speaker.”

Page 4: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

Training Methods & Levels of ImpactJoyce & Showers (1980)

Method: Modeling/Demonstration (i.e. live, video)

Level of Impact: Conceptual Understanding

Evidence of Impact: Participant can articulate concepts clearly and describe appropriate actions

2

Page 5: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

Training Methods & Levels of ImpactJoyce & Showers (1980)

Method: Practice in protected or simulated situations with immediate feedback

Level of Impact: Skill Acquisition

Evidence of Impact: Participant can begin to use skills in structured or simulated situations

3

Page 6: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

Training Methods & Levels of ImpactJoyce & Showers (1980)

Method: Coaching & Supervision during application

Level of Impact: Application of Skills

Evidence of Impact: Participant can use skills flexibly in actual settings.

4

Page 7: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

Results-driven Planning for Professional Learning Schmoker

What do STUDENTS need to know?

What do Teachers need to know and be able to do to ensure student success?

What professional learning will ensure educators acquire the necessary knowledge and skills?

Page 8: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

Agenda for Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

It’s time to ask yourself, what do you believe?

How do you communicate your goals?

What strategies/routines enhance and facilitate communication?

Page 9: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

Pair - Share "The problem is not tests per se but the failure… to

be results focused and data driven. Coaches regularly adjust performance in light of ongoing results, even dramatically altering their lesson plans in light of unexpectedly poor results."

Grant Wiggins

“A rapidly growing number of schools have made a momentous discovery: When teachers regularly and collaboratively review assessment data for the purpose of improving practice to reach measurable achievement goals, something magical happens.”

Michael J. Schmoker

Page 10: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

“Professionally skim:” What does meaningful conversation look

like?

….

….

Page 11: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

Intuition - instinctive knowing (without the use of rational processes)

Fruition –1. Realization of something desired or worked for;

accomplishment: labor finally coming to fruition.2. Enjoyment derived from use or possession.3. The condition of bearing fruit.

How do we go from intuition to fruition?

Page 12: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

How To “Build” Collaboration: Articulate:

Communicate:

Speculate:

Cogitate:

Demonstrate:

Page 13: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

“ate” Latin Suffix – to do, or act upon, to

do something with

Page 14: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

Where should schools begin?

Focus on a few things:1. Measurable goals

○ Your energy is diffused by trying to tackle too much.

○ Or, if what you are trying to accomplish, or the problem you are trying to solve, is too vague, your efforts get diluted.

○ “A Goal” – reserve that one word for a subject area.

“This year we’re going to improve in math, from 47% of the kids reaching proficient, to 50%.”

Schmoker, 2001

How Many Goals?

Page 15: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

15

Measurable Goals: Criteria for Effective Goals(Schmoker, 1999)

Measurable Annual: reflecting an increase over the

previous year of the percentage of students achieving mastery.

Focused, with occasional exceptions, on student achievement.

Linked to a year-end assessment or other standards-based means measuring established level of performance.

Written in simple, direct language that can be understood by almost any audience.

Page 16: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

Where should schools begin?

Focus on a few things:

2. Look at your data – assessment data1. Determine areas of weakness – areas of

“opportunity.”2. Look for patterns and trends.3. Look for those high-leverage areas where

kids aren’t dong so well.

Schmoker, 2001

Page 17: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

Where should schools begin?

Focus on a few things:3. Bring the real resource, teacher expertise, to the

scheme.1. Collaborative structures/meetings2. Begin with a simple agenda3. Agendas focused on problems that the students are

having.4. Find those patterns and trends….5. Generate solutions to those problems6. Gather and analyze those results.

Schmoker, 2001

Page 18: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

Strategies and Routines to promote collegial collaboration and

communication: Professional Learning Communities

School perceptions – Are you a learning organization?Fostering healthy conversations

30 Minute Meeting

Protocols to examine student work

PASS – Principal Alignment for Student Success

Page 19: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

Isolation: The Enemy of Improvement?

Just leave me alone

and let me teach!What are the consequences of teacher isolation in schools?

Page 20: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

Building and Fostering Collegial Conversation through the “PLE” Professional – someone with expertise

in a specialized field.

Learning – Suggest ongoing action and perpetual curiosity.

Community – a group linked by common interests.

Page 21: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

In a Professional Learning Community:

All these characteristics are present○ See tools to help develop a collaborative

culture in your schools.

All educators create an environment that fosters mutual cooperation, emotional support, and personal growth.

All educators work together to achieve what they could not accomplish alone.

www.allthingsplc.info

Page 22: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

Professional Learning Teams

Why create them?

To improve professional development by encouraging teachers to recognize and share the best of what they already know.

(Schmoker, 2006)

Effective team-based learning communities – not workshops – are the very best kind of professional development!

Page 23: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

Professional Learning Teams

Why create them?

To improve student achievement by assuring that instruction at each grade level builds on the previous year and prepares students for success in the next grade level.

Page 24: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

Professional Learning TeamsThe basic structure of the professional learning team is a group that shares a common purpose.

(DuFour and Eaker, 1998)

What would be the common purpose of a grade level, social studies Professional Learning Team?

Page 25: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

Professional Learning Teams

Until a school has clarified what students should know and be able to do and the dispositions they should acquire as a result of schooling, its staff cannot function as a professional learning community.(DuFour and Eaker, 1998)

Page 26: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

Four Focused Questions1. What do we want students to know and be able to

do?

2. How will we know when they know it?

3. What will we do if they don’t know it?

4. What can we do to extend understanding?

( DuFour and Eaker, 1998)

Page 27: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

Professional Learning TeamsFinding time for collaboration: Provide common preparation time. Use parallel scheduling. Adjust start and end times. Share classes. Use scheduled time for group activities, events,

and testing. Bank time. Use in-service and faculty meeting time wisely.

(DuFour, et.al., 2006)

Stop, Drop,

and Jot!

Page 28: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

Listen to the story of a teacher…. What were the unwritten rules this teacher lived by?

Why did she return to those rules after a 3 year leave of absence to work in professional development role?

What recommendations could help teachers transform their practice?

Why is the isolated classroom scenario not working anymore?

Page 29: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

Assessing your environment: Shared and supportive leadership Shared Values and Vision Collective Learning and Application Shared Personal Practice Supportive Conditions and Capacities

(Structures, Relationships)

Page 30: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

Building Collaborative Teams

Build a community of listeners

Developing effective dialogue through the use of protocols

Page 31: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

What are protocols? Agreed upon guidelines for a

conversationPermits a focused kind of conversation to

occur

Vehicles for building the skills and culture necessary for collaborative workActually creates a culture of trust by actually

doing substantive work together

www.lasw.org/protocols.html

Page 32: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

Why use a protocol? Makes is safe to ask challenging

questions of each other

Makes the most of the time

Page 33: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

Important note!! The point of a protocol is not to “do” the

protocol well, but to have an in-depth, insightful, conversation about teaching and learning.

Page 34: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

The 30 Minute Meeting: A protocol created for short, focused

meetings aimed at achieving real, measurable results based on an agreed-upon goal.

Getting from “intuition” to “fruition”

Page 35: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

Examining Student Work:Assessment Literacy

The capacity of teachers to examine student achievement data and student work.

The capacity to create/develop and implement classroom and school improvements plans designed to get better results.

The capacity to positively enter the debate and be influential in the discussions about the uses and misuses of achievement data.

Page 36: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

Examining Student Work Schools need to examine, simply and

conscientiously, the number of students who can compute, calculate, analyze and compose.

Discuss the implications of where there are strengths and where there are weaknesses.

Page 37: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

Examining Student Work From there:

And this is where we fall down –

Instead of just talking….

Adjust instruction in a way that enables more students to compute and calculate and analyze and compose

Page 38: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

“PASS” – Principal Alignment for

Student Success Goals:

“They constantly remind students, staff and the community that the core purpose of the school is teaching and learning.”

Increase learning for all students

Increase purposeful and practical support for teachers and their pedagogy

Page 39: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

41

The three surefire ways to kill your collaborative efforts

1. Ignore input2. Use the collaborative processes in

evaluation3. Allow “planning time” to become a time for

other things (like disseminating information that could be shared other ways)

Page 40: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

42

…and some advice on keeping it going

1. Time for “do the data” is essential2. Share data in multiple formats – graphs

as well as charts3. Illuminate your successes, especially

the small ones!

Page 41: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

43

“Collegiality among teachers, as measured by the frequency of communication, mutual support, help, etc., was a strong indicator of implementation success. Virtually every research study on the topic has found this to be the case”

(Fullan, 1991, p. 132).

Final Thoughts:

Page 42: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

Warning:“Much of what we call teamwork or collegiality does not favor nor make explicit what should be its end: better results for children … the weaker, more common forms of collegiality ‘serve only to confirm present practice without evaluating its worth’.” (Schmoker, p. 15).

Page 43: Keeping Meaningful Conversations Alive!

Professional Learning Teams

Read more about Professional Learning Teams: DuFour, R., & Eaker, R. (1998). Professional learning

communities at work: Best practices for enhancing student achievement. Alexandria, Va.: ASCD.

DuFour, R., DuFour, R., Eaker, R., & Many, T. (2006). Bloomington, Ind.: Solution Tree.

Langer, G., Colton, A., & Goff, L. (2003). Collaborative analysis of student work: Improving teaching and learning. Alexandria, Va.: ASCD.

Schmoker, Mike. (2006) Results now: How we can achieve unprecedented improvements in teaching and learning. Alexandria, Va.: ASCD.